Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

Carrying the cased rifle and a folded tarp, Milo climbed back up onto the roof of the ruined tower. He had been classed an expert rifleman in every army in which he could recall serving, and during the long blizzard days and nights he had read and reread the booklet that the Browning Arms company had packed with the rifle, then stripped the piece. thoroughly cleaned and relubricated it with other contents of the steel chest, and dry-fired it until he thought that he knew all that he could learn of the weapon without actually putting live rounds through the minor-bright, chromed bore. He also had completely familiarized himself with the scope and its adjusting knobs, for the optic device would be useful to him long after the last round for the rifle had been expended.

Lacking the sandbags he recalled using to steady the piece or long-range shooting, he utilized the tarp-covered frozen carcass of an unskinned wolf, settled himself in the prone position behind it, opened a box of cartridges and filled the rifle’s magazine, then removed the lens covers from the scope. Everything now in readiness to give the wolves a rude and very deadly surprise, he relaxed in place, waiting until a maximum number of the predators had come within range of the rifle.

The pack must have not found much if any game during the days of the blizzard, for soon the most of them were gathered about the foot of the tower, engaged in a snapping, snarling battle royal over the skinned carcasses the Linszee twins tossed off the roof as soon as the pelts were off them. But a few wolves were still sitting or ambling at some distance from the ruins, so Milo set about sighting in the weapon.

Far down, near the distant edge of the plateau, sat two of the wolves, intently observing something in the forest below, Milo centered the cross hairs of the scope on the head of the nearer one and slowly squeezed off the first round. The rifle butt slammed his shoulder with a force and violence he had half forgotten. Below the tower, the wolf-pack members were streaming off in every direction—yelping, howling, barking, tails tucked between their legs, looking back as they ran from that awesome sound with wide and fear-filled eyes. But Milo did not notice the lupine exodus, so intent was he in checking the performance of the rifle, which he calculated had thrown a good ten feet short of his chosen target and well to the left.

The two distant wolves had looked around at the noise, but as they never had been hunted with firearms, they failed to connect that noise with danger or with the small something that had drilled its sizzling way through the frozen crust; they may not even have been aware of that something, since it had arrived somewhat ahead of the noise.

Milo chambered a fresh round, adjusted the scope and then settled himself behind the weapon, remembering this time to push the butt firmly against his shoulder. The second round whizzed out of the barrel. Through the scope, Milo saw the target animal suddenly duck down, then shake his head and raise his long muzzle skyward, looking around above him.

Three morn rounds were fired and three more adjustments of the telescopic sight made, but the sixth fired round sent the distant wolf leaping high into the air, to fall and lie jerking and twitching in the snow for a few moments before becoming very still. The other wolf was still sniffing at its mysteriously stricken packmate when a 180-grain softpoint bullet ended its curiosity forever.

Milo had had the tower top to himself for some time. The two Linszee 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 he was engaged in extirpating, for they none of them had the faintest notion who or what was killing them. The crashingly loud reports tended to keep them well away from the tower, and that distance simply made it easier to shoot them accurately with the long-range weapon.

He tried hard to make each kill a clean one, and the tremendous shocking power of the mushrooming bullets helped him toward his goal. He never knew how many, or how few, of that pack survived, but those that did were those that, for whatever reasons, were not on the plateau that morning, for he stopped firing only when there were no more targets.

When he finally stood up, his joints crackling and protesting, to survey the slaughter he had here wrought, he felt more than a little sick. Of all of the animals, he had always admired the great cats and the wolves. Sight of the tumbled, furry bodies—scores of them, scattered from side to side and end to end of the plateau—and thought of all the fierce vitality that his skill with the ancient weapon had snuffed out so safely and effortlessly pricked his conscience.

But the Horseclansmen, who had climbed up onto the roof of the ruined tower as soon as they could be reasonably sure that those earsplitting noises had ceased, did not any of them share his anachronistic squeamishness, not when they had gotten a good look at the windfall out there on the plateau.

Whooping, they lowered themselves down the sides of the cower and ran to the nearest dead wolves, skinning knives out, Winter wolf pelts were heavy, warm and valuable. They would become wealthy men at the next tribe council, through trading wolf pelts for cattle, sheep, horses, concubines and inanimate treasures.

By the morning of the fourth day after the blizzard had ended, the deer carcass was become but well-gnawed bones, and the den of rattlesnakes an assortment of curing snakeskins. The cat and her cubs had avidly lapped up every last drop of the three gallons of milk Milo had prepared them from some of the milk powder, so he decided to take Dik and Djim down into the forest below the plateau to seek game more edible than frozen wolves.

However, in the wake of the thorough scouring to which the winter wolf pack had subjected the country roundabout, four hares were all that the hunters had to show for three hours of the endeavor. Then Djim’s keen eyes picked out some large beast moving through the thick, snow-weighted brush among the tree boles.

Alerted by the soundless mindspeak. Milo raised the rifle and almost loosed off a deadly bullet before the scope told him precisely what the animal was, Lowering the piece and thumbing the safety back on. he pursed his lips and whistled the horse-call of the clans, whereupon the chestnut broke off her browsing to come trotting out of the scrub.

Milo put out a hand to the mare, but she shied away, going instead to Dik and nuzzling against his chest.

Smiling broadly and patting the shaggy neck of the mare, he said wonderingly, “Why, this is my hunter, Swiftwatcr, Uncle Milo. But I left her with the other horses, back at that deer yard, days ago.”

“Then it’s a pure wonder that she’s not now wolf shit,” commented Djim laconically. “I figure most of those horses we left there are such long since.”

Dik hugged the mare’s fine head to him, saying, “Well, she won’t have to fear that now. I’ll take care of my good girl.”

“Then we’ll have to set you up in a tent down here in the woods,” said Djim bluntly, because there’s no way we’re going to get a live horse up onto that plateau. Dik.”

Dik set his jaw stubbornly. “I’m not going to leave down here alone again.”

Milo nodded. “No. Dik, you’re not. You’re going to her right now and ride back to the camp. Her fortuitous appearance changes the complexion of things. You’ve got your bow and your dirk. Djim will give you his arrows his spear, as well.

“Fil says that the big cat may never recover her strength in those forepaws. I mean to persuade her to come back to camp with us, her and the kittens.”

Neither Horseclansman showed or felt any surprise at Milo’s stated intent, for both had “chatted” often with the invalid cat and Djim was now become not only a frequent companion but a virtual parent to all three of the cubs. To their minds, the four cats were human, anatomical differences notwithstanding.