POV: Mattock Finch

  The sound of Nate throwing up made Matt smile. The young man had been very gung-ho about helping with the hide from the Sabertooth, and had promised that he wouldn’t complain or lose his lunch when Matt had warned him about how disgusting the process could be. Matt had learned how to tan deer hide when he had followed in his father's footsteps to become a professional hunter. He remembered his first time in the tanning shed and had done much worse than Nate. And that had been with the proper tools and chemicals. What they were doing now was on a new level of disgusting, so he was impressed Nate had only thrown up once.

  The day after Jack and the hunters had left, Miles and Mavis had started arguing about whether or not it was possible to make a saw out of stone. Neither of them had come up with anything, and their failure only added to the tense atmosphere in the camp. With Marcus’s arm injured and no painkillers he had gotten grumpy, and with Gordon sick, Maple barely able to move from her wounds, and a handful of others with some sort of stomach bug from drinking unboiled water, people had more than enough to be worried about before thinking about the dangers that still surrounded their camp. Matt was more than happy to ignore it all for the task of tanning.

  He had gone to work skinning the tiger, already having removed its fangs and claws to give out for use as knives. While he was very practiced at skinning animals, he had never hunted a big cat before but the process wasn’t dissimilar to skinning any other large animal. He had hunted elk and deer plenty of times, and while he wished he had all his tools with him, it only took a few hours to get the hide off the body. He checked it over, and was satisfied that it had clean cuts and no holes. He had been skeptical about Jack’s ridiculous club, but other than the skull, which he didn’t bother to skin, the hide was in near perfect condition.

  Nate and his friends had gone out hunting for the day, but returned empty handed a few hours before nightfall. They had described seeing a large carnivore of some sort, like a small T-rex with longer arms, and had wisely decided to not push their luck by confronting it. They had helped out around camp, adding manpower to get more of the wall up and start laying the first foundations of a longhouse with Miles. Nate had come to assist Matt though, and asked to learn the process of how to harvest the meat and tan the hides.

  Harvesting the meat wasn’t hard, but the Sabertooth wasn’t great for eating. Most carnivores weren’t. He had given Nate an anatomy lesson to the best of his ability, carving away what cuts he thought could be edible. Back on earth he wouldn’t have bothered, but here they needed the food. They had carried the meat to Ms Margaret, and Matt had made it clear that this meat needed to be cooked well done to remove the risk of parasites and other things common in carnivore flesh. Dinner that night had not been particularly tasty, but it could have been a lot worse.

  Matt spent the night shift explaining the process of tanning to Nate and whoever else wanted to learn. He demonstrated how to clean and trim the hide with his knife as they sat around the fire, but the more he explained, the less people wanted to learn. He had taken one of the smaller logs with Miles' permission and made a very simple beam. He laid the hide on it and started to scrape it clean. It was much harder without a proper scraping tool, and he made a few mistakes, though none bad enough to ruin the hide. Mavis had come over when she noticed him cursing, and he described the type of tool he wanted to her. She said that she would see what she could do, but it would likely take a few days. He thanked her, and let Nate give it a go. They got all the flesh off and trimmed the edges of the hide until Matt was satisfied. He then weighed it down in the water and left it to soak. They had to shower three times under the waterfall and scrub at their arms to get most of the smell off. Matt hoped someone smarter than him would figure out how to make soap soon.

  The next morning he and Nate started the hard part. They moved the beam to the outskirts of camp and retrieved the hide to start scraping it. Soaking it overnight had caused the smell to worsen as it began to rot and fall apart. That was the goal however, and it let them get at the different layers of the hide to scrape away the parts they didn’t want. They worked at it for a few hours before Matt was satisfied, and they took a break to clean up and rest. They showered again, and got some clean food and water. Berries were on the menu today, along with some other fruit.

  Matt overheard some arguments from the waterfall cave, and listened briefly as Marcus started to blow up at the lazy art student Lennox. He was ready to intervene if his friend went too far, but he agreed that the useless manchild needed a wake-up call. One of the few rules in this new world was that you needed to work to survive, and Lennox wasn’t working. Marcus gave him the task to make a kiln, and start turning the clay they had gathered into pottery so they could gather and boil water more efficiently. Lennox didn’t seem happy about it, but after Marcus yelled some more the man stopped complaining.

