Chapter 4

We were up with the sun. I dragged the empty cart along to collect furs and meat for the smokehouse. The arrows on my left hip were tipped with the biggest razor sharp broad heads that I had. Additionally, I had taken the time to strip the bark from a straight green hardwood sapling about 8 feet long and fitted one of my alien spear heads on it. The spear head was designed like 6 tan-to knives welded together into a point and was sharper than any razor. Fitted onto the end of the new staff, it was a formidable weapon.

When we were within a couple hundred yards of the herd, I told Wolf and my mates, "Stay here. My mates and I need the furs from the animals. I promise that there will be plenty of meat for everyone."

With that, I worked my way around the herd as silently as possible and kept the wind in my face. It took me about 30 minutes to get within 50 yards of the western most edge of the herd. I decided to use the bow first and see if I could take one of the bison with it. I nocked my arrow, rose up from my hiding spot and let fly at the nearest bison.

"SHIT!"

I hit it in the chest and where I thought the heart was but it didn't go down. Now the bison was running towards the herd carrying one of my valuable arrows. I nocked another arrow and fired. This time, its front legs collapsed, it rolled over onto its side and didn't move. I went toward it to retrieve my arrows and put it out of its misery.

As I got to the kill and started removing my arrows, I noted that the heart was somewhat lower and towards the back of the animal that I originally thought. I heard a snort off to my left. Glancing in that direction, I saw one of the woolly rhinos looking my way from about 50 yards off. I dismissed it as a threat because its immense size would make it slow and I could easily outrun it if I needed to and went back to work on the bison carcass.

Moving quickly, I slit the throat of the bison, gutted it and started skinning it out. With the bison about half skinned, I put my head up to look around and the rhino was within 10 feet of me. He had his head down and had been creeping up steadily. I assumed he was either curious or was trying to sneak up and impale me on his horn. Either way, he was too close for comfort. Now, do I run away, fight him or try to tame him?

I wanted to hunt some more and didn't really want to have to try and kill the rhino so I decided to try and tame him. He put his head down and charged. I easily sidestepped him and brought my hand down on his back. Like that he was mine. He swung his head around and tried to gore me. I rolled to my right and grabbed my spear on the way up. As we faced off, I realized he was not tamed. What happened? Why didn't it work? Maybe the rhino was too wild or stupid to tame. I decided to try again.

This time when he charged, I leapt over his downturned head while twisting in the air and landed on his back straddling him. He turned his head left and right trying to gore me but I had quickly moved forward to his neck and laid both hands on his head. I tried my mental skill on him again but all I got was blind rage and visions of flames. He wasn't going to be tamed. I couldn't get through the rage. Sighing, I pulled my combat knife and sunk it into the place where his head joined his body easily cutting through the spinal column.