The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  After the coffee was prepared, the militiaman would refill the pot with a small amount of water to which he would add a handful of grains and maybe a pinch of salt. Sometimes, in the lean times, when there were no grains, another chunk of sausage or jerky would be added to the water and cooked into a broth. There was always plenty of meat. On good days, maybe an egg, or some other delicious local creature or plant would show up in the pot.

  When there was fat, the men might cook a portion of it down with a sprinkle of dried agarito berry powder or fresh prickly-pear cactus fruit added to the mix. They had become experts at providing what their bodies needed, and very little more. As a result, they were lithe and fit, and with the exception of Rollo The Mountain, the huge and muscular man-child of the group, none of them would have been considered large.

  The outriders rode directly to Phillip and, by way of salute, each of them gave an almost imperceptible nod to the commander before sliding off of their horses. The riders split into three groups. From this point on, the motions of each of the men was akin to a choreographed ballet. Phillip crouched down with one of the outriders, as men surrounded him wordlessly, facing outward. There was no way of telling when they might be being watched, or when a sniper might be observing the entire scene from a thousand yards away via a high-powered scope. Thus, in an over-abundance of caution, whenever Phillip talked to outriders, spies, or whenever he received reports, the militia made sure that even his lips could not be read from afar. This scene was repeated three times, as each of the outrider and militia segments mimicked the routine Phillip and his sub-group followed. Only the man who approached Phillip had the real report. The other two meetings were diversionary. In this way, a watcher might not even know which of the militiamen Phillip was. No man wore any insignia of rank or identifying regalia. In every way that was apparent, Phillip was just like the rest of the men. Still, even without an outward sign, to his men, he was not only the leader, but also their hero, and their father.

  “What news do you bring?” Phillip asked.

  The outrider looked down, with some sadness. “We have no good word yet of your wife and daughters. We’ve almost come to the conclusion that they did not ride for New Rome, or for El Paso. We’re focusing our attention north now. The Vallenses believe that they have found some indication of a party traveling northward at approximately the correct window of time.”

  “I want our men up there and in charge,” Phillip said, “I don’t want the Vallenses stumbling upon the kidnapping party and mucking things up. They are superb trackers, but they are not killers, and they’ll ruin any possible rescue attempt if they find them first.”

  “Yes, maestro. We had anticipated that this would be what you wanted, and we have sent a force of twenty men to take over the northward search.”

  “What else?”

  “A little over a day ago, we captured an Aztlani messenger riding under the white flag towards San Angelo. He had a message for you.” The outrider handed the message to Phillip. It was sealed with the ducal seal of The Duke of El Paso.

  “What did you do with the messenger?”

  “We told him that we did not recognize or honor the white flag at this time. We said that until the captive women and children were released, along with all captives held by Aztlan, the militia in Texas will be operating under the black flag and had every right to kill messengers. No surrender, no captives, and no hostages. We went on with the threats for a while before letting him go. We assume that the black flag message will make its way back to the Duke.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Phillip agreed, as he opened the letter.

  ****

  Attention: To the Insurgent leader named Phillip, and to all of the leadership of the illegal Rebellion against the Rightful King of Aztlan.

  HEED THESE WORDS!

  In order to put an end to your cowardly acts of terrorism and your continued unlawful war against the rightful Liege Lord of the Kingdom, the wife and children of Phillip the Insurgent have been arrested and taken to New Rome, where they are to be tried on charges of Heresy and Treason!

  Upon their conviction by the New Office of the Inquisition, they will be turned over to the secular authority to be burned at the stake.

  Upwards of 20 times you have been warned to cease your activity, Phillip, but you remain in league with all of the enemies of Aztlan. For this, you are bound to see your wife and children perish—unless you are willing to give up your fruitless war, and surrender yourself (and all of your men) to the proper authorities. Your lives in exchange for those of your family, Phillip, those are your choices.

  A day’s hard ride could free your loved ones, if only you will surrender.

