Free Dogsong by Gary Paulsen Page A

into the snow and kill them.
    That much Russel saw clearly and one more thing.
    As the man grabbed the long killing-lance and jumped from the ivory and bone sled, the wind blew off his parka hood and Russel saw the man’s face and knew it.
    The man was him: Russel, with more hair, longer hair, and small beard and mustache, but he was Russel and Russel knew fear, deep fear, because with the knowledge that he was the man in the dream he knew that he would have to fight the mammoth. He would have to fight it and kill it.
    And the mammoth charged.
    The head and tusks thrashed in angry arcs and the huge feet trampled the earth, tearing up clods of dirty snow, as the mighty animal bore down on the man and the dogs and sled.
    There was no time for escape, no time for dodging. The man had to face the beast.
    The dogs ran to the side, but turned back in as the mammoth rushed by them, heading for the man. But their action caused the animal to swing its head slightly to the side and that revealed the center of the chest.
    Crouching and turned away, the man set the shaft of the long lance in the earth and snow in back of him, settled it in as hard as he could and rose to face the oncoming mammoth. With its head sideways to lash at the dogs it roared down on the man as withsmall arm movements he guided and let the weight of the animal carry it down the shaft to death.
    The lance entered like light, like a beam of light shot into the mammoth and when there should have been death the animal instead wheeled and heaved in a great circle, caught the dogs and threw two of them in the air.
    All in silence.
    And then the beast stopped. It stood with its head hanging, swaying back and forth, and accepted the death from the broken lance shaft in its chest and went down on its front knees and then its back and in an almost gentle roll slipped to its side and died.
    And the man as he saw the animal falter began to sing. Again Russel did not know the words but they sounded familiar to him.
    The man sang in exultation.
    Sang the death of the great beast, and the mountain of meat lying before him.
    Sang the luck of his hunt.
    Sang of the fat that would be his for his family and the dogs that now tore at the belly of the mammoth.
    Sang the wind that brought his dogs to the tracks and sang the gratitude for the great animal who died and left him much meat.
    And Russel felt all those songs inside hissoul, felt them even as the man in the dream sang and the fog came again to hide him and the dogs and the mammoth.
    Russel knew it all because he knew them all. He was the man and he was the dream.
    He was the fog.

8
The Run
    T he light filtered into the skins and he awakened. Some of the dream was still with him and he had a great hunger for the coarse red meat and yellow fat but when he looked out from the skins he saw only the four deer carcasses. The team was chewing on one.
    He stuck an arm out and scraped his parka and turned it right side out and put it on. The cold of the skin penetrated his squirrelskin undergarment and brought him totally, instantly wide awake.
    Next he put his mukluks on—they were warm from being in the skins all night—and then he threw back the skins and stood.
    The dogs had fought while he dreamedand the gangline was bitten in two or three places. He swore and pulled them back from the deer and to the sled and tied them in place, liberally slamming their noses with his mittened hand.
    In a few moments they had settled and he went back to the deer. Their bodies had frozen but were small enough to fit roughly on the sled. Legs stuck out but he wanted to keep going and the legs didn’t bother him. There were no trees to catch at them.
    The skins were more of a problem. Though he had slept in them the raw sides had frozen solid. The hollow hairs had kept his body heat from penetrating the skins and they would not fold. He finally jumped on them in the middle to fold them over and jam-fit them next to the deer