A Dawn of Mammals Collection

by Lou Cadle

  She heard nothing for long seconds, and then she heard Garreth again. “Shh. It’s okay, little guy.” He said nothing for another few minutes, and she was about to call out and ask him what was happening when he said, “I have him. Move quietly, though. He spooks easily.”

  Hannah circled back around the bush, and saw Nari approaching Garreth. In his arms was the tiny animal, its tail wrapped twice around his arm. Garreth held it to his chest, and it was obviously nervous, but it wasn’t fighting him.

  Not, at least, until Nari approached and held out a hand. Then it jerked, and kicked at Garreth.

  “Back off, Nari,” Hannah said. “Let it calm down.”

  “Look at it. It’s just a baby,” the girl said.

  Garreth said, “That’s right, aren’t you, buddy?” With Nari backing off, the horse calmed again in his arms.

  Hannah said, “I guess this means we don’t get to have him for breakfast?”

  Nari shot her a dirty look.

  Hannah had to keep herself from laughing.

  “Can we keep him, Mom?” said Garreth, grinning. The horse wiggled a little bit until it could tuck its head into his armpit. Once it had, it seemed to relax even more, having blocked out the scary world of predator birds and odd-looking humans.

  Chapter 30

  “I doubt you’ll be able to keep him. I’m sure it’ll run the second you put it down.”

  “Then I won’t put it down,” Garreth said.

  “I wonder if it’s still on milk,” Hannah said.

  Nari said, “Do you think its mother was the one who got, you know—by the thing?”

  “You don’t need to speak delicately in front of him, Nari,” Hannah said. “He can’t understand you.”

  “I know that. I’m not stupid. I’d just rather be kind to animals than kill them and skin them and eat them, is all.” She sounded as angry as Hannah had ever heard her sound.

  “I know that, Nari. But this is not a domesticated horse. This is a wild, primitive animal.”

  “Then why is it letting Garreth hold it?” Nari said.

  Good question.

  “Maybe I smell like its mother,” he said.

  Nari giggled.

  Garreth said, “I can feel it calming way down, now that its head is hidden.”

  “Guys,” Hannah said, “it’s a kind urge and all, but you need to put him down and let him go. Find his own kind, or whatever.”

  “They had lots of time to find him,” Nari said. “They didn’t.”

  This was true. Probably, nature taking its course would mean the animal would die—and soon, if it wasn’t grazing on its own yet. Probably, the instant Garreth set it down, here, or elsewhere, it would take off into the brush. She shrugged. “Okay. We still need to fix the pool.”

  They walked back across to it, keeping an eye out for the terror crane, but they saw no sign of it. At the pool, Garreth put the horse onto the ground. It stood on unsteady legs, looked around, and moved into the shadow Garreth was casting.

  “You try building the fire again,” she said to him. When he dropped to a seated position, the horse started, and Hannah thought it was about to bolt. But it seemed to reconsider and moved back to Garreth’s side, keeping his body between itself and her and Nari.

  Hannah shook her head at the whole situation, and then went back to focusing on the pool’s repair. She said to Nari, “I need you to dam the water, to keep this bit dry while the mortar is setting.”

  “How?”

  “Pile up rocks. Set them as closely together as you can, and make the dam pretty wide.”

  “Won’t water leak through?”

  “Not fast, if you build it well enough. So ignore the horse and focus on that, okay?”

  Nari made a face, but she did as she had been told. Garreth took the fire-starter again and worked at igniting the pile of dried, shredded tinder. It caught, and Hannah had him wave his hand over it, keeping it lit, while she fed small sticks into it. They hissed and emitted steam, but Hannah had a lot of experience at this by now, and she fed the sticks in at just the right pace to keep the fire from going out.

  She helped Nari finish the dam and then took her mortar out and, using her finger as a trowel, re-set the original stone in its place in the pool. There was nothing to do but to wait, and she got up and paced twenty yards out from the fire, keeping her eye out for any predators, the terror crane or whatever else might be wandering around. Just because they hadn’t seen it again didn’t mean it wasn’t out there, making a second loop through its hunting grounds.

  She could see Nari trying to coax the horse from behind Garreth, but the little creature had found its protector and wasn’t having any of it from Nari.

  Hannah walked sentry duty while the fire got built up and burned back down to ashes. Garreth had been heating small rocks in it and, when she came back, he was all ready for her. She squeezed the mortar into place, set the stone again, and they packed the repair with heated rocks, then layered on some dirt, and then moved the coals of the fire right up against the outside of the repair. Hannah checked the dam, made a couple of adjustments, and said, “Okay. That’s as good as we can do.”

  It had taken them two hours to accomplish. The others would be at the beach, fishing. By noon, they’d be back at camp, and this group could meet up with them then.

  “Okay, let’s get back to the camp. We’ll do some fern collecting and soap-plant collecting on the way,” she said.

  “What about the horse?” Nari asked. “Can we really keep it?”

  Hannah said, “If it’ll allow Garreth to carry it, yeah. But realize, it probably won’t survive long. You might want to consider it’ll be less painful for you if it dies out of your sight.”

  “You don’t know it will die,” Nari said.

