A Long Lonely Road

by Tj Reeder

  And since nobody was there they just towed them to town, I had to laugh at that. I love the practical attitude of the people city folks would refer to as hicks. City folks think food grows in stores and wouldn’t think of scavenging the roadways . Hell in truth neither had I!! (Note to self, file that one away.)

  One thing we had was silver coins not to mention the gold coins. But where we were going the ammo might be worth our lives so we stuck with the coins.

  While we were inside several people had gathered outside and were looking the mules over but seemed to be just interested in the show so to speak. I asked Sandy to fill our wish list while I went outside to see what was so interesting.

  As soon as I walked out a man spoke up and said he wanted to buy Buck! I told him me and Buck had a long road ahead of us and we liked each others company. This guy looked like he wasn’t used to taking no for an answer and I sure wasn’t gonna lose Buck to anybody.

  About that time Sandy came out and got their attention , she asked me quietly for some of the silver so I handed her the bag we had prepared for this eventuality.

  Turning back to the store and the folks standing there she smiled and said

  We are going home to Texas to our families and we need our mules so like my daddy said, they aren’t for sale.

  Well the crowd started breaking up and drifting off but the one kept looking back at me then Buck. I headed inside to move things along and the old gent said that feller is a bad un and yawl need to keep an eye on him till yer way out of town.

  I asked if he was a local and the old guy said more or less, that he was born here but between jail time and who knew what he was never around too long and it wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings if he left for good.

  I was constantly amazed at the way the rural folks were taking this whole mess, they were just going on with their lives and to hell with the daily worries !

  And how decent most were remaining. Outside of a few rotten apples it was not as bad as I knew it would be in the cities.

  When we had the stuff we needed which included a good pair of boots for Sandy we headed out to load the stuff into the packs.

  I was tying down the load when I heard the lever of Sandy’s 30-30 working, I looked up and saw the pushy guy and two others coming at us.

  Sandy was standing behind the pack horse and was so short they couldn’t really see her …or the rifle. I was turned so they couldn’t see me very well but I knew trouble when I saw it.

  One thing I did real quick was to step away from the mules and over to a car that had died right where it was. This put me away from the mules, and Sandy and it also placed them with their backs to her.

  I wanted any bullets to be flying away from her and the livestock. I really didn’t want any bullets flying any place. Things were bad enough without some dumb bastard pushing his luck.

  Seeing no reason to pretend this was a social call I simply said “ That’s far enough boy’s” The leader of the pack just laughed and said “look I was nice and offered to buy that mule. Now I’m gonna take him” and his hand twitched.

  And I shot him, twice to the chest and one to the head. Just as I’ve trained for years. The stupid bastard thought he was just gonna walk up and push the issue with a bunch of talk like high school boys.

  Welcome to the new reality of life in America! Or in his case death. He thought we would talk and argue and push each other a bit before we go to it. He was wrong, dead wrong.

  I never took my eyes off him from the moment he opened his mouth until he was face down, and I heard the 30-30 blast off.

  I turned to that threat and saw one of the two down and the other with his hands in the air and piss running down his pants front.

  I also saw that fiery redhead slid the 30-30 into the saddle scabbard and pull the AK sling off the saddle horn. all in about 3 seconds.

  The one fool just stood there with his eyes closed and shaking.

  The old man from the store was standing at the door with a double barrel shotgun that had to be a 10 gauge and older then him.

  I looked at him and said “he just had to push it. He nodded and said well it was gonna happen one way or the other so don’t yawl worry about it. But best get to riding coz he had a few more friends here.”

  And ride we did, hard! We cleared town and headed for the high lonesome and crossed a couple of gully’s only a horse could cross, no vehicle was going to.

  After a few miles of switching back and forth we were clear if anybody came after us which I didn’t expect. In fact I kinda figured the locals were cleaning out the rest of the bad apples right about now.

  We covered 10 miles before we really slowed to allow the animals to ease up, they were all in good shape by now so it wasn’t like they were about to drop. We found a creek and stopped to eat something and rest out butts.

  Sandy sat a while and kinda chuckled so I had to ask what?… She asked if I ever saw the old movie “ The Outlaw Josey Wales “ I said well of course about 10 times why?

  She smiled and said remember the line where the man chasing him said

  “ Well he ain’t gonna be hard to track! He leaves a trail of dead men everywhere he goes”.

  I had to admit I remembered the line and she said well we are gonna get to be easy to track if this keeps up!

  I had to look at her and wonder why shooting that man didn’t seem to bother her. And to her credit she read my mind just that fast. She said the one she shot was going for a pistol under his coat and she wasn’t gonna lose me to some no good trash like that.

