Traveler trilogy Book 2, updates every Friday!
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Jenny's knife sliced into a deer carcass.
With most of the men gone, she and Charles had been the ones hunting to keep the camp fed. A couple of days ago, Charles had come back with an entire black bear tied to his pack horse. Today it was Jenny's turn to bring in meat, and thankfully she'd been able to bring down a mature doe with a well-placed arrow to the lungs.
"Save me a long piece of that loin sinew, would you?" Charles asked from behind her. "It's about time I made myself a new bowstring. I can make you one too, if you want."
Jenny smiled, wiping sweat from her eyes, and turned around with a bloody hand on her hip. "Or maybe you could teach me to make my own bowstrings," she suggested. "That was one of the things my mother never got the opportunity to teach me, and Davey always used machine-made strings for his bow. I've heard sinew is better, though."
"It is," said Charles. "Save me some and I'll show you."
"Alright," she agreed happily, continuing to peel the skin off the doe with her knife. "You want anything off of her before I cut her up? Pearson asked if I'd do the butchering so that he could focus on making a stew with the last of the bear meat and do some cleaning around the chuck wagon." Her hands grabbed a fistful of deerskin, and she pulled down to rip the skin from the body.
"No, that's alright," said Charles with a small smile on his face as he watched her. "I made pemmican with the bear fat and some huckleberries I picked. I should have enough to last me for a while." He hesitated, as though he wanted to say something else.
"What is it, Charles?" Jenny asked, continuing to slice at the skin.
"Would you like to go up to Wapiti with me tomorrow? I've been making trips up that way to hunt over the past couple of weeks, and I've been bringing meat to Rains Fall in addition to the camp. I know you mentioned wanting to see Eagle Flies again, so-."
"Of course!" she exclaimed with a wide grin as she separated the skin from the deer's head, and the bulk of it plopped to the ground with a thud. "You know I'd love to come. How are they?"
"Not good," Charles admitted. "They're... well, you'll have to see for yourself. The army has been quite cruel to them as of late."
"Bad business," Jenny sighed, laying the skin hair side down on the ground to make a clean place to put the meat from the doe.
"Yes," Charles agreed. "By the way, I was in town selling the bearskin to the butcher, and I went by the post office to check the mail. There was a letter for you there."
"A letter?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow. Her knife bit into the deer's neck at the base of its skull, trying to pop the skull out of its socket where it joined the last vertebrae. It only took a second, and then she was rewarded with a gush of spinal fluid that let her know she'd been successful. A couple more quick cuts and the deer's head fell to the dirt as well.
