Highway of Eternity by Clifford D. Simak

best, he admitted, his circumstance was not too hopeful. On the face of it, he probably would not be important to the people of the future. He was, after all, no more than an intruder, perhaps an unwelcome intruder, who had come blundering in on them.
    The monster spoke to him again, a faint and distant voice.
    Boone! Boone, please have mercy on me!
    â€œGo chase yourself,” said Boone, muttering to himself rather than to the monster, for he had no faith in the monster’s voice. There probably was no voice; the words were no more than his own perverse imagination.
    The wolves had come back to the bull—seven of them now, where he had never seen more than six before—and were tearing at the carcass.
    â€œGood eating to you,” he said to them. Both the hide and the meat of the ancient animal would be tough. It would take some effort to rip through the hide to get at the flesh, which would not be the best of eating. But to a wolf it would be meat to fill an empty gut.
    Before the day was over, Boone would need some of the meat; he had nothing else to eat.
    It would be dangerous to walk out to the carcass and drive the wolves away so that he could slice out some meat. The only tool he had was a jackknife of the very cheapest sort, put together so shoddily that any undue pressure might break it all apart. He’d have to wait a while until the wolves were less hungry and therefore less possessive. By that time, perhaps, they would have so torn the hide as to expose areas of flesh from which he could hack a chunk for his own consumption. He’d be, he decided, the scavenger to the wolves.
    He rose from his squatting position before the fire and began walking, beating out a path from the fire to the sandstone spur and back again. Pacing, he tried to formulate a plan for his survival. His ability to step around a corner worked only under extraordinary stress. More than likely, after an indeterminate time, it would bring him back to exactly where he was. It had been only by a fluke that his strange ability had taken him and Jay around a corner into Martin’s traveler. He couldn’t count on the same thing happening again.
    He still had five cartridges in the rifle and with each of the cartridges he could bring down a more than adequate hunk of meat. Once it was down, however, he either would have to defend it or hide it against the scavengers, and it soon would deteriorate beyond any possible use. He could smoke it, of course, but he was not up on the procedure for the smoking of meat; he could salt it, but he had no salt. He was innocent of all the proper techniques to wrest a living from a land like this. He could, perhaps, find fruit or roots that could aid in his survival, but how could he know which of them would be safe to eat and which would poison him? So the problem, boiled down, came to how he could, day after day, hunt down and collect enough protein to keep his body functional.
    That meant weapons that he could devise. And if that was to be the plan, he must get at it immediately, gaining some expertise in their manufacture and use before the last cartridge had been fired. The first step would be to find stone that could be worked. The sandstone ledges jutting out of the butte held nothing he could use. But there were other places where he might find the necessary stone.
    Finally he halted his pacing and squatted down beside the fire. The wolves were feasting, burrowing into the ripped-open body cavity of the bull. From time to time they raised their blood-smeared muzzles to stare at him and then went back to feeding. In another couple of hours, it might be safe for him to walk out and claim his portion of the kill. The sun stood close to noon or a bit beyond. The vultures were gathering. A dozen or more of them circled high in the sky, dropping lower with each circle that they made.
    The monster spoke again. Boone, be reasonable. Listen to me.
    â€œI’m listening,” said