Chapter 25

I was down below our valley, amongst the tree shrouded slopes that dominated the terrain south of where we lived. I’d been down there hunting often over the past two summers, once all the construction had been taken care of up at the enclosure. It was a great place to stalk deer and wild boar and even an occasional bear. I was with Gogra, Rugar, and Sygor that day. We were on foot, our horses trailing behind us on lead ropes as we walked the hillside path in search of our prey.

The gunshot startled everyone.

“What the... ,” I gasped aloud, looking about as I did, just as the others did as well.

There wasn’t anything to see. We were deep in the forest surrounded by towering trees. There were hills rising behind us and hills lying below us, along with shrubs and brush and all sorts of underbrush. We’d crossed one gully to get to where we were standing and I knew that there were two more not that far below us, hidden from sight, but still there. To make matters worse, there had only been a single shot. While the report was audible, it had been faint. I was sure that it was close by, but in this terrain that could be a hundred yards or a mile away.

“Who fired a shot?” Rugar asked me pointedly a second later, his voice filled with concern. “Is it one of your women?”

“No,” I responded slowly and thoughtfully, still glancing about as I replied. “The report we heard came from somewhere below us, not from above. Unfortunately, that is all I can tell you for now.”

“Should we go and look for the one who fired the rifle?” Gogra asked hesitantly, looking first at me and then down the slope from where we were standing, glancing questioningly into the wilderness that lay there.

“No,” I said curtly in reply, my voice filled with frustration. “I have no idea where the shooter was, nor how many shooters there might be. Since we heard only one shot, my guess is that the person firing the rifle was out hunting just as we are. That means that the person isn’t looking for me or at least they’re not looking for me at the moment. I think we should swing back up the slope and return to the valley. If we’re lucky will find some game on the way and our trip will not be wasted. In either case, I think we should head back to the valley to make certain that everyone is all right. Then I will call a council and we can decide what to do.”

We did encounter game on our way back up the slope. Our trek took us westward for a bit before we started climbing back up towards the valley. The track we followed wound between the trunks of tall trees, whose canopy swayed and rustled in the wind, filling the air with sound. Within a short time we broke out of the confines of the forest and into a hillside glade. In a word we stumbled upon a small herd of deer grazing on some ferns that grew by the edge of it. The herd consisted of a large buck and four does. They startled the moment we entered the glade and bolted a second later. Fortunately I wasn’t leading my horse. Rugar had my lead rope in hand so I could be ready with my bow if we did walk upon anything, either prey or predator.

My bow came up the moment I spotted the buck and the instant it spotted me. I quickly drew aim on the doe closest to me. It was no more than thirty yards away. As the herd turned away from me and moved to flee into the forest, I led the animal and then just as it hit the edge of the tree-line I let loose my arrow.

The doe stumbled to the side when the heavy broadhead slammed into it. It tried to pick itself up, but by then I had nocked a second arrow and I let loose with it as well. The second arrow put it down for good.

“I heard nothing,” Clara told me once we returned to the valley and our enclosure. By then it was late afternoon and close to suppertime. Most of my people were back in the enclosure. “I was out with the women foraging for mushrooms up the slope behind the enclosure most of the day. Whoever fired a shot must have been far away.”

“Far enough,” I acknowledged quickly in a dismissive manner, not really wanting to get into a discussion about acoustics with the rest of my council sitting there listening in. It was hard enough at times to explain to the people from here and now how something worked and unfortunately for most, I wasn’t an expert in physics.

We were sitting about the central hearth, sipping tea. My hunting party was there, as were Uttar, Vedic, and Balto. Gabby was there as well. She was holding Adiba on her knee, almost clinging to her. I could tell she was nervous about what we were talking about. I also knew that it didn’t help much that she was four months pregnant with our second child. Clara was sitting beside Gabby holding our year old son, Henri, who was currently fast asleep.

“What are we going to do about it?” Gabby enquired in a voice that trembled.

