by Jack L Knapp
Robert nodded. “It's something to think about, Matt. We’ve decided to leave too. We’ve also got women in our tribe, and we don’t have enough people to take on the mine guards either. What would you say to joining together and traveling as one large group?”
“I would have to talk to the others first, Robert. Tell me more about your tribe while I think about this.”
“We’ve got equal numbers of men and women, plus a couple of indigenous youngsters now. Your people are all from North America but that’s not the case with my tribe. I suspect we got transplanted by two separate groups of Futurists. Four men and six women came from central Europe somewhere, east of downtime Germany and maybe all the way into Russia. The rest of us came from France.
“We had language problems before we finally settled on English. That’s the only language all of us understood. The eastern men still keep to themselves but the women have friends in each group. My group still speaks French when we’re among ourselves. The easterners speak Russian or Czech or something, but everyone can speak English.”
“That’s interesting. Lee was born here, and I think Lilia might have come from Canada. She might understand French too. They had a different rhythm to their speech when they first got here, though that’s mostly gone now.”
“The Futurists picked people from everywhere, Matt. Some of the guards are Asian. I haven’t seen Africans yet, but they’re probably out there somewhere.”
“Seems likely. At any rate, there are too few of us to let feelings from our previous time bother us. We’ve got a whole world to live in. There’s room for all of us.
“I found Millie and Sandra, but Lee and Lilia found us. Their home was raided, maybe by the mine guards, maybe by someone else. Lilia’s husband was killed and the two of them just managed to escape. They joined us and have been part of our group, our own little tribe, ever since. People here look to me for major decisions, but I try to bring everyone in and get opinions if there’s time. What I’m saying is that my group may not be willing to just begin following your lead.”
“I’ve got the same problem. My own French people might be willing to accept you as a leader, but I’m pretty sure the eastern Europeans won’t, at least not the men.
“What I was thinking was that we could share the leadership duties. You lead the movement, I could keep the camp organized--actually, the women will organize most of it--but I could keep friction from developing.”
“If those eastern Europeans can’t get along, maybe it would be best if they just left, Robert. Or got left behind.”
“I considered that. But the women have made friends among my French group and they wouldn’t want to see their women friends booted, so I haven’t decided to split the tribe yet.”
“OK, you talk to your folks, Robert, I’ll talk to mine. We’ll need to get together later and work out the details if we decide to join together. You’ve met my people, so I think Lee and I may come visit if that’s acceptable. In a couple of weeks, say, if the weather doesn’t get too bad? I could meet the rest of your tribe and we could talk about what my group thinks.”
“That should be time enough. I’ll see you then. I need to get on the trail now if I’m going to get home before dark.”
#
Robert departed and I was left to do a lot of thinking.
There were real advantages to having more people working together, more efficiency from dividing up the work and certainly more safety. But it would depend on what the rest of the cabin people wanted to do.
Chapter 30
I thought about Robert’s plan, and I could see advantages and disadvantages to the idea. The next morning I brought it up for discussion.
“Robert wants his tribe to join with ours when we move west. Think about it for a while and let me know. Robert thinks that some of his tribesmen may not like the idea.
“I won’t make a decision without the rest of you agreeing, and I think it has to be unanimous. I won’t drag anyone into a merger if they don’t like the idea, and nobody will be left out if we merge.”
“I’ll bet it’s Pavel’s gang that Robert’s talking about,” Laz said. “I’ve never liked those people. Pavel wanted to be the tribe’s leader and he’s never understood that the rest of us didn’t want him,” Cindy added.
“It will probably be safer, being part of a bigger group,” Lilia mentioned.
“Yes, but I’ve felt safe having Matt watching out for us. He’s got our interests in mind and I don’t want to change that. We’ve seen what he does; when those rapists got in, he didn’t hesitate. The bear, too; he wanted us to stay back while he went out and faced the bear, taking most of the risk. I trust Matt, but I don’t know those other people. I think they’ve got their own ideas. Can they be depended on if the rest of us need help?” Millie looked troubled by the idea.
“Robert suggested we could share leadership of the joined group. He thinks he can work it out, but I don’t know if it's possible. I was prepared to leave here, just the seven of us, until Lee got hurt. We would need to be careful, but the added risks could be dealt with. Now we’d end up moving around twenty-seven people. That would provide more safety, as Lilia said, but we'd also have more responsibility and the trip will likely take longer too. We’ll have to cross barriers on the way, rivers and probably other things; being responsible for twenty-seven people is going to make it much harder on me, maybe the rest of you too, and Robert's tribe has children, so that increases the difficulty.
“Whether we go with them or alone, we may have to leave before the snow melts. The animals won’t be back until the grass greens up, so we’ll be living on what we’ve got stored for the first few weeks. Robert said his tribe has food and I’m sure he would share that with us in return for the help we provide. Plus we’ve got our own supplies, so we might not need much from them, but it would give us an option in case ours started to run low.
“The snow might not melt this year. Robert and I discussed the possibility that the glaciers might be pushing south. I had intended to leave after green-up and hunt on the way but now I’m considering whether we shouldn’t just pack everything on the sleds and be ready to leave sooner.
