The Door to September: An Alternate Reality Novel: Survival in Prehistoric Wilderness (Back to the Stone Age Book 1) by R Magnusholm

Author:R Magnusholm [Magnusholm, R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HappySnail Media
Published: 2020-08-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 47

The Sunset Clan

The sun shone brightly through interlaced branches overhead, and birds chirped, piped, and twittered. Despite the frosty air and hard-packed snow, spring was in the air. Five miles west of Camp Bramble, the great tidal river glinted darkly through a curtain of swaying reeds to John and Liz’s left. They kept to the jumble of cracked shore ice where their moccasined feet left no prints. A dense forest of birch and spruce loomed to the right.

Spot ranged, scouting the ground in front. As usual, Liz carried the firepot in her canvas bag and a bow with a nocked arrow in her hands. Her cheeks were rosy, and her eyes darted around, looking for danger. Spot had sniffed a tiger nearby, and even though the predator kept well away, it wouldn’t do to be complacent.

John strained under the weight he carried. In the bearskin slung like a large knapsack over his shoulder were two deep-frozen ursine heads. A bundle of sharpened stakes to make bent-sapling traps had been tied to the sack. They came to a prominent headland jutting into the reed bed. The ursine trail turned inland, skirting a thorny tangle, and the path narrowed to squeeze between two holly stands.

He lowered his gruesome cargo to the ground. “I guess that’s far enough.” As Liz was heavy with child, it wouldn’t be wise to venture too far from the safety of their fort.

“Yes.”

He pulled the axe from his belt and selected a ten-foot high dead tree standing by the trail. He chopped off its top half and mounted the first head, turning it so its empty eye sockets (the crows had been at it) stared upriver. Then they searched for a suitable sapling for a spring-loaded trap further up the path. The sight of the severed head on a stake should distract the victim long enough to miss the trap.

After selecting a young pine, they worked in silence with John bending the sapling and Liz fitting the bent end to a notched upright stick. The sapling looked good, and John straightened it and tied a sharpened stake to it. Then they bent it back, added a trigger-stick, and camouflaged the contraption with fallen branches that littered the ground after the winter storms.

They headed deeper into the woods, found another ursine trail between holly thickets, mounted the second head on a spike, and made another trap.

“I feel horrible about it.” Liz stared at the concealed devil’s device. “These upriver ursines have done nothing to us.”

“If we don’t scare them off, they will find us.”

She sighed.

He dropped a couple of pine fronds to camouflage the sharpened stake. “I don’t want to kill anyone needlessly, either.”

“The trap’s more likely to strike a deer or an auroch than an ursine. Lots of wildlife here.”

“Wolves and tigers would be delighted. Foxes too.”

She glanced at the sun. “We’d better go before the tide turns.”

On their way back, they kept close to the water’s edge. With the tide still mostly out, the great slabs of cracked ice lay directly on the mudflat.

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