“Okay, well, if the choice is walking thousands of kilometers or paddling thousands, I think paddling wins out. Just because it means we can carry more gear and keep it with us longer than we could walking,” Karen said.
“There’s another option to paddling,” Meri said. Bill and Karen looked at her. “We can sail part of it.”
“Sail on a river?” Karen asked.
“Of course,” Bill said, slapping his forehead with his open palm. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s not like we didn’t do that crossing the Med and Atlantic. It’s also what Lewis and Clark did.”
Karen looked at him skeptically.
Meri nodded. “Exactly. We rig up a small mast, use part of the parachute for a sail, and when the wind is at our back, we raise it. We might even be able to get a couple of extra klicks a day out of it.”
“Y’know, we’ve got room on this river to run an outrigger. That’ll make it more stable, and really give us an opportunity to use a sail better,” Bill said.
Karen raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. “Okay, let’s make it happen. I want this thing ready to go asap, so while Bill’s making supper, we can gather the necessary stuff and start working on it. Looks like we’ll be here for a couple more days.”
It didn’t take long before sufficient dry wood was gathered for the gunwale and some suitable small trees for the outrigger and mast. As it was getting dark, Karen decided to hold off on cutting the saplings until the next day.
Between using small hand-held chain saws, hatchets, and knives, they were soon able to fashion mast supports, one for the canoe’s bottom and one to fit across the gunwales. Rather than attempt to chop out the center holes for the mast, Meri marked the hole’s location and then used a controlled burn to burn through the wood. The edges were scraped out using a survival knife.
It took a couple of days to get a canoe sail rigged and the outrigger installed. The mast had a single cross-brace at the top, allowing for a square sail. Ropes led back toward the stern, so whoever was riding behind the mast would be in control of the sail, and could either adjust the angle or roll it up. Meri’s suggestion of having somebody use a paddle as a rudder meant that two people would be in the stern, one controlling the sail, and one handling the rudder. Bill, with his broken leg, was selected to the master of the sail (or, as Meri said, he could be “the sailor boy”).
Looking at the small vessel, Karen wondered aloud, “What’s smaller than a guppy?”
“A minnow?” asked Meri.
“Nah, minnows are bigger than guppies,” Bill said. “What about a tadpole?”
“Tadpole’s not a fish,” Karen said.
“Yeah, but it both swims and goes on land, just like the canoe when we drag it ashore,” Bill said.
“Good point. Okay, tadpole it is,” Karen said. Raising her arms up, she intoned seriously, “I christen thee the CDS Tadpole.”
“All right, let’s get loaded up and see how this bad boy works,” Karen said, turning and grabbing her pack.
In minutes the Tadpole was loaded and launched.
The morning air was still, so they paddled up the Mississippi. Shortly after noon, though, the wind picked up, and while not quite at their backs, it was close enough that they decided to test the sail. To Bill’s pleasant surprise, it worked, and rather well.
“I think we’re going faster than we were paddling,” he said.
Karen, holding onto the paddle rudder, looked down at the rushing water. “I think you’re right.”
And, so it continued for the next ten days. Mornings would typically be spent paddling and afternoons sailing. Meri, bow in hand, would keep an eye out for tasty critters near shore as they sailed along. She also kept an eye out for nasty critters. On several occasions, she spotted bears and, based on the size of some of them, thought they were short-faced bears.
On the tenth day, they arrived at the confluence of the Missouri, the final river they would be traveling on this side of the continental divide. It was now mid-September, and while the days were warm, the nights were starting to get rather cool. Karen had given Meri and Bill orders to hunt specifically for another couple of bisons. “I don’t fancy freezing out here, so let’s make like the Injuns and make some seriously warm buffalo coats.”
“Injuns?” Meri asked.
“Slang for Indians, what we used to call Native Americans on Earth before people developed a little sensitivity,” Karen answered.
“You’ve got some weird habits on Earth,” Meri said.
“Yeah, that we do,” Bill said softly, thinking, There’s a reason I left.
