Chapter 594

The Prison Planet

... A smiling Morales raised the massive elk a little higher for the trip home. “She made it look easy, Ladies,” he said after everyone, including Junior, was back aboard. It didn’t take a high I.Q. to realize that Morales was proud of Jasmine. “You should have seen the first animal I field dressed. Well, then again, I’m glad you didn’t,” he said with a grimace.

The rooster had squawked when Jasmine shot the elk, but he remained on the seat back, although he watched the humans closely.

The wolves were happy since they had gotten their choice of heart and liver, which they made disappear. With the elk hanging clear on the back of the trailer, they mounted the crawler and slowly made their way back home.

Morales stopped the machine at the top of the hill above the cave, turned the rig around and shut it down. As he opened the door, Junior hopped on his shoulder, then launched out the door to head straight for the cave. After landing in the entranceway, he hurried toward the hole under the wall.

“Looks as if our chicken friend is glad to be home,” Christine said as they watched the chicken hurry out of sight.

Jasmine let out a chuckle. “Maybe the big wide world turned out to be a little bigger than he thought.” Leaning over, she gave her husband a quick kiss. “Our coffee thermos is empty. We’re going to stop by the outhouses, then we’ll get some coffee going.”

“Okay. Since the path we’ve shoveled out isn’t wide enough for the cart, especially with the way all the equipment has chewed up the snow, I’m going to hook the blade to the tractor and clear a path from here to the cave entrance. I’ll butcher the elk out here well away from the cave. We can put what we want in our stasis chambers, and I’ll hang the rest in the ice cave. Moving the meat should be a snap with the electric cart to do the hard work.”

The women made their stop, but Morales just used a tree. The tractor’s engine was cold and required two sessions with the glow plugs before it fired up. A couple of minutes later, Morales carefully backed the tractor until the three-point hitch on the blade was lined up. A few moments later and he had the blade secured to the machine and the hydraulic hoses coupled.

With a touch of the lift lever, the big tractor snatched the blade clear of the ground as if the attachment weighed nothing. With one pass down the hill with the new blade, Morales had a nice wide path mostly clear of snow, but the pass had left a ridge of snow in front of the outhouses. With a little maneuvering, he soon had a path clear to the door of each outhouse.

After putting the tractor back where it was originally sitting – he left the blade attached – Morales backed the crawler trailer until the elk was suspended over the cleared path. As he got off the machine, the women came out of the cave, Jasmine bringing a small folding table that Ashley and Christine put the coffee and condiments on.

As soon as that was set up, Jasmine moved the cart over to where Morales wanted it.

“We might as well have something hot to drink while you work,” she told her husband as she nodded toward the little table and the coffee setup.

“Damn, Woman. I don’t know what I ever did without you – all of you,” he finished before hugging the three of them.

Ashley stood looking around. “If it weren’t so frigging cold,” she complained, “it would be a beautiful day out.”

“Trust me,” Jasmine said with a sigh, “this is wonderful, and it certainly beats butchering the animal on the ground, then climbing into a tree, over and over again, to hang the meat out of the reach of animals. Not to mention having to struggle to get the loaded case back to the cave – then do it multiple times until we finally managed to get most of the meat secure. Now, we can field dress the animal and bring it back here to butcher.”

Butchering the meat and moving most of it into the ice cave still took time, though, but the electric cart saved Morales multiple trips trudging through the cave with a heavy slab of meat slung over his shoulder.

Afterward, Morales wiped the cart clean and managed to get the rolled-up hide into it, which made moving the heavy hide inside the cave much easier. As he struggled to move the hide off the cart, Damn, this thing is heavy, and it’s going to take forever to process, but Jasmine and I didn’t have to strain our guts out to get the hide inside this time. A short distance past their living area, he put the hide against the wall out of the way. I’ll work on that before bedtime. A moment later, he pressed a button to check the level of the small, almost tiny, battery that was nestled beneath the handlebars on the cart. There were four bars on the indicator and two of them were lit. “I can’t believe a battery this small has done all that work and still has a half charge left.”

Jasmine, who was walking by, smiled at her husband. “Wow, that is amazing.” A thought struck, and a grin washed over her face. “Of course. I suspect that you just used a prototype that will hit the market on Earth soon. We might well have been chosen as product testers. Without a doubt, that battery is alien technology that the General’s people have adapted to become an Earth product. You can bet that he’ll make a few million or even more with this new technology,” she finished with a chuckle.

