He contemplated
the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in
them which had not yet died. Could it possibly be that he might be
that ere the day was done! Such was life, eh? A vain and fleeting
thing. It was only life that pained. There was no hurt in death.
To die was to sleep. It meant cessation, rest. Then why was he
not content to die?
But he did not moralize long. He was squatting in the moss, a bone
in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it
faintly pink. The sweet meaty taste, thin and elusive almost as a
memory, maddened him. He closed his jaws on the bones and
crunched. Sometimes it was the bone that broke, sometimes his
teeth. Then he crushed the bones between rocks, pounded them to a
pulp, and swallowed them. He pounded his fingers, too, in his
haste, and yet found a moment in which to feel surprise at the fact
that his fingers did not hurt much when caught under the descending
rock.
Came frightful days of snow and rain. He did not know when he made
camp, when he broke camp.
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