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Post by rvm45 on Oct 7, 2014 0:36:21 GMT -6
A test of "Notes" Apple's version of "Notebook".
I'd hate for a well-crafted chapter advancing a work in progress to disappear into cyber-space…
Indulgence
Chapter One
Church in the small village that I grew up in was long and tedious. I thought the speaker was a fat red-faced fool, but I attended every Sunday and tried not to let my true feelings show. I had scant desire to be sent to a “Repentance Camp” for several weeks or months.
Food was both plain and skimpy at Repentance Camp. Hard labor, sleep deprivation and constant brain-washing were de rigor. Those who came back generally had glassy stares and monotoned voices and only some ever fully recovered. And of course, some never came back at all.
The old bastard was on a roll that day. It was going on 2:00 pm and I was more than ready to get myself around some food if he ever finished his never-ending harangue.
Then he introduced a speaker from Prophetsville. He was recruiting volunteers for the Peacetime Army.
When Sanctum goes to war, they impress many of the faithful into the Wartime Army. It can be grim, but the survivors can look forward to returning home eventually. I don’t think that’s from the goodness of the Ecclesia. It’s just to hard to keep that many men segregated indefinitely.
The Peacetime Army is different. Once you join, you’re there for life. The Peacetime Army serves as the backbone of the Wartime Army and the Ecclesia also rents them out as mercenary forces—to earn silver and to hone the Peacetime Army’s fighting skills.
If you volunteer for the Peacetime Army, you never come home. The theory is that so much rough living has turned you into a very bad influence for the faithful. Even if you live long enough to retire—however unlikely that is—there are segregated old folk colonies for old soldiers.
There are compensations. Soldiers eat well. They can freely partake of alcohol and hashish. They have only the briefest “Chapel Services” to attend.
They are also given almost unlimited indulgence for sexual activity. There are companies of fallen women who travel with the Troops. Troops can even marry one of the women—which results in some multi-generation Peacetime Soldiers. The men aren’t forbidden to practice sodomy either.
I was only marginally more likely to volunteer for the army than I was to gouge my own eyes out.
The Ecclesia spokesman started repeating himself for about the third time.
“Alright,” I thought. “Peacetime Soldiers are free to be buggering fiends with no fear of being flogged and sent to Repentance Camp. Get this over with.”
He seemed to be striking that nail particularly hard.
Deacon Thornton sat behind me. He was porcine and had a distinctly undershot jaw that made him look somewhat like a warthog. He stank. He kept clearing his throat and shifting around in such a way that he continually kicked the bottom of my pew.
I noticed that the speaker was staring directly at me and several of the congregation kept turning to give me surreptitious glances. Did my neighbors and fellow churchmen think that the bugger corp had some special appeal for me?
I started becoming angry and I glared back a the speaker with every bit of hostility that I could muster after turning around and demanding that Porky quit kicking my seat.
The Pastor came over to sit beside me the way he’d do when he felt that someone especially needed to make a trip to the altar.
“Have you ever considered joining the Army brother Gonne?”
“No,” I answered him.
“You are twenty-three years old and you have yet to take a wife,” he pointed out.
“Find me one that will have me,” I said. “Even if she is fat or ugly. Women don’t care for me.”
“If you refuse to volunteer, I guarantee that you will never marry. I will see to it,” he said.
“Cool dude. But I ain’t volunteering to go with the sodomite soldiers. You do understand the concept of ‘volunteer’?”
“Brother Gonne, if you reject such a clear calling from God, I will have you thrown out of the nation of Sanctum and exiled for life,” he said.
“You would do that for me? Thank you! Thank you so much!” I said.
I had never heard of anyone being exiled. I knew that he couldn’t back down and send me to Repentance once he’d made a public threat that way thogh. I grabbed his puffy red face with both hands and kissed him on his lips.
No, I’m not splayed, but I’ll do much to embarrass an ass like him in public.
You’d have thought from the look on his face that I’d somehow contrived to force him to swallow a big live toad.
My departure was relatively unhurried. I had until dawn to leave the village and start moving towards the border. I was allow to keep anything that I could carry with me. There was a formal shunning and excommunication ceremony and then I was free to make a leisurely departure.
I saddled one of my draft mules with a riding saddle and threw a pack saddle on the other.
I had heard it said that mules back on Earth were strange hybrid creatures that did not produce after their own kind and that none of them were as big as our twenty six hundred pound draft mules—but I don’t know if that’s true or not. Many legends and myths have grown up about the godlike power and technology of the old Earthmen and the first few generations of men on the world that they named “Cairn” for no reason that anyone can cite.
I only owned two guns—my .32 ACP Semi-Automatic Rifle and a modest sized hideout also in .32 ACP that had been my grandfather’s—though I never met him. My parents had died when I was barely old enough to work the farm and keep it.
I have seen a couple antique Earth guns in a quaint .22 caliber rimfire cartridge. Rimfire cartridges never became popular on Cairn and stout loaded flat-point lead .32 ACPs fill that ecological niche.
Grogan’s hounds leaped all over me as he opened his general store special for me, even though it was Sunday.
“Why don’t you take them with you when you leave?” Grogan said.
“I won’t live forever and no one else loves them the way you would. Besides, at least a few of mine should get to leave this place,” he said a bit sadly.
Grogan had came back from Sanctum’s last war with two legs that could barely support his weight, but he managed to run the general store with the help of crutches, his wife and several sons. Whatever happened to his legs hadn’t interfered with his reproductive ability.
Since I was single, I had saved some silver. I always tithed the mandatory ten percent to the church and gave them as few and as skimpy “free-will” offerings as I thought that I could get away with. Still, there were things that I wanted that I didn’t buy—lest I make myself a target of more clerical silver extractions defined as “Gifts”. They had all sorts of ways to bring the pressure to bear.
I bought two Double Action .44 Magnum revolvers from Grogan. I bought a strong-side holster for one and stuck the other into a holster hidden under the flap of a saddle bag. There was a holster under the other bag’s flap as well, but Grogan only had two .44 Magnums in his store.
I bought a .30-30 Lever Action Rifle that could be taken down into two pieces for easy transport and I bought a saddle scabbard for the .30-30.
There were two other revolvers that I bought from Grogan as well: a long barreled .32 ACP Revolver that used full moon clips along with a shoulder holster. That would let me take potshots at small game without either extracting my .32 ACP Rifle or exposing my .32 ACP hideout. Then there was the huge “Assault Revolver” that I’ admired ever since my father took me to Grogan’s General Store as a small lad.
I say that I admired it. It was well made, but I’m not sure exactly what good that it was.
The revolver had a nine-inch long barrel. It held eight rounds—big powerful .50 caliber rounds as long as my ring finger. The gun had a Single Action style loading gate. It had a horizontal pump handle up front and pulling the handle back forced the base pin back far enough to to c*** the Single Action Hammer. Of course there was shielding to protect the forward hand from barrel/cylinder-gap gasses.
It had a leather sling and was meant to be carried across the back.
They made regular five-shot revolvers in that caliber, but frankly they kicked too much to be very versatile. The bigger gun was necessarily heavier and that helped soak up recoil. The spreader hold it necessitated also tended to tame recoil. It was slower to load than a Double Action—but it held a full eight rounds instead of five. Face it, if eight .50 550 grain bullets at close to 2000 FPS won’t do it, then the situation is rather dire anyway. I had no conceivable use for the big heavy revolver—but I’d always wanted it. So now I had it.
******************** *********************** ***********************
I handed the border guard the token that told him to let me out of the great mental hospital that was Sanctum.
“I took exile rather than join the Army,” I told him.
I’m not sure what prompted that outburst though I had resolved to leave all hypocrisy behind me in Sanctum—and all tact is confirmed hypocrisy. I’d put up with far too much and held my peace far too often out of fear of the Repentance Camps.
A man shouldn’t fear. He should act boldly without regard for consequences.
“Good for you,” the guard said. “Don’t ever regret your decision.”
I was a little sad as I raised my hand in farewell. We had that moment together. It was fleeting, but it contained truth and I’d always count him as a friend—though I didn’t even learn his name. It was of no consequence. God knew the poor soldier’s name—and God knew my name as well.
I hadn’t gone far when I came upon a trio of riders.
Two of them were nondescript plain men on medium sized saddle mules. The third man was very bald with great jug-handle ears. He was comically undermounted on a skinny pony mule that had to break into a short gallop occasionally to catch up to the two larger mules.
“My name is ‘Candi’—‘Handy-Candi’ they call me. These are my brothers. There is a town three more days down the road. We should travel together for protection from Injuns,” he said.
“Injuns? Do you mean Blue Men? This isn’t an old Western for pity’s sake!” I asked him.
“Blue Men—yeah, that’s what I mean,” he said.
He wiped his freely running nose with his sleeve and then gave me a bucktoothed smile that showed a mouthful of oversized brown mulish teeth.
“We haven’t been eating well. I’ll chip in ten coppers if you’ll share one of your dogs with us tonight,” he continued.
“Y’all don’t have enough coin and ride to buy one of my hounds,” I said. “And if you even look too hard at one of my dogs I’ll blow your brains out you mutant-get piece of trail trash.”
I was far too diplomatic, even after I’d firmly resolved to speak my mind from now on. I resolved to be less friendly in the future.
I swung far around them and prepared to pass.
“Watch them,” I said to my hounds.
They would recognize the hostile intent if any of them reached for a gun.
