Chapter 46

I knocked on Angel’s door and said softly, “Can daddy come in to play with Angel and her friends?”

The door opened up and Angel hugged me and said, “Of course you can come in to play daddy, you don’t have to ask. You can come in anytime.” I explained that when the door is shut, I always knock. That is because she may not be dressed or she is doing something I shouldn’t see.

Angel said, “But daddy I don’t care if I have no clothes on, you saw me like that before, when you sent me to heaven so Doctor Phil could fix me, so I could come back here to live with you.”

Suddenly both Grenna and Bertron looked at Angel and like twins asked, “Are you Solange; the girl that the Sky Spirits made new again?’

Angel nodded and said, “Yes, but daddy calls me his angel and he changed my name to Angel Stevens. We don’t use that name anymore. It makes me and daddy sad when we hear that name.”

“Yes Angel it does, now who is your new playmate?”

“Daddy this is Bertron and you know Grenna. Bertron is Bernita’s little girl. She is six!”

“Nice to meet you Bertron, now are you having a tea party or do you need to hear a story?”

All three girls yelled, “A story, a story, please?”

“Ok but you have to sit nice and listen,” I say.

I grabbed one of Angel’s Golden Books. This one was about the “Little Engine That Could.” I sat on the bed and the girls crowded around me with Angel on my lap. I started to read and before I was halfway thru the story I had 3 very sleepy little girls holding on to me to keep from falling over. I lay them on the bed and silently left the room and closed the door. I saw Ambat and said, “The girls just went to sleep for their nap, don’t let anyone wake them for at least an hour, OK?”

“Yes Bob, I will wake them in an hour.” I had clocks all over in my family’s cave so that was not a problem.

I went into the practice cave and was I surprised, it was now at least twice as large, both in length and width. There was a new door that led to an armory where all the ammunition and arrows were stored. I found out later that only three people could open it, Barbara, Harlou, and me. Instead of the 18 lockers, there were now about 50 of them. Most of them did not have a name or picture on the front, but they were there. There were more archery stations I could see at least 15 stations there. Then there was a wall between the gun range and archery range. In the gun area there were 20 standing rest stations and 6 laying stations. I looked and Joulnar was lying with a scope rifle and was shooting like that. Barbara was coaching him. I saw them and walked over. Barbara saw me and tapped Joulnar on the foot and he stopped and looked up. Once he saw me, he cleared his weapon and laid it down. He stood and said, “I like this new practice cave Bob, it is nice to see different ways to shoot.”

“Yes Joulnar, sometimes we have to shoot standing up, or leaning on a tree and sometimes we have to lie down to keep ourselves hidden from the animals we are hunting. That is why we have the different places set up for us to practice.”

“That is very good thinking. That is why you are leader and not any of the rest of us.”

“Thank you Joulnar, I see you are being well trained, let me see if someone else needs help.” I wondered over to where Harlou and Valkorla were shooting. “How are you two doing?”

Harlou said, “He is not doing so good, I guess I am not saying the right things to be able to get Valkorla to hit the target consistently. Can you help father?”

“I can try, what seems to be the problem?”

“I can see the gun move when he fires, but I am not sure why it moves so much.” Said Harlou

“Ok, Valkorla, let me see you shoot just two shots only, ok go ahead.”

I could see immediately what was happening as I stood right beside Valkorla when he was firing. Two things he was doing wrong. One was he was pulling the trigger hard or a jerking motion. Second he was closing his eyes. “Valkorla, I think I see the problem. First you are closing both eyes when you pull the trigger and second you are jerking the trigger to get the shot off fast. First can you close just one eye?”

Val showed me he could close his right eye only, but not his left without holding it. So I said, “Val you are a left-handed shooter. Because you can only close your right eye you are holding the gun up on the wrong shoulder. The other thing is that you are squeezing the trigger too hard and it jerks the end of the gun up when you fire. Let’s work on the second part first and I will see if I can get you a left-handed gun to use. I think we have one in the armory.”

‘Fred can you get me a left-handed gun for Val?’

“Certainly Bob if I knew what that was.”

‘It is one where the right hand side of the rifle we use is on the left hand side so it is more comfortable for a person to shoot from the left side, does that make sense? It is reverse of the gun you have made for most of us.’

“Yes Bob, I will see about creating one from one of the other rifles we have in lockers that has not been assigned to anyone yet.”

‘Remember the stock will have to be reversed as well.’

“Thank you for the reminder Bob.”

“Now Valkorla, do you know how you squeeze your mates breast? I will bet you do not grab it and squeeze as hard as you can, because I think you would be a very, bruised husband. The same goes here; you need to slowly squeeze the trigger so smoothly that the shot will surprise you when it fires. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes Bob I would be a very, bruised husband if I did that. But I think the bruising would not be seen and I would walk funny.”

“Oh yes, Val, you would definitely be walking funny for a while. So ease your touch up a little and the gun will stay steady for you. Now we need to find you a left-handed gun.”

“What do you mean a left-handed gun father?” asked Harlou.

“Harlou, most people hold a gun like this,” and I held it up to my right shoulder. “But a left-handed gun you hold up to the left shoulder like this and you use the left finger to pull the trigger. Now do you see? Most people are what is called right eyed, they can close the left eye without closing both eyes. Some people, like Valkorla here, can only close the right eye. They are called a left eyed person. Then there are some very few people that can close either eye.”

“What are they called?’ Valkorla asked.

“Val I can’t remember what that is called, but it is a long name and I forget long scientific names easily. Now let me see if we can find a left-handed gun for you.”

‘Fred, do you have a gun finished for Valkorla?’