42
The trip up the Missouri River was just like the trip up the Mississippi, only a lot longer, with the three following the morning-paddling, afternoon-sailing routine. A week after entering the new river system, Meri spotted a small herd of bison on the north shore, so Karen ordered the boat aground. While Bill remained near the boat, she and Meri slowly approached the herd, which took no notice of them, especially since they stopped several hundred meters from the closest bison.
The two women went into the prone position, integral rifle bipods extended. They shot simultaneously, each hitting a different animal. While they were doing so, Bill kept an eye out for any threats from the edge of the river. Both bison dropped, and the remaining herd shifted around a bit, probably thinking that the resounding booms had been thunder. Their bovine brains didn’t equate the two bipeds with the noise, so even when the women approached the downed bison, the rest of the herd barely shuffled about.
It took a couple of hours to skin the bison, mainly because they had to roll them over to complete the task. Rolling an animal that weighed over half a metric ton wasn’t quite as easy as it looked in the instructional videos from survival training. Even the woods bison Bill had killed wasn’t the same size.
While they were skinning the bison, Bill did triple duty: keeping guard over them, setting up camp, and preparing stakes for the skins. By the time the women were finished, it was almost dark. Bill had gotten a fire going in the campground, and hobbling around with his rifle at the ready position, kept an eye out for the predators that appeared to be following the herd. He had seen at least one pack of wolves, probably a Great Plains wolf, also known as the buffalo wolf. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected he also saw a pack of dire wolves, somewhat larger than the smaller Great Plains cousins. Upon spotting them he had kept his rifle at the ready position, but fortunately didn’t need it. He also called out to the women to warn them.
An hour after spotting the dire wolves, he saw a Smilodon, the big scimitar-toothed cat prowling along the herd’s edge. Bill once again warned the women and kept extra care to watch the large predator, knowing just how dangerous it could be. The women stopped their tasks, picked up their rifles, and kept an eye on the tiger until it had wandered out of sight toward the rear of the herd. Fortunately, the Smilodon was more interested in bison calf than another obvious predator.
When the women returned to camp with their bloody, fuzzy trophies with the bison brains wrapped inside, Bill felt some relief. Giving Meri a quick kiss, he said, “Glad you’re back. I was starting to get worried.”
Meri gave him a wan smile, showing just how tired she was.
“Let’s get these skins staked out. We’ll need to scrape most of the flesh off them tonight,” Karen said, dumping her bundle on the ground. “Bill, you think you can handle some scraping?”
Bill nodded. “Yeah, I think I’m a little less worn out than either of you.”
The three spread out the hides and staked them down, and as Meri and Karen began making supper (Oh, yummy. Bison for supper, AGAIN! Bill thought sarcastically), he began the tedious scraping process.
He continued the project well into the night, working by the light cast by the campfire. As he worked, Meri kept watch, the two of them talking about the best ways of making the buffalo coats that should keep them warm in the upcoming winter.
Over the next several weeks the trio continued upriver, u
sing paddles and the makeshift sail. Each evening was spent working on the bison hides.
As they had passed the Platte River, Bill had commented that if they wanted to get to the Front Range around Earth’s Denver, the Platte would take them there.
“Just a thought,” he said that evening, as they sat around the campfire, “but, have either of you wondered why we haven’t seen any survey planes yet? I mean, we’ve been on this planet for damned near four months.” Looking at Meri, he asked, “You grew up with this stuff. How long does it take to complete the Initial Survey and begin the aerial and ground surveys?”
Meri stirred the pot of bison stew, wrinkled her brow, swatted a mosquito from around her face, and said, “Lemme see. Forty to fifty days for the Initial Survey, which was just about a quarter of the way done when we crashed. So, that should have been done by late July. Give it a month or so to set up the field and logistics for the aerial surveys.” She paused, thinking. “That puts us into September.