Candi was determined to keep up with me. He spurred his little mule into a very fast trot.
“That .32 is a boy’s rifle,” he spouted. “It's is almost as useless as that mule pistol you wear on that sling. If you come upon a hunting party of Injuns they’ll eat you as well as your mules and hounds too.”
“Dude, it is like: You are sorely trying my patience. Fall back and give that poor little pony a rest or I’ll shoot you out of the saddle,” I said.
“If you do, my friends will gun you down. You will never live to see another sunrise,” Candi said.
“Neither will you,” I countered. “My words aren’t wind. Try me if you doubt me.”
He pulled the little mule up, but you could tell that it killed his soul to do so.
I didn’t think that they were outright highwaymen. I galloped a short while, until I couldn’t see them behind me on the wooded trail anymore and then I slowed to a mile-eating trot.
I came upon a partially tumbledown old barn about an hour before sundown. The barn was very old, but it had been very strongly built of three inch thick planks of rough sawn oak about a foot wide and the standing portion didn’t seem in danger of falling anytime soon. It looked like it might rain. The roof would add an an extra layer of protection between me and the elements.
It wasn’t very cool and I could have readily done without the small fire that I used to cook my supper, but instead I sat and admired my fire making skill for a short while after I ate.
It hadn’t occurred to me that my companions of the brief encounter would follow me to bushwhack me.
One moment I was sitting watching the fire.
The next moment I was lying face down in a mess of my own blood and vomit. My head ached abysmally and I couldn’t focus my eyes. I’d been out awhile to judge by the blood.
Apparently the trio had left me for dead.
They’d taken my mules, my gear and all my weapons—well all that they could see. They had missed my .32 ACP Hideout and a couple small knives that I carry. Possibly because I was all bloody, they hadn’t found the small leather sack with a small survival kit in it.
The kit wasn’t any great use at the moment. I didn’t want to build a fire—that might give away the fact that I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t hungry. I had painkillers, but they were opiate based and not a good combination with head trauma and probable concussion.
My hounds appeared out of the surrounding woods—all four of them. They’d been smart enough to fade while the dog eaters were robbing what they thought was my dead body.
I cut a walking stick. The trio wouldn’t have traveled far at night, but if I didn’t find them by the time they took off tomorrow, they’d be gone along with my mules and gear. It really wasn’t relevant that I didn’t feel like traveling, having had a bullet crease my scalp and having bled copiously.
“Find Cindy and Dauber and don’t bay,” I told the hounds.
They say that the old ones made hounds smarter and better able to understand verbal commands than Terran hounds had been. Maybe. Getting a Bloodhound to trail silently is hard to do though.
I had hopes that even if the dogs bayed occasionally, the highwaymen would simply think that the hounds were railing the mules that they were familiar with.
We found them at dawn. Despite the pounding in my head, I was still a good stalker. I made it into the center of their camp undetected.
The fellow that they’d left on guard realized that I was no more than ten feet away from him and had been aiming my Walther PP at his face for several seconds. I wasn’t there to discuss their conduct or remonstrate with the fools. As soon as I saw his eyes widen in terror, I fired a three round burst at his eyes.
I got another three round burst into Candi’s horrorstruck face as he sat up. Then I carefully fired my last three rounds into the third man’s head from behind.
I didn’t intend to make the same mistake that they had. I located my Bowie and went to take my heads.
The sentry’s head came off without incident. Then the second fellow’s head. When I got to Candi’s bedroll though, I felt a horrified thrill run up my spine. Although Candi’s bedroll was soaked in blood and gore Candi had managed to flee while I’d been fighting the nausea and the booming pain in my head and beheading his henchmen.
Candi had fled barefoot and he’d left his pants and his sidearm and rifle behind.
Great! I had meant to rest and recuperate for a day or two, but now I didn’t dare—lest Candi return to dose me with my own cure.
These lazy fools had lain down to sleep with their mules and mine still saddled and ready to travel. Obviously, long abuse such as that would ruin the strongest animals. I assume the neglect was a function of them spending half the night locating and stalking me. Even so, it was very poor animal husbandry.
Nonetheless, I may not have been able to saddle and load my mules if I’d had to.
I took all their weapons and anything of value. I burned their clothing and boots lest Candi be able to salvage them.
I hung the two heads over the pommel of one of the saddle mules. Highwaymen and brigands rarely display their trophies—preferring to pass themselves off as honest travelers. So if I encountered the mules hypothetical former owners, the heads would be a strong defense against charges of Rustling.
A hard day and a half’s ride later I rode into the small town Candi had mentioned.
*************** ****************** *********************
So you killed Candi’s brothers and wounded Candi badly?” the town marshal asked me in a tone of getting it straight.
He’d been tolerant enough to let me seek medical attention and even rest a few days before interviewing me.
“That’s about the size of it,” I said.
“That’s a bad deal. It’s a shame that you couldn’t have killed Candi cleanly along with his brothers. They were cowards, but they’ve bushwhacked or gotten the drop on many a nameless traveler in this region. It isn’t good to have so much innocent blood staining the ground of one’s home. It brings ill fortune,” the marshall philosophized.
“Are there any claims against the saddle mules?” I asked.
“No, they bought them honestly. Even if they hadn’t, a highwayman’s swag belongs to the man who sets him free.”
I sold the two saddle mules, making sure that I found them good homes. I decided to keep the pony mule for no good reason. I saddled him and he carried naught but the two heads that I’d taken hanging from his saddle horn. Heads are a subtle form of boasting on the road and a fair way to reduce incidents with robbers and bullies.
There wasn’t any real question of me staying in the village. They profess to admire the heroes who take the highwaymen’s heads—but get right down to it, they’re more than a little poogly about associating with confirmed killers.
Even if it wasn’t for that…
The bullet hit me near the top of my right forehead and tore a diagonal strip across my scalp to the back left corner. The doctor shaved about half my head and did a bunch of stitching and debriding the wound. I was resigned to having a bald swath across my head—as badly as I hated the idea.
Instead the hair grew in extra fast—and all the hair along the wound’s path was as blue as a blue man’s hair. …..RVM45
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Post by 2medicinewoman on Oct 7, 2014 0:57:15 GMT -6
RVM. Another tale of "off world" populations. I love your mind. It is so busy. Hope all is well with you and yours.
Thanks for the new tale.
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Post by millwright on Oct 7, 2014 20:13:06 GMT -6
moar
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 9, 2014 0:23:28 GMT -6
Indulgence
Chapter Two
A couple of weeks had passed since I’d left the small town behind. I had no particular destination in mind and there was no sense of urgency to my travel. I kept my mules at an easy trot. The little mule, who I’d named “Goliath” had no trouble keeping up now that he wasn’t carrying the oversized Candi.
I had quite a bit of silver. I had even more since selling the saddle mules—saddle and all—along with most of the highwaymen’s weapons and gear. I supposed that eventually I’d try to buy or at least make a substantial down payment on a farm. I meant to go a good deal farther south before I set down roots though. Milder winters are always to the good and I had a desire to have a big vineyard and orchard on my hypothetical new farm.
Orchards and vineyards were in Sanctum, but the frost killed the fruits and caused them to drop off onto the ground where they were good for nothing but hog food about one year in three and the trees were stunted.
I spotted a rabbit up the road a piece. I drew my .32 ACP rifle from its saddle scabbard. The .32 rode on the right side of Dauber and the .30-30 rode on his left.
I sighted throughout the aperture sight. I had a scope for the .32 and a even spare, but the scope didn’t work well in the saddle scabbard. It was of little consequence as I was a good shot and the range was well under fifty yards.
There were earmuffs riding in a small bag attached to the saddle horn. The .32 ACP isn’t terribly loud, especially from a rifle, but it is the accumulation of noises that erodes a man’s hearing throughout his life. Any noise loud enough to make the ears ring takes away a wee bit of hearing acuity—and even some noises that don’t cause ringing of the ears are still loud enough to do harm.
A man can’t go through life totally protecting his auditory nerves any more than he can spare the enamel on his teeth from all abrasion. I don’t eat bread made with cheap gritty flour though and I don’t shoot without ear protection unless circumstances force me.
“Gonna shoot,” I cautioned the mules.
My mules were trained to stand steady in the presence of gunfire or other loud noises, but it never hurts to be extra sure.
A few miles down the road I encountered a second rabbit. I decided to cook the first rabbit in a pit. If I slow roasted the second rabbit slowly over the fire until he was good and dry he would keep for a day or two. I don’t mind dry meat, though I don’t particularly want all of my meat that way.
If an opportunity for a third shot turned up, I resolved not to take it—unless it was an animal large enough to make it worth my while to stop and jerk the meat. There is no sense in shooting more than you can eat.
I was feeling a certain urgency to exercise my trigger fingers though. I did dry-fire all my weapons diligently every night—excepting the .32 rifle—since I’d long since mastered it and the Walther and the Saddlebag .44 Magnum. Those two were hideouts and I worked at keeping them out of sight as a general rule..
I stopped early. I built a fire and set my rabbits to cook. Then I made a crude backstop—partly for safety sake, since the woods were kinda open and the trail had at least a few travelers. It wasn’t necessary to completely halt every bullet. A bullet tumbling wildly and robbed of at least a significant portion of its forward velocity Is unlikely to seriously damage someone in the next county. If someone was directly behind my backstop, I expected them to have wit enough to make their presence known or at the very least, to hasten to abandon the area.
