Chapter 24

We made a fast, if exhausting, trip.

I turned over the meat and asked to speak to Robert. He came in, yawning; we had interrupted his sleep. I didn’t like waking him, but I thought he should know about René.

“René is one of your people, so I figured you would want to know what happened. We were hunting the edges of the tall-grass prairie, and lion got in close and clawed him. He’s alive, but the wounds are serious. Lilia’s the best we’ve got for treating injured people— she treated her son Lee and he’s almost fully recovered now—and she’s also knowledgeable about herbs and other kinds of medical care. Anyway, she cleaned out the scratches and made sure that none of the leather from his vest was still in the wounds. We’ll get him back to the cabin and do the best we can for him until he’s recovered.”

Matt paused for a moment, remembering. “Lilia and I shot a yearling bull, then the cow charged us. Sandra got a crossbow bolt into her spine, so we finished her off. We had just started field dressing her when the lioness jumped us. That grass ... it’s perfect cover, which explains how the lioness got in close before we knew she was anywhere around. I guess we were lucky she didn’t maul more of us.”

“Yeah, they’re dangerous,” Robert agreed. “René is more than just a tribesman, he’s a member of my extended family. I need to go back with you if you can wait long enough for me to let my supervisors know what happened. I’ll also need to let my family know about René, and I’ll take him home with me if he’s well enough to travel. We’ve got a healer in our camp too, our Wise Woman. She’s dealt with wounds before, in fact since before she was transplanted. I’ll decide when I see René. Laz didn’t get hurt?”

“Laz is fine,” I said. “He’s here with me, helped me unload the meat. He can help you get René home, and Lilia can go along to help with security. She can also help care for René while you’re on the trail.”

We got food from the kitchen while we waited for Robert to return, enough for a quick meal and sandwiches to eat on the trail. Robert got a sandwich too, and less than an hour later, we were on our way.

I had intended to abandon the sled ... they’re not difficult to make ... but Robert thought it might help if we decided to transport René. Another consideration, the skin from the bison was still on the sled and it occurred to me that we would use it as padding to make René comfortable on the trip.

The sled barely slowed our pace back to where Lilia and the others waited with René. We found them by spotting a faint smoke column. They were drying meat on a rack, built over a smoky fire. Sandra had remained close to René, while Lilia took care of the drying meat and Millie tended the fire.

Laz parked the sled near the fire and we went to examine René. He didn’t look good; the wounds were red and swollen, and René looked feverish to me. He wasn’t sweating, even though his skin felt hot to the touch. Robert wasted no time. “We’ll put him on the sled. Laz, you and I will pull, Lilia comes along for guard duty if she’s willing, and we get René home to the Wise Woman as soon as possible.”

We put the hide from the second bison on the sled as an added cushion and wrapped it loosely around René. I hoped it might cause the fever to break, because if we couldn’t bring the fever down René wouldn’t survive. The wound wasn’t severe enough to kill him outright, but infection and fever surely would. Hopefully, Robert’s ‘Wise Woman’ would be able to get it under control before it was too late.

I gave Robert the spear I’d made for René and they set off.

Two days later they were back.

René never made it home. He became delirious, then slipped into unconsciousness. Robert wrapped the skin around him and he and Laz continued on, Lilia keeping watch. The next time they paused for a rest break, René’s body had already begun to stiffen. The skin he had been wrapped in became his shroud. The body had been left on the sled beside the trail, the bison skin tied in place around it. Robert’s tribe had never practiced burial or cremation since arriving on Darwin’s World; bodies were simply removed from the settlement and abandoned to the elements, whenever possible on hastily-assembled platforms to keep the bodies out of reach of land-based scavengers. Birds would dispose of the remains, and predators weren’t tempted to hang around the settlement and become a nuisance.

Or get accustomed to eating human flesh.

Sandra and Millie were shocked when they heard the news, but we had little time to grieve. Winter would be on us soon and we still had much to do. We had come to like René during the short time he lived with us. His passing was a quick reminder that death could come to any of us at any time. This world would weed out the unfit, but it would also eliminate the unfortunate. We had tried to be as careful as we could, and still it had not been enough. There was no safety to be found anywhere on Darwin’s World.

We finished smoking the bison meat and set off for the cabin. The preserved, dehydrated meat weighed less after smoking, and the replacement sled I made worked well for transporting it. I would build similar sleds to carry loads through the winter, and they would work even better then than what we were using now. Robert helped to pull the sled on the way back to the cabin, understandably still depressed by the death of René. As for the rest of us, we didn’t dwell on René’s passing; there was nothing to be gained by protracted mourning. Danger was always present and death happened. Quick, brutal, commonplace; death was part of living in this survival-of-the-fittest dimension on the planet I’d named Darwin’s World. We who lived would have to concentrate on the never-pausing tasks of survival. Food, shelter, clothing, defense, we had more than enough to do. There was little time for grieving, for reflection.

We took a break at the stream when we crossed on the way back to the cabin and all of us washed off. This time, it was Lilia and Robert who provided security while Laz, Millie, Sandra, and I washed up. We watched over the other two when it was their turn.

Robert got the unenviable job of explaining René’s death to Cindy and Lee after we arrived. Cindy was clearly upset; she had known René all her life. The rest of us went to work unloading the sled and hanging the meat in the rear of the lean-to for storage.

Lilia wanted to layer it with salt for a day to see if that would help preserve it longer, so we did. It didn’t seem to hurt anything, but if there was any uptake of the salt by the smoked meat I saw no sign of it.

It’s better to coat the meat with salt before smoke-curing it, but we hadn’t taken nearly enough salt with us. It would have been an added burden for us to carry, and in any case, we hadn’t intended to kill two bison.

Once they were down, however, we had no choice other than to preserve as much as we could or abandon the cow’s carcass. I was unwilling to do that. Some of the meat was for the mine workers, payment for as much iron they were willing to give us, but most of it was for our own use and it might be the difference between surviving and not.

Robert offered to take Cindy back to the mine and send two other people to the cabin, but she shook her head. “No, Robert. I will stay here. We have to move on. He was not the first we’ve lost. There will be others. I have work to do here and more responsibility than I had when I worked at the mine. I will stay.”

Robert headed back to the mine the following morning. I offered to go with him, but he was confident he could cope with the danger. I was equally confident in my own skills, because I had survived alone for months before I found others, so I accepted his judgment. I was concerned for him, but even more so for the survival of my small group. I had accepted responsibilities and was no longer as free as I’d been. So Robert went off alone, and I settled in at the cabin.