  We look forward to your positive response, and to seeing this rebellion come to an end. Enough blood has been shed on both sides. Your own sacrifice could bring the peace for which all good men pray.

  Sincerely,

  Duke Carlos Emmanuel, Lord Provider of the Duchy of Texas, by the hand of His Royal Secretary.

  Phillip read the letter through aloud so that the leaders among his men could hear it. Then he smiled faintly, almost imperceptibly.

  “Why the smile, maestro?” Only Rollo, the huge, muscular man that most of the militiamen called The Mountain, had noticed it. “Your wife and children are in danger of being killed, and they’ve been taken to New Rome! Even we, as good as we are, can’t invade New Rome to save them.”

  “They haven’t been taken to New Rome, gentlemen.” He looked at the outrider. “You and your men were right, they’ve been taken north—60 miles away. 20 leagues.”

  “How can you know?” asked Rollo. “How can you possibly be so certain?”

  He looked up and the smile faded from his face. “It’s a code. The Duke’s secretary is an old, old friend of mine. We even survived the collapse together 20 years ago. He’s ex-British SAS and he’s been helping us from inside for a very long time. Now, he’s told me where to find my wife and daughters and he’s risked his life to do it.”

  Gareth whistled. “Oh, what a web we weave!”

  Phillip looked at Gareth, “Deception goes both ways, Assassin. So maybe you thought yours was the only side with spies?”

  “I thought no such thing, Ghost man. I know for certain that that is not the case,” Gareth responded, “I know Sir Nigel Kerr very well too. English and I go back quite a long way; not so long as you, but I’ve known him for almost all of my life.”

  “You’ll have to fill me in on that later. I’m interested to find out how else you and I might be connected.” Phillip looked to the outrider, “Is there anything else?”

  “The guests you are expecting have been spotted approaching from San Angelo way. They are alone. We’ve sent a guide to bring them to you. They should be here momentarily.”

  “Ahh,” Phillip noted, “more friends from Aztlan.” He turned to Gareth and pointed, “You should be starting to feel at home.”

  “I’m not sure that is exactly how I feel, Ghost, but I do have the feeling that things are just starting to get interesting in our friendship.”

  Gareth, Phillip, The Mountain, and a few other militiamen sipped mesquite coffee and discussed the plan to free Phillip’s wife and daughters. It wasn’t going to be easy, they all freely admitted. First, there would be the hard ride north in this heat. Phillip had assumed from the letter that they needed to move quickly… A day’s hard ride could free your loved ones.

  As the group made their plans, the guide returned with the two men riding in from Aztlan. Again, the ballet of men went into action to obscure events for those who might be watching from afar. As the choreographed scramble of men continued wordlessly, Phillip scanned the horizon in every direction. They were miles and miles away from anyone. He wondered if the protective machinations even mattered, and if anyone would even be watching. No, he thought, shaking his head. Diligence and obedience are ours; results belong to God. Our decisions do not depend on the enemy. We do our duty and do things right reg
ardless of how safe we may or may not be.

  Phillip ducked down into the small group that now surrounded him, and greeted the militia guide—Tyrell of Terrell the men called him—and the two men who had just ridden from Aztlan.

  Like Gareth, the men had been given ‘uniforms’ that approximated the dress of the Ghost militia—black or brown cotton pants girded with heavy leather in the knees and backside. The high leather boots were strapped up the leg, to guard the rider against mesquite thorns, cactus, and rattlesnake bites. A long leather coat was worn over a tan cotton shirt while riding, even in the summer. It was only partially as bad as it sounded. “Leather breathes; that’s why cows wear it,” Phillip liked to say. The coats had pockets throughout in which pounded steel or iron plates could be placed as makeshift armor, but these were kept in a secure location, and were only very rarely worn. Only when the militia intended to fight in traditional battle array—which was almost never—would they wear any armor.

  Likewise, the militiamen very rarely carried guns, although they had access to them. Guns were heavy, ammunition was rare, and the Ghost militia survived and thrived by moving quickly and silently as an invisible recon force. Only a few times in the past ten years had the militia ever used guns in a battle.

