Chapter 7

"Not yeh, but hell yeh," I told her, nodding my head like crazy to make sure she and Charto got the message.

I wasn't sure what all a hunting trip called for, since the last one I'd seen involved women and enough stuff to camp for a few days. I was pretty sure if it were something Malta didn't think we had time for she'd have let me know. I didn't think we needed any meat since Malta hadn't mentioned that either, but at least if I went hunting with Charto, and maybe others, I'd have something to do besides sitting around and looking handsome, and Malta seemed pleased too when I agreed.

That night I wasn't sure of the significance but we moved over to Sheeta's hut. I guess it was necessary though because Mayta's was over half full of crap now from the trading and such. Whatever the reason, Sheeta's hut was roomier and the furs on the floor seemed thicker by a good bit. Sadly though, another bout of fucking didn't seem in the works and we all went to sleep soon after supper was done and the stuff was cleaned and put away.

The next morning Sheeta woke me with a cup of hot tea and then Mayta came in with a bowl about half full of stew. I didn't know why I was eating inside the hut and none of the others were eating at all but I did my duty and cleaned my plate, uh bowl. After I swallowed the last of the tea Malta and Motee set about dressing me as if I couldn't do it myself - they even strapped my tool belt on me.

To me this meant Charto and I, and possibly others, would be heading out soon. Since I didn't see Malta or any of the others dressing, I assumed none of them would be coming along. I guessed we weren't going to go to the plane and try for more buffalo.

Charto showed up a few minutes after I was ready and scratched on the side of the hut. I went out to meet him and then ducked back inside to get my bow and arrows. Malta smiled wide at me when I picked them up.

Charto was alone but it was nearing dawn so I figured it was just him and me. We didn't have hardly a damn thing we could accomplish by talking, but I figured we could make each other understood well enough with hand signals to get a little hunting done.

Basically he just walked out of camp and we were as good as hunting. Their little village was among some of the tallest trees I'd seen since I got here, but they were spread out a little more than you'd expect for some reason. Charto didn't seem to be taking any special care to keep quiet right at first but that changed when we were about a half-mile or so from camp.

When he changed to quiet as I can mode I was hard pressed to do the same, at least not as well as he was. I realized they had to be extra quite because they had to get pretty close to anything before they could take it with a spear.

Bison wouldn't be as tricky since they couldn't get away as fast, but I was betting there weren't enough of them in the whole tribe to chase down even one deer, and deer was my guess as to what we were after today.

Maybe fifteen minutes later Charto proved me right. He held up his hand for me to stop and then pointed almost straight ahead. Through probably a hundred yards of trees I could make out fifteen or sixteen deer browsing in a small clearing. Charto made me understand I had the first chance.

Knocking an arrow, I moved off ahead of him. I took my time and all the pains I knew about to move silently. I even made a point to keep my legs from rubbing together and letting my jeans make noises from that. Luckily there was just a slight breeze in our faces, though here inside the tree line it wasn't much at all.

I made it up behind the last tree before I'd be exposed in the clearing and stopped with half myself hidden behind it, standing still just a few seconds to make sure I was settled. It was probably forty yards to the nearest deer, a big buck, and he was going to be my first target.

You couldn't call me an expert archer by any means, but I knew I could take deer from this range. I even felt sure I could get at least two. I wasn't a rapid-fire specialist but I was pretty sure I could get off six or seven arrows in a minute or less. I drew the bow and let fly then, knocking another arrow as fast as I could and letting go again. I kept it up until they caught on and all hauled ass. All the ones that still could anyway.

Charto had been right behind me and when I turned to look at him he was clearly stupefied. He was trying to say something but though his mouth moved open and closed a time or two no sound came out. Didn't matter, I wouldn't have been able to understand him if it had.

Finally he gathered his wits and we went out to see how I'd done. Like I thought in the first place, there were seven dead or very near death deer scattered around. With Charto's help we dragged all of them to one spot just inside the wood line.

