Chapter 17

Our plans to trek northwest were on hold until we knew whether Lee would survive. For the moment, he had lost a lot of blood and might be in shock. We’d have to care for him as best we could, and wait to see what happened.

The women had shown plenty of courage and more fighting ability than I expected, but physical strength would also be a factor on the trek. I could carry more of a load and do it longer before needing to stop and rest, and Lee had been almost as capable. Now?

I couldn’t count on protecting three women by myself, even though they’d help.

As for animals, the bear had been injured before the fight started, and despite our combined efforts Lee had been badly wounded. Killing the scimitar-toothed cat had been the result of as much luck as skill, and we hadn’t yet faced a large, healthy predator on its own turf! But bears and cats were far from the most dangerous things we’d face; dire wolves hunted large prey where we intended to go. They were larger, much larger, than modern gray wolves, and like their smaller cousins they probably hunted in packs. If such a group caught us in the open, without Lilia or Lee backing me up...

By almost any measure other than intelligence, those wolves were better suited to survive than humans. The same was true of all the other top predators. This was their world, not ours. Technology had made us the top predator downtime, but here we were prey. I had named this world after Darwin for a reason. It would soon eliminate the unfit, the unready, and the merely unlucky.

Maybe us.

Meantime, I had more important things to do than muse about the future. Regardless of whether we left the cabin this year or waited until next year, I needed a stronger bow and arrows matched to its draw weight. I also needed better arrow points, and I had not yet mastered the art of flint knapping. My stone points were usable, barely, but they would become much better with practice.

We also needed spears for everyone. The new ones would have longer, thicker shafts, and steel points, making them better for use against the huge animals we could expect to face. I would get the points by salvaging the blades from the short swords we’d taken.

I explained this to the women. “We can’t travel until Lee recovers. I know you’re better able to defend yourselves now, but against the kind of warriors we fought? Realistically, you wouldn’t have a chance. Sandra found that out when those two broke into the cabin. I was a soldier in my previous life, so I had experience and training to draw on. I knew what I had to do against that swordsman, so I did it. Even then, he nearly killed me.

“The two that Lee killed never got close enough to use their swords. Which means that one of us would need to be close enough to help on the trip. Whichever one of us stayed in camp could do some trapping while the other hunted. Another thing to keep in mind, we’ll use travois as our main method for moving heavier items. I found out just how much strength and endurance that takes when I hauled the camel meat to the cabin. Everything else, we’ll carry it in backpacks or leave it behind. We won’t be able to move fast, and we won’t go very far in a day. We’ll also have to carry the travois during the last hour before we stop for the night so that we don’t leave drag marks. We’ll also change course, so if anyone’s following they can’t find us by going ahead in a straight line. We can probably evade an ordinary enemy, but a skilled tracker will still be able to find us, which means we’ll have to take turns on watch every night even though it will leave us tired the next day.”

I left it at that. We could talk about the issues I’d raised later.

We had meat for the time being, but the half-carcass that we’d managed to process into bear jerky wouldn’t last long. My traps might still catch the occasional small animal, but we needed fats and large hides for leather bags and packs. That meant deer or elk, and that in turn meant I would have to hunt farther from the cabin to have a reasonable chance of success. Larger animals would be even better, but I had no idea how I would kill something as large as a bison or ground sloth, and certainly not a mammoth!

The heavier bow I intended to make would help, but I wouldn’t be the only one hunting the huge grazers! Big game attracts big predators, and out on the tall-grass plains I wouldn’t have a handy tree for refuge.

And maybe the bison, what people downtime often called buffalo, would graze in bowshot of the tree-line. There had to be at least one in the herd dumb enough to do that, right?

Nope. On Darwin’s World, dumb critters don’t get to grow up! We would have to do the best we could.

What kind of bow? The Welsh longbow was excellent for warfare, but less suited for hunting, especially in thick cover. English archers had used them in the forests, judging by the legend of Robin Hood, but their longbows were so powerful that a bowman needed regular practice just to draw the bow. They were also not the best choice for fast snap-shooting. By comparison, the horse nomads of the Asian steppe had used short, stout bows, and American natives had short but lighter bows.

Something shorter than the longbow, then, but more powerful than the American Indian bows. My old, weakened bow would suffice in the meantime. I discussed my thoughts with the women, but Lilia wasn’t yet ready to hand over caring for Lee. She would help around the cabin until she was satisfied that the others were competent to take her place.

Felling trees for bow-staves and spear shafts would need to be done before I could hunt. The blanks could dry while I was away and they’d be ready when I had time to work on them.

As soon as I’d eaten, I went looking for suitable trees. There was still residual muscle soreness, some of it from my wound and some from the fight with the bear, but I soon worked through it and felt better. I carried my spear in my hand, and my strung bow was slung across my back.

I soon crossed the stream near where I’d killed the camel. There was little remaining sign that anything had happened there. The scraps of skin and flesh had been eaten and the scuffs left from the fight had been eradicated by a short-lived but heavy rain. Sic transit camel.

Morbid thoughts: I would likely leave no more sign than the camel when I passed. Pleistocene-age humans, those who lived in the Americas at the end of the last ice age, rarely lived to be thirty years old. My downtime knowledge might help, but it might also not be enough. Those ancient humans had also acquired knowledge, and theirs had been the specialized knowledge of how to survive in a world like this one. Darwin’s World was primitive, violent, and untamed. I decided I liked it just as it was. It might kill me, probably would, but I would live and enjoy life until it happened. About half a mile away, I found the kind of tree I was looking for, and a few feet away I found another. I cut both, and one at a time carried the trimmed trunks back to the cabin, leaving them stacked by the front door.