Chapter 10

They all knew about bee trees and a few of the men even claimed to know where some were located. What they didn't have any idea about was using smoke to settle the bees down. After I explained how to do it they didn't seem to swallow my tale.

The men who knew where bee trees were located got together and decided where the closest example was and we headed towards it. We worked our way close enough to get started by building a small fire about ten feet from the tree and then piling on dried leaves to make plenty of smoke and then using the effect to get another fire built all around the tree.

Once we had them surrounded we piled on plenty of leaves until the tree was fully smoked and then we beat on the tree to get the bees to come out and take their medicine. It wasn't the best way to do things, but I was in a hurry to get going. We all got stung a few times, but there was nothing serious, it was mostly a big annoyance.

We cut the tree down then, cut off the upper part and then dragged to bee container near camp. By applying more smoke and plenty of heat we finally got rid of almost al the bees and cut our way inside. It was a revelation for me.

I'd only seen honey in the store before and what we had in the tree didn't look a thing like it. Hell, there was all kinds of shit in it, from dead bees to twigs, pieces of leaves, and other trash.

Of course it made sense to me as soon as I saw it, but that didn't make it any more appetizing and it didn't help me think of a quick way to clean it. When I finally came up with what I thought might be a workable solution I had more work to do, as in show them how to make cloth, or at least string.

Of course I was mostly putting the cart before the horse, or at least the honey before the beeswax. What I needed most was wax and we'd need to figure out a way to strain the honey on down the line. At least there was a fairly straightforward way to get the honey out of the comb, mostly.

After commandeering one of their biggest pots made so far, I laid out clean arrow shafts over it and started piling on honeycomb. Most of this job required waiting and then later there was some squeezing to do. This first time we did it by hand.

Once we were down to mostly lumps of beeswax we washed them in water and then did it over and over until we were pretty sure it was wax only. Warming it in smaller bowls let us get more of the crap out until we had fairly pure wax.

Even though I wasn't very artistic at all, I was able to carve out something which seemed like it would work as an arrowhead from the wax. Next we were able to make a sort of muddy slurry and by using the waxy arrowhead I'd carved as a pattern we were able to create a mold from the slurry. Once it was dry we melted the wax out and then smelted some copper and got it hard enough to pour into the mold.

It was such a leap for Choto and Nagato they didn't even believe it the first time and I had to go over the whole thing again. I didn't think the two arrowheads we ended up with would really be worth a shit, but at least it got them started. It was all I'd intended to do in the first place because I was sure they'd refine the process and the details. The best I could hope for now was to help them over any rough spots they discovered.

Of course at first they were intent on working one arrowheads, but it didn't take much talking to convince them we could make axe heads, hammer heads, and knives this way too.

After a couple of weeks they had finished all the malachite I'd brought back with me so I organized a trip with six men to go gather some more. Chatako and Colon came along and picked out three others to go.

We hadn't been on the site of our copper mine for more than an hour when I thought of the next metal implements we had to have. Shovels were the next things we needed to cast. Most of our mining this trip was done with hands and tree branches carved into makeshift shovels.

Things went well enough though. My guess was we came back to camp three days later with over a ton of malachite. Both Choto, Nagato, and their apprentices were happy to see the new supply of ore and I was rewarded by being shown Choto's latest development.

He had developed a set of molds to cast the wax patterns ten at a time. The mold was made in halves, put together for pouring the wax points and then taken apart to get them out. The patterns were then carefully examined and any foul ups went back into the molten wax to try again. It wasn't quite mass production, but it was a hell of a lot faster than one at a time.

When I gave then the idea for shovels, both round point and square point Choto and Nagato were thrilled about the challenge and set to work at once.

Their enthusiasm was contagious and it made me think of a class of tools we'd ignored so far. I needed something else to help me now though. I wanted a pencil worse than a dog wants to scratch, but I knew it wasn't possible. A paintbrush and some type of ink didn't seem out of each though and of course it put horsehair back on my mind.

We were already using horsehair for bowstrings, and I reasoned we could make a sort of honey strainer out of the hair too. Since horsetails worked in a shitty environment we'd have a lot of washing and rinsing to do, but we could manage it.

A few of the women were already cleaning small amounts of honey by hand and their efforts were well received when honey was mixed with some of the berries and chopped meat to make a sort of portable ration.

We'd soon need more wax anyway and that would mean more honey and we still didn't have even a tenth of our first batch clean enough to eat.

Another thing we were going to need for the strainers was boards. Nice regular even boards. I used a stick in the dirt to show Choto and Nagato what a drawknife looked like, generally and while I was at it I drew some chisels and explained how they would help us. Meanwhile I wondered if we could make a workable saw from bronze and thought about what we'd need to do to make one.

When I thought up new tools and such now I didn't try to work out the details. I'd already seen Nagato and Choto could work those out much better than I could. I just tried to remember handy devices and then get them on board for making one or several if things worked out.

Life was going well in our valley and we rarely ventured out. The women found plenty of things for gathering in and near our home. Most of our treks into the cruel out of doors were for bison and we'd come to understand their habits so well by now we could wait until they made a grazing pass near our handy exit from the valley.

Ralato told us the bison were headed our way one afternoon and we decided a hunt was in order. The women didn't even go with us now since it was much easier to bring whole carcasses back and tend to them in our valley.

We'd settled down enough only twelve men usually went hunting. Choto, Nagato, and their apprentices didn't go along and even the oldest of the boys didn't either. It didn't mean they couldn't do fine with their bows and arrows, they just weren't needed. Of course all the women were excellent archers too, whether they needed to be or not.

Even the women were looking forward to the hunt this time. They wanted to put their new meat hatchets and metal knives to a good test and for once seemed happy we were gong out to bring something for them to cut up.

Since the advent of metal points for our arrows we'd given up on larger bows for bison hunting. The new points did so much better we didn't really need extra power and it was a bother to make different bows, arrows, and points just for bison. In fact most of the twelve of us who were gong to hunt wouldn't need to loose even one arrow unless something unusual happened.

I'll admit I should have been paying more attention to what I was doing, but I guess so much of getting along with no problems had made me lax. We were all riding by now and I just took on off out onto the large plain without looking to see if anyone else was hunting there already.