Chapter 6

They now had a new hunting routine. Jeff did the killing with his flint-tipped atlatl spears, and Julie rode shotgun with her poison-coated crossbow bolts. Jeff had made several more spears so that he now carried eight of the deadly weapons with his trowing stick. He needed the additional spears because he was after as much meat as he could get, and this sometimes meant using all of his spears to try for a quick kill. With Julie along to provide protection, he could afford to use every one of his spears for killing prey and not have to save any for self defense. Later on when Julie's pregnancy prevented her from traveling in the field, he would have to be more sparing with his spears, but not for now.

It was now two months until the expected birth date, so Julie was stuck at home, even though Jeff did make a few swings around the neighborhood. He was more intent on keeping an eye on things than he was in hunting, since they now had their storage shed filled to capacity with smoked meat, and there was even some meat stored in their cabin. They were sure that they had enough to last until Julie was able to rejoin the hunt, especially since the meat did not spoil as fast as they would have expected 250 million years in the future. Neither one had any idea of the reason for this, but they gratefully accepted the boon and went on with their lives.

Now that she had time to sit at home, Julie was spending more time in knapping practice and had become quite skilled at it. She had made several knife and ax blades and had fashioned some quite adequate wooden handles for them. Jeff was now carrying a flint ax she made for him instead of the hatchet they had brought from the future. That hatchet was showing considerable wear and would have needed replacing long ago if they had still been in their original time. As it was, Jeff was very glad to get the flint replacement, even if it did get dull much faster than the steel blade he had been used to.

Julie was also the family barber, shaving Jeff once a week with the flint razors she was able to fashion. With Julie cutting his hair and shaving his beard, Jeff no longer looked like the proverbial "Wild Man from Borneo" that he did several months before. He was also more comfortable without all that hair to get in his way.

Jeff was now a reasonably skilled, if primitive, carpenter. He had built the birthing chair that Julie wanted. It looked very much like a conventional wooden kitchen chair, but the seat had a large hole cut in it for the baby to pass through as it exited Julie's body. The idea was that Julie would sit in the chair, and Jeff would catch their baby before it fell to the ground. They had no way to practice the necessary maneuvers, but Jeff's reflexes were fast enough that they were not worried.

Their problem was that they had no conventional blankets, so they had to improvise. Julie had saved the best of the dragon fly skins to be used for wrapping the baby. The ambient temperature was so uniformly warm that they were not concerned that the baby would be chilled, but it was hard to find something absorbent to use to wipe the baby with to remove the birth fluids and blood. Fortunately, Julie had found a broad leaf that would do the job after it was boiled in a weak soap solution for two days. This made the leaf soft and pliable, and it was quite absorbent after the treatment. It was similar to the material Julie had been using to make tampons. The only problem was that the leaves were not very large, so they needed a large quantity of them.

Naturally, it was the middle of the night when Julie's water broke. She was definitely having labor pains, though they were not severe at the time. She woke Jeff to tell him, though she knew that it would be several hours before she really needed his physical help. Nevertheless, she suddenly was very apprehensive and badly needed his moral support.

Julie had been sleeping with her ever faithful cloth blouse under her so that it would catch any liquid discharge. Therefore, she did not have a mess to clean up, a fact for which she was very grateful. They had been sleeping spooned together with her back against Jeff's chest, so neither one had to move much for her to feel the comfort of his arms. Jeff did exactly the right thing, for a change, and tightened his arms around Julie until he had her in a snug, but not painful, grip and whispered into her ear how much he loved and cared for her.

She stayed on her side for a while longer before rolling over onto her back. She lay like that for almost three hours as her contractions came closer and closer together. Something told her that it was time to move to the chair, and she was not there more than 15 minutes before she felt the baby move down the birth canal. It must have been her superb physical condition, though the love built into the birthing chair probably had something to do with it, but, whatever it was, the baby, a girl, slid out with only a minimum of pain.

Jeff caught the girl as she slid out and did not even come close to dropping her. He tied a string made of vine around her cord in lieu of the clamp they did not have. A sliver of flint made short work of cutting the cord, and he tied it off as close to his daughter's belly as he could manage. He wiped her down with a few leaves and wrapped her in a section of dragon fly skin before placing the baby in Julie's arms. Fortunately, the girl had very little fluid left in her mouth or nose, and she started to breathe on her own from the very first. As a result, Jeff's inexperience as an obstetrician did not play a part in the birth.

Julie had already picked out names for the child; she was prepared for either gender, so the girl was named Mary Elizabeth, after the two grandmothers. Mary was a normal child in every way, so she was very vocal shortly after her birth. Both parents smiled and breathed much easier at the sound.

The after-birth was disposed of in a small pit dug by Jeff out behind the house, and the new family settled down to its first day of the new life.

Jeff had a surprising amount of time on his hands, now that he was not hunting all of the time. He had decided that he wanted a bow and arrows, not because he was dissatisfied with the results from his atlatl, but more for the variety it offered. Therefore, he took the opportunity to make a bow and used some of the brake cable from the car as his bowstring. The arrows were simply a scaled-down version of the atlatl spears, except that he kept the points as nearly the same size as he could manage. If the experiment worked out, he would have Julie knap him some points that would be more uniform, since she was more skilled at that job.

At first, he practiced inside the house, shooting from one corner diagonally across the room to a target in that corner. This gave him a distance of only about 30 feet, but it did let him get in a lot of practice while still keeping an eye on Julie and Mary. Without any instructor, he made just about all of the errors a beginner could make, but he eventually learned the correct form for best results. This was the advantage of shooting inside the house, he did not waste a lot of time having to hunt for lost arrows.

Julie was up and about in only a few days, so she was able to resume a lot of the duties that Jeff had been stuck with. He had not complained, but it was obvious that he did not relish the position of "house husband." Julie smiled at this and did not chide him about it, since he had done everything that needed to be done without complaint. She just took over, again, as fast as she was able. Naturally, taking care of Mary was her first priority, but she still had time for Jeff and the house.

Julie made a quiver for Jeff's arrows out of scorpion skin, and she made a special pouch for the quiver to hold in a separate compartment, the three arrows he carried which had been dipped in scorpion venom. He had the occasion to use these on his first hunting trip after Mary was born. This was not a serious hunting trip so much as it was a trip to test his new bow and arrows.