  Phillip embraced Rob Fosse, who was his best friend and often operated as a spy in New Rome, and greeted Sir Gerold Holcutt of Riverdell, Rob’s traveling companion and a supporter of the insurrection against Aztlan.

  Rob looked over the militia contingent and beamed. “Well, isn’t this a strange court? And me so underdressed for such esteemed company!”

  Phillip could not help but laugh at his old friend Rob Fosse. Rob was the funniest man he had ever met. This ought to be interesting, he thought.

  “Greetings in the name of The Most High God,” Phillip announced formally. “We humble servants of Jesus and lowly militiamen of Texas do kneel before Your Graces, newly arrived from Aztlan.”

  “Stand up, man!” Rob said, laughing. “We are the ones who ought to be bowing.” He and Sir Gerold bowed down on one knee and dropped their heads.

  Rob looked up with a grin on his face, “I didn’t know that you kept company with royalty, Phillip, but you cannot have friends much higher than the Crown Prince and future King of Aztlan himself!” He turned his attention to Gareth. “Our surprised but heartfelt greetings to you O’ great Prince Gareth and peace be unto you.”

  Phillip’s eyes went from Rob Fosse and Sir Gerold to Gareth as they bowed to the Crown Prince, and his hand instinctively went to his sword.

  For only a split second, confusion set in on the faces of Phillip’s men; but instantly that confusion cleared and the men set into motion. The sound of swords being drawn all over the camp was both awesome and terrifying. Rob and Sir Gerold staggered backwards at the frightening sound, as blades appeared from everywhere, pointed at Gareth. “He’s a traitor and a spy!” someone shouted.

  Phillip’s sword was drawn, but his was soon intersecting those of his men. “Easy boys!” he said with a smile on his face, “I know what you’re thinking, but the Crown Prince is with us.”

  Chapter 6 - Jonathan

  Ruth smiled as she struggled to lift the stringer of twelve largemouth bass to show her father. Jonathan estimated them all to be at least 14 to 16 inches long and meaty too. He smiled back at her, clapped her on her shoulder and helped her carry them to the concrete worktable behind the springhouse. Although Wally would cook them, both knew that he wouldn’t clean them. Over the years, the old cook had made sure everyone understood that. Jonathan and Ruth got to work with their fillet knives while Ruth chatted excitedly about the day’s events, minutely dissecting the finer points of her fishing success.

  Fishing had recently become a very popular pastime at the ranch, but it seemed that now folks were fishing more for sport rather than mainly for food. Jonathan could remember back when Ruth was too young to go fishing alone. Back then, he had been forced to assign fishing duty. Almost no one wanted to fish, especially in the hot dog days of summer. Now, Ruth’s excitement and energy about anything to do with fishing, hunting, or trapping had started to rub off on everyone else.

  Sometimes, when he walked past the lower tank on his way to the woodlot, or to check on the cattle in the bottom acres, he would see four or five people fishing with Ruth. Very few days passed without there being fish on the menu in some form or fashion, or, at the very least, bass fillets hanging in the smokehouse for long-term preservation.

  The tanks on the Wall ranch were man-made ponds that had been originally designed to provide water for the cattle. Tanks were usually built on the lowest parts of a piece of land, where there was evidence of regular run-off from rains.

  Only a few years prior to the collapse, several of the small cattle tanks along or beside the creek had been expanded to increase the total amount of water catchment, and to enable fish farming as an additional source of protein. The lower tank had been steadily expanded until now it encompassed about four acres. It was a pond, even if everyone still called it the lower tank.

  In order to maintain a good population of fish in the tanks on the ranch, Jonathan had finally been forced to adopt both a flexible fishing season, and a quota. Every time a fish was caught out of any tank on the property, it had to be logged into the ledger hanging by the cleaning table behind the springhouse. Jonathan kept a close eye on how many fish were being taken from the tanks on the ranch, and would put an end to fishing season if too many were being caught. In addition, any servants who took fish from the tanks had to return a specific amount of food for the fish in the tank. Fish feed could be anything from old eggs past their prime that were scrambled up for fish food, to small pieces of meat, bits of rattlesnake or possum, or, preferably, buckets of grasshoppers caught in grasshopper traps.

