Tales of the Incredible Hoke Robertson

As I re-set the many vole traps around Oakenglade, my Angels Camp estate I am reminded of my trip to the Caucus. The year was 1962 and we were half way through our excavation of the Kurgan, or Bronze Age burial mound. We had found the site by using a proto-type ground penetrating radar (”GPR”) loaned to us by my friends at Cambridge. Initial dating of the mound suggested it was an early example, from the 4th millennium BC. As we lifted what remained of the last timber support our torches revealed the remains of two figures. My assistant Subedei Guyuk, PhD., let escape an old Turkic exclamation which roughly translated in “awesome sauce.” “I’ll have the spicey” I replied in proto-Indo European. My attempt at linguistic humor was not lost on Subedei who speaks about as many dead languages as I do.

The figures were clad in plates of what was surely bronze, but the amount of gold around them was truly remarkable. My eyes were immediately drawn to a beautifully crafted gold dagger. When I carefully lifted it the quillion separated from the handle and slid back and forth along the main axis of the ceremonial weapon. As we began to carefully brush away the dross from other items, we heard the crack of primitive firearms and the tell-tale shout of steppe bandits attacking the camp!

Our only hope of saving the camp workers was quick action. I realized that all of our team were descendents from the original Turkic peoples of the area but that the bandits were obviously sons of the Cossack tribes. As I had just finished editing a large tome entitled Aural Differences Between European and Asiatic Peoples, I realized we could alter the settings on the GPR to “stun” the attacking Cossacks without any significant discomfort to our team. The only problem was that we needed to do some upper division math to convert the structural morphology of the two ear types into linear equations and then calculate the appropriate frequency to match one but not the other.

Without any computer I knew Subedei or I could do the math given enough time, but time was what we lacked. To speed up the process, I took my Sharpie pen and drew the appropriate lines on the golden dagger. Using the loose quillion as the “slide” of a slide rule, I quickly did the appropriate calculations and Subedei adjusted the GPR. When the blast from the GPR hit the Cossacks, they fell to the ground like sacks of Ukranian wheat dumped off an old cart. We quickly tied up the unconscious bandits and sent a runner to notify the local constabulary.

Everything finally settled down and we completed the excavation without further mishap. However, the discovery of a complete clay tablet with cuneiform writings on it found beneath the two figures set us on another adventure, the telling of which will have to wait for another time. HOKE ROBERTSON