Chapter 20

On the other side of the trail, some of the enemy had been watching the short conflict between Little Bear's men and the ambushers. When one of the more quick-witted men saw the easy defeat of their friends, he shouted for his companions to retreat to warn the rest of the camp.

Little Bear's men on that side of the trail opened up on the men who suddenly appeared and were running north toward their camp. Five were killed by hastily fired darts, but six escaped to reach and warn the camp. These people had no missile weapons, other than a few rocks that they picked up in passing, so they were forced to charge in an effort to come into close contact with their attackers.

This was the ideal tactical situation from the point of view of Little Bear's men, since it put the enemy in plain sight and moving toward them. They could not have asked for a better set of targets. The only problem was that the entire camp seemed to have gone crazy, and women and children were mixed in with the charging men. There was no choice, the crossbowmen had to shoot everybody, since being stabbed by a spear or hit by a club or struck by a thrown rock was just as potentially fatal, no matter what was the age or gender of the person wielding it. The attack on Little Bear's men was practically a lunatic frenzy of shouting and running and throwing and swatting and stabbing. There was no way to be choosy about the next target; the crossbowmen had to keep shooting until they ran out of ammunition. Fortunately, the supply wagon was not far away, so the infantry was able to restock ammunition and get back into the fray with little delay.

The berserk charge by the people in the camp resulted in no survivors, except for a few infants and some apparent slaves who were roped to their workplaces. The slaves were in miserable condition and must be prisoners who had been captured in raids on villages. There were five of them, all female, ranging in age from 9 to 13. When things settled down, a couple of the older girls recognized Tin Man, and he verified that they had lived in the destroyed village at the tin mine. The five men from that village were pointed out to the girls, and one recognized her father. He did not recognize her at first because of the vile treatment and little food that she had received after her capture.

Little Bear found the oldest girl and asked her what had caused the mad charge by every resident of the camp. She answered, "I don't know what it was, exactly, but every member of the camp almost constantly chewed something that made them act crazy. The only other thing I know about it was that it is somehow made from cactus. The people chewed it to keep from feeling hungry, but we slaves were not allowed to have any of it."

Little Bear's answer to this was, "I think you slaves were lucky, then." He ordered the freed slaves and the infants loaded on the ambulance and taken to Doug's Town. He loaded one of the troop-transport tractor/trailers with all of the tin ingots that they had found and sent it along with the ambulance. When both returned from Doug's Town with more fuel, they would make one last sweep for marauders and head home, themselves.

The two vehicles were gone for nine days; the trip home had been slower than usual in consideration for the infants. They returned with plenty of fuel, enough for them to stay out for four weeks of continuous travel. Little Bear pronounced that this was surely more than they needed, but he was glad to have the safety factor on hand.

Little Bear decided to swing even farther south to see if he could find some interesting or useful things while they were looking for marauders. They did meet a number of people who were not suffering as much from the cold because they were far enough south to escape the worst part of the weather. These people were fascinated by the vehicles, but had no interest in acquiring any of their own, though they were much more interested in the crossbows. Little Bear did observe that there was still plenty of the right kind of cactus in this vicinity, so these people might be persuaded to manufacture and sell tampons. He planned to discuss the prospect with Doug when he returned to Doug's Town.

There was not much going on this far south, so Little Bear turned his men north in the general direction of home. This made everybody happy, and they were in a hurry to return to Doug's Town, though they still kept a careful look out for any troublemakers.

Doug talked the council into supporting a regular patrol of the area to try to keep the people from killing each other in the search for food or, simply, in the search for power. Four expeditions similar to the one which had been led by Little Bear were sent in the four cardinal directions to police the neighborhood and make sure no more tragedies happened like those at the copper and tin mines. Several marauding groups were met and discouraged from causing any more trouble, usually by the death of the majority of men in the group. This operation eventually turned into a regular police force which the people of the area were glad to see.

One of these patrols acted as a guard as another expedition went to The Naval of the World in search of more iron. Charles' appetite for iron was becoming insatiable. Doug was beginning to think that they would have to go into the business of refining iron ore at the rate Charles wanted to use it. Doug had told him of making permanent magnets by running DC through a coil of wire wrapped around a piece of soft iron. Charles and Flower of Spring were set on trying to create an electrochemical industry, so they needed a lot of iron, and the Naval was the easiest place to get it.

It was kind of a circular problem. They needed iron to make magnets to make electricity to refine copper to make wire to make better magnets to make more electricity, etc., etc., etc. Charles wanted electricity for other reasons, too. He wanted to replace the gas lamps with electrical lights, as well as get enough electricity to drive electric motors for machine tools. He was already thinking about a Stirling Cycle engine running off the hot spring to drive the generator. Doug had remembered enough that Charles was sure that he could build one.

Doug wanted to travel to the crater with the mining crew. He wanted to see the place one more time before he got too old to travel, and he wanted to take his wives and children along. By now, Doug had four wives and 17 children, counting the adults, and he wanted to make one last family outing. Doug was a little over 50 years old by his reckoning, and he didn't know how much longer he would last, though he felt fine—no arthritis or any other ailments of "old age." In fact, he never got sick, though members of his family occasionally did.

They now had over 20 tractors with tandem trailers, so there was plenty of transportation available. Doug and his 21 family members all climbed aboard a rig when the expedition set out. When you counted in the five husbands and wives that were now also counted as family, it made an impressive array of relatives. There were no grandchildren, yet, but at least three were on the way.

Scouts ranged widely to protect the caravan, so they were not bothered by stray interlopers. Charles had worked on the ideas from Doug and had produced a very effective repeating crossbow. It was capable of 36 aimed shots per minute, with a crew of two, so they were well armed and had no reason to fear anyone stupid enough to attack. The current weapon was hopper-fed, but Charles had some ideas for switching to belt-feed, which would raise the rate of fire. With its steel parts, the crossbow was sufficiently accurate up to 75 yards.

The four-day trip to the crater was a party all the way, and everybody had a grand time. Sure, it was cold, but they were dressed for the weather and had plenty to eat, so there was no hardship to the trip. They could see the crater rim from miles away, so the children were bursting with excitement to see the inside of the crater while they were still a long way from it. Cries of "Are we there, yet?" rang out every few hundred yards.