Chapter 4

We headed north toward the mountains with Jean in the lead and me in the drag. Each one of us was pulling a travois that was overloaded, I knew, but each item seemed too important to leave behind. We didn't know what time of the year it was, but the weather seemed to be getting hotter, and when somebody from central Florida says that the weather is hot, then you know damned well that it is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We all had a deep tan, so I was not worried about us getting a sunburn, but I was concerned that we all, especially Jean, drank enough water. The problem there was that we did not dare drink water that we had not boiled first.

The travois were heavy, so we were lucky to make two to three miles per hour. Jean was a bit impatient, so I had to keep calling to her to slow down; whenever I did that, I also reminded her to drink some of her water. Luckily, we had water bottles that we could use as canteens; these were two-liter bottles with a finger loop molded into the neck, so we were able to carry them with a strap slung over our shoulders.

We managed to get through the first day without being troubled by carnivores, though we did see a number of herbivores. We ate some dried meat for lunch and I used the crossbow to shoot some sort of duck-billed dinosaur that we had for supper. We thought that we had done pretty well for our first day—we had covered around 15 miles. At that rate, we should come to the mountains by the end of a week.

We were less than fully rested the next morning. We had spent the night on tree limbs about 40 feet off the ground. This was a scrawny tree that had been ignored by the herbivores; I don't know why, but I was happy for the gift. We took turns standing watch, since we had to leave our travois on the ground and vulnerable to scavengers, though there was nothing that they would want except for some dried meat.

That day we met our first carnivore. It was only about five feet tall and had a lush coat of feathers. It really was not interested in us, since it had a dead animal it was working on eating when we came into view. It roared at us, and we were not too proud to detour around it while it ate. I don't know what it was, but it looked a little like a miniature T. Rex. It had a bright coat of red feathers on its head and neck, and light brown, almost tan, on the rest of its body. Beautiful, but deadly!

I didn't argue with Jean as she picked up the pace a little bit to get us well away from the red head. It didn't have much for spurs or claws, but those teeth were awesome. I kept glancing back to be sure that it was not following us.

That little spurt of speed gave us what I estimated to be 18 miles that day, and we spent the night in another tree. All three of us were already tired of trees and hoped to find something better for the third night on the road. No luck, but we did do better on the fourth night.

We were now close enough to the mountains to see them all of the time through the trees. We began to come to rock outcroppings, and we found a useful place among some boulders to spend our fourth night. Our joints and muscles had a great rest by spending the night sleeping flat on the ground. We felt quite cozy in a deep declivity among the rocks, and we were able to pull our travois in with us.

The fifth day on the march put us among the mountains, so now it was a matter of searching for a suitable cave. We were encouraged because we quickly found some limestone cliffs, and this was the most likely place for us to find a cave. When we came across a stream, on a hunch, I suggested that we travel upstream to see what we could find.

The stream ended in a waterfall coming out of a moderate-sized opening in the cliff. The opening was about five or six feet off the ground, so I gritted my teeth at the cold water and climbed into the opening. We still had functioning flashlights, the LED type that were charged by shaking them. I was enthralled by what I saw as I entered the cave and got the light to function.

The stream followed a narrow channel through a cavern about 20 feet wide by 60 feet long and about 12 to 20 feet high. The highest part of the ceiling was at the rear of the chamber that I could see. I stuck my head out the door and told the women to come on in, "We may have found our home."

The women were as impressed as I was with the cave, especially since there seemed to be a wind coming through the opening we had climbed through. Water and fresh air were great selling points. The floor was a bit rough in places, but we could cope with that. We all had flashlights, and we soon were inspecting the cavern to find any disadvantages to it.

There were a couple of openings in the back of the cavern, one of which was the watercourse. I thought that we could investigate that later. Right now, I wanted to look through the other opening which seemed to be the way the wind was blowing. We went through the opening to find an even larger chamber with a nearly perfectly flat floor.

Angie directed her flashlight up at the ceiling, and we were impressed by the fact that we could not see it. The ceiling was simply too high for the strength of our flashlights. The point was moot in any case, since it had to be an effective chimney from the way the wind was moving, so there would be no difficulty with having a fire in here. The fact that it was so dark in the chamber indicated that the top was closed to the weather, so we would not be troubled by rain.

None of us could find anything immediately wrong with the cave, so we immediately staked our claim and prepared to move in. Jean and I whipped up a ladder for the front door so that we would not get so wet while Angie unpacked the travois so that we could move the stuff into the cave. I stood on the ladder and took stuff passed to me by Angie and handed it to Jean inside the cave.

Once that was done, I went looking for something to use for mattresses, since I, for one, had no intention of laying my blankets directly on the rock floor. I found some tall grass and made about 20 trips before I had enough for a large bed. In the meantime, Angie and Jean had collected enough wood for a decent fire. It was comfortably cool in the cave, but not cold enough for a fire; nevertheless, they wanted a cooked supper and we did need the fire for light. It got tiring, having to shake those flashlights continually to keep them operating at full brightness.

Jean and I went hunting and quickly found a small dinosaur for supper. It was small, but it must have been an adult because the meat was a little on the tough side. What the hell—it was our first meal in our new home!

That night, we christened our new home with as much sex as we could manage; we really wanted to celebrate!

The next morning, my first thought was, "Now I know why I loved that foam mattress!" I vowed right then that I was going back for the mattresses, and maybe some other stuff. The women agreed with me about the mattresses, so we made plans for another run back to the boat. We should be able to reach the boat in three days if we did not take any travois with us, but make new ones when we got to the boat.

We spent a couple of more days at the cave before starting back to the boat. This might be the last trip we made for a while, so I wanted to try to get some form of electric lights for the cave. There was a small auxiliary generator at the boat that I wondered if I could convert to water power by stripping away the diesel engine part of the system. If so, it could power a lot of useful things.

We made the trip to the boat in the three days we had expected and set to work pulling out what we wanted to take on this trip. That generator was a definite possibility, so I spent some time taking it apart while the women built three travois. They gathered up the pots and pans they wanted and pulled the mattresses on deck. It was a wrestling match of sorts getting everything arranged on the travois, but we were finally ready to leave. The trip back to the cave was similar to the first trip, and we were not bothered by predators, so this trip took only five days. Man, were we glad to get "home!"