Adrian's War Page 3

  He looked over the spot and, as he suspected from the flint workings, discovered the reason this was an old, longtime camp; there was an overhang of rock ledge jutting out from the cliff face. He could see the blackened stone where eons of fires had been built. He could almost smell the smoke of past fires; closing his eyes he imagined the voices of men telling stories around the fire at night. Dropping his pack, he gathered enough dry wood to last the night, stacking it neatly under the ledge. Then he walked down to the cottonwoods.

  There he found a spring-fed creek. Cottonwood trees are water loving, and usually grow near a source, although sometimes it is buried down deep. He watched the water for a few minutes. He caught and threw a grasshopper into the water and it was immediately taken by a fish. Adrian guessed he had enough time to build a trap and set it before the storm came in. He cut eight small saplings the size of his little finger and about five feet long. He cut them with the flint blade he had just found—it was naturally serrated, amazingly sharp, and worked well.

  Stripping the green bark from the saplings in thin strips, he made crude cordage. He was pressed for time by the encroaching storm, so he simply rolled the bark strips rapidly between his palms to break the fibers loose, then twisted the bark. He cut four smaller saplings, about a quarter of the size of his little finger. He tied them into hoops with the cordage, then using the other saplings he made a basket-style fish trap with inverted ends that had smaller openings. He made it swiftly; it wasn’t his first fish trap.

  Adrian set the trap in a narrow spot in the creek, a place where any fish moving up or down stream would almost have to pass through. Rocks were used to weigh it down in place, including a large rock inside of it. He gathered more rocks and made funnels into each end of the trap, forcing more fish to come through. He would check it in a little while. Adrian returned to the cliff face and saw where hip and shoulder holes had already been dug out of the caliche earth. He collected cedar boughs and laid them over the area. It made a comfortable enough bed.

  While collecting firewood he had also collected fire-starting materials. Fine, dry grass, an old bird’s nest blown out of a tree, some dry milkweed stems that he crushed. Using his magnesium fire starter, he had a fire going in no time. “I’m cheating,” he thought to himself. “I should be using a fire bow. I’ll work on that soon.”

  He went back to the fish trap while there was still enough light to see and found two small fish in it. It would barely do, but…he walked up the stream a hundred yards and then began walking back down towards the trap, hitting the water with a tree limb. He was scaring the fish toward and hopefully into the trap. When he checked again he had two more fish. Lightning flashed. A few drops started to fall. Adrian emptied and reset the trap, and double timed back to the cliff.

  He made two small columns of rocks on either side of the fire, then set a large, flat rock atop them so it was straddling the coals. From the looks of it this stone had been used this way before; more of the ancients’ craft left behind. He poured some water on it to clean it. When the coals had heated the flat rock enough, he split the fish open and laid them on it to cook. He ate the fish with hopes of catching more during the night for the next day’s breakfast. Then he settled in for the night as the storm hit with full force. Wind whipped and rain swirled over the cliff. Hail scattered the ground for a few minutes. It grew cold. He had kept his mind busy, up to that moment, but the grief came crashing back in. It rolled like thunder through his chest. He played her harmonica, its sound drifting out and melting into the storm.

  Chapter 3

  THE STORM CONTINUED, RAINING HARD, then softly, then hard again, through the night. Lightning flashed rapidly as thunder rumbled across the valley below. Adrian was exhausted from grief and his attempts to avoid it. The storm lost intensity toward morning as the ground cooled. By dawn, the storm had been over for an hour.

  Adrian hadn’t slept well, but on awakening was free of the grief for two or three seconds. Then the painful memory flooded back into him. It was the worst time of the day, that moment when he remembered. The moment after that brief awakening moment when his mind had forgotten. A fresh breeze blew up the hill side; it was clean and carried the odors of the wet grass and dirt it had brushed across to reach him. He knew the fish trap would have been washed away by the downpour in the night. Adrian stood and stretched long and hard. He stirred the coals and placed fresh wood on the fire to get it started.