“My guess is that a few billion would be closer,” Morales said as he popped the battery out before taking it over to plug it into the charger. “Unless there are bugs that we haven’t experienced yet, that thing will sell like crazy.”

A few minutes later, Morales manhandled the big tub of refuse –what was left of the head after the brain was removed, hooves, etc. – and wedged it onto the blade. (The guts were left for the scavengers where they had field dressed the elk.) After driving the tractor a quarter of a mile or so away, he dumped the contents of the tub into a deep ditch before pushing snow over everything with the blade. After wiping the tub clean with handfuls of snow, he returned to the cave.

While the women prepared supper with the tenderloin for the main dish, Morales field-stripped both his and Jasmine’s rifles. After thoroughly cleaning and oiling them, he also oiled Ashley’s and Christine’s because their rifles had been in the weather all day, too.

The women wouldn’t allow him to help with cleanup, so, he gave up, and well away from the others, rolled the hide out on the floor of the cave. Damn, I knew that fucker was big, but it’s very noticeable when I stretch the hide out like this. Oh, well, I’ve put it off long enough; it’s time to start scraping.

After a few minutes, he realized that someone was standing beside him. That someone knelt and smiled, having obviously been waiting. “Both Christine and I are engineers, or at least have engineering degrees, but so far, we’ve been of absolutely no use to you. We have no practical experience, and as city girls, we have been scared out of our wits too darn much of the time. Do you realize what it sounds like at night when we go to the outhouse? It reminds me of the sounds in a jungle movie.”

“Oops. Sorry about that. I guess we’ve become accustomed to the night sounds, and with Lobo and Lila to help watch, we just go about our business – rifle in hand, of course.”

“I suppose we’ll get used to the nights here at some point. Anyway, Christine and I made a pact on the way back from the plains. We are somehow going to be of use to you, and we mean other than in the bedroom or helping with meals. Now, it’s obvious that what you’re doing with the hide is going to be a time-consuming process, so I want to help. How do I do it, and what should I know as I scrape the hide?”

Morales, even though he knew intimately every part of this beautiful woman’s body, took a second to grin up at her before saying, “Scraping, let alone some of the other things necessary to make the hide useful, is a bit messy ... Well, a lot more than a bit, actually. Plus, the smell is powerful during certain parts of the tanning process. Think about dipping your hands into a mixture of the animal’s brains and piss, then working it into the hide. Think you’re capable of doing that?”

“No,” she said with a sigh, “but I’ll do it anyway. Do you have another of those scrapers?”

“On the shelf there,” he said while pointing.

When she returned with the scraper, she had an odd look on her face. “Morales, even I can tell that this is just a bone. You’re not screwing with me, are you? I’m serious about helping you. I really am.”

Morales chuckled and almost reached for her, but his hands were covered with gore from the hide. “Yeah, it’s bone, just as mine is. See,” he said as he held his scraper up. “I tried using a knife, but after I accidentally cut the hide, I did what the article said and chose a piece of bone for a scraper. It does the job, and it takes a determined effort to ruin the hide while using bone. I’ve seen pictures of various ways to scrape hides. With a smaller hide, it’s best to stretch it over a log that has been debarked and smoothed down, while doing the scraping, but this thing,” he said, motioning, “is just too big and heavy for that method to work well. Something like the snow leopard and this elk, I just stretch out on the cave floor.”

When she knelt beside him, he wanted to take her into his arms but refrained and said, “All the meat has to come off the hide, and I do mean all. Then we have to remove the membrane as well, or the hide will never be soft enough.”

It didn’t take Ashley long to catch on, and she was obviously putting an effort into it. Time slipped away as they diligently worked at scraping the hide clean. When they were finally finished with the scraping, he told her, “Okay, I’ll do the next step.”

“You mean by rubbing the brain and urine solution onto the hide?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“But we haven’t, uh ... urinated on the brain in the five-gallon bucket you put it in.”

“I have another bucket farther back in the cave with enough of the mixture to do what we need to do tonight. I’ll work the mixture in. Why don’t you go ahead and wash up?”

When he returned with the noxious solution, she was still waiting. “I can understand what the urine does, but what do the animal’s brains have to do with it?”

“Brains have ... ah crap, what’s the name? Some type of oil. It starts with an ‘L,’ I think...”

“Lecithin,” she said as she snapped her fingers. “I’ve read some about tanning.”

