The Last Pilgrims (22 page)

As the two men parted, Jonathan saw Phillip
approaching, and went out to meet him. The two old friends shook
hands before Jonathan pulled Phillip towards him and embraced
him.

“I hope things are well Brother Phillip, and
that your news is not too dire. It’s been a rough week.”

“That it has, Jonathan.”

They walked eastward without any particular
destination in mind, but before long, they found themselves at the
end of the main street where it met the Bethany road as it turned
towards the Pass. The rocks and boulders blocking the pass were
still there and, from the street, Jonathan could see at least a
half dozen of the Ghost militia guards manning their posts up on
the twin mesas.

Phillip stopped walking and looked him in
the eye before looking away again towards the Pass. “Our troubles
are likely to come from the east this time, and I would be
surprised if they weren’t focused more up north… up at your ranch,
rather than at Bethany.”

“I figured that that would be the case.”

“We haven’t seen any movement yet. Whatever
the Aztlanis are doing, it hasn’t involved any kind of lightning
attack westward, which is what we originally expected.”

“Do you have any guess as to the size of
their force?”

“Our scouts have estimated it at around
1,000 men, but there could be more. We’ve sent scouts northward and
southward too to make sure that we weren’t being enveloped. My
guess is that they will attempt an assault en force on the
Vallenses encamped near your ranch, and I’d be surprised if we had
another week to prepare.”

Jonathan looked at Phillip, “We’ve got to
evacuate the people again; only this time we need to know for
certain that we aren’t sending them directly into the path of the
enemy.”

Phillip nodded respectfully, “We anticipated
that you would want to move your people north and westward toward
Vallensia, and already have outriders patrolling that entire area.
Based on our intelligence, we think that we have a good idea of
which way they will come. We’re going to plan an ambush between the
old city of Penateka and the Lake Penateka dam. There is a throttle
point there at the dam that we can use to our advantage. We already
have men guarding that critical point.”

“Will they make it through? I mean, you
can’t have enough men to take them on face to face, right?”

“We never fight that way. Traditional
frontal assaults are not part of our repertoire. This time, we will
use their own guns against them, and we’ll have a few other tricks
up our sleeve. They will make it through the choke point, but
hopefully, we can thin them down enough so that only a few hundred
are still around to make the assault on your ranch. If we can do
that, we feel like we can win.”

“So there will be a defense of the
ranch?”

“Yes, sir, there will.”

Jonathan exhaled deeply, rubbing his beard.
“I will need to leave with the people going towards Vallensia. I
won’t send them off into the unknown alone again.”

“I figured as much.”

“Well… then you’ll need to come up for a
visit, Phillip. There are things I’ll need to show you. A few years
ago, we were having some serious problems with the wild pigs
getting in and destroying our fields and crops. We tried everything
to get rid of them, albeit with little success. So… in order to get
ahead of the problem we installed some… structures… that might
interest you near most of the corners of our property.”

Phillip smiled, “Oh, really?”

“Basically, they are like what you call
‘pill boxes’—reinforced defensive enclosures—from which we could
shoot the invasive herds of pigs without being seen or
attacked.”

Phillip tried to hold it in, but finally
gave up and began laughing uncontrollably, and it took a minute for
him to stop. When he finally pulled himself together, his eyes were
red, and he was still giggling a bit when he put his hand on
Jonathan’s shoulder.

“Brother Jonathan,” he said, before breaking
into more giggling. “We’ve known about your ‘structures’ for some
time, and we’ve already made plans for their use.”

Jonathan didn’t know exactly what to say to
that, so he just looked at Phillip with a sheepish grin. “Good…
then… good.”

At that, Phillip shook his hand and walked
away in the direction of the guards manning the pass. After a few
steps, he swung around and Jonathan could see that he was still
laughing. “Here’s to reinforced defensive enclosures!” he shouted,
before shaking his head again and walking away.

Having the guns, ammo and other supplies
brought up from Harmony had been the easiest part of the
preparations. Even though San Angelo had ceased to exist as a
habitable frontier town, the militia’s Harmony location was still
intact. When the Ghost militia showed up to retrieve their
munitions from one of their central hiding places, they found it
undisturbed. Hauling the materials to Bethany had been a pretty
straightforward task, but distributing everything to units spread
out over hundreds of square miles turned out to be more
challenging.

Once the Vallenses were almost fully
evacuated from the vicinity of the Wall Ranch, Phillip saw to it
that most of the reserve arms and ammo, along with the largest
number of his troops, were in place there. With the exception of
the two units he had sent to guard and protect the Vallenses in
their retreat, almost all of the Ghost militia would be engaged in
the oncoming battle with Aztlan.

After abandoning a plan to send wagons on a
long, dangerous, and circuitous route to distribute weapons to the
militia units that were already in place, it was finally decided
that each unit or position would be responsible for sending a
sufficient number of men back to the Wall Ranch to pick up the
necessary arms and supplies. This meant that the transport troops
needed to move extremely fast, and that the supply troops working
at the ranch needed to be prepared and efficient. So far, the plan
was moving along pretty well. Almost all of the troops stationed at
the Penateka Dam had already received their weapons.

For more than 20 years, he had made sure
that the militia did not rely or become dependent upon guns.
Nonetheless, each man and each unit was trained to use them
expertly knowing that there would be situations, as the one he now
expected, where guns would be beneficial.

He was expecting a two-stage fight, starting
with the ambush at the bottleneck, as the Aztlani army attempted to
move past and around Lake Penateka at the Penateka Dam. In order
for his men to have any chances of success in the battle, at least
2/3 of the enemy forces would need to be destroyed at the dam. The
second stage would only be realized if the Aztlani forces were to
keep moving westward, as they were expected to do, and engaged in
an assault on the Wall ranch. An active and energetic defense of
the Ranch was the next critical part of the plan.

