Red smiled as she remembered herself asking, “But Mrs. Kramer, why didn’t Dad tell me these things himself?”
Mrs. Kramer had sat down on Red’s bed next to her and said in a conspiratorial tone, “Red, you’re father’s a fine man. One of the best I’ve known. And he’s done a fine job of raising you. But he’s like most men. When it comes time to talking to girls about anything having to do with sex, he’s a great big chicken. And you can tell him I said that.”
Red never did tell her dad the old woman said that. It was just a fond memory she’d put in the far recesses of her mind and called up from time to time when she needed a smile.
Butch Poston never taught Red about the birds and the bees or her menstrual cycle. But he taught her plenty of other things which were now coming in handy. How to handle a gun. How to hunt and fish and trap. How to ride, and how to take care of her horses.
And how to do enough blacksmithing to get by.
Red was caring for the bay when Jacob walked into the barn. She had the old shoe off and was dressing the horse’s hoof so she could fit the new one.
Jacob watched and said, “The sun’s going down in half an hour or so. Are you gonna have enough light to finish up? I found a kerosene lantern I can light if you need it.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be done in ten minutes. Are you saddled and ready to go?”
“Yes, but I’ll take my turn on the bay. No need in me driving the Cadillac all the time and leaving you the Chevy.”
She smiled.
“Have you ever even driven, Jacob?”
“Oh, yes. I have my license. I got it two months before the lights went out. Fat lot of good it does me now…”
“Well, don’t throw it away. I’m hoping that in a few years they can get everything going again. You might still be able to use it someday.”
“I sure hope so. But I seriously doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Well, because nearly everybody has died. Getting all the machines started again would take qualified electricians, Technicians. Plumbers and mechanics and laborers for the factories.”
“It’s not all as bad as Lubbock, Jacob. Lubbock was hit extra hard for some reason. Jeff told me that Lubbock lost more than ninety percent of its population.
“From what I learned from talking to Dave Speer and others is that most of the world wasn’t that bad. Maybe some of the third world and communist countries. But in the United States and other developed countries, I think the average loss of life is more like sixty to eighty percent. Very bad, sure. But the experts capable of fixing this mess are still out there. Maybe in limited numbers, but they’re there.
“You’re a ‘real glass is half empty’ kind of guy, aren’t you Jacob?”
“Nope. I’m more a ‘glass is completely empty and I’m dying of thirst’ kind of guy.”
Chapter 28
The second night on the road was uneventful. Red counted four shooting stars in the big West Texas sky. Jacob told her it was a meteor shower. He said he’d learned all about meteor showers in school, back when there were such things.
Red wasn’t so sure.
Despite her rough and tumble exterior there was a part of Red which was very definitely girly. A small part to be sure, but a part which still believed in fairy tales and pure sweet love and magic.
Red didn’t voice her opinion. She knew better than that. But she was convinced the shooting stars were waves from her lost loved ones – her mother and father, her husband and son.
Part of Red believed that death was forever. That when a person died he simply returned to the great pool of black nothingness he was in before he was born. That there was no heaven or hell. That those concepts were borne of great novels written by ancient writers and bastardized into religion for men who sought to capitalize on them. That religion came about simply so men could make a living as preachers and ministers and counselors. Unscrupulous men who made money selling snake oil, as it were, to those grieving lost loved ones. By convincing them their dead had gone to a better place.
The other part of Red, the bigger part, believed that God created earth and the heavens. And that He was as real as anything else she’d ever knew or loved.
It was that part of her… the more human side of her, which convinced her there was indeed a better place awaiting the deserving.
And it was that part of her which just knew… knew with all her heart, that those four shooting stars weren’t part of a meteor shower. Rather they were her lost loved ones having found a way to communicate with her.
To tell her to hang on. To be righteous. To keep walking the right path.
To earn her way into heaven as they had.
She hoped she didn’t already blow it by killing Luna.
Luna wasn’t the first man she’d killed. There were a couple of others she’d encountered in a one-horse town on the way to Lubbock. Men who murdered a helpless old man and who were brutalizing his elderly widow. Men who needed to pay a heavy price for their deeds. Men Red sent straight to hell.
As she and Jacob rode slowly through the darkness that second night, Red pondered her fate.
She wondered if she died this particular night, whether God would forgive her for having killed. The Bible said quite clearly that one should not kill. But it also mentioned something about an eye for an eye.
Red was not a Biblical scholar. She’d daydreamed each Sunday during Bible classes.
But she believed her God would evaluate her life as a whole, instead of just a series of good or bad deeds. Surely He, who was all-knowing, would understand that Red was a good woman with a good heart. And that she was more into helping others than hurting them.
And that had to account for something.
She looked at the sky and saw a subtle change in its darkness.
She called up to Jacob, who was riding point.
“It’ll be light soon. Let’s start looking for a place to hole up for the day.”
