A Long Time Until Now (25 page)

CHAPTER 11

The next day, Bob Barker found the goat wrestle was almost anticlimactic. As Ortiz said, they laid out crisscross parachute cord over the brush on the slope, waited for three goats to step into it, and started pulling. The goats jumped nimbly up, straight into the crocheted nets thrown by Ortiz and Caswell.

Bob waded in and untangled one, bit by bit, with Ortiz helping. The scruff of the neck worked a bit to slow their thrashing.

Then he was picking up a smelly, squirming goat and carrying it across the field. He stopped after fifty yards, squatted down to hold the thing in place, and gasped for breath. While he did that, Caswell reached under his ass and tied the creature’s legs. That felt weird. There were so many jokes. She’d definitely be pissed if he said anything, so he didn’t.

“Go on,” she prompted, and went to tie the one Ortiz carried.

He made another fifty yards, another pause, smelling stinking goat, feeling it breathe in panic. He’d much rather wrestle the injured cat.

It took a good twenty minutes to reach the corral. He chose an inward point of the fence, reached the corner, heaved the goat up, waited while Caswell untied its feet, and dropped it in.

Ortiz rolled his over the side, and they went back for the last. Caswell had it pinned, and clutched the net to keep it down. The two men grabbed it front and rear, and carried it like a casualty. He had an arm under its chin to stop its biting, with it in a half chokehold. He was sweating heavily in his jacket, despite the cool air.

At the fence, Ortiz lowered the legs and he shifted. He got arms under the bristly hair, hooked the legs firmly, and heaved. It struggled and kicked him in the thigh, the balls and the guts. He grunted, clamped down on it, and hefted it like a kid with a puppy. Its gyrations did little, then.

He kicked something as he walked, and realized the damned thing had dropped a deuce on his boot. Of course, the old slick boats would have shed it better than the sueded finish on these.

“Crap,” he said, and realized the irony.

He fairly tossed that one over. It rolled, stood, and brayed at him.

“Yeah, fuck you, too, pal. You’ll be over coals in a week, if I have anything to say about it.” He couldn’t blame the animal, but he didn’t want to be friends with dinner, either. Much better to hate them.

“How many are we going to get?” he asked Ortiz.

“Eventually we need breeding stock, and we’ll eat the kids to keep the milk coming.”

“Yeah. Cheese. Someone here said they know how to make it.”

“I do,” Caswell said. “Spencer says he does, but I expect like a lot of his skills, it’s stuff he’s read about and not actually done.”

“Well, we’ve all got some of that. Like Oglesby and sex.”

Caswell gave him that stare.

Bob said, “Look, I’m sorry. I joke about stuff so I don’t get pissed off. I’ve got goat crap on my boot, bruises on my groin and thigh, goat smell all over me, and no cigarettes.”

Ortiz saved him. “I figure a half dozen for now, and we’ll expand the pen, but we’ll need to make sure they’re fed and watered. Someone has to come dig a pond in that low spot and start bringing water in, until we can run a pipe.”

“Good point. Don’t want them to bind up their guts and die.”

“Just toss all the food waste here, and all the trimmings off the trees. We’ll recover some sticks we can burn.”

“I’ll do it. Hey, the two of you are going to get me my breakfast cereal. You are my heroes.”

They got three more goats into the pen, and even though it seemed they could climb out, the animals ran around, then butted the fence, then settled down to munch grass.

“Not the sharpest spoons in the drawer, are they?” he said.

Ortiz said, “They’re not. But we’ll need other animals eventually. Still, this will make it easier to get a few things.”

That done, he looked across the stream at the site. The north wall was half done to the stream. Progress. They needed to find some way to trade with the Urushu for something other than medical care.

He walked down to the rocks to wash the stink off. Cold water was better than warm goat. He did wish the course was deeper, though.

Felix Trinidad was glad Alexander had found the cat. She seemed to be taking it harder than the others, and given her age and family, and her fitness, something to help her relax was probably a good thing. Chopping wood took a lot of stress off, but she really didn’t seem fit enough for much of it. She dragged branches, but that wasn’t the same as hacking bits off.

Or maybe he was just atavistic. It worked for him, but possibly not the others. Also, he needed to pay less attention to the females. They weren’t available, though he’d love to jump Caswell, but she didn’t seem like the type to go for men at all. A very angry, closeted lesbian, if he had his guess. Even if she did anything with men, it wouldn’t be with him, and it wouldn’t be very good. She was a large bundle of negative emotions.

Alexander was just depressed, and it wasn’t all separation. She had a fairly tough façade, but was not at all happy. The combination of being the oldest, and female, and with health problems meant she’d never fit with the rest, either.

Though she had that faintly mousy presentation, she was probably a firecracker in bed. But it would be up to her to make the call.

She seemed to get along best with Spencer, who was closest to her age. She didn’t notice Felix, found Oglesby annoying, didn’t like Dalton’s religious presence, and definitely didn’t care for Devereaux. She might consider the LT, but kept a very professional shell.

Which was a long-winded way of wondering when he was going to get laid. These women were off limits, so the interaction with the natives needed to continue until they could bring some in for socializing. And those women were tall, which was just fantastic. If only he could persuade them to be interested in a shorty like himself.

Back to the wall. They had one side, half of another, two natural obstacles—the creek and ditch—and several piles of brush. The more they got built, the better he felt. Spencer was correct about that. They needed their own territory, their own secure area, and they’d have both less labor and more comfort.

