Chapter 22

We had broad smiles on our faces when we rode into our valley, four days later. It had been a quick, uneventful trip and we were grateful to be close to home. We’d been gone from the cave for over a month now, and we were all looking forward to getting home. It was therefore with some regret that I told my companions to rein in and walk the remaining few miles to our enclosure. I had to remind them that anything could have happened in our absence, and that to just ride in without scouting could lead us into trouble. It didn’t help much telling them that little fact of life; but, it was the truth, and they needed to know it.

I ended up riding on ahead of my party to do the scouting and make certain everything was safe. Tonko and Sygor held back with all our animals, waiting impatiently for my return. I took my sniper rifle with me. As I’d done before, I used the scope on it to spy out the land. To my relief, I found everything in order.

I was met well in advance of the enclosure by Gort, Geeta, and Bogdi. The three had been out patrolling the area near our cave, armed with bows. It was something I’d insisted upon before leaving, just in case we got another visit from Quantum and their thugs. The trio had been up in the tree-line near the lowest ford when I’d ridden into sight. It hadn’t taken them long to dash down the hillside and confront me.

“Jake,” Gort cried out upon seeing me. “You’re back!”

I had to smile and chuckle at that. Then I asked the all important question.

“How’s Gabby,” I enquired with a great deal of interest, “and all the other women who are due? Have any given birth yet?”

“Not yet,” Geeta informed me before Gort could reply, “but Clara has said they are close. You just made it back in time.”

The girl was carrying one of our survival weapons instead of the bows that the boys had. The men had been adamant about what the women and the girls could carry. The bows were for men. That was fine with me, and with Clara as well. She’d handed over her survival rifle the day we acquired the automatic shotguns, declaring openly that any girl going out of the cave could carry it for her own protection. For the men, there was nothing they could say. It wasn’t a bow.

I left the three of them to run and tell Tonko and Sygor that everything was well, instead of riding back to them myself. I turned my mount towards the enclosure. I wanted to see my mates!

My arrival at the enclosure caused a bit of a stir. The gate was closed and it took some yelling to get the attention of whoever was inside. When Uttar yelled out that he was coming, I dismounted my horse and moved to the gate to wait for him to get it open. It took a few moments to remove the braces we used to fortify the gate, and for someone else to show up and give him a hand. That someone was Vedic.

“Hello, my friends,” I said when the gate was finally lifted and put to one side. “How is everything?”

The two men greeted me warmly, clasping my forearm when I offered it to them. That was another new tradition that I’d introduced to our group. It was sort of our private handshake. So far, none of the tribes I’d met had a gesture anything like it.

“We’re all fine, Jake,” Uttar reassured me with a grin. “Everything is fine, although I think you are in for a heap of trouble. Gabby has been moaning all day long. Clara has declared her time is near.”

“It is,” Vedic interjected, “and hopefully not a moment too soon. Gabby has been grouchy as of late, and she’s been cursing up a storm and calling you names. It is good that you’re back now so you can take the brunt of it. By the way, where are Tonko and Sygor? I hope nothing has happened to them.”

“Nothing has,” I promised them both as I handed the reins of my horse over to them. “They’re both behind me a bit leading in a few more horses. I just rode ahead to make certain everything is all right here. I met Gort, Geeta, and Bogdi by the ford and they told me that Gabby’s time is near, so I rode on ahead instead of waiting for them. Now if you’ll take care of my horse, I’ll go see Gabby.”

The men said they would and I headed towards the cave. I didn’t get far. Clara came running out trailed by Atta, Unna, Runa, and Ulla. The little girls were calling my name. I just stopped and waited for them to get to me.

Clara threw herself into my arms and basically scaled my body so she could kiss me. I held her up while she wrapped her legs about my waist. She was dressed in a khaki t-shirt and a loincloth and that was it. She didn’t even have moccasins on her feet. It felt good to have her body pressed up against mine.

“Jake! Jake! Jake!” the girls cried out while Clara and I embraced and Clara tried to ravish my mouth. “Gabby’s going to have a baby!”

That declaration brought me back to reality really quick. I pulled my lips way from Clara and I stared her in the eyes.

“Really?” I asked tentatively. “Has her labour started already?”

“Oui,” Clara declared with a big grin spread across her face, “and you are just in time to catch the baby.”

I went pale. I almost dropped Clara onto the ground right then and there. Clara just laughed at my response. It wasn’t really that funny.

Thankfully, I didn’t really have to catch the baby. Gabby had been in labour for the last couple of hours. She was in our furs, resting and being kept company by the other women. She was indeed very happy to see me.

