Chapter 28

It was halfway to noon before the pow-wow was over and the women were settled down. I'd soldiered on through it without one sip of coffee, but that lack was about to come to an end.

As things broke up the women seemed to still be thinking over what I'd said and Mary and Chris were in among 'em trying to explain some of it. I fished out the coffee pot myself and didn't feel a bit ashamed about brewing a pot of the scarce beverage. There had been a lot of it in the PBY's supplies.

Cheetal and Sholou were hanging around the edges of the group of women, but I'd already noticed they hardly let me out of their sight. They were both scandalized when I started acting like I was cooking and they rushed to me at once to take over the job.

I wouldn't have minded letting them do it, but of course they didn't have the foggiest idea how. Unfortunately, I couldn't explain this to them since they understood only their own language and I couldn't speak it. We came to an understanding after a bit and I made a pot slowly, with plenty of hand motions as I went. Soon enough I was sipping a big mug of boiled coffee and they were jabbering questions that I couldn't answer.

At first I thought possibly they wanted to try the coffee. I started to get them both a cup, but decided it would be senseless since I was almost sure they wouldn't like it. I signaled them closer to me and encouraged each of them to take a sip after doing my best to remind them it was hot.

I was surprised by how surprised they seemed at my offer. The result was more like what I expected. It was obvious neither one of them had any desire for more than the one taste, but something about the process made them almost giddy and I wondered what the hell I'd done. My curiosity was reinforced when I noticed Christy and Cinqua were watching too and Cinqua was staring open mouthed.

Apparently Sahnay had seen it too and she headed toward me. I hoped she was coming to explain. As it turned out she was not coming to explain, she was coming to find out about the cause for the ceremony. After she told me it was a great honor for the leader to let a mere woman have a drink from his cup I understood a little. I thought about telling her what an honor I thought it was for the women to offer me a shot of pussy every night. I decided not to when I saw I needed to offer Christy and Cinqua a sip also...

Christy wasn't as excited by the mini-ceremony as Cinqua, but she played along. I think Sahnay was proud of it in spite of herself. I was pretty sure it wasn't such a big deal among Cro-Magnon women, but I was going to find out and make sure I didn't slight any of my mates. Meanwhile Cheetal and Sholou still seemed to be basking in the thrill of it all and they hung even closer to me.

The rest of the women finally decided they had a workable strategy I guess, because their impromptu meeting seemed to break up. Chris and Mary came over and I made sure they got a sip of my coffee just in case. They looked at me like I was nuts, but at least they played along.

While we were at it each of the women and children got a sip whether they wanted one or not. I hoped it wouldn't dilute the thrill Sholou, Cheetal, Cinqua, and Sahnay got out of the new ceremony and apparently it didn't. After the sipping from my cup was over I refilled it and tried to get still and have a cup to myself. I managed the trick because all the women started working on projects of their own and the kids got interested in playing with the pups.

After lunch Reela, Keela, Mecha, Kemela, and I went to work with the horses. We hobbled them outside so they could catch up on their eating with fresh grass. We didn't turn all of them loose though since we each saddled up and spent some time looking for any predators that might have taken up residence in our valley.

After a good inspection of the outer valley we moved toward what I now thought of as the middle valley. The over flight had let me know there was an even bigger one off the opposite end of it. As far as I was concerned there were still too many wild things in it for us to do much exploring.

"Won't they always be here until we deal with them?" Mecha asked.

"I'm sure they will, but I'm hoping for more help before we get started."

"Who are you hoping will help? No one has guns but us? It isn't the kind of hunting most men would be interested in doing. Bears aren't so likely to bother people unless people bother them, but they can become very angry when troubled. I'm sure you remember from last year," Mecha said.

"I'm not worried about killing them. I'm worried about what comes next. There will be a lot of skinning, cleaning, cutting up, and preserving to do once the killing starts. We will need help to take care of it.

"Growwta and his band should be here in another day or two and I've been thinking of inviting Jockat to bring his bunch to join us too. I'd like to see how much room there is in the other caves first though."

"Then we should go and look. The bears are probably not inside them now. They are out finding food. We will have to be very careful of the lions though. We should be able to deal with them since all of us can shoot well now," she said.

What the hell, we headed for the cave with the largest opening. There were at least five caves in this valley and there could be more since at least half of it was fairly densely wooded and we couldn't really see half of the rock walls. The largest opening did seem like the one to start with though.

Thankfully, as Mecha had said, no one was home. I knew someone would be soon though and I intended for it to be us. This cave was much larger than the one we were already using and after a close inspection we found other features that were desirable.

In my opinion the best features were two streams of water flowing down from above. There was one near the entrance and an even larger one near the rear. Both flowed out via holes in the floor. The one near the rear formed a rather large pool in a depression in the floor and it almost shouted bathtub to me after a good look at it. It overflowed via a low spot and the escaping water flowed about ten feet across to a rather large hole. No doubt it could be arranged into an indoor privy while we were at it.

Unlike our current residence, there was no handy passage leading to the next cave over. I didn't see that as a drawback. Even though it was handy to be able to check on and feed the horses without going outside, the loss of the ability of the smell of horseshit to move directly into our living area would not be missed.

When we explored the cave near the first one it was clear it was too good to be used for horses. It wasn't quite as large as the first one we checked, but it nearly was and it had remarkably similar provisions for water. Sahnay said it was easily large enough to accommodate three times more people than would be coming with Growwta.

It was getting on in the afternoon after we left the second cave, but our luck had been so good we decided to ride across the valley, nearly a mile, and check out at least one of the two caves we could see across the way. There was one more entrance visible from where we were, but it was just inside the line of trees near the rear section of the valley and we didn't intend to go there with sunset coming in an hour or so.

We found a surprise across the valley. The two entrances both led to the same large cave. It went deep under the mountains and was easily ten times as large as any we'd found so far. I thought it was large enough to keep every horse, ass, donkey, or onager we could corral. Hell there was even room for the aurochs to spend the winter in there though I had no intention of trying to capture and domesticate them. They'd been getting along on their own during the winters for centuries and I doubted the ones we'd want to eat would thin them significantly.

As we headed home I was convinced we had more than plenty of cave space for every human I knew of in this time and place. It would be better if we could find one more livable cave in the central valley so we could all live near each other, but it wasn't mandatory to my way of thinking.