A stiff, hot breeze blew almost constantly
from the southwest, and as he helped his men load wooden boxes full
of ammunition into Jonathan’s
‘reinforced defensive
enclosures’
—the pillboxes originally intended to be used for
sniping pigs—he really began to feel the effects of physical
exertion and mental stress, something he rarely noticed in the
past.

Phillip tried to keep his mind on the more
immediate tasks, since those were the only aspects of the current
situation over which he actually exercised any real influence and
control; but his mind could not help drifting to thoughts of the
well-being of his wife and daughters. The latest word from militia
spies in New Rome was that his family had, indeed, been taken to
the Aztlani capitol, where, they were being held hostage in a
castle near what was called the Old Town.

It was generally accepted that, at present,
no legitimate attempt at hostage rescue could be attempted in New
Rome. Although, in theory, Phillip knew that hostage exchange could
work, the only person of value he had to exchange would be Gareth,
and there was no way his honor would allow him to be disloyal to
the Crown Prince, even if the lives of his wife and daughters were
on the line.

Prince Gareth had, in fact, offered himself
up to Phillip as a pawn to be used in such an exchange, but he had
immediately, and somewhat angrily, rejected the Prince’s proposal.
There was one thing that everyone on both sides needed to know
about him. His wife and his daughters knew, as would everyone else,
that Phillip did not and would not bend to moral or political
pressure.
Strange
, he thought,
in that arena I am really
just like Jonathan
.

Many years ago, Phillip had embraced the
possibility that his loved ones might be used as weapons against
him in the war. In fact, he had broken his own rule in order to get
married in the first place. Although Ghost militiamen were not
forbidden to marry, he strongly advised against it; and now, his
own situations served as a perfect example of why marriage and the
militia did not mix.

He could not convince himself that his
marriage had been a mistake. That he could not do. He loved his
wife and his daughters more than he could ever show. However, the
amount of suffering and distraction a soldier was going to be
subjected to was bound to be in direct proportion to how connected
that soldier was to friends and family outside of the militia. His
was to be a cautionary tale on why militia members ought to be
recruited from among men who have no hope or desire to get
married.

For years, he had discussed the realities
and dangers of the situation with his wife. She and his daughters
understood that it might be necessary that they die or suffer for
the cause they all believed in. He would no longer risk the war
with Aztlan, or the lives of his men, on risky schemes to save his
family. Already almost twenty men had died during the rescue that
was attempted up near the Red River. That loss was unacceptable to
him, and he vowed not to allow it again. The men of the Ghost
militia were his family too, and he felt their losses as acutely if
his wife and daughters were killed.

The wind howled almost incessantly and made
it difficult to work without having to constantly angle one’s head
and squint to keep out the dust. The wind, combined with the bright
sunlight and the oppressive heat, made the work that much more
difficult.

When Jonathan and David rode up, accompanied
by several militia riders, the last preparations to the defensive
measures at the southeast corner of the ranch were being made.

The men dismounted and joined him as he made
his final examination of the area.

“I never intended these structures to be
used in a war,” Jonathan said reflectively, shrugging his head
towards the pillbox.

“Yes you did,” Phillip replied, “you built
these because you were at war with voracious invaders who wanted to
destroy your ability to survive here… You just fail to recognize
that some predatory invaders are of the two-legged variety, but are
of the same character and nature.”

“Well, I would say that God differentiates
between the two as well.”

“Ok, ok, ok!” David interrupted. “We’re not
going to get anywhere with that conversation right now. Are we? I
don’t think so. We came to have a final briefing so that I can get
Father, Ruth, Ana, and a few other stragglers out of here and out
of harm’s way.”

“Well,” Phillip answered, looking at
Jonathan, “why are you still here, Brother? What is it that you
need to know?”

Jonathan looked down and shuffled his boots
a little before finally looking back at him. “I was wondering if
you could give us some idea of… this is hard to say… what you think
your probabilities of success are. I just need to know so I can
make plans to keep our people moving if need be.”

Phillip looked at his old friend and smiled.
“Jonathan, I am never over-confident, and I always leave room for
surprises… but this place you have here is highly defendable. It is
built on high ground, and we control the angles to every approach
from any direction. We are watching the Aztlani army on their way
in, and we are going to deliver a serious blow to them at the
Penateka Dam. From there they will have a half day’s march through
rough and hostile country, under fire almost all of the way. Those
who make it this far will be marching uphill into hellacious fire
and they have no way of knowing what awaits them once they finally
make it. I wouldn’t want to be in any Aztlani force trying to take
this hill.”

Jonathan rubbed his beard and looked around,
absorbing the information. “I see. So we are hopeful enough that we
might be able to return here before long, and we shouldn’t have to
go very far north to wait out the fighting.”

“Actually, we’d prefer it if you’d stay here
with your family Jonathan. We can protect you better here.”

“I cannot,” Jonathan said, shaking his head,
“so many of our people were killed after I let them run off without
me. I could not bear it if it happened again.”

“Then leave Ruth, Jonathan. She’ll be safe
here with Tim and Piggy guarding her. You should leave Ana and
Betsy as well.”

“Betsy and Paul have already left. Wally is
staying because he… well because he refuses to leave this place,
and he says he wants to cook for you. He thinks you are famous.
Winnie, the lady who does the laundry, is here too; she didn’t want
to leave. Ana and Ruth are still here. Are you sure they’ll all be
safe?”

Phillip looked at his old friend, and
clasped his shoulder with his hand. “Jonathan, I assure you that if
things do not go as well as anticipated we will use all of our
resources, skill, and ability to get your family and friends out of
here. I do think that they will be safer here than on the trail out
there somewhere.”