There were times, of course, when everybody had to go short. In some years, when the crops had been scanty, food became very scarce before the end of winter, and then the people used to suffer greatly from hunger. At such times, men used to hunt longer and more keenly than during the summer and autumn months; and if a boy could snare a hare or catch a hedgehog, or creep up along the bank of a pool where the wild ducks rested, and fling a couple of stones hard among them as they rose, he would be warmly welcomed at home when he took in his game.
Of course, when food became very scarce indeed, men killed their own cattle. But they did not do this so long as there was wild game to be got. Some men were not such skilful hunters as others; and so it sometimes happened that a man would have to kill all his cows, one after another, for food during the cold time, and a long winter would make many men poor. The women and children suffered terribly, and everybody got very thin. We sometimes say nowadays that the spring is a trying time to live through; but it was very much harder when there were no shops where food could be bought, all the year round alike.
The dogs had a bad time, too: and they used to scratch up buried bones and gnaw them over again, till they had gnawed away all the softer parts. Everybody longed for the summer and the time of plenty again; and there were always great rejoicings when the crops were ripe, and the time came to get in the harvest.
Before he was seven years old, Tig had learned in many ways to be useful to his mother. He used to go with her to the field and pull weeds out of the corn, or to the woods and help her to gather dry sticks and fir cones for fuel; and when she went to milk the cows, Tig went too and carried one of the milk jars; so he always earned his supper.
There was one thing Tig never tasted: he never had any kind of sweets. Of course he used to have honey at home, and he used to pick and eat all kinds of wild fruit, wild strawberries and raspberries and blackberries, but he never had sweets. There were not such things in those days. Nobody had sugar because it was not made then. Even salt, which is so common with us that you can buy as much as you can carry for sixpence, was very scarce among Tig’s people. The Medicine Men of the tribe always had some which they got from some other Medicine Men, who got it from some other Medicine Men who lived by the sea-shore. But they were not willing to part with it except in little pieces; and for a handful of salt a man would have to give something valuable in exchange.
Chapter the Sixth
How Gofa sold some Meal to a Hungry Man