Harry Turtledove - A Different Flesh

Often he would bring back to camp smal game he had slain himself rabbits, turkey, a beaver, a porcupine that proved amazingly tasty once it was skinned. They made a welcome change of diet.

Saw strange thing, Charles signed after one of his solitary jaunts. Many buffalo bones. He opened and closed his hands several times, indicating some number larger than he could count.

He led Kenton to the spot the next morning. The scout whistled in surprise as he looked down into a dry wash at the tangle of whitened bones there. "Must be a hundred head, easy," he said.

Charles repeated the sign for an indefinitely large number.

Together they scrambled down the steep side of the ravine, going slowly and often grabbing at bushes for support. Kenton tried to imagine what could have made a herd plunge down such a slope. Even at fuII stampede, the buffalo should have turned aside.

Then the scout was among the bones. Scavengers had pul ed apart many skeletons. Bushes were pushing through rib cages, climbing over skulls.

The herd had met disaster at least a year ago, Kenton judged.

Many great legbones were neatly split lengthwise, almost al the skul s smashed open. When Kenton found a fist sized lump of stone with an edge chipped sharp, it only confirmed what he had already guessed.

He tossed the hand-axe up and down.

Charles recognized it at once. Sims. Wild sims.

"Aye. No animal could've gone for the beasts' brains and marrow so."

Likely, Kenton thought, the subhumans had driven the buffalo into the gully. He glanced round, as if expecting to see a sim crouching behind every shrub. He had never doubted sims lived west of the mountains, but this was the first sure sign of it, and a sobering reminder.

Big killing, Charles signed, his eyes traveling the scatered bones.

Kenton wondered what was going through his mind, wondered if he was proud of the slaughter his distant cousins had worked. Some Englishmen trained their sims to hate and fear the wild ones. The scout had never seen the need for that. Finding out he was wrong might prove costly.

He did his best to keep his voice casual. "Let me know before you join them, eh?"

Charles's face was troubled. Joke? he signed at last.

Kenton dimly realized how hard it had to be for sims to keep track of men's vagaries they could not share. "Joke," he said firmly.

Charles nodded.

They spent a while longer investigating the ravine.

Kenton turned up a few more stone tools, but nothing to show that the sims had come back to this immediate area since the year before.

That was some relief, if not much.

When Charles wanted to go off for some purpose of his own, Kenton said only, "I'll see you back at the camp this evening." The last thing he wanted was the sim thinking he mistrusted him. He wished he had kept his mouth shut instead of letting his stupid wisecrack out.

Thinking such dark thoughts, the scout decided to return to the salt lick. The chunk of venison he had cached in a tree probably would not be fit to eat by nightfal , not in this heat. And game was so easy to come by west mountains that he did not have to put up with meat even a little off.

He wormed his way to his familiar cover. Excitment coursed through him as he looked into the clearing of the lick. A spearfang had just slain a plump doe dragging the carcass back into the bushes to feed, without conscious volition, his rifle sprang to his shoulder and spoke.

The spearfang yowled with anguish as it staggering from its kill.

Kenton reloaded, hurried after it. He held the gun at the ready, although he did not think he would need it for such desperate work as before. The big cat's gait reflected a wound that would soon be fatal.

So it proved. Less than a furlong from the fallen doe the scout found the spearfang dead, its mouth gaping in defiant snarl. Insects were already lighting on the cat They buzzed away as Kenton stooped beside it.

He set down his rifle, used his knife and a stone out the beast's fangs. They were a fine pair, not much shorter than the gap between his thumb and little finger when he splayed them wide. He bound the two long teeth with a rawhide thong, slipped them into his pouch rest.

He caught a slight motion out of the corner of his eye. Still on his knees, he turned. "See, I'll be rich yet.” The words caught in his throat. The sim behind was naked, and shorter and stockier than his companion and hefted a stone in its right hand.

The tableau held for several seconds. The sim looked at Kenton as if unsure it believed its eyes. He beratted himself for putting his musket to one side. The sim might hurl its rock before he grabbed the gun.

And at twenty feet, he might miss with a pistol. .

All the same, his right hand was easing towardthe musket when three more sims, all adult males, slid silently out. No chance now he could frighten them off.

He drew a pistol. That alone would have sent wild Virginia sims running; They knew what guns could do. But these sims did not know filearms.

One drew back its arm to cast its stone into the air. At the report and the noise the sims shouted in fright. The scout could flee, but the one that had its rock ready and that rallied the others. They rushed at him the missile, snatched out his other gun, and at blank range. As happens too mournful y outside of action romances, he missed. He brought the gun down club-fashion on a sims head. The stunned sim stil surged forward to grapple him, as they had thicker skulls than humans. The scout was just as glad not to remember the fight with the sims. What he could recal hurt. He soon lost consciousness The sims were not sophisticated enough to use deliberate cruelty, but when four of them beat him into submission the result came close enough to foolall, but the most exacting critic.

When he came back to himself, one sim was carrying his gun and another with its hands dug into his pack. Why the sims had not killed him on lug his head, he saw that the four he had fought with were part of a larger band. There mwt have Xber, mose of them bearing big joints lwdeer the spearfang had killed and from the her food, he thought, they could afford curiosity about him.

Humans were as Ws-aa the leverse; indeed, sims had kidnapped his grandmother when she was a baby, which proved interesting enough to distract a good part of the troop from his person.

The fine black grains of gunpowder made the sims sneeze; some tasted the stuff, and made faces at the result. The scout hoped they would toss the powderhorn onto the fire. The blast might scare them away long enough for him to get free. Of course, afoer a pound of gunpowder went off close by, he might not be in any condition to try.

Given his present predicament, though, he was willing to take the risk.

The sims poured the powder out onto the ground, scotching that chance.

His tin water jar enthral ed them a good deal more. Like his belt, it was an idea they had not thought of. One rushed over to a tiny creek a few hundred yards away, filled the jar, and brought it back.

The sim that had bound the stone to the vine belt suddenly snatched up the powderhorn. It hurried to the streamlet and filled the powderhorn with water. Adapting a tool from one use to another showed quicker wit than most sims could boast.

They came to his shot-pouch next. The bul ets cascaded out. As soon as the sims discovered they were not some queer kind of fruit, their youngsters pounced on the musket balls, which made toys unlike the sticks, leaves, and stones they had known before.

The older sims went on exploring the scout's gear. He ground his teeth as they opened the leather bag that held the canines of the spearfangs he had killed. The sims recognized the fangs at once.

Surprised hoots arose. The sims stared wide-eyed at Kenton, unable to imagine how he had slain so many of the big cats.