Chapter 15

She had me there. I had work to do now even though it wasn't much. I fished out the machetes, gave their edges a lick and a promise with a whetstone, and then headed for the door.

When I stopped to pick up a Marlin the machetes were taken from me. Mary and Chris didn't get away free either. Mecha talked and waved hands at them until they each picked up a long gun to carry.

In minutes we were through the small tree covered stretch and starting out across hundreds of acres of standing hay, kinda. On closer inspection I saw it was some type of wild grain and my best guess was oats. Oats or not there were seed heads apparent and it gave me an even better idea. Hay cutting was off for the day.

"Chris, we need to harvest this grain first. These look like wild oats to me. Hell, we can eat them and the horses can too."

"I think you're right," she said, and started talking to Mecha.

Mecha wasn't a bit surprised about finding the oats. She'd known all along they were here and grains were a big part of their diet. This just didn't happen to be the type they liked best. The camp they'd come from had other places to gather other grains they liked better.

Local women were all glad to find out this grain was suitable horse feed, since they knew exactly how to harvest it. We went right back to the cave and they gathered baskets and flint knives as more appropriate tools for the job.

The harvesting went fast once we had the correct tools. We'd still need to cut hay at some point but it was better to get the grain while the getting was good. Get the grain they did too. We only stayed at it for about three hours and I'm sure they had more than three hundred pounds when they quit. I know because I put my foot down and demanded the job of pulling the travois loaded with baskets of oats back.

While Mecha, Kemela, Reela, and a few of the others started on a big meal Chris and Mary buttonholed me for more conversation of the horse persuasion.

"That looks like one problem on the way to being solved," Chris said.

"Tell me about it. We can have plenty to feed a couple of horses within a week easily," I said.

"Poor Jack, we've been working you too hard. We can have enough to feed ten in a day or two. Just the few of us can't get the job done that quickly, but Mecha is already wanting to go and get most of the women and children at Jockat's camp to help. She says she can trade a buffalo or two for all the labor you need with no problem. They will cut the hay and grain and you go shoot a buffalo or two," Chris said.

She and Mary were right of course, or at least I thought they were. It just hadn't occurred to me. I knew I wasn't familiar enough with the language or the customs to get this bartering done, but I'm sure Mecha could handle it with ease, especially since she'd be trading with women. The men weren't going to come cut hay, but they weren't needed anyway.

Chris asked Mecha to join us and when she did they went over a plan for hiring temporary labor in the morning. I listened carefully and was able to keep up with what was going on, mostly. In the end it was decided that we'd take off for Jockat's camp in the morning and see what kind of deal we could make.

That was tomorrow though and this was tonight and Shantee called from the nominal kitchen and let us know the food was ready. That little detail pushed thoughts of hay cutting and oat gathering out of my mind completely.

After we'd eaten I thought about asking Chris and Mary to see if they couldn't get some pigtails going for some of the young girls but before I got the thought into words plaiting took over completely. If we were going to catch horses I needed a Lariat and the best ones were always plaited.

I knew there was a way to get the material out of the skins we had, but I didn't know how. I was sure I could teach the women to plait one if we could get the leather in suitable shape to provide the proper makings. No way to avoid it, we needed another discussion. This one turned out to be easy for me.

After telling Chris what I had in mind she and Mary got the idea over to Mecha and the solution came up right away. Mecha, and all the downtime women knew exactly how to get long strings of leather out of hides. They took a wild ass guess about how much skin they would need, picked out a piece they thought would do, and started around the outside edge cutting off a continuous string in whatever width they needed. It was a sort of modified spiral along the outer circumference of the original material and it worked perfectly.

Explaining how much of the material I would need was the hard part, mostly because I didn't know myself. Mecha cured this problem too, or at least let us know how we were going to cure it. She named Kalela as the very best thong cutter she knew of and had her pick out a piece of tanned and hairless hide to give us a demo. In fifteen minutes I had about thirty feet of leather string that was about three sixteenths of an inch wide and that happened to be approximately that thickness to.

It didn't take me long to cut it into eight equal lengths, tie them together at one end and demonstrate the process of plaiting. I ended up with about four feet of eight-plait. It was approximately the right size for a lariat, maybe a little small, but it gave them the general idea.

The next trick was explaining how long I wanted it to be when we were done with it and trying to get them dialed in on one with just a little more diameter. The real breakthrough came when Mary explained more carefully to Mecha that the rope I wanted was for catching the horses and that more would also be needed for control devices and training aids.

After Mecha shared the new information with the other women the race was on. Most of them got up and started unstacking hides and then they went through them in a sort of grading and examination process. Thirty minutes later Kalela and Marita were cutting away at thongs, going round and round on large hides and turning out foot after nearly perfect foot of my soon to be rope.

While the two were working I had a lucid thought and fished out a hank of nylon rope we'd brought with us. It was only about twenty feet long but it was good enough for a show and tell. I tied a small loop on one end and came up with a cobbled up demo. Chris volunteered as a guinea pig and walked off a few paces to be roped. It was a showstopper and then an inspiration to boot. It didn't cause Kalela or Marita to try going faster, but it did put big smiles on their faces regarding their tasks.

We were going to need some things made of rawhide too, but I didn't bring it up right away. I left Chris and Mary talking to all the women and gathered the children up, taking them onto the big pallet of sleeping furs for some more wrasslin' and other entertainment. They loved it, I loved it, and the women kept smiling at us. What could be better?

Our two cutters turned out an impressive amount of lariat material before we decided to head for the furs. I had successfully worn out the kids and they were sleeping when the adult females converged on the furs and started wearing me out. I had to admit it after a few minutes. This was even better than playing with the kids.

The women woke me early the next morning but some of them had to have been up even earlier. By the time I'd dressed and visited the privy breakfast was ready and the children were already eating. One of my favorite spectacles was in progress too. Sika was having her breakfast and she was lustily sucking at Marita's beautiful full titties. It was relaxing to watch while I stuffed my own face.