“I’ll need to make another large sled or two. Three sleds with mostly furs and food would be all we could haul. That would mean two people to pull each sled and it would leave one person available for security. We could rotate the jobs so that no one’s doing more work than anyone else and everyone gets a break from pulling a sled.
“We’d be dependent on finding firewood along the way and putting up temporary shelters at night. The snow hut worked well, so as long as we have snow we’ll have building material. Water, too.
“If we go soon, we'll be able to cross the rivers easier. They’re probably frozen over and the ice should be thick enough to support us. Hauling the sleds will be easier too. We’ve built temporary shelters, we can do it again.
“The best course would be for all of us to get ready, Robert's people too. If there’s no sign of melting in a couple of weeks, we leave whether they’re ready or not. Every day we wait, we use up some of our stored supplies and we aren’t finding replacements. Even if Robert’s tribe does have more food, it won’t last forever.”
Lee commented, “We’ve been lucky so far, Matt. That bear would have been even more of a problem if he hadn’t been favoring that injured paw. The cat, too; he jumped into the river and that slowed him down. We didn’t have a serious problem with the wolves, but suppose there had been more of them? What if we hadn’t been able to put out that foreleg for bait and build a barricade? That pack didn’t reach the barricade but the next one might. We might have climbed the trees, but again we might not have had time. If they’d jumped us without warning, some of us wouldn’t have survived.”
“I understand, Lee. Animals are dangerous, but starvation is dangerous too and if we start without enough food, we might not make it.
"I see it this way: we’ve got more food now than we can pull o
n the sleds, but if we wait too long we’ll have more sled capacity than we have food. There’s a point in between where we have just enough, all we can pull on the sleds but no more than that. That’s the point where we should leave. If we wait, we’ll be using up supplies and not getting anywhere.”
We left it at that. I would bring up the subject later, after everyone had more time to think. But I didn’t see any choice, we would have to take our chances along the way. Lee's injury had kept us here, now the heavy snowfall was pushing us to leave, ready or not. Robert was no more anxious to move than I was, but he would have been talking over the options with his tribe. We could get together in a week and make a decision.
I looked over our food supplies and concluded that the break-even point for us would occur in about three weeks. Whether Robert had sufficient food to wait longer, time would tell. It would be something for us to discuss.
#
Meanwhile, something had been prowling around under the meat that we’d hung from the trees. The unknown animal had not been able to reach anything, but it had made several visits and I decided to do something before the critter figured out a way to get at our food.
I made a quick trip out to the lean-to and brought in an armful of branches. They were nicely dried now, some of them warped, but that wouldn’t matter for what I had in mind. I cut them to lengths of about a yard, then chopped through the center at a sharp angle, leaving me with two sharp-ended stakes about eighteen inches long.
Lee and Laz came over to see what I was working on. “Sharpened sticks, Matt? What are you going to do with those?”
“Something’s been after the meat. It’s not a bear, although the tracks are similar but narrower. Still, the print’s almost as long as a bear would leave. Anyway, I think it’s time to do something before it figures out a way to get at our supply of meat.
“I don’t see any way of rigging a deadfall with all this snow, and this critter can probably gnaw through a snare. So I’m going to build a pit trap.
“We’ll dig a hole under one of the hanging quarters of meat. We can dig out small hollows in the bottom and set the stakes upright, then pour water around them. We’ll hold them in place until the water freezes. The trap might not kill it; the critter might even be able to pull itself off the stakes, so I’m going to fix it so that the animal won’t be able to get away. I’ll use ice for glue to improve the killing ability of the stakes.”
“Ice? I never thought of that,” Lee said. “How are you going to do it?”
“I thought of carving barbs, but then I came up with a better idea. I’ll harden the points in the fire first, then glue on small flakes of flint or obsidian that were left over from chipping arrowheads. I’ve got bags of those. I’ll dip the end of the flake in water, then just hold it on the stake until the water freezes. I may drip a little more water on to make sure the flakes won’t come off. Anyway, after that we plant the stakes upright in the pit and pour water around them. The ice will fix them in place so that the animal falls on the spikes when it jumps to get the meat.
“I’ll hang a piece of meat over the pit for bait, lower than the rest, maybe just a shank off of a quarter. Then just cover the pit with thin branches and a few grass stems, sprinkle a little snow over it, and wait. The animal sees the meat, jumps for it, and falls into the pit; the sharp blades on the stakes will cut organs and blood vessels, so he’ll bleed out even if a vital organ isn’t punctured. The blades will act like barbs too, so the critter won’t be able to pull free without causing more injury. We just wait and go out every day to see what we’ve caught.”
Lee and Laz wanted something to do, so they jumped in with enthusiasm. We shared the job of improving the stakes’ sharpness, then fire-hardened them afterward. Laz did most of the ice-gluing of blades to the stakes, while Lee and I dug the pit. By the time we were satisfied, the pit extended down to ground level and we had chipped holes in the frozen soil to accept the stakes. As Laz finished a stake, we planted it upright. I held the stakes in place while Lee dripped water around the bases. The water froze within seconds. We lightly covered the pit as soon as we’d finished.
