Chapter 9

Our cleanup efforts and the attempt to air out the cabin had helped, but enough of the stink remained to remind us that yesterday two men had died here. The fact that we’d been defending ourselves made no real difference. They were dead, and the cabin smelled.

Killing animals had become almost routine, but not humans; it was surprising that I slept at all! But yesterday had been physically exhausting as well as stressful, so maybe that’s why I slept so well.

After taking care of morning necessities, I found a young tree to serve as a temporary spear. I hacked a point at the end, cut the trunk so that it was equal to my own height, then smoothed the places where branches had been. The spear ended up slightly more than six feet in length and two inches in diameter. It would deliver a lethal wound, but only because it was backed by strong muscles. If not of the same quality as the one I’d broken yesterday, at least I had a spear again.

Scavengers might still be feeding on the bodies we’d dumped, and if so, they were welcome to those two. I hoped to get my dart back, or at least the chipped point, but salvage could wait. In any case, the dart wouldn’t be useful until I made a replacement shaft.

I collected a large rabbit from one snare and there was evidence that another had been caught, but something else had a taste for rabbit. There were no recognizable tracks, just bits of fur, and even the snare cord was beyond salvaging. Maybe one of the scavengers had abandoned feeding on the human bodies in response to the rabbit’s squeals. Wait too long before checking your snares, you won’t get the rabbit!

I cleaned my catch and headed back. One rabbit, shared three ways, wouldn’t provide much of a meal. Yesterday’s events provided some excuse for the failure; defending the women had taken precedence and after dragging the bodies into the woods, I was tired. But excuses can’t be eaten; I would have to do better.

Leaving the rabbit at the cabin, I headed for the stream. It might be possible to dam up the gully. It would be a lot of work, but possibly worthwhile. There are advantages in having a plentiful supply of water for irrigation. Add a palisade for security, perhaps an outbuilding for storing supplies ... such improvements would eliminate two of the cabin’s worst failings. Musing on the possibilities occupied my thoughts.

My last few prepared snares I placed in the gully; the final snare was rope, all I had left, but maybe it would work. Heading back, I collected fibrous leaves and long-stemmed grasses for use in making more cord. As I was stuffing them into my pack, I noticed the bees.

They had been visiting a shrub with small whitish flowers. Whatever kind of blooms they were, the bees liked them. There were a lot of them and when they left the flowers, they flew away downstream. I followed their flight path and found the hive.

It was in an old tree, now hollowed out by rot. Possibly it had fallen victim to a lightning strike; the bottom showed a long split extending almost all the way to where the bees were entering the tree. A rotten branch had fallen away there, leaving a foot-wide hole. The bees I’d been following entered, even as others exited and flew away. I moved in a little closer to make sure they were bees and not hornets. But bees they were, and I decided to raid the tree for honey. I suddenly had a taste for something sweet, and I knew the women would like it too.

There’s a trick to gathering honey. If you’re careful, you can do it without getting stung. I hoped! But I would need a helper, plus gourds or a tightly woven container for carrying the honeycomb. I wanted the beeswax as well as the honey; I had a use for it.

On the way back to the cabin, I cautiously approached the place where we’d dumped the two bodies. There might be tracks there, and knowledge could be a life-saver. The bodies were gone. Only a slight smell lingered to indicate they’d ever been there! There were numerous tracks, most of them looking like a cross between a cat and a dog. I’d have called it cat, but cats retract their claws and this one showed claw marks ahead of the oval pads. The animal was heavy, too; the tracks were deeply indented into the soil. Had the cat-dog carried a body away? Might it be some kind of terrestrial cat, as opposed to an arboreal one? A lion, perhaps even a saber-tooth?

My spear wouldn’t be adequate for either. The big cats were best avoided; they were better armed than I was! The atlatl-spear-dart was simply not good enough. I needed a projectile weapon, but the crossbow was heavy and in any case it needed to be left for defending the cabin. It was also slow to reload. A sling would be easier to make but would take even more practice, plus it lacked the killing power of a bow.

A longbow takes practice, a lot of it, and strong muscles to use it effectively. But I could start with a fairly light bow and work my way up. Along the way, I would develop the necessary skill and strength. In the meantime, my first bow could be quickly reloaded and a second arrow launched. Rabbits tended to be bold, and even the deer didn’t fear me. I intended to use their overconfidence against them!

I gave up on recovering the dart; I would have to make my own. It would take time, but I had the time since I wasn’t traveling. I also had plenty of raw materials, including the rocks I’d spotted along the stream. But first I needed a bow, and if it was to be as useful as I hoped, I would need a dried staff. Green wood tends to warp while drying.

Done right, the raw trunk would yield wood for a new spear shaft and as many as three bow-blanks. My knife could be used as makeshift drawknife, so carving the staves wouldn’t be a problem. Fashioning a thin, strong bowstring would, but numerous primitive peoples had solved the problem so I could too.

Drying my current spear shaft near the fireplace might prevent warping. In the meantime, I would work on cutting a suitable tree-trunk to length and splitting it into quarters. The quartered blanks would also be less prone to warping ... I hoped. Yew was reported to be best, but if necessary, ash or hickory could substitute. Even beech or cedar would do, and American natives had used a tree called Osage orange. But I hadn’t seen anything matching what I thought such a tree looked like, and yew didn’t grow here either. Maybe there would be some closer to the mountains where the climate was cool, but in the meantime my choice would have to be made from what was available.

What was the rest of this country like? There would be mountains, the spring near the cabin told me that. Surface runoff produces streams, but springs need elevation so that water falling higher sinks in and flows downhill, still underground. Where it emerges is a spring. And yet, this region had not been mountainous in my timeline. The Ozarks and Ouachitas were north of here, that much I remembered, but the Futurist had warned me that the geological history here might be different.

I was probably still in Texas, well north now of the big-tree region located above the coastal swamps. The mix of plain and forest in this area might indicate the area west of downtime Dallas. There were probably rivers somewhere nearby too because there had been several down-time, though hopefully not equal to the down-time Mississippi!