It was the first words either of them had spoken in well over an hour.
And it was at that moment, as soon as she’d finished her sentence, when a new thought popped into Red’s mind.
The thought that, yes, the shooting stars were sent by her family to give her a message.
But that perhaps it wasn’t a message of hope at all.
Perhaps they were trying to warn her.
Perhaps there was trouble ahead.
Jacob called back over his shoulder, “I see a cluster of big buildings about a quarter mile to the west. Wanna check them out?”
“Lead the way, my friend.”
Jacob pulled the reins to the right, prodding the big horse away from the blacktop they’d been following and onto softer ground. They were now walking slowly across an old cotton field. One that would likely never again see another crop.
He went carefully, mindful of the possibility that prairie dogs or jackrabbits might now call this field home. Both animals burrowed holes in the ground. Holes which could cripple any horse unfortunate enough to step in one.
Jacob couldn’t see such holes if they were there, not even with the night vision goggles perched on his face. But by progressing slowly he’d lessen the chance of the horse breaking a leg.
The group of buildings he’d seen from the highway loomed large in front of them.
Red could see them now too, showing up as huge patches of darkness against the star-filled sky.
They appeared to be a mill of some type. Perhaps a place where long ago farmers brought their cotton or sorghum crops for processing.
“What do you think?” Jacob asked over his shoulder.
“I think I’m tired and want to rest. Let’s hope this pans out.”
He looked around.
“I hope it does. There aren’t any other structures around for at least half a mile.”
They rode slowly past what appeared in the darkness to be a well house, or maybe a tool shed. Then a large corrugated steel building with a roll-up door left fully
open.
They rode inside to the chorus of several rats squealing their objection as they scurried about.
These strangers on horseback, whoever they were, weren’t welcome.
It was pitch black inside the building. There was no starlight to give Red a clue what might be contained there. But it didn’t appear to be a barn. There were none of the tell-tale smells. And she smelled nothing to indicate that either raw cotton or grain was there.
“What can you make out?”
“Vehicles. Big trucks. It looks like a storage building for some type of hauling service or something.”
“I don’t like rats. Let’s tie up the ponies and sit in one of the trucks until it’s light enough to see what we’re dealing with.”
Chapter 29
Red didn’t know it yet, but her miscalculation was going to come back and haunt her.
She’d assumed that traveling in the hours of darkness was the safest way to go. That the pair could cover the distance between Lubbock and Blanco in stealth mode, without encountering any of the bad men who undoubtedly inhabited the area.
And that part of her reasoning had merit.
She also assumed that by hugging the shoulder of Highway 87, they could move south through west and central Texas without getting lost, until it was time to head east toward Blanco.
And that part of her plan had merit too. There was far less chance of encountering rattlesnakes or copperheads along the highway. And less chance of the horses stepping into unseen holes which were far more plentiful farther inland.
But there were a couple of things that Red never considered.
One was the speed, or rather the lack of it, which traveling at night forced upon them.
Because they had to move slowly in the dark, they’d only cover twelve to fifteen miles per day.
A man on horseback riding in the daytime could cover twice that much on a good horse.
By riding the shoulder of the highway, she was protecting the horses from injury. Riding on soft grass was always better than forcing a horse to walk on hard pavement.
But horses are heavy beasts, made heavier by the additional weight of their riders and provisions.
And they leave tracks in soft grass that are very easy to spot and very easy to follow.
John Stance was many things.
First and foremost, he was a very bad man. One of the worst who’d ever walked the streets of O’Donnell, Texas. He had that tiny town under his thumb. Fairly owned it once the blackout hit and the meek and timid started staying inside their homes.
O’Donnell is best known for having been the birthplace of Dan Blocker. Dan was a jovial sort, loved by all. He wasn’t a small man by any means, and used his great size to land the role of Hoss Cartwright on TV’s Bonanza. He was gone long before the blackout struck, but never lost his title as O’Donnell’s favorite son. For many years the tiny town had his easygoing smile and rugged good looks emblazoned billboard-size on a building facing southbound traffic on Highway 87, so he wouldn’t be forgotten.
John Stance was everything that Dan Blocker wasn’t. Instead of smiling easily he snarled. Instead of taking care of his friends and family he took advantage of them.
Instead of being universally loved he was generally hated with a passion.
In many ways the blackout and its aftermath gave people a license to kill. Most law enforcement agencies ceased to exist. Or they were so short-staffed they were largely ineffective. Especially in rural areas, where the county sheriff had hundreds of square miles to police and no vehicles to help him do it, many people took advantage of the situation.
They settled old grudges with guns, knowing there was little chance they’d ever be charged.
They robbed, assaulted or raped with relative impunity.
Then they frequently killed their victims, just for good measure.