The main purpose of my backstop was to have a good surface to mount some butcher’s paper—I had a modest roll purely for that purpose—to use as targets. Blazing away at nothing is fun, but it does little for one’s marksmanship.
I had waited until morning for my target practice. I also waited until I was packed and ready to go. That way no one would be able to locate me and spend all night stalking me.
I’d brought along plenty of spare ammunition to practice occasionally and I had bought more ammunition in every town and village I’d encountered.
I had skill enough with the .32 rifle. I’d shot it and hunted game with it every since I was a small boy. I also had a good grasp of how the Walther PP shot and it was the only semi-automatic handgun that I owned. Shooting any of the revolvers would have far more beneficial carry over to my other revolvers.
I shot the .30-30 first. It was a good deer and brigand killing cartridge and it had been used sucessfully on much larger game.
Shooting a pistol can be a matter of shooting fifty or one hundred rounds—or even several hundred rounds—at one time. Shooting a rifle is generally a matter of firing twenty or thirty rounds. I fired twenty rounds at longish distance for the .30-30 and then fired a dozen while speed working the lever and from behind cover.
I fired one hundred rounds of .32 ACP from my long barreled revolver—it had an eight inch barrel—and then I fired fifty through each of my .44 Magnums. The one on my belt had a six inch barrel while the one secreted in my saddlebag had a four inch barrel. They were both made to the old “Redhawk” pattern from old Earth while my .32 revolver was a Smith and Wesson style replica.
It is worth considering, when you are target practicing in a remote area: always keep at least one firearm loaded and ready to go at all times, lest someone decide to wait until you’ve shot yourself dry to rob or molest you. When wearing both earmuffs and ear plugs it is also a good practice to look around often and take the ear protection off occasionally to give a good listen.
I finished up firing twenty four rounds—three eight round cylinders full—through the mule pistol. I really didn’t expect to “Master” the oddball revolver. I wasn’t sure that it could be shot masterfully. At any rate, I hadn’t the time to devote to it and the big rounds were very expensive.
It really wasn’t built for aimed fire—though I suppose that from prone or a some sort of seated position that it could have done reasonably well out to maybe two-hundred yards. The weapon—to the degree that it was designed for any purpose at all—was intended to be point fired, perhaps from the hip—at humans or blue men—up close and personal. I suppose that it might have had some utility against a charging grizzly or a Siberian tiger as well.
Apparently the old ones felt that large predators were ecologically desirable—perhaps necessary—in the long run. I was a bit too far south for Siberian tigers and grizzly. They tended to be creatures of the arboreal forests and muskegs to the north. Far to the south there were open savannas. Huge herds of bison were said to roam there. Lions hadn’t survived the trip to Cairn so the old ones modified the genes of Bengal tigers to turn them into pack hunters like the Terran lions were said to have been. Never content to leave things well enough alone, the old ones gave the male Bengal tigers manes to go along with their new leonine nature. The grassland grizzlies have also developed into a distinct sub-species with longer legs and a body thinned somewhat to cover larger pieces of ground with greater efficiency.
There are ostrich, emus, wallabies, and kangaroos on the plain along with great tribes of mandrills with brilliant multi-colored stripes on their snouts.
They say that on old Earth there was a nomadic reindeer herding folk known as “The Sami” and by the time of the diasporas they had intermarried more than a little with the Esquimaux that they shared the far North with and that further, they had also recruited many Esquimaux for their schemes. They were joined in their enterprise by some Australian outbackers and New Zealanders from the rural areas of the islands. When they arrived on Cairn they headed straight for the savannas where they quickly developed a nomadic lifestyle following the great herds of bison, gnus and the wildebeest.
The nomads have great striped mules that dwarfed our largest draft mules and they make full use of the wheel. Some of them live in somewhat oversized versions of Gypsy caravans—the larger size being permitted by teams of four to six of the giant mules. Others transport enough long poles and bison hides in wagons to build teepees wherever they make camp.
They are a fierce and wild and free people much like the Plains Indians of old Earth. Unlike the Plains Indians though they are no stranger to firearms, metal working and the written word.
The savanna's great tortoises—also known as Oracles—are also the subject of many legends and folktales
It is said that the gravity is a bit less here on Cairn and that the air is modestly thicker and richer in oxygen. Few mammals or birds have grow weaker or thinner boned. It is to their advantage to be as strong and as sturdy as possible. Many animals have grown more than a little larger though.
On old Earth, one only found great tortoises on isolated islands where there were no large predators. There were problems of scale and a giant turtle can’t fully retract its legs and head into its shell—offering an easy meal to any predator big enough to force them to attempt withdraw into their shell.
The old ones, in their manic urge to experiment on nearly everything, had genetically modified the tortoises. Their heads were armored with a bony helmet that looked much like a smaller version of their shell. Their forelegs and hands were similarly protected by bone armor and short stout bony spikes.
Then just for spritz and giggles, the ancients gave the turtles external ears with mammalian inner ear bones and hearing far better than human. They upgraded their eyes to better than human and full-color—at least so it is claimed. Then they gave the giant tortoises a third eye set well above the other two.
Now while humans do an excellent job of perceiving the world in three dimensions, all a man’s parallax is horizontal so to speak. The great tortoises have both horizontal parallax and vertical parallax all at once—along with more than fifty percent more visual data to utilize.
All that would avail them little, except that the ancients gave them brains larger than human and far more developed in some areas. Then they gave the Oracles two mammalian style four-chambered hearts, large lung capacity and very efficient oxygen transporting compounds in their blood—all to nourish their great brains—though they are still very cold-blooded.
They have total recall. They have the verbal apparatus of a parrot paired with the most advanced reptile vocal apparatus that the ancients could find. The turtles have Toki-Pona—an old artificial language that gets by very well—although not perfectly—with only a hundred and twenty words—hardwired into their genes.
Their lifespan is said to be many centuries
What are they for? Did they ever exist? Do they still exist?
Their purpose, apparently—was so that humans could seek them out and ask them questions—Oracle like. The turtle’s cold-blooded nature, lack of prehensile digits and general awkwardness—along with a built-in easy-going nature and a compulsion to engage in both debate and lecture—should prevent them from ever being man’s rival.
I couldn’t have said if the Oracles existed at this point or not…
But I digress.
I had only been on the road a few moments when I heard shooting somewhere not too far along my back trail.
Someone could simply be returning what they felt was a loud and ostentatious salute.
I could have inspired someone else to do some target practice.
It could be bait for a trap or it could be simple coincidence.
I decided that I’d better go see. If it was a trick, then they’d simply try something less obvious. At least this way there was a fair chance that I’d get to satisfy my curiosity.
I drew my .30-30 from its scabbard. I checked to the chamber. I knew that I’d reloaded it after firing. I was as certain as I could possibly be and the rifle hadn’t been over arm’s reach from me since. None of that was relevant. When there is a chance to check your weapons before going into harm’s way, you take advantage of it. Someone who doesn’t take every opportunity to check is a fool.
“Stay well behind us—say fifteen or twenty yards,” I told Cindy and Goliath.
People who don’t work with Cairn mules every day are likely to say something like:
“And did you really expect them to understand you?”
Yes, I did. That was well within their capacity to comprehend.
“Jared and Red Boy—check out the trail on the right for bushwhackers.”
Neither dogs nor mules seem to understand “right” and “left”—but I pointed using my whole arm.
“Melissa and Deke—flush out the left side. Don’t try to attack armed men. Just raise a ruckus to where I know they’re there,” I told my trusted scouts.
I walked Dauber at an even walk, checking all around as I did so. I was straining to find one twig or one stone out of place.
I rounded a corner and there sat a very large black woman sitting on a big saddle mule. She had a yearling colt in tow and seemed to be attended by a Great Dame and some sort of medium-sized Collie mix.
She was being swamped by a small army of blue men.
She had one of those pistol caliber lever actions— a .357 Magnum from the sound of it. That gives you 10+1 instead of my .30-30's 6+1 and the gun is lighter and kicks less. It doesn’t hit the target as hard either. Sooner or later though, there comes a day.
She fired out her rifle very quickly. Then she drew her sixgun and fired some more. She seemed to be hitting what she aimed at and both her dogs had turned into snapping snarling fiends. When a couple blue men made a move on the colt, her mount turned and bit one blue man’s arm off and then fastened firmly on the area between the neck and shoulder of a second blue man and lifted him clear of the ground.
The Collie slipped and then he went down under a dozen blue men.
That’s when I got the surprise of my life. The girl leapt from the back of her mule onto the ground. She had a mule pistol similar to mine that she hadn’t unloaded yet. She couldn’t point fire the weapon from above without risk of shooting her dog. She slammed out eleven rounds as fast as I’d ever heard that many rounds fired.
Gun empty, she let it fall on its sling, drew a tomakawken and a Wakizashi and advanced on the huddle of blue men around her dog like a man on a mission.
No, I hadn’t been idly standing by and yes I can almost always tell very accurately how many rounds are fired even if several men are rapid firing in a group. It is a gift—though with limited usefulness.
I fired my .30-30 dry. I shot out my .44 Magnum twice. I don’t put much stock in speed loaders. They work great for reloading, but they get ruined very easily. A man who is riding hard and living rough shouldn’t come to rely on such things. After my second cylinder of .44 Magnum I sheathed my lever action and holstered my .44 Magnum. I stepped off the horse while drawing my .32 ACP rifle. It used the same eight round magazines as my Walther and I had several on my belt.
