Suddenly, Sam moved and tried to open her eyes. “What’s all the noise about? Go away and let me sleep.”
Sam rolled over and ended up in the fetal position as she snored herself back to sleep. Tom stretched and then stood up. He whispered, “Sam’s not really as bad a person as I thought. She’s had some bad luck with men and is trying to get herself in a better place.”
Tom walked around the corner to relieve himself and then took some of the wire from the plane and walked into the brush behind the house. He was still hungry and planned to do something about it.
*
Chapter 9
The Hills subdivision north of Dixon, California.
The sun was barely below the horizon when Tom finished setting the third snare and hid behind a brush pile. The snare was a simple one right out of the Army Survival Manual FM21-76. Grandpa had the old manual for many years, but the information was still useful. The device was a drag noose type that he’d set in the middle of a rabbit’s path into a thicket. He made the frame out of two eighteen-inch forked sticks, and the top rail was another fourteen-inch stick. He shoved the forked sticks into the ground on either side of the trail and laid the top rail onto the forks. He drove another stake into the ground, tied the guitar wire to it, and then hung the snare's loop from the top rail. He then cut several dozen more sticks and stuck them in the ground on either side of the entrance to funnel the animal into the noose.
The other two snares were simple twitch up snares made by bending a young sapling over with the trap tied to the top. He made a trigger from two notched sticks and placed the loop in front of another rabbit trail into a large briar patch. Now he could lay back and wait for his breakfast.
Sam woke when she heard Jackie waking Tom. She had heard them talking about her before Jackie had moved her head and liked what Tom had said about her. She’d enjoyed their conversation that night and felt much safer with Tom around. She wondered if she’d misjudged him. He’d showed a much softer side that night and was easy to talk with. She waited until they stopped talking about her, yawned, and woke up stretching to get the kinks out.
Jackie gathered up their sleeping gear while Granny B went to the restroom to clean up. Sam asked, “Jackie, what can Lucy and I do to help this morning?”
“Search the area for some pokeweed, berries, and nuts. We need to save our packaged food as long as possible. Be back in half an hour, even if you don’t find anything edible. Take your pistol.”
Sam patted her pocket. “I don’t leave home without it.”
Lucy balked but went with her mom into the brush and on into the woods, which turned out to be an overgrown farm from the 1940s. They worked their way through the brush, and suddenly the dense thicket gave way to a meadow with waist-high grass and several pieces of broken-down farm equipment. A rickety barn and an abandoned house with all the windows broken out painted a picturesque scene of hopelessness across the field. Sam felt a pang of sorrow, knowing that a family had lost everything and had to leave their dear farm.
“Mom, that tree has apples!”
Sam and Lucy ran over to the tree and found it to be full of juicy red apples. They were also scattered under the tree, and she could see where animals had gnawed on them. They both plucked one from the branches and smiled as they tasted the fruit's tart but sweet flesh.
“Lucy, we need a bag or basket to haul a bunch of these back to the others. Let’s search the barn and house.”
Sam led her daughter through the open barn door and poked around until she saw a stack of gunnysacks in a corner. “Those will do nicely.”
She watched for spiders because she was terrified of them, but didn’t notice the two rats beside the pile. She gingerly grasped the corner of one bag and yanked it from the pile scaring the rats. One ran between her feet, and she screamed, scaring Lucy, who yelled out because her mother hollered. The rats quickly scurried across the dirt floor and disappeared. Just when Sam and Lucy had calmed down, the barn’s back door flew open, and a man came running out of the dark.
“Are you okay? Where did they go?”
Sam and Lucy charged Tom and clung to him with tears in their eyes. Sam’s face was ashen, and she still trembled in his arms as she tried to compose herself. Tom tried to keep the rabbit blood off her clothes but wasn’t successful. Then Lucy giggled, which started Sam snickering.
Tom stood there with a pistol in one hand and three dressed out rabbits dangling from one of their paws in his other hand. He looked around while waiting for an answer. “What happened, and why are you laughing now?”
“Rats!”
“Yep, old barns have rats. Did a varmint scare you, brave women?”
“It’s not funny. I hate rats almost as much as spiders. One ran between my feet. I thought it was going to bite me.”
Tom laughed. “Thank God, that’s all it was. I was afraid more of those men had found us and were kidnapping you.”
“Were you going to beat them to death with the rabbits?”
Lucy and Sam were still clinging to Tom when Tom said, “I always like being hugged by two beautiful women, but my arm is tired