  Jonathan had been so excited when he discovered plans for the grasshopper traps in an old, antique book that included plans for hundreds of old-timey farming devices.

  The large grasshopper traps were screened boxes, some as wide as twelve feet across, with partial openings on their bottoms. The traps could be dragged through the fields and grass behind a horse or mule. The grasshoppers would jump and get trapped in the boxes. When the boxes were full, they were left out in the fields until the grasshoppers dried up; then they could be bagged and stored as chicken or fish food. Dried grasshoppers were one of the primary forms of chicken feed on the ranch, and provided most of the protein that would one day become eggs for the inhabitants of the ranch. Excess eggs (and there were a lot of those) were usually cooked up and fed to the pigs, but would sometimes also become fish food. The guts and heads of Ruth’s fish, when cleaned, went into the bucket of stuff to be fed to the chickens; and any unproductive or culled chickens would be fed to the pigs. It was quite a system! Because of it, and with the regular hunting, the Walls and their ranch staff had quite a variety of meat regularly appearing on the menu.

  After he finished helping Ruth clean all the fish, Jonathan washed his hands in cool water that was pumped up from the cistern. He used a bar of homemade lye soap to make sure he got rid of the stench and the stickiness from his hands.

  Every time he washed his hands here, he thought of the ‘grey-water’ system they had installed on this sink. The used water swirled down the drain, into a pipe that ran eighteen inches below the ground. As the pipe ran past three large pecan trees that shaded the tannery and the root cellars, the water seeped out through tiny holes that had been drilled in the pipe several feet from the trees. The pipe with the holes drilled in it passed through a bed of coarse gravel so that the mud and dirt wouldn’t compact around the holes and plug them up. Owing to this method, these productive trees regularly received some watering, even between rains and during droughts.

  He and and his wife planted these three pecan trees 25 years ago, not long before she gave birth to David, their first child. Now, a quarter of a century later, the trees were fully-grown and in full production. The lifespan of th
ese trees was not usually expected to be much longer than that, though some pecan trees in this area had been known to live and produce for many, many decades. There were pecan trees in the Wall’s orchard and along the creek and down by the lower tank that were already 30 years old, planted there when the Vallenses first came to this land. Although they were still healthy and strong, the Vallenses planted more nut and fruit trees every year, planning for the future.

  When he looked at the towering trees heavy with green pecans, he remembered the day they had planted them. He could recall Elizabeth—pregnant with David—watching and laughing at him. It was spring, and back then, Jonathan had thought it was the spring of their lives together. But God had seen fit to take her, and it was not up to him to question the wisdom, goodness, and severity of a Sovereign God.

  He still had David, and his two daughters Elizabeth (who had been named after his wife), and Ruth. Betsy had been married to Paul Miller for five years now, and had given him his two grandchildren—Jon and Thomas.

  David was his friend, his partner, and his constant worry. His son knew perfectly well the reasons and the apologetics for the pacifism of the Vallenses. Still, in the past few years, as the attacks on the peaceful communities of believers had increased and had become more heinous and violent, David had become more militant. He still obeyed the wishes of his father, and submitted to the commands of the Church, but he was constantly—albeit within the bounds of what would be allowed—agitating for war with Aztlan.

  He was still too young by five years to be an Elder in the Vallensian Church, but a year ago, David had asked to speak in front of a meeting of all of the Elders, even those from distant communities, and he had made a heartfelt plea and argument for active Vallensian material assistance to the militias. His argument had been so good that it had split the community—a split that remained to this day. Though both sides had agreed to listen to and to tolerate one another, and though the Vallenses’ official position on violence had not changed, Jonathan knew that a significant number of God’s people in the Vallensian Church were now in support of active participation in the war.