Chapter 67

I stopped to talk with Fred on my way out. “Fred, I slept soundly all night with my shield up and was not interrupted. Tonight I will sleep with it down and try to bring it up if they try to take me. We shall see what happens then. I have a thought though; they have not tried two consecutive times I have slept. They have to have someone monitoring me, because the last two times I have been taken during my naps during the day; one time with Angel, and then again yesterday in here.

“There were two days between trips, but 6 days between the first with Karen and the second when I was with Angel. I assume that they were accessing my mind to glean information from it during those 6 days. Once they had the right information, they attempted an unsuccessful trip. Those memories were not as strong as the one with Karen; so they had to get reinforcements and try again. They were successful that time. Now they should wait 2 days and try again. Now if I do not nap during the day for the next 2 days, then I think they will try at night. I also think they need the 2 days rest in between trips. Let’s face it, a trip like that with that kind of realism, has to put a drain on someone’s mental abilities. They would have to rest in between trips, right?”

“Yes Bob, I would think they would have to rest. That much strain from somewhere fairly far away would be great. I think you are right about that. We will just have to wait and see what we can find out. So far we have found about 25 species that would have sufficient numbers of telepaths to accomplish this from far away. We are accumulating as much information as we can about these peoples to see if we can figure out who is doing this and why.”

“Well I have to get out there Fred; I think we are going hunting again today.”

I left Fred and walked into the main cave. Breakfast was being served, eggs, sausage and potato hash browns. For sausage, we ground up some pork, auroch and some of the bear meat pieces that had a lot of fat and a small amount of meat. Pieces that was just not practical to fry or grill or even put in a stew. We cut a lot of the fat off and then ground it up in my meat grinder. This was a relic of years gone by. I’m sure you have seen the old grinders that attached to the counter with a screw clamp and had the big long arm with a wooden handle. You put the meat in the top of this cast iron grinder and turned the handle and out came ground meat. I still had three dies for it so we could grind fine, medium, and coarse. We went with medium for the sausage and it turned out great. Because of the amount of work and everything, we ground up the meat once we got the animal butchered, added spices and then bagged the meat and froze it. When we wanted sausage, we would thaw out the bags and then make patties and fry it up. Believe me that was some very good sausage.

I got our hunters and protectors together and headed out for the plateau. Today, Merthar, Valkorla, Teague, Harlou, and I were the hunters. Olnafot, Joulnar, Tovar, and Torget were the protectors for us. I had Dignar and Grunto as home defense today. We came out on the plateau and I called to the lioness, ‘Lisa this is Bob, can you see us?’

“No Bob I cannot see you; have you just come up on the plains?”

‘Yes we are about where we met the other day, when you brought me the small meal.’

“Unless you hunt beyond the bison, we will not meet today. Good hunting.”

I had been looking in my binoculars for some game while I conversed with Lisa. About another mile and a half from us was a herd of bison. They were wandering kind of towards us but also going south too. I had Harlou drive us in that direction. I wanted to get fairly close to the tail end of the herd so I could make them go towards the edge of the plateau. That way we could come back this afternoon, for another three or maybe four animals. I figured we could just gut them and hose them out and then hang them in the cooler until we could get to them to finish butchering.

When we came up on about the tail end of the herd, I had Harlou stop and get in the bed of the pickup. The protectors were in the wagon. I said only one bison per hunter as these were pretty big. Most looked to be about 9 to 10 feet long and about 5 foot tall at the shoulders. They would probably weigh in at around 1500 to 1800 pounds each. At that size we could only fit about four or maybe five in at once. I scanned the area behind the herd looking for moving grass, which meant predators. I saw none so we had a go for the shoot.

We all took a shot and killed one each. I had the protectors’ transfer to the truck bed and roof, while we loaded the two biggest ones into the wagon. We loaded them with the legs going to the right on the bottom one, and the second one legs left. Then we loaded the smallest one on top and I had to dig out my tie downs and ratchet them tight. Then we loaded the last two into the truck bed the same way we had the first two in the wagon. I went ahead and tied down these two too, just to be safe.