“So, the odds of seeing anything any time soon are pretty slim,” she concluded. “In case you didn’t know, it takes a while to run a survey, covering a swath maybe three klicks wide each pass. Remember how much territory we covered throughout Carib on Zion? Figure on three to five passes per flight each day, that’ll push the survey out maybe ten, fifteen klicks. Probably average twelve klicks a day, so, about three hundred sixty klicks a month. We’re still more than two thousand klicks from the IP, so figure if they started in September, they probably wouldn’t reach this far for five or six months. Best guess, we might see them come January or February.”
It took Bill a while to digest this news. He had always assumed that there would be a survey crew out further, looking for them, just in case.
What the hell was I thinking? he thought, bitterly. I know the Corps doesn’t send people out on hopeless rescue missions.
He took a deep breath. “Well, looks like we’ll be spending at least part of winter on the great plains. So, what are we gonna do about shelter along the way? I mean, the hammocks are great and all, and these new coats should work fine, but what about the sub-zero temps we can expect this winter? And, I ain’t talking Celsius,” he said, looking pointedly at Meri. “I mean, it’s gonna get freezing ass cold, and we’re gonna be in one of the coldest, windiest places outside of Siberia.”
Even with the heat reflective liners, the hammocks weren’t rated for temperatures that much below freezing. Both women sat quietly a moment, thinking.
Karen finally glanced up as she continued sewing a sleeve onto her bison coat. “Well, I figure we can do like the Native Americans did, and kill some more bison and make a wikiup.”
“If we’re gonna do that, we should probably gather wood for the frame now, before we get into the real prairie,” Meri said, looking up from the pot. “And more bison skins,” she said with a grin at Bill. He interpreted it as an evil grin, considering he would be the one most likely to do the flesh scraping.
“So, lemme get this straight. You guys hunt and I scrape?”
“Naw, not completely,” Karen said. “Well, yeah, we hunt. At least, until that leg of yours is healed. So, yeah, I guess you’ll kinda have to do most of the scraping,” she finished with a sheepish grin.
Bill just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“You can also gather poles,” Meri said. The soft smile she gave him was meant as a peace offering, which he willingly accepted.
The crew began gathering wood the next morning, despite Meri’s comments about Bill doing it. There was plenty near the river’s edge; they selected small Eastern red cedar saplings that were interspersed in the understory of the larger cottonwoods. Bill, with his broken leg, wasn’t as mobile as the other two, so he did the cutting while the two women brought the small logs to the campground and began building a wikiup frame. First, three poles were lashed together at one end with rawhide, then raised, and spread at the bottom, creating a tripod. Then they laid poles upon the tripod, creating a cone-shaped frame structure.
The wikiup reminded Bill of the tipis he would see in some of the old classic movies, with the bottoms of the poles in a circle and the tops meeting above.
Once the frame was constructed, Bill realized that it wasn’t tall enough for all three of them to stand in at any one time. He pointed that out.
“Well, it’s your own fault you’re so tall,” Meri said, with a grin. Bill was pretty average height, not even close to being six feet tall.
“The goal’s to be able to sit up, lie down, and have a fire inside,” Karen said, looking at the structure, feet apart, and hands on hips. “Remember, this is a mobile wikiup, not a long-term thing. At most, we’ll maybe spend a couple of days in it if there’s a bad storm.”
“Good start,” Meri said. “Now we just need some skins and insulation.”
“Where’re you planning on getting insulation?” Bill asked.
“It’s all around,” Meri said, sweeping her arms wide. “Leaves, bushes, sod, whatever it takes. I’m sure we probably won’t do too much insulating on the move, but if there’s a storm coming in, I think it’s best we plan on insulating, at least for the duration.”
Over the last several months, the three had gotten pretty adept at reading the weather, so her comment wasn’t out of place.
Once the last pole was in place, Karen had the three of them deconstruct it, lashing the tripod and other poles in place on the canoe’s outrigger.
“We’ve still got plenty of daylight left, so let’s get on the move. Keep your eyes peeled for a bison herd, ‘cause I’d like to get those skins ready asap.”