There were a lot of people in and around O’Donnell who had grudges or vendettas against John Stance. Men he’d wronged over the four previous decades. Men who owed him money who didn’t want to pay him back. Men he’d stolen from or humiliated in public. Men whose wives Stance had dallied with at one time or another.
John Stance should have been one of those hated men who fell victim to an assassin’s bullet after the plague wiped out the entire Lynn County Sheriff’s Department.
But nobody had the guts to take him on, even with a rifle from long range.
Nobody had the guts to tell him no, either. So when Stance went door to door enlisting volunteers for a private army he was building, men went.
Stance’s plan was simple. He would assemble a group of a hundred hard men. He’d call them “Stance’s Raiders,” in honor of his grandpappy Stance who led a team of men under a similar name during the civil war.
Stance’s Raiders would plunder Lynn and Dawson counties and steal every head of cattle. They’d murder every ranch owner and all their families.
And they’d take over the Rocking RJ Ranch.
The Rocking RJ had been in the Davis family since the year before the Alamo fell. It was originally a homestead of forty acres. Originally it wasn’t much to look at and would only accommodate a few head of cattle. As many as could be sustained through well water.
Over eight generations, though, it had expanded to over one hundred thousand acres. Its confines included a river and seven creeks. Its livestock population now numbered close to ten thousand. And it took a lot of work to keep them.
Bennett Davis was the Rocking RJ’s latest patriarch. The one unfortunate enough to preside over the sprawling ranch when the world went to hell.
Bennett Davis was one of the men in the county that John Stance hated the most.
For John Stance not only coveted old Bennett’s ranch. He also coveted old Bennett’s wife Sally as well.
Davis immediately did the smart thing after the blackout and offered his ranch hands the opportunity to live on the ranch full time. Most of them were single and lived in the bunkhouse anyway. They were told they could stay on the ranch, where there was plenty to eat, in exchange for helping to guard the herd. If they had girlfriends in one of the nearby towns, they could bring them onto the ranch as well. Provided the girlfriends were willing to help earn their keep, by cooking and cleaning and growing a large garden with enough fruits and vegetables to feed them all. And enough left over to can for the winter months.
Turns out old Bennett was a sexist.
But it was an offer few of the hands and girlfriends could resist, given the alternatives.
Several of the ranch hands had families that were brought in as well. By working together, they were able to convert two of the barns into adequate, if not fancy, living quarters.
The result, a year after the blackout, was a commune of sorts. A group of people living together on a huge ranch. The men rode the fences and chased away rustlers and scavengers. The women did everything else. Old Bennett and his wife Sally sat back and enjoyed the fruits of everybody’s labor.
Chapter 30
John Stance’s plan was simple. He’d scour the countryside looking for men who could shoot and follow orders. Men who were too afraid of him to tell him no.
He’d tell the men they were working for nothing. But that within a year, after Stance had assembled the greatest empire the west had ever known, they each would be cut in for a big slice of the pie.
Whether he ever followed through with that promise didn’t really matter much. He might reward those of his men who were most trustworthy, who fought hardest for his cause. He might slight the weaker ones, might even kill them so they couldn’t bitch about being short-changed.
That was all later. It was going to take some months to achieve his ultimate goal. And his ultimate goal, after taking control of all the smaller ranches in the area, was to declare war with his army.
Upon the Rocking RJ ranch and all its occupants.
Now, half a year into his campaign, things were progressing more or less as he’d planned them. He was hopi
ng to be able to sweep into the Rocking RJ within a few more months and to wipe out its entire population.
Except for Sally Davis and a few other young women for his men to share.
There was only one serious glitch in his plan.
It seemed there was a very serious shortage of horses in the area.
He had more men than mounts, and that presented a major problem.
For while his army could attack and take over a ranch with limited acreage while mostly afoot, the logistics of a ranch the size of the Rocking RJ made that tactic fairly impossible.
So for the time being Stance and his eighty man army were in horse gathering mode.
He’d given his men a standing order. The men who already had horses were scouring the countryside looking for more. They were to shoot the riders on sight, collect their ponies and to bring them back to Stance’s armed camp.
Stance himself would select the most worthy of his foot soldiers and present them with their new mounts.
Those so awarded would then be dispatched with the same instructions.
A tiny snowball rolling downhill gains momentum and turns into a huge ball in no time at all. In the same manner, Stance’s horse gathering operation quickly garnered every available horse in Lynn County.
And he was desperately seeking more.
By chance, it was Stance himself who discovered Red and Jacob’s tracks. He was riding with four of his lieutenants to the southern corner of the county to survey what was left of a ranch house his raiders had burned to the ground. The ranch owners wouldn’t willingly cooperate by handing over their horses. They made the mistake of gathering together in the ranch house and made it their Alamo, defending it against the aggressors.
But the ranchers couldn’t stop night from falling.
And they couldn’t stop the raiders from sneaking up in the darkness and setting the house ablaze.
A Lesson Learned: Red: Book 3 Page 9