Blue men are indigenous amphibians. It takes a very big one to weigh a hundred pounds. Their bones are cartilaginous and their muscles weak. They do have very sharp shearing teeth, a powerful bite and horny claws at the end of their astonishingly humanoid hands—except for a limited webbing that stops just past the first phalange. The only things that make them truly dangerous are their extreme stealth, the frantic burst of speed they display the first sixty to ninety seconds of a fight and the fact that they generally attack in very large packs and they don’t appear to feel pain.
.30-30, .44 Magnum and .357 Magnum were all a bit of overkill with the little froggie men. The .32 ACP in its stout Cairn incarnation was good enough for them.
I walked my way over to the black woman. I kicked a few of them off of her even as I shot out three magazines of .32.
When we were down to the last few I slung my rifle.
“Watch. You may need to know this sometime,” I said to her.
“You can grab them like so and break their little necks—but don’t get your fingers in their mouths,” I instructed.
“Or you can crush their skulls like so,” I said.
The amphibian’s head exploded like a giant boil and sprayed me with indigo ichor.
“Now watch this,” I said.
As the last creature attacked, I hacked one of his hands off with my Bowie.
“They don’t feel pain,” I said as I sidestepped the blue man’s charge and lopped his remaining hand off.
He charged in with lowered head and gnashing teeth. I thought that I had made my point. I drew my long barreled .32 ACP revolver and blew his head off.
“You’re cruel,” she said.
“What?”
I reloaded my .32 revolver, my .44 Magnum gathered up all my .32 magazines and started to reload my .30-30. I wiped my fingers extra clean and extracted my ear plugs.
“Now I can hear you,” I said.
“You are cruel,” she repeated.
“I told you that they don’t feel pain. He could have tried to run away. Did he? Anyway, he chose to attack you. ‘Chose’ is a poor word. These things are dimmer than a red brick. They make unimproved reptiles look like geniuses,” I replied.
Then I saw the mischievous light in her eyes.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“I have a couple pretty good bites,” she said.
“Blue men are full of weird and bizarre antibiotics—at least they’re antibiotic in human terms. God knows what metabolic purpose they serve in the blue man’s physiology. We’ll make sure that they aren’t bleeding and we’ll look at them more thoroughly this afternoon. We need to didi mau right now,” I said.
“Afraid of highwaymen?” she bantered.
“I’m not afraid of pain, torture or death. That isn’t to say that I’m actively seeking any of those blessings. However, the noise and the scent on the wind of so many blue men meeting their demise will draw more blue men—and possibly highwaymen too,” I said.
“We have their gore all over us. What about when we stop for the night? Or even as we ride?” she said.
“Our scent trail will tend to lag behind us. The pheromones don’t last very long. They will be thoroughly decayed by this afternoon. What are you doing riding all alone anyway?” I said.
“I might ask you the same Gonne Whey, but I already know your story,” she said and then mounted her saddle mule with an easy grace that I could never equal.
But then again, Dauber’s shoulder was a good two feet higher than her saddle mule’s. Cindy’s shoulder was higher yet as she was the larger of the pair.
********************** **************************** ***************************************
“My name is ‘Amber’” she said as she unsaddled her mule that afternoon.
She as tall—maybe six-four. She had me beat and I’m marginally closer to six-two than I am to six-one. She was big-boned too, but I had been wrong earlier. She wasn’t a grown woman, but an adolescent girl.
When she took off her big felt slouch hat, her hair was brilliant red and as straight as a geometer’s dream.
They hypothesized that with a limited number of people that the folk of Cairn would rapidly become one folk and one blood. It didn’t happen. I don’t think that it is racism so much. It is more that like attracts like—far more so on a frontier than in the parties and drawing rooms of old Earth.
I’m a contrarian. I always dreamed of a woman the color of rich chocolate.
Maybe it goes back to my childhood and my relation to my mother.
There was a woman in the village who was lazy and sloven. She stole and she slept around with menfolk and she never got sent to Repentance because she’d played catch-as-catch-can with three of the church deacons.
One day I joked that her son Weber was highly unlikely to grow up singing the old Earth ditty about:
“I wanna girl, just like the girl who married dear old dad.”
It was a joke made at someone else’s expense, but my father chose to make a weird issue of it.
“How about you Gonne? Do you want a girl like the one that married your dear old dad?”
And he smiled all the while. I could have frankly answered:
“Hell no!”
And I’m not sure if he’d have laughed and been satisfied. Or he could have laughed and continued to badger me. Then again, he might have slapped me hard across the face.
I don’t imaging that he slapped me more than a half a dozen times in the fourteen years that we shared.
But he was always taking things wrong and accusing me of disrespecting him. His favorite expression when he felt put down was:
“One of these days, you’re going to disrespect me like that and I’ll slap you into the middle of next week.”
I was always afraid that I’d say something that angered him without knowing it and I’d find myself on the floor with blood streaming from my nose and too befuddled for some moments to have a clue what had happened.
I held my peace and refused any sort of answer and he kept pestering me like it was a pleasant jest.
Now my mother was not cruel, lazy or of loose morals, but I simply didn’t care for her much.
She was determined that we be buddies and I was just as determined that we not. And she’d start every morning with the bright cheerful banter that friends indulge in. I’d answer her silly-ass flights of fancy with matter of fact replies. I’d get gradually sharper and more curt—hoping that she’d take a hint.
Then I’d lose my temper momentarily and scold her. Then she had me. I’d do everything that I could to make up for that lapse. I’d try to be as mindlessly amiable as she started every morning, but it was too late.
When my father came in from the fields she’d tell him that I’d been surly. He’d just look at me and shake his head as if having a surly son was the worst cross that a Christian father might have ever been asked to bear.
I’d explain to him how she baited me without fail every day until I broke—and that I more than half suspected that she did it deliberately. He’d just continue to look disgusted and shake his head occasionally.
Looking back, I realize that I could have put an end to her never-ending psychological warfare simply by being her friend. Her unendurable prodding would then merely be bantering between friends.
I wouldn’t have been willing to do that though. Why should I have to endure his disappointed look every night because I had integrity?
And why would he ever think that I’d ever want a chubby little mousy five-foot blonde with firm opinions—like he married?
Or maybe he was baiting me to say something that would justify him slapping me.
But anyway, I grew up to prefer that women be tall and very dark. Later I wondered if that was an unconscious way of insuring that I didn’t get one like the one that married dear old dad.
Most men in Sanctum marry by age twenty or twenty one. At twenty three I was unlikely to ever marry there unless I settled for some dear departed one’s widow—and later to that.
The last couple years I’d been growing in the opinion that a man was better off without a wife.
“So how do you know my name and my story Amber?” I demanded.
“I was there when Pastor threatened to kick you out of Sanctum and you kissed him!” she said.
“Don’t remember me?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“I’m Deacon Beals’ daughter, “ Amber said. “I always wore a navy blue sock hat down to my brow line,” she said.
“I don’t like your family. I tried to negotiate with your grandfather for your Aunt Bedelia’s hand and he was rude to me and threw me out. She’s a spinster now and I’m an Exile..
“So I guess that I owe the old bastard. That begs the question. What are you doing here?” I said.
“You said that if Pastor found you a woman that you’d marry her—even if she was fat or ugly,” she said.
“Your Pastor was accusing me of homosexuality because I wasn’t married. The old reprobate was a big contributing factor to me not being able to find a wife. I called his bluff. I want a wife as much as I want saddle sores, but I’d have followed through. I’m glad that he didn’t rise to the bait though,” I said.
"Aunt Bedelia said that they were angling to get your farm cheap. You’d have no use for it serving a lifetime in the Peacetime Army. She said that they’ve probably been plotting for years,” Amber replied.
“Well I set a time delay to burn the house and the barn to the ground. I killed my hogs and threw the carcasses down the well. They’re welcome to the ground. Much good that it will do anyone not willing to work hard at it for many years to build it back to what it was when I lived there.
“Amber, I keep coming back to this question, because you keep refusing to answer.
“Why are you here?” I demanded.
“You said that you’d marry an ugly woman if she’d have you. I’m ugly. I’ll be fifteen in less than two months and eligible for marriage. I’d have stood up right then in the church if I’d been eligible. Now you say that you don’t want a wife,” And she started crying.
I let her cry it out. Any other course was a fool’s mission.
“Damned Nation Amber! I suppose that you’ve burned all your bridges back in Sanctum? Yes? You aren’t ugly. I have more than enough silver to buy you a fine dowry and I will stay around until I’m satisfied that you have a good match. Please quit crying,” I said.
She took off her slouch hat again and after a moment her hair came off as well. Her head was completely bald.
“I have no hair,” she said. “No eyebrows, no eye lashes, no body hair, no nose hair, no hair anywhere. Even under magnification, I don’t even have microscopic hair. I’m mutant-get.
“It’s worse,” she said and fiddled with her eyes momentarily.
Without her contacts her eyes were featureless red orbs. You could spot an equilateral triangle of pupils in each eye when the sun caught the eye just right.
“That is different enough,” I allowed.
She smiled for the first time and I saw that she’d been hiding a nice set of fangs—top and bottom.
“I’m surprised that your knob-gobbling father didn’t have your fangs extracted,” I observed.
“After he pulled them the third time and they grew back, he gave up,” Amber said.