  And then she teared up and ran to me and curled up in my lap and had a good cry. After a while she stopped and said promise me something? I said “sure honey, I promise to be more careful in the future“.

  She leaned back and looked at me all funny and said “well shit John I know your being careful ! I want you to promise to teach me to draw a gun that fast!”

  She is a joy this redheaded runt with small tits and big brass ones! I promised her and thought about it for a bit and knew she was right.

  We needed to work as a team which she was doing better then some men I’ve known as was proven back there in town.

  But we needed to be better. Much better. And that was gonna take time and I made up my mine right then I’d teach her all I could while we rode and then camp early and work on it.

  After we had made camp I had an idea and got out the Idaho Atlas and started scouring it for that little symbol I had seen back in MT and Lady Luck was with me.

  I found several hot springs located in the area to the east of where we were at the moment and since I had a slight idea of where we were in relation to where we had just been I figured we could locate one.

  I never said anything to Sandy because I didn’t wanna fail and disappoint her. That night she laid out just the one bed roll and I guess that meant she was moving in.

  It’s a good thing I had made my own sleeping set up. It wasn’t simply a sleeping bag it was wider and longer then the usual, because I’m wider and longer then the usual. And I hated not having room.

  And since I had made this bedroll I guess I had lost damn near 100 pounds. Being 6’6” tall I was big to begin with but I had really gotten lazy and larded the weight on but man it was flowing off now. I could feel it in my knees and back. Never again!

  I was suddenly hit with the thought that if this SHTF event didn’t kill me it might have saved my life. I had forgotten all about all the pills and crap I usually took. They were gone and I was still here. Wouldn’t that be just the strangest thing? the world dies and I get a second chance.. Too deep.

  Next morning I told her I wanted to head up in the higher hills a bit. She just smiled and said I was the boss while she carved another notch into that rifle butt plate. I thought yea right, but with a smile.

  The first day in the search for hot water was a loss as was the second but on the third morning I caught a whiff of the sulpher smell associated with these hot springs.

&nbs
p; It took some looking but I found it and it was worth the effort. We rode into the clearing where it was and it was a nice pool of hot but not too hot water.

  Sandy said what the ??? Then jumped down and ran to the pool stuck her hand in and let out a yell. Scared the hell out of me, I thought she cooked her hand.

  Then her cloths were flying and she leaped in with a big splash! Well actually a small splash since she’s a runt.

  I took time to unload the animals and leave them to graze, Sandy was trying to coax Molly to the pool but she remembered her one time before.

  I took off my cloths and after laying our rifles very close to hand I quickly grabbed Molly and tossed her in!

  And handed Sandy her bath kit. She was hanging onto Molly who was dragging her around the pool trying to escape so I jumped in and between us we got her soaped , scrubbed and rinsed then let her go. Poor molly, pissed off but clean!

  We spent the better part of an hour in the pool, washing each others hair and other things and made love in the hot water. I finely had to get out because it was just too much, Hot water, hot woman and old man!

  I got dressed and started gathering wood and decided to build a wind break near the hot pool, sort of a lean-to as a sleeping place with the warm ground it would be nice.

  Sandy saw what I was doing and just went to work, this girl just takes a second to process then engage. No matter what it is, working loving or shooting.

  So far she had saved my bacon twice when I was whipsawed and never blinked. He dad must have been one hell of a man and a great father! She and I are both lucky with that.

  After setting up a comfy camp and gathering plenty of fire wood we took our rifles and did a patrol which we should have done first thing. I was getting too relaxed for our good.

  We did a big perimeter patrol and saw nothing to worry about. We did see some deer. We decided this was the place to hunt and make jerky. Before we headed into more dangerous country where we might not have the time or safety to have a fire going all the time.

  We gathered plenty of dry wood for the meat drying and I was wishing for some good Hickory which grows all over the area in Texas. That would be awesome! But we don’t so it ain’t.

  Later that evening Sandy asked if I had ever seen one of those beehive ovens like they use in rural countries. I said nope but I seen a picture and I think I could build one why?

  So after a nice comfy night with her sleeping next to me we are building her an “ Earth Oven”. So far it’s going pretty good. We found a nice flat stone of good size for the base.

  The only problem was moving it the 2oo yards to the camp site. Finely we simply hooked a rope to it and Buck just dragged it for us after being promised a treat by the softy.

  After placing the stone where she wanted it we gathered small flat rocks for the walls. We didn’t have the usual sand to build the shape to cover with clay so we just used mud and green grass as clay and used it to hold the stones in place.

