He had found a gift that made her happy. The boots also made the other sims jealous. Quick tried that as fast as he could; he did not want Sol to suffer he'd only meant to help. The only solution he came with involved sacrificing his trousers, which he could not wear anyhow. They made several pairs of improvised shoes, not as good as real boots but far superior to bare yet hairy, leathery bare feet. makeshift cordwainery let Sol keep the boots that had been his.
That relieved him a great deal.
Once he as convinced they did some good, he signed, All hunters sther gone, Quick answered. Martin gave a dissatisfied grunt. The trapper hoped the sim would not demand the shirt off his back. He needed it.
Also fearing the big male would take his boots away from Sol, the trapper suggested, foot things from skins of animals you kil . Skins stink fast, Martin signed. Quick remembered promising to show the grizzled sim to snake leather. Now, in a way, he could keep that promise. Rub skins with bark from spruce, he signed. Then slow, maybe not stink. Martin grunted again. Do, he signed. Before long, Quick doing as much skinning, scraping, and curing as he had working the trap line. He had been a lot of things before, but never a cobbler for sims. cold, wet weather made his leg hurt worse, but with Brent kind of pain, one he suspected would be with the rest of his life: he knew several men with healed in bones who were the best prophets of rain for miles. Now at last he felt himself definitely on the mend.
successive triumphs were small but satisfying: he treasured the day he sat up by himself, the day he rol ed over,the day he coupled with Sol with him on top.
The sticks were stil awkward, and so was she. That was not a posture sims often used.
Neither, come to that, was female atop male; most often they mated from behind, like any other beasts, Quick realized he would have thought before his enforced sojourn here. yet they treat far more than beasts.
That applied to other things seeing the utility of boots.
Every so often, around the camp the trapper would notice the subhumans joining as he Sol did. He smiled every time. That was not one of the things he had intended to teach them.
Still Without the fire and the windbreak, the band of sims could not have survived. In the worst storms none of them went out, except to gather more wood. They huddled in their bedding close by the fire, hugging one another for extra warmth. Often they went a couple of days without food. They were used to going hungry.
Quick was not. His bel y began to preoccupy him more than his leg. Whenever the hunting party came back with game, his stomach heralded their arrival with growl a wolf would have been proud of.
Thanks in no small part to his hatchets, the fire the never went out, nor did the sims have to sacrifice the windbreak or rob it so it became threadbare. Indeed, the females a youngsters cut so much more wood than they had before that the band often used the piles of of branches to thicken and restore their beds before using it to feed the fire. Quick had done that himself on the trapping line; fir branches made a fine mattress on which to lay a blanket.
Being now without a blanket, the trapper happily join the sims in burrowing among the branches and using the group to hold his body warmth.
His nose grew so used to the thick, resinous smell of fir that he had to make a conscious effort to notice it. He found that the sap that oozed from the branches was easier to clean from his relatively smooth skin than to get out of the sims' hair.
The sims spent a fair amount of time grooming one another under any circumstances; it was as much a part of social lives as back-fence chatter was back in the Commonwealths. Quick did not mind taking part.
Getting lair smooth and neat pleased him. He made an absent note to carve out a comb when he had the chance.
as he cleaned from her hair left his hands constantly and spit did not take it off.
after a while he accepted that as just another nuisance.
his whoop made sims all over the clearing jump. If it not dissolve the resin, neither would water. Now his feathers would stay where he put them.
He had a couple of dozen shafts finished by the time they came into the clearing, staggering under the weight of a fawn in his arms. Quick was no archer, and was hampered by having to shoot sitting down. Nevertheless, he sent several arrows close to a treetrunk that stood further away than anyone could throw a stone.
Hiss wrist raw and red from being lashed by the sinew string, he handed the bow to Martin. The sim had used it a couple of times before, but already showed signs of being a better marksman than Quick. Martin grunted the first two arrows went where he aimed them, then 'Hoo!"
as a third followed.
He shot again, as if to reassure himself it was no fluke, thrust the bow back at the trapper. Make more, he signed. Quick had won over the skeptic.
with Sol's help, Quick went from cobbler to bowyer and Per. He had finished a handful of crude bows and close to a hundred arrows before he paused to wonder about what he was doing. Men had always pushed forward across Pica as they pleased, not least because sims lacked the brains to fight back. A bow was nowhere near as potent as a gun, but it was vastly better than anything the subhumans had before. Not only that, it was simple enough for them to make and care for themselves, which was not true of firearms.
After some thought, he decided it did not matter. For one thing, ideas did not move quickly from one band of sims to the next: how recently this band had acquired sign showed that. For another, even with bows the sims could hardly become more than a nuisance. And final y, staying.
alive now counted far more than any hypothetical trouble in the future.
In such matters, the trapper was a practical man.
He grinned from ear to ear when the hunting party began coming back with more game than they ever before. Not need close, one signed, holding a rabbit, blood on its white fur in front of Quick's face.
He kissed the trapper's cheek, then patted his own belly.
from far, eat good.
Save for a single infant, not a sim had died this winter though it was the desperate time of year for the wild sim’s Quick was amazed at the difference the extra fuel and the extra food made.
But winter was also the desperate time of year for other predators that roamed the woods. One morning a female started to push aside a chunk of the windbreak, She shoved back the piled branches with a shriek of fright as a wolf bayed in anger and frustration and hunger. Around[ the windbreak, the rest of the pack took up the chorus.
The sims were besieged.
Sol shivered, next to Quick. Cold had nothing to do with it.
Wolves stay, she signed. Stay, stay, stay. We him hungry. We go out, they eat. They eat enough, then go - The rest of the sims seemed sunk in the same fit of depression. None showed any sign of trying to drive wolves away, nor did they reach for the bows that lay by fire.
Their wits were slower than humans' after al , Quick saw: they had trouble grasping that what served so well on the hunt would also defend them.
He was sure they would eventually have worked through for themselves, but lacked the patience to wait.
He shouted till he had Martin's attention. His voice also roused the devil's choir outside the windbreak, but he did not care about that. Take bows, arrows, he signed. Shoot wolves. He red that by pantomiming drawing a bow back to his shoulder to shoot wolves, those you not shoot run away. The big male rubbed his long, chinless jaw as he led with the idea. He sprang to his feet with a wordless run for the weapons. He dashed to the windbreak, I through. Quick heard a snarl from the far side. The was not afraid of a sim, especially not with a barrier between them.