“I’m going to have to go and see who it was,” I told Gabby bluntly. “I’ll try and be careful, but there really isn’t a choice in the matter. We were a few miles down the slope when we heard the shot. That puts the shooter within three to four miles of the mouth of our valley. From there it’s only a day’s march from the settlement. It wouldn’t take long for them to find us and if they are Quantum, it could mean that some of our people will get killed. I can’t allow that to happen.”

“I’ll be going with you,” Clara informed me in a de facto manner.

“No, you will not,” I told her sharply, almost snapping her head off with the sternness of my reply. “You’ll stay here and look after Henri and that is that.”

“But...” Clara growled in protest.

“No,” I snapped again, cutting her off before she could say another word, “and that is final. You’ll stay here to protect our child, my children, and our settlement. I’ll take Sygor and Tonko with me. Both of them have used an auto shotgun before, so they’re my best choices for this expedition. You are the best choice to look after the community and to keep it safe. Do you understand?”

Clara understood. It took her a moment or two to admit it, and it didn’t make her happy, but eventually she aquiesced. Once she had, we all sat and discussed my intentions and what I expected out of the people there in our community. Until I came back from looking for the shooter, everyone in the enclosure would have to be extra careful.

That evening, after we’d eaten supper, I called a community meeting to discuss what had happened that day, and what it meant to the community. It was immediately obvious that someone had already spilt the beans about what I wanted to talk about. I noted some nervousness amongst the old timers in our tribe. All of them had been exposed to Blackmore and company in one fashion or another and they all were aware of what the consequences would be if men with weapons like mine came to the enclosure and they started shooting. I would try and reassure them once I was finished speaking. Regrettably we had to talk about this. Our new citizens hadn’t experienced what the up-timers had, and they needed to understand what to expect. I would need to be blunt with them and drive home the point that for now the community needed to be extra careful. If not, people could die.

That night I made love to both Clara and Gabby. Clara hadn’t really forgiven me, but there was no way she was going to let me slip off and get myself killed without her getting one last roll in the hay. We made love energetically and when we were done, we both made love to Gabby as tenderly as we could. She needed it that way.

I headed out just after dawn the next morning, taking Sygor and Tonko with me as I had said I would. We rode horses and we brought a packhorse with us laden with supplies. We all wore buckskin clothing, and we each packed our bows and arrows along with us just in case we got the opportunity to use them. If a chance at dropping game came along, I didn’t want to use a rifle to take it down; certainly not with someone possibly representing Quantum or Ridgeway in our area.

We did have firearms with us. I had brought my sniper rifle and my carbine as my primary offensive weapons. I’d also brought my automatic pistol. Sygor and Tonko were armed with automatic shotguns.

We rode south towards the mouth of the valley, riding at a quick lope. It took us a couple of hours to reach it. Once there, we rested our horses for a bit while I spied out the landscape below us using my binoculars, but they didn’t reveal much. It was late summer and all we could see was miles upon miles of forest below us, clear blue sky above us, and far off in the distance a patch of dark blue that I still thought to be sea.

My hope had been to spot a wisp of smoke from a campfire. Regrettably, it didn’t happen. Either whoever had fired the shot was now long gone, or they knew how to make a fire without generating any smoke. The lack of it just made my job that much harder.

Within an hour we were back down the track that we’d followed the day before. We paused for a moment or two at the spot where we’d heard the shot. I looked and listened; but, when we didn’t see anything and we heard nothing other than chirping birds and the occasional rustle of leaves from some small animal skittering away, we moved on. I found a game trail that led off towards the southeast of our position and we headed down it, deeper into the forested wilderness and further away from our home.

The trail we followed took us downhill for about two hundred yards before it bottomed out in a broad ravine. We stopped here for a moment as well, pausing to look and listen. We were still in the deep forest and besides the tall pine trees standing everywhere there wasn’t much to see. I put Sygor on one bank of the ravine and Tonko on the other. I stayed down in the ditch. A moment later we headed out again, moving downhill and following the ravine, searching for sign.

