Dawn of Mammals (Book 5): Mammoth

by Lou Cadle

  “Short days,” Rex said. “Assuming we’re close to the solstice.”

  “We’ll turn around at noon,” Claire said. “No clouds up there, so it’ll be obvious when that is.”

  Bob grumbled a bit about having to stop, but Nari cajoled him into helping her with her physical therapy exercises, and that distracted him. The others continued hiking, trying to find the road, or at least its course.

  But though they walked all day, ranging out in the direction of the paved road of the future, they found nothing. Every hour that passed without seeing anything—not a distant fence, or a cloud of dust that suggested a truck or covered wagon might be traveling along a dirt road—left Hannah more certain they weren’t in modern times. There were no ruins, so it seemed unlikely they had landed in a future with a collapsed civilization. They did see a distant line of trees that suggested a stream. Hannah thought she spotted willows among them.

  The question then became, were they in a time when Indians might be here? If Laina’s promise of a two-thousand-year window was right, they should be. There was no sign of that either, but she imagined the population density was low back in 1600 or whenever. She tried to remember everything she could about the Lewis and Clark journey, but she’d never been passionate about that topic. Their journals probably had told the tale of how populous this region was. When she asked if anyone else was an expert on it, no one said yes.

  Zach said, “If Garreth was still here, he’d tell you. He knew history.”

  “We haven’t explored very far at all,” Jodi said. “There might still be something over the next hill.”

  “We’re going to have to jump again, aren’t we?” Rex said. “I’d hoped we’d make it home. Or to the future. Either would be good for me.”

  Laina said nothing. From the look on her face, she was doing more of her mental calculations. But without something to tell her the date, how would she know what to change the next time? A longer jump was needed. But how much longer? A hundred years? A thousand? Could she time it that closely?

  Bob and Rex had tried to follow along with Laina’s logic and math about the timegate’s operation while they lived out the end of their ice age time, but they had both given up. Hannah hadn’t even tried. What she did know was that since every timegate arrival did not come with a calendar, they didn’t even know for sure what epochs they had been in. Only the knowledge M.J. and, lately, Bob had of extinct mammal life had let them roughly confirm Laina’s mathematical claims. Laina had been going with theory alone. There was no external verification of her guesses. At the very least, this time they needed to understand what year it was. Though Hannah didn’t understand the mathematics of time travel at all, she believed knowing today’s date would help Laina jump with more precision the next time.

  The hope of getting good medical care for either Bob or Nari faded with every hour they hiked and saw nothing. And by the time they were back at the parking lot area, that became a more important concern than ever.

  Chapter 20

  Over half the gear had been hauled up to the flat spot. Nari was sitting there, leaning over Bob, who was flat on his back.

  “Thank God you’re here,” Nari said, struggling to her feet.

  “What happened?” Hannah said.

  Nari limped over.

  “You’ve hurt yourself?”

  “We decided to move camp. We built a bunch of trail markers with rocks, to get back to the timegate when we need to, but then he insisted we haul the gear up here. So we did, and about mid-afternoon, he fainted.”

  Hannah cursed under her breath and hurried to Bob’s side.

  His eyes were shut and he looked pale.

  Her heart in her throat, she shook him.

  “I’m awake,” he said.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said. “Where does it hurt? Is it different than it was yesterday?”

  “No, the same,” he said, but his voice was breathy and weak. “Chest pain. And a bad wave of weakness on our third trip back up here. Nari had to drag me the last little way.”

  Hannah glanced at Nari. “And you hurt your leg doing that?”

  “I don’t care. I wanted to get him to where the hides and stuff were.”

  Claire was leaning over Hannah’s shoulder. She turned and said, “No, everyone else stay back. Let Hannah do whatever it is she has to.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Hannah said softly. “I never have.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Bob said. “After I rest.” His eyes drifted shut again.

