Dawn of Mammals (Book 5): Mammoth by Cadle Lou

Author:Cadle, Lou [Cadle, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction | Time Travel
Published: 2017-02-08T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Claire said, “I’ve been racking my brain, trying to remember everything I ever read, and everything my father told me in passing, anything at all about hunting bigger game. I don’t know much, but maybe what I do know is enough.” She looked around at everyone. “There are seven of us healthy, which is about half of the minimum I’d like to try this with, but this is what we have to work with.”

She paused to upend her bowl of soup, scraping the last few drops into her mouth with her finger. She set it aside and said, “I think our best chance is to catch one of the mammoths away from the others. And the best chance of that is if one drifts to the side or behind the main group. After that, it’s a matter of keeping it in place, isolated, while the others are moving off, or of driving it farther away from the others if we can.”

Ted put his bowl aside. “So what’s the plan?”

“It depends a good deal on you. And on that hide you just brought back.”

“The hide?” Dixie said. “What good is that in a hunt?”

“It’s fresh, it’s big, and it still smells like the animal it came from. Ted’s going to wear it over his head and be the one to get closest to the herd.”

“We don’t know one will drift away like you want,” Hannah said. “They stuck close together when we saw them, at least until they started chasing us.”

“It has to happen eventually. One will find a patch to browse while the others are walking. One will go to investigate something. One will step in a hole and take thirty seconds to pull itself out. Surely even mammoths stumble sometimes.”

“It’s a good idea,” Bob said, “but it might take a few days before it happens.”

“Then it takes a few days,” Claire said. “We’re going to gear up and follow them. Two days, three days, however long it takes. We’ll trail along. And we’ll stay within visual range. I’m hoping they get used to us being there. As they do, Ted’ll move up on them, wearing the hide. And Nari, I want you to trade pants with him for the duration. He can take your leather pants and you can wear his.”

“I’ll have to let them out. Add a strip of hide to the outer seam, maybe, and lengthen them. But yes, I can do that quickly.”

“Make it tonight. So Ted gets close, acting like an antelope, trying to fool them into thinking that’s just what he is, another grazer following behind, taking advantage of the food they’ve dug up. A second group—the pair of Rex and Laina—comes up behind him, as close as the mammoths will allow, with ropes and the atlatl and almost all the spears. Either Rex can snarl the mammoth up in nets and ropes, or Laina can launch spears at it. Any launched spears that miss, Ted can grab and throw, or dart in and use up close.

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