Chapter 5

Maybe I’ve been this hungry before, but I can’t remember when.

As soon as he could, he put two steaks over the fire to cook. While they cooked, he continued butchering the animal, saving all the hide and tendons possible. He let the meat cook until it began to look slightly more like rare steak than raw meat before cutting a chunk and popping it into his mouth only to grab frantically for his water bucket. He laughed aloud as he realized how he must look, half-naked, wearing an uncured skin loincloth, body reeking of a vile flower while sitting in the dirt gobbling a half-cooked piece of meat. After his involuntary fast, the meat was beyond delicious. He allowed the second steak to cook for a while longer, then finished it at a more leisurely pace.

That has to be the best-tasting piece of meat I’ve ever put into my mouth, and even better, there seem to be many of the animals around. I just hope I can continue to be successful in hunting them — without — having to hang out in a tree practically naked while doing it.

In a deep crevice just outside his cave, and using green wood, he built a small, smoky fire along the bottom before hanging the meat-laden spits into the crevice well above the fire.

Hopefully, the sides of the crevice will force more of the smoke into the meat, and after it has dried sufficiently, it shouldn’t spoil for a considerable length of time. He would have to move his food inside before late afternoon, though. He certainly didn’t want to give the cat another free meal.

Even with building fires as close to the entrance as possible in the hopes of warding off animals, the fire still put a lot of heat into the cave, and had it not been for the breeze coming out of the hole in the back, he could never have stood the heat. In addition, it was a beautiful day, and he was tired of the gloom inside his impromptu home. He had to watch over the meat anyway, so he sat under a gnarled old tree twenty feet from the entrance to work on the stronger bow. He had kept back his shards as he knapped his arrowheads, and he decided to use these as much as possible while working on the bow, thus saving some wear on his precious knife. The shards were almost as sharp, and he could knap a new edge when needed.

He had never eaten that much meat in one setting in his life. He forced himself awake as his eyes threatened to close and scanned the area below him. If the cat could smell as well as he thought it could, and it had remained in the area, it would know by now that he had more meat. There was no possibility that the animal could reach him before he could get back inside the cave, however — if he remained alert. But it wouldn’t do for him to doze off out here. His cook fire had burned itself out, and the cave would remain reasonably cool with the breeze coming in from the back. Still, he was going to stay out of the gloomy interior and the cloying smell of wood smoke as much as possible just now. He had spent more time with his heavier bowstring and had wound up with extra sinew strings incorporated into the string to make certain it would be strong enough for his more powerful bow.

He held the big bow up to test for balance. Much of the rough shaping was done, and the recurve gave it a flare and more power — he hoped, but he still had to do more bending, particularly with the recurve. I still need to find a smoother piece of sandstone to do the finish work, but I want this bow to be as perfect as I can make it.

The hot day was near its end as he moved his meat and equipment inside the cave before starting a smoky fire to continue slowly drying the majority of the meat. The poles sliding into place gave him a feeling of security as the setting sun cast long shadows across the land below. He laid the bowstring out, dipped a piece of hide in the much-diluted, hot glue, and stripped the string through the hide, working a very thin layer of glue into the string. When he was through, the string remained flexible and could almost have passed for one solid fiber instead of multiple strands of sinew wound together.

He still had a long way to go on the bow, but he decided to test it a bit anyway. He mentally crossed his fingers as he started to string the bow, expecting the wood to be a little stiffer than the bow he had used as a teenager. I know that I need to take it down some more, but I want the most powerful bow I can draw.

After several frustrating tries, he finally had the bow strung. “Maybe I’ve been a bit overconfident with my strength,” he grumbled to himself. After a couple of tentative pulls, he stopped. It’s for darn sure that I’ll never draw this thing the way it is now, but I’m going to be very careful while taking off more wood. Again, he thought of the cat. I have to have a bow powerful enough to take that monster down.

The dense wood, tough to begin with, was now so hard that his knife or the shards would hardly cut it. Determined, he worked well into the night, scraping and testing. Finally, he strung the bow and gently tweaked the bowstring. It seemed to sing for him. He was dying to try out this thing of wood and hair that he had spent so many hours fashioning.

After standing with the five-foot bow, Mack took a deep breath and drew the weapon as far as he could. Judging from the seventy-pound draw-weight of his compound bow he had hunted with in the twenty-third century, this must run over eighty pounds — maybe, well over eighty. He would like to make a compound bow, but constructing it entirely out of natural products would be a slow process; there would be pulleys and cams to make and a much-longer bowstring — possibly a future project. He nocked an arrow, and straining and shaking, drew the bow about two-thirds the length of the arrow. If this had been a composite bow, it would have “broken” about there and gotten much easier to draw, but it wasn’t, and it didn’t.

He released the pressure and started again. This time, he began from the classic hard-draw position with the bow above his head before bringing his new weapon to bear as he reached full draw. No use. Strain as he might, two-thirds was all he could get.