  Hannah leaned over and pressed her ear to his chest. Not that she knew anything about how a heart should sound, or even if she could hear a laboring heart by merely listening. It might not be better than doing nothing to listen, but it felt better than doing nothing.

  Claire said, “Since the gear is mostly here, why don’t two of you go get what’s left? And the rest of us can build a shelter for the night.”

  Rex and Ted volunteered to take the extra hike down to the timegate site.

  “Are we building an igloo?” Dixie said. “It doesn’t seem like enough snow is on the ground.”

  “One of the simple snow shelters,” Claire said. “We at least should get some walls up to cut the wind. A couple of you go out to gather more snow from around here. If we don’t find other people here in this time, we can build something more sturdy with stone. Hannah, feel free to tell anybody what help you need with Bob.”

  Hannah was out of ideas for what to do for him. She’d seen those willow trees in the distance, so at least there was that hope to cling to. She pulled out the rest of the bark she had from the Miocene. She put it in her water bottle, warm from her body heat, and shook it hard.

  “I’ll get started on a fire,” she said to Claire, “just as soon as I look at Nari.” She had Nari sit, and together they unlaced the outside of her hide pants, which she’d retailored to fit herself again after the mammoth hunt. “Did you fall?”

  “No, but when I was pulling Mr. O’Brien, I felt something pop.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. How badly does it hurt?”

  “It’s fine. Will he be okay?”

  “Nari. Tell me. Did you really hurt yourself?” She felt around the scarred wound.

  “It’s not nearly as bad as it was.” She jerked back when Hannah found a tender spot, but she insisted, “Really. I think whatever I did, it’ll be okay in a few days.”

  “I hope so. Because we didn’t find anything out there. No signs of humans, I mean. No roads or anything at all. So you probably have at least two more months of hard living before you’re home and safe. Keep doing the physical therapy for your shoulder but wait a week on resuming it for the leg. Let whatever you just did to yourself heal first.” Hannah glanced around, and there was Laina sitting in the snow and, using a stick, drawing formulas in the white powder. She’d remember to try and encourage her a little later, in case she was feeling bad about the jump not taking them home. For now, she wanted to wrap Nari’s knee and get some willow tea into Bob.

  She found the bandages she had used on Nari before, permanently bloodstained, but still useful as bandage material. She wrapped the knee firmly. “How’s that?”

  “It’s tight. I can’t bend my knee very far.”

  “Good. Don’t walk around any more than you have to. Your job now is to watch over Mr. O’Brien. Here’s the willow bark tea—well, water still. Keep that warm, and I’ll get a fire going so we can steep it.”

  There was plenty of firewood here and a few scrubby trees. The wood was mostly damp, but Hannah could dig into the core of the fattest downed branch here and pull out some dry tinder. The others—except for Laina—worked on the shelter while Hannah ranged out to gather more downed wood.

  She interrupted Laina’s calculations to ask her to help build a fire ring with rocks. She had to ask twice, but Laina finally nodded and started to build the base, a flat surface of rocks to keep the fire away from direct contact with the snow. There were plent
y of rocks around too. Rocks, trees, the right stars in the sky, but no people.

  When she had the fire going, she waited impatiently for the rocks to heat.

  Dixie joined her and said in a hushed voice, “Is Bob going to be okay?”

  “I hope.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Melt some snow in bowls once they get the bowls up here. I’ll be able to give him a couple strong doses of tea. Tomorrow morning, we need to go to that stream and get more bark and water.”

  When the guys returned with the last of the gear, Dixie, without being asked, also set up bowls of snow for making mammoth stew. She carved off small pieces of meat from one of the big chunks.

  Hannah retrieved the wet willow bark from Nari and made a big batch of tea. She gave a bowl to Nari and one to Bob. “For the pain,” she said to Nari.

  “Shouldn’t you save it for Mr. O’Brien?”

  “There’s plenty more here. We only need to walk over and get it. So drink up.” Hannah helped Bob sit up to drink his.

