by David Craig
The pine tree's branches weren't cover, they wouldn't stop a bullet, but they were concealment combining with the darkness to conceal Beacon from the man's view. At this range even a barrage of shots from the twenty-two couldn't guarantee to keep the guy from pulling the trigger and Beacon's pistol was on his hip under his coat. Drawing it would have created too much movement and sound to go unnoticed by the man.
Beacon began to sink slowly and silently to one knee hoping he could get low enough so a shot would go over his head.
"You can come out now and we'll do it nice and easy or I'll put a bullet in your leg and then we'll still do it only one of us will be doing it with a bullet in her leg."
"So much for ducking," Beacon thought.
If the guy shot it was likely he'd at least nick Beacon. The guy pushed the gun out in front of him. It was pointed right at Beacon.
There was a tremendous explosion.
The guy screamed dropping his gun and the rope as he turned and fled down the trail holding his side. At the sound of the shot the dog took off straight ahead. Beacon made a diving grab for the rope as the dog ran past.
"Here Bobo!" an anxious female voice called from under the big pine ahead. The dog whined and tried to go to the voice. "Let go of my dog or I'll shoot you!" It was a bluff the other short pine tree was between them. She couldn't see Beacon and at that longer range Beacon was willing to bet on a miss if he stayed low. Still, caution and common sense said it'd be better if she didn't shoot at all.
Beacon believed she'd shoot but wanted to show his good intentions. "Sure and here's a little peace offering for the two of you." Beacon pulled a small sack of pemmican from an inner coat pocket and tied it to the rope before releasing the dog.
The dog went straight to her. "What's this?" the voice sounded suspicious.
"Pemmican, it's Indian food or Mountain Man food depending on how you look at it."
The girl may have been suspicious but Bobo wasn't. He heard her exclaim "Bobo no!" then saw the dog run out onto the trail with a piece of pemmican in its mouth. As the dog gulped it down she said, "If that's poisoned I'll kill you!"
"Not poisoned and there's more where that came from, how's your foot?"
"None of your business!" but the words were spoken around a mouthful of pemmican.
Taking that as a sign of acceptance Beacon said, "I'm going to check Romeo's back trail, hold your fire."
He waited a second and when she didn't object he stepped out onto the trail and policed up the man's pistol as he followed the blood trail a few dozen yards into the trees.
Aside from his curiosity about the pair Beacon wanted to know if they were alone or part of a group. If a group, how large and how well were they armed?
Returning he announced, "Good hit, the way he's bleeding he won't get far before he bleeds out."
The dark space under the pine tree was silent.
"How'd he know your name?"
"Before The Blowup he was a neighbor, and an unwanted suitor. I don't know how long he's been a peeping Tom. After The Blowup he started getting persistent. Then a few days ago, after my dad was killed, he kidnapped Bobo and threatened to kill her if I didn't submit to him."
"Sounds like Lothario was a real class act," Beacon said sarcastically.
"I told him he'd never find me without Bobo and took off running. He had a gun and I didn't, so I ran and hoped he'd use Bobo to track me instead of shooting her," there was a sob in her voice, "I couldn't think of anything else to do."
"Sounds like you've a head on your shoulders that was one smart move, he couldn't shoot you to get what he wanted and needed the dog to track you" Beacon said sitting down beside her tree.
"Then yesterday I found a dead man with this gun and I started cleaning the pistol so I could kill him. I took out the bullets and then started getting the rust out of the barrel with twigs and sticks."
"Sounds like you came up with a good plan, you almost got me."
"Oh I wouldn't have shot you! I was going to let you pass, but then you disappeared and I didn't know what to do."
"No plan survives first contact." Beacon intoned.
"What?"
"It's an old military maxim. It means no matter how carefully you plan and prepare people are going to do something unexpected and unplanned for. In this case Bobo sensed me and almost kept Lothario from walking right into your ambush."
Gail seemed surprised he answered her question but held her ground, "Maxim smacksome my plan worked in spite of your interference!"
"If you want to come out from under that tree we can walk back to the fort and see if they'll accept you into the group."
"Why should they?"
"Good question, got any skills, tools or talents?"
"Uh, no," then suspiciously, "what kind of talents?"
"Well you obviously don't have any horses, cows, pigs, furs or food to trade so it would have to be something they don't already have enough of like weaving if you had a loom or being a doctor or nurse or something like that."
"No, nothing like that, I haven't eaten in three days." She said coming out and handing him the empty pemmican bag as she sat beside him. But he noticed she kept her pistol in the hand away from him and pointed in his direction.
