Chapter 44

When I woke the next morning I realized my need to exert more self-control. This morning I was damned nearly tired when I woke up. The facts of life intruded on me over my hard work in the furs last night. There were a lot more women in the furs than there were of me. None of them ever had a headache and none of them would even consider telling me no, not even Rose.

I needed to hold myself down to only one turn a night for any of them, because I finally realized they were going to get ready to give me another piece anytime I got anything started. It was a lovely problem to have, but one I had to learn to deal with unless I could settle for being turned out to stud for real, and I didn't want that.

I put a bright smile on my face and headed for the pisser after dressing. The smell of coffee steered me to the table next, but I was too late to feed Kita. Chalta had done the duty today since I was lying slugabed and the duo was back in the furs for an after meal nap.

Goondoe happened to walk by and I asked if he'd sit with me while I ate. He did, and when I brought up the archery lessons he agreed to help if I was ready to start. He said he'd meet me near the big haystack in about an hour.

When I finished breakfast I headed into the garage. I found the archery pallet Rose had told me about and started sorting through what it contained. Assembling the bows was a no-brainer at first. They seemed identical and consisted of a center grip section and two limbs which attached to the center part with only one bolt each. I put twelve of them together and then came across the hard part, as in stringing them.

For each of the cams there was a leader attached already, but the assembler, me in this case, was responsible for getting the ends of the bowstring attached to the leaders. Thankfully Goondoe and ten of his men arrived about then and with their help I was able to get the bows finished.

Arrows were next and they were easier after I found the parts. We had thousands of fletched shafts, but I had to locate and then install the smooth practice points. They screwed in place and were easily installed, but it still took about an hour to finish enough of them for the first practice session.

Of course we couldn't just start practice since I had to give them a talk to explain all I knew about it, but after we were done with my instructions we found some paper targets, put them up on the hay bales, and I talked each man through the process individually.

Goondoe wanted the others to go first, but he watched them all carefully as they got started. He also wanted a full lesson before he tried it himself. After he'd heard the spiel again he took off and damned if he wasn't the best from his get go.

I'd started their practice from about twenty feet, and as they mastered a distance I'd move them back ten feet or so. The bows were very powerful and so ten feet more wasn't such a change. Things were different as we got out past fifty feet though and I took a break to explain to them exactly what was happening.

None of them had ever heard of gravity, but of course they all knew about its effects. Still, we took time for me to explain about adjusting the point of aim to counteract gravity's influence. It isn't exactly so easy with a bow either because unlike a rifle or pistol, a bow doesn't have any provision for accurate sighting. Oh, there are sights available for bows, but in this case they were much too complicated to be really useful.

Accuracy with a bow in this situation needed to be ingrained as a sort of general feeling and familiarity and the only way to accomplish it was with practice, practice, practice. These people wouldn't have time for using sights even if they had any, and none had come with the bows anyway. This left us with heavy-duty practice as the best way for accuracy and once I had them going I got my ass out of the way to let them practice. Since there was one more bow assembled I started practicing myself.

In the first place I'd never done much in archery, and in fact this was my first try with a compound bow. Its effectiveness was apparent from the first. With the additional mechanical advantage of the cams the arrow speed was much improved from what I remembered with a more familiar recurve bow. The cam's ability to deliver more force as the arrow was leaving the bow instead of less as normal bows do was also noticeable. Hell, I loved it. After twelve tries I was already better than I'd ever been with any other type bow.

As time for lunch neared Goondoe stopped practicing and came over to talk.

"Jack, is it possible for these men to take over teaching my others about the bows and arrows? They are excellent weapons and I want all my people, even the women, to learn their use."

"It is not only possible it's very helpful. You can tell by the number of bows we have there are more than enough for all of your people to have them. I didn't realize how well the bows and arrows worked myself and I intend to teach all my women to use them too. Maybe you'd like to let these men help me teach them this afternoon and tomorrow they can start teaching more of your people."

"It is an excellent plan. They will need to practice teaching as they practiced with the bow. Is it possible you could watch when they make their first tries?" Goondoe asked.

"I'll be glad to."

We called a halt to practice then and headed to the cave for some lunch. I went directly to the table and was in time for the Kita and Chiqa feeding detail. After they were full I helped them into their furs for a nap and then finished my meal talking to Rose and my girls.

Rose thought the archery lessons were a good idea, but she dodged them. She said she already knew a little about it and she let the others get lessons from the new prospective teachers saying she'd stay to watch Kita and Chiqa while we were gone.