“Speaking of mutant-get,” I said and I removed my cowboy hat to show her the purple strip running diagonally across my scalp.
“You haven’t always had that?” she asked.
“No. I was shot—a graze across the top of my head.”
“What are we gonna do?” Amber said.
“I don’t know. Travel farther South. I guess that I’ll have to go much farther South than I originally meant to. The civilized countries don’t take kindly to folks like us settling amongst them." …..RVM45
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Post by 2medicinewoman on Oct 9, 2014 15:11:03 GMT -6
wow! This is getting heated. Come on RVM I have faith in that bottomless mind of your's. Sometimes I feel like I am from another world. It has always been trying for me to conform. Let people in. Trust. Probably just my "red" roots.
So..... need some help? LOL Thanks for the story.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 9, 2014 23:41:05 GMT -6
" Red"? Do you mean Indian by any chance? Why were the Indians called " Red Men"? As one fellow pointed out, Columbus' sun-baked sailors were probably several shades darker than the average Indian. Word was that several of the Cherokee sub-tribes had distinctly pale skin. I'm supposed to have generous amounts of Indian blood. I read " Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" when I was in High School and the author claimed that almost every white man that he ever met falsely claimed Indian blood. Well I have a Celtic nose—short but broad. My father had the classical Indian nose. When I showed an Indian friend a photo of my deceased Grandmother he said that she could be on the reverse side of the Buffalo Nickel. I'm also very fair, blue eyed and I had strawberry blond hair when I was young. About twenty years ago I worked on a carnival one summer. Never much for sunbathing, I spent more time in the blazing hot sun watching my ride than I ever had before. I got burnt and a bit darker than I think I ever did. That isn't the main criteria though. There were several Indians on the carnival. Both Gypsies and Indians seemed drawn to the life. And several of the Indians said they knew I had Indian blood, because there was a distinct Reddish Bronze note to my skin. You have to have a certain eye to see things like that—like only a small minority of people perceive Indigo as a Distinct Hue. (Most see it as no more than a shade of Purple.) See how your veins are blue? They say that's because the blood in the veins is deoxygenated. When I worked in the slaughter houses and they'd stick an animal—the outpouring rush of blood is red— Hell yes, Its red. But if I looked, I could see a distinctly blue undertone in the red flood. I often made a point to watch the sticking—not because I had an unhealthy fascination with death as some of the butchers seemed to think. That was such a lovely shade of blue and I don't know anywhere else that you can see it. My mother used to get pissed of when I mentioned "That Green Cat" that hung around to play with our dogs. But he did have a tint of green in his grey/brown fur and if she couldn't see it I'm sorry. Conformity?They didn't throw the term around much when I was a boy—but people tell me that I'm probably a high functioning Aspergers. When younger, I was happiest when my flamboyant non-conformity was pissing folks off. There is something that used to bother me a great deal though... People—by that I meant mostly my peers, in my formative years—but others too—have an unlovely tendency to leap to the conclusion that all non-conformist males must be Gay. Frankly I don't know what ghetto cubbyhole non-conformist girls are filed under. Back in the Olde Tyme they Burnt them at the stake. When I went to get my disability, the Psychiatrist said that when I was " Down" I couldn't do production type work and make rate—too slow. When I was " Up" I could make rate, but my happy banter annoyed everyone around me to the point that they couldn't work. At my next to last job I bid on " Set-Up" and after eight weeks of training, was disqualified {Most places " Set-Up" is low-level Maintenance—but more pleasant and better paid than Production.} I went to Vo-Tech school and started a course in Industrial Maintenance so I could do full-fledged Maintenance for the big bucks. ( I was in my mid 40s) Only after he died did my sister tell me that my father said that he was very proud of me to go back to school so late in life. I also got a job in " Jig Repair" at the Plant—another low-level Maintenance gig—but one that got me some experience with Lathe, Mill and practical fabrication. I figured that the Knob-Gobblers would disqualify me again—so I reported to my first day at the new job with those big one and a quarter inch wide fancy shoe strings on my spit-shined, steel toed jet black Wolverine Workboots: One Flourescent Lime Green and the other Fluorescent Violet. My way of saying: Disqualify me or fire me if you will—but I won't kiss your Ass! O yeah. I got my degree just as I got too decrepit to work. I tried to be an Artist for a few years—but got discouraged. I've wanted to build some of my firearms designs for a very long time—now that I've finally come to see how a man can make a revolver with little more than a small drill press, a jewelers' torch, a barrel and some files… I don't have drill, files, torch or barrel and I stay too broke to buy them. So I write. I had high hopes for " Parallel" but none of the Literary Agents would take me on as a client. Since I threw in the towel and went with " Amazon Kindle" well over a year ago, I've made less than $100. Guess I don't have what it takes to be a Successful Writer either… But I keep punching keys. My online friends like my work—all 19 of them… And what else would I fill my Idle Hours with?I wish that the compulsion to Draw and Paint would grab me once more—but when I think of Drawing o Painting I just feel very tired… Yeah—this is verbose. I had some late-night Caffeine and ……..RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 10, 2014 13:18:00 GMT -6
Indulgence
Chapter Three
The stage stopped overnight in a town with the unlikely name of “Stiletto”. Ball climbed out to stretch his legs, to find something to eat and to find himself proper lodging for the night. The stage driver told him that he could leave the larger bag in the luggage rack on the stage’s back, but Ball wasn’t a trusting soul. His fellow passengers and the stage line might all be as honest as a Beagle Dog. Nonetheless, if he missed the stage for whatever reason, however unlikely that might be, he’d be at some pains to reclaim his property. Such problems were better avoided.
Ball partook modestly of concentrated and low residue food. It wouldn’t be cool to have to ask the stage to stop so he could woo-woo-woo beside the road and wipe his private parts in poison ivy in haste to avoid being left behind by impatient teamsters. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he made a point to consume more than ample quantities of liquids. The fluids would be eliminated by morning. It was bad enough to have to ride in the motion-sickness inducing stage coach all day without being dehydrated as well. Dehydration made Ball’s head feel like it was about to explode.
Ball set his bags beside the bed in the room that he’d rented for the night. He wasn’t a trusting soul and he was on a mission.
He checked the room carefully and couldn’t find any indication of secret doors or anything else to arouse his vulpine suspicions. He extracted a small wooden wedge from a pocket and wedged the door shut. The landlord might have a key, but he couldn’t get inside now without alerting Ball to the attempt.
Still not satisfied, Ball leaned a straight back chair against the door to further insure his physical security.
Ball carried a modest Smith and Wesson style .45 ACP revolver with a five inch barrel in a conservative right hand drop holster belt rig. When he unbelted it it became evident that there was a rather long curved Tanto style blade carried behind his back and angled for a left hand ice pick draw. It took some doing to come up with a rig that would allow him to lean against a chair’s back comfortably with the big knife in place. He could’t draw it while leaning back on it of course, but he had hopes that he wouldn’t be reclining like a chucklehead when he was attacked.
All that wasn’t too outré in that time and place.
When Ball reached inside his jacket and extracted a 1911A1 style .45 Automatic—that was outré. Semi-Automatic pistols were scarce and the relatively high cost of ammunition meant that few tried to master the big pistols. When almost everyone carried revolvers, the old myths about Semi-Autos being less reliable than a revolver were back in vogue.
Ball placed his revolver on the night table. He carefully lowered the hammer on the 1911A1 and placed it under the pillow. He trusted “Cocked and Locked” for almost everything—but not when a frantic draw while half asleep might cause him to inadvertently contact the trigger, and if the safety had just happened to work its way off during the night...
Ball didn’t believe that Christians had to dicker with Peter at the pearly gates to get into Heaven—that was just an unscriptural meme that had grown up—but hypothetically, he’d hate for Peter to have to tell him that he’d just blown his own brains out trying to fast draw a cocked and unlocked auto from under a pillow.
Ball was a “Belt and Suspenders” type of fellow. He divested himself of several small revolvers, semi-autos, derringers and various knives in the process of preparing to sleep.
He had a few more small weapons in his bag and he switched them around fairly frequently. In all seriousness, he doubted that he’d ever use a one of the small weapons in anger. He just liked to collect small weapons and it was a game that he played to see how many he could carry and how ingeniously that he could carry them.
And secreting all the little weapons on his person first thing every morning helped to remind him that it was a cold and feral world and that he needed to stay sharp.
He kneeled beside his bed and said a brief prayer before turning in for the night.
********************** ********************** ***********************
Ball saw that he was the only one of yesterday’s passengers still riding the stage. There were four new passengers instead. There was a nun. She wore the wine colored habit of her order. She had a lever action rifle in her hand. She had a Katana, two Wakazashis and a big Tanto on her belt but no pistol.
Or at least no pistol showing. Some of the orders of nuns believed fervently that inside pistol distances a sword was just as effective.
Ball could see their point out to seven, eight, maybe even ten yards—on dry even footing. He’d hate to have to stop a well-trained nun with one of his pistols at close quarters. But in his mind the nuns had it backwards. One didn’t carry a pistol to protect life so much as carrying pistols made life worth protecting in the first place.
There was a short balding man who wore a business suit and looked like an accountant or banker—but he carried a short barreled single action with bird's head grips in a bellybutton cross draw holster—as well as a thick gold chain that was presumably connected to a big gold pocket watch. The fellow had three gold rings with various stones on his soft hands.
