Chapter 361

The Prison Planet

Whenever he had the chance, Morales had sawed out boards, and dug more shelves into the cave wall to store his jerky and other items. Next on the agenda was building something more or less permanent to store the salt in so he could free up the rolling case. He thought about using the big resupply case he had found in the stream, but decided it was far too big for what he needed.

Resolving to build something suitable, he delved into the giant database on his computer. Having already done a preliminary search on the subject earlier, he brought the video up and watched it again, then reread the accompanying text on the subject. The video wasn't exactly what he needed, but he figured he could modify the idea a bit and it would work.

I have a few big nails that came in my rolling case with the supplies, but once they're gone I'll have to use something else, anyway. Might as well just start out using dowels. I would have to learn sooner or later, in any event.

Among the building tools that came in the rolling case was a chalk line and a small bag of blue chalk. While sawing out his first crude boards a few days ago, he had learned to snap the chalk line down the flattened piece of log so that he could have a straight line to follow with the saw. The resulting piece of lumber was far from perfectly straight, but it was much straighter than the guess method he had first used.

He knew that a real carpenter could build a simple box with ease, but he wasn't a carpenter and he didn't have any straight lumber, either. "Fuck it," he said aloud as he sorted through the few boards he had. "I've already cut them to eight foot lengths when I sawed them out of the log, so my box is going to be eight feet long. If I cut the boards in half, I won't have any waste, so the box is going to be four feet wide."

After carefully measuring, he marked the first board and cut it in half. Putting one on top of the other, he checked to make sure he had cut the board in the exact center. With the first board for a pattern, he marked and cut the others he would need.

Lobo, curious about all the sawing in the cave, had come over to watch his master. With a short whine, he looked up at Morales.

"Yeah. Yeah. I know. You're wondering what I'm doing. Well, Friend, that makes two of us. The first time I ever held a saw in my hands was when I took it out of the rolling case, but I'm catching on. The extent of my carpentering on earth was to put a nail into the wall to hang a picture on. A carpenter I am not. But fuck it. I'll learn, and there's damn sure no one here to criticize my work."

During the last several days, when he had a spare moment, he had been making dowels out of hardwood tree limbs. When he finished each with the appropriately sized spoke shave, he cut a shallow spiraling groove in the dowel before putting it near the fire to dry. Taking several dowels, he rounded one end off each of them so they would be easier to slip into the hole in the lumber.

With a four foot length of rough-cut board positioned over two rocks, he sat on the board and put three marks evenly spaced across the board about three quarters of an inch from the end. With his brace and bit, he bored out the first hole, then tried his dowel in it. It fit snugly, but he could easily drive it through the board. Satisfied with the fit, he bored out the three holes completely through the side, turned to the other end of the board, and repeated the process.

The article had mentioned that using corner posts would increase the strength of the box, and with that in mind, he had cut four, each measuring three inches by three inches by two feet in length.

While holding the end board against a corner post, he marked the dowel holes with his drill bit, then drilled them. Had it not been for his reading the article, he would have tried to mark where the dowels should go in the corner post, but by drilling the dowel holes all the way through the side pieces and on into the corner post a little, he could be sure the holes would line up when he drilled them to depth.

After wiping hide glue into the holes, he dipped a dowel in the glue, then drove it through the side piece and on into the corner post. (Note: the spiral he cut out with his knife helped to assure there would be glue on the dowel after it was driven into the wood.) Hurrying to finish before the glue dried, he drove the other two dowels in. Using the same method, he finished attaching the first row of side and end pieces to the three by three posts.

After fitting a second row of boards on top of the first by attaching each board to the corner posts, he had a box, but without a bottom. He attached the bottom boards to the sides by putting dowels along the ends as well as several more along the sides. He strengthened the box by putting two crosspieces equally spaced on the inside bottom of his new salt box and doweled the bottom boards into them.

Standing back, he both admired and detested his first attempt at woodworking. He had made a crude box, but the rough sawn lumber did not match up well, leaving cracks between the boards in places that the salt would certainly pour through. Back to studying.

A little later, he returned from the stream with willow bark that he used to chink the cracks. "It won't hold water," he told Lobo, "but it damn sure will hold salt." With his shovel, he flattened out a place for the salt box well back from the entrance. After dragging his box into place, he brought the rolling case over and dumped the salt blocks in.

Standing next to the box of salt, he repeatedly slammed a long piece of lumber endways into the salt blocks, breaking them into smaller and smaller pieces. Then when he had accomplished all he could with that, he knelt with a shorter piece of the wood and smashed the flat side of it into the salt, stirred it, then continued until he could find no more lumps. Eventually, the box was almost full of salt grains, certainly not as fine as table salt, but easily fine enough to cure meat with.

