Chapter 30

I thought about Robert’s plan, and I could see advantages and disadvantages to the idea. The next morning I brought it up for discussion. “Robert wants his tribe to join with ours when we move west. Think about it for a while and let me know. Robert thinks that some of his tribesmen may not like the idea. I won’t make a decision without the rest of you agreeing, and I think it has to be unanimous. I won’t drag anyone into a merger if they don’t like the idea, and nobody will be left out if we merge.”

“I’ll bet it’s Pavel’s gang that Robert’s talking about,” Laz said. “I’ve never liked those people.”

“Pavel wanted to be the tribe’s leader and he’s never understood that the rest of us didn’t want him,” Cindy added.

“It will probably be safer, being part of a bigger group,” Lilia mentioned.

“Yes, but I’ve felt safe having Matt watching out for us,” Millie said. “He’s got our interests in mind and I don’t want to change that. We’ve seen what he does; when those rapists got in, he didn’t hesitate. The bear, too; he wanted us to stay back while he went out and faced the bear, taking most of the risk. I trust Matt, but I don’t know those other people and it sounds like they’ve got their own priorities.” She looked troubled by the idea. “Can we trust them to treat us as equals, or will they take care of their own people first?”

“Robert suggested we could share leadership of the joined group,” I mentioned. “He thinks he can work it out, but I don’t know. It may not even be possible. They’ll wonder about me just like you are wondering about them.

“I was prepared to leave here, just the seven of us, until Lee got hurt. I still am, if that’s what you decide. But if we merge with Robert’s group, we’ll end up moving around twenty-seven people. Safer, as Lilia said, but we’d end up with more responsibility.

“We’ve learned to live without the support of a large group, some of his haven’t. That increases the difficulty, so the trip will likely take longer. There will be rivers to cross and Robert’s tribe has children. Being responsible for twenty-seven people is going to make it much harder on me, and probably the rest of you too. I know I can rely on you, no matter what. The others, especially the mothers of those children? But whether we go with them or head out on our own, we may have to leave before the snow melts.

“Hunting has gotten harder, we’ve all noticed that, and the animals won’t return until the grass greens up. All this snow ... is it normal? What if the glaciers are advancing south?

“I had intended to leave after green-up anyway and hunt along the trail, but now I’m considering whether we shouldn’t just pack everything on the sleds and head out sooner. We’ll need another large sled or two, but three sleds with mostly furs and food would be all we could haul. That would mean two people to pull each sled and it would leave one person available for security. We could rotate the jobs so that no one’s doing more work than anyone else and everyone gets a break from pulling a sled.

“We’d need to collect firewood along the way, but the snow hut worked well, so as long as we have snow we’ll have building material. Water, too. We’ve built other kinds of temporary shelters, we can do it again. If we head out now, before the river ice melts, crossing rivers won’t be a problem. Hauling the sleds will be easier too.

“The best course would be for all of us to get ready, Robert’s people too. If there’s no sign of melting in a couple of weeks, we leave whether they’re ready or not. Every day we wait, we use up some of our stored supplies and we aren’t finding replacements. Even if Robert’s tribe does have more food, it won’t last forever.”

Lee commented, “Matt, We’ve been lucky so far. That bear would have killed me and maybe you too if he hadn’t been favoring that injured paw. Lucky with the cat too, because it landed in the river. We didn’t have a serious problem with the dire wolves, but suppose there had been more of them? What if we hadn’t had that foreleg for bait or time to build a barricade? That pack didn’t reach the barricade, but the next one might. We might have climbed the trees, but again, we might not have had time. If they’d jumped us without warning, some of us would have died because there just aren’t enough of us. I favor joining Robert’s tribe if we can work out the details.”

“I understand, Lee. You’re right, the animals are dangerous, but starvation is dangerous too. Right now, we’re strong enough to pull the sleds, but if we wait too long we’ll have more sled capacity than we have food. There’s a point in between where we have just enough, all the weight we can handle but no more than that. That’s when we should leave. If we wait, we’ll keep on using up our supplies without getting anywhere.”

We left it at that. I would bring up the subject later, after everyone had more time to think. But I didn’t see any choice, we would have to take our chances along the way. Lee’s injury had kept us here, now the heavy snowfall was pushing us to leave, ready or not. Robert was no more anxious to move than I was, but he would have been talking over the options with his tribe. We could get together in a week and make a decision.

I looked over our food supplies and concluded that the break-even point for us would occur in about three weeks. Whether Robert had sufficient food to wait longer, time would tell.

Meanwhile, something had been prowling around under the meat that we’d hung from the trees. The unknown animal had not been able to reach anything, but it had made several visits and I decided to do something before the critter figured out a way to get at our food.

I made a quick trip out to the lean-to and brought in an armful of branches. They were nicely dried now, some of them warped, but that wouldn’t matter for what I had in mind. I cut them to lengths of about a yard, then chopped through the center at a sharp angle, leaving me with two sharp-ended stakes about eighteen inches long.

Lee and Laz came over to see what I was working on. “Sharpened sticks, Matt? What are you going to do with those?”

“Something’s been after the meat,” I explained. “It’s not a bear, although the tracks are similar. The footprint’s almost as long as a bear would leave, but narrower. Anyway, I think it’s time to do something before whatever it is gets at our supply of meat. A deadfall won’t work ... too much snow ... and this critter can probably gnaw through a snare, so I’m going to build a pit trap.

“We’ll dig a hole under one of the hanging quarters of meat. We can dig out small hollows in the bottom and set the stakes upright, then pour water around them. We’ll hold them in place until the water freezes. The trap probably won’t kill it, at least not right away. The critter might even be able to pull itself off the stakes if I left them the way they are, but I won’t. We can’t afford to use up our glue, so I’ll use ice.

“Ice? I never thought of that,” Lee said. “How are you going to do it?”

“I thought of carving barbs at first, but then I came up with a better idea. I’ll harden the stake points in the fire first, then glue on small flakes of flint or obsidian, left-overs from when we were chipping arrowheads. I’ve got bags of those. Dip the end of the flake in water, then just hold it on the stake until the water freezes. I may drip a little more water on to make sure they won’t come off, then plant the stakes upright in the pit. Pour water around them, and the ice will fix them in place”