Clara had everything under control. She was monitoring Gabby who was progressing slowly, but steadily towards the main event. She’d even set up a separate delivery room in the cave, while I was gone. It was in a corner and Clara had laid down all our ground sheets and tarps to keep the area as hygienic as possible. Gabby would deliver there with Clara’s help. Then, once she’d been cleaned up and the baby had been tended to, Gabby would be returned to our bed. There was a small fire burning in a hearth near the area to provide some warmth and all of Clara’s medical gear was over there. It was now simply a matter of waiting.

As it turned out we didn’t need to wait very long. I guess my return was like letting the cork out of the bottle. Once Gabby and I had kissed and greeted each other, and I’d confirmed that she was well, her contractions started coming quickly. Two hours after my arrival I was a father. Gabby delivered me a very healthy baby girl. We called her Adiba after Gabby’s mother.

After Adiba, the babies started to come one after the other, spread out over just the next two weeks. Catta had hers next, followed by Tula, Zela, and then Thela. The last one to give birth was Beria, Rugar’s mate.

In addition to Adiba I ended up with three strapping boys. They were Ludor, Mondo, and Nagar. I named them after consulting the women first and a few of the older men. The names were special to all the women. They were very happy with my choices. I got slaps on the back for all the sons. As for Adiba, the men knew better than to say a word, at least anywhere near me.

I wasn’t the only one to have a daughter. The third mother, Tula, gave birth to a pretty little girl after a very long and tiring delivery. Tonko wasn’t overly happy about that. He was about to say something that he’d regret one day, when I took him aside and had a word in his ear.

He learned very quickly that a daughter was just as important as a son, and if he really wanted to argue about it with me, we could step outside the enclosure for a little private conversation. I promised him it would hurt.

Not really. I didn’t threaten the young man with physical violence at all. I did point out that his mate had given him a healthy child. He should be happy they had both made it through the delivery alive. I also pointed out that if he ever wanted to try for that son again, he should mend his manners and go and congratulate his mate and greet his daughter properly. Tonko got the point and did as I suggested. I named their daughter Reva after Tula’s mother. It made the girl happy.

Tonko’s outlook on life changed drastically when at the end of the two weeks of women having babies, Beria delivered a baby girl. I named it Luta after speaking to both father and mother. They were pleased. I even believed that Rugar was happy about it. By that point he’d heard of my conversation with Tonko so there was a chance that Rugar simply put on a brave face and accepted fate, but in my gut I thought that the man actually was happy to get a daughter.

In those two weeks we started making our preparations to pack up our cave and move to the new valley. I called a gathering the night after Gabby had given birth and told everyone my intentions. I made it plain to everyone that if they did not want to move, I would not force them; but, when I left, I would be taking everything that wasn’t solid rock. I didn’t hear any complaints.

Naturally, questions were asked about the new valley. Thankfully I had both Tonko and Sygor to tell everyone what the place was like, while I got to sit back and hold my day old child in my arms. Most of the time I just let the two young men ramble on, telling about our trip to the valley and what we’d found. I only interrupted once in a while to correct something, or to answer a specific question that neither man could answer by themselves.

Work towards the move started right away. The big jobs fell to Ramie and me. With Clara tied up delivering babies and providing post natal care, and Gabby recovering from giving birth, Ramie took on the job of organizing the cave’s move. Thankfully not every woman in the cave was confined to their furs. Clara knew that the women were hardier than most from our time, but she still wanted them to get as much rest as possible; especially since we were going to be packing up and walking well over a hundred miles. In fact, by my calculations, the valley beyond the mountain pass was closer to two hundred miles away! Even with the help of horses the trip would be long and arduous.

My job was the hardest. I needed to mobilize us in a way that we could transport everything we had as quickly as possible, with the least amount of fuss. In total we had eleven horses at our disposal. By themselves and pulling travois they were a great asset, but even so we needed more than dragging poles behind us as we trekked across the plateau and we worked our way up into the mountain. We needed wheels and I intended to provide them if at all possible.

We already had the pup trailer that I’d taken from the compound. A horse could be hitched to it. The trailer had dual axles and it could easily carry a thousand pounds. It was a flatbed trailer, but with a little work, I could put sides on to it to enable it to carry more. The only drawback with using the trailer in that manner, was that the brakes on it wouldn’t work. They were electrical. I’d have to figure out something if we intended to use it.

I also had five tires. After the little dust up with Blackmore and company, and the destruction of the ATV, Gabby had put together a work party. They had dragged the ATV into the cave, and had parked it beside the drone. Over the winter, everything useful had been stripped off it and set aside, or packed up in a plastic storage containers. Five solid rubber tires, mounted on the ATV’s wheels, would allow me to build at least two carts, and possibly a wheelbarrow. We’d have to see about that last one. First there was the task of manufacturing axles for the wheels to be mounted on; and, again, the problem was braking.

