TEOTWAWKI: Beacon's Story (13 page)

Beacon interrupted her. "Let's dispense with the lengthy speeches tonight, OK Maggie? We've all heard your justifications before. If the group will allow I'd like to introduce you all to the young lady and tell you why we need her more than she needs us." That last part wasn't quite true, but Beacon was on a roll and wasn't about to let mere technicalities get in the way of rhetoric.

The crowd broke into a hundred conversations and arguments as Maggie called for order. Finally it was decided to let Beacon speak.

"As many of you know I went hunting last night, but what you don't know is that what I found instead was a treasure. As you can see she's an eligible young lady…who's told me she'll cut the balls off of the first man who touches her" he added quickly as Gail gave him a hard look. Several young men laughed nervously.

"That's right, she can fight; I watched her kill a would-be rapist before dawn with this." Beacon pulled the big Dirty Harry gun out of his waistband to approving Ohs and Ahs.

"Murdering people isn't a qualification," Maggie shouted over the crowd, "We're not cannibals!"

"That's right," Beacon said grabbing control of the meeting again, "but IF she agrees to join us she'll bring with her a complete set of blacksmithing tools."

"She's not big enough or strong enough to be a blacksmith!"

"No, but once we have the tools Gail and Old Bill can show some of the bigger guys how to use them."

"We haven't any metal for them to work with." Maggie was getting desperate.

"The town down by the lake is full of metal for the taking. But that's only one of the reasons she's a treasure."

"What? She can walk on water?" Maggie was red faced now.

"Better, IF she agrees to join us she brings a full set of farrier tools too."

"So what, nobody here knows how to shoe a horse!"

"I do." The words from Gail's lips hung in the silence that followed.

Maggie glared at Beacon realizing she'd been carefully guided to that embarrassing moment. Beacon didn't give her a chance to recover.

"We've got six horses and two mules that need shoes. If Gail elects to join us we can go get the gear as soon as Pat gets through making her a pair of moccasins."

"You can't use Settlement resources for an … outsider!"

"She won't be an outsider once we vote her in, besides, the deerskin is from one I shot and I'm paying Pat for her labor with my own personal property. The moccasins will be my own personal property to do with as I please and it'll please me to give'em to Gail. Oh, and did I mention she's also an experienced trapper with thirty traps? Now, let's have a vote of the council."

Maggie had missed her meal for nothing. The Council of Crones vote was nearly unanimously with Maggie the only dissenting vote on making Gail a member of the Settlement. Beacon turned to Gail, "Speaking for the common folk here I think it's safe to say we'd be happy to have you among us." A cheer went up, mostly among the young men.

"I'd feel better about joining y'all if all the leadership approved of my joining."

Maggie knew that publicly defying the counsel's vote would undermine her leadership position. Also there was the Settlement to think of. They'd need a blacksmith shop and farrier if the settlement was to survive and grow. "All right, I'll make it unanimous."

Gail walked up to Maggie and gave her a hug surprising Beacon almost as much as it surprised Maggie. "I'll be happy to work with you." Gail said disarming a former foe while magnanimously confirming her prediction.

The Settlement consisted of almost eighty people living in twenty-three SUV's, motor homes, cars, trailers, pickups and assorted lean-tos circled around the old deer stand and enclosed by the stockade. Gail probably would have been welcomed into almost any of the vehicles but she found the accommodations acceptable at the trailer the Settlement called "Fort Apache" because of the improvements made to its defendability made by the mountain men.

Beacon chased the lovers out of the watchtower and finished his shift. Then he spent the rest of the night on the floor in the middle of the trailer.

In the morning Gail gave Beacon the little thirty-eight he'd given her as "the spoils of war" after trading it for the forty-four magnum. "How did you know I wouldn't shoot you with it back there on the trail?" she asked.

He grinned and handed back the gun with five bullets from his pocket, "It wasn't loaded." He added another ten rounds in speed loaders for "pocket change" and showed her where he and Old Bill kept the thirty-eight ammo.

Then he allowed as how since the Dirty Harry gun was hers too she should consider letting Old Bill shine it up a bit while he was guarding the gate so she could trade it off for something in a caliber she could control. She agreed.

Gail made friends with most of the women of the fort almost instantly and a consensus gradually built among the young men that the girl in the moccasins, duster and Stetson was a "cowgirl" and therefore just one step away from being a mountain man's squaw which meant it was best to admire her form from afar.

Before they left Beacon went to Maggie with what he hoped was a peace offering. "You'll need to appoint a ridge runner to cover for me while we're gone," he hurried on before she could cut him off, "Buck will accept instructions from Old Bill and he takes orders from you. If Old Bill tells him to come warn the fort if he finds trouble instead of playing Davy Crockett at the Alamo I think he'll do it."

Maggie started to open her mouth but Beacon interrupted her before she could make a sound, "If you order Buck to stay within the tree line of the valley's watershed and not venture below the bone pile I think he'll do that too. If he does those things and has to shoot his shots can be heard from the fort," Beacon exaggerated, "and he should be safe."

Beacon was speaking to her worst fears; Buck was the only family she had left. "It's something for you to think about." He said on his way out.

They took four horses; two the mountain men had ridden in on since they were in the best shape and had pack saddles fitted to them and two more for them to ride. Beacon dug out his old duster but kept his MultiCam boonie hat for the trip.

In the late 1800's Dusters were worn by cowboys whose home was under their Stetsons. The Stetsons kept rain from running down their neck while riding the range and off of their faces when laying down at night. Beacon's MultiCam boonie hat wasn't nearly as wide brimmed as a Stetson, but Beacon had the boonie hat. The combination protected the drovers from wind, rain, snow, sleet and hail while riding the range and on cattle drives. Dusters look a lot like canvas raincoats but were slit up the middle of the back for horseback riding.

