Chapter 17

Since it was only mid-day I had time for a leisurely afternoon. The new black stallion, Blackey, and the new buskin model were both well started so I gave Red a break, saddled the buckskin, Buck, and headed back to check out our wall and other stock.

The wall had damned sure done its duty even if it hadn't come through without a little damage. Most of the electric fence-wire was pulled down now and a lot of it was wrapped around a very large cave bear who seemed he'd been really mad about his fix for a while.

By now he was just tired and tangled up. I'll admit I'd put a lot of the small but damned tough wire up on the wall and the bear now had most of it wrapped up around himself. He couldn't even crawl away and the fence charger was dutifully giving him a jolt about once a second. All he could manage by now was a small grunt with every shock.

Fuck the thieving bastard - he'd keep a few more minutes. I headed back home to see what the women wanted to do about him. To me it looked like he had been caught for at least a day or two and while I'm sure he wasn't really comfortable in his current situation he still seemed healthy enough even if he was probably dehydrated.

In one way he'd done us a favor. I now knew our wall would stand up to rough treatment, but also realized electric fence wasn't the best way to make sure we were secure. It had done the job this time, sorta, but not in a way we could count on. I'd have to come up with something else.

There was also the problem of more than a ton of damned good eating laying there getting electrical tenderization. As long as I could deal with killing it at my leisure I wanted to figure out the best way. Ideally I wanted to let it die from bleeding to death, or mostly so. The more blood I could get pumped out of it the better the meat would be.

The girls were surprised to see me back so soon and when I gave them the word they saddled up to come along with me. They were even more surprised to see the fix the big bastard had himself in than I'd been. After a short talk they thought cutting its throat with a machete would be the best thing. It was practically hogtied anyway.

The fight started when I picked up the blade to go over and do it. None of the women would hear of it. They claimed it was too dangerous for me to try. To their way of thinking I was too valuable to risk and each of them wanted to take over and do him in.

I wasn't going to risk any of them either, so I pulled my Glock and gave it a round in the head. It turned out to be one of those Golden BB type things. You know what I mean, one of those why you lucky bastard shots. It stopped all the bear's voluntary movement, but didn't kill it right away. The girls relented after getting no response from poking it with sticks a time or two and went ahead and allowed me to cut its throat so it would bleed out faster.

It took half an hour with wire cutters to untangle the fucker enough to load its big fat ass onto a travois and damned near strained my nuts out rolling it over onto the thing. At least there was a stout stub of a limb close by on one of the trees we'd used for posts and we could raise the ends of the travois with a come-along to get it attached to a horse for dragging.

There'd been no discussion about gutting it here to lighten the load. Nightfall was near and we had plenty of work to do before we'd get to a stopping place if we started now. We were able to drag it right on into our cave and with the help of electric light we could deal with it at our own pace without worrying about any nosey sneak thieves.

Of course this mealtime bonanza halted my plans for a leisurely evening washing and fucking my women. There'd be no point in taking a bath just so we could get bloody from asshole to appetite again processing a ton of recently live meat. The bastard was so big and heavy I had to help move it around where the women could work on it.

Yogi had some nice features though. I could barely believe how long his claws were. The biggest, off his front paws, were nearly four inches long and seemed nearly an inch wide. His teeth were nothing to sneeze at either and I noticed the women paid particular attention to removing them, rinsing them off, and putting them away pretty quickly.

Their semi-secretive behavior tickled a memory up and let me think of a little job I needed to do. By now we had more cave lion teeth and claws than the law allowed and Catla was the only one with a necklace and bracelets. The next time it rained I intended to get started fixing that omission. Not only for public display either.

You'd be surprised how sexy a cave woman looked in a hide halter-top and thong with tooth and claw necklace and bracelets rattling. I had to sit down to recover my equilibrium when I fantasized of them all dancing in such outfits. It was too damned bad I didn't think I could show them the proper way to do the old strip-tease bump and grind. Of course I wasn't sure even my rebuilt heart could take it if they learned.

Once they had the hide off and the main carcass cut into manageable sizes they shooed me out of their way. Catla fixed some supper for everyone and the others would come up one at a time and eat. Of course I sat around and provided what conversation I could as they took their breaks.

What surprised me most was how proud they all seemed of me, as if I'd killed the fucking monster in hand to paw combat. I finally figured out the method didn't really signify to them. I'd ridden off to do what they considered generally as the manly job of hunting and then come back to get them so they could watch me make the kill.

They were damned near giddy with the quantity of proverbial bacon I'd brought home. Nanita let me know they were all practically flabbergasted I'd killed it with one shot. I knew it was just a fabulous stroke of luck, but to them it was another sign of my unimaginable prowess as a hunter.

At least I finally got to bathe them all around nine, but it was a perfunctory process to only do what most baths did, as in get them clean. Oh well, I could do a more ceremonial job tomorrow and introduce Keeta, Leita, and Layta to the delights of shaving their legs and underarms and tidying up their beavers.

At bedtime they were acting like it was time for a fuck-a-thon, but I demurred. I settled for giving them all a good licking and nibbling and put off the main event until they could regain their strength. I knew damned well they were worn out from the unexpected work. Hell, I was tired myself and they'd done nearly everything.

We all slept late the next morning since the sun was actually up by the time they started to get out of bed, and when they tried I wouldn't let them. I pulled the first two who tried to rise back into the furs and when they claimed they needed to visit the potty I let them but made them promise to come right back to bed. I didn't let any of them get up until I was sure it was at least nine o'clock.

After breakfast they were chagrined again since I gave them bean preparation lessons. Of course they knew how to cook beans, but I introduced them to a better way of washing and soaking the dried beans first. They were surprised when I wouldn't let them start cooking and made them leave the beans alone to just soak.

Mama and the cubs were so full from bear delicacies they didn't really want to do much at all, and I'll admit I thought a day of rest was in order. The women decided they had plenty of work left finishing up with the bear and I thought it was high time I assembled my main contribution to the idea things could be brought along in a disassembled state for space saving and put back together again once I was here.

I was a Texan after all and from the first I'd known some way to introduce Bar-B-Que to prehistoric times was necessary. Of course I knew exactly which welder within a hundred miles could make the very best hickory powered meat smoker from a used butane tank. Since I'd walked in waving cash money it hadn't bothered him a bit to get started building me one from hideously expensive schedule ninety stainless steel thirty-inch pipe instead of a used tank.

When he was done it was a work of art and he had the remaining fifty-four feet of the sixty-foot joint of pipe I'd had to buy left over for his use later. It ended up six feet of pipe sitting horizontally on a hellaciously stout four leg stainless stand, with a stainless firebox below and nice bolt on expanded metal racks to either side for holding or draining.

The hard part was building it so it could be disassembled to go into my container. He worked his little fabricating heart out on it though.

My job, since I chose to do it today, was unpacking the things Rose had packed inside it to save on my allowed space for the move and then putting it back together. It was no mean feat, since there was no practical way for me to bring a welding machine along.