I cautioned the women about going out where the meat was hung. A pit trap doesn’t care what it catches.
It caught nothing that first night. We simply left it in place and spent the next day working around the cabin.
#
Lee was making a drum from a gourd. He stretched rawhide across the gourd, then laced it underneath to provide tension. He dampened the rawhide slightly and let it tighten more as it dried; he drum wouldn’t win prizes for looks, but I was impressed. He amused himself by tapping with his fingers, trying to find different sound points around the drumhead.
Laz, not to be outdone, began working on a carved flute. He hadn’t yet achieved a sound, but he kept trying. Perhaps he had seen one used in Robert’s tribe.
I was carving too, but making utilitarian things. After making spoons, I looked for other things I could make.
My knife wasn’t suitable for carving, but I'd gotten several small scraps of steel from Robert. I attached a haft to one, then shaped it by rubbing on a stone. It was more scraper than ‘knife’, but even so it removed thin slivers of wood. The shavings went into a leather bag, kindling for starting fires.
We had too little to waste anything.
I made a simple ‘plate’ by splitting a board from a billet of firewood; the flat board would give us a place to put food while we ate and scraping a shallow channel around the edge would catch liquids before they could spill. My spoons would also allow us to eat with more refinement than simply slurping from a gourd or using our fingers.
Those fingers didn’t get nearly the amount of washing they needed; it was too difficult to wash in freezing water and doing so carried the risk of frostbite. Washing in the cabin made a mess that would have to be cleaned with the poor substitutes we had for soap and towels. We did what we could, and hoped the improvements made by the Futurists would protect us from disease. There was a risk, but frostbitten fingers were risky too.
Our would-be meat robber came back two nights later. I heard a squall from outside, but decided the beast could wait until daylight. The noises died away so I went back to sleep.
The musky smell was the first thing I noticed next morning. I had never seen one before, but I finally decided we had killed a wolverine. The trap had worked, even if not as I’d intended. The wolverine had actually ripped two of the stakes from the icy pit we’d made, then dragged itself into the woods. We found it, frozen stiff, about fifty yards into the trees. Laz and I tied ropes around the carcass and dragged it back to the cabin. I wanted the fur, but there was no way we could skin the thing while it was frozen; we would have to find a way to thaw the carcass first.
Skinning the wolverine inside the cabin was not an option.
“That thing stinks! You’re not bringing it in here!”
Millie was the one who spoke up, but she wasn’t alone in having that opinion. Even Laz and Lee were on her side. I considered pointing out that the cabin already smelled, but decided that wouldn’t help my cause. Finally, I hauled it around to the lean-to and left it until I could think of a solution.
#
We went back to our crafting, the women cooked and kept the beds fairly sanitary by rotating the skins in the stacks. The top skin from the night before was pulled off and the rest of the skins then placed on top of the one that had been removed. In this way, we always slept on a skin that hadn’t been in contact with our human skins for three or four days. If things got a bit smelly--well, our noses were accustomed to the stinks now.
Cindy had finally gotten around to visiting my bed. I had no idea what the others were doing, but no one seemed jealous, so I figured that Laz and Lee were being visited too. There was no way to tell in the dark cabin.
Was Lilia visiting Lee? Did ordinary taboos even hold here? Did the genetic tinkering done by the Futurists remove harmful recessive genes?
I dec
ided I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t own either of them, so what they did or didn’t do was their business.
#
The next storm arrived with a vengeance. Wind howled outside and snow fell for two days. During the daylight hours we shoveled clear the steps and pathways around the cabin. At one point I estimated that six feet or more of snow surrounded the cabin.
I kept moving the safety lines higher as the snow got deeper. Fortunately, the weight of the new snow packed what had fallen earlier in the season, and the depth finally stabilized at four, perhaps four and a half feet of hard-packed snow.
The temperature dropped even more.
We now went out in pairs to handle sanitary chores; there would be some unusual deposits here and there come springtime! But none of us went far from the cabin door.
As the snow level rose, we raised our quarters of meat so they remained beyond the reach of scavengers. But we saw no other animals; they were hibernating, had migrated south, or now lived in tunnels under the thick snow.
I worried about the lean-to, but the sturdy roof held. I decided the steep pitch transferred a considerable amount of weight to the ground. Whatever the reason, the lean-to survived.
Millie had been keeping a makeshift ‘calendar’ by counting the days. We were never sure, but finally decided that winter was half over, maybe as late as February. I looked at our supplies again and decided that we might need to conserve food; despite wanting to leave at that ‘break-even’ point, weather might force us to remain longer in the cabin. Even if we did find game later, the animals would be lean from winter.
I might have to dig that wolverine out from where the snow had covered it; hungry people will eat things that well-fed ones won’t.
It would take time for all this snow to melt, even if a Chinook wind blew up from the south. And the water would still have to go somewhere.
We had coped with the winter cold and snow, at least so far, but we might yet be flooded out of the cabin in the spring.
