Cowboy

by Jerry D. Young

  Finally sure no one from the local area was following him, Craig set out on course that would take him across Missouri to Oklahoma. He traveled parallel to I-44, setting up camp well away from it each night. When he passed the point where the retreat had done some salvage work, Craig began hobbling all the horses but the one he was riding and checking the vehicles left on the road.

  He was cautious, but wasn’t bothered as he checked out each of the vehicles. He had a notebook with him and noted everything that the Retreat might be interested in. There were some signs of salvage work, but it looked more like raiders’ work than careful salvage work. He occasionally found an item worth taking for trade purposes and Craig didn’t hesitate to do so.

  He approached the small towns along the route the same way, caching the more important items the horses carried, and leaving the rest of the packing tack hidden nearby; he’d hobble the horses and go in with just a saddle bag’s worth of trade goods.

  The activity had two results. One was that it allowed the horses to get plenty of graze, since he wasn’t able to carry grain with him. The other was that he didn’t look like the target that he would be if it became known he was traveling with a pack train.

  Craig mostly got information from the stops. The occasional trade, to show good faith, and keep up the illusion of traveling light, kept him a much lower profile than he might have been. Though seeing a traveler for any distance than locally was more than a high enough profile for Craig.

  There were the occasional armed roadblocks to some of the towns. Almost all required the relinquishing of firearms while in the town. It was too much risk for too little possible gain, Craig decided, and turned around and left the area each time. Sometimes he didn’t even go up to the roadblocks, but made the decision while glassing it with binoculars, which he always did before approaching one.

  He was on the outskirts of Springfield, Missouri when he ran across what turned out to be a treasure trove for him. The surrounding area had been well worked over for salvageable materials, but Craig found himself studying one of the remote homes back up in a section of the many forested areas in the region.

  Craig had stopped there for the night, able to stable the horses in a stripped, but still useable barn. There was even a bait of grain for each of the horses in the feed bins, though it was obvious that the majority had been salvaged.

  After checking the entire place over carefully, Craig did what he seldom did on the trip. He took up residence for a few days in an abandoned home. There was significant damage to the house and outbuildings, but the decorative hand pump in the front yard wasn’t just decorative. It pumped up some sweet tasting water. Craig filtered it anyway, but it was very good tasting even after the filtering.

  Craig noted the tall flagpole standing in the front yard with a ragged US flag hanging limp in the still air. It didn’t set well with him, so he pulled down the flag, and destroyed it by fire reverently.

  Little elements of the things he saw nagging at him, Craig continued to look over the house. It had a big pantry, which was bare to the wood. A gun safe stood open in what had been a very nice study. There was blood on the overturned office desk chair and Craig openly sighed. It was shaping up to the fact that someone had survived here and been attacked. What the attackers could take, they did. Only later did organized salvagers find the place and finish the job.

  Moving cautiously, as always, Craig went downstairs to the basement. It too had been ransacked, both the finished portion that seemed to have been a family room, and the unfinished area that was mostly storeroom. There were a few broken jars of home canned food, but no intact ones. Again Craig felt the nagging feeling.

  There didn’t seem to be anything left of value, so Craig cleaned up the master bedroom and made up the bed with sheets still in an overturned drawer from the wrecked dresser. After caring for the horses, Craig turned in, weapons ready. He spent a couple of days at the place, just studying it for the same nagging reasons that there was something he wasn’t seeing.

  There was a pickup truck and a Cadillac car in the garage. Neither ran. Craig looked over the garage again, planning to leave the next day. That was when he noticed the pipe running up the inside wall of the garage, into the garage roof.

  Craig looked around a bit closer and found three more of the pipes. There was no logical reason for them to be there. He pulled down the attic access stairs that were in the ceiling of the garage and went up, a windup flashlight in hand. All four pipes were capped with screened hoods, obviously to keep out pests. The pipes were part of a ventilation system.

  Going back downstairs, Craig opened the garage door manually, and, with much effort, rolled both the truck and the car out onto the driveway. He looked down at the large concrete surfaced parking area and driveway. Craig went around to the back of the house. Sure enough, the back door patio was in line with the garage and the driveway.

  Craig moved everything out of the garage that wasn’t bolted down. He couldn’t find any access point of any kind to what he was sure was a shelter of some kind under the garage floor, driveway and parking area, or patio.

  He found a thin steel rod in the miscellanea in the barn and returned to the house with it. He probed thoroughly around the exposed areas edging the concrete patio and driveway. Nothing. Finally Craig decided he must have missed something in the basement, despite the thorough inspection he’d done the first day.

  It took him all of that day and most of the next before he found the secret door hidden in the unfinished part of the basement. One of the heavy cabinets that looked so solid would roll to the left, exposing a vault door. The empty space to the left of the shelving unit, Craig had finally noticed was out of place, considering the shelving that covered the rest of the walls of the little alcove.