After that he waved his hands around and babbled quite a bit and finally made me understand he wanted to go back to camp to get some help and that he wanted me to stay and watch over the kills. Hell, it was the least I could do because they were my kills. He took off in a dead run and he wasn't making any effort at all to be quiet this time.

Charto was back in less than ten minutes and he looked like he'd been running a marathon. Malta, Motee, Mayta, and Sheeta were with him along with a woman I hadn't met and two young boys. I was glad as hell Malta had taken time to bring the travois along cause it saved a lot of work.

We managed to pile five of the deer on the travois and Charto cut poles to carry the other two by tying their front and back legs together and carrying them swinging below a pole. Charto and what I assumed was his mate were intending to carry one that way and it looked like the two boys would carry the other one.

Malta brought things to a more sensible outcome since she could do it easily by talking out the kinks and she also knew more about using a travois and keeping watch too. She had Charto's mate and Sheeta carry one pole-mounted deer while Motee and Mayta took care of the other. Charto and his two boys served as lookouts and she walked right beside me carrying both my bow and quiver. With everything settled into a sensible order, away we went.

Yes, there was quite a commotion when we arrived at the camp. Charto seemed determined we should have all the deer except one which would be his for going with me. I didn't like that one bit, especially since we had more than plenty of meat already. Besides, Malta had been so diligent about building a sturdy cache at my old camp, and I figured we'd be heading back there sooner or later. We'd never be able to eat up six deer before we left unless we stayed for the winter and I was pretty sure I wouldn't put up with that. I didn't look forward to carrying that much meat anyway, since I knew perfectly well we could get more deer a lot easier than we could carry all these.

Malta pulled a fast one on the others then, with my help. She turned to me in front of all of them and asked me a question. I knew she knew I didn't understand a word of it, but I played along and told her of course it pours when it rains and the Yankees were out of the pennant picture yet again this year.

She nodded her head sharply and turned around to face the others and announce ... something. Apparently this was a deal closer because there were smiles all around and suddenly other women were coming up to haul deer off and do what they did to dead deer.

With so many working on them the deer cleaning, skinning, and cutting up was done shortly after lunch. One surprise for me was women kept coming to our hut every now and then and bringing deerskins already scraped and mounted on the racks they used to stretch them. They brought six back and I was glad Charto kept his. In fact I would have been happy if whoever skinned a deer had kept the skin. We already had plenty and I knew good and well a lot of them would leave with us when we went.

It wasn't worth trying to communicate my thoughts to Malta though. I could always hope she'd trade the skins later for more pinto beans. I hoped like hell they knew how to cook 'em.

After sunset things didn't go as they had on other nights here. They built a massive fire near the center of camp and everyone ate supper near it. The main dish was venison, of course, but there were plenty of side dishes of different vegetables and even a lot of pinto beans, though it was obvious they didn't realize the beans were twice as good when warmed up the second day. They were plenty good enough their way though and I was sure I could teach Malta the better method, by begging if I had to.

Soon after the meal was over skin bags of some type of drink were being passed around and sampled. Mayta came out of her hut with one and gave me the first taste. I didn't recognize what it was, exactly, but it had the tell tale taste of alcohol. I didn't take much of a drink, but I smiled at her to let her know it was tasty. That was the trouble, it had a different but better taste than any beer I'd ever had and I knew I'd be best served by shunning it like the plague. I'd satisfy myself with watching to see how drunk the others got. It didn't take long to realize it was going to be Very drunk with the capital V.

We gave up on the party not long after the girls realized I didn't have any interest in the hooch that was being passed around. After entering Sheeta's hut were all started shucking clothes and my dick and spirits shot up when I saw them all hitting their hands and knees on the furs and wagging their asses at me. And a good time was had by me - them too I hope.

During breakfast the next morning I could practically feel Malta getting ready to try for a talk with me. I was right as rain too, because as I was sipping my last of the tea she got started. I surprised the shit out of her when I let her know early on I understood what she wanted.

