A Distant Eden (18 page)

Jerry was frustrated with the men. “I have to admit, I’m surprised. I would’ve thought they would set snares all up and down the creek. It’s amazing what lack of ambition they have, even with starvation to motivate them. It’s like they want it handed to them, and won’t break a sweat to get more.”

Dave watched out the window. He said, “It could be starvation has deteriorated their judgment and they haven’t thought beyond this meal. In fact, Jerry, we should probably be surprised that the one man thought to reset the snares. That may have been extraordinarily clear thinking on his part. Truth is we’ll never know which it is, laziness or mental stress.”

Dave spotted another gang coming across the field. “Uh-oh, looks like trouble. Those guys are going to see the snares and the pig tracks and put it together that someone around here has fresh meat. Crap, I didn’t think about that. Now they’ll search every house. They’ll probably kill the people with the meat. All we did was to set them up to be shot by thugs.”

Jerry moved to look out the window. “Oh man, I never even thought about that. I thought we were doing them a favor. Instead, we killed them. This sucks. Look, we got to get this place ready for inspection. Those goons’ll probably come through here soon and we want to be extra sure they don’t find anything.”

Dave and Jerry went under the house and notified everyone. Then they went back upstairs and took a long final look through each room, making sure there were no signs they were still in, or rather under, the house. They returned below and the adults took up watch at a spider hole.

A few hours later they spotted the gang going through the house next door. Then the gang came through their house. They could hear them walking around on the floor; they could hear them talking. Up the stairs they clumped, then back down. Most of the time was spent in the kitchen. Within a couple of minutes they left. They went to the house on the other side and went through it quickly too. Only a few minutes after they left, the families heard gunfire from a couple of houses over.

Dave turned to Jerry. “Sounds like they found the meat. I expect they’ll stay there until it’s eaten. That means we go into lockdown mode.” But Dave was wrong. The gang took the fresh hog meat and carried it out of the house where they had shot the men, taking it next door. From the firing ports, the group could see the gang building a large fire in the backyard next door and cooking the meat. There were ten of them.

After dark, Dave and Jerry headed upstairs and watched the gang through the dormer windows. Just like the men before them, they did not await the hog to complete cooking, eating it partially raw. “Well,” said Jerry, “if they’re still here in a couple of days they may be sick by then.”

“We really need to get out of here,” Dave said. “Having those creeps next to us makes me want to go even more, but having them next to us makes it harder to get out unseen.”

That evening they spoke to Roman on the radio, as they did almost every night. Roman told them to sit tight for two or three days; Adrian was coming with a squad of soldiers to help them get home. Roman said, “Avoid those guys for now. Avoidance is the all-time premier number one survival technique in nature. The largest grizzly bear tries to avoid conflict. If you can avoid them, do so. If you can’t, then kill them. But try to wait for Adrian.”

Jerry said, “Roger that, Dad. However it shakes out, we’ll see you in a week or two. Let’s set rendezvous points and recognition signals—also, let me describe the best way to approach the house.”

The next morning Adrian and his men left for Dallas. They carried their weapons, ammo and a little bit of traveling food. The MREs were about gone, but there was enough for this mission if they ate light. They carried ponchos and the sleeping mats and canteens and water purification tablets. The plan was to carry the children on the return trip, so they didn’t want to be burdened. They also carried their Zulu spears. They had devised an across the back carrier that allowed them to reach and pull the spear free in a split second, yet was out of the way when not needed.

They left doing double time, maintaining single file with plenty of space between each man. At this rate they could cover a mile every ten minutes. This varied with terrain and the number of fences they had to cross, but the average was good. In a straight line, they had to travel sixty miles cross-country. Adrian figured they could do it in fourteen hours, allowing for rest and foot care breaks.

However, he added another ten hours to that. Once they were at the edge of the city they would be slowing down, moving with stealth. He expected to see his cousins in approximately twenty-four hours. This kind of fast travel took a toll; once they arrived they would need rest before heading back, and a good bit of food to restore their vitality. In an emergency, they could move straight in and then straight back out without food or rest, but a tired soldier is a soldier at risk, and if it wasn’t necessary then it would be foolish.

