Chapter 30

We mounted again and retraced our trail around the outer wall. I pointed out where we'd come across the lions as we passed it and Growwta was impressed. Nearly a mile farther on he was even more impressed, and so were we. Two mature female cave bears and four cubs were gobbling up berries at a prodigious rate.

That wasn't surprising since it was the biggest patch of black berries I'd ever seen. As best I could tell it had to be at least five acres of the thorny delicacy. I asked Kemela to lead Growwta and the others back toward the small cave while Reela, Keela, Chris, Mary and I dismounted and sent our mounts back with the rest. Chris, Mary, and Keela took one mama bear while Reela and I drew beads on the other one.

Of course the bears had seen us by now but they weren't interested. It was obvious we were staying back and I'm sure they didn't consider us dangerous. We all fired on my signal and both mothers hit the ground and stayed there. It seemed a little cruel when we got around to the youngsters, but we did what we had to.

Afterwards it was more of stop and deal with the fresh kills. I sent Reela back to the main cave and asked her to bring everyone except for a small crew to watch the cave's entrance and guard it against any threat.

We left the bear meat where it was, regrouped, and left Kemela to watch over them until the others arrived while the rest of us continued. I thought we might as well go on and actually hoped we could get rid of a couple more bears, or some lions today.

Our next customer wasn't a lion or bear though. It was an obviously pregnant wolf. We didn't kill her but Reela stayed behind to see if she could track the wolf to her den. I had visions of trying to trap the female before she gave birth.

Reela and Kemela caught back up with us as we were examining the passage into the last valley. The river, which ran through the first passage made its way through this one too.

I decided to just stop here and wait, mostly. There was no sense in potentially stirring up more predators while Reela was still slow trailing the pregnant wolf. In the meantime Chris, Mary, and I headed through the passage intending to get a first peek into the next valley.

The footing in this passage wasn't as good as in the first one. It was plenty wide but more of the bottom was rocky and it wasn't possible to make the whole trip feet dry. The stream meandered completely against the wall on one side and then the next. If we'd been walking through we'd have had to wade three or four times.

It was worth the trip though. The last valley was even larger. I'd noticed from the air of course, but the difference was more impressive on the ground. I estimated it might be even twice the size of the central valley we'd just been in.

There was obviously more game in it too. More aurochs, bison, and even several Mammoths were visible. The grass seemed substantially higher for some reason and it seemed greener. I didn't have any idea why, but it's the way things looked. Apparently this valley was just more fertile.

Chris went back to the others and told them to come on in for a look around. Reela was back with us now and she told me she'd found the wolf's den and knew how to find it again easily.

We could come back with shovels and a big cage tomorrow, for now I wanted to finish the circular trip around the middle valley we'd already started so we all returned to it and started around the other side.

The first thing of interest was another cave probably a quarter of a mile on around. It was fairly large too and it also had running water and there were a couple of handy holes where the water ran out - they were perfectly suitable for indoor shitters too.

We passed more berry patches and I saw three more bee trees on the way around, but we didn't see any more wolves, cats, or bears until we were nearly back out of the forest. We could already see it was thinning before we spotted five mature cave bear mothers, nine cubs, and even a giant male in the biggest berry patch yet.

The sows were keeping the male far from their cubs but they were all chowing down on the berries. It was a hell of a note, but we decided we should take care of all the sows before we took on the male. If we left them until last the sows would probably come after us trying to protect their cubs from potential danger hinted at by all the loud noises.

This time we got our lies completely straight on which bear we were to shoot first and we also planned out who each of us would help if one of our targets held up longer. We sent the unarmed back to make sure they were out of danger, each of us picked a tree we thought we could get up if worse came to worst, and we all found a comfortable and useful rest for more accurate fire.

All the bears survived the first shot and since no one shot the male in that round he was up on his hind legs giving us a hard looking over. We didn't try to maintain simultaneous fire after the first shot so the rifle shots continued rapidly until all the sows were on the ground.

By the time they were all down the male was convinced something was dreadfully wrong, made a hell of a roar, and started in our direction. We all fired at him then and he went down at once.

We did away with the youngsters then. They were all small and we could have captured some of them easily, but what the hell would we do with a pet cave bear after a year or two of its growth.

We had a major meat moving job now, but it turned out not to be so much of a problem. We were not far from our exit back onto the plain and we were even able to go out and signal for the others to head our way. They were done with moving the first kills to the front to be processed already and they came with the horses and plenty of help with only a little waving.

Of course this was more meat than we had any immediate need for and it was going to be one hell of a lot of work. Still, killing them this way was not nearly as dangerous as trying to lure them out of a cave to do it, and the cave bears had to go. They were too damned dangerous to leave roaming around.

Growwta was completely amazed. In the first place they'd have never hunted the monsters on purpose. In the second this was more dead meat than he'd ever seen at one time, not to mention more bearskins for warm winter clothing.