“Yes Bob, we just finished it, it is inside the armory by the door.”

I walked back over to the armory and picked up the rifle and held it up to my left shoulder and checked the fit. ‘Good job Fred or whoever. This will work nicely, I will put Valkorla’s rifle he has now in the armory for you to put where this one came from. I will check my gun owners a little more closely now to see if they need this type of gun. Thanks.’

“Here you go Val this should help quite a bit. Go ahead and load this with five bullets and let us see if we have some improvement, OK?”

Valkorla loaded 5 shells and then cocked it like normal. I said, “Try using your left hand to cock the gun next time to see if that works better for you. You may be left handed as well. Most left eyed people are.”

Val pulled the gun up to his left shoulder and fired one shot; he then levered in another shell and fired again. I tapped his shoulder after he had fired all five shots and we looked at his grouping again. It was much tighter, it was still off about two circles, but it was a much tighter group. I looked at the gun and the sights were dead on center. I guess Val with his larger frame did not get quite close enough to get his eye lined up with the sights or the rear sight was off a little from where the barrel was pointing. Then it hit me. I had asked for a reversed rifle, what if they reversed the rifling too. I checked that and the rifling was opposite. It gave the bullet the opposite spin and therefore could have made the difference. I would have Fred change it later.

“Well, Valkorla that was much better wasn’t it? I’ll bet it even felt better after a coupe shots.”

“Yes Bob it did seem to feel better and your advice helped too. I was surprised by each shot. I will have to tell Valkerita what you said about my squeezing softly too.”

“Harlou, I think that is enough practice for today, we can do more tomorrow, so we can go hunting the next day. Oh yes I almost forgot we have people coming in the morning. We will have to set up practice for tomorrow afternoon, besides it is lunch time and...”

“You’re hungry, right.” said Thorf, who came over while I was talking.

“Yes I am Thorf, and I’m sure you are too.”

“Well I didn’t want to say anything, but yes I am hungry too. Practicing makes me hungry.”

“Shall we all put our weapons up and go see if the women have made anything for us. Do you think that if we just sat down they would take pity on us and feed us?”

Everyone laughed about that and we were still laughing as we came into the main cave and smelled something wonderful, FOOD! We all hurried to our places at the table and Angel climbed into my lap and said, “Thank you daddy, for reading to us. I’m sorry we fell asleep on you, can you read the rest of the story to us later?”

“I will try Angel; did you have a nice nap?”

“Yes Daddy, we all had a nice nap; mommy Ambat came and woke us up when it was lunch time.”

“Good, now let’s eat. What do you want first?’

“Anything daddy, just keep it coming, I’m hungry, just like you daddy.”

Everyone at the table laughed and so did I. “Yes Angel you are always hungry, just like Daddy.”

After eating I drove down to the fence and took the workers back. Pauloa had been driving them to and from the work. I looked at the progress being made and let Merthar know about the chicken wire. So I had him put an additional 3 hut poles in the open fencing, one at the post and two in the middle, spaced evenly. Then we could hang or tie the wire to the pole and then drive a hooked stick along the bottom every 6 to 8 inches to hold the wire down but not over about a half inch or so above the ground. I would show him when the wire came in. He thought that would work just fine. He said we would need a lot of the bottom sticks made. I told him not to worry I’m sure I could put some idle hands to work on that. He laughed and said, “Bob I’m sure you will have many people want to do this for you.”

I said, “It is not for me, but for all of us. I don’t ask these things just for me, but for our whole camp. Sure it benefits me, but more to the point it benefits all of us.”

“That is right Bob; I just meant that anyone would want to do as you ask. We love you and what you have created here. We all love this place and anything you say you want to make it better, we will do; because everything you have asked us to do so far, has done that. It has made things better for all of us.”

“Thank you Merthar for your love and confidence in me. I will try very hard not to disappoint you or our people. Now I have people to train and more things to work on. I think before too long I am going to teach you how to drive the truck. Then you could have the truck if you needed to run back and forth to get things or bring the men out here for work and back for meals.”

“Thank you Bob, yes it would be very nice to learn to drive the truck and it would be very nice to have it here to help with lifting and dragging logs. I look forward to learning to drive.”

“Well are you at a point where the men can carry on and not need you for say about an hour?”

“Yes I think so. Heagern, can you come here? I will be going with Bob to learn to drive the truck for a while. Do you need me here right now?”

Heagern, looked around and said, “No Merthar, we can do without you for a while, go learn how to drive and then we can have the truck when we are working.”

Merthar and I left the fence area and I drove off into the canyon. I stopped and turned everything off. I then went through the steps to start and how to shift and what does what, where. I went over it again once he was in the driver’s seat. I had him start it and just put it in drive. “Now then Merthar; slowly, push the long pedal until we are moving, but not too fast. See the arm moving there,” I said as I pointed to the speedometer needle. “Don’t let it get beyond 10 for right now. We can go faster once you are more experienced.” The idle on the truck would let us do about 5 mph so he did have to push a little.

I got him to make turns, go straight, and I even got him to back up. I told him that the R meant reverse and D meant drive or forward. He asked about the other squiggles and I said we would get to those later after I taught him some English. He did quite well; I think he had been paying a lot of attention to Pauloa and Gerona, who were his normal drivers. I asked Fred if he could download some of the basic skills of driving into Merthar’s head later tonight, he said he would. We drove around for about an hour and then I said, “Well Merthar I think we can go back to the fence crew now. We can probably go a little faster this time. Say 20,” as I pointed to the 20 on the speedometer. He looked at me and said thank you for the lesson and stopped and put it in park. I asked what he was doing, he said, “Well aren’t you going to drive us?”