A quick once-over of the camp area and some few of the tents, to look for survivors and what-not, turns up some startling finds...
...saddlebags full of other bags, burlap and leather all shapes and sizes, and small round steel pans, some slotted to varying degrees others solid-bottom, shovels, pickaxes and various other tools, candles, lanterns, and many lengths of sturdy rope...
... smaller pouches filled with sand, pebbles and up-tp-fist-sized stones and rubble, most of the granules or clusters sparkling or shimmering in the sunlight, obviously precious, at least by all appearances...
... a roughly-drawn scrawl of a map, done in charcoal, and tempered, and recently altered and edited, to include an area marked DANGER! MOUNTAIN LION LAIR! very near this valley, and also very near the red (as though drawn in BLOOD) 'X' somewhere in the foothills close-by....
... a packet of parchments including deeds, contracts and the like form some place called CUR, Cavendish Unlimited Reclamations (a division of Cavendish Emporium International, with offices in CA, NV, TX and MEXICO....)... documenting the formation of a 'survey party' for a 85% share of all finds found...
One thing is certain: whoever these guys are--- uh, were--- thery weren't no deer hunters!
Meanwhile, across the lush valley, near the foothills, Jake makes a move to retreat from cougar country; it is a move that nearly proves painful in wholly other ways, as Jake backs away and nearly stomps blindly into a deep, dark sinkhole of some sort shrouded in the undergrowth...
... anyone who wasn't careful and didn't know there was a hole here could be in a world of hurt!!
Originally posted by Darth Revan
[After this ridge, the prairie levels out, and the landscape is quite flat. Off on the horizon, maybe as far as five or six miles away, the source of the smell is visible as several thin, gray columns of smoke rising up from the ground. The other thing that has changed is the height of the grass. Here, it is quite tall. In places, it is almost over the head of a grown man on a horse.
It is back to this area where the map leads the group, and Chayton the wolf leads the way. He holds his head and nose high, and whimpers, not in the direction of the buffalo-chip fire or the smoldering deer carcass or the stinky drunkards mangy, thieving miner/hunter CURs, but toward the foothills, in an area of the meadow where the grass is merely waist high, or horse-haunches high at most.
((If Jake paid more attention and posted more often, you would find him here too, camping out, as it is getting dark again...))
There in the foothills, is the COUGAR LAIR, and near by, a sinkhole open in the ground, where Jake is camped out, recovering from his fall...
((Does anyone know Jake? I forget... wanna scalp him as a thief?? 😱 ))
((I wasn't planning on killing Buddy off (not yet any way).. just wondering how the group would react to finding another campsite, after the scalping and murder that just took place... will you scalp Jake as a stranger/miner/hunter/thief?
since he only checks back once a day or less, its hard to play around him, so what??))
Post the approach and meeting and see what happens....