Note: I made a change to chapter one, since I found a source that said it was Hera who caused Hercules' temporary madness (which makes a lot of sense!).
MontyPythonFan, I know so much about skinning animals and tanning hides because of three things: my dad (hunts, skins critters, tans hides) a book (inherited from my grandfather) entitled Taxidermy, and Google (gotta love Google!).
Ellen, thanks for another great review!
Ecri, same to you—I love your reviews.
Padawan Jan-AQ, Wow, that's a lot of reviews. Lol, Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it.
Iccle fairy, Thanks so much. Hope you enjoy this chapter, too.
Warning: This chapter may just gross you out a bit. Heh heh.
Indy, Mutt, Marion and Ox aren't mine... but I'm in danger of becoming theirs.
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BRAINS
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"OK," Indy told Mutt. "If we really want this hide to survive the trip, then there's only one good way to preserve it without salt."
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Marion muttered.
"What is it?" Mutt asked.
"Brain tanning."
"Is that what it sounds like?"
"Uh...yeah."
Marion stood up. "So, I guess I'll be collecting more firewood..."
Indy grinned at her. "Find some rotten wood while you're at it—we'll want to smoke the hide when we're through."
"I'll do my best."
"Guts are one thing," Mutt said, sounding a bit uneasy. "I'm not sure about brains."
Indy was already advancing on the jaguar carcass, sword in hand. "I've never decapitated a big cat before," he mused. "Should be interesting..." He noticed that despite Mutt's hesitation, the boy was watching him fixedly.
Oxley, of course, found the whole thing hilarious. Well, let him laugh. He'd been through a lot in the last few weeks.
Once he got into it, Mutt seemed to forget the grossness of the situation and helped Indy peel the flesh away from the jaguar's skull.
"If you decide you want to keep the skull," Indy said, "we'll have to be very careful taking the brains out."
"Nah, I've had enough of skulls to last a lifetime," Mutt answered.
"OK, that makes it easy."
When the skull was fairly clean, Indy set it close to the fire nose-up so he could be sure it wouldn't start leaking.
"If things were more in our favor, we'd have a pot to boil it in, but this will have to do. While we wait for it to heat up, we can do some more fleshing."
Indy and Mutt held the hide between them and they continued the long—and admittedly boring—task of removing fat and tissue from the flesh side.
Marion wrinkled her nose at the sight of the jaguar's skull sitting by the fire, but she didn't comment on it as she put more wood on to burn. "I'm piling your rotten wood over here," she told Indy. "Does it matter if it's hardwood or soft?"
"Hard is better," Indy answered. "We don't want the fire getting too hot. Heat can damage the hide. What we're after is the smoke." He looked over at Ox. "If you're feeling industrious, you can go cut some poles—eight or ten feet would be good."
Ox tipped his head quizzically to the side. "With a sword?"
"That's all we've got."
"The blades will be no good by the time we get home," Mutt said glumly.
"I'll have them sharpened for you," Indy said. "Don't worry about it."
"If and when we do get home," said Marion, "I think we should drape that pelt over the couch, don't you Mutt?"
Mutt shrugged. "Sure. If you want everyone who comes over to ask where it came from and have to tiptoe around the UFO thing so they don't think we're completely kookie... sure."
"Careful how you're angling the knife," Indy reminded him. "You don't want to put a hole in it."
"Righto." Mutt returned his attention to his work and dragged his switchblade over the hide at a right angle.
Glancing up, Indy caught Marion staring at them. She was smiling a very soft smile.
"What?" Indy asked. "You're not repulsed anymore?"
"It's growing on me," she answered.
Before long, Indy decided that another installment of the Hercules Show was in order. Fleshing a pelt really lost its appeal after the first ten minutes or so.
"What number were we on?" he asked Mutt.
"Five," Mutt answered.
Indy turned the jaguar skin to give Mutt a new patch to work on. "Five. Is that the stable or the birds?"
"The stable," Ox answered from his little corner of camp. He was awkwardly trying to sharpen the ends of three poles with one of Mutt's rapiers.
"All right, then. The fifth task Eurystheus gave Hercules was to clean the Augean stables in a single day."
"I take it they were big stables?" Mutt asked.
"Yes, but it was more than that. Augeas kept very special livestock in those stables. They were immune to disease of all kinds. So the stables never really needed to be cleaned."
Marion made a face. "Just like men...if it doesn't need to be done, why do it?"
"I take offense, ma'am," Indy told her. "Anyway, Eurystheus figured it would be a very humiliating job for Hercules. So even if he did manage to pull it off, this task wouldn't set him off as a hero like the others did."