Since Gail presumably had a Ruger Mini 14 waiting for her at home Beacon loaned her his scoped Mini 14 in .223 and carried the iron sighted one. Between them they had ten thirty round magazines. Beacon carried his Randall knife and Colt .45 as always but increased the number of spare magazines on his belt to six giving him a seven magazines of seven rounds and one more round in the chamber giving him a grand total of fifty pistol rounds ready to fire. Gail said she was satisfied with just the diminutive S&W AirWeight and the extra rounds Beacon had given her. She declined Old Bill's proffered Sheffield Bowie.

They rode the horses up to Gail's house without incident traveling in the same manner the mountain men journeyed through hostile Indian country in the early 1800's: "Stay off ridges, camp away from the trail, build small fires."

Near the end of the first day Beacon noticed a squirrel midden and placed a straight one inch branchless pole, about head high, between the two trees nearest it. He took two sixteen inch pieces of 24 gauge brass wire from his vest and made a small eye in one end of each of them before running the other ends trough the eyes before tying the ends to his pole at the one third and two thirds marks. Then he bent the wires upwards positioning the little lasso ends about an inch over the topside of the pole. Then they went on to camp in a hollow about a quarter mile up slope.

Beacon dug a Dakota fire hole about a foot wide and deep in the dirt under a large tree. Then he dug a slanting tunnel about as big as his fist in from the windward side until the tunnel reached the bottom of the main pit. Air would enter through the slanting hole, feed the fire at the bottom of the pit, be heated and rise with the smoke up out of the hole to be dispersed among the branches of the tree. As long as he kept the fire small the flames would never show above ground level and what little smoke there was would be invisible as it rose through the tree's branches.

Just before sunset Gail made pine bough sleeping cushions while Beacon rode back to the snares to retrieve the two wires and a pair of squirrels hanging beneath the pole with their necks caught in a wire noose. They had squirrels for dinner and then unrolled their sleeping bags on opposite sides of the fire.

Gail's house was undisturbed. After they'd cleared it she explained she'd gone outside in the rain to close up the pump house without taking a weapon with her. When she returned Larry the Lizard had been waiting for her with one of her own guns. "The bastard had been peeping on me again!"

From the house she retrieved a matched set of black leather shoulder holsters with another AirWeight still in it saying "I'll never go outside unarmed again." They put Beacon's scoped Mini-14 in a gun case they'd brought along and Gail took up her own iron sighted Mini-14 and a messenger bag full of magazines.

She filled two duffel bags with pots and pans, needles and thread, cloth and clothing and "girl stuff" Beacon didn't care to know about. Her dad's old 30-30 lever action rifle and a bunch of ammo would go back with them on the pack horses tucked beneath one of the duffel bags.

They cached what they couldn't carry back and constructed two monuments in front of the burned barn, one for Gail's dad and one for Poky the pony. Then they loaded the horses with Gail's anvil and all the tools and as much metal stock and horseshoes as they dared.

They veered north so as to clear the ridgeline of the Settlement's valley in a dense set of trees so they wouldn't skyline themselves to anyone below and two hours later were almost to the tree line of the meadow above the fort when they heard gun fire up near the head of the valley.

Beacon knew Gail wouldn't leave him to fight alone, but he hoped to get her to the fort anyway. "Gail, take the horses to the fort as quick as you can and tell Old Bill I need "Mac" he'll know what you mean. Then bring it to me as fast as you can."

She started to protest but he shouted over his shoulder as he rode towards the sound of the guns, "Please hurry, I'm depending on you!"

She hurried.

People were running into the fort as she trotted into view with the two pack horses. They held the gate open for her. "Don't seal it up yet," she yelled at them, "I'll be going back out in a minute!"

Old Bill was just coming out of the trailer with a brace of long barreled six guns on his hips and a lever action rifle in his each hand.

"Beacon says he needs Mac!" she shouted to him," then asked some men to take charge of the two pack horses.

Old Bill hobbled back into Fort Apache coming back out with "Mac." It was just an old green messenger bag, but very heavy.

Handing her a heavy OD duck bag he said, "Only the top three magazines are loaded. You'll need to load the rest for him."

Without asking him what "Mac" was she slung the bag over her shoulder next to her rifle and shouting at the young man at the gate to open it she dug her heels into her horse's flank. She was gone before the gates were fully open.

Back at the tree line Beacon had his hands full. It was the Blue Heads again, he was sure of it; they all wore dark blue bandannas around their heads. They had cornered Buck in a tangle of dead trees at the edge of the meadow and were trying to outflank him when Beacon arrived.

Using the Sergeant York method again he shot three of them in the back before they realized it was they who were being outflanked. He got two more as they retreated. But there seemed to be an endless stream of them and they kept coming. This time most of them had guns.

Shouting Buck's name as he charged into the thicket so he wouldn't get shot he discovered Buck was wounded in the leg and unable to even stand.

Moving back and forth behind a fallen log between two trees Beacon set up a withering barrage of fire. Beacon broke up two charges while Buck lay behind the other end of the log pumping rounds into a bush at the edge of the meadow that seemed to be drawing an inordinate number of attackers to it. Once the Blue Heads established a fire base behind that bush Beacon and Buck's position would be untenable.

Then Gail arrived with the horses riding at a gallop. As she slowed to enter the thicket one of the blue headed horde tried to run in and grab her but she put the reins in her mouth and pulling one of her little .38's shot him dead without slowing.