  The sun rose as Adrian made the last of the coffee that Sarah had packed for him. He would leave the small coffee pot here; he would not have a use for it now, not if he was going to live primitively. He would need to learn how to make a cooking pot. He had read of the techniques but had never practiced. This camping spot would eventually draw someone to it. They might find the coffee pot invaluable. If not, they could leave it for the next travelers to come along. The aroma of fresh coffee aroused a final regret about leaving Fort Brazos behind. Adrian drank the coffee, savoring it as long as he could.

  He concentrated his focus on each sip, rolling it on his tongue before finally swallowing it. He finished the pot, rinsed it and set it upside down with a heavy rock on top of it and a small rock underneath one edge, ready for the next wanderer. In the meantime it might as well supply a few field mice with shelter; propped up slightly as it was they could shelter inside. He would, however, take his shotgun with him. It would rust and become useless if left without maintenance. Maybe someday he would find someone to give it to. Until then it would be carried as baggage.

  He was sure the trap was gone, but a man didn’t rely on simply his thoughts where traps were concerned. It would be the worst kind of mistake to leave a trap untended. Traps that were no longer being used had to be dismantled. No need to be cruel to animals out of laziness. They were just trying to survive another day, the same as he was. The rain had swollen the creek into a muddy torrent. The trap would have come apart in that current, broken down into simple sticks again, releasing any fish it might have held. Adrian could find no sign of it.

  His stomach growled ferociously as he walked back to camp. He had two choices: go hungry or eat pemmican. He chose hunger. He was a long way from being in trouble as far as food was concerned; better to save the pemmican for emergency use. The hunger pangs helped keep his mind focused. “Makes me a better hunter” he thought to himself. As he took the fire apart and let the coals die he contemplated on his internal words “Makes me a better hunter”. “True words,” he thought “A hungry hunter is a better hunter.” But what interested him the most was that he used words less often when thinking these days.

  When he was with other people, he thought in words all the time. When Adrian left Fort Brazos he was thinking in words. The longer he had been away from other people, the less often he used words to think with.” Adrian considered this for a while. The camp was clean, the fire out, the coffee pot propped up. He left the pine boughs where they were. The map unfolded easily and Adrian re-checked his position. He had intended to stay for a couple of days, but he was restless and wanted to keep moving, to stay distracted. He took out his compass and walked around the cliff face. He spotted a large tree on a ridge in the distance that was in the right direction and began walking towards it.

  He was out of food except for the pemmican so walking now meant hunting. He moved more slowly and quietly. He watched the ground ahead of him for signs of small game, and the further distance for glimpses of larger kills. Occasionally on this trip he had come across feral cows. They would have been easy to kill, but Adrian had passed on them. They were too large for one man to make efficient use of without freezers to hold the meat. He could have killed them, taken the best parts for immediate use and made jerky of more of it, but he would still have had to leave over half the animal behind, and he wouldn’t do that. Someday those feral cows were going to be important.

  Deer were altogether different. Deer were considerably smaller; he could utilize an entire deer, although he would have to stop and ca
mp to prepare it. Since he was in no hurry that was fine with him. Just as long as he could stay busy. He had been shooting game up to this point, and still had plenty of ammunition left, but now he was going to hunt like a primitive man. He would have to learn new techniques. Or rather he thought, relearn old techniques.

  Adrian found a stick the right size and shape to make a throwing stick and carried it with him as he walked. Throwing sticks were among the first hunting tools. They were short, heavy sticks that could be thrown at small game, stunning the animal long enough for the hunter to pounce on it. Boomerangs were crafted throwing sticks designed to be thrown at small game. That design had the aerodynamic quirk of curved flight. North American throwing sticks were usually about two feet long and straight with a knob on one end. The end-over-end flight path of a throwing stick widened its hitting radius to the full length of the stick, making it more effective than throwing a rock. A rock would work, but required a great deal more accuracy because its striking radius was only the size of the rock itself. A throwing stick worked better.

