Chapter 3

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."R. Frost

My world had changed. There was a plain area radiating out in front of the cave. About 1000 yards out there were trees. They weren't like any trees I'd seen in Texas. They were huge! The forest was thick, too. It extended as far as I could see from my vantage point at the mouth of the cave. At the base of the forest were tall, narrow trees. Their growth stunted by the giants they were under. The plain itself was mostly clear and had waist high grass and a few scrub trees. That was not my only surprise.

I had had a lot of quirky projects assigned in High School. I guess my teachers didn't have anything better to do, so we got projects. One I really liked working on was a report on the La Brea tar pits in California. I worked for 3 weeks on the report. As I remember I got a B-. It was something about the diorama not being very good. Dang, what did Mr. Seaver expect? I mean, I did get started on it after Star Trek was over. I remember it was the episode about the Horta. That was the animal that dug through solid rock. Anyway, what I remember most is about all the Smilodon fatalis (in regular terms, the saber-tooth tiger) bones found in the pits. And if I remember correctly, this was in the Pleistocene era, and they went extinct about 10,000 years ago. They also are the State Fossil of California.

So imagine my surprise when I peered out the entrance of the cave and standing about 400 yards from the entrance, munching on a freshly killed something, was that same fossil I reported on for Mr. Seaver. What the holy hell was going on. I know what I was looking at. It matched the descriptions I'd read and looked like all the drawings I'd seen. It was a saber toothed cat. And it was huge. I'd never seen a cat that big before. Not trusting the Henry, I inched back into the shadow of the cave, watching the cat the entire time. He gave no indication that he had seen, heard or smelled me. Once inside, I turned and made the short distance to my saddle and the 'Quigley" gun. I knew the 45-70 would do the trick. I returned to my original position and found the perfect rest for the long gun. There was a slight notch in the rock rim of the entrance and the rifle rested comfortably in it. I adjusted the Creedmoor sight for 400 yards. I noted that there was no wind. Taking aim, I took a breath, pulled the set trigger, let it out, another breath and then slowly let out half and held.

Now if you ever shot a 45-70 shell, you know what recoil is. That Sharps has one heck of a kick! So when I put the Creedmoor sight on his center of mass, I knew this would be a one shot, one kill situation. Paying attention to my heartbeat, I finished releasing the breath. I was relaxed and ready. I whistled, he looked, and I shot. I let the Sharps do its work. But I did forget about one thing. The echo in the cave was deafening. It frightened Jake and Red. They put up a little bit of a fuss, but they were both used to my shooting near them so they didn't cause too much trouble. Looking out of the cave I saw that indeed I had made the kill with one shot. But I didn't rush out. I took a good look around. And I waited to see if any other member of the family was around.

After about 10 minutes I decided it was ok to go look. Exchanging the Sharps for the Henry, I slowly emerged from the cave. I edged forward cautiously. I heard something to my left and quickly ducked down. Then my next surprise came along. About 20 yards from where I was hidden, I saw a woman approaching the downed Smilodon. I was about to stand when a man appeared behind her. He was armed with a spear and the point appeared to be flint. He was shouting and pushing the woman. She stumbled and fell. The man yelled at her again and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her to her feet again. Both were dressed in some kind of hide clothing, possibly deer like the one I thought was a pronghorn. When they got to my kill, I stood up.

"Hello," I shouted. "Who are you and what is going on?"

The woman ducked down behind the carcass and the man started toward me. He was shouting something, but for the life of me, I could not understand what he was saying. It was a guttural sounding language he was shouting, and I was at a loss for words. He continued shouting for a bit, and then took an offensive posture. Suddenly he was rushing at me, his spear at the ready. I hollered for him to stop, to no avail. Realizing that it would be him or me, I drew my Blackhawk and fired. Got him square in the chest. One shot, one kill. He was dead and that was that. Now I turned my attention toward the woman.

She showed no fear, but instead, came over to me and threw her arms around me and held me tight. I didn't know what to think. "Are you alright?" I asked. She looked at me strangely, cocking her head to one side and frowning a little. Then she shook her head, and said something in a very lyrical language. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand a single word of her language either.