Now she'd seen first hand the benefits of the travois she wanted more of them. It was jake with me because it meant we'd have a lot of stuff to carry back to our camp and the more we could carry per trip the less trips we'd have to make. I wasn't sure about what all we'd be taking but I knew if she wanted more travois it would probably be more than one trip.

She went with me and we cut poles for five more travois. When she saw me cutting two that were noticeably longer she let me know I should cut four like that. I didn't understand why, but it didn't make much difference to me, so I did as she asked. It made us end up with enough for six travois.

I'd cut the longer poles so I could make one that would let me carry even more. I figured she understood this at once, but I wondered who in the hell she thought would be hauling the second one. If it was too much weight for someone though we could just lighten the load and catch the leftovers on the last trip.

She thought we'd cut the cross pieces also before we went back to camp but I didn't want to. Even with two of us, twelve long poles was a load and we were going to need at least seventy cross pieces. They'd be lighter or course but not much when you considered the numbers. I'd been right on the button as it turned out. We had to make two trips just to carry all the cross pieces back.

My first step this time was to skim the bark off all of the handhold sections and make sure I left the wood underneath as smooth as I could get it. Laying out the poles and trimming the cross pieces to length was the next step, but before I started tying them on I managed to make Malta understand I wanted to use rawhide for the chore this time. I still had more than plenty of twine, but it had to last a lifetime and I knew we'd never get anything better to make bowstrings from.

While she and the others were cutting thongs out of rawhide I took some extra time to cut notches in the in the long poles to help hold the cross pieces in place. I figured I might as well make them as good as I could and it wasn't like there was a deadline or anything. At least if there was no one had let me know about it.

When Malta brought me the rawhide strips they were in the biggest wooden bowl I'd seen yet and soaking in water. Damned if she wasn't a smart one. I happily took a break to let them soak a while and I even managed to get a big cup of tea out of Mayta. A hard working man like me needed a little now and then to keep his spirits up.

By the time I'd downed my tea the rawhide seemed wet enough to stretch some. When I tied it around each end of each cross piece I used my Channel Locks on the short end so I wouldn't have to waste enough rawhide for a handhold on that end when I was stretching it tight. I figured I saved nearly a foot for each joint and that was a hell of a lot by the end of the job. It took the rest of the day and all the next one to finish and I was as tired as hell of lashing little sticks to big ones before I was done.

The next morning Malta and the rest, except Mayta, started taking down Grumpy's former hut as soon as we were out of it. Mayta wasn't helping because she was feeding the ding dong daddy from Plano. I noticed they just left the six poles that had been the frame and only salvaged the hides that made the covering. They were nearly half done by the time I finished breakfast, and it was a struggle to get them to let me help after that, but I stamped my little feet and got my way in the end.

The packing didn't end after we'd loaded the hut's hides though. They started in with the stuff that had been stored inside it next. As we worked I thought I'd figured out what they were doing. As the load on the big travois grew they'd have me test the weight every now and then and Malta made me understand I shouldn't let it get too heavy to pull constantly at a good pace. I called an end to it a little before I thought it was absolutely all I could manage and they started on the next one then.

This time they didn't have me testing the load. Motee went to fetch Charto before this one was loaded with even half as much as the one I must have been scheduled to pull. Apparently Malta had made some type of deal for him to help us on the trek. Later I learned his whole family was going to help. He and his wife would pull a travois and the two boys would keep their eyes open so they could shout a warning.

That's how the whole loading deal went. Everyone scheduled to pull a travois named their own poison by testing the load a few times as it was being done. I was pretty sure Malta was encouraging them to err on the side of too light instead of the other way around.

We were damned close to having it all loaded by the time we quit for the day and I was pretty sure we'd be able to get it all on the two reaming travois. After a good supper we slept in Mayta's hut, which was now nearly empty and had plenty of room for sleeping again.

After an early breakfast again the next morning we got right back to loading. Everything left in Mayta's hut fit on one travois easily and I figured that was it. We had a nice leisurely lunch when we were done and I spent the rest of the day mostly sitting on my ass drinking tea while all the girls roamed here and their in camp talking to people. I guessed they were saying goodbyes.