They had some fittings to install, that he’d helped carve. If the LT’s design worked, this would be a hinged gate.

Spencer said, “Trinidad, you’re the little guy, you’re voted.”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s always Felix up the pole.”

He grabbed the post, braced his feet, and shimmied. He reached up for the pin and thong holding it to its neighbor, and hoisted himself to the top of the wall. He was breathing a bit as he wedged a foot between poles. Barker tossed up the headpiece to him, a tumbling, rough-hewn block. He caught it and he wiggled it down the gatepost. It had been preshaped by drilling with the power drill from the toolbox, filing, chiseling, and finally just spinning it around and around the post until it fit. It had two holes cut for dowels.

The three men below shoved and pushed the gate section into place. He slid the headstock down, twisted until the dowel holes lined up with the recesses in the gatepost.

“Hammer,” he called, and Barker lobbed it underhand to him. He tapped the dowels in until they started to mush on the ends.

“Try it,” he said.

The pivot worked smoothly enough. They opened the gate both ways. The inside would be reinforced with a crossbar and logs set into the ground. Nothing the natives had should be able to open it, and most animals would detour around. A stampede might be a problem, but even then, after a few bumps, most animals would go past, not blindly into a wall of logs.

Barker walked the gate in and out, and it was surprisingly smooth. The rough spots had been well worn. Socketed top and bottom, it was a functional hinge.

“Good job, Bob,” he said.

“That was Sergeant Spencer’s work.”

“Still a good job. Can I get down now?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.” The poles were biting into his ankles. He dislodged himself carefully, stepped back and dropped.

“We’ll put the second door up tomorrow.”

“Good. Once we do some more trenching it will be awesome.”

Spencer came over. “There’s going to be braces that prevent the doors swinging back, top and bottom. Then a crosslet bar in case we need extra reinforcement. And a sill.”

He asked, “Punji spikes in the trenches?”

“I am considering that, yes.”

Hah. He’d been joking.

So he added, “Also vines and twine to tangle whoever it is.”

Spencer said, “Right, but we also need to start on stone walls. Constant improvement.”

That . . . sounded odd.

“Who are we trying to defend against?”

“Anyone or anything. There’s thousands of them, ten of us. Enough bodies can climb over, or ram through, or maybe they’ll learn to control rhinos. I don’t know. Since we can’t get back home, we want a castle, fields full of serfs, a noble class of us and kids, who are well-educated, and then we’ll see about windmills for electricity, teaching people to mine metal for us. As far as we can go. Unless you want to eat grubs and baluts and chase native chicks.”

“The native chicks are starting to look pretty good. But yeah, we might as well work on being tops.”

“Visitors to the north!” Oglesby called. “Large group, a dozen or more.”

Elliott ordered, “Be ready, stay in camp. I want someone covering the gap.” The south wall was twenty feet shy of the stream while they figured out what to do about that.

“I have it,” he said, and grabbed his rifle from the log he’d leaned it on.

“What loading?”

“Magazines in, chambers empty,” Spencer said.

He climbed up the ladder on the back of Number Eight and got a good view downslope. Barker came up next to him. Oglesby was in the turret of Number Nine. He did a quick scan by eye. Spencer came up, and Elliott too, and settled next to him. Caswell and Dalton had the east covered from behind logs. Ortiz and Alexander were watching the north from the brush pile.

“More than a dozen,” he said. “Sixteen? And those are some other group, not the Urushu.” It was less than a kilometer, but there were trees down there and assorted terrain features covered in scrub. Visibility was about twenty percent.

Barker said, “They’re significantly more advanced.”

“How do you figure?”

“I’m looking at the bindings on their spears, and the cut of their clothing. And they have bows. And tamed dogs.”

Yes, and he should have caught that. “Yeah . . . think they’re going to move in?”

“I expect so. Likely some advance or scouting party.”

He said, “Well, this is a major river valley. There’s bound to be both transients and settlers.”

Spencer said, “Be glad we got as good a spot as we did.”

He turned and said, “I was joking earlier, Sergeant, but I agree. We need to work on some stone, and mortar.”

Elliott said, “Slaked lime we can do. Water and sand we can do. I’m trying to remember the rest.”

Spencer said, “And it would be much better to get flat stone, or find some way to cut it. I can crack it and burn it, but it takes so damned long.”

Barker was still watching the travelers. He said, “Those dogs bother me. They’re not wolves. They’re dogs. Domesticated.”

Elliott looked quizzical. “Okay?”

“So how do they have domesticated dogs? We haven’t seen any others.”

“They may be first in the area.”

Ortiz called up, “I don’t think so. Breeding dogs took centuries. They’d be all over. What do they look like?”

Barker said, “Wolfhounds or large malamute types, but definitely dogs.”

Ortiz was standing, but stayed in position. “I might be able to tell if I could examine one.”

Felix was intel. He wanted to talk to them.

Elliott had the binox and was studying them.

He asked, “Can I take a look, sir?”

“Yes, here,” the lieutenant said and handed them over.

“I’m next,” said Barker.

“Then me, goddammit,” said Spencer.

“I’m behind you,” Alexander said. She held her camera with telephoto. “Strap around your neck first, and for gods’ sake, be careful.”

“Got it,” Spencer said, taking it and carefully looping the strap over his head.