Naturally I started with the easiest job first. With the help of Gort and Geeta, I framed the pup trailer, and then I created a wattle basket about the bed of the trailer. I raised the sides to four feet high, hoping that it would do the trick. My big problem still remained the issue of braking, and I really didn’t have an answer. I did remove the tow bar from the front of the trailer. It was too short to harness a horse to properly. Instead I rigged two poles as if they were travois poles, one on either side of the trailer frame. My hope was that by rigging the poles to a horse the rigid frame would prevent the trailer from rolling forward on a slight decline. I knew it wouldn’t work on the slope leading down the other side of the pass, though. We’d have to lower the trailer down using ropes and brute strength. But, with luck, it would work until we got there. Once that job was done, we moved on to the next job: building two, two-wheeled wagons from scratch. For this job I broke out all my supplies. I didn’t have the time to play around making tongues and groves on this job. We were on a deadline.

While I worked on the transportation, others got to work sorting stuff and packing it up. While they did that, others went foraging for food or supplies.

Thankfully, I’d left ample instructions when I’d gone off to visit the Horse People, and check out the valley beyond the mountain. One important job that I’d left behind was a trip down to the lake to catch as many ducks as possible. I hadn’t seen a single duck on the lake in the other valley, and I had serious doubts that I ever would. My goal was to domesticate the birds. Gort, Geeta, and Bogdi had done the job for me. They had rounded up a half dozen ducks and over two dozen ducklings. The ducklings were being hand fed by my cave people. Amongst all the dried stores I’d liberated from the compound, there had been two containers packed with dried lima beans. My cave people didn’t care for them, but the ducklings did! It wasn’t all they were getting. In fact, the birds were cutting into all our stores of dried vegetables; but, it was a price I was willing to pay to add domesticated birds and their eggs to our table in the future.

Work, while important, was not the only thing I got up to during the days following the birth of my four children, and our pending departure date from the valley.

I decided we would be celebrating the summer solstice. It was due, soon, and we really hadn’t had a feast for quite a while. We’d celebrated the winter solstice cloistered away in the confines of our cave, six months ago. It had been a pretty good affair, but now I wanted something different. I was planning a barbeque!

My objective was to orient our feast around foods we hadn’t eaten in the winter, or to at least to serve them up differently. We would eat outside in a less communal manner. While we’d still be doing our cooking down in the enclosure, I thought that we could all sit up on the overhang. By now the windbreaks and the stable doors had been broken down and packed up to come along with us on our pending trek, so there would be plenty of room for everyone to spread out, eat in small family groups, and to enjoy the view.

My scheme called for a little work by our community, but everyone was onboard to help out. I needed people to do a little fishing for me, and to collect whatever molluscs and shellfish that they could find down at the lake. At the same time I wanted a group of foragers to hit the local berry patches. There were a few on the far side of the valley near where I’d killed the bear last winter. I figured fresh berries would definitely add to the meal. While volunteers turned there attention to those tasks, I took my small group of sling hunters out on the plateau to bring back some game birds.

The big issue was that all of this had to be done the day before the solstice so we would have everything on hand in advance of the feast. I didn’t want to be looking for something while working on the barbeque. Thankfully we had the horses and sleds at our disposal. It allowed Uttar to take one group of fishermen and foragers down to the lake in a matter of hours, hauling a sled laden with plastic containers behind him that could be filled with lake water to put his catch in to keep it fresh. While he was down there he’d take a quick side trip over to where the Hilltop People dug for salt. There was a seam of salt in one of the cul-de-sacs just beyond the village and Uttar was going to get some for us. It wouldn’t be as refined as the stuff we’d scavenged from the compound, but that was a fact of life that Clara, Gabby, and I had to accept living back in the here and now. What we had scavenged was running out, and we needed more.

My hunting expedition onto the plateau allowed me to ride down to the ford that crossed the big river and then on towards the compound. I did keep my distance, but I wanted to see if there was any activity happening there. To the best of my knowledge, given that I looked at it through a scope from a thousand yards away, the answer was ‘no.’ I spotted nothing that suggested that anyone was, or had been there at all.

The barbeque proved to be a big success. I took over the grill. There had been grills in the ovens in the kitchen container at the compound. We’d taken them when we cleaned the place out. They were roughly two feet by four feet. With a little effort I was able to put two of them overtop of the hearth that was under the overhang. With a couple of volunteers I got everything cooked up. I even had sauces for the meat. When we’d cleaned out the kitchen container at the compound, we’d found condiments; just your basic stuff like ketchup, mustard, Tabasco sauce, and steak sauce. With a little ingenuity and some other ingredients that we had left over from the supplies we’d found in the cache such as brown sugar or some local ingredients like honey and minced wild onions, I was able to create a spicy hot sauce, and a tangy honey-mustard sauce. If I do say so myself the sauces were great. I certainly enjoyed them! So did my cave people once they got over the initial surprise. In all we had fresh salads, baked bread rolls, wild berries, rice, and all the game birds, fish, and shellfish we could eat.