The hands were without callouses but they looked both strong and steady. Ball had the man tentatively identified as a watchmaker—maybe even a pistolsmith. He was unlikely to do rifle smithing. He’d have ground-in oil and grease on his hands in that case—and probably a blackened fingernail or two as well.
Ball noted the man’s eyes traveled over him and the man’s gaze hesitated long enough for Ball to know that he’d made the .45 automatic in the shoulder holster and the .25 ACP that Ball had hidden on his right wrist. The mild mannered man nodded at Ball pleasantly.
Interesting.
The other two men seemed to be soldiers pure and simple though they were out of uniform and presumably between assignments.
Soldiers had the depressing tendency to regard weapons as no more than mere utilitarian tools and thus soldiers held little or no interest for Ball unless someone had pointed them at him. At least the sisters clove to their blades.
The soldiers tossed a coin to determine which one would ride inside and which one would join the driver and the “shotgun rider” atop the stage.
They hadn’t gone a quarter mile when the nun pulled out a cigarette and flicked her lighter. Ball noted a tattoo as her sleeve fell back, but she had noticeably less tattoos than the typical nun and the tattoos that Ball could see didn’t seem to be the blood and guts, skull and snake, swords and knife tattoos that most nuns favored.
The nun would flick one cigarette butt out the window and immediately light another one. He wondered why she didn’t light one from the last one before flicking it out the window and save butane.
When the nun opened her second pack, Ball threw in his metaphorical towel. He fished out a couple of morphine tablets and a dramamine. He washed it down with a couple of swallows of scotch from a pint bottle in his valise. He offered the bottle around. The soldier and the nun both took modest slugs but the watchmaker waved Ball’s proffered bottle aside.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Ball thought.
He always wondered “A pound of what?” but he’d never met anyone who could explain the inscrutable proverb. The intended meaning was clear enough though.
Ball had a few cylinders of cannabis sativa. It was one of the strongest anti-nausea drugs that he possessed—but Ball distrusted it very much. The obnoxious weed had a reputation for promoting pacifism. Nonetheless Ball hated to vomit more than anything else that he’d ever experienced. The ride and the smoky air had him feeling closer to that unpleasantness than he’d felt in some time.
He offered them around and the soldier and the watchmaker shared one while Ball sat and nursed his and carefully monitored his dosage. When he was half done with the joint, he felt a big letup in his desire to vomit.
“Anyone? I’m going to pitch this,” Ball said.
“Why don’t you put it out and save it?” the nun asked.
“I only use it when I feel nauseous and I have enough to last me for several years—unless I start feeling sick a lot more often than usual. I don’t want to mess with it,” Ball said.
“Well, I hate to see it go to waste,” the nun said.
She sat there looking virtuous with a cigarette in one hand and a half-smoked joint in the other.
The dramamine and the morphine kicked in at about the same time and Ball felt his awareness pleasantly disengage from his body. He wasn’t passed out or catatonic. He just felt that the “little man” was floating pleasantly at large in the stage compartment instead of crouching right in the forefront of Ball’s frontal lobe while peering intently out of Ball’s eyeballs.
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing and Ball was tempted to get out some mescaline tablets but he forebore.
He started feeling a wee mite paranoid. The trio seemed an unlikely group. Perhaps they were some sort of hit team sent to take him out. Well, he’d outsmarted them. Ball all on his own was formidable. Ball with chemical assistance was invincible.
Skew these people and their byzantine plotting anyway.
Ball dug back into his pharmacopia and shook out a couple tablets.
“Anyone want a mescaline or a psilocybin tablet?” Ball said magnanimously.
“I don’t think you ought…” the nun began.
Ball tossed the pills into his mouth and quickly washed them down with a big swig of scotch before anyone could interfere. He chuckled. He’d outwitted these clowns big time he thought.
The nun gave a rueful smile.
“You know what they say:
“When you can’t join them, let them beat you,” she said.
She carefully selected two mescaline pills and single psilocybin tablet and extended her hand mutely prompting Ball to offer her a drink of his whiskey.
“What in the seven burning Hells does that mean?” Ball demanded.
The nun laughed and shrugged.
“My name is Sister Mary-Elizabeth Musashi,” She said. “Of course that’s just my convent name.”
"So what was your name before?” Ball asked.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” she giggled.
“Why wouldn’t I?”Ball asked quite reasonably.
“Daddy named me ‘Boyd’,” Sister Mary-Elizabeth giggled.
“My name is ‘Ball’. ‘Ball Greene’,” Ball said while they shook hands very formally.
“Tell me pistolero, do you often take every psychoactive drug in your pharmacopeia when you’re alone with strangers?” the watchmaker said.
“Actually, there are several psychoactive in my valise that I haven’t taken…..yet,” Ball said.
“Sh..!!” the watchmaker started to curse and caught himself.
“May I?” he asked Ball.
He rustled around in Ball’s valise. He handed the soldier several pills.
“Take them,” he ordered the soldier.
The soldier popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with some of Ball’s whiskey without question.
“Take these,” he told Ball and Sister Mary-Elizabeth.
“What?” Ball demanded.
“You’ve been drugged. We’ve all been drugged. The nun may smoke, but nuns don't chain smoke. You don’t spontaneously start taking every drug in your pharmacopeia. Eldritch and I don’t smoke cannabis sativa,” the watchmaker said.
“Drugged to do what?” Ball demanded, instantly suspicious.
“If it’s the drug that I’m thinking of, it should make us all get irritable as all Hell and start killing each other. But with enough other chemicals clouding the issue, we may be able to override it.”
The watchmaker tapped on the roof of the coach with the hilt of a double edged dagger. Ball noted with his heightened perception that the pommel of the dagger was shaped in the image of a snarling pear’s head.
“Stop the coach!” the watchmaker demanded.
“Skew!” the driver screamed and started firing rounds through the roof of the carriage.
There were two blasts from a short barreled shotgun and then no more new shots through the roof of the coach.
“These fellows went crazy your highness,” the soldier up top hollered.
“What is going on?” he continued.
“We’ve all been dosed with bevalar,” the watchmaker screamed. “Why aren’t you affected?”
“I’m allergic to it and that keeps it from working as intended. I am feeling an increasing sense of unreality,” the soldier replied.
“Unreality? I’ll show you some unreality you moron! You aren’t supposed to address me as ‘Your Majesty’. Are you stupid? I’ll kill you,” the watchmaker screamed in rage and started to draw his bird’s head revolver.
Ball was laughing hysterically, but he grabbed the watchmaker’s hand and prevented him from drawing the weapon.
“Remember what you said King Watchmaker. It’s the drug making you homicidal,” Ball chuckled.
“Sister Boyd-Allen, can you help me restrain this dude?” Ball said.
“My name is Sister Mary-Elizabeth not Boyd-Allen you cretin!” the nun raged.
“Who gives a rat’s derrière what your name is you free-martin sow. I told you to help me restrain the watchmaker king. Don’t make me have to straighten you out!” Ball raged.
“Y’all are done messin' with my high!” the soldier said.
“I’ll kill the next one to speak,” he continued.
Ball reached over and slapped the soldier hard.
“You’re next if you don’t help me retrain the crown prince of carbuncles here,” Ball told the nun.
She started laughing at that. Then the soldier started Laughing. Then the watchmaker was laughing. Soon everyone was laughing too hysterically to quibble anymore.
Then the door opened.
“Your Highness, there is a building there. We need to get undercover. Whoever gave us the bevalar won’t trust it to finish the job. They’ll be along to do that just any moment now,” the soldier reasoned frantically.
Just then a score of hard riding brigands came into view on the trail.
“Get your sovereign into the building. I’ll handle this,” Ball said.
“Drug me will you, you knob-gobblers?” he screamed at the galloping mule riders.
Ball shouldered his .30-30 and fired seven rounds at the host.
He didn’t miss, but a couple of his clients failed to go down. Sister Mary-Elizabeth fired her own seven rounds at the massed riders. Three of her clients failed to attain perfect satisfaction as well and they had both shot the same man with a couple of shots.
It amounted to nine men falling from their mules. At least two or three fell into the path of the onrushing horde and caused their mounts to stumble and jostle each other.
Sister Mary-Elizabeth drew her rather long katana. She ducked under a rider’s cudgel and then amputated the brigand’s mule’s leg at the knee. Then she got in a slash at a rider’s leg as he road by—half severing the leg and opening the man’s mule’s flank up enough that its guts bulged out and threatened to fall to the ground.
Meanwhile Ball drew his 1911A1. He refused to drop his .30-30 so he was forced to shoot the pistol one-handed. At that range it wasn’t much of a handicap.
He fired four very fast double taps as the mule riders charged and every one of them dropped. He dropped the magazine and fumbled a reload while clutching the lever action in one hand.
The riders were well past him and only a certain amount of good fortune had spared him from being shot or trampled.
He shot twice more hitting two of the men in the low back as they raced away.
The men weren’t made of iron. They kept riding hoping to get out of the fiercely accurate pair’s ready distance.
They also knew that they had reinforcements coming.
Ball and Sister Mary-Elizabeth grabbed their bags and ran to the cinder block building that appeared deserted.
“Can you handle a rifle Watchmaker King?” Ball demanded.
“I am quite proficient with all sorts of weapons including the rifle,” the king said.
