Chapter 4: Life and Death

Since I introduced the travois hunters and gathers were now able to gather larger amounts of items. Hunters could easily bring back twice as much game. Gatherers were also able to bring back almost three times the amounts they were able before.

This made life in the village much better and everyone was becoming stronger and healthier.

But life soon showed us that we must be thankful for every day, every minute we have.

I just happened to be on this fateful hunting trip. Laya was with me and probably the reason things did not turn out much worse.

We had taken eight of the elk like animals, two bulls and six cows. We had to split all of the cows in half to pull them with a travois. The bulls we had to quarter due to their larger size. We had made twenty travois to drag them back to our village. we had two extra that were used to carry or well drag all the equipment and items back so those pulling the travois did not have to also carry their equipment. We had not expected to take this large amount of game but luckily had started out with 35 people in our hunting party. Laya and I along with Wenok, Nitti, and Echee brought the original 30 in the hunting party to the 35. This allowed one person to pull a travois with half a cow or quarter bull.

Everyone took a turn pulling a travois while the rest would keep watch for danger. We were about halfway home when the trouble came.

A male lion almost twice the size of what I knew lions to be jumped out in front of our group. We would find out this was a trap or distraction when the five female lions attacked from the side and slightly from the back.

One man and four women were taken down and killed almost instantly from the female lions attack. The sudden unexpected violent attack shocked everyone including me preventing us from reacting quickly.

When I regained my senses I somehow managed to put an arrow into the male lion’s throat just as he was less than ten feet away effectively killing it sadly not immediately but injured enough to not be a further problem.

Everyone else finally turned their attention to the female lions and began to shower them with arrows, Laya suddenly turned to our rear and shouted a warning. Eleven hyenas or animals that resembled a hyena except of course the fact that these were almost as big as a black bear from my time and place. They were almost three times bigger than what I would have expected them to be. Each of these hyenas attacked a member of our group.

The one that charged me I killed simply with my bare hands catching it as it jumped to attack, I broke its neck quickly. I turned to help others and saw the carnage. Some of the men were able to put their spear up and take the attacking hyena in the chest.

I rushed to help the closest person being attacked by a hyena drawing my knife and stabbed it at the base of its skull while pulling it off the woman it had been attacking. Unfortunately, she was dead the hyena had got her by the throat as it took her down I did see that she put her knife into the hyena’s chest almost the entire length of the blade so this hyena would not have been able to attack anyone else had I not killed it or was it already dead?

I quickly moved to the next person who happened to be alive and fighting the hyena’s ability to bite him as he had managed to get his spear shaft into the hyena’s mouth. The hyena has one of the most powerful bites but when you shove something all the way back against the back of its mouth it can’t bite down completely and this eliminates its bite force somewhat. I could see the spear shaft was not going to last much longer so I slit the hyena’s throat as I moved by to help the next person.

When all was said and done we had sixteen people killed, four by the lions and twelve by hyenas. Just about everyone was injured to some extent. I even had serious scratches on my left arm and left hip from my hyena’s attack.

Laya hacked one on the back of the neck just as it was biting down on her shoulder so she was slightly injured with a large, jagged bite wound on her left shoulder. She did get knocked down by another hyena as she slashed its throat hacking it using both of her hatchets in opposite directions. It took her a few minutes to get the dead hyena off herself.

I was checking on Wenok because Echee came screaming for me. Nitti was taking care of Wenok who had been attacked from behind as he was protecting both of them. The hyena bit his thigh and dragged him to the ground. Nitti put an arrow into the head of the hyena from like four feet away and almost half of the shaft was embedded into the head of the hyena down into the neck.

The wound on Wenok’s thigh looked real bad but the good thing was the bone was not broken. It could heal if well treated. I sent three people running for the village to get help to come to us as we could not make our way back with all the injured and dead. Laya stayed with me to ensure we did not have any more surprises. It was not long before all the help arrived.

Once back at the village I gave the instructions on how to threat the wounded. I had all of them moved to the main hut and hot water prepared. I did not want to use the lye soap we normally used but decided it was better than getting an infection. So I had a person wash their hands with the lye soap and rinse then using a clean bowl make a lather from the lye soap into the clean bowl. Using the lye lather rather than the straight lye soap every wound was carefully but thoroughly washed and rinsed.

This was done twice a day for a week or until it was obvious the skin was healing. Minor wounds only took 3-4 days. Major wounds like Wenok took ten or more, Wenok took sixteen days before there was signs of skin healing as he had the most serious injury of anyone.

We held a service to remember the sixteen who died: Hornmal leaving his widow Yalta, Walah leaving her widower Koom, and the mated couples; Paopao & Cimta, Ungla & Metu, Vaalat & Rera, Jakim & Mukee, Barok & Bethal, Poamoa & Luma, and Munook & Vada. Most of these couples died trying to protect their mate. Koom & Yalta ended up becoming mates more due to both losing their mate than having feeling for each other. Hopefully, they will come to care for each other or even better fall in love with each other.

The entire camp got great news a few days later. Several women were pregnant two of mine, Etla and Fueb were so happy to be pregnant I was very happy myself and told the other three we would just have to practice more. It was the right thing to say at the right time too.