Chapter 19

(September of Year Five to Mid-winter of Year Five)

"Lazy days of summer" my ass. We worked like mules. The windmill had to be broken down, the harvest had to come in, the mill had to be scavenged for parts, the food in the granary had to be packed and stored, the greenhouse had to be broken down, and there were at least ten other things to be done just to get the material stuff handled. SeeksWisdom hadn't done anything to move the preparations forward, so Julie had lost well over a month of critical time to get things ready. On top of that, there was now all the displacement of the families and the upheaval of the mini-'war' to deal with. It was a nightmare. I was up before dawn every morning, and got to sleep close to midnight or even later each night. Julie and I were run ragged.

It didn't matter, none of it. In the end, come mid-September we were leaving. That's all there was to it. I'd decided that they could all just damned well fend for themselves if that's what it took. I'd made the mistake of trying to do things the 'right' way for everyone, trying to save people as much hardship as possible, trying to make life as easy as I could on them. If I had simply moved my family and the important people, it all would have worked out anyway. So that was it then. From then on, I'd decided that my family and my personal interests came first. A couple of people had acted bravely on behalf of me and mine, Twinkle and a couple of the scouts, and SacredBear. The rest had all acted otherwise. So, let them eat cake, we were moving. Julie was overjoyed at my new found and hard won pragmatism. Just how overjoyed?

I was laying in bed one night, staring at the ceiling. I couldn't sleep. So much crap kept running through my head about the shitty decisions I'd made, about the fool I was and am. The little voice in my head was on loud that night. Julie rolled over and looked at me with tired eyes.

"Why're you awake?"

I must have sobbed or something, cause the next thing I knew she was holding me tight and whispering in my ear that everything was okay.

She snuggled up real close to me and put her lips to my ear. "You know I love you, right?" I nodded.

"You know how many men I've know or dated or slept with, Josh?"

I looked at her. Suddenly I had no idea where this conversation was headed.

"No."

"I'd guess maybe a hundred ... maybe more like a hundred and fifty." Her lips were soft against my ear. "I've known all kinds of men. Hard men, soft men. Hard workers, lazy bums. I've been with momma's boys and thugs. I've snorted coke with criminals and given blow jobs to politicians. I've seen all kinds of men, Josh."

She paused and stroked my hair. "The only people I've ever really loved have been women, Josh. All the men I've known have been abusive or irresponsible or braggarts or cowards ... all of em." She kissed my neck and her hand stole down my chest to my groin. "All of them ... you're the only one I've ever loved. Really loved."

Her hand toyed with my pubic hair as I slowly got aroused. "What made me fall in love with you is that you try so hard to be fair. You work like a dog, sure ... and I'd like it a lot of you'd stop that sometime soon ... but it's your fairness and decency."

She began stroking my cock, and as I got hard she rolled on top of me and slid her wet hot pussy onto me.

"You're my Boy-Scout. My knight. My Lancelot."

From the other side of the curtain I heard Winter say. "Mommy Daddy make sex." Both of the girls giggled. Then I heard one of the other women shush them and snuggle them up. Julie laughed a little in my ear.

"You know how many times I've been pawed or groped or assaulted in some way Josh?" She screwed me slowly, and I savored each moment, but the dissonance of the actions with her words distracted me more than a little.

"I've been raped before. Seeks Wisdom wasn't even a good rapist. He had a hard time getting it up, so I offered to blow him instead. It worked. You feel dirty?" Her hand in my hair pulled hard and she hissed a little. "YOU feel dirty? You're my Boy-Scout."

I could feel warm tears slide from her cheek to mine. "None of the other men I've ever been with would tear themselves up like you're doing. That's why I love you. Now stop being an asshole and make the sex with mommy."

We got real busy.

Just as she was ready to cum, she said in a voice full of heat. "Just remember from now ON ... the only safe place is with you."