Ball rummaged around in his suit case and came out with a second .30-30 taken down. In an instant he had it assembled. He handed it to the watchmaker king along with bandoleer of cartridges. Then he extracted a short barreled 20 gauge and assembled it.
“Why do you have so many guns?” one of the soldiers asked.
“I’m a gun salesman,” Ball answered.
That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.
"I have my rifle and I took the shotgun rider’s shotgun and gun belt, but he only had eight rounds of 12 Gauge. You wouldn’t have any 12 gauge?” the soldier who’d been on the roof asked.
Ball tossed him a box of 12 gauge cartridges without comment.
He fished out a sawed off 12 Gauge with a pistol grip and thirteen inch barrels. It had a gunbelt and a dozen 12 gauge cartridges in six sets of double loops.
“Sister Mary-Elizabeth, I know that y’all nuns don’t cotton much to handguns, but if you’d humor me…” Ball said while holding the roadwarrior gear out towards her.
She came closer and gave him a brief kiss of thanks—much to Ball’s astonishment. The adrenaline from the combat had washed most of the high from their brains—but by no means all of it.
Mary-Elizabeth rustled in her own baggage and came out with a long barrel revolver—it looked like a Colt type—and a gunfighter rig. Then she proceeded to put a second pistol—this one a short barreled double action .38 Special onto the belt with the big gun.
She shrugged at Ball as she tried different ways to hang the second gunbelt bearing the roadwarrior shotgun to work with the Colt gunbelt.
******************** ************************ **************************
“There must be forty men laying siege to that cinderblock building,” Amber said.
“Sounds about right,” I said.
“We have to help those poor people,” she said.
“I spotted a nun, a couple of soldiers and a pistolero. They aren’t going to take the place any time soon. We need to wait until they attack. With all the gunfire they won’t notice someone whittling down the odds a bit from a distance,” I said.
“We’ll have to be careful and try to only shoot the rearmost. We might be able to get a dozen or more before they wise up.”
“What happens then?” Amber asked.
“Well then they’ll either attempt to charge us and over run our position or they will run away. We need to be ready for either case.
“If they make a flat out charge at us, we can probably get another dozen. If the folks in the building are doing their job, it will be a pretty equal contest by then. …..RVM45
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Post by 2medicinewoman on Oct 10, 2014 15:31:29 GMT -6
I love the chapter. Old west, royalty, soldiers, nuns and an arsenal and drug store in a suitcase. Hard to beat that line up.
In my case, red roots do mean indigenous. First people. I am a Lakota of the northern tribes. The concept of subtle is an on-going learning process for me. I was born a straight talker/thinker and never thought to change it. It seems my forth right manner scares people or makes them angry. *shrugs* I can't conform. It is not me to become what others want me to be. ..I saw you were online last night. I think it was here. Maybe. I am not much for sleep unless injury or ill health is involved.
If you will, count me as one of your 19 friends. I am now a RVM groupie and trying to make sure I read everything you have out there so far. Said it before and will say it again--Love Your Mind.
2medicine woman
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Post by crf78112 on Oct 11, 2014 3:57:08 GMT -6
Enjoying this tale tremendously. Thank you.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 13, 2014 16:06:03 GMT -6
Indulgence
Chapter Four
I watched as the gunmen assaulted the cinder block building. The back and one side of the building had a thick growth of thrown bushes right up to the wall itself. There wasn’t any question of a gunman getting through that with any degree of grace and alacrity. He’d get hung up like a bug in a spider’s web several times—at the very least—and he would be an easy and inviting target for the defenders.
I had my .30-30 and it was good enough for shooting at this range. Amber’s .357 Lever Action had a more challenging trajectory and would have less striking power when it got there—but she was full of surprises.
I had wondered how she’d cranked eleven rounds out of her mule pistol. Mine only held eight rounds. Mine was in .50 caliber though. Her’s was in .357 Maximum—a lengthened .357 Magnum. It held eleven rounds to my eight and it was still a bit thinner and trimmer. It was also lighter in the hands, even though its barrel was a couple inches longer. I’d never heard of a pistol like that in .357 Maximum. But then again, the big gun in Grogan’s General Store—that had languished there almost two decades without a taker—and one that I’d spotted very briefly on a traveller—were the only two that I’d ever seen or heard of in our small village.
The oversized revolver wouldn’t have been a great choice for long distance shooting, even from prone and even with the notable boost in power that it had over regular .357 Magnum cartridges…
But Amber had a nice scoped takedown bolt action in .357 Maximum that I’d been completely unaware of in one of her saddlebags. It even had a nice eight inch long suppressor the thickness of a small girl’s wrist.
The suppressor wouldn’t mute the supersonic crack of the bullets, but if it was one of the wet kind, it would pretty much eat the muzzle blast. Even a dry suppressor would make locating our position from a hundred and thirty yards very problematic.
I intended for us to hold our fire unless there was beaucoup shooting going on and then it wouldn’t be at all obvious that the men were being fired upon from another quarter.
They started shooting at the building, hosing it with rifle fire right at the outset to intimidate those within.
I took out three of the rearmost and then reloaded my .30-30. I wasn’t used to shooting the rifle from seated supported and though my suppressor was only about half the volume of Amber’s, it changed the point of impact to a degree.
I halted to reload. When and if we were charged, I wanted to start with a relatively topped-off rifle. I had no idea what Amber was doing. At the moment it wasn’t fruitful to fret about her activity. If she was dropping a foeman per second or firing her rounds at the sky was all one to me at that precise instant in time.
Two more rear echelon folk dropped to my rifle and then the tempo of the firing picked up considerably. Two of the brigands had molotov cocktails with burning fuse and the others were frantically firing at every window, doorway and possible firing loophole trying to keep the defender’s heads down and keep them from realizing their peril or being able to address it effectively if they had.
The building was concrete blocks and the roof was corrugated metal. I questioned how effective an attempt to burn the defenders out might be. Nonetheless, fire is nothing to clown around with. If even one of the defenders was burned too badly to continue fighting that would be a twenty percent decrease in their effective firepower and a potent blow against the defender’s morale.
I dropped the first arsonist and his bottle of coal-oil burned harmlessly on the bluegrass.
“Coal-Oil”—it is spelled “Coal” but pronounced “Coil”—unless you want to sound like a cityite. There’s too many youngsters nowadays that aren’t the least ashamed to adopt cityite dialect and mannerisms.
“Coil-Oil” that’s a very short and pleasant rhyme and it bespokes the hillbilly or the outlander.
The second fellow—I can’t take full credit for him, I was trying to lead him and failed slightly…
His bottle exploded when the 170 grain hollow point hit it and sprayed him liberally with burning lamp oil.
Yippie—Ky—Ay friends! He started whirling and doing a stomping knee-lifting dervish that made him look like some middle-aged fat housewife who’d just been touched by happiness in church to the degree that she could no longer sit still.
I did think that I heard several of the names of the Lord in his exuberant exclamations even at that range.
I left him to dance and started picking off his compañeros as they watched his dance of immolation.
With time out for a reload, I’d only dropped four more of the group when someone shot the dancer and then a general ceasefire started.
Meantime, Amber had decided that since I’d switched my emphasis to frontline troops that she should too. Her little .357 Maximum Bolt Action held four plus one now its magazine was empty and she had a number of stripper clips on hand.
While I fired at the molotov cocktail guys and then emptied the rest of my magazine, she’d fired thirteen rounds through her little rifle. Then before I could reload, she’d picked off five—and the last three shots came after the general cease-fire.
The commander of the host quickly realized what was happening. I realized what Amber was up to just as the troop prepared to charge. She calmly dropped two more and set the bolt action to one side and picked up her Lever Action .357 Magnum.
I paused momentarily as I watched the remnants charge. I let them get within sixty yards or so when I started firing my .30-30. Seven shots, seven men down—not bad shooting for what might very well be my last act on this earth.
I set the .30-30 aside, stood and grabbed my mule pistol. I was glad that I’d get to use the big pistol in earnest at least once.
The big .50 caliber was quite capable of shooting through three men—or three mules longways—with one shot. So while I didn’t score anywhere near 100% shots with the big pistol, I think that I dropped more than eight men and mules combined as I fired at the close packed ranks.
As the big revolver clicked three times on empty cartridges, I let it fall to be caught by its sling and reached for my .44 Magnum.
Just then an errant round took off my trigger finger and the finger next to it on my right hand.
There was no drawing the .44 Magnum from the decidedly right handed holster with my right hand wrecked.
I reached for the .32 ACP revolver in the shoulder holster with a left-handed twisting cavalry draw. I had time to shoot one mule rider twice center chest when one of the troopers fired both barrels of a twelve gauge double barreled coach gun into my sternum at no more than eight yards.
****************************** **************************** *****************************
“I thank you for your timely aid,” the balding man said to Amber. “But how did you know that we were the ‘good guys’?”
“As Gonne said, when do an honest troop of mule riders attack a passenger stage?” Amber said.
“Well, in general he’d be correct. Would it change your mind to know that I am the Good King Gerald the third?”
“You’re Jerry the Tyrant from Northland?” Amber said in wonderment.
“Yes, that is one of my sobriquet’s,” the king said. “These are two of my sworn bodyguards and my companions of the road:
“Ball Greene and Sister Mary-Elizabeth Musashi. They didn’t know who they were roped into aiding until they were already committed either,” the king said sadly.
“When these deviants contrived to drug us all with bevalar in hopes we’d murder each other on the road, they became my enemies,” Sister Mary Elizabeth spat.
