Chapter 88: The New Camp

Dignar looked around at his new home. It looked a lot like the one he just left, but smaller. All of their people were standing around in the main cave area. There were no hide doors up, to hide the outside scenery of the area. This was way different from where they just left. For one, the canyon was in front of them and the meadow was to the left. Dignar walked out to the lip of the cave entrance and looked down. There was a drop of about 50 feet, but off to the right there was a wide trail, big enough for a truck and wagon to go up. It was not steep at that point but the trail curved after about 50’ out from the cliff face and turned to the right and sloped gently to the meadow floor. Across the valley he could see a similar trail leading to the plateau by the canyon. There appeared to be game up there, as there was a dark smear across most of the plateau. They would have to investigate later.

Grojan had been busy having people move their belongings to their new homes. Mundoner, Torget, and Steprun were going towards the headmen rooms with their belongings. Therssa, Orangan, and Grenna were headed to their new home too, followed by Newlander, Majorne, Fortuna, and Twobor. They were surprised when they went into the main home, like Bob’s. There were two cave entrances, one marked Grojan and one marked Dignar. By now everyone could recognize their own name when it was printed out. Therssa looked at Newlander and asked, “Why are there two caves? We only expected one cave, just more bedrooms.”

Newlander remarked, “We won’t know until we go inside and see, will we?”

Each of the double wives and children entered their own suite and saw a small living room, a small dining room, (big enough for their family only), a medium kitchen, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms. There was one bathroom, for the master bedroom, with its large bed, and one for the rest of the house. This is one surprise both families enjoyed.

Grojan meantime had gone to the practice cave and saw a smaller range, but sufficient for their use; and lockers with all their previous gear inside; TAC radios, rifles, and ammo. He then went into the garage, and saw a truck, red instead of white like Bob’s, a wagon and two ATV’s. There was an overhead hoist just like Bob’s garage. He wondered over to the pantry sections of the cave which housed the coolers and freezer; and the vegetable bins.

Dignar came back inside and then helped his wives to take the remaining items into their new home and was surprised by the double suites. Dignar went back out to the main cave area to continue his tour of the new surroundings and met Grojan coming out of the pantry area. “It is just like it was back there, only smaller, because we have less people, and we asked for fewer things.” Said Grojan to Dignar

Dignar said, “You should see the new rooms for us, we have our own cave for our families. You should go see, I am going to help our people move their things to their new rooms.”

They left each other, Dignar going over to help people move their belongings into their new rooms. Grojan however, left to explore his new home. He did wonder why there was no office for him, so he went next door to see if Dignar had gotten one, instead of him. Nope, none there either. He would have to ask Dignar about it later, now he had to help the others of their tribe move their belongings into their new homes. Besides it would be suppertime soon, and he, like Bob, didn’t like to skip meals.

The next few days were very exciting, exploring their surroundings. They found a river that Dignar promptly named “New River” and Grojan got to name the canyon, Dead Horse Canyon as they found two half eaten horses. They looked around the animals closely and Dignar said, “Maybe we should name this Long Tooth Canyon as these horses were killed by a long tooth. They both agreed that Dead Horse Canyon sounded better and not so scary.

By week’s end they had explored the canyon, and found the cave of the long tooth, although he was out hunting. On the plateau, they found plenty of game: deer, auroch, bison and cave lions too. They didn’t shoot anything that first week, but they were going to go after the long tooth very soon. They did not like them living nearby.

The very next week saw a large hunting party setting out in the truck and wagon. They sat in wait for the smilodon to return from hunting. About 2:30 in the afternoon there came two of the magnificent creatures sauntering down from the mouth of the canyon. Thank goodness that Dignar had parked far enough away from the entrance they were not immediately seen by the slow moving cats. The cats had eaten their fill and were somewhat lethargic from the large meal of bison that they had just eaten.

All of the hunters; Grojan, Steprun, Dignar, Torget, and Mundoner; divided up the two cats and each had his target. Then almost at once they fired, going for head shots or shoulders. Before a minute was up, both cats were dead on the ground. The hunters waited for another five minutes before they even ventured close to the cats. They surveyed their kills from inside the truck with the windows up and stayed there for another 10 minutes before going out to slit the throats of the beasts and dragging them into the truck bed and wagon with the winches. They went home triumphant with their kills.

What they did not know was that there was a third cat; a smaller female cub that was lagging behind the other two. She was half the size of the female that was killed, and had just recently been weaned. She was eating her first big meal after the two adults had had their fill, and was therefore too late to be included in the massacre of her parents. She crawled up and into the cave to rest and sleep off her gorging on the left over bison.

Back at camp, it took two days to finish butchering and skinning the two adult cats. The meat was taken to the freezer where some of the women noticed the wrapped meat already there. They went back out to the garage to the meat processing area and found lots of bags and the vacuum bag machine. Through trial and error they finally understood how to package the meat. But it took two days of working around the clock to get everything done. The women told Dignar and Grojan both, “If you go hunting again, you hunt in the morning and not in the afternoon. It’s too much work that late in the day.”