There was so much damage to the old camp, but I just didn't care. I had a couple of work crews fill in the trenches we'd made, and we made sure that the water pump and old mill wheel still worked. Other than that, all we did was a little repair on some of the houses. It left the people who would be staying behind still in a great situation. They had running water, basic sanitation, and access to simple motive power. Whether or not they ever used it or benefitted from it ... well that would be up to them. I thought it might be interesting to check them out in a few years. The lambs were big and fat and happy little bastards when we rounded them up, and the dogs were delighted to see me and to get moving. Everything useful came with us, either walking or in the wagons. The smaller lambs were caged with their mothers on the back of a couple of wagons, and the older ones walked. The chickens were crated up in large crates that allowed for some movement, and fed daily.

We got started on September 3^rd in the early morning. Julie and I rode on the sprung seat of one of the second generation wagons, with our horses tailing along behind. In front of us ranged close to thirty of the scouts led by QuietlySneaky, and ranging out behind us in a long and motley crew were most of six hundred people. A good four hundred people decided to stay at the old camp, and I was fine with that. At the end of the whole wagon train was another group of scouts, led by FartsALot. Their main job was to keep predators off and collect the useful stuff that people left behind. This time, their job was NOT to gather people up and move them along. They'd make it or they wouldn't. Kids were an exception of course, I'm not a complete bastard.

I'd spent a long time on the road at this point, and the next several days were a lot of fun for me. I had Julie and the girls close to me finally, and I was headed to our new home. The weather was crisp in the evenings, but the leaves hadn't turned yet and there was no snow. It was delightful. Julie and I made up for a lot of lost time in bed on those first few nights. We arrived at the first and second outposts in good shape, and added a few people to the train as we did so. It took four days to get to outpost one and another six days to make it to outpost two. So it was a total of twenty days to get to outpost three where we had out big reunion with Luscious and many others. Runners between the outposts had kept them informed of the doings at the old camp, and they were all happy to describe what they thought Julie and I should have done to the shaman. Christ, I guess hunting them down and skinning them wasn't mean enough. Cavemen are ruthless bastards.

We set off for outpost four on September 24^th, and we did so in good shape. The scouts were almost all trail hardened by this point, and I didn't make a big deal about herding the stragglers. Since I wasn't closing up the outposts, the stragglers could still wander along just fine.

October 3^rd — We were now at outpost four, and well over two hundred miles south of the old camp, and we'd descended at least a thousand feet in altitude. The difference in the October weather was remarkable. I guessed that by now up at the old camp the leaves were turning and there might even have been some October rains come in. Here on the trail in contrast, the weather remained warm and fine. We made great progress. Sure, there were some breakdowns with a couple of the wagons, and some of the aurochs had to be walked off and turned into food, but compared to the original trip down in late winter, this was a breeze.

October 8^th - we made it to outpost five. Travel had been slower that week, as a couple of fall showers came through and turned some of the trail to mud. Spirits on the trip remained high. We spent a day on repairs and loafing. I broke out some beer and a fair number of us in the 'main group' had a nice little party. Some of the men are quite good on drums.

October 10^th — I shot a man trying to get to one of the lambs. The dogs initially alerted me, and when I figured out what he was trying to do ... in spite of all the warnings, in spite of all the talking I'd done about the lambs ... I just shot him. If I'd been less tired, if I'd been less pissed off in general at cave men, if I'd been another person, I might have just yelled at him some more. Instead, I shot him and let the scouts take care of the body. I didn't know if he had a family, but I knew that there was enough food. So, screw it. Julie looked at me with new eyes and I didn't quite know what to make of it.

October 15^th — We left outpost six. What came next was the long defile down toward the river valley. We followed the ruts from the prior trip. When we got to the long hills that we had to rope our way down, it started to rain and the trail turned to mud. The process took a lot longer than we had anticipated. It took four full days of work in the cold fall rains to get the wagons down safely. The weather was taking on a distinct coldness in the evenings, and the days are a lot shorter now than on the last trip down. Everything was taking longer and we could hear more predators off in the distance. Since the work on the wagons took so long, I let a lot of the scouts go hunting. The results were pretty great. Fifteen wolves were killed along with one pride of smilodons and fifteen deer and elk. I made a note to myself to remember that these are silent ninja caveman assassins I have at my bidding.

