Chapter 5

I woke at sunrise again, fixed a quick breakfast, and then had a decision. Should I take the dolly with me or go scout the situation first? If there were enough horses in the valley now I'd need it, if there weren't it would be a two-way haul for nothing. I damned sure wasn't going to leave it there.

Take it or leave it was going to be my option every day too. I had three small remote control cameras which connected to my computer via wireless.

They were another of Rose's ideas and I thought they were great. She'd hired a professional to come out to the house and set them up and teach me how to repeat the effort. The trouble was they didn't have the range required for this situation.

I decided to save the extra work and scout first. If the horses were there today I wouldn't be saving anything, but if they didn't come until tomorrow I'd be ahead of the dolly pulling game. I still hoped they'd be in place today, but I doubted I'd be that lucky. I wasn't. Since I was a little antsy about them I made a return scouting trip in the late afternoon and didn't see any then either.

Six days later the great horse migration still hadn't happened. I'd already gone back to working around the cave on other things. My computer table was finished now and all the equipment was set up. I'd even mounted the cameras outside and could take a look around my front yard anytime.

It was just too damned bad we hadn't gone for a couple of the repeaters the computer camera guy had mentioned, but I would have never envisioned any need like this one and they were expensive, even on Rosco's dime.

The trouble was I'd never thought of using them for any type of recon until the horse thing popped up. Rose and I thought of them as high-tech peepholes for looking around outside without having to go out and they worked well for that, even though the only attacker I'd spotted with them so far was a raccoon. At least he provided nearly and hour of live entertainment.

The seventh time was the charm here and now, and was it ever. Not only were there about thirty horses in the valley, a small pride of cave lions had snuck in behind them and had them caged before I had a chance to. I was glad I'd brought an M1 with me.

There was one giant male guarding the back door. He was guarding if you could call stretching out for a nap in the big middle of the escape route guarding. Four females were separating out for more strategic positions and there were two of this year's cubs playing near the male.

It was easy to tell the male had caught my scent, but he didn't seem bothered by it. He took a hard look at me standing two hundred yards away, and then forgot me. He wasn't worried about an attack from my direction. Of course he had to go first.

After finding a medium sized to small oak with a branch in a good place I took a rest on it and put the cross hairs on Big Poppa. The first shot was right on the money, in his ear, and he slumped the rest of the way to the ground.

His female hunting party turned to look and seemed to fret a little, but after ten minutes or so they resumed their slow stalking. I did for the cubs next. They helped me out because the one I didn't shoot first froze in place giving me an easy second shot.

The females were obviously upset now. Two of them especially, and I thought they must be the mothers. Both those abandoned the hunt and came trotting back toward the male and their cubs. I took the first one while she was sniffing her cub. She required two shots. I took the other when she came to sniff around on the newly dead female.

That was it for the easy part. The other females had located me by now, and even though I'm sure they had no idea how I was doing it they were surely going to pin the trouble on me and ask questions after they'd made me stop moving. They came toward me at a trot. It did wonders for my concentration and marksmanship, but they also required two rounds each.

The lions had fucked up my plans completely. I'd intended to leave without being noticed as soon as I saw a good number of horses in the valley. They'd forced my hand since I was sure if they attacked any of the horses they would all leave and stay gone for a long time.

Of course my slaughter of the lions wasn't recognized as a providential rescue by the horses. All they could really tell was there were lions in the valley with them and something else that made thunder type noises.

Neither the lions nor I moved again. I stayed in place watching the horses for nearly an hour. Finally I decided they were not going to bolt from the valley and they seemed content to graze as long as the lions weren't prowling around.

Things looked to be going my way now so I headed back to camp to fetch the dolly. While in my cave I picked out a good skinning knife and a sharpening steel to add to my load and then took off to return to the valley. They all were still in their places when I returned and the chainsaw and I got right to work on the fence.

The construction took about three hours. I built a three rail fence but with no gate out. That could come later. The top rail was about five feet off the ground and I took the time to tie a long streamer of bright orange surveyor's tape every couple of feet along the top rail to make sure the horses noticed.

No one should ever go into any appreciable woods without surveyor's tape. It is cheaper than dirt, weighs practically nothing, and you can mark a trail that will stay marked for a year or two.

It would spoil a lot of adventures though. If everyone carried surveyor's tape into the woods, practically no one would get lost, and what would we do without those massive man hunts that are called every so often in the national forest and other out of the way places?

Now the horses were caught, sorta, the real work could begin. I skinned every single lion, including the little ones and I removed every tooth and claw. I wasn't so starved for trophies, but I figured I could surely use them for trading after I'd made contact with other humans.

In fact, I wasn't sure Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons were technically human. I thought they were close enough for comfort though.

The great cave lion massacre and its aftermath polished off the remains of the day. It was slightly after sunset by the time I had them all toothless, clawless, and nude. I still needed to build some racks to stretch the skins on and then do the actual attachment and stretching, but I wasn't about to do it at night.

After building a big fire and laying out a normal one person sleeping bag I'd nearly had to fight Rose to buy, I lay down and told myself I should wake at the slightest noise. I kept telling myself until I drifted off, hoping my subconscious would take care of the details.

Did it ever. The saving grace was the scent of the lions, or I think it's what did the trick. Several wolves woke me snooping around outside the fence I'd built, but even though they were curious, and no doubt hungry, none of them got up the nerve to come closer. Of course, since I added fuel to the fire when I woke that helped too.

My big surprise the next morning was I felt great when sunrise woke me. During the night I'd been afraid waking and sleeping and waking over and over would make me feel like I had a major hangover in the morning, but it wasn't the case.

Sleeping out in the open and away from my new home had me back to chili and beans for breakfast. It didn't matter. I enjoyed it and felt raring to go when it was finished.

Just to test the waters, so to speak, I removed hatchet, canteen, and such from my belts so it wouldn't flop around while I walked or ran. My Glocks were still on board, but otherwise it was me and the lariat out for a stroll among the potential beasts of burden. I even made a few warm up throws before I started.

An hour of slow stalking horses showed me it wasn't going to be this easy. As I'd half way expected, they let me get tantalizingly close before moving away. They even moved out of range at the slowest speed they were sure would keep them from being caught, or at least it seemed that way. I thought of it as behavior designed to really piss me off.

I had to figure out a better way so I took a break to build frames for stretching the lion skins I'd taken yesterday.

Building the stretching frames went faster than I'd expected, but attaching the skins to the frames took longer. I was finished with all of it and had the skins stretched and drying by just a bit after noon though, so I warmed up more food.

After lunch I didn't go back to walking around with a rope and throwing it at horses. I used the scattered standing trees in the valley's big open spaces as temporary fence post, cutting and putting up rails in several places then tying on the surveyor tape as a visual cue.

I'd already noticed the horses never even came close to the other fence that closed the valley. I wasn't sure the dead lions weren't keeping them away from that end, but I hoped the fluttering and waving tape was doing some of it too.

Horses do not like to come around things that make movements they don't expect or understand. I don't know why, but it is usually true. I've seen horses panic and unseat their rider just from a paper sack being blown around by the wind from where someone threw it out. Some horses are more frightened by such things than others, but almost all of them will watch closely when it happens. It's one of their quirks.