Caroline spoke. “Nice tender one, I think. Suit you, Rod?”
He nodded. “Couldn’t be better. A clean kill, too. Carol?”
“Huh?”
“I think you are better at this than I am.
“Oh, shucks, it was just luck.” She grinned and looked sheepish.
“I don’t believe in luck. Any time you want to lead the hunt, let me know. But be darn sure you let me know.”
She looked at his unsmiling face, said slowly, “By any chance are you bawling me out?”
“You could call it that. I’m saying that any time you want to lead the hunt, you tell me. Don’t switch in the middle. Don’t ever. I mean it.”
“What’s the matter with you, Rod? Getting your feelings hurt just because I got there first that’s silly!”
Rod sighed. “Maybe that’s it. Or maybe I don’t like having a girl take the kill away from me. But I’m dead sure about one thing: I don’t like having a partner on a hunt who can’t be depended on. Too many ways to get hurt. I’d rather hunt alone.”
“Maybe I’d rather hunt alone! I don’t need any help.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Let’s forget it, huh, and get this carcass back to camp.”
Caroline did not say anything while they butchered. When they had the waste trimmed away and were ready to pack as much as possible back to the others Rod said, “You lead off. I’ll watch behind.”
“Rod?”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry”
“What? Oh, forget it.”
“I won’t ever do it again. Look, I’ll tell everybody you made the kill.”
He stopped and put a hand on her arm. “Why tell anybody anything? It’s nobody’s business how we organize our hunt as long as we bring home the meat.”
“You’re still angry with me.”
“I never was angry,” he lied. “I just don’t want us to get each other crossed up.”
“Roddie, I’ll never cross you up again! Promise.”
Girls stayed in the majority to the end of the week. The cave, comfortable for three, adequate for twice that number, was crowded for the number that was daily accumulating. Rod decided to make it a girls’ dormitory and moved the males out into the open on the field at the foot of the path up the shale. The spot was unprotected against weather and animals but it did guard the only access to the cave. Weather was no problem; protection against animals was set up as well as could be managed by organizing a night watch whose duty it was to keep fires burning between the bluff and the creek on the upstream side and in the bottleneck downstream. Rod did not like the arrangements, but they were the best he could do at the time. He sent Bob Baxter and Roy Kilroy downstream to scout for caves and Caroline and Margery Chung upstream for the same purpose. Neither party was successful in the oneday limit he had imposed; the two girls brought back another straggler.
A group of four boys came in a week after Jim’s shirt had been requisitioned; it brought the number up to twenty five and shifted the balance to more boys than girls. The four newcomers could have been classed as men rather than boys, since they were two or three years older than the average. Three of the four classes in this survival test area had been about to graduate from secondary schools; the fourth class, which included these four, came from Outlands Arts College of Teller University.
“Adult” is a slippery term. Some cultures have placed adult age as low as eleven years, others as high as thirty five and some have not recognized any such age as long as an ancestor remained alive. Rod did not think of these new arrivals as senior to him. There were already a few from Teller U. in the group, but Rod was only vaguely aware which ones they were they fitted in. He was too busy with the snowballing problems of his growing colony to worry about their backgrounds on remote Terra.
The four were Jock McGowan, a brawny youth who seemed all hands and feet, his younger brother Bruce, and Chad Ames and Dick Burke. They had arrived late in the day and Rod had not had time to get acquainted, nor was there time the following morning, as a group of four girls and five boys poured in on them unexpectedly. This had increased his administrative problems almost to the breaking point; the cave would hardly sleep four more females. It was necessary to find, or build, more shelter.