Beacon replaced the empty bag in his coat pocket and pulling another bag from a different pocket he gave her a bag of jerky to chew on while he wrapped a rabbit skin he used as an Ascot on cold nights, fur side in, around her foot and tied it up around her ankle with a strip of rawhide.
"I'm a country girl. I can fish my shoe out of your creek and go home. I'll be safe there alone, I don't need anybody!"
"Want'a trade guns for a minute?"
She hesitated, "Why?"
"I want to see what kind of cannon you have there it just about blew my ears off."
He held out the S&W "Bodyguard AirWeight" in .38 Special that Lothario had dropped butt first.
She took it and handed him a huge revolver. It was a .44 magnum "Dirty Harry" revolver with a six inch barrel covered in rust. It didn't look safe to shoot.
Even in the moonlight she could see the look on his face. "He'd been dead a long time."
Beacon unloaded five live rounds and the empty hull from the cylinder. With a lot of oil, steel wool and elbow grease the gun could probably be salvaged.
He stood up and held out his hand hoping she wouldn't notice he hadn't given her gun back, "Let's go get warm."
She stood up on her own grabbing Bobo's rope as she stepped out onto the trail. He figured she would be all of five feet tall in cowboy boots, but she had on just one sneaker.
"Why should I go with you?"
"To get some hot food and maybe a shoe or two, then we'll see if we can talk Maggie into letting you stay."
"I lost my shoe in that stream below your fort. Why wouldn't she want me to stay?"
"Well for one thing you're with me and Maggie doesn't like me. For another unless you have a talent, skill or resource The Settlement needs she'd have good reason to reject you as just another mouth to feed and we're gunn'a be short on food until spring."
"It's almost spring now and …"
"Still, unless you have something The Settlement needs there's no reason to let you stay. Heck, being with me is the only way you'll get in the gate, but we're going to have to find something you can do to justify feeding you."
"I'm not marrying anybody for food!"
"No, no you're not. I didn't say you would, and besides that's why Maggie and Coven of Crones has to pass on newcomers. Too many women were willing to trade sex for a billet so it's now the old ladies who have the final say on admitting newbie's.
Trying to change the subject Beacon asked, "What's a nice girl like you doing being chased around the mountains by a lecherous young man?"
"Larry the Lizard, that's the guy I shot back there, was just an annoyance before The Blowup. His parents were in the city when it happened. They never returned and he kept showing up after that. I'd h
ave run him off, but I felt sorry for him until I caught him peeking in my bedroom window one night. Then I did run him off."
She finished the last of the jerky and handed the bag back to him.
"Then two days ago I left at dawn to set up a trap line over on beaver creek. The country is too rough for horses so I left Poky with dad. I didn't get back 'til dusk. Looters had hit while I was gone. They killed Dad and Poky." Her voice tightened as she added after a pause, "They ate him!"
Cannibalism hadn't been unheard of after The Blowup but Beacon had been rejoicing the new found knowledge that she was a trapper. That would count towards an invite to join The Settlement. Without thinking he blurted out, "They ate your dad?"
"No," she sobbed, "they ate Poky!"
"Poky?" Beacon asked dumbly.
"Poky the Pony he's … he was my horse I've had him since I was eight. When I got back they were just laying there. And the bastards had cut out huge hunks out of Poky."
"Oh." Beacon was still trying to get back up to speed on what she'd been talking about before he got sidetracked by her trapping remark.
"I took anything worth keepin' out of the barn and dragged them both inside. I said a little prayer and lit the barn on fire and then I took out after them."
"You found them?"
"They were easy to track; I caught up with them at dusk the next day. The stupid asses had built a fire anyone could see from across the valley. I waited 'til the middle of the night and just walked in and shot all three of them in their sleeping bags. The dumb asses hadn't even mounted a guard."
"Good!" Beacon thought his exclamation might sound patronizing and hastened to add, "You policed up their guns and ammo?" Then he felt even worse.
She didn't seem to notice his discomfort. Her voice hardened, "No, I didn't want nothing of theirs! They were eating him!"
"Huh?"
"They were smoking Poky's meat over the fire. I just took back my dad's gun from them then I put their faces in the fire so they'd get a good look at where they were going to spend the rest of eternity then I buried the pieces of Poky and left their meat to rot!"
"Remind me never to make you mad."
She choked out a bitter laugh as the remembered pain drained out of her.