  As a child Adrian had made several slings for rock throwing. They were deadly when the rock hit the target, but that was a low percentage proposition. In his experience the sling’s accuracy was a myth; they required months of practice and one had to find a supply of rocks the same size and density in order to have a chance. Even then, he missed his target far more often than he hit it. They also required time to load, swing, and throw, giving the game animal time to alert and run. But with the stick he carried, all he had to do was pull his arm back and throw. It was more efficient, even though limited in range.

  Atlatls were much better, but required long reeds for their darts. He was travelling through country that didn’t offer reeds, but when he did find some he would make one.

  Adrian threw the stick at a bush that was on the edge of his throwing range, but missed it by inches. He retrieved the stick, walked back to where he had thrown it, and tried again, and again, and again until he was hitting the bush every time. He continued walking.

  Adrian flushed a bird at his feet and threw the stick at it, missing. An hour later he startled a jack rabbit, but it was beyond his range. An hour before dusk he jumped another jack rabbit, closer this time. The stick was in the air before he realized he had thrown it, and it smacked the rabbit in the back. Adrian was running as soon as he threw, sensing that it would hit. The rabbit lost its footing for a second when the stick made contact with it, but that was all Adrian needed. He grabbed the rabbit and broke its neck instantly, as humane a kill as he could. Adrian had dinner.

  It was time to choose a campsite. The weather looked good, so he chose a spot above a nearby creek. He took the rabbit to the creek and removed its skin, then opened the stomach with his flint blade and removed the entrails and organs. He rinsed the rabbit’s stomach cavity out, then opened the entrails and squeezed out the contents carefully. He split the entrails lengthwise and rinsed them out, then put them back into the stomach cavity and rolled the dressed rabbit back up inside the skin. Adrian gathered wood for a fire, and because he had not built a fire bow, started it with his magnesium fire-starting tool.

  Cultural blindness had caused many people to starve; history books were replete with stories of the kind. People would refuse to eat certain items that were necessary, and die as a result. Blind stupidity. Adrian had been trained in survival by the smartest and most experienced tutors in the world. They had taught about rabbit starvation. During the opening of the west, settlers had died of starvation with their bellies full of rabbit. The problem was they ate only the lean meat of the rabbit. Their upbringing, their culture, had not prepared them for the need to eat the rest of the animal. What they had not known was that man needed not just protein, they needed fat as well. Without fat in his diet, he eventually died. He had been taught that each animal carried the correct ratio of fat to protein that a man needed. It was simple really: each animal had to have fat in it to survive just as a man did, and if it was healthy, the ratio of fat to protein was there. The problem for the settlers had been where the fat was located. What they failed to comprehend was that the whole animal had to be eaten. Brains, entrails, organs, and bone marrow. All of it was necessary to survival.

  Adrian knew that Stone Age man had learned to make cooking pots out of tree bark and animal skins. Adrian would eventually do that as well, but he didn’t have time for that right now, or the materials at hand. He roasted the rabbit on one spit over the fire, head still on. He speared the organs on other small sharpened sticks and placed them over the fire, and wrapped the entrails around another stick and placed it over the fire. He carefully tended each stick, turning it as necessary until every piece had been cooked enough to kill any bacteria or parasites. That would happen when the meat had reached 180 degrees at the bone. Adrian gauged this by how the meat began to pull away from the ends of the bones.

  He ate all the meat, entrails, and organs, then cracked open the head and ate the cooked brain. He put the bones back into the fire for a few more minutes. Rabbit bones didn’t take long. Once he had cooked the marrow inside the bones he removed them from the fire and split them open, scraping out and eating the marrow. There wasn’t much of it, but every bit helped. Adrian would have preferred to stew the rabbit parts all together in a pot, and would soon be making a pot to do that with. It would be simpler, tastier, and less wasteful of the nutrients.

