“Sister, I’ll take the straps off. But you must promise not to tear off the little skins covering your legs with your teeth. Will you?”
The blizzard blew for three days, but the wind began to die during the third night, and morning brought a full blaze of sun in a blue sky. It also brought back the wolves, which had shrewdly left the exposed mesa during the blow. Bili and Bahb, who were atop the tower, working on the frozen carcasses with their skinning knives, mindcalled Milo as the first grey predators moved out across the frozen surface of the deep snow.
Carrying the cased rifle and a folded tarp, Milo climbed back up onto the tower roof. He had been classed an expert rifleman in both the armies with which he could remember having served, and during the long blizzard days he had read and reread the booklet that the Browning Arms Company had packed with the weapon, then stripped it, cleaned it and dry-fired it until he thought he knew all he could learn without putting a few live rounds through the mirror-bright bore.
Lacking the sandbags he recalled, he steadied the rifle on a tarp-covered dead and frozen wolf, opened the first box of cartridges and filled the magazine, then settled himself to wait until the maximum number of furry targets were in sight on the mesa.
The pack must not have found much if any game during the blizzard, for soon most of them were gathered about the tower, engaged in a snapping, snarling battle-royal over the skinned carcasses the Linsee boys dropped over as soon as the pelts were off. But a few wolves still were sitting or ambling at some distance from the tower, so Milo decided to sight in the rifle.
Far down, near the distant edge of the mesa, sat two wolves, intently observing something in the forest below. Milo centered the cross hairs of the scope on the nearer one’s head and slowly squeezed off the first round.
The butt slammed his shoulder with a force and violence he had had forgotten. Below the tower, the wolfpack members were streaming off in every direction, yelping, howling, tails tucked between legs, looking back as they ran with wide and fear-filled eyes. But Milo did not notice, so intent was he on checking the performance of his rifle, which had thrown a good ten feet short of target and well to the left.
The two distant wolves had looked around at the noise, but as they had never been hunted with firearms, they failed to connect the noise with the small something that had drilled through the frozen crust, may not even have been aware of that small something, since it had arrived ahead of the noise.
Milo chambered a fresh round, then adjusted the scope and resettled himself behind it. The second round sizzled out of the barrel. Through the scope, Milo saw the target suddenly duck down, then shake his head and raise his muzzle skyward, looking about above him.
Again he adjusted the scope. The eighth round sent the target wolf leaping high in the air, to fall and lie jerking on the snow. The other wolf still was sniffing at his fallen packmate when a 180-grain softpoint ended his curiosity forever.
Milo had the tower top to himself for some time. The Linsee boys had descended the rickety stairs shaking their ringing heads and wondering how even Uncle Milo could stand those incredibly loud noises.
In a way, Milo felt sorry for the pack of merciless killers—they had no idea who or what was killing them. The loud reports kept them well away from the tower, which simply made it easier to shoot them with the long-range weapon. Milo tired hard to make each of his kills clean, and the tremendous shocking power of the mushrooming bullets helped. He never knew how many wolves got away, if any, but he stopped firing only when there were no more targets.
When he stood up finally and surveyed the slaughter he had wrought, he felt a little sick. Of all animals, he had always most admired wolves and the great cats. Sight of the tumbled, fury bodies and thought of the fierce vitality his skill had snuffed out so effortlessly pricked his conscience.
But the Horseclansmen did not share his anachronistic squeamishness, when once they filed out upon the roof and saw the windfall. Whooping, they lowered themselves down the walls and ran to the closest dead wolves, skinning knives out. Winter-wolf pelts were warm and valuable. They would become wealthy men at the next summer’s tribe council, trading pelts for cattle, sheep, concubines and inanimate treasures.
By the fourth day after the blizzard had ended, the deer carcass was long since but gnawed bones and the snakes were curing skins; the cat and her kittens had lapped up almost all the powdered milk Milo had mixed and set before them, so he took Djim and Dik down into the forest to seek edible game.
Four big hares, however, had been all that the hunters had to show for over three hours’ stalking when Djim’s keen eyes picked out a large animal moving among the thick, snow-heavy brush. Alerted by mindspeak, Milo had raised the rifle and almost loosed off the round before the scope told him just what the animal was. Pursing his lips. he whistled the horse-call of the clans, and the chestnut maze broke off her browsing to come trotting out of the scrub.
Milo put out a hand toward the mare, but she shied away, going instead to Dik and nuzzling against his chest.
Smiling and patting the shaggy neck, he said, “Why, this is my hunter, Swiftwater, Uncle Milo. But I left her back with the other horses, in that deer park.”
“Then it’s a wonder she hasn’t been wolf meat,” commented Djim Linsee laconically. “I figure most of our horses are.”
Dik hugged the mare’s fine head to him. “Well, she won’t have to fear that now. I’ll take care of my good girl.”’
“Then we’ll have to make you a tent down here in the woods,” said Djim bluntly. “ ’Cause it ain’t no way you’re going to get a horse up on that mesa, Dik.”
Dik set his jaw stubbornly. “I’m not going to Leave her alone down here.”
Milo nodded. “No, you’re not. You’re going to fork her right now and ride back to the camp. Her fortuitous arrival changes the complexion of things. You’ve got your bow and your dirk.” He unsnapped his saber. “Here, take this. Djim, give him your spear, too.
“Dik, Fil says that the big cat may never fully recover her strength in those forepaws. I’m going to persuade her to come back to camp with us, her and the kittens.”
Neither Horseclansman evinced any surprise at the intent, for both had “chatted” often with the crippled cat, and Djim was now a virtual parent and frequent companion to all three kittens. To their minds, the cats were human, anatomical differences notwithstanding.
Milo continued, “Dik, tell the chiefs of all we have found and done here. Tell them to come with a large party, plenty of spare horses. We’ll strip the ruin, up there, of anything we can use. Then, too,” he grinned. “you won’t want to leave any of your wolf pelts or snake hides behind. Tell the chiefs to hurry, Dik. Esmith and Linsee will be very wealthy clans by the time they leave this winter’s camp.”
“It’ll take them at least a week to get around to getting here,” thought Milo as he and Djim continued the hunt.
“They wouldn’t be Horseclansmen if they didn’t spend a couple of days and nights discussing the matter, then two or three more days arguing about how to divide booty that they don’t yet have in camp. Then they’ll take at least a day getting organized. Both chiefs and every warrior will insist upon coming, but in the end, half will stay behind to guard the camp and the herds.
“But maybe the week will give me time to read the rest of the records in that office. What I’ve found in there so far is damned interesting. Back-breeding then-living animals to produce extinct ones they were descended from wasn’t then new, as I recall—the Europeans had reproduced a decent facsimile of the aurochs that way.
“And that could damn well be the origin of those cats, come to think of it. The only cats I ever heard of with fangs that long were called sabertooth cats, and they’ve been extinct in this hemisphere for ten, twenty thousand years. And those huge, long-horned bison, there’re more of them around this part of the country than in any other place I can recall; they could easily have originated here.”