Finally assembled, and with about a half-dozen bolts made, with the broadhead points, the wooden vanes glued in, and butt caps made of cartridge casing, he tried it out.
He had brought a piece of three-eighths-inch plywood up from the ranch that compared, according to his memory, with the one that had been used as a target when he had first seen and fired a crossbow. He cut it in half, putting one piece loosely behind the other, since he did not want to lose the bolt if it indeed went all the way through, as he had lost the first bolt of the crossbow he had been allowed to fire several years back. Now, he cocked the device, put the bolt in the slot, and aimed at the plywood from an easy fifteen yards of distance.
The crossbow exceeded expectations. It went clear through the outer piece of plywood and its point penetrated at least a third and possibly half of the way through the second piece, so that he had to cut the wood around it before he could wriggle it out.
In the immediate days following, he practiced with his crossbow whenever he had spare time; and at last became reasonably accurate with it.
He was very pleased with this addition to their armory. He had wished for another rifle that Merry could keep with her while he was gone. While making the crossbow, he had thought that perhaps he could leave the crossbow or the rifle with her. Accordingly he let her try her marksmanship with the crossbow. But it soon became obvious that if he left either weapon with her, it would have to be the rifle.
It was strange. Merry, who was literally a superb shot with both rifle and pistol, was much more erratic and inaccurate with a crossbow than Jeebee himself. Jeebee puzzled over this. But the only answer he could come up with was that, since he had envisioned the crossbow and wanted one since he was a child, he might have approached the use of the weapon with more enthusiasm than she did. Either that, or else she was trying to use it the way she used a firearm, which fitted the shoulder differently, as well as having a definite kick and a different flight pattern to its missile.
In the end he was glad she was better off with the rifle. The bolt of the crossbow was a penetrating missile, rather than a smashing missile. For that very reason, it was slower to kill. It achieved its end by internal bleeding of its target, unless whoever fired it was lucky enough to hit dead on a vulnerable spot like the heart or an eye socket. That meant it produced a wounded animal, which could be more of a threat before it finally died.
Jeebee was in the smithy, engrossed in making some more bolts, in preparation for his first attempt with the crossbow on a hunting trip to the flatlands, when he heard a curious thumping sound from overhead. He listened tensely for a second. It was not coming from directly above him but was being transmitted to him through the earth and the wooden walls he had put around the forge. He dropped his work and ran to and out of the outer door, snatching up the rifle from just inside the door of the inner room.
Outside, the rifle held ready for use, he swung about to look at the bluff above the cave.
There, just above the cave, Merry was digging into the cliff and into the bluff face.
His hands sagged with the rifle as the tension abruptly went out of him.
She was beginning, he saw, the last of his projects for him, the putting in of the skylight to the inner room. The first step in adding the skylight was, of course, to dig an opening into the bluff above the ceiling of the inner room. An opening in which the window of the skylight could be put.
She had put the metal ladder from the ranch up against the front wall of the cave; and climbed up it until she could step out onto the sloping face of the bluff above. There, she was busily at work with a shovel. Jeebee stepped hastily back to avoid being hit by a shovelful of earth and took a calmer look at what he was seeing.
Next to where she was digging on the steep face of the earthen bluff was something that Jeebee squinted at, not understanding what he saw at first glance.
Then he recognized that it was a platform of stakes driven at a slight angle deep into the bluff face. Supported by those stakes and firmly tied to them was the chest pack in which Merry normally carried Paul, outside the cave. It was just possible to catch sight of Paul’s face above his wrappings, and then his arms waved suddenly.
He was dressed inches thick in warm clothing, and seemed to be enjoying the open air, the sunlight, and the vigorous activity of his mother, next to him.
“Merry!” Jeebee shouted to her. “What are you doing that for? That’s my job!”
“When you’re ready to get to work on it, fine,” Merry said a little breathlessly, without stopping her digging. “Meanwhile, I’m making a start. Don’t worry, I won’t dig down into the top of our room.”
“Well, I’ll take over now!” Jeebee shouted.
“When you’re done,” Merry called back. “Until then I’ll keep on working.”
“I’m done now,” Jeebee said, guiltily conscious that he had been lingering over last-minute touches on the crossbow bolts.
Jeebee went up the ladder after her. She continued to work until he was right beside her, but then stopped and passed the shovel over without protest. It was not one of the tools he had gotten around to making at the forge yet. This was a rather rusty one they had been fortunate enough to find in the ruins of the ranch. They also, of course, had the small collapsible entrenching shovel that Jeebee had carried down with him on the horse or sledge when he went hunting over the snow on the flats in wintertime. But this old, full-sized shovel was a great deal more effective up here, moving several times the load of earth that the entrenching tool was capable of lifting.
Jeebee took over and was soon hard at work digging back into the bluff over the ceiling of the inner room. The supports he had put up earlier to hold back the earth above them were probably sufficient so that he would be able to stand and work on the two-by-fours that made the rafters of the ceiling, but just to be on the safe side he added a few extra supports and planks between them.
The result was that the outer room’s ceiling became a solid floor as he gradually cleared dirt out to a height of about five feet at the front of the opening in the bluff, shallowing down until it met the wall in the back of the ceiling.
In this new space he set up new shoring timbers and support for the earth that would be above it.
He was still hard at work, but ready to quit, when Wolf returned with the evening. Seeing him up there inside the hole he had made, Wolf was instantly interested and started to climb the ladder toward him, then changed his mind before his hind legs were off the ground. His partner, Jeebee had found out sometime back, could climb ladders with no trouble or worry at all, but he was not at all happy about climbing down them.
Jeebee shouted the news of Wolf’s arrival to Merry inside, went down the ladder, and after preliminary greetings, the two moved inside the room where Merry and Paul were.
Merry had gradually relaxed her concern over allowing Wolf close to Paul. Far from being a threat to the child, Wolf was very gentle and solicitous toward Paul. He would, in fact, endure more from Paul than he would from Jeebee or Merry. He insisted on sniffing the youngster over thoroughly each time he came in for greetings; and if one of Paul’s waving arms happened to stick a finger into his eye while he was doing this, he merely squeezed the eye half shut and went on about his examination.
Wolf’s fascination with Paul did not seem to fade with familiarity. He was clearly ready to continue being full of wonder about him. From the wolf books, Jeebee had learned that this was typical of wolves, that they were all very interested in the young of their own species and would be both caring toward them and willing to play with them for hours at a time. From Wolf’s point of view, Paul was plainly one more member of the community.