Chapter 5

The villagers returned home and life returned to normal. The days went by and Evening Star's pregnancy progressed in a perfectly normal manner. Then it happened. Evening Star delivered a healthy boy after nearly 17 hours of labor. Actually, White Antelope, the healer and midwife was more worried about Doug than she was about Evening Star; on a couple of occasions, Doug looked close to collapse. Finally, in desperation, Evening Star sent Doug away with Little Bear to get drunk, just to get him to calm down.

Though it wasn't traditional, Evening Star consulted Doug on a name for the new baby. They discussed the matter for a while and decided to name him Charles, after Doug's grandfather. Doug had always admired his paternal grandfather, and this was his first chance to honor him this way. Of course, Charles looked more like Evening Star than he did Doug, but Doug thought that this was a good thing.

It was traditional for a new mother to wait for 3 months before returning to sexual activities, so Evening Star worried that Doug would be deprived for too long. Therefore, she looked around for a substitute to keep him happy until she was ready to return to full service. Actually, she didn't have to look very long or very far. The line of potential candidates had started forming before Charles was even born; Doug's reputation as a sexual novelty and powerhouse, as well as his extremely high social status, made him a marked man among the unwed older girls and younger women in the village. The candidates were lobbying their cases heavily with Evening Star, hoping to influence her selection of a standin for the upcoming three months. Some of the mothers had even joined in on the lobbying.

It was not at all unusual for a man of Doug's high status to have 2 or even 3 wives, and all of the eligible females wanted a chance at the job. Evening Star was engaged in the process of selecting the standin and potential next wife, if she could please Doug enough, so Evening Star was very careful who she put on her "A" list. Doug, of course, knew nothing of this and was surprised right out of his socks when Evening Star presented her selection.

The young woman was a year younger than Evening Star and nearly as beautiful. Doug had nothing to complain about with Evening Star's selection, he was just caught off guard. It took nearly an hour for Evening Star and Cactus Flower to convince Doug that taking a second woman was the proper thing to do; the clinching argument was how much Cactus Flower's life would be ruined when word got around that Doug had rejected her. That's how, that night, a new voice moaning and crying in pleasure was heard all over the village emanating from the flint knapper's hut.

Cactus Flower was not a virgin, but she had only a general idea of what to expect from Doug. They started off with Evening Star sitting beside the bed, nursing Charles, and watching the festivities. They went through usual foreplay that Doug had introduced to the village, and the novelty was enough to cause Cactus Flower's first orgasm of the evening. She had two more before Doug filled her with his jism and let out his own roar of pleasure. All four family members cuddled in the bed before the last one fell asleep.

Doug took this opportunity of peace and plenty to introduce the community to the general use of soap. He had taught Evening Star how to make soap, and she was ecstatic over what could be done with the stuff. Basically, all she needed as raw materials were ashes from the household fireplace and animal fat that she got when she cooked. Doug showed her how to leach the ashes to obtain potash (potassium hydroxide) and how to react the potash with the fat to make a kind of liquid soap. It would never have sold in a 21^st century super market, but it did a better job of cleaning than any amount of rinsing could have done. Evening Star became something of a hero in her own right when she organized a class in soap making, and some of the older women who had too much time on their hands began making soap to sell to the women who had too much work to do to have time to make their own soap. This was a win-win situation, and Doug noticed a definite improvement in the aroma of the village and its inhabitants.

Three month's after accepting Cactus Flower into his household, Doug agreed to marry her, and the happiest person there was probably Evening Star, cheering for her best friend. Doug's household had already been operating as if there were two wives in residence, so there was a completely smooth transition to the new formal status of Cactus Flower. Doug did make both women promise not to recruit anyone else without consulting with him, first. He said that he did not know that he could satisfy 3 wives, and he didn't want to disappoint another woman. The 2 wives agreed, though they did plot between themselves, but what husband could prevent that?

