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@@ -1,3 +1,82 @@ +## Bridie goes on a hunt + +It was midday before the Henri and hunters returned with two boar and a deer. The crew had already built a fire and wasted no time cleaning the animals and loading them onto spits. Henri strutted about the camp like some great warrior hunter even though Birdie knew he hadn't had anything to do actually killing any of the animals. Her father caught her glaring at Henri's back and asked her why she was scowling. On a whim she told him it was because no one ever asked her to go hunting. Her father looked at her for a minute and then smiled. "Well Tamba's going again this afternoon to get something for us to bring when we head south, tell him you want to go." He turned and then spun back around and added, "And tell him I said you can use my gun." + +Birdie's face lit up in a smile and she bolted off off to find Tamba before he headed back off into the island. He was sitting cross legged by the firepit, a bowl of rabbit stew in his lap. A kettle of water hung over the fire and was nearing a boil. She sat down across from Tamba, unsure what to say. He raised an eyebrow at her. She looked down at her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath. "I was hoping I could go on the hunt with you today." + +Tamba did not say anything, he continued to chew on rabbit stew and watch her, squinting and narrowing his gaze. Finally he seemed satisfied. "Your father's gun?" + +She nodded. + +Tamba grunted. "Okay then. After the coffee, we hunt." + +Tamba made coffee like her father, by pouring the boiling water over the grounds and then waiting for them to settle. Tamba lifted the kettle lid with a sticks and then carefully unwrapped the coffee grinder from the cloth it was kept wrapped in. It was her father's prize possession, something he'd acquired from a man in Boston the year before. Most people, her father included drank tea, but Tamba and her father were the only she's ever seen drink coffee. Birdie had tried it once, it was bitter and tasted like moldy wood smelled. She'd never asked for it again. + +"Why do you drink coffee?" + +"Why do you want to hunt?" + +"Because it's fun." + +"There you go." + +"Coffee is not fun. I've tried it, it's awful." + +"It's awful to you. To me it is delicious. And fun." He smiled and began to grind. The rattling noise made him have to raise his voice to say, "get your father's gun, make sure it's loaded, you're only getting one shot." + +Birdie darted into the hut. Her father had two rifles, one was a new gun he'd bought on their journey down from a gunsmith in Philadelphia. It was a massive thing, easily two heads longer than Birdie was tall. She knew her father did not mean for her to use it. She grabbed the shorter, English navy rifle from over the door where it hung. It was heavy and the steel strangely cool in her hand despite the heat of the day. She knew it was loaded, she was careful not to put her finger over the trigger, but she carried it as her father had taught her, as she would on the hunt, one hand on the trigger and flintlock, the other on the barrel just up from the trigger, that way it was balanced in her hands. + +She brought it to Tamba who took it and examined it carefully. "This will do for our hunt. We will clean it when we return." + +She waited while Tamba drank his coffee and cleaned his own gun. He stood up and slid the ramrod out from it's place under the barrel. He took a small scrap of clean sailcloth and fastened it to the end of the ramrod. He scooped some boiling water still simmering in the kettle and poured it down the barrel. In one smooth, practiced motion he slammed the ramrod in after the water and rubbed it up and down, sending pulsing jets of powder-black water squirting out to base where the hole for the cap was located. Tamba lifted out the ramrod and repeat the process, this time though the water wasn't nearly as black. Tamba lifted out the ramrod, put another piece of sailcloth on the end, this one well greased with pig fat, and rammed it up and down. When it was well-coated he pulled it out and rubbed down the outside of the barrel and stock with a bit of grease. + +Tamba let Birdie hold the gun when he fetched his powder horn and shot bag. When he came bag he open the metal cap of the powder horn and poured in gunpower. He glanced over at Birdie, shrugged and then poured in a little more. He tapped the barrel and shook the gun a little to get it all down at the base. Then he dropped in a bullet and used the ramrod, with a bit of cloth to pack the bullet into place. He put the ramrod back in the gunstock and placed a cap under the hammer. He slowly lowered down the hammer. "Well then, let's go." + +The set off down the souther trail that led along the back of the marsh. Birdie was hoping they'd run across boar, but she knew deer were more plentiful on the island. The boar preferred the less swampy forests of the mainland that were not easily accessible without the pirogue. + +Tamba walked quickly and quietly, with a sense of direction and purpose. + +As they walked through the woods Birdie worked up her courage to ask. "What made you say I could hunt with you?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean when I asked you, you stared at me for a long time, like you were figuring something out or testing me or something, I was just wondering what it was that I did that made you say yes." + +Tamba burst out laughing. "You give me too much credit little one. You give yourself too little. I wasn't testing you, I just had my mouthful. Didn't anyone tell you it's rude to talk with your mouth full?" + +Birdie stopped in her tracks. "You mean you were just chewing." + +He laughed again. "Yes, just chewing." + +Birdie was embarrassed and she was thankful the deep evening shadows of the oaks hid her burning cheeks. + +"Now, no more talking. We'll enter this grove up ahead, I have a tree I like, you are going to sit in a branch near me, where I can help you sight the gun and we will fire together okay? You know what to aim for? + +"In the heart?" + +"Yes, but where is the heart?" + +"Think of a salt pork barrel." + +"What?" + +"Think of a deer, or a boar, or even a bear really, though don't shoot at a bear. Think of their body as a salt pork barrel. Now, imagine about one third of the way back from the front of the barrel there is an orange hanging by a string." + +"An orange hanging by a string?" + +"Yes. That orange is the deer's heart. You want to aim for that orange. It's in the middle of the animal's chest. Hit that and it will drop where it is. Miss it and we will be walking in some slough mud." + + + + + + + + + + + + --- The afternoon sun was gone. The Wind began to roll ashore in gusts ar first, spitting cand off the tops of the dunes, whiping it into the aire and then letting it settle again, some kind of dance between wind and done, one that ducked the dunes dipped the dunes, back, away from the sea, and then lifted them again in some kind of dance, light and bluri at the edges, stingin the skin of any create that might cut between them might be so bold as to cut between then. Very quickly though the dance became to fast to follow, the wind no longer let the sand dip, prefering the whirl it endlessly across the sandy shore dance floor. the sea because to instrde, waves moved higher as if draw by a tide, but it was not a tide it was wind, moved water over thousands of miles, piling it up here in th sahllows of the coastal water where it rose and surge forward., washing the frontal dunes first, then rising high enough to whipe out their camp, what was left, that the had not backed up was list, nothing more then the stones for the limns, though Birdie was sad to see them gone, pished out over the marsh. her father said perhaps they would find them, bu again, but Lyuly could not see how, the dunes were moving like soldier marching befor ethe wind, further bck buring reeds and sloughs and certainly and stones that folled down below them. |