I did find a lot of sign, but not what I was looking for. The bottom of the ravine was littered with animal tracks, scat, and the sign that some creature had stopped to nibble on some greenery. As for human sign we didn’t find any.

The ravine went on for roughly a mile. At the end of it, it opened up into a very narrow valley through which a creek flowed. The creek was only about two feet wide and a foot deep. The land in the valley was steep and the water ran quickly. We paused a moment to water our horses and to look around again. By now we were more in line with the mouth of our valley, facing southward again. In the distance I could hear the running water of our river as it continued down the hillside towards wherever it ended up. I had no idea where that place was actually. While my hunters and I had explored beyond the mouth of our valley, we hadn’t travelled that far as of yet. It could have joined another river, or flowed into a lake, or perhaps it had continued on until it reached what I believed to be the sea. One day I’d be back to explore the land, but not today. Today we were looking for people.

Once the horses had drunk their fill and we’d paused to drink and eat a bit as well, conversing about what we’d seen so far, we moved on, still heading downward. Within a half mile we hit the river.

The river was a bit of a problem. Because of the steepness of the slope the river had cut a deep wound into the land. The gorge stood over a dozen feet wide and more than two dozen feet deep. The water in the bottom of it tumbled over rock and stone, cascading downward at a rapid pace. You could actually hear it rushing by while standing at the edge looking down into it. The only place we could cross the river was back up the hill, in our valley. It meant that for now we were stuck on the left bank of the flow. If the people we were looking for were on the right, we were screwed.

With a sigh we pushed on. I led Sygor and Tonko down the steep incline that was the slope, keeping the flowing river to our right. We traveled for another half mile until we came upon another streambed that ran into the gorge. Just like the other stream had cut the land like a wound, it also barred our onward progress Seeing our onward trek blocked I turned us up the stream and we headed back uphill, searching for a ford. It took us nearly an hour to find it.

By the noon hour, we were miles from our valley. We’d found a ford and we’d crossed it to the other side of the stream. We’d swept the opposite bank for any sign of human activity. We didn’t find any. Eventually we ended up in another narrow valley that ran perpendicular to the sloping land and towards the distant river. We stopped there to rest and eat.

“Do we go on?” Tonko asked as he sat down on his camp stool, chewing on a piece of dried venison as he spoke.

Yes, we’d packed camp stools with us. We had a packhorse and the way I’d seen it as we’d packed to leave the night before, only an idiot needed to be uncomfortable out here in the bush. I wasn’t an idiot. We had food and water, sleeping furs, and protective clothing. I only wished we had coffee. That had run out a year ago.

I didn’t answer Tonko right away. We were definitely further down the slope from our valley than I’d ever been before, and we were probably further down than where whoever had fired the shot had been. With all the ravines and small, narrow valleys running across the slope of the land it was very unlikely that the shooter had been anywhere near this location. With a sigh I nodded my head.

“Yes,” I told my two companions, glancing about as I did. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near where the shooter was yesterday. I think we should head up this valley for a bit and then swing back up the hill until we reach the stream we crossed a while ago. Depending on whether we can ford it or not, we’ll either search along it for a bit or cross it. If we cross it we can continue up the slope in an attempt to reach the valley. If we’re lucky we could sleep with our mates tonight, and then try again tomorrow on the other side of the river.”

It was a plan that both Sygor and Tonko could accept without any argument. We finished our break and mounted up to ride the short distance up the valley to a spot where we could re-enter the forest.

We rode for about fifteen minutes before I spotted a fair size game trail that led back into the forest. I turned my mount into it and rode along it for a bit until we reached the stream again. It was fordable so we crossed it. By that point we were back on foot and leading our horses. We climbed the opposite slope leading away from the stream and uphill for a bit. As expected the land rolled for a bit and then dropped into another hollow. This one wasn’t that big and it certainly didn’t qualify as a ravine, valley, or even a gully. That really didn’t matter. What did matter was that we finally found something that pointed us towards whoever had fired the shot the day before. We came upon their kill.