  “No,” Hannah said. “I don’t.” But she did know. It’d be eaten, or it’d die of an accident or disease. Without a mother to teach it the ways of the world, it would probably not last long at all. If it was still dependent upon mother’s milk, it might not live a day.

  She hated to see Nari—or Garreth—experience pain they didn’t have to, but she couldn’t think of a way to say all that to them. Let them live the experience. She couldn’t protect them from everything, and she couldn’t protect them forever. She might not be alive herself in a week, and Bob might die after that, and the kids would be all on their own. They had to learn how the world worked, as much as she might want to protect them from its harsher lessons.

  Garreth said, “He’ll let me carry him. Won’t you, fella?” He pulled the horse into his arms, got it settled with its head tucked under his arm again and said, “Nari, will you take the spear?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Hannah said, “I’ll take it.” Nari didn’t have the aggressive instincts needed to defend them. “But thanks, Nari. You be lookout. Make sure nothing sneaks up on us, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, handing the spear to Hannah.

  “Let me get my pack on first.” She pulled it on and then took the spear. “Okay, soap plants, and any of the three ferns we know are edible.”

  They took their time walking back, gathering up plenty of food and a patch of soap plants, and to her surprise, the horse hardly budged. It seemed happy to sit forever in Garreth’s arms.

  Chapter 31

  They found the camp deserted. Bob had penciled a note on a light-colored rock at the fire ring. “Assume you were delayed. See you midday back here.”

  Garreth put the horse down, and it immediately began nosing through the vines. It found something it seemed to like and started chewing.

  They built the fire back up from the embers, rearranged the rocks for fish-frying, and used some of the water to clean the ferns they had collected. The whole while, the horse hung fairly close to them, munching its way through the vines. It seemed to have a favorite plant and would follow a vine in one direction until it stopped being productive, then turned and hunted for its next meal. The long tail lazily
swished back and forth. It seemed perfectly contented.

  “When everyone comes back, it’s likely to take off,” Hannah said.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Garreth said. “I’ll pick it up again, the second I hear them.”

  “Don’t traumatize the poor thing any more,” she said. “If it wants to get away, let it go.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But I bet if I introduce it to people slowly, it’ll be fine. Look how it has adjusted to being close to you two already.”

  Nari said, “What are you going to call him?”

  “I don’t know. Have any suggestions?”

  “Harry Potter. He was an orphan too.”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t look much like a Harry Potter.” He turned to Hannah. “Name some famous horses.”

  “Man o’ War. Secretariat. Um, Seabiscuit.”

  “No, I have it. Bucephalus.”

  “That’s a mouthful,” she said.

  “Why that name?” said Nari.

  “That was Alexander the Great’s horse.”

  Hannah couldn’t help but laugh. “If Alexander sat astride that one, he’d squish it.”

  Nari shot her another dirty look.

  “No, I know!” Garreth said. “Traveller. That was Robert E. Lee’s horse. Not that I’m pro-slavery or anything, mind you, but it was a good horse name. And it’s perfect for us too. We’re travelers through time.”

  “Okay, that’s easier to say, anyway,” said Nari. “Hey, Traveller, come here, boy.”

  Hannah was still smiling, even though she thought the horse as pet would come to tears for everyone. But then, what pet did not, eventually? What still amazed her was that the horse seemed so easy to tame. She had always thought that domesticating animals took generations to accomplish. When she made a move toward it, it danced away, and it wasn’t letting Nari touch it either. But for some reason, Garreth had the magic touch with the animal. “Maybe veterinary medicine was your calling,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t be a terrible job,” he said.

  Hannah suspected it might, seeing abused animals, or putting them to sleep while their owners wept. Trying to sell people stuff they really didn’t need, like tiny $50 bags of cat food, to pay back your college loans. “Maybe a big animal vet, like horses. Farm vet.”

  “I’ve never even been to a farm,” he said.

  “They have miniature horses in our time,” she said. “Bred back down from normal-sized horses. Not to mention miniature pigs, and goats, and even llamas.”

  Nari said, “How do you know this stuff?”

  “I read things. Magazines like Smithsonian and articles on the internet. I saw a miniature llama farm on a drive and went to look up what other miniature animals there were around me. Surprisingly, there were a lot.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “Iowa. A university town, surrounded by farm country.”

  Garreth said, “You’re a ranger there?”

  “No. I’m a ranger in summers. The rest of the time, I work as a housing manager on campus. My side of it closes down in summers, so I can have a summer job too. I like the outdoors, and I thought it was a great way to see some of our national parks up close, to get to really know them, hike all over each one. So I’m a seasonal park ranger. I might have put in for fire-lookout duty, but a lot of those are either volunteer, or being phased out.”

  Nari said, “What’s that?”

  “People who live in a remote tower all summer and look for the beginning of forest fires. But some of that is done with satellite now, and infrared cameras.”

  Garreth said, “Did you ask for this assignment, then?”

  “Sort of. I looked at the openings, and I picked three places that sounded interesting, and where I’d never been before, and this was one that wanted me.”

  “Wow,” he said. “If you would have randomly picked three others, you wouldn’t be in this mess, would you?”

