Chapter 10

We secured the cabin door with the latch-string, a heavy cord with a wooden handle that went through a hole and connected to a pivoting lever inside. The lever was mounted on the door and would engage the wall hook when it dropped. Pulling on the handle lifted the lever’s bar, allowing the door to be pushed open.

I had exchanged the club for my axe, because I needed it for chopping through the breastbone and pelvis. A knife is not the best tool for those essential cuts. I also wanted to keep the skin in one piece and the animal’s tendons intact. The sinew fibers within the tendons, especially the long ones, are very strong, useful for making bowstrings.

I left the women to skin the camel after I split the heavy bones. They would divide the carcass into portions light enough for us to carry up the gully sides, and Millie decided to save the organs too. Camels, being ruminants, have a stomach and a paunch, useful for waterproof bags. The intestines would be used for sausage casings.

The loads would be heavy and awkward to carry, and getting the heavy green hide up the side of the gully was also going to be a chore. I wasn’t willing to abandon it, and cutting it into smaller pieces would solve one problem by creating another. We would just have to manage.

I cautioned them to watch out for scavengers--the crossbow was cocked, loaded, and propped against a nearby bush ready for immediate use--and went off to make a travois.

Two saplings, straight, bare of limbs and about ten feet long, made the side beams. Branches tied across the main poles near the bottom finished the frame and held it with the ends splayed apart. The long poles supported the weight, the crosspieces added stability and a place to tie the load. Because the load was well back, only about eighteen inches from the end, leverage kept most of the weight on the poles. Dragging them kept friction to a minimum.

I needed one more thing to make the travois complete, and I would get that from the camel’s skin. I left the travois propped against a tree after finishing construction, so that I could lift the poles without having to pick them up from the ground. This made it less-likely that I’d reinjure my back.

On my way down, I removed stones from the side of the gully and cut away some of the dirt, making a path for climbing up the side. It was longer but required less effort. We would expend less energy carrying the load up the slope, but even so I expected we would be exhausted by the time we got back to the cabin.

The women had the hide off when I got back to the kill site. I washed my axe-head, then quartered the animal. I also lopped off the head, but kept the neck; there’s a lot of meat on an animal’s neck. I also chopped off the hooves and stashed them in the branches of a small tree; I already had enough to carry this trip, but I wanted them for later and hopefully the scavengers would leave them alone.

Hooves and hair, boiled down, make hide glue. It has excellent adhesion and is easily reheated, but it’s not waterproof. It also stinks while being prepared, but I could live with that.

Cutting a two-inch strip of belly skin from the hide and punching small holes in each end took only a short time. I measured the length I needed, allowing for stretching of the green hide, then laced the strap to my pack. This left me a loop for the top of my head, just behind my forehead. This tump-strap would help by taking some of the weight off my shoulders. The heavier loads, the skin and meat, devolved on me, while the women carried lighter packs of meat and organs. The rest could wait.

We stretched the skin out square and rolled it up, hair side out, into a long irregular bundle. I secured this by tying the roll at one end and taking half-hitches the rest of the way along. The flexible package went across my shoulders and neck, a heavy, awkward load. But I could carry it, and my spear would help me balance as I climbed.

After unrolling the skin, we tied it to the travois crosspieces, hair side down, with the excess length at the top. It got folded over the quarters of meat, then secured by tying the two corners to the poles. I tied the tump-strap’s loose ends to the two side poles, leaving just enough length to pass across the top of my head. Sandra put the strap into place and I allowed some of the weight to transfer from my arms to the strap. It made a difference!

The women shouldered their packs and Sandra picked up the crossbow. I would need the protection; both hands were occupied in dragging the travois. My spear lay across the poles, but I wouldn’t have time to grab it.

Lean forward, adjusting to the weight, then start dragging the heavy load. Put one step in front of the other, keep going. Try not to think about how much farther I had to go. From time to time, one of the women would help by grabbing one of the travois poles and pulling with me, but even so getting everything to the cabin took more than an hour and by the time we stopped, my legs felt like jelly. Millie and Sandra each held onto one of the poles as I lowered them, and then assisted me until I could lean against the cabin. Straightening my bent back was painful, but there were no spasms.

The women immediately began butchering the meat, putting three large sections of back-strap aside for cooking. Only a few words were necessary. We’d worked silently at the stream, now the habit continued back at the cabin. It’s really strange how that works. Noise brings danger here, and anyway, most conversation downtime deals with things that aren’t very important. I broke the silence long enough to mention, “We’ll need more salt. I’ll head for the lick tomorrow after breakfast.” The women nodded and kept on with their tasks.

I put empty gourds and a turtle-shell into my backpack, shouldered it, and headed for the salt deposit that I’d spotted while following the bees. I left my axe behind for the women to use and took the club in its place. The bar thumped behind me as one of the women secured the door.

I made the two-mile round trip to the salt lick and back without incident. Collecting the salt was work and it took time. Unlike the salt from the lick, most of this deposit had crystallized. I used my club to knock off fist-sized chunks and loaded my pack with as much as I could comfortably carry. Smaller pieces I scooped up with the turtle shell. They could be used right away; crushing the larger chunks for use could wait until they were needed.