The novelty of two wives did carry Doug along for about 5 months, but even his remarkable stamina couldn't keep up the pace, so they did back off a little. However, during this period, Cactus Flower did become pregnant so that they could marry. She eventually delivered a daughter whom they named Mary in honor of Doug's maternal grandmother. The two wives thought that it was "sweet" that Doug would honor his ancestors that way.

The other change that Doug was anxious to make in the village was to overcome the complete lack of a sewage disposal system. Most adults and all of the children simply pissed outside their front door. At least, they were house broken. The children would stop and shit wherever they happened to be, and the adults were not much better. This meant that you sure had to watch your step as you walked around the village. By the second day after Doug had moved into his own hut, he had a chamber pot in use by both himself and Evening Star. She didn't understand the big deal, but she did follow Doug's orders about using the pot for shit and dumping it somewhere outside the village.

Doug had surveyed the environs and found a safe place for a public sewage dump, so he showed that place to Evening Star and insisted that she use it for dumping the chamber pot. Evening Star had noticed the immediate improvement in the smell around their house since they had started using the chamber pot, so she told her mother about it and suggested that they try the idea. One night of the convenience of the chamber pot convinced Chief Raven's family of its value. Other people had started copying the chief's family, since they felt that it improved their own status to be doing what the chief's family did.

The use of the chamber pot became popular among the older folks who just were not up to making a trip outside the house late at night. The younger women, especially those that were pregnant, quickly came to appreciate the convenience of shitting indoors and also adopted the device. Since it was there, why not use it, so the men started using the chamber pot, too. It took over a year, but all but a few holdouts for tradition were finally converted. Even the holdouts switched to the new system when they found themselves being avoided by the rest of the village because of the stench around their house.

Not all was "sweetness and light" during these months. A dispute had developed between their village and their nearest neighbor over some hunting territory. There had always been some overlap, but the advent of the atlatls had made the territory near Doug's village more desirable because it was more open and an easier place to use the new spear. Actually, the argument had gotten quite ugly, and it looked like a war was about to erupt. There was some doubt whether or not the dispute could be stalled off until arbitration could settle it at the next "Mammoth Hunt."

Much as he hated to see the tormenting of the mammoths, Doug had no trouble accepting the value of the tradition of settling disputes at the gathering. Therefore, he put his desire to stop the killing of the mammoths on the back burner until he could come up with a suitable replacement. He would try to rush his search.

Meanwhile, another drastic problem came to the fore. Saber tooth cats had moved into the neighborhood in increasing numbers because of the increase in prey animals. This would not have been so bad, except that they represented a significant danger to the village. Most of the men, except for the elderly or those with specialized skills like Doug with his flint knapping, were gone hunting during the day. This left very few men available to defend the village against predators; one child had already been taken because her mother could not stop the huge cat.

Doug set his mind to finding a solution. The obvious answer would be for the women to arm themselves to protect the village when the men were away. However, the only weapons available were stabbing spears and atlatls, both of which required considerable upper body strength to manage properly. The women were simply not equipped to fight this way, so something else was desperately needed. He did not think that the women could handle a longbow, and a short bow that they could handle was just not powerful enough to do what he had in mind. Besides, he had not seen the right kind of wood nearby to be used for a bow, either long or short.

Doug puzzled over this problem for a week before he realized that a crossbow might answer the problem. They didn't have available the kind of wood needed to make a good bow, but there was plenty of sinew available, so he could rig one based on the Roman ballista with its torsion springs made from sinew. It took him nearly a month to fabricate what he wanted, but finally his crossbow was ready. He made a dart from heavy stock and fitted it with a flint point. He fletched the dart with a road runner feather "to give it extra speed" and demonstrated the weapon to Evening Star and Cactus Flower.

He didn't tell them that it was a weapon, at first, because he was afraid that they would reject it because it was not traditional for women to use weapons. They thought of it as a spectacular toy and became quite proficient with it within only a few days. It took them a while to cock the weapon, so they would never be able to get off more that 2 shots per minute, but that should not be a problem for what Doug had in mind.