We headed back and saw no predators on the way home. It kind of surprised me as we were about three miles out on the plateau from our ramp to our home. I backed into the garage and I used the garage hoist to get them unloaded from the wagon. Then I pulled back out and unhitched the wagon and backed in the garage again and got the other two out of the bed. I pulled out again. With the truck and wagon outside that left enough room to move the animals around so the butchers had a place to work. In the meantime I rinsed out the wagon and the truck bed. We rested a while and helped where we could. I told the butchers we would have four more in the afternoon, if the herd hadn’t strayed too far. I explained about gutting and cleaning the carcass out and storing them it in the cooler until they could get to it. They liked that idea and strung up the two biggest and gutted them and cleaned them out. We cut the heads and tails off and quartered them after they were skinned. We had a cart to carry it back to the cooler and three of us lifted each piece to hang it on a hook. We went back for the second half as we could put 2 quarters on the cart at a time. They were almost done with the second one. We finished that up and they had the third hanging and draining when it was decided it was lunch time. We still had plenty of bread left from the celebration so we had sandwiches for lunch.

When we left for the plateau again, I had Joulnar and Olnafot trade with Dignar and Grunto for hunters and home defense, as both Joulnar and Olnafot had killed game before. I had Merthar drive this time and we headed for the tail end of the bison herd. We stopped about 500 yards from the herd and got ready again. I was up looking around with the glasses before we did any shooting. I didn’t want a pride of lions or a saber tooth (Smilodon) to be stalking the herd and take it out on us when we kill a couple bisons. I am glad I looked as I saw two distinct patches of grass wavering, but never the same two patches at once. It had to be either lions or smilodons. I had everybody wait a minute. Finally I caught a glimpse of one of the cats. It was a smilodon. I told everyone what we had and they were all a little afraid. I told them I was too and I wanted the cats for myself as they were about 700 to 800 yards off and their rifles would only wound the cats from that distance. I got the Barrett out of the truck and climbed back up on top. I sighted in on the furthest cat first. Once I could get a good look at where it was and where the head would be, I waited for it to stop moving so the other cat could move. I shouted in my mind, ‘Hey Cat!’ just to see if they could hear me. My cat’s head popped up and I squeezed the trigger. Boom; one dead cat, I caught it right in the left eye. I quickly reloaded and swung back to the nearest cat. I again concentrated and yelled to it. It popped its head up too, but looked toward the dead cat. I caught this one in the left ear. Scratch two dead smilodon cats.

We waited for about 5 minutes and then drove over to the first one. Sure enough dead, so we loaded her into the wagon. I also noticed no elongated teats, so no cubs around. We drove over to the other one and loaded him too. He was a big sucker, probably 10 feet long nose to butt and probably weighed close to 700 lbs. The female was only about 8’ long and about 150 pounds lighter. Now we could go after our bisons. With the load we already had we could only take three so I chose three small ones and Dignar, Grunto and Torget took them down. You have to realize that small for a bison was about 8’ long and about 5’ tall and would weigh probably 1500 to 1800 lbs. Each had to use two shots to kill them; but hey, they were not sniper trained to make one shot count. We loaded the smallest of the three on top of the two cats and hoisted the other two in the bed and we were off again back home.

Everybody was thrilled with our kills. I think even our hunters were happy. Even though I was the one killing the cats, they saw that I had to use the big gun instead of one like theirs. The butchers made quick work of skinning the three bison and then quartering them. I had just hung the cats, and they gutted them and cut off the heads and paws. They then skinned them and cut in half. We moved the cats into the cooler and cut them in half there so we had quarters and hung them on hooks. The hooks were only about 6 and half feet off the floor so we had to quarter them to keep them off the floor. By this time supper was on the table. This time it was my turn to feed Angel, Grenna, and Bertron. Barb had Grenna and Marlit had Bertron. I think it was more of a mutual thing than one feeding the other.