October 21^st — This was an amazing day. In the early afternoon we began to hear the trumpeting of mastodons. As time passed, we cleared a rise in the trail and saw at least a hundred of the mammoths making their way just like us down to the river trail. We made camp so as not to get in their way and just watched. It was pretty awesome to see. There's a grace and majesty to this place, to this whole world that I rarely have time to notice. Yet when I take the time to really look at my new world I begin to see it with wonder. My world was once like this place.

October 22^nd — We didn't stop in outpost seven. We were running late on the schedule, and we'd already take a couple of trail breaks. We changed out the water in the wagons and made polite conversation with the scouts in the outpost. Several joined us, and a couple families left the wagon train to stay at the outpost. That was pretty typical.

I haven't spent much time writing about it, but there was a fair bit of travel between the outposts. People knew each other and they could go back and forth with scouts or horses or wagons, depending on what we were doing. Families joined and left the caravan at each outpost, swelling the numbers at each post. I was fine with this. These were people who were trained in basic hygiene and advanced survival tricks, and they'd shown the initiative to travel with us on the trail. Overall that meant that they were the brighter and hardier of the cave bastards. It was good by me that these were the people that would be making up the people in our outposts.

I never went into detail with any of the scouts or the people in the outposts about what they could expect from us following the move. What it came down to was 'not much'. At best, someone might visit every couple of years or so, but the outposts were well placed, well defended, and were certainly better places to live than some stinky cave.

October 25^th — We stopped overnight in outpost eight. The folks there were glad to see us, and we traded some goods. We were now almost four hundred miles south of the main camp, and while weather back there might already have turned bad, we were fine to travel. I was happy. With each passing mile my heart lifted a little.

October 28^th — Outpost nine. Our pace was definitely slower than during the long spring days of the first trip, but we still managed to get in well over thirteen hours of travel a day. We did this by waking the camp before dawn and getting moving at near first light. There was no breakfast stop, and the kids who needed to eat got to sit on the back of a wagon and munch. The adults ate while walking. Lunch was the same kind of deal, a less is more kind of arrangement. When it became twilight, we simply circled the wagons, started the fires, and went about the business of making dinner. Talk and stories around the camp fire then led to sleep not long after.

I was rapidly reaching the conclusion that I had dramatically underestimated the resourcefulness of the stinky cave bastards. During the days when the pace was slow, they would forage all on their own for roots, grubs, tubers, grasses, and small game. It was second nature to them, and came easily. I'd over planned for the food. Although really, this was not a problem. Too much food is always better than not enough. It did bother me sometimes to think that if I had let them all rely on foraging, we could have moved the entire first camp during the spring.

November 1^st — We arrived at outpost ten. I made a big speech here to the assembled cave morons about how winter was going to be easier than they were used to, and about how we could continue to travel. I also gave many of them the option to settle at camp ten if they wanted to. Several families took us up on the offer, but it wasn't a large number. At that point, we were overall down only about a hundred and fifty people from the crowd that had started out with us. That meant we'd end up with close to eight hundred people at the new camp, all told.

November 15^th — We had travelled as quickly as possible during this stretch of trail. A concern that I had in the back of my mind this whole time was getting through the pass. As we arrived at the base of the switchbacks a couple of scouts and I took to the trail to inspect the pass. I left Julie with instructions to get the people fed and watered, to take a day of down time to see to the wagons, and then to get moving again. Meanwhile Quietly and I headed off on horses while the scouts ran along with us. On our way down the first time, we'd lost five days of travel to clearing the trails up to the pass. This time we were lightly loaded and moving quickly. We got to the pass on November 17^th. There was over a foot of snow accumulation in the pass, and we could see that there were places that the trails would need clearing again, but it looked more than safe enough to get the wagons through.

I'd been very concerned that we were going to have to winter over at the base of the mountains or run the risk of being a Donner party style catastrophe, but none of those signs were present. I sent word down with a couple of scouts to send the wagons up. The rest of us worked on clearing the trail for them. Sure enough it did snow on us in the pass, but we are a big party and not afraid of work. We kept moving.