  Matt checked on Marcus after that, and the two shared some time together before Matt was called to continue with their project by Nate. He had given Marcus a nod and put his hand on his friend's shoulder, which was as much as a hug as either men wanted to get or give when they both stank like a slaughterhouse and one of them was injured. They had barely exchanged five words the entire time, but that was more than enough.

  Nate quickly came to regret helping with the next steps of tanning. They had soaked the hide again, and then continued to scrape the other side. Matt was sorry they had not cut the hide into smaller pieces by the time they had finished, as the Sabertooth had so much fur to work with that each step took two to three times longer than he was used to. But eventually they got all the membrane off. When they were done, they wrung out the hide as best they could. Keeping it wet, but not soaking.

  “Now for the fun part. You should go ask Mavis if she figured out nose plugs.” Matt had said to Nate. They both knew she hadn’t but it was the first time that Matt had really made any sort of joke as they worked, and Nate took the excuse to smile.

  “I can handle some stink. I helped muck out the area those Styracosaurus are nesting in.” He had said.

  “Alright then, time to get the brains.” Matt had said with a smile, and led Nate to a hole he had dug. It was full of water, and a small fire had been built underneath it, tunneled in from the side. Matt was impressed with whoever had dug it. Apparently the highschoolers who usually helped Ms Margaret had been given the task, as they weren’t strong enough to help with the building and too fidgety to help the crafters. It had taken a few tries until they got it right, but a hole in the ground with a fire below it wasn’t the most difficult thing in the world to work out. It only needed to hold a few gallons of water. Still they had warned Matt not to poke too hard at the bottom of the hole or it would collapse and put out the fire.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Matt filled the hole with water using one of the leaf bowls that Taressa had made to catch rainwater, then lit the fire and let it warm. He had been pleasantly surprised when he asked Ms Margaret if she knew how to render the fat from the dinosaurs they had killed. There apparently was much more to her than just a school lunch lady, and she gave him a small amount of it. They didn’t have the pots she was used to, but had managed to get some rendered fat by building a small stone bowl and leaving it by the fire. Most of her attempts had failed, but she apparently knew he would need some in his tanning process. He had thanked her graciously and made a mental note to do something nice for her at some point.

  When the water was boiling, he stopped the fire and let it cool to the point it wouldn’t hurt to touch. He added the rendered fat to the water and told Nate to stir it. Nate shrugged and did as he was asked. It didn’t stink at all, but that changed when Matt went to the edge of camp where he had stored the crushed Sabertooth skull. He carried it back to the hole in the ground, then slowly scooped out its crushed brains, making sure to remove the bone fragments. He added it to the warm water and took small delight in Nate’s pale face. Obviously Matt had never used Sabertooth tiger brains to make a tanning solution before, but he also hadn't used Hadrosaur fat. He wasn’t a chemist but he could tell from the smell of the brain solution that what they had made was similar to what he was used to.

  When the brain had mostly dissolved, Matt grabbed the hide and tossed it into the hole. He had Nate stir it around and make sure that every part of the hide was covered. The hole was a bit smaller than he would have liked, and he realized that they would need a larger cauldron or bucket for the next time. He hoped that the kiln project went well.

  Once the hide was submerged and soaked, he and Nate had to both reach in and grab the hide to wring it out by hand. This is where Nate had to step away and throw up. The smell, combined with the texture of warm brain juice was too much for him and he took a few minutes to get fresh air before coming back. Matt gave him a respectful nod.

  “You are doing quite well. My first time I didn’t come back to finish. My dad had to come get me.” He said with a smile.

  “This sucks. A lot. But I keep telling myself that if it gets cold, everyone here is going to need warm clothing or we will freeze to death. And this is the only way to do that.” Nate said, but his face turned green when he looked down at the white liquid.

  “Good man.” Matt said, and leaned down to pull the hide out of the solution. He twisted it around and started to wring it out without Nate’s help.

