Chapter 9

Doug took the promise of never doubting him again with a grain of salt, but hoped that he would never have to test the commitment.

Doug had decided before construction of the first house was begun that they would be building a permanent town, so he built a kiln and roasted the chalk found with the flint to make a mortar similar to the concrete the Romans had used. This was mixed in the right proportions with sand, volcanic ash, and water to make a very durable and tenacious mortar that would hold together any reasonable construction that he planned to do, even the arched roof of a house. This turned out so successfully that Doug tried casting pipe from the concrete. His first efforts left something to be desired, but he finally was able to cast 4-foot sections of pipe about 6 inches in diameter. These pipes would serve as both water pipe and sewer pipe, if he could make enough. He couldn't get curved pipe to hold its shape during curing, so he had to resort to turning corners by building a box-like structure with holes 90 degrees apart. This was not perfect, but it should work.

The advent of running water and flush toilets in each home was a miracle that the people had trouble comprehending, but they grabbed hold for dear life once they understood what was going on. The source of water was a large pool on top of the cliff that they were able to tap into. Doug knew that, eventually, they would exceed the capacity of this pool and would have to start pumping water from the river that ran below their dwelling place. However, that was probably years away, so he had time for other improvements before he had to tackle that chore.

The other thing he wanted was toilet paper, but that was almost impossible to come up with, so Doug took a different tack. He again borrowed from the Romans; they had used a sponge on a stick in place of toilet paper. There were no sponges available in New Mexico at his time, so he tried using the heart of a cactus trunk as a substitute. He cut a section of large diameter trunk from a cactus and stripped the outer layer from it, leaving a cellulosic cylinder which he fastened to a stick. This stayed soft and "spongy" as long as it stayed wet, and it made an adequate substitute for the missing toilet paper. Each person had his or her own "wiper," so sanitation was not a serious problem, once the children were convinced that the "wiper" was not a toy.

Doug was even able to make a workable tampon from the heart of a cactus. He cut a small cylinder from the cactus and boiled it in the potassium hydroxide solution for a while. This made the cactus quite soft. A piece of gut was tied to one end and it was pushed into place something like a cork in a bottle. There were a few false starts, but the bugs were finally worked out, and the women treated Doug as even more of a hero than before. The only catch was that they had to make sure that all of the potassium hydroxide was washed from the tampon before it was used.

The previous spring, Doug had instituted the concept of a garden and many small plots were scattered about, growing mostly varieties of squash, but Doug was trying to get corn to grow, too. The people had a few ears of a primitive corn that they had traded for; it had made its way from the mountains of Mexico through many hands before winding up with Doug's people. Doug recognized it for what it was and grabbed hold of as much as he could trade for. His hope was to push it through careful breeding into a semblance of the corn he had been used to. This was his first year in the program, so mostly all he had to show for his efforts was a lot of sweat and hope.

All of these advances in the life of the people took over a year, since there were other things that had to be done, but the citizens of Doug's Town settled into a contented life with few problems until the "others" showed up.

The "others" were a nomadic group who wandered the country near the the ice, but came south when the weather became too cold. This was usually for a period of about 2 months, then they returned north. When first seen, they were welcomed as friends with offers of food and drink. The others appeared to have no concept of how to be a good or welcome guest. If they wanted something, they just took it, and no amount of conversation could make them stop acting that way. Finally, Doug's people could take it no longer, and Doug ordered the others to leave.

At first, they refused to leave, but they got the idea when Doug resorted to punching the leader of the others in the nose and breaking it. The others outnumbered Doug's people by more than 5 to 1, and Doug expected to hear from them again before very long. He was right. Two days after they had been sent away, the others returned as a war party. They positioned themselves below the cliff and demanded that Doug's people give them everything movable, or they would attack. Of course, they knew nothing of the crossbow, so they were sure that Doug's people would cave in when they had to face the superior numbers the others had arrayed before Doug's Town.

There was not the discrepancy in numbers as the others thought when one factored in that every adult and most of the children in Doug's Town were experts with the crossbow. Only the men of the others had shown up in the war party, so the ratio was more like 2 to 1.

Again, Doug ordered them to leave, but the others refused to go. Doug warned them that they had no idea what a battle with Doug's people would be like, and they were sure to lose. There was a lot of derisive laughter and name calling at this statement, and several of the others picked up rocks and threw them at the people of Doug's Town. A woman was struck by a rock and knocked unconscious by it. No sooner had she fallen than her teenager son fired his crossbow at the rock thrower.

The crossbow bolt hit him in the chest and drove in so deep that it did a good job of slicing up the man's lung. The fletching of the bolt was all that protruded from the victim's chest, so the people did not realize that this was what had caused the man's injury. There was considerable consternation among the others because none of the people of Doug's Town had done anything that they recognized as a hostile move. The man fell so that he was lying on his back, and he quickly drowned in his own blood.

One of the others shouted "WITCHCRAFT!" and turned to run. This was enough to set off a general exodus of the rest of the others, so that, soon, the only one left at the foot of the cliff was the dead man. Doug sent the boy who had fired the bolt down to recover it so that the others would still not know what had attacked them.

About an hour later, a shaman appeared in full regalia and chanted incantations at Doug's Town for the rest of the day. Doug was sure that this chanting and dancing was supposed to drive away any spirits protecting Doug's Town, and he expected an attack either that night or the next morning, probably the next morning. To be on the safe side, Doug asked Little Bear to establish a watch for the night and to have everybody ready to react to the call if and when they were attacked.

Nothing happened that night, but, shortly after dawn, the whole war party of the others ran at the stairway leading up to Doug's Town, shouting war cries and waving their weapons. They were seen soon enough that the whole town was alerted and showed up at the head of the stairs with their crossbows, ready to repel the attackers. There were so many defenders in one place at the head of the stairs that they actually got in each other's way. Doug and Little Bear were able to get them spread out in time to counter the first wave of attackers.

All of the people had been trained in volley fire and firing only on command, so they established 3 ranks of shooters at the head of the stairs, with a single rank of flankers to each side. On command, the first rank fired at the charging attackers, then knelt down and reloaded their crossbows. Then the second rank fired and knelt down to reload. The third rank fired and reloaded. By the time the third rank had fired, the first rank was ready to stand up and shoot again. They could have continued this rippling of the line until they ran out of ammunition, after each rank had fired 10 volleys, but they did not need to.