Chapter 30

"Have they just been fending for themselves while you were away?" Marilyn asked, when we reached the barn/storage building.

"Yes, kinda, but in this timeline we left last night and got back this morning, so only the night has passed here," I said.

"Man, that is just too weird for me. Can we skip that part?" Randy asked.

"It's fine with me, and it doesn't really mean anything to us anyway. We're here now and you two got here this morning, with a bunch of gifts in fact, and that's that, end of story," I said, and they laughed.

Just then I heard the birdcall that George's tribe usually used to let us know one of them was approaching. Louise gave me a questioning look and I nodded my head for her to return the call.

"That was one of the girl's former tribe mates. Whoever it is will be here in a minute or so," I told Randy and Marilyn, and hoped they didn't drop their jaws again.

It was Sky and he came in smiling at first and then looking around at everything that had come back with us. Louise started explaining before he could get any questions out, but I wondered what she was telling him. Whatever it was, it seemed to satisfy him, even though I knew he had to be wondering what all that stuff was.

"We show Sky horses, cows, pigs. Tell him not for hunting," Louise said, and we headed back to the newly constructed pens.

Louise kept up a running dialog with Sky for the whole trip and Sky just kept listening and looking. I could tell it was confusing to him, since I was sure they had no concept of holding or raising animals. They knew about planting some crops but hadn't made the leap to animal husbandry yet.

Then it hit me that I had never explained these little details to the girls. Like a big dumbass I'd just assumed they'd figure it out for themselves. Well, they had for a fact, because Louise must be explaining it to Sky right now.

The ranching lesson petered out and Sky had some questions for Louise about the pigs. He'd never seen anything like them before and I assume he wondered what they tasted like. Helen volunteered to let him find out, and headed for the camper. Of course Randy, Marilyn, nor I new what was going on.

"Helen make Sky ham sandwich, show what pig taste," Nancy said, explaining.

"Damned if some food doesn't sound good to me too," I said.

"Invite tribe for Bar-B-Que tomorrow," Louise said, and I wanted to but worried about how much work we had to do still, but when I shared my worries with her she gave me such a look.

"Need help, Bill. Invite tribe Bar-B-Que," she said again, and then gave me that I have spoken look.

With Sky munching on his ham sandwich, which also introduced him to mayo and whole wheat bread, we all piled into the new four-door Silverado and headed toward George's camp. We didn't really need to stop and signal since Sky was with us and welcome at his own camp. I usually counted on the noise of the truck to alert them anyway.

George had been alerted ok and he was out to meet us. With the help of Louise, I introduced him to Randy and Marilyn and while we were saying things to each other that we couldn't understand, I saw Louise giving George's woman a sort of signal. Before you know it, Randy, Marilyn, Louise, and I were following George and his mate into his hut.

After we were all sitting on our asses my part was easy. I invited George and the whole tribe down to our place, in English, but it didn't really have to follow any set protocol. Since he couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand him, I just asked him to bring the bunch down for a feed and let Louise take care of the niceties in translation. She must have done a bang up job.

We left after about half an hour, and everything was set up. They would be coming down a little after noon tomorrow and staying until nearly dark. Louise, Helen, and Nancy were going to use one of the new slow cookers and Marilyn promised to show them how it worked exactly if they had any questions.

Alas, tonight was not a night we'd be spending in our campers. Randy and Marilyn would be sleeping outside, near our main base of operations while the girls and I would make a spot on the other side of our new fencing. There was no one I could blame for this, because it was my idea. I wanted to make sure we were close enough to do some good for the first few nights, in case something came around uninvited.

Mainly it was so we'd be outside with Calvin and Dooder. After all, they barely knew us, except Marilyn, and they sure as hell didn't know the area yet. We were going to be relying on them heavily for the next week or so to keep an eye on things, after dark especially. I thought we needed to stay out with them until they had a grip on where they lived now.

Of course the girls thought nothing of sleeping outside, especially since I'd made sure to get us a big airbed mattress for just such occasions. The mattress, along with the zip together sleeping bags was just the thing for a relaxing evening out in the wild. Ok, I know it wasn't actually that damned wild.

Dooder seemed like he already knew what he was supposed to be doing when we got our sleeping set up in place and then built a fire. He sniffed around and peed on things and then seemed almost like he was patrolling for about half an hour. When the first blush was off the fire and it settled down to little more than a nightlight, he scratched out a place for himself not too far from it and lay down for a snooze.

I thought that was a great idea and I copied him right away, even if I didn't pee on as many trees as he did. Before long we were all zipped up in our bag. I'm not sure about the girls, but I was off in dreamland pretty quickly.

It's damned nice to have three wives, especially when they know more about living in primitive times than you do. I didn't have to get up a time to put wood on the fire. I would have of course but they always beat me to it. There was only one snag in our setup and they didn't bring it up until the next morning.

Nancy let me know that we would not be using the airbed any more. She said they'd put up with the sleeping bags a few more times, but were pretty sure they didn't like them. When I asked them what the problem with the airbed was, Louise was fairly blunt.

"Move too much. One get up, mend fire, wake everybody. We make bed tonight," she said, and it didn't leave me a lot of wiggle room, so I agreed of course.

Getting your own way is not one of the advantages of having three wives. Might as well face it, you are going to be outnumbered most of the time. All in all though, I'd settle for the situation and be happy about it. Hell, I wasn't the kind of guy who thought he always knew best anyway.

Breakfast was an excellent example of this. Left to my own devices, I'd have gone back to the camper to cook. This must not have made sense to the girls though. They had the fire perked up, eggs and ham frying in a skillet, and water boiling in the coffee pot before I finished dragging my clothes back on. Damned if it didn't taste better this way too.

After we'd eaten I found out that getting a fire going in one of the cookers was the next thing on the agenda. Louise had already scoped out a hickory deadfall that she wanted me to cut up for this and with Randy's help we had more firewood than she could possibly use today in less than an hour. This was one job that I thoroughly approved of. Hickory smoked beef and ham was right up there at the top of my list.

Marilyn did give them a few tips, such as wrapping the meat in aluminum foil completely after slathering on the Bar-B-Que sauce. Mostly the girls had their own way to do it lined out already though. They had company coming later today and they went busily about making sure there'd be plenty for everyone to eat.

Randy and I decided to saddle up a couple of the horses we'd hobbled for a look around, and Marilyn got busy making a good sized pen so that she could let Margie, Geraldine, and the pups out of the horse trailer. She thought the puppies were old enough now to be let out of the box and she thought the mothers were probably ready for some time away from their charges.