  “Strong tea this time.”

  “Good.”

  “The heat feels good going down. Don’t worry, Hannah. I’ll be fine.”

  “Of course you’ll be fine,” Hannah said, but she didn’t like his pale color. And when he raised the bowl to his lips, his hands were trembling—and not from cold, she thought.

  Another wave of frustration swept through her, and she had to grit her teeth against yelling aloud about it. She had so hoped Bob could find medical care. Now, with him having a setback, missing the modern world on this jump was even more of a disaster. It was a disappointment for all of them who wanted to see their families, but for Bob, a two-month delay in getting help could be deadly. How many of these incidents—heart attack or whatever they were—could he survive?

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That we have a lot of walking to do to explore.”

  “If I were you, I’d walk for town. Where town was in our time.”

  “That has to be a two-day hike, and worse if it snows again.”

  “But if it’s any time after the Civil War, there will be a town there, or a settlement. And before that for a few hundred years, Indians might be camped there. I’d head for the river in that hope.” The town was situated on a small river. The creek they had seen might feed into it.

  “We’ll need more food while we’re here.”

  “There should be game.”

  “And predators?”

  “Bears, wolves, not much else. And if they know people, they won’t be aggressive. If we really are within a thousand or two thousand years of our time, they’ll know people and spears and arrows and be wary.”

  “Then so will game. Might be harder to find.”

  Claire called over, “My dad never had problems bringing home deer. So they can’t be impossible to hunt.”

  Hannah didn’t point out that her father probably had a high-powered rifle with a scope that let him see the deer from a quarter-mile away. Still, Laina’s traps should work on small game of any time.

  The whole group talked over their plans while they ate mammoth stew. Everyone was sick of the meat’s taste, and the idea that they’d be able to find alternative food was enough to erase a fraction of their disappointment that they hadn’t arrived at home. They’d become a tough, resilient bunch of people. But they also were relieved to hear that they probably wouldn’t have to keep such a constant eye out for predators. All the big ones had gone extinct—been driven extinct by humans.

  They made their plans for the next few days. They’d take one day to head for the line of the stream they’d seen, Laina would put down traps, they’d gather more willow bark and any nuts they might find, and explore the stream in both directions, fishing or hunting as they did. And then the following day, they’d split into two groups, one heading for town, the other exploring in the opposite direction of the stream.

  Rex and Laina offered to be in the latter group with Hannah. The rest of them wanted to go to town, to the place they’d all spent most of their lives—if it existed. That group packed for an overnight journey, possibly two nights. Hannah and her group planned to explore only for a day at a time while the others were gone.

  The town group left early. Hannah checked on Bob, built up the fire, and made sure Nari had the new willow bark in hand. “Every couple hours for both of you,” she said. “And stay off that leg.”

  Then Laina, Rex, and she walked in a new direction, exploring the world. It was mid-morning when she saw her first sign of hope.

  Chapter 21

  Cows.

  They came over a rise and saw brown herd animals browsing in the snow. They were still far away.

  “Buffalo?” Rex said. The animals were quite a distance away to the east.

  “No, cattle I think,” Laina said, her hand over her eyes, shading them from the bright sun.

  “Then we’re close. Within a few hundred years. Indians didn’t have cattle until the white settlers brought them,” Rex said.

  Hannah had realized the same thing. “Now we just have to figure out when we are.”

  “And where people are,” Rex said.

  “You don’t sound too excited about it,” Hannah said.

  “Hannah, I’m black. If it’s 1900 or something, I’ll bet you people around here have never seen a black person. If it’s 1800, I could be an escaped slave.”

  “Oh,” she said. Nari, too, she realized, might be a shocking sight to 19th century people, unless Chinese railway workers were employed around here, and then they might mistake her for Chinese. Otherwise, they’d probably be shocked by her appearance. “Railroads,” she said. “I wonder if we’re close to one.”