I made it back to the cabin late that afternoon, offloaded the containers, then headed out to collapse my snares. One held a rabbit, so I sighed and took him along after field-dressing the carcass. We didn’t need the meat right now, but there was no reason to waste it. The rabbit was already dead, and I could use the skin. The tump-strap was uncomfortable, but lining it with rabbit-fur would make it less so.

I followed my trap-line as I usually did by spiraling in from the distant snares toward the ones closer to the cabin. That’s when I spotted him.

A boy, a teenager I thought, stepped out a few yards in front of me. He held a bow, arrow nocked to the string but not drawn. “Matt?” he said.

“I’m Matt. Who are you?”

“I am Lee.” English, but a strange accent. And where had he come from? I’d had no idea he was there until he stepped into the open! “I have been waiting for you.”

“You have?” Dumb question, and I knew it as soon as I spoke, but his appearance had surprised me.

“My mother and I have come here,” he said. “She is at the dwelling place. We should go now and talk there.” His speech was stilted, but easy to understand. Maybe English wasn’t his native tongue?

“All right,” I agreed. “Can you walk guard? I’ll move faster if I don’t have to watch for danger.”

“Yes.”

Boy, or man, of few words! I led off, he followed a few steps behind.

I had time to form a quick impression as we finished collapsing the snares. Leather breechclout, open leather vest, moccasins or turn-shoes; I couldn’t tell. His breechclout was secured by a belt, and a scabbarded knife hung over his right hip. He held the bow in his left hand, the nocked arrow in his right. I couldn’t get a good look at the bow he carried, but the arrow had a chipped stone point and flight-control feathers. A leather arm-guard protected the underside of his left forearm and a slung quiver held half a dozen arrows, feathered ends up. Everything appeared well made.

He had deeply tanned skin, not ethnically white I decided, but not black either. Something in between, maybe some sort of Mediterranean mix. Black hair hacked off short and no beard, at least not yet. He moved easily, quietly, not upright but not quite crouched either; a hunter’s gait, similar to mine! He’d be hard to surprise, and he could immediately respond if threatened.

I took off my pack when we got to the cabin, stretched upright to get the kinks out, then tapped on the door.

“Who?”

I chuckled; the owls were back! “Matt and Lee.”

The locking-bar scraped as it was removed, then the door opened. A woman, perhaps a bit older than us, looked at me. It was actually more than that; she examined me, head to foot, and I wondered if I passed inspection! I guess I did, because she stepped aside. I picked up the pack, carried it inside, and propped my spear next to the door. Lee came in, and I heard the bar thump, locking the door behind me. Lee shrugged out of his quiver-strap and released the tension on his bowstring. Something for me to remember when I had a bow of my own: don’t leave it strung unless you expect to use it right away!

“You have salt?” the woman demanded. So much for civilized introductions!

“I’m Matt, and yes, I brought salt. It’s in my pack. Who are you?”

“I am Lilia,” she said. Her voice had a lilt to it; English, like Lee’s, but probably not my kind of English. “We have seen smoke,” she went on. “It has been two days. We crossed a stream and there were two straight tracks in the dirt. We followed them and found this dwelling. I have talked to Sandra and Millie.”

I glanced at the two women and got nods in return. “Matt, she’s been a huge help. Lee worked a lot too. We wouldn’t have managed to get nearly as much done today without their help.”

“Well, you’ve certainly done a lot more than I expected,” I acknowledged. “So are Lilia and Lee going to be staying with you? With us, I mean?” I felt a bit anxious; she might be more useful than me, so perhaps I would suddenly find myself unwanted!

“They’ll stay, at least for now,” Millie said. “We were talking about that. Her husband was killed over west of here and she’s been alone ever since. They had a shelter, but it was burned and they lost everything.”

Well, not everything. Lilia had the knife she’d been using to cut the meat into thin strips, and Lee was better armed than me. I was tired and it was nearing dark outside, but I didn’t see how four adults and a near-adult were going to fit comfortably in the cabin. So I asked.

“Lilia will stay inside with us,” Sandra decided. “You and Lee will need to sleep outside tonight. Will you be OK?”

I nodded. I’d slept out for months, and clearly Lee and his mother had been doing so since their home burned. “I’ll need something to eat first, but after that we’ll head out. I’ll take a torch, and we can build a fire near the edge of the woods. Animals won’t bother us.”

My backstrap steak was quite tasty and the piece of a different kind of bread was equally nice. There were also boiled roots and a kind of fruit I wasn’t familiar with. Lilia was already showing her worth! Lee got a similar meal and we ate in silence. I fastened smaller branches together while the women cleaned the table, lit them, and we moved out, bar thunking into place behind us. So much for my domestic arrangements!

We found a tree at the edge of the forest with branches that could be easily climbed. I didn’t expect it to be necessary, but it was there just in case. We built a small fire near the tree and Lee fed in branches while I went off to gather more. He wasn’t by the fire when I got back, but he soon returned. He’d been collecting material for beds, and now he set them up a few feet apart. Our heads would be near the tree, there was a scraped-out hollow for our hips, and springy branch tips formed the simple ‘mattress’. Sleeping on the ground was far more comfortable than up in a tree. Lee’s quiver and bow, not strung but with the loop in place around the bow’s limb, lay near the head of his bed.