I haven’t shot a bow much in years, but I refuse to cut this beautiful bow down any more. I suppose I’ll have to practice and build more strength before I can ever hope to draw this monster, if I ever can. To stop the cat, I’ll need all the force behind the arrow that I can muster. He isn’t going down easy.

At the front of the cave, he took one of his poorest arrows, strained until his arms trembled, and released. The bowstring snapped back with a satisfying crack, sending the arrow between the bars arching out of sight over the plains below. Even without being pulled to full draw, the bow seemed to push the arrow at a respectable speed.

Depressed from his inability to draw the powerful bow that now lacked only its final sanding to be finished, he pounded out holes in the back of the cave on either side about a foot down from the roof, and worked a pole into position — a chinning and pullup bar.

Maybe a series of exercises coupled with practice with the bow will help. Time will tell.

During the next week, Mack cured the hides as best he could, made arrowheads, arrows and stocked wood, as well as successfully hunting twice more. The meat, well-dried and smoked, was wrapped in leaves and now hung in the back of the cave. He had twenty arrows of varying quality, most of which were in a skin quiver. The soreness was almost gone from doing pushups, pullups, chins, and situps three times a day. He still couldn’t draw the bow much over two-thirds of the way, but he was proud of the weapon and refused to weaken it.

The kaleidoscope had touched the edge of his consciousness, but after the trip into the past, he seemed to be able to ignore the swirl of colors. He knew he should hypnotize himself and use the kaleidoscope to try to return to his own time. But what had he left there? He could return to part-time jobs, living in an old house and cooking vegetables on a camp stove. Even if he could control the kaleidoscope and by some miracle, managed to get a decent job again, he would constantly be reminded of Janie. He knew he would, yet again, drive by their house that now belonged to someone else. In his mind’s eye, he could see Janie working in her roses. Roses that the new owners had destroyed when they did away with the flower gardens.

What have I got to go back to? Face it, Boy. You’re still scared of that thing, and you really don’t know how to get home, anyway.

He grimaced as he thought about riding the thread into the future. He had chosen the green-colored thread before, because it looked brighter and somehow, more substantial than the others. But what about all the other threads? Could he be sure of getting the same thread this time? How long should he stay on it? What did all those threads represent? He had read about other dimensions, other realities. Was this confusion of violently-swirling, multicolored threads possibly pathways to other dimensions? Even if he chose the same thread again, he might stay on it too long and be worse off than he was now. He might overshoot and wind up in a nuclear holocaust, or choose the wrong thread with whatever consequences that might have.

Could I return here at this time if I didn’t like where I wound up? I’m not quite ready to jump out of the proverbial frying pan into the fire. I’ve felt healthier here than I have since leaving the hospital. Maybe it’s better to leave well enough alone.

Before the accident, he had trained and run three marathons — his times weren’t good, but he had still been upright at the finish line. Somehow though, he had never had the sense of well-being that he had now. This isn’t exactly the ideal place to run for pleasure, though, he thought with a grin. Running would attract a lot more attention than cautiously walking would. Running, in all probability, would advertise me as the main course for the cat or some other beast that I haven’t even seen yet.

The blisters he had accumulated when he first got here had healed quickly without a hint of infection, and calluses had replaced them. At last, my body seems to be functioning the way it should.

The cat had “visited” only twice during the week. Or more accurately, it had shown itself twice; he suspected it still watched him at night. The first time, it had charged the bars just as before, but the next time, it just lay at the entrance and hissed at him. Mack had refrained from shooting it, doubting that the arrow would penetrate all the muscles and bone it would take to kill it, unless he could draw the bow fully. Six months in the hospital had left him with a weakness that he had been unable to shake back in the twenty-third century, but that seemed not to be the case now. I want to kill it quickly, not injure or infuriate it, so I’ll wait if it will let me.

So far, the days had been quite warm, occasionally, even hot with slightly cooler temperatures at night, except when it rained, and it quickly dropped several degrees. He wondered if there were a winter here, but suspected there was not. He couldn’t imagine the large dinosaurs migrating and didn’t think they could live in a very cold climate. Still, he thought there might be cooler weather to some degree. He would like to have several of the bison hides to sleep on. Also, he was hoping to close the entrance against the elements, particularly before cooler weather. From the animals he had killed, he had cut and stitched two of the hides together for a narrow bed before filling it with dried grass. It wasn’t much, but it was better than lying on the dirt floor. However, he could no more bring down one of the bison than he could the cat.

Even if I could manage to take one of the bison, I suspect the rest would stomp me into the ground before I could get away.

He made a pair of shorts out of a piece of hide, using rawhide strips to sew with, before making a crude pair of moccasins the same way. He wanted to save his civilized clothing, especially his boots. His beard was coming along nicely if the itching were any indication.