  “Might be,” Rex said, “depending on when we are. Let’s head for the cows. Maybe we’ll see a farmhouse or ranch or something. Fences, even, that we could follow to a road.”

  “Fences might mean 20th century, lack of them 19th or late 18th,” Laina said. “Right?”

  Laina and Rex continued chattering in excitement about what they might find. Hannah was thinking about Bob and what kind of medical care he might get. And then something else struck her. “There were wars with Indians and whites, right? So we should be careful.”

  “They might think I’m Indian,” Laina said.

  “From a distance,” Rex said. “Not once you talked to them.”

  “How would I explain clothes like this?” Laina was dressed all in hides and furs, and carrying an atlatl and spear. If it was 1950, she’d look like a character walking out of a history book. Or, ten years later, like one walking out of a TV western.

  “Maybe we should leave our weapons somewhere,” Hannah said.

  “I think we should keep them,” Laina said. “Until we see people. And then we can decide whether to drop them or n—” She stopped mid-sentence. “What’s that?”

  “What?” Rex said.

  “Listen.”

  Hannah strained to hear whatever Laina had heard. Then she caught it. “An engine.” That was big. Important news. And not a steam engine. This meant they were in the 20th century.

  “From where?” Rex said.

  Laina turned in a circle, and then she pointed. Up.

  Hannah looked up and saw it. A small plane, headed their way.

  “We’re in the 20th century. Mid-20th, too,” Rex said.

  “It’s one of those kind with two wings,” Laina said.

  And indeed it was. “A biplane,” Rex said. “Open cockpit, I think. Guy must be cold up there.”

  “We need him,” Hannah said. “If he can land in the snow, we need to convince him to.”

  “We do?” Rex said. “Why?”

  “So he can take Bob to a hospital. If there are airplanes, there have to be hospitals, right?”

  “Right.” Rex waved his hands over his head.

  Laina stood still. Then she said, “I’ll go back for Mr. O’Brien. I can drag him here on the travois.”

  “Two would be bett
er for that,” Hannah said.

  “We’ll both go as soon as we can get this guy’s attention,” Rex said. “Hannah, it’s your job to talk him into helping us, okay? If he lands, we’ll run back right away for Bob.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said. She had a terrible kind of fear, a roiling in her stomach. She realized it was not only because she had to convince a stranger to do them a huge favor, but because she hadn’t talked to anyone but the same eleven people for six months now. What she was feeling was almost like stage fright. Or some phobia. One they didn’t have a name for. Time-travel-associated social anxiety syndrome. A new one for the shrinks’ books.

  But even as she was thinking that, she was waving her arms. The plane swooped down over the cattle, scattering them.

  “Uh-oh,” Laina said. “I hope they don’t stampede our way.”

  But they didn’t. They scattered to the sides, splitting the herd into two. The plane lifted back up and then turned, maybe to make another pass at harassing the cattle. By then the cattle had slowed to a walk. They’d recovered from their fear quickly. Maybe they were used to this guy buzzing them.

  “I wonder if it’s his livestock,” Rex said, jumping up and down and waving.

  “Wouldn’t make sense. Why run meat off them if you wanted to sell them next year?” Hannah said. “C’mon, mister, look at us.”

  Even Laina joined in, jumping up and down and whistling a piercing tone.

  “When did you learn how to do that?” Rex said.

  “Few years back,” she said.

  Hannah could see the instant the pilot caught sight of them.

  Laina said, “He’s coming in. Can he land in snow?”

  “We’ll find out,” Hannah said.

  “Rex, let’s go,” Laina said. “We need to get Bob. It’ll take us a long time.”

  “We don’t even know if he’s going to land. Much less if he’ll help us or not.”

  “Let’s go anyway. We can see what’s happening from a distance and come back if he flies off.” The two of them took off in a sprint.

  Hannah dropped to her knees and made a pleading gesture with her hands. The biplane passed her, circled around, and came back in low. She heard the pilot scream, “You need help?”