  “And if the weather doesn't end up changing, we can use these as blankets or simple doors. The Native Americans would make teepees out of buffalo hide. It can also be used for shoes, leather strips, armor, or to trade to the people who do live in cold climates. Using as much of every animal we kill as possible is a good way to treat the world.” Matt continued to explain as he got as much of the liquid out as possible from the hide. He then brought it to the beam and wrapped it around the pole. He twisted it as much as he could to wring out the last bits of the solution, then brought it back and dumped it in again.

  “What's the point of putting it back in?” Nate asked? Still visibly disgusted.

  “We need to make sure to get the entire thing soaked all the way though. We do this four or five more times until we run out of the stamina to keep going. Or until we run out of solution. It’s starting to seep into the ground more and more, so we may only get through three cycles.” Matt said, sitting down and gesturing for Nate to stir the foul smelling liquid.

  They let it sit for a few minutes and went to check in with Miles. The wall the builders had been working on was constructed by laying logs on top of each other and using mud and clay as mortar. It was already close to being done and surrounded about seventy five percent of the camp. They had only been able to stack the logs about eight feet tall, and they all knew that something like a rex could easily step over them, but the smaller predators and even the medium sized dinos would have a hard time getting through. The four legged animals like the Triceratops had the same problem as elephants back on earth, they were too heavy to jump. They could ram into the walls and bring them down, but most animals would only do that if they were extremely agitated. As the amount of space they had to work on decreased, a small handful of builders was no longer necessary. Matt had explained his plan to Miles the night before, and the builder had agreed to shift priorities from the longhouse to a small smokehouse for him.

  The construction had already been started. Calling it a shed would be generous, and they would need a bigger one once they had another big kill, but it was perfect for the small tanning operation he and Nate were working on. It would continue to be useful in the future as well. While it wouldn’t be enough to smoke a full mammoth hide, it would be enough for a large elk or a dozen smaller things. Matt didn’t need to stick around to watch them build it. At least one of the builders seemed to have a good idea of what was needed. Based on their current progress, it would be done in a few hours, so he and Nate went back to the brain solution.

  They spent the next hour and a half soaking and wringing out the hide. By the time the solution had either evaporated or seeped into the ground they were both exhausted. They stank, and whenever the wind shifted the people in camp would shoot them dirty looks. There was nothing to do about it though, and they moved onto the second to last step. They had to stretch the hide out to make sure it didn’t harden into rawhide. They each grabbed a different side, and started to pull and stretch. Both of them were so exhausted by this point that Haden and some of the others on break had to come over to help them. They pulled and twisted the hide, then used some of the twine to string it up tight. They took turns hitting it, pulling it, rubbing it, and drumming on it. The younger men started to make bop-it jokes, which Matt was both too old and too tired to understand, but it got many smiles and laughs from his helpers so he didn’t complain.

  When the hide was fully dry and satisfactorily soft, Matt carried it over to the new smokehouse. A fire had already been started, and Ms Margaret was directing some of her helpers as they added different types of wood and leaves to the fire. The winning combination was letting hardwood burn down to coals, then adding some wood that had been slightly rotted out. They had plenty of the stuff, and soon the smokehouse was living up to its name.

  Normally Matt would have stapled the hide into a sort of bag and let the smoke flow directly into it. But he didn’t have staples, and didn’t trust his sewing skills to replicate that technique. Instead he and Nate hung the stretched hide inside the hut, and let it rest.

  They spent a solid hour showering after that, scrubbing as hard as they could to get clean under the waterfall. They only stopped when the sun went down and they started to shiver. Most of the camp had gotten nose blind to them by then anyway, so they didn’t get any complaints.

  Before he fell asleep, Jade pulled Matt aside. Apparently they were planning a celebration of sorts for the completion of the wall which should be finished the next day. They needed him to go hunting again and bring back something large enough to feed the entire tribe. He was happy to do so, and said he would gather the hunters in the morning.

  That night he sat beside Ms Margaret at the fire. They didn’t talk much, but he enjoyed her company, and thought that she enjoyed his too. Life might be hard on Kittis, but Matt started to find a rhythm for himself. One he enjoyed quite a bit.