Adrian was taking this as semi-emergency at this point. Get in, rest up, get out. Hopefully with no hostile contact, too—especially on the way out, when they’d have women and children.

To maintain double time for hours on end requires as much mental as physical toughness. The body will take as much as the mind can force it to. Training for this type of travel had been primarily the type where the troops were pushed way past what they had thought they could endure. The only way to learn how much you can truly endure is to go to the point where the body refuses to move no matter how much your mind demands it. It is agonizing training.

The mental toughness includes an ability to place the mind in a state similar to meditation. The mind has to be present enough to make the necessary adjustments to the terrain, but not so focused on the present that it wallowed in the pain. This too can only be learned by doing. These men had learned. They double-timed, a fast trot, across country without much thought involved in the process. They were more alert to looking for other people than they were to what they were doing. When necessary, they communicated via hand signals.

Every two hours they stopped to rest and change socks. Each man inspected his own feet and then his buddies’ feet for signs of hot spots or blisters. The reason for inspecting each other’s feet is that some portions of the foot are less visible to their owner than they are to someone else. There was also the problem of stubbornness. Soldiers get stubborn about not recognizing when they are about to have a problem. The buddy system had saved many a bad foot problem.

The men reached the edge of town on schedule at dusk, then began the slow process of working their way across town without being seen. Adrian was right again; this took twelve hours. Just before daybreak the next morning, Adrian found the field behind Jerry’s house. They scouted the house next door where the gang was staying and saw there were no sentries.

Adrian tapped on the under-skirting, expecting Jerry to respond.

Matt walked behind James, who limped heavily, favoring his right leg. As they approached the house, Matt hollered out that they were coming in. The boys met them at the gate, armed and ready for tricks. Matt gave them a nod of approval for being wary and they went on into the house, leaving the boys outside on lookout duty.

Sitting at the kitchen table with Kristy, Alfred, Wilma, and James, Matt said, “I’ve been thinking for some time now that the ranch cannot support six of us permanently, especially since the boys are growing and eat enough for two adults each. The problem I’ve had is that leaving would be abandoning you two. It’s been a dilemma. If we stay, we’ll starve you out. If we leave, we leave you in a pickle.

“James may be the solution. He lost his family recently. That would be three people instead of six. Eight if you count how the boys eat. I believe three can survive on the bounty of the land. Plus, James is a game biologist; he’ll know how best to maintain a renewable food supply. If you and he agree, then we’ll be free to leave. Roman has consistently asked us to join with him and his growing tribe. He claims that they have plenty of food with the river providing fish and mussels and turtles and a wild hog population that’s growing every day. They also have plenty of pecans and acorns and even mesquite beans, plus all kinds of wild vegetation that’s good to eat. He makes it sound like the land of milk and honey. He now also has two doctors and five nurses ready to set up a hospital. I guess there’s a lot to be said for river bottom living in these times. Roman needs my metal working skills, and he thinks I would make a good preacher—he thinks they need that too. So, what do you guys think?”

Alfred looked at James closely. “I remember you, James, from a couple of years ago. You were out here every day for two weeks. I liked you then. I doubt you have changed for the worse since then. One big question though, James: why poach? Why not just come right up to us?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure,” James answered. “Since my family died, I’ve been depressed, not really wanting to talk to anyone or be around anyone. I remembered how much game there was on this place—more than it can carry without supplemental feeding. So I decided I would come out here and live off the excess game, helping you out in a backhand kind of way. I thought I could be careful enough that you wouldn’t know I was here. I’m sorry for trespassing, and for poaching. If I’d known you have so many mouths to feed I wouldn’t have come here.”

“Well, son, I don’t hold it against you. Given what you thought you were doing, you weren’t meaning anyone any harm. From what Matt tells me about capturing you, you never showed any inclination to do harm. So, yes, you are more than welcome by us.”

“That works for me too, Alfred. I can stay out in the barn if you like.”

