Chapter 24

When we came to the canyon we had blocked off with the remains from our wall building job we took a break and pulled enough stuff out of the way so the horses and other occupants could move in and out safely. I'm sure Jack would have been disappointed if he'd realized what it meant to him, but he didn't.

As soon as there was an open path we mounted up and headed on toward the far end. We made it well before noon and ate a light lunch before we got started. This job wasn't going to be nearly the project our other fence/wall had been, but it wasn't merely an afternoon diversion either.

To give Daro and Rayta something to do I found them good spots for still hunting and set them our to get us some fresh meat for supper. A twenty-two isn't a good weapon for taking deer normally, but they were both great shots and if they wounded one which got away we had Mama and the cubs to help hunt it down.

The rest of us went to work and it started with me. I had trees to fell and then the girls had limbing to take care of. The wall didn't need to be so sturdy this time since the trees we left in place for post were very near the edge of a drop off and no real pressure could be brought to bear against them since there was no room for anything seeking entrance to work with.

The gate was another story completely. It needed to be just as sturdy as the one back down the path. We finished the wall in a day and a half, but it took nearly as much time to get the gate in place and working well.

Breakfast the last day before we left finished off the last of the deer Rayta had bagged. We filled our bellies, shut the gate behind us as we went, and climbed out onto the plateau.

Since it was twenty miles or so from where we'd been up on the other end I shouldn't have been surprised it was so different, but I was. The grass here wasn't the same as the other spot we'd been. We were as good as in a field of oats, albeit they were wild oats.

There were hundreds of horses here and most of them were cropping off seed heads even though they weren't mature yet. The aurochs, which were too many to count, were taking the whole thing nearly, but they weren't losing much of the grain either. There were a few bison going over the delicacy too, but not nearly as many as I'd have expected.

Of course there were wolves prowling around in view, but they weren't close and weren't likely to come close until the cave lions and saber-tooths who were much closer got something started and maybe lamed something edible the wolves could deal with more easily afterwards.

Since we were mounted on animals the lions and cats would likely consider their next meal we all drew our rifles at once, even Rayta and Daro. Their small rifles probably wouldn't do much good, but then again they most likely wouldn't hurt.

The whole scene was mostly an annoyance as I saw it. I wasn't very worried about being dragged off my ride an eaten, but I couldn't afford to take a chance. As best I could tell there were two different prides getting ready to start chasing lunch and there were four of smilodon working separately for God's sake.

After a little discussion we settled on the list of targets. We cut down on the nearest bunch of cave lions first. I took the male and the girls settled the hash of the eight females. We left the cubs for later and switched to the other pride next. This poor male only had six mates to make his life easier and they were all dead meat soon too.

Catla, Nanita, and I had the M1s and we did the saber tooths in next. We let Rayta and Daro start on the cub clean up and they did excellent jobs of it. I told them to try for shots in the eyes. Of course we had to move closer, but the horses didn't really scare the cubs and the kids got all fourteen of them.

After the fireworks were over I was all for leaving the predators where they'd gone down, but my mates wouldn't have it. When I made the suggestion Catla told me to stop joking around and keep my eyes open while they got to work. She even handed her binoculars to Rayta and Nanita passed the pair she and Shayta shared to Daro. We were all on overwatch duty while the work was going on.

Mama and the cubs were wanting to get after the wild wolves by now, but Nanita changed their minds by providing the first heart, liver, and kidneys to get them started on a feast they'd never be able to finish.

By now I didn't really see the attraction to trophy gathering. Every one of them had a necklace and bracelets of cave lion teeth by now except for Chiqa, but I was obviously outvoted and it was by a large margin. In fact Chiqa was the only one who didn't vote against me, and in reality she abstained and just giggled.

At least I wasn't dumb enough to piss and moan about useless killing of our noble animal brothers or any shit like that. Saber-tooths and cave lions were vicious predators and in they'd have killed us quickly if they'd been able to. It was even the same with the wild wolves.

The main problem, besides what I considered wasted time, was a lack of handy saplings. There weren't enough to build stretching racks for all the skins. At least we had enough to build a travois to haul the skins away on.

Five hours later we headed out again. I hoped desperately we wouldn't end up having to slaughter any more cats, but I figured we had at least a week of traveling left and didn't see how we could be that lucky.

There was one gruesome detail they'd saved for right at the last. They used their hatchets to crack open every skull and then dug out all the brains. Catla obviously didn't want to run out of pissbrain potion for tanning and she'd brought along our largest pot to keep the brains in while we traveled. Apparently all the women had expected us to need to thin the cat population up on the plateau.

We made camp about an hour before sunset, but the women were not happy. There wasn't enough firewood available to build a fire big enough to boil water. Finally I had a chance to show off my wealth of knowledge again. Buffalo chips were not hard to find up here and everyone but me was completely floored to find out they would burn. Of course no one admired the smell, especially at first.

I guess it was mostly to humor me, but I woke to the smell of coffee brewing over a buffalo shit fire the next morning. I could have done without the smell of burning excrement, but I wasn't going to split hairs. My coffee was still good and the breakfast they fixed was even better even though it surprised me. We'd been eating mostly pemmican on the trip.

My mates, Rayta, and Daro seemed unusually happy this morning and I couldn't shake the feeling there was something I didn't know about. An hour after we started for the day I learned what it was. We came to a path leading down, and it was much longer than the one we'd used coming up. That was because it went down to what I thought of as the river level even though there was no river here. An hour later we were doing the equivalent of hello the camp at Goondoe's place.

It didn't seem possible to me at first, but later I realized we must have taken a more direct route. Goondoe was even more surprised than I was, and when Keeta let him know we were interested in trading he was nearly lost. Apparently trading wasn't something he was used to doing with what he thought of as the others.

He got over his confusion quickly when Keeta told him we wanted to trade fresh meat for food his camp's women had gathered. He was so excited he nearly wet himself, but confused again when he realized we hadn't brought the meat with us. Catla joined Keeta with the explaining then and they convinced Goondoe to let us go and kill something as a demo.

We saddled a mount for him and though I was sure he wasn't excited about another horse ride he did climb up and head off with us. Back up on the plateau we rode directly toward a bunch of bison and I shot a yearling bull right off the bat. Goondoe seemed so impressed I asked Catla to shoot another one for luck.