Chapter 22

Our weather conditions had me thinking of new phrases to describe how cold it was. Colder than a witch's titty in a brass brassiere didn't seem to convey enough meaning for the situation. Colder than a well digger's ass wasn't in the running either, since I'd actually helped dig a well once and it wasn't really that cold. Colder than a Texas boy in a privy during his first real blizzard after being sent back to ice age Europe by a fucking thunderstorm fit my opinion of being scientifically correct, but it just didn't have much of a ring to it. Oh well, I'd never even hoped to be a poet anyway. Then again, I'd never been this cold while trying to choke the piss out of my best friend either.

Thankfully I didn't have any idea what things were like outside this valley, but if the nearby mountains were shielding us from many of the conditions - everyone outside this valley was catching hell with a capital H. I finally gave up on an insightful new phrase for how I felt about the weather and fell back on my old standard. Goddamn it was cold.

I made myself a hero when I got back inside by telling the women to use the campstool potty we had and I'd clean it out. It was going to be a necessity for the children anyway because I didn't want them out in this weather. I hoped things weren't this way all winter long, but hoping was all I could do about it. I did promise myself I was building an enclosed walkway to the privy if we got enough break in the weather to get it done and I also figured it would be a good idea to make something like that for getting to the horse cave.

That thought got me started worrying about the wild horses. I hadn't seen a one when I'd gone outside for my trip. They were most likely in the small forest near the back of this valley. It probably provided quite a bit of shelter, from the wind at least.

Before I could get myself wound up tight with worries about things I should have done but hadn't in preparation for seriously cold weather the women reminded me it was time for breakfast. The cooks must have had their own ideas about cold weather feeding. There was much more meat for our ingestion this morning and not only did they encourage the children to eat more, they gave me a dose of that too. I could live with instructions like these.

The heavy snowfall lasted for three days, but after it was over I was surprised. The wind funneling down through the two valleys had seemed to keep the snow mostly blown out of the one we were in. It still covered the ground, but not thickly and it hadn't hidden the standing grass. The temperature must have been seriously low too, because even snow that hit the ground got swept toward the end of the valley without much of it sticking in place. Apparently it was so cold the snow didn't cling together after it fell.

When the snow backed off a little and the wind settled down the still wild horses were back with us, nosing around and paying a lot closer attention to eating. I noticed they spent a lot of time cropping off the oat's seed heads now. Our horses were happy to get back outside even if they were hobbled and they had the same thing on their mind the wild ones did. Even though we'd been generous with the stored feed and hay we had, they still seemed to be in a mood to concentrate on the business of eating.

We had to pay more attention to our predator watch now too. Another solo cave lion came snooping about and I had to tend to him early. Lola didn't like pulling this one near the cave either, but she didn't fuss much about it and the women were determined to get the skin. Hell, they even brought back the four wolves I killed too. It was the first time we'd ever skinned out wolves but hell, they were doing it and I didn't mind at all.

On the second morning of our break a saber tooth took down one of the horses shortly after sun-up. I happened to have a Barrett close to hand and killed it before the horse finished dying. We couldn't do anything for the horse to save it, except to save it for the table. Mecha and Keela had Lola in her dragging harness and were off after the horse and the lion as soon as they made me understand they wanted me to come and look out over them while they were at it.

Of course I was Johnny on the spot and I even discovered something I hadn't noticed before. The downtime women had learned to make thick-soled leather boots while I wasn't paying attention. Mecha and I could understand each other very well by now, and when I asked her about it she was happy to tell me.

They'd copied Mary and Chris' boots as well as they could. They didn't disassemble them of course, but Mary and Chris had helped them figure out the parts they couldn't see. The soles and heels were made from laminated rawhide using melted hooves as glue. They'd even put the rawhide into the small broiling oven to drive out as much moisture as possible and they'd applied the glue while it was hot and used plenty of it too.

They didn't have the tiny eyelets to use on the holes for the laces, but they'd made do with rawhide and more glue to hold it in place along with stitching it there. While I wasn't watching, the downtime women had become experts with the needles I'd brought almost as an afterthought. I was impressed. The boots didn't look like the store bought models we had, but it seemed they worked just as well and I could tell by looking they fit better from each pair being custom made to fit exactly. Hell, once I started looking each of the kids were sporting a pair too, except Sika.

The women swarmed on the two carcasses when we dragged them up near the backside of the windbreak wall. They even carefully remove the cat's teeth and claws. Missy was allowed to do all the gnawing she wanted on the cat and she seemed to like parts of it, especially the heart and the liver. She didn't get much of the horse though. They let her have the leftovers around where the cat had ripped its throat out, but they kept the rest and I saw they made sure to collect the hooves - for more glue probably. I wondered why they took the trouble to open both skulls and remove the brains. I was pretty sure we didn't eat them, but when I asked Mecha told me they used them in tanning hides.

The horse was the first fresh meat we'd had in a while. We had plenty that was smoked and dried but the horse was fresh. Mary and Chris suggested I build a meat cache so we could keep the horse cool by piling a section at the bottom of the new cache full of snow, or even ice if we could collect some. At least I knew the cure for finding ice.

"We don't have to look for ice. We can just put water outside in containers and make ice overnight. It probably won't even take that long."

"What containers do you suggest? We don't have any ice trays and I don't want to use our pots and pans because they'll end up stretched out of shape," Chris said.

"I know we still have some trash bags left. We can use those long enough for me to build something suitable out of wood," I said, suggesting myself into more construction of the chop it out of a log type.