“Yeah, that’s it. The lecithin is supposed to be a natural tanning agent that also lubricates and softens the skin. The concoction smells like – well, really fucking bad. When I have the stuff worked into the hide, I’ll fold and roll the hide so that the hair side stays away from the solution. We all need to pee in the other brain bucket until we get enough urine in the mixture. What we have here will be used up with the first treatment of this big-ass elk’s hide.”

Amazing him, Ashley helped him work the solution into the hide, even though she did turn a bit green the first time she dipped her hands into the solution. She was beyond ready to wash her hands when they finished, but she helped him fold and roll the hide before assisting him in carrying it farther into the cave where he had already put the partially processed snow leopard hide.

“Ready to wash your hands?” he kidded.

“You know it,” she agreed as she stood holding her hands away from her body.

When they walked back into the kitchen area to wash their hands, Jasmine winked at him. Christine passed a glance with Ashley. “I’ll help next time.”

“It isn’t as bad as it looks,” Ashley assured her. “It’s worse,” she teased. “I didn’t throw up,” she bragged, but when Morales looked at her, she added, “but I did gag a few times.”

“No one enjoys the smell, but I haven’t heard anyone griping about those soft hides we sleep under – once they’re processed,” Morales reminded. “From what I’ve read, the oils in the brains that make the hide soft are also good to keep your skin soft. So, maybe rubbing it into the hides will have some benefit you haven’t thought about.”

“I’m not going to be depending on that as long as my hand cream lasts,” Christine said with a chuckle before she realized what she had just said. “I mean other than when I help with the hides. Don’t you have to rub the mixture in more than once?” At Morales’ nod, “I’ll help the next time you do that.”

After Ashley had washed her hands several times, she smelled them and wrinkled her nose. “Over here,” Jasmine called out to her. “Hold your hands out.”

After dumping something black into Ashley’s hands, Jasmine added a bit of water. “Work that into your hands well before you rewash them; it will probably help to calm down the odor.”

“But what is it? It smells like...”

“Yep. Coffee grounds with some ground-up, nice smelling roots that Morales found. The combination seems to help with the smells. We have several cans of the concoction sitting near the walls. It might not be the best deodorizer, but it’s all we have.”

Later, Morales turned the heat and lights down before starting a fire, his women snuggling around him. “When I told Jeff that I wanted to leave the fire pit, he never even blinked.”

“Yeah, they have a giant fireplace. Diana said that they sometimes sit around it and cuddle,” Ashley offered.

They sat snuggled together while staring into the fire for a time. “You know,” he continued as if there had not been any lapse in the conversation, “with a bit of effort, we could make a beautiful fireplace. We have plenty of rocks to build with, and I’m sure Jeff would bring us anything we would need to finish the project.”

Jasmine snuggled tighter to him as she ran her hand downward. “Why don’t we have an early bedtime? I’m certain that we could find something to do.”

“Bath time,” Ashley said as she got up to put water on to warm.

“Come spring, we are going to have running water in here,” Morales grumbled.

The Retreat

Jeff took Tosha into one of the alcoves in the hallway, where he spent a half-hour making out with her, giving her several orgasms although she had remained fully clothed.

“I have to go,” she finally said as she reluctantly pushed back, “and you have wives to see to.”

After one final kiss, Tosha walked away while Jeff remained sitting there, staring out the window.

“You knew that I was watching, didn’t you?” Di said as she walked over to sit facing him.

He didn’t bother answering as he reached over to pull her onto his lap. “You can and do watch me make love to my wives every night. So why are you sitting in the shadows farther down the hall watching me make out with her? Have you changed your mind about my marrying her?”

“No, I haven’t,” she stated firmly. “The question is, have you? How long are you going to keep that girl waiting?”

“Baby,” he sighed out, “just stop and think. How long have I been married to Kei?”

“A few weeks...” she began.

“Exactly.”

“But you married Ada soon after marrying her daughter.”

“And ... there was a reason for that, but let’s let Kei get used to being a newlywed before someone else takes her place.”

“Jeff, I ... suppose I never thought of that,” the Clan Queen finally said. “But ... you should at least make love to Tosha.”

He chuckled. “I just did, although not the way you seem to want me to. What’s with you, Di? Why the insistence that I take more and more wives? The straight of it, Babe.”

“I...”

“Di.”

Diana let out a sigh. “I suppose that I don’t actually know. I just know that I want you to have more wives.”

“Damnit, Woman. Are we back to what happened in Georgia?”

She stared at him for a couple of seconds. “My wonderful Husband. You word it so even the question doesn’t show fault. What happened didn’t just happen, it came about because I let that asshole...”