  As he cooked the meat on the spits he noted the fluids dripping off the meat. Those fluids contained nutrients. In a stew those nutrients stayed in the broth. The boiling water also removed nutrients from the bone cells that were otherwise impossible to remove. When stewing, the bones were removed from the meat, split to expose the marrow, and placed back in the pot. Altogether a better way to utilize everything the animal had to offer.

  Again, the work of survival had helped a little. He lay looking up at the stars for a long time, trying and failing to not feel the pain, before exhausted sleep overtook him. He slept the sleep of the mentally exhausted, not the physically exhausted. As he lay there, he had no idea that the next day would bring people into his life again, if only briefly.

  Chapter 4

  ADRIAN ATE SOME OF THE rabbit that he had reserved for breakfast. He had learned morning hunger could be intense, but easily resolved with a few bites of protein. He knew that it was better to have a small dinner and a large breakfast than the reverse, but he also knew that the best plan was to eat when hungry, if possible.

  Walking along looking for more game to throw his stick at, he spotted a Bois D’Arc tree, also known as Osage Orange. They were easy to recognize because of their large, green fruit the size of softballs. Later in the year they would turn yellow. He had grown up around these trees and called them horse-apple trees, as did most people in his area. The trees were once planted in close knit rows and as they grew, their entangled thorny branches made natural fences and wind breaks. The trees had been a popular item to plant as the west was occupied until the advent of barbed wire. They had grown well in the Southern and Western climates. It was the favored wood for making long bows by the original inhabitants of the continent.

  Adrian chose a long, straight branch of the right diameter, about the size of a small woman’s wrist. One with no side branches to create knots. He cut the limb with his flint knife; it took almost an hour to cut the tough wood. For now he would use the limb as a staff, a handy tool and weapon in itself. When the wood eventually seasoned he would make a long bow of it. He walked on with the throwing stick in his left, dominant hand and the staff in his right.

  It was time to make a fire bow, so he had chosen a burled piece of the Bois D’Arc wood to make the cup that he would use to hold down the twirling stick. The burl was a tight, hard, grained wood that fit his hand. He used another longer piece for the bow. For the twirling and bottom sticks he watched for a softer wood, eventually settling on pieces of dry cottonwood for this. Adrian pulled leaves off of Sotol plants, they would provide cordage
materials. He also replaced his throwing stick with a green piece of Bois D’Arc because it was heavier and would make a harder impact. With a bit of work with his flint knife he soon had it tuned up.

  Adrian had been loosely following a river and had entered the Palo Duro Canyon. The beauty of the place was evident, though he didn’t think about it on a conscious level. He had been lulled by weeks of walking alone. He smelled smoke, and went into stealth mode smoothly and efficiently. He stopped moving, frozen in place while assessing what he could see and smell. Motion drew the eye faster than anything else. Very slowly he lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position. This put his eyes above the brush to where he could see around him but kept his profile low. He began to slowly rotate his head, shifting his position quietly so he could scan around him in a complete circle. He saw no one.

  The smell of smoke was coming from ahead of him, its source probably from a good distance away. He was being overly cautious, but why not? Adrian stood and quickly walked over to a grove of mesquite trees, then disappeared into them. He waited and watched from inside the trees but still saw no sign of people, just the faint odor of the smoke alerted him. He stalked slowly into the wind, following the smoke scent.

  It took him two hours to travel the distance he would normally have covered in half an hour, but no detail slipped past his intense scrutiny. This type of concentration was tiring. It fatigued the mind and muscles. It was difficult to remember to keep the muscles relaxed when the mind was so focused on external matters, and the muscles tended to stay tightened unnecessarily. Knowing this, he took breaks each hour. He would sit down with his back to a tree or boulder, in some hidden place, close his eyes and deliberately relax his entire body. He would perform a brief meditation, allowing his mind to go blank. It was a simple technique he had learned overseas.