Wilma had been biting her lip since hearing of the loss of his family. She jumped in. “No you won’t, that’s no good; we have rooms to spare in the house. You’ll move in.”

“Since all I have is on my back, then consider me moved.”

“Excellent,” Kristy said in a relieved voice. “God has provided what each of us needed.”

Matt relaxed and smiled. “Now I need to make plans to leave. Alfred, where is the nearest bicycle shop?”

“Bicycle shop? That’s a peculiar question.”

Matt said, “We used a bicycle getting here, and it gave me ideas about traveling.
With four good bicycles, we can travel fast and carry a decent load. We can put saddlebags on the bikes, carry backpacks and make rifle scabbards. There was an experiment by the US Army shortly after the civil war using bicycles instead of horses. A troop made a cross-country trip to see what the outcome would be. Believe it or not they averaged fifty miles per day—and that’s cross-country, mind, not on roads. The experiment was a partial success in that they were able to make as good a time as horse soldiers, with less impact to their actual operations as they didn’t have to feed or otherwise care for horses. But it was hard on the men and it was never actually adopted. Then there were the North Vietnamese—they used bicycles to carry freight on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. There have been several instances of other guerrilla troops using bicycles for transport. So, it’s not a new idea that I am considering here.

“If we can get two more quality bikes, we can travel on paved roads from here to “Fort Brazos,” as Roman likes to call it. We can travel at night—maybe even fifty miles a night at the beginning. Once we get the muscles conditioned properly, that might increase to a hundred miles. Kristy and I will be the determining factor; the boys can easily outride us.”

Alfred and Wilma made the usual noises about hating to see them leave, but were actually relieved at the prospect of not starving themselves off their own property. Everyone originally had good intentions at the time, but they all had seen the actual problems and knew that something would have to give eventually.

James said, “The nearest bike shop that I know of is back in Ozona, and I don’t know how badly it may have been looted. When the gasoline gave out, many others probably thought about cycling too. It could be a dangerous trip into town for nothing.”

“I have a better idea,” Alfred said. “Matt, do you remember Raymond Hart? He has a ranch over a couple of miles from here. He also made a business of pay hunters. Instead of going with exotic game, he had the idea of mixing mountain bikes, mountain bike trails and hunters. It was a pretty good idea, too. His place appealed to a particular niche of young people who had money, enjoyed cross-country bike riding, and deer hunting. He placed his stands where the hunters would ride bikes to them. When they killed a deer, they had the extra pleasure of packing it out by bike. I am betting that he still has bicycles—about ten, I think, probably pretty good ones too if I know him. I wouldn’t mind making a trip to check up on him anyway, see how he is getting along.”

“I vaguely remember him. If he’s interested in trading I have several extra rifles and pistols. We can’t carry all of them back with us anyway. How about I carry a couple of rifles and let’s go see him?”

“One of the first things we have to do is to kill off twenty deer, and I mean right away,” James interjected into the conversation. “Otherwise, there’s going to be a large die-off when the available food gets too low to support the herd out there. Twenty is a lot to process and I don’t intend we waste any of it. Before you go to Fort Brazos, we need your help to kill and process all that meat. The bonus is that it will provide you with travel rations. We can make pemmican for you to carry. Pemmican has a tremendous amount of calories in it, and travels and keeps well. It was the primary food of the French fur traders. They would pole and pull large rafts upstream in ice-cold water day after day. Brutally hard work. They kept fueled with buffalo pemmican.”

Matt said, “Pemmican would be great, but it takes a lot of animal fat to make. These deer aren’t fat. A little, but now their cornfeed is gone, that’s disappearing. I don’t see how we can make pemmican.”

James explained, “I’ll bet right now that you guys have been eating only the lean deer meat. Probably the heart and liver too, but that’s about it, right? You have the look of people about to go into rabbit starvation. You ever heard the stories of the early settlers that died of starvation although they ate tons of rabbit? They died because they weren’t getting enough fat. Foolishly died, at that. Every subsistence culture has learned better than that. There is fat on those deer, but you aren’t culturally attuned to where it is, or to eating it.