“Those two coachmen were blameless as well,” Ball added. “Their deaths are on these brigand's heads.
“Who are these men anyway? And why did they suddenly break and run like cowards?” Amber asked.
“They’re Rangers from Silverstan and fear is not in them. When they saw that their forces were reduced to the point that they were all in danger of being wiped out, their first priority was for some of them to escape to carry intelligence about us. A few will be shadowing us and a few will be looking for a working telegraph office to request more aid,” King Jerry said.
“We cannot outrun them and it grows dark. We should set up camp and get an early start in the morning. We can also bury or burn your companion as you desire come daybreak,” the nun said.
************************ ********************** ***********************
Having a couple fingers shot off ruins your whole day. When you can’t regenerate it wrecks your whole life.
A double shot of 00 buckshot to the chest is problematic too.
I awake to the sensation of Red Boy insistently licking my face. Jared lay beside me to keep me warm.
Something caught in my throat and I coughed and gagged. I went to reach down my throat with the first two fingers of my right hand, having forgotten that I lost them earlier. They were just a couple of inch-long stumps that ended just above the second joint.
I try to be ambidextrous, but it felt awkward as all Hell reaching down my throat left-handed.
I reached far deeper than I ordinarily would stick my fingers down my throat, but the need seemed overwhelming. I thought that it would be poor form to bite off my remaining trigger finger, but I managed to push the bolus a bit further down into my throat and break it loose in the process.
I coughed and choked and gagged violently for several moments—having quickly snatched my fingers out of my mouth.
A ball of very thick and bloody phlegm came up. It almost seemed as if it had formed deliberately to encapsulate the foreign matter that my body worked so hard to expel. There were five beechnut shaped 00 buckshot in the phlegm ball.
Well, okay then…
I had forgotten about taking a shot in the sternum.
The buckshot finally expelled, my heart jump-started itself.
I’d been conscious and capable of movement even though my heart wasn’t beating. That was weird enough.
Happily, this time I awoke from being left for dead, my weapons were all around me. Melissa, Deke, Jared and Red Boy were there too.
I retrieved my weapons and loaded them.
I could see that Amber had joined the stage riders and they’d built a campfire and they had lain down to sleep. Apparently my regeneration and resurrection had taken most of the night.
Everyone was sleeping except the nun who sat smoking a cigarette as she guarded the camp.
“Hello the camp,” I shouted.
The nun had a short-barreled pump shotgun—ideal for close range nighttime shoot-outs in the dark.
“Who goes there?” she demanded querulously.
“I’m the dude that y’all done left up on the hill with my fingers shot off,” I said.
“I don’t believe you,” she shouted.
“Just don’t shoot me,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
I walked into the camp holding my right hand up high to show the mangled digits.
“Gonne Whey’s fingers were blown off right at the first knuckle. Your fingers are barely missing the last joint,” Sister Mary-Elizabeth said.
“You’re right. I’m not Gonne Whey. I just whacked of two fingers to impersonate him—but I screwed up and cut them a couple inches too long ,” I said.
“Dill weed!” I said as I sat beside the fire.
I prodded Amber with my foot.
“Amber, I don’t feel well. Could you fix me something to eat?” i asked her.
“Gonne! I thought that you were dead!” she exclaimed.
“I was. It got better after awhile though,” I told her.
I ate and had a couple hours feverish sleep. I awoke and I had a pain in my chest. I poked and prodded at the purplish boil-looking bag and it burst and out came blood, pus, purplish fluid and three more deformed buckshot balls.
“I have a pain in my back, right at the lowest extremity of my right scapula,” I said.
“You have a sack kinda like the one you just busted in the front,” the soldier named Eldridge said.
“Can you get it open?” I asked him.
He shrugged and opened a pocket knife with about an inch and a half pointy blade.
The skin around the abscess was hypersensitive. It was an agonizing sensation as he ripped it open an pressurized fluid spurted out and after his oversized fingers poked and probed agonizingly around in the puss pocket, he fished out one of the mucous boluses with seven 00 buckshot inside.
The pain subsided rapidly after that. I coughed up a single 00 buck a few days later. I assume that I coughed or otherwise expelled the remaining pellets or maybe I shat them out.
I was feeling relatively well except for my fingers. They felt like they’d been dipped in coal oil, set on fire and then ran into a meat grinder.
They were also as blue as the skin of a blue man.
My complaint prompted the king to grab ahold of my wrist and examine my fingers.
“Your index finger stops just short of the nail bed while your second finger stops just short of the last joint. Didn’t you say that you lost all of both of them? Well obviously you’re regenerating. I guess in your case that the regeneration is painful,” King Jerry said.
Amber examined my scalp. The old hair was still bright blue, but was coming in reddish blond again at the roots.
I had a big blue scar around my sternum and they told me that I had a smaller one on my back where Eldritch had cut the boil open.
The blue marks went away gradually as the wound healed.
My fingers never stopped hurting, even when they fully regrown.
I noticed that they were both weak and relatively stiff—and only a marginal improvement over having no fingers at all.
They strengthened and became more mobile as I exercised and stretched them. A few weeks after they were fully formed the bases started slowly returning to flesh colored once more. By the time they were fully flesh color again, they were more than fully rehabilitated.
I had to be a bit careful shooting with my new trigger finger. It was so strong now that the heaviest and grittiest long double action pull became almost as easy as flicking my finger. Most of the muscles that work that finger are in the forearm and not in the finger itself, which gave me cause to wonder.
I said that I woke from the bushwhacker’s shot face down in a pool of my own blood and vomit.
I wondered at the carelessness of the highwaymen to leave me alive. Most such folk aren’t lax about leaving witnesses behind. They can’t afford to be.
Had I awakened face down in a pool of my own blood and brains?
This was troublesome. It just might still be there, but on the other hand, I couldn’t count on it.
I might have very well used up the last of my regenerative power.
******************* ******************* ***********************
“Folks, do I seem a power-crazed tyrant to you? You all will kinda be associated with me by those uniting me, whether you would have it so or not.
“I have a mision to complete on the great savannas. I can’t reveal the whole of it to you yet.
“Even my most trusted bodyguards Eldritch and Young—who are closer to me than brothers—know no more of my mission than you.
“If we succeed though, there will be great rewards all around.” King Jerry said.
“It doesn’t bother you that Amber and I are mutant-get?” I asked him.
“I’ve met a few mutants like you,” he said. “Though none of them heal anywhere as quickly as you do. It doesn’t concern me—at least not in a negative way.”
“Young and I aren’t mutant-get,” Eldritch said. “But we are sterile, genetically engineered and grown in artificial wombs,” Eldritch said and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“I am mutant-get myself. That’s how I came to be cast out of my tribe and my guild,” Ball said with a glance at the nun.
Admitting that he was mutant-get spoiled any chance that he had of persuading her to leave her order and take a husband.
“I am not a free-martin,” the nun told Ball. “Nor am I mutant-get. Sometimes I wish that I were. I’m a first order mutant…
“And not to throw the accusing finger—but I think some of y’all are too.”
“Well, it is settled then. We will accompany King Jerry to the Savanna—at least,” Amber said.
“Please,” she added looking at Gonne.
“I ain’t gonna kiss your ring or address you with a title,” Gonne stipulated.
And thus the seven were united. …..RVM45
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Post by 2medicinewoman on Oct 13, 2014 21:07:25 GMT -6
Yeah, more story! Quite the motley crew we have here. I am sure it will gel properly under your verbose pen.
Thanks for sharing and thanks for not leaving us.
2mw
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Post by philipinoregon on Oct 20, 2014 0:27:28 GMT -6
RVM45, my conversion factor to Notes was EASED Greatly, when I sprang the $$$ for Pages, it is a Writers Dream Com true, and my writing is Technical, not an easy do, all the time. there are very suttle difference in Pages ala iPad, and Pages ala MacBookWhichever version, but they are still workable.
FYI, do Not try to back peddle, and go from a Pages format, to plain ascci txt... You will not be happy.
IIRC, Pages has a convert to, for PDF, that works fairly well, If my memory banks are correct. I use Notes, more for a scratchpad....
though in iOS 8.~~ notes now auto captures graphics within a Copy & Paste.... a nice addition, but IMO, it is like setting a 24K Gold Crown, upon the Frog, before the Princess has kissed it.
Great writings, regardless... My work, self imposed, is keeping me from doing the leisure route of hanging here and commenting as I would like, and have in the past... but I am studying Next Generation Computational Machines, Their Languages, and how to make them Row, Up Stream with their arms tied behind their backs!!!
OK, a little less than above, but really, I have MIT Grad Level TextBooks, that I am reading to understand what I want to know....
philip.....
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Post by rvm45 on Nov 1, 2014 23:47:30 GMT -6
Got behind on payments and lost Internet access for a Long while.$240+ dollars today and I'm back online. Next thing is the !!!!#$!!!#$%***##!!!!! Heater… So far as a word processor: "Notes" is a temporary expedient. My sister says she thinks that she can restore "Word" via "Time Machine" or failing that, she'll shop for another "Word" package. I get much well meant advice that doesn't take into account that this isn't my computer. My wants and desires come second, some of the proposed solutions fall on deaf ears and her motivation to get the "Word" fixed is variable and subject to long periods of being forgot… And insisting too much just gets me an unpleasant person to share a space with. …..RVM45
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