The Cache Read Online Free PDF Page A

slow and silent search, he came across a pack of kangaroo rats. These long-legged, strong-tailed little creatures were playing in the moonlight in a coliseum formed by a ring of malapi boulders. They bounded high into the air, chased each other, rolled and tumbled in the dirt that was the floor of the coliseum. Benoni waited until one was chased close to the boulder behind which he crouched.
    Then, his left hand fired the stone at the unsuspecting creature.
    Sixteen years of practice propelled the missile. It struck the rat on the side and bowled it over. Benoni shifted the rock in his right hand to his left and threw it. The rat rolled over a few turns from the second blow and kicked out its little life.
    Suddenly, the coliseum was empty of all but the victim.
    Benoni ran up to it, picked it up, and cut its throat with the chert he had sharpened an hour ago. He held the beast upside down, allowed its blood to drain into his throat. Some ran over his lips and down his chin and dripped onto his chest, but he was too hungry to pay any attention. Later, he would scour himself with sand.
    When he finished drinking all the rodent had to offer, he skinned it. His rough tool of chert made the skinning a tough job, but he was not concerned with damage to the skin for he had no use for it. Then, he cut off the long heavily muscled legs, cut out the heart and kidneys and liver. And he chewed up the warm tough meat. This he did with some distaste; he did not like raw meat of any kind. But a man had to eat, and he had been doing just this for some years in preparation for this day and more to come. To light a fire was to invite a Navaho knife at his throat, or an arrow in his back; too high a price to pay for cooked meat.
    Gingerly, Benoni cut open a barrel cactus, not without being stuck several times with the long spines, though he was careful. He gouged out several pieces of the pulp and sucked on them. It was not like drinking from a cup of water or a spring. In fact, the pulp held no more moisture than a piece of raw potato. But it was moisture, though in limited quantities and somewhat bitter.
    Afterwards, he dug out a foxhole under a palo verde tree near the banks of a wash. Curling up in the hole, he composed himself for sleep. Sleep came swiftly.
    But as swiftly, dawn with its whiteness and heat awakened him. Thirsty again, he crawled out of the hole, cut some more strips of barrel cactus. These he took back to the hole. Some he buried deep to use later during the day; the others, he sucked. He covered himself with sand to cut down on the moisture loss and went back to sleep. Several times during the day, he awoke and dug up the cactus pulp. Still, the water he got from the pieces was far from enough to replace that drawn from his body by the dry and burning air.
    Fortunately, a sidewinder wiggled its crazy path near to his hole. All Benoni had to do was to reach out, seize the rattler by the tail, and crack it like a whip. Back broken, the sidewinder managed only to writhe as it tried, vainly, to sink its fangs into him. Benoni hacked its head off, then drank the blood and ate some of its back-meat. The rest he buried beneath the sand, for he did not want to attract any buzzards or hawks. Their circling might also bring some curious Navahos.
    No birds came. But the ants did. For an hour, he scooped them up and crunched them between his teeth or swallowed them whole. Finally, they quit coming, and he settled back to sleep.
    Dusk came. Benoni, itching all over from insect bites, crawled out of the hole. He took a sand bath, cut some more cactus pieces, and set off toward the northeast. The moon, diminished to a sliver, rose over the Superstition. It was huge and bloody. As it went higher in the cloudless sky, it became smaller and silvery. Benoni had the light he needed. He found a nest on a branch of cat’s-claw tree; two wrens slept in it. A leap upwards, ignoring the thorns sticking into his hand, and clutching the branch with