While in town they checked every house in that block and found several guns worth taking plus a sizeable amount of ammunition for them. Half the houses had nothing of value to them; the owners must have left and taken the essential survival items with them. A bedroom in one house contained a one gallon glass jar almost full of old silver coins. On a hunch they ransacked the house and found twenty, one ounce gold coins hidden in a utility room cabinet. In addition, canned goods were gathered to assure their survival through the harsh winter they anticipated. At two of the houses with large garden areas out back, they found home canned fruits and vegetables on basement shelves and jars and equipment for home canning. They confiscated more than enough equipment to process the vegetables they planned to grow the next season.
After leaving Tom’s place, they located the address on Stacy’s license. It was a massive two-story home with a four car garage on a large lot that hadn’t been maintained for several months. A key on Stacy’s key ring let then in the backdoor. The expansive log house appeared to be less than five years old, and the designer kitchen was modern and extravagant. JR drooled when she saw the top brands of stainless steel appliances and hickory cabinets. Photos were hung in the stairway leading upstairs. “Look, Sam, this family picture shows Stacy with her parents and two slightly older men I bet are her brothers. They were a nice looking family.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what her parents did, but they appear to have been wealthy judging by this house and the furnishings and amenities.”
“Let’s go through it quick to see if there’s anything we can use.”
Clothes closets in four bedrooms were stuffed full of clothes. Apparently, the occupants didn’t escape and were turned into zombies weeks earlier. Two refrigerators and a freezer were bypassed because anything in them would have long since rotted. JR claimed two matching tall oak chests of drawers in the master bedroom. The contents were emptied onto the king-size bed, then JR helped Sam lug them to the truck. He found high dollar name-brand winter vests and coats for each of them in the massive closet. The owners looked to be above working with their hands because no serious work tools were owned. At one time, he would have envied the big screen TVs and high dollar laptop computers, but now they were useless junk of a past, dead era. JR swooned at the jewelry Mrs. Pohlman had in a jewelry armoire in her closet. She almost passed on all of it because none had a place in their new lives. Then she realized the gold and platinum settings and diamonds and other precious stones had bartering value. She suddenly realized how quickly her attitude was adapting to the changes in her environment and lifestyle.
While riding the loaded Kubota back to the cabin that evening, they were confronted by a small, female black bear. Sam guessed she weighed about 160 to 200 pounds. A pair of young, black cubs stared at them curiously from forty feet. The female stood erect on her hind legs and snarled at them. Smokey barked and growled as the four-wheeler stopped and waited for the trio to leave. Sam ordered Smokey to sit and be quiet. When they tired of watching the spectacle, two shots over the bear’s heads caused the trio to scamper into the woods. Sam let the Kubota idle several minutes longer as they waited for the carnivores to move away from the trail so the four-wheeler wouldn’t be attacked from the side as it passed. JR was impressed by their first close-up bear encounter. She had helped her dad dress rabbits, squirrels, fish, frogs, turkeys, doves, and several deer, but a bear, a bison, or a moose would be a new challenge. The Kubota’s headlights lit the trail as they continued toward the cabin. Then the Kubota and the black Polaris took two more trips to haul the rest of their day’s loot to the storage shed.
Leaves were changing colors and the evening air was brisk when they rested outside the cabin after super the following workday. Sam and JR sat together on the wood slab bench; Smokey laid on the cool earth between their feet. The fading sun put them in the cabin’s shadow as it leisurely dropped toward the western horizon. Two sawhorses stood ten feet away with several boards laid across them. Sam worked that afternoon measuring and sawing boards by hand for a project he’d started.
He asked, “Are there any other ‘honey do’ jobs you need completed before winter?”
“None I can think of right this minute; unless we decide there’s a need for a second storage closet to hold more of our miscellaneous items we want stored nearby and handy. You’ve already committed to installing base and wall mounted kitchen cabinets this winter. Those will hold a lot of kitchen dishes, towels, and pots and pans that would otherwise go inside a closet.”
“Good,” he replied. “I want to build three tree stands for deer hunting and several blinds in the valley by the stream for hunting larger game animals. At some point I’ll also want to build a smokehouse to cure some of the game we shoot. One of the books Charlie gave us gives instructions for how to build one, and it also tells how to use it. ”
“My dad talked about getting a smoker, but he never did. Don’t they use a special kind of wood?”
“The book tells that too; apple, cherry and hickory are recommended as being the