"Oh, I know what he did," Mutt said quickly.
"I can't wait to hear it."
"He picked up the stable with his crazy strength and set it down in a clean spot."
Indy laughed. "He really should have had you along, kid. No, he got a couple of rivers to change course and wash the stable out."
"That works too, I guess."
"Now, Augeas had promised to give Hercules a share of his cattle if he succeeded, and since he agreed to accept payment, Eurystheus said that this task didn't count either. Also because Hercules got help from the rivers. He was pretty upset that he hadn't had to get his hands dirty."
"Eurystheus sure was a whiner."
"Yeah."
"Not going to mention Phyleus?" Ox asked.
"I wasn't going to," Indy answered. "But I guess now I'll have to. Phyleus was Augeas's son. Apparently Augeas was of the Eurystheus persuasion in that he didn't want or expect Hercules to succeed. But Phyleus sided with Hercules. So his father exiled him."
"Touchy dad," said Mutt.
"Just wait. When it came time to pay up to Hercules, Augeas refused. So when Hercules was done with his tasks he killed Augeas and gave his kingdom to Phyleus. So there's some extreme vengeance for you."
"Wow. Well... maybe he was taunting him or something. Cruisin' for a bruisin.'"
"That's a good enough reason to kill him?"
Mutt shook his head. "But maybe he didn't really mean to kill him."
"I don't think that's how it happened.... The Greeks had very different ideas of ethics. In their culture, vengeance was acceptable. Admirable, even."
Indy paused as Marion approached him from behind and bent to whisper in his ear.
"He's only combed his hair once today."
Indy grinned and leaned back to kiss her.
Mutt cleared his throat. "Um, hey. Story? What happened next?"
Marion squeezed Indy's shoulder and wandered off again.
"Right," Indy muttered. "The Stymphalian birds. They belonged to Ares, the god of war."
"I thought Mars was the god of war."
"That's Roman mythology. This is Greek, remember?"
"Oh, OK. So what were they like—lots of heads?"
"No; metal wings. They could shoot their feathers at people."
Mutt seemed impressed. "Supermurgitroid. That's a talent that would come in handy."
"You really need to watch your language," Indy muttered.
Mutt laughed. "Maybe you just need to expand your vocabulary. But back to the birds."
"All right. Ares' pets got chased up to Lake Stymphalia by a pack of wolves—"
"Why didn't they shoot their feathers at them?"
"I don't know—be quiet," Indy said, slightly irritated. "They kind of took over up there and Eurystheus decided that Hercules' sixth job should be to get rid of them. Well, the forest around there was very dense, so he couldn't get a good shot at them with his bow. So he got Athena and Hephaestus to forge these big clappers to scare them into the air."
"Didn't that make the task not count—because he had help?"
"No, oddly enough. Maybe word didn't get back to Eurystheus about it. So anyway..." Indy waited to make sure Mutt wouldn't interrupt again before he went on. "He used arrows dipped in the poison hydra blood to shoot them down. The ones that got away left Greece for good."
"Wow. Hercules finally did something smart. Maybe he had some brains after all."
"Speaking of brains..." Indy got up and carefully felt the side of the jaguar's skull which faced away from the fire. "This is probably as good as it's going to get without burning the skull or our hands. We'll want a couple of rocks from the riverbed to break it open.
Marion made herself scarce again during the skull-cracking. Mutt looked as if he wanted to join her, but he didn't say anything.
Indy used the largest rounded piece of skull to fetch a little water from the stream to mix in with the brains as they rubbed them into the hide.
"Goopy enough for you?" Indy asked sarcastically.
"Well...it's not too bad if I don't think about it," Mutt responded, squishing a lump into the skin. "Whose idea was it to use brains to tan a hide anyway?"
"I don't know who did it first, actually."
"You sound so disappointed. You told me yourself you have your limitations."
Indy smiled at him, tempted to rub a brains-covered hand on his son's face. He resisted the impulse.
"So when we're done here, what do we do?"
Looking over at Ox, who was tying his poles together with vines, Indy said, "Next we get to smoke it."
Mutt had a strange look in his eye. Mischievous, Indy thought.
"OK, what's that look for?"
"Oh, I was just thinking what a bad influence you are," Mutt said, trying and failing to hold back a smile. "We've known each other only a few days and you're going to teach me to smoke."
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Hope it wasn't too nasty for you. But I'm not sorry! :p I know that this chapter was mostly dialogue... but after all, they had to sit around all day. Please leave a review if you liked it... or if you didn't, I suppose you can say that too, but be nice, please.
