I hope you enjoy this chapter. Much of the lore surrounding the bow is true. this type of bow is still shot in traditional competition in the Corn Shoots held during Cherokee celebrations. I've made a couple myself using black locust as I don't have easy access to Osage Orange (Bois D'arc). They are truly efficient weapons not too dissimilar to English longbow and shoot to within a few feet a second of the fastest of modern recurve bows. Compound bows shoot much, much faster, but that's cheating :-) My brother knaps the arrow heads for me out of Rainbow Butte Obsidian. And I have several made out of the rainbow sheen subtype that comes only from that area (as far as I know).
Ferg is a great character as well and based on a conglomerate of Vietnam vets that I know, including an Uncle who used a Thompson as a LRRP.
Hope you are all enjoying the story!
Chapter 31