  “If you would have played hooky and called in sick the day of the field trip, you wouldn’t either,” she said. “What happens, happens.”

  “Maybe it’s meant to happen,” Nari said.

  “I don’t know about that,” Hannah said. “But it’s done. Now we all have to deal.”

  “You don’t resent it, then?” Garreth asked.

  “Do you?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But mostly not. It just seems like bad luck. Like with Traveller. It could have been the other guy’s mom got eaten this morning. All it would have taken was for that horse to walk a little faster, get near to the terror crane first, and this guy wouldn’t be an orphan.”

  “Like I say,” said Nari. “It’s fate. Or karma.”

  If Hannah was being punished, she wondered what for. It seemed like a pretty big punishment for what had been a lifetime of minor sins. Maybe for resenting her sister so much—that was probably the darkest stain on her own karma. But she really didn’t believe in that. She believed that stuff happened, period. Good stuff happened, and bad stuff too. She glanced at the foal.

  To me and you both, buddy.

  Chapter 32

  Traveller was so spooked by the approach of the eight others, returning from the morning of fishing, that he bolted. Garreth followed him.

  “Not alone!” she said. “Nari, go with him. And if you can’t find the animal in ten minutes, get back here. Both of you!”

  Nari trotted off after them.

  Dixie immediately asked where Nari was, and Hannah explained the situation. After all the exclamations and questions had faded from their first burst, she said, “If you guys want a pet, I know I can’t stop you. But it’s a wild animal, and skittish, and so far it only likes Garreth. So I suggest you stay quiet around it. If he catches it again, maybe go off with him one by one, and let the animal sniff you and hear your voice. I’d give it a one in a hundred chance it won’t leave once it sees all these bizarre creatures that we are to it, but that’s your best shot of keeping it around.”

  “Cool,” said Zach. “I miss my cat.”

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “Think more like a wild mustang, but tiny.”

  Jodi said, “Sounds adorable. I can’t wait to see it.”

  “So what’s for lunch?” Hannah asked. They had decided they liked the schedule where they ate in early afternoon, then left the rest in the steam pit to have in the morning. Two meals a day, plus fiddlehead ferns anytime anyone wanted some, raw, or simmered, or grilled on a rock. They weren’t getting impressive numbers of calories, and the variety of vegetables left a lot to be desired, but they were surviving.

  They were also gaining skills with each passing week. Nets, fishing, pottery, cordage, even some rather sad-looking attempts at basket-weaving. They’d eventually nail that skill too, she believed. It’d go a hundred times faster if she had one lousy library book on primitive crafts, but trial and error got them there too, eventually.

  To her surprise, Nari came back and said, “Garreth has him. But he doesn’t want to bring him by the fire until everyone is seated and quiet.”

  In short order, all the kids had dropped to the ground, staring in Nari’s direction, curious about the foal.

  In a minute, Garreth walked out of the trees, carrying little Traveller. It had its head tucked in his armpit again and the tail was wound tightly around his arm.

  “Is that prehensile?” Bob whispered to her.

  She shook her head, meaning she didn’t know. Didn’t prehensile tails evolve to give animals a safe purchase in trees? Surely these creatures didn’t climb trees. But it had toes, that was for sure, not hooves, so it wasn’t impossible. Just highly unlikely.

  Garreth sat down and said, “Traveller, these are our friends. Everybody, this is Traveller.”

  They all sat quietly, until Dixie said, “Is that all he ever does?”

  “Shhh,” said Nari, coming as close as Hannah had ever seen to crossing her friend.

  “You’re making him tense up by talking,” Garreth said. “
He had just relaxed.”

  Dixie rolled her eyes, but she did shut up. After another ten or twelve minutes, Traveller pulled his head out, looked up at Garreth, who whispered something, and then the horse wriggled. Garreth set him down. He turned around and saw all the people, leapt into Garreth’s arms again, and hid his head once more.

  “Sorry,” said Garreth. I’m going to go back into the trees. Maybe one at a time, come out. I’ll try to get him used to you slowly, okay?”

  “Don’t go alone,” Hannah said.

  “I have Traveller.”

  She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “Not a great watch dog, I’m afraid.” Rex was seated nearest to Garreth. “Rex, go with him first, okay?”

  Lunch was interrupted six more times, as Garreth took every person out alone, and tried to get Traveller used to the smell and the sound of the voices. Bob went last.

  He looked pleased when he came back and said, “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’m rather pleased. The little fellow seemed to like me. Or not hate me.”

  “This is crazy, you know.”

  “It’s harmless for now,” Bob said.

  “Until something gets him, the terror crane, or the ants, or something else,” she said.

  “That’s harsh,” Ted said, overhearing.

  “It’s the law of the jungle. We should know that by now. If we couldn’t save M.J., how can we save a little creature like Traveller?”

  Ted said, “Well yeah, but....” He scrubbed at his face. Hannah noticed that he was getting a beard coming in. Bob had grown one, and it was getting bushy by now. He looked like someone off an Alaska survival adventure reality show. But none of the boys had much of a beard yet. Ted’s, with his light complexion, wasn’t even that noticeable.