Free Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen Page B

fear.
    The snow was small and hard at first, driven needles that seemed to cut his cheek when he looked outside, and then changing to blown finer snow that found ways to seep into the shelter and melt hissing on the fire.
    He was not idle. He had dragged in enough wood to last if he was careful, but by the second and third day he was going stir-crazy and was looking for things to do.
    Luckily there was much that needed doing. His clothing was far from adequate. The rabbit-skin shirt was like paper and ripped easily—indeed had been torn in several places during the moose attack and needed restitching—and Brian, with great effort, stretched the moose hide out in the rain and cut it in half and brought the rear half into the shelter.
    The hide was still wet from being on the moose, hadn’t had time to dry, but the fire and heat in the shelter worked fast and within a few days it had dried sufficiently to work.
    It was stiff and thick and while it was still damp he cut a rectangle for a moose shirt, stitching it down the sides with moose-hide laces, making it larger than the rabbit-skin shirt. He did the same kind of sleeves and then made a crude hood, which he stitched around the head opening.
    He did all this with the hair side in and when he put the rabbit-skin shirt on underneath and then the moose-hide parka on the outside—even with the moose hide still uncured—he could feel his body warming up instantly.
    He also nearly went down with the weight. He figured the coat weighed at least thirty pounds, maybe more, and decided he wouldn’t be doing much running in it.
    The snowstorm lasted three days on top of the rain and Brian worked on his weak spot—his hands. He used moose hide and made a pair of crude mittens by using his hands for a pattern and a piece of charcoal to draw on the hide. The thumbs were so large he could almost stick his whole hand in the thumbhole. These he made with the hair side in and fashioned them large enough to allow a second set of rabbit-skin mitts to be worn inside. The mittens were so big they kept falling off his hands and he used moose hide to make a cord that went over his shoulders and held the mittens up if he relaxed his hands.
    This was all hard work and kept him busy for days, but worse work was the hide. As it dried it started to harden and it turned into something very close to a board.
    He worked it back and forth over a rounded piece of wood as he’d done with the lacing and this process, trying to soften the dried moose hide, took longer than sewing up the clothing. And in the end he had to settle for less than he wanted. He had the hide loose where it counted, in the armpits and elbows and the hood, but much of the rest of it was only half supple, stiff enough so that he felt as if he were wearing a coat of armor and still stiff though he worked on it for hours when at last the storm ended.
    Brian expected to be snowed in but in fact it was only eight or nine inches deep. It had been a fine, driven snow and hadn’t accumulated to any depth but it was blasted into everything. Many of the trees had a full six inches sticking out to the
side
of the tree, where the snow had been driven by the wind.
    It was still beautiful in the sunlight but had a different look from the last, fluffy snow, and it was cold, a deeper cold than before.
    Brian couldn’t estimate temperature but he thought it must be near zero, but quiet—the wind had stopped completely—and his clothes kept him as warm as if he’d been in the shelter.
    He started to brush the snow off the stacked moose meat and then thought better of it. The meat was frozen and protected under the snow and ice from the rain and safer there than in the open. He didn’t think the bear would come—it must be hibernating by now, and the same for Betty, whom he hadn’t seen since just after the bear attack—so the meat should be all right just beneath the snow.
    He needed wood and he spent most of that day dragging in dead