Trying to change the subject Beacon asked, "Maybe there's something back at your place that we could use to buy you into The Sanctuary?"
"Nothing much there, it was just a summer vacation home 'til mom died. We hardly visited the place after that. Then, after The Blowup, we just moved all our gear and food up there with us. We ran out of gas and had to carry it all up the last five miles. We figured once things settled down we'd make our living with our farrier and blacksmithing gear. But it's been a year now and nothings getting better."
Beacon started to tell her it would be at least a decade before things settled down and then stopped dead in his tracks. "You've got blacksmithing supplies and horseshoes?"
"Sure, dad was a blacksmith but I'm a little small for that so I learned how to shoe horses. I was scheduled to take my AFA certificate test 'til all this happened."
"You're got blacksmithing tools and you're a farrier?"
"You think that'll get me in?"
"Lady you'll own the place! The Settlement has six horses and two mules that need shoeing, two of' the horses are ours."
Misunderstanding his intentions she wasn't sure if she liked the sound of that. "Ours?"
Too happy to notice the tone of her voice Beacon babbled on. "Yeah, ours, Old Bill and I brought two horses in when we joined the Settlement. You can stay with us, you'll like Old Bill."
"Stay with you?"
Too late Beacon realized what she was thinking. "Oh, I didn't mean that. You can stay anywhere you want, but we'll make a special room for you so you can have some privacy if you'd like to stay with us until spring that's when Old Bill and I are going to start building a cabin that'll serve as a gatehouse too."
"Or", he added quickly, "you could stay with Granny Reece she's lives in a little horse trailer by the gate, but she snores so … unm ..."
She gave him a small smile and said, "We'll see. Who's Old Bill?"
"He's a real mountain man!" Beacon's embarrassment disappeared as he proudly recounted his history with the old man.
"I first met him when I was nine and my parents took me to the Mountain Man Rendezvous at Fort Bridger Wyoming. Every summer after that I begged, cajoled, wheedled or sweet talked my parents into taking me back to the Mountain Man Rendezvous on our summer vacations.
One year it was my one and only Christmas present. When I turned fourteen I persuaded my parents to let me spend the summer with Old Bill while they went on a cruise of the Caribbean. From then on I went to summer school and spent every winter in the mountains learning hunting, snaring, stalking and trapping from Old Bill. From my fifteenth birthday on I made enough trapping to pay my own way back the next year. He taught me everything I know and ..." Beacon stopped, blushing.
"Sounds like an interesting old man."
"More like an old codger, but he'll like you. Any woman who runs her own trap lines has earned his respect. Those women at The Settlement fainted when he first showed them how to gut a deer. It's like they didn't know where the meat in the supermarkets came from."
TREASURE
They were letting the horses, cattle, sheep and goats out into the meadow as Beacon and Gail emerged from the tree line near where he'd first seen her. He spotted Old Bill sitting in his usual spot by the gate with a Winchester 30-30 over his arm and a Colt Peacemaker on his hip. No longer able to walk very far or work too hard Old Bill stood guard duty at the gate all day every day acting as much a babysitter to keep the younger kids inside as a defense against outsiders. He was the gate's gossip monitor as well as guard.
The mountain men had been unable to convince Maggie and the Circle of Crones of the need for daytime gate watchers. There was, the ladies said, too much work to be done. So Old Bill appointed himself to guard the gate. It wasn't long before the mothers of the fort saw the advantages of Old Bill as a babysitter for their toddlers.
It had been all they could do to persuade the fort's inhabitants to keep a daytime 360 degree tower lookout. Maggie and the Circle of Crones had initially been against it.
The argument had been settled by teenaged hormones. Once mothers realized kids in the tower could easily be seen by all those below; young Romeos and Juliets who weren’t working in the fields with their parents were assigned to daytime shifts in the tower. The kids cooperated to get some time to talk alone out of range of the Settlement's prying ears. As long as both kid's heads could be seen above the tower's parapet it was assumed all was well and it was hoped that the pair could occasionally look past each other long enough to see approaching danger and stop holding hands long enough to ring the bell. Gail giggled as Beacon explained the reasoning behind the Settlement's security measure.
Embarrassed Beacon pointed out that the watch tower's bell had alerted the fort's inhabitants to approaching scavengers many times.
"They told me you went ahuntin'" Old Bill said by way of greeting as the two approached the gate.
"I found a treasure instead." Beacon replied and filled Old Bill in on Gail's talents and resources.
"How many traps ya' got?" Old Bill demanded as Beacon finished.