  Getting the round dome part was killing us until Sandy said screw it lets just find a flat stone to place on top. Nobody says it’s gotta be a round dome. it can be a flat dome.

  Now I was pretty sure a dome is in fact rounded but since I never built one and besides who cares? So we looked for and found a smaller flat rock to lay on top of the rounded walls and used the same mud, grass combo as before we plastered the outside then the inside.

  When it was done we built a small fire in it to bake the mud which I had doubts about but it seemed to hold ok. We then made a bigger fire and let it get so hot the outside was too hot to touch.

  In the meantime Sandy had been busy with the corn meal and other stuff and soon filled the cast iron skillet with batter. After raking the coals out she placed the skillet in the oven and leaned another flat stone against the opening.

  After about a half hour she opened the door and took out the skillet which had some beautiful corn bread in it. we were laughing like kids and opened a can of butter and a jar of Strawberry Jam and just pigged out.

  I sat looking at this simple thing and realized it was used all over the world by people who lived daily in what to us was a SHTF life. But for them it was just their every day life.

  We are a nation of soft wuss’s who have allowed our children to become couch potatoes. Give the kid a video game player and some trashy games and they don’t bother you. Well, not anymore.

  I guess what one man thinks of as a SHTF day another would classify it as a pretty good day compared to the day before. It’s all in ones perceptions I guess.

  As a nation we went from being a subservient group of scattered villages to the mightiest nation in all of history. Now here we are thrilled that we could duplicate the oldest oven in history with rocks and mud. It was both sad and uplifting. I can’t explain it.

  I know this trip was opening my eyes to so much that we allowed to go wrong and what was worse was that so many of us saw it happening and did nothing to stop it.

  But could we? Have stopped it I mean? how? I think it truly would have taken a full blown civil war to root out the bastards we allowed to destroy our country.

  I mean the fat cat self important Senators and House members. And the people who bought and paid for them. What was the choice ? Charge the ramparts and drag them out kicking and screaming?

  Take them to the nearest lamp poles and hang them for being traitors to their Oath of office? For stealing the trust of the people?

  Samuel Clements supposedly said “ While hanging it’s Lawyers and politicians might not help the country as a whole, it would be a great deal of fun and would do no harm to Decent folks”

  I think he was right. Look at the crap Nancy Pelosi pulled, flying back and forth on a huge Air Force plane to Californication every week end. Costing us tax payers hundreds of millions just so her fat ass could be comfortable and not be sharing a seat with the “lower classes”.

  I’ll get that rope.!!!

  No in a lot of ways things are going to get better but so many will have to die before it does. As long as some son of a bitch don’t shoot off a few nukes we still have a chance.

  Sandy and I decided we would stay here for a few days to rest the animals and our butts. Not to mention get some fresh meat which was on the agenda around day break.

  We also spent a lot of time teaching her to draw her pistol working with the holster location until just could draw from damn near any position. Now practice , practice and then practice some more until it becomes second nature.

  We spent another long time soaking and playing and slept like babies. My last thought before sleep came was I hoped Molly wasn’t sleeping to sound.

  And I guess not or nothing came around because we both woke up just before day break, took a quick soak and headed out on foot.

  I had the can on my 308 and Sandy had the 10-22 with the can on it. (and her AK across her back). This gal takes being prepared to heart!

  We headed down stream far enough that the water was cooling enough to drink, not cold but not warm. But didn’t taste all that wonderful

  We found a place with a game trail crossing the stream and settled down in some brush. And within 20 minutes two does came to the water. Both had last springs fawns with them but they were well past nursing.

  I had told Sandy to put her bullet tight behind the ear and to try for 2 shots rapid fire, I sighted in on the biggest doe and whispered on 3 and counted it out 1, 2 ,3 …pop pop POP .

  The 308 does good enough with super sonic rounds and even better with subsonic ammo but was still louder then the 22.

  We had 2 deer down and the rest scattering a bit but then they stopped and looked back so I took one of the yearlings, that was our fresh meat. the others were jerky.

  While I dressed the deer Sandy headed back to camp for one of the Mules to pack the deer back. By the time I was done she was back and we loaded the deer over the cross bow and lashed them on.

  We were back in camp within 2 hours of the first shots, deer hung away f
rom camp in the shade and I was skinning the first one when Sandy started in on one of the others.

  I told her I’d do it but she just smiled and said “ John I was a Daddy’s girl, this ain’t my first rodeo“. So we worked side by side and I refrained from checking her work.

  When I looked over she was further along then I was and I complimented her on her abilities, she struck a pose with her butt sticking out and her