The First Jumper (first draft version)

The First Jumper 26: Spears

Feverishly, he began picking through the bundle of spear shafts.

“What are you doing?” asked Pomegranate.

“I’m looking for the sticks that weren’t straight enough for spears.”

“He didn’t keep those,” she said.  “If it wasn’t right, he just put it on the fire pile.”

Little Bear growled, but then jumped to his feet and ran around to the wood ready to go onto the fire.

“Don’t touch that!” said Fox, who was watching the fire while his father Ringtail slept.  “Only fire makers can feed the fire god.”

“I don’t want to feed the fire god,” said Little Bear.  “I just need a couple of pieces of wood.  There!”  

He pointed to a piece of laurel.

“That is not spear wood.”

“I know, but that is what I need.”

The boy shrugged, and handed him the stick.  Little Bear tried to break off what he wanted, but realized the tough wood bent, but did not easily break.

He took the whole piece over, and began cleaning the bark off it.  It was satisfyingly smooth underneath, and he had already learned how strong it was, but cutting it to the right length stumped him.  

“Use this,” said Rat.  He was holding an odd stone, that Little Bear had thought was a botched spear head.

Little Bear took it, and looked at it more closely.  It had lots of bumps along one side.

“Rub it where you want to cut,” said Rat, “like this.”  He took the stone back, and made as if to rub the serrations back and forth on the wood.

“I guess Bison taught you some things after all,” Little Bear said.

He looked over at Pomegranate.  “Why didn’t you know that?”

She shrugged.  “He cut the shafts wherever he collected them.  They were already cut to length when he brought them back.  Rat went with him, but I had to stay at camp.”

Nodding, Little Bear held the stone as Rat has shown him, and began rubbing it along the stick where he wanted to cut it.  It was tiring, but eventually, it succeeded.

He had cut it just where the laurel made a branch, bending the main branch as well as the smaller one.  

Next, he began cutting into the main branch where it bent.  Pomegranate showed him which tool to use for that one.

The laurel was very hard, and it tended to bend instead of break, but by the time it was getting late, he had finished hollowing out a place where the butt of his spear could rest, and a groove on it for the spear shaft.  When the two fit together to his satisfaction, he found that Rat was asleep, but Pomegranate, Raccoon, and Cave Bear were all watching.

“What are you making?” asked Raccoon.

“I don’t know,” said Little Bear.  He stood up, holding the stick in various places, with the spear on top of it.  It felt awkward if he held it any farther from the butt than about two thirds of its length, so he found a place where the laurel bent to make a comfortable handle, and cut just after that.  Then he smoothed and deepened the groove a bit.

He held it up to them.  “I’ll try this at first light.”

Raccoon glanced at Cave Bear, and said, “What do you want to try?”

“I want to see if I can throw a spear with this.”

“With that?” said Cave Bear.  “Is this more rabbit magic?”

“I don’t know,” said Little Bear.  “Maybe.”

Cave Bear and Raccoon looked at each other without speaking, and both nodded.  

“Come, Little Bear,” said the Chief.

At the edge of the wood, they looked out in the darkness at the plain.  “It will take us four days to cross that,” said Raccoon.  “Every other tribe out there will see us, and they will know how few warriors we have.  We watched a tribe hunting this afternoon.  There were twenty in the hunting party.  If they see us, they will kill us.”

“We could stay here,” said Little Bear.

“No,” said the Chief, “We could not.  Can you not smell the snow that is coming?”

“I can smell it,” said Little Bear, “but we could make walls of snow, like before, and fur coverings for hands and feet, from the rabbits.”

He looked back to their right.  A long ridge ended above the plain, a couple of miles away.  “We could set up a camp near the mountain, and it would protect us from the wind.  We can hunt and stay warm here, all Winter.”  

Cave Bear’s face was gray.  “Little Bear, we have never tried to stay so high before.  None of us may live through the Winter.

Little Bear gestured at the plain.  “We will surely die, if they see us, out there.”  Then he paused.  “What if . . .”

“What if what?” said Raccoon, when Little Bear did not finish.

Little Bear shook himself, then said, “I had an idea that might let us get across the plain, but later.”

“We can’t cross it later!”  Cave Bear almost shouted the words.  “Once the snows reach this far, no one will cross those plains alive.”

“Then let us go to the mountain,” said Little Bear.  “But I still want to see what this stick will do with the spear in the morning.”

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