Chapter 21

I cut up the small pines and stacked a row of wood right at the back of the truck's bed, until I had all I thought would ride without falling off. When I took it over where they were working, damned if they weren't done with the hard part, for today anyway. They were going to let the carcasses hang overnight so the meat would cool a little and Louise let me know that I had way more than plenty of wood already.

After unloading the wood I'd cut, and scattering it into six piles in a large circle around the girl's workplace, I started small fires near each woodpile. They were to keep nosey critters away during the night. Louise, Helen, and Nancy were down to dealing with the livers, hearts, kidneys and no telling what other parts they wanted to do whatever with.

They also had the skins hanging so they'd dry a little bit too I guess. My spirits had received a big boost when I noticed that the new long skirted get ups they'd traded for were off them now and they were back in their familiar nearly naked buckskin mini-dresses.

We had supper a couple of hours later and they were all amazed that I didn't want any of the delicacies they'd prepared. I scarfed up the corn, and peas but the heart, liver, and kidney dishes were not for me. I was worried for a second there that they were going to make me eat it, and I attempted a lot of explaining that it wasn't the cooking but the fact that I didn't care for those particular parts. Actually didn't care for didn't even nearly explain my feelings, but I made sure not to get carried away with it. In the end it seemed to come out ok.

I went out and put some water in the U-Haul for the calves shortly before we went to bed. We just didn't have time to do anything more for them tonight and they'd have to tough it out.

Bed was a little of a misstatement tonight though, since we didn't sleep inside. The girls spread out some of the straw and dried grass that had been gathered for the bricks and then put bedding on it for our repose. We took turns staying awake to keep an eye on things and keep the fires going. Helen made sure we had a big pot of coffee to help the one on duty keep their eyes open.

Even though we were a little short on sleep the girls still hit the ground running the next morning. They had the brick mud mixed before I'd even finished my oat meal and I barely got to help pouring the new batch, then they were right back at the meat processing. We ended up with so much meat to smoke that I was worried about the small rafters it would have to hang from.

Since we had let the little ones out of the trailer first thing, we stored the cut up meat in there temporarily while we went to cut some bigger trees to install for hanging the meat. I didn't want to cut into the walls that were already up and sealed so I cut cross beams and then post to stand them on, notching out a V in one end of each post for the cross beam to rest in, and notching short pieces to go between each post at the top and the bottom to keep them from falling over.

All that worked well and the calves spent a busy day munching and grazing around and minding their own business. I did see that all three girls made it a point to go approach the calves occasionally and it looked to me like they were trying to make pets of them. Hell, it wouldn't hurt anything.

Most of my day was spent trying to rearrange things we'd had to remove from the trailer, doing my best to get it out of the way while keeping it close by at the same time. For some reason Louise didn't want to put it back in the trailer. She couldn't make it plain to me what she wanted but I knew it involved the calves somehow.

About an hour before sunset it all became clear. Nancy, Helen, and Louise made me understand that they wanted a piece of sash cord each and by example they let me know it needed to be about ten feet long. I cut it for them, and since it was nylon, I melted the ends into a glob so the cord wouldn't unravel. I saw them trying to tie a loop in one end and showed them how to tie a bowline so it wouldn't pull itself closed.

They pulled a good one on me then by going over to a calf and threading the free end of their short ropes through the bowline and placing it around the calves' necks. It only took them a few minutes to make the calves understand that they were supposed to follow along on the rope. They ended up loading every calf back into the trailer for the night. I thought it was a damned good idea and it would keep them safe and wouldn't let them wander off.

The next day was more work around the home place but it was much less hectic. We did nearly lose one calf though. It wanted to stay near the camper and kept getting into things, finally fucking around and knocking over a stack of my Long Necks, I started to shoot it. I didn't, but I gave it a serious cussing and Nancy, Helen, and Louise tried their best not to laugh at me. They also made it a point to discourage the calves from hanging around too close to the camper.

I had to face it, sooner or later I was going to have to build a pen for the little bastards, and it was nobody's fault but my own. It had been my bright idea to cabbage onto a miniature cattle herd. If I was going to be a buffalo rancher I'd just have to start building fence. I wouldn't have minded so damned bad if I had a pair of posthole diggers. Oh well, it wasn't like I'd have to fence forty acres.

We had been spending about an hour a night on English lessons and the girls were getting pretty good at understanding me when I made sure to keep it simple. That night I made a drawing of a two rail fence and then sketched off a couple of the calves in a small pen. My lovelies were spellbound by my artistic skills but Louise pointed out the error of my ways right away.

"Calves not get out, but wolf bear cat get in," she said, and damned if she wasn't right.

There weren't any real worries during the day, since we were almost always here, and the calves had quickly lost interest in getting near the camper. Our main concern was for something attacking them at night.

I canceled the plans for a fence and we decided to build the calves a sort of log barn that would let us lock everything else out at night. Louise made a real breakthrough when she suggested building it even bigger and with two separate sections, or rooms, and storing all our other crap in one of them.

We got started the next day and it turned out easier than I thought. It was sure as hell more satisfying than trying to dig postholes with a round point shovel.

We weren't after a quick and dirty job this time so we selected the trees much more carefully. It took some traveling but we cut oaks for this project, selecting the straightest and most uniform ones we could find. We were going for about a twelve to fourteen inch diameter and with all the ones we had to choose from they weren't hard to find.

That was good, because we needed fifty-six logs for the walls, including the center divider. It took us nearly two weeks to get them found, felled, and dragged back to the site.

After the logs were ready we spent a day picking and preparing a level spot for our construction and then it was notching, trimming, and placing the logs. When we were done we had a very strong rectangle, sixteen by thirty two feet with a center divider that made each section sixteen by sixteen. All we needed now was a roof.

I still didn't have any good ideas about roofing material and I couldn't waste the few remaining tarps for this; there weren't enough left to cover it anyway. I knew generally how to split cedar shakes but I didn't have the proper tools and I thought it was too much work anyway. It turned out that Louise, Nancy, and Helen knew exactly what to do.

The huts at George's camp, and I guess for most of the Caddos anywhere around here, were covered with grass tied into bundles somehow. Of course the roof had to be steep for them to turn water but it would have to be enough. I collected much smaller trees to frame for the roof and they started cutting, and tying the shingles.