Then it was the turn of the arrows. He lit a small fat lamp and dumped out the contents of both quivers, checked each shaft for straightness, tightness of head and horn nock, then subjected the feather flights to a painstaking scrutiny, before replacing them in precise order in the two quivers—one, the larger, for hunting arrows, the other for war arrows.
Having found a couple of places on his saber edge that happened to be less keen than he thought proper, Staiklee took that weapon and a stone and began to carefully hone the blade.
Looking directly at Bettylou. he remarked, “The bruin that once wore that skin I gifted you and Tim, well, he wasn’t the first of his breed I came up against, you know.
“Now down Tehksuhs way, we hunt more with packs of dogs than with prairiecats. Of course, the most of our dogs are each as big as or bigger than a full-grown prairiecat, some of them as big as lions, to tell the truth: but they have to be, because the bears up here are just puny little critters compared to the bears we hunt in Tehksuhs. Why, the flayed hide off a Tehksuhs bear would cover the whole top of this yurt and hang partway down the sides.
“And the hides on Tehksuhs bears is so thick and tough you can blunt down the edges of a whole beltful of skinning knives a-trying to skin one of the critters, even if you was able to kill him afore he killed you, that is.
“I recollect an old boar bear that my daddy sent me out to kill when I was about fourteen, fifteen winters. Well, that was a bad-luck hunt from start to finish for me, but a damned good day for the bear.”
He paused for a moment to rub a fresh application of sheep fat and spittle into the grain of the hone stone, then went on with his tale, “Anyhow, two days out, my horse turned up lame, and I hadn’t brought but the one, so I had to throw my saddle on Brootuhs, the biggest of my tooth-hounds.”
“Your pardon. Honored Father,” Nansee interjected, “but what is a tooth-hound?”
Djahn nodded, smiling, and answered, “I keep forgetting, you Horseclanners don’t hunt with dogs. Well, honey, there are three kinds of hounds that go to make up a pack of hunting dogs. The ‘nose-dogs’ are the ones that find and follow the scent trail of whatever critter it is you’re hunting. The ‘leg-dogs’ or ‘runners’ (as some folks call them) don’t have much of a nose, but they’ve got keen eyesight to spot the critter, the speed and stamina to run him to earth and enough ferocity to hold him in place until the tooth-hounds get there.
“ ‘Tooth -hounds’ are bigger, heavier and meaner than the other two kinds of dogs. Their job is to bring the critter to bay and, if necessary. to go in and kill him, rather than let him get away before the hunter gets there.”
“But they truly are big enough to saddle and ride?” asked Dikees widow, Ahlmah.
“Of course they are … down Tehksuhs way.” replied Djahn Staiklee emphatically.
Bettylou truly liked this man so she kept her own doubts to herself. The Abode of the Righteous had kept many canines—both hounds of several varieties and herding dogs—but she had never seen one, even the biggest of these, that stood much over knee height at its shoulders.
“Anyhow,” Staiklee went on, “Brootuhs didn’t care too much for the saddle and he was downright upset about the bridle and bit, but I gentled him down some before we’d been many more days on that bruin’s trail. And we were many a day on that trail, too. Why, I doubt not that me and all the dogs would have plumb starved to death, if I hadn’t been able to kill a couple of middling-size rattlers every day.”
This last was just too much for Bettylou to take in continued silence. “Father, please tell me how a couple of rattlesnakes a day could feed you and your entire pack of dogs.”
Again, he smiled. “It’s all just a matter of size, Behtiloo. All critters seem to get bigger or stronger or smarter down Tehksuhs way; even plants do, too. You’ve seen these scrubby little smidgens of cactuses on the plains hereabouts? Well, in Tehksuhs, they gets tall as twenty lances end to end would be, that tall and as thick through the middle as Chief Dik’s wagon is long, too. And …”
“Your pardon, Father,” Bettylou interrupted again, “but we were talking of two snakes big enough to provide enough meat to feed you and all your dogs for a whole day.”
“Yes,” he agreed in a dead-serious tone of voice, “they get every bit that big down in Tehksuhs, honey. Big enough to coil all the way around the outside of this yurt and grab their tails in their mouths, was they of a mind to do such a thing. More than a foot thick in the body Tehksuhs rattlers get, some of them nearer to two feet. That’s a powerful lot of meat.”
“It certainly is.” Bettylou agreed, then asked, “But you give the impression that these plains are very dry, near deserts, so what creatures are there of a size to sustain such huge serpents in such a wasteland?”
Djahn Staiklee regarded her shrewdly for a long moment, then he mindspoke quickly and personally, “Child, you are far more intelligent than you seem outwardly. Tim has more of a prize than I think he realizes yet in you. But let be, here, tonight. This is a long-drawn-out mocking tale I spin; don’t question it too closely. I mean but to bring a little merriment into this yurt which has seen so many years with little or none.”
While beginning to stroke the stone on the next portion of saber blade he felt due his ministrations, he went on with the story.
“So, anyhow, riding Brootuhs and living on snakemeat and cactus water, we trailed that bear for more than half a moon. We trailed him through country so dry that the creeks and the rivers, even were none of them running with water but running with coarse gravel and rocks, instead—all grinding away, those stones were, as they flowed along.
“But, then, one day, we heard the leg-hounds give tongue—that’s how they let you know they’ve spotted the critter they’re trailing—and the tooth-dogs commenced doubling their pace … all except Brootuhs, of course, since he was carrying about twice his own weight or almost that. For you see, I was nought but a younker then, and though I was big for my age, like most men or boys in Tehksuhs, two weeks of hard riding on nothing save snakemeat had fined my body down to just whipcord muscle and sinew over my bones.
“Well, by the time Brootuhs and me got up to where the others had brought that old boar bear to bay, he had killed or near killed most of my pack of dogs. Well, I jumped off old Brootuhs and slipped his bridle so it wouldn’t hinder his teeth and jaws. Then I slung my lance over my back and took my bow out of the case to string it.
“At that very second, poor, brave old Brootuhs took it in his head to bore in after that bloody-clawed bruin like a weasel after a swamp rat, and as luck would have it, the very first swipe of that bears forepaw not only broke the poor dogs back like a rotten slick, but simultaneously snapped every shaft in my arrowcase and flung Brootuhs’ body—saddle, gear and all—so hard against a big old boulder that the impact snapped the blade of the sheathed saber I had been carrying slung from the pommel.
And so there I was, all alone, all of my dogs dead or dying or run off, with only a lance and my dirk against two tons or more of hopping-mad Tehksuhs plains grizzly bear … and he had finished off the last dog and was coming for me!”
Staiklee took the last stroke of the stone on his saber blade, meticulously wiped off the cursive length of burnished steel, then sheathed it, yawned mightily and looked on the point of arising from his place in the circle.
“But … but what happened, Father Djahn?” demanded Nansee, almost bouncing up and down in her excitement. “How did you kill the bear?”
Staiklee looked surprised at the question. “Oh. I didn’t kill that bear, honey. He killed me! Ate me, too.”