Blue Raven broke another branch, and tossed it onto his growing pile. “It’s unfortunate that there isn’t another trail, one less traveled by game. By the time we leave in the morning, this one will be a quagmire of deer and elk hoofprints.”
“Something to look forward to,” Dust Moon said with a groan.
Sparrow smiled, and began spinning his drill in his fireboard. “It’s just for a few more hands of time, Dust.”
“I realize that, Sparrow, but it will feel like forever.”
The color of the cliffs had gone from tan to a glowing silvery blue. She let her souls absorb the beauty for a few instants, then gingerly knelt in the grass and laid the rabbit before her. Every muscle in her body ached. She rotated her right shoulder and winced.
“Long day, wasn’t it?” Sparrow asked, concern in his eyes.
The hoarse sound of the drill spinning in the fireboard combined with the cracking of wood and hooting of owls to create a familiar evening serenade.
“I’ll be fine once I’ve eaten.”
She drew her chert knife from her belt, and sawed off the rabbit’s head. The small body had cooled enough that the fleas who’d called it home were scrambling for their lives, crawling out of the fur by the dozens, hopping onto her skirt and over her hands. She stood the rabbit on its haunches and began peeling the fur back from the neck and shoulders. When she reached the front legs, she pulled each up and out of the hide, then rolled the skin down the back and belly to the hind legs. After she’d worked the hide over the rump, she pulled the hind legs free. Beautiful pink meat lay on the grass before her. She took the inside-out hide and straightened it. Later tonight, she would use her knife to scrape off the bits of tissue that clung to the skin, then she would set it near the fire to dry and smoke. It would make a warm pair of mittens for Rumbler.
His round face appeared on her souls and smiled at her, but she knew he must be terrified, fleeing for his life with a stranger from an enemy clan. What would he be thinking tonight? She ached to see him.
Dust Moon set the hide aside, and picked up her knife again. She cut a shallow hole just beneath the rabbit’s ribs, then slit the animal open to the pelvis, and pulled out the viscera. The rich scent of warm blood filled the air. Her stomach growled.
Sparrow looked up from his fire drill. “Smells good, doesn’t it?”
As she sifted through the viscera, picking out the kidneys and liver, she said, “Much better than cornmeal gruel and dried meat.” She placed the internal organs on the hide, then reached inside the rabbit’s chest cavity for the heart and lungs.
Flames crackled in the fire pit, and a wavering orange halo lit the camp.
“Blue Raven?” Sparrow looked up. The Headman stood stiffly, his arms folded. “Throw me a few pieces of that wood.”
Blue Raven gathered an armload and brought it to Sparrow’s side. “I broke them into small-enough lengths that they should fit in the hole,” he said.
Sparrow pulled several branches out and laid them over the burning grass in crisscrossing patterns. “Perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”
Dust carried the rabbit, and organs, into the light.
She examined the lungs first. A variety of diseases showed up there, spotting the lungs with white or black, but these appeared clean. Next she looked at the liver. Worms often invaded the organ, creating ugly yellowish cysts and ruining the meat, but it was clean, too. She threw the lungs away, and dropped the liver into the cook pot, followed by the heart and kidneys.
“How should we cook the rabbit?” she asked. “Roasted over the fire, or boiled in a stew?”
Blue Raven spread his hands. The gray in his long hair sparkled in the firelight. “Your pleasure, Matron. I will be happy either way.”
Sparrow said, “I would love a good greasy leg of roasted rabbit.”
“Yes, I know you would, Sparrow, but it will go further if we add it to a stew. What we don’t eat tonight, we can warm for breakfast.”
Sparrow’s mouth quirked. “If you knew how you were going to cook it, why did you ask me?”
“I’m a polite person.”
Sparrow laid his fireboard and drill aside, and leaned toward her. “When did this start?”
Blue Raven laughed, then, as if embarrassed, he tried to choke it back, which made it worse.
Sparrow grinned.
Dust Moon smiled, too. “I may eat this rabbit by myself.”
“Uh, forgive me, Matron,” Blue Raven said.
Dust Moon stuffed the rabbit in the cook pot and handed it to him. “Here. Cut this up while I prepare the rest of the stew.” As she cleaned the blood from her hands on the dry grass, she said, “Sparrow, I gave you the food bags earlier. Give them back.”