A Man Called Milo Morai

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The day of hunting, trapping, seining and foraging for wild plants, fruits, nuts and tubers had gone well in this rich, not often hunted slice of the great prairie. Fillets of fish and thin slices of venison now had been added to others already in the process of curing over slow, smoky beds of fire scattered about the camp of the hunters.

All of the daylight hours, those who had not ridden forth with the hunting and foraging parties or fished the small river had been hard at the tasks of tending the fires and the meat and fish that hung above them, had scraped and stretched and salted and rolled the skins and hides, rendered fish offal for glue, and performed the countless other tasks necessary to maintain the camp and its temporary inhabitants—human, feline and equine.

Between chores, certain of the camp detail cared for and saw to the needs of an injured boy. His intemperate insubordination of the preceding night had resulted in his chief flinging him into the still-live coals of a large firepit —a regrettable but very necessary cost of survival in the often-harsh environment was instant and savage punishment for failure to obey leaders, for repeated instances of such undisciplined conduct might well one day cost lives, his own and many another also.

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