Within a couple of days, they spotted a larger herd of bison. Fortunately, many were near the water, drinking or rolling in it.
“Let’s angle in so we’re close, but not too close,” Karen said. “Don’t want to spook the herd and cause a stampede.”
That’s the last thing we need, Bill thought. It’d suck if they stampeded our way.
Since the daily wind hadn’t kicked up too hard yet, the sail wasn’t deployed. Not only did it make it easier to sneak up on the herd, with barely a ripple as they silently paddled near them, but it gave them a smaller profile, less likely to spook the herd. Bill imagined himself a bison, Oh, no. Here comes a big scary thing to eat me. Run away, run away!
They beached on a sandbar jutting from the shore. Slowly, they exited the canoe, dragging it further up the bar, until it was mostly out of the water. Luckily, it was still early morning and the sun was at their back; the bison probably wouldn’t see them as they approached from the east.
Once again, Bill was relegated to standing watch while the women began stalking their prey. As they slowly slunk into the dust-filled air, raised by the herd’s constant motion, Bill kept an eye out. It wasn’t easy, as the land rose above the river, blocking his visibility. He awkwardly made his way up the small bluff, trying to move as slowly and silently as possible with the makeshift splint on his leg, rifle at the ready, and peeder strapped over his shoulder. Bill bit down on his rising anger at his situation. Only a little longer and this thing comes off, he thought.
At the top of the bluff, he had a clear view of the area. Karen and Meri were getting into the prone position less than two hundred meters from the edge of the herd. He didn’t focus his attention on them; they weren’t a threat. Well, not to me, anyhow, he thought, keeping his eyes roaming over the landscape, turning around to make sure nothing was sneaking up on him. He glanced back at the women. They had their rifle bi-pods extended and were preparing to open fire.
Just then, flames shot out of their rifles almost simultaneously. It took a second for the sound of the guns firing to reach him. Two bison staggered, one collapsing to the ground.
As with the last herd, the bison looked around, surprised, then continued grazing. The second bison fell to the ground. Bill remembered reading about buffalo hunters from the 1800s standing all day, shooting bison, and the bison never moving.
Twice more the rifles s
ounded, and twice more a pair of bison dropped dead.
Only then did the women rise, rifles held in hand, and begin walking toward the herd, making noise and waving their free arms. This finally startled the bison, and they began moving away from the obvious predatory threat. As the hunters got closer, the bison broke into a slow trot, until the six dead bison were alone, surrounded by nothing but the tall prairie grass.
Meri approached the first bison cautiously, staring at the eye long enough to determine it was dead. Karen did the same with hers. Each animal got the same treatment: leave some space around it, watch the eyes, and if the animal didn’t blink for an extended period, it was presumed dead. This was especially telling when a fly landed on the eye of the last bison they checked.
As the two began skinning the first bison, Bill’s attention was drawn to a motion out of the corner of his eye. Slowly turning his head, he saw movement in the grass, heading toward the downed bison. Looking closer, he finally made out a Smilodon. Its tawny fur was engulfed by the brown, dried fall grass of the prairie. It was obviously in stalking mode, moving slowly, hunched down, its short tail sticking straight out, twitching lightly. The low-slung back reminded Bill of the hyenas they had fought in Eurasia.
Even though the big cat was almost three hundred meters away, and just about that far from the distracted women, Bill didn’t feel like taking any chances. Getting down on one knee, he brought the rifle up, bracing the arm holding the forestock on his knee. Sighting through the ghost ring sights, Bill drew a bead on the deadly cat. He took a breath and slowly released it while tightening his finger pull on the trigger. At the end of the breath, when his body was most relaxed and not jumping around, he continued to squeeze the trigger until the rifle bucked in his hand with a loud report.
He immediately reloaded and brought his rifle back up to the ready position, all the while keeping an eye on the Smiladon. From shot to ready took less than a second.
The women were both on their feet, rifles at the ready. Bill stood and waved to them to indicate all was well. They were too far away hear even if he yelled, so he didn’t bother.
The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history Page 44