He had worked up an appetite. While his stew made of potatoes and jerky was bubbling on the fire, he sat back with a cup of coffee to think. After the first sip, he looked over at the wolf. "If it wasn't for that damn saber-tooth coming to visit at night, I could salt and smoke the meat in the ditch, but the article I read said that I should rub salt into the meat and let it set for fourteen days, while daily rubbing salt onto the meat to make sure nothing was missed, particularly the areas around the exposed bone. I could widen the ditch, put in a wall or two with a removable top, and we would be in business. Until ... that bastard decided on a free lunch. I don't fancy sitting on that big rock at night watching for the saber-tooth while he sneaks up on me. And I don't want you tangling with him, either. One of these days, I'll build a real smokehouse to cure and smoke our meat, but for now I'm going to salt cure the big pieces of meat in our cave, and continue to dry the rest for jerky.

"Drying has obviously worked on the deer and antelope, but I've only had the meat for a couple of weeks. Who knows how long it will last, although my gut feeling is that it will be fine for a very long time. According to the articles, lean meat is a lot easier to cure properly than fat meat, and it cautioned that pork should be cured with salt. Well, we have salt now."

When the stew was ready, he dished out half to Lobo, put the remaining portion on his own plate, poured another cup of coffee and sat to eat, still thinking about the smokehouse that he would someday build. I've always loved smoked ham, and one of these days I'm going to have some, but there is a lot to do around here before I can build a place to cure and store the meat.

A while back, he had found a small side tunnel that quickly widened out as it sloped downward. Wary, he had ventured on, the tunnel dropping what he guessed to be a couple of hundred feet down a slope. It was much cooler in there, but without a thermometer, he had no way to properly judge. Nevertheless, he was going to use this for his pork curing area. He worked well into the night digging out more shelves there. When the boards were in place, he grinned. "Now, all I need is a hog, and I know where there are a lot of them."

With the dawn, wolf and human left the cave. After rubbing the smelly shrubs on his exposed skin, he stopped for a moment to think. He had never been in the military, but he had certainly watched enough war movies and so-called survival shows. Glad that no one could see him, he cut a number of small branches and stuck them in various places on his fatigues.

While rubbing the sweet smelling shrub onto his exposed skin, he caught a glimpse of himself in a still part of the stream. Chuckling at his ridiculous-looking reflection, he shrugged and turned toward his destination. Fuck the naked shit. Bathing and going naked with that smelly shrub wiped all over my ass worked before, but I'm going to try it like this. "Come on, Lobo. Let's go find us a good place to hide and see if we can get some bacon."

A second later, he realized what he had just said. "Shit, Boy. They might not smell me, or pay as much attention with all this sweet shrub smell that I'm putting out, but they damn sure will smell you, and I'll bet they'll haul ass as soon as they do. Shit, what are we going to do with you?

"This planet's version of hogs are supposed to be extremely smart. At least that's what the article said that one of those scientists wrote after he studied them. One of the articles also said something about bad vision, but I can't remember whether it was hogs or buffalo that was supposed to be nearsighted. Whatever, but I suspect that every animal on the planet, including those hogs, can smell a hundred times better than I can. Once again, I need to pay attention to the direction of the wind if I'm going to have a chance at that bacon."

As Morales pulled the case along, walking as quietly as he could, he thought about the place he had chosen to try for a pig. A mile or so below the falls, and still near the stream, there were a number of trees that produced nuts that the hogs seemed to love. He didn't know much about nuts, but he had never seen any in the grocery store that seemed to be identical to these. Curious, he had broken open a couple to try. They had tasted fairly good, but were very moist yet. There was, however, a considerable amount of meat within the relatively thin shell, and he assumed the nuts would taste better when fully dry.

There seemed to be an abundance of hogs/pigs in the area, so he doubted he would get many of the nuts, unless he found the nut trees in another area that the pigs didn't know about.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, storing a bunch of nuts to shell and eat when the weather is cold and I'm snowed in might just be worth the effort. If I kill a few of the critters, they might well decide to go looking for food somewhere else. Win. Win. I get 2214's version of pork, and the nuts. Top of the food chain, boys. Move over; ol' Morales is coming, he gleefully thought.

He stopped and determined the direction of the slight wind when they were three or four hundred yards from the nut trees. "Boy, I wish I had some way to tell you to go around behind them like you did out on the plains when we were after the deer. Oh, well. I guess now is as good a time as any to see if you will really stay put when I tell you to."

Surprising himself, he leaned over to hug the big beast before ordering, "Stay, Lobo. Stay!"

Lobo whined quietly, but sat on his haunches. Morales walked a hundred feet or so away before turning to the wolf again. Pointing at him, he called out sharply, "Stay, Lobo."

Lobo laid down, put his head on his outstretched paws and remained watching the human until he disappeared from view. After a few minutes, the wolf got up to stand quietly, obviously listening. Plopping back down, he continued to stare in the direction of his master, his ears still up and tilted toward where he last saw Morales.

The human had difficulty finding a tree downwind of the nut trees with large enough limbs close enough to the ground for easy climbing. Finally, he settled on one about two hundred feet away. Climbing fifteen feet or so into it, he cut several smaller limbs to give him a clear shot at the area, but standing on the smaller limbs meant he had to keep his feet close to the trunk of the tree. The limbs didn't tend to break, but bent under his weight, and the bark was fairly slick.