Page 18 of The Outcast
“Hmm… did he live alone up there?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
Aubri chewed on her inner lip as we watch Keith’s group work.
“He’s not much of a communicator. I noticed how he just declared to the group that he would go hunting. He didn’t stick around to talk strategies or debate who should do what. Keep an eye on him.”
“Will do.”
It was interesting, watching the groups work. Some of the candidates stood out as strong leaders and in Keith’s group two of the men almost got in a fight over how to build a shelter.
Where Keith had made the decision for his group to begin hunting from the get-go, the competing group had concentrated on building their camp.
“I’m noticing that for both groups, the women got stuck with the responsibility of building the kitchen facilities,” Banni said. For a moment we stood shoulder to shoulder observing Lilly, a twenty-six-year-old candidate who was building an underground oven.
“That woman knows what she’s doing. I’m impressed with the level of knowledge among these candidates. If I’d had trainees like this back home, my life would have been much easier.”
“It’s a good oven, but I would have used bigger stones,” I noted, not liking Banni’s admiration of Lilly. “Not to mention it’s taken her way too long to dig out that small hole. Bianca already has her oven ready to go and she was smart enough to build it into the mountainside instead of digging a hole in the ground.”
Banni looked over at Bianca, a mature woman in her late thirties who was a widow from the East Coast. “Is one method better than the other?”
“It’s a matter of preference, but it’s easier to cook in an oven that’s on a slope because the smoke doesn’t rise straight up into your eyes.”
“Hmm, good point. But still, most of these people are better at survival in the wild than I am.”
“That’s because you never had the sort of training we do. You just learned as you went, didn’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.” Banni’s eyes widened and I followed the direction of his gaze to see Keith walk back into camp with a dead deer over his shoulders.
“Damn. How long was he gone?”
“A little over an hour.”
Keith walked over to Lilly and tossed the deer on the ground. “Do you know how to cook it?”
Smiling up at him, she pointed. “I made an oven.”
Squatting down next to her, Keith tore off some grass and used it to rub blood off his hands. “I saw yellowfoot chanterelles not far from here. We’ll do steaks with roasted mushrooms.”
She nodded. “I was just about to build a fireplace. Do you want to collect twigs and firewood or would you prefer to cut up the deer?”
With a quick look around, Keith frowned. “I’ll get the mushrooms and some twigs.”
“He prefers to be alone,” I muttered to Banni. “I think being in a group with other people stresses him out.”
“You can’t know that. He already said that he knows where the chanterelles are, so he’s operating from a rational point of view. Why send her out looking for something he already knows the location of?”
“Maybe you’re right.”
Group B were looking over at the deer and strategizing.
“Let’s hope they realized that they have to get going on the dinner,” I said.
Indiana and Aubri moved closer to us.
“What do you think?” Banni asked in a whisper. “Are you as impressed as I am?”
“We always knew these people could survive in the wild. Four of them are professional soldiers, one teaches survival skills, and at least one lives in Alaska, where you have survival skills or you die. What I’m not impressed with is the time lost to pissing matches. I almost had to break apart Allan and Bjorn. I warned you that we have too many alphas,” Indiana muttered.