It was a medium size doe. Whoever had shot it had only taken part of it. They hadn’t even dressed the animal out. They’d just lobbed off the hind leg, leaving the rest to be picked over by scavengers. To my two companions it was a waste of good meat and a skin.

I cast about while Sygor and Tonko stood watch. I found the hunter’s tracks. It really wasn’t hard. The person had worn ‘size ten’ combat boots. Whoever it had been had left footprints everywhere. Within seconds I had found his trail.

I led the way with my carbine at the ready. Tonko followed after me armed with his shotgun. Sygor brought up the rear leading our horses. I kept a fair distance out in front of the others, moving as quietly and as quickly as I could in my moccasins. Within fifteen minutes of finding the hunter’s trail, we found where he’d taken the shot.

It was atop of a rise that overlooked the hollow where below, the doe lay dead. The rise was well above the mix of trees that encircled the hollow and there was a gap through which a person could see. The person had stood on the rise and they’d taken the shot.

I found the spent casing. It was a .338 Winchester Magnum. That was a big ass round for taking down game like a doe. It was more suited for moose or bear. Still it told me that whoever had fired the shot was well armed with a rifle that could reach out and touch me if they ever got me in the crosshairs of the rifle’s sight. It told me that I needed to be exceedingly careful.

I also found the direction that the hunter had gone in. It wasn’t hard. The hunter was mobile. From the look of the tire tracks left in the loam of the hillside the person was driving a multi-wheeled ATV, probably similar to the one that Blackmore had been driving. That made life that much harder for me.

I stood and thought for a moment. By then it was mid-afternoon. I could see the trail clearly. It headed off into the woods and down hill, vanishing into the distance towards the southeast. I could follow it, but the driver could have driven off and left the area after making his kill. It was certainly possible given that the hunter was driving a vehicle. It was also possible he was still in the area. Having hunted the slope I knew that you didn’t have to go far to find something to kill. That was one of the reasons I hadn’t explored more than a few miles from the mouth of our valley. I didn’t have to travel more than a mile to find prey just waiting to be turned into supper. The question was what had the hunter done?

After a minute of contemplation I made the decision to follow the vehicle trail. In my gut I knew that the hunter had to be close. No one with a vehicle would have driven this far into the forest to hunt, when game was plentiful wherever you looked. To me the likelihood was that the hunter had a camp somewhere close. I’d follow his trail for an hour and see what I could find. With that I told Sygor and Tonko to mount up. My two companions weren’t happy about the fact we weren’t going to head home, but I ignored their grumblings. I wasn’t happy about it either. However, I knew deep down if I didn’t follow the trail and find the shooter, and if something did happen to one of my people because I didn’t do my job right, I’d never forgive myself.

We didn’t ride too far before we came upon more sign of human presence in the area. The vehicle trail went down the slope and across the stream that we’d crossed a while ago, and then it went up a hill and around an outcropping before heading downhill once again. It was by the outcropping that I spotted the new sign. It became obvious almost immediately that the hunter had stopped at the outcropping, and that he’d attacked it with a pick! There were flakes of stone on the ground and there were gouges in the massive rock. Seeing the sign made me wonder who the hunter was. That wonder grew even larger when fifteen minutes later we came upon an open seam of coal. It wasn’t large, but again it was clear that the hunter had stopped at the seam to poke at it with a pick.

We continued on from there, still heading downhill, but now more to the south than to the southeast as we’d been doing before. The slope eventually bottomed out in another small valley and then it started to climb again. The vehicle tracks continued on so we did as well. Eventually, an hour or so later, after riding up and down hills and around a number of outcroppings that had been attacked by someone with a pick, we finally came to a halt.

The vehicle trail led to another hidden valley. This one was a little wider than some and a little longer than others. A river flowed through it, visible from the rise we crested as we followed the trail of the ATV, as was the camp that stood at the bottom of the hill we were sitting on.

We moved back into the tree-line the moment I spotted the camp. We rode back down the slope which we’d just ridden up and when we came to a flat clearing that stood just off the trail, we reined in and dismounted. Within minutes we had our horses tethered and we were ready to go and investigate.