  Craig played with the dial of the vault door, not wanting to do what he was pretty sure he would have to do to get into the hidden room. Finally he went out to the barn and opened one of the panniers the pack horses carried. He took out one of the small bags of black powder the pannier contained.

  He went back inside, fashioned a holder for the bag and used a piece of plywood and a two by four to hold it against the door. He laid down a fuse, and then lit it. Craig moved quickly away from the direct line to the vault door and covered his ears. A few seconds later there was a very loud explosion, with a resulting cloud of white smoke billowing out from the area.

  Craig waited a safe amount of time and then checked the damage to the door. The black powder had enough force to punch the lock. After waiting for it to cool, Craig pulled the remains of the locking mechanism out of the way. It took quite a bit of manipulation to get the locking bolts retracted, but Craig finally managed it and opened the door.

  What he saw was worth the effort expended. The man had been a collector. A gun collector. This was his storage vault, for the good stuff, apparently. “He must have just kept a couple of token items upstairs,” Craig thought to himself.

  Craig drew up short when he took another step into the room and saw the head resting against the back of a chair. “Hey! Anyone here?” he asked softly, knowing better. The person would not still be sitting in that chair after the blast. Moving around, Craig finally saw a dead woman sitting in the chair.

  What was left was all dried up. Apparently the vault hadn’t been totally rodent proof. There were signs of rats and bugs everywhere. Craig swung the flashlight and looked around the area he could see. Nothing seemed to have been touched.

  Craig thought about it for a little while and concluded, rightly or wrongly, that the husband had sent the wife down into the vault when trouble appeared. He’d stayed upstairs and become a victim of the violence of the early hordes. Craig checked the door to the left. It was a bathroom. The door on the right was as much storeroom as kitchen. It still held plenty of food and water for two people for at least a month. A third door opened onto a tiny bedroom.

  “She must have checked her husband when he didn’t return and came down
here to just die.” It was the only thing Craig could think of that fit the facts. He took the time to wrap the body and take it outside. He’d found what had to be the grave of the husband near the fence behind the barn.

  Craig was sure it was the salvage team that came later that had buried the man, and not the original looters. It took most of the rest of the afternoon to dig a grave and bury the woman. Craig said a few words of prayer over both graves and then tended the horses.

  Breathing a bit easier, Craig went back down into the vault. He cleaned up the mess from the rodents and bugs, not wanting to spend any time in the filth, thinking all the while. He’d come up with a plan by the time he finished the clean-up.

  Having only glanced at the collection of firearms in cabinets and on wall racks, Craig left them for a while longer and began sorting the food stored in the other room. It was mostly high quality freeze-dried and dehydrated foods in #10 cans. With what he was planning, Craig decided it was best to leave it where it was.

  Finally he began inspecting the guns. There were literally dozens of them. His eye was drawn to one display case and he suddenly wished his Mother was still around. He would love to give her the Luger carbine with attached wooden butt stock that had a leather holster attached. There were five Luger snail drum magazines laid out in front of the carbine.

  The case also contained six other Lugers. Each one was a different configuration, which was listed on a display card. He read the labels. All the pistols were originals. The carbine was a reproduction.

  Craig continued to look around, noting the various military bolt action rifles. Then something in one of the glass front cabinets caught his eye. He took the rifle out of the case, holding it reverently. It was a pristine M14E2, the select fire version with pistol grip stock, with original sling and bipod. He checked the serial number. It was apparently early production. The selector switch was there and when Craig tried it, the switch moved from semi-auto to full-auto.

  Setting it down, Craig took out the carbine that was hanging below where the M14E2 had been. He’d never seen anything like it. It was futuristic looking, with a large hump extending back over the extendable stock. He looked in the cabinet again and saw the label for the display.

  He was holding a very rare, possibly the only one in existence, proto-type Calico submachine gun similar to the Calico M960. But instead of 100-rounds of 9mm in the helical magazine, the gun carried 85-rounds of .45 ACP. And the barrel was made with an integral suppressor.

  Checking quickly in the closed cabinet under the glass display case, Craig found a dozen of the 85-round magazines. There were some M14 magazines, too, but only six. At least they were 30-rounders. There were several cloth bandoleers, that when Craig checked them, proved to be 60-round bandoleers of 7.62mm x 51mm NATO in stripper clips, with a stripper clip guide in each bandoleer.

  Digging deeper in the cabinet, Craig found the GI manual for the M14E2, and a handwritten booklet about the Calico prototype and its low maintenance suppressor. Craig started to stand up, but there was something in the back of the cabinet. He pulled the boxes forward and looked at them in amazement. This man was some collector.

  There were five 100-round Beta C-Mag dual drum magazines for the M14. Craig had no way of knowing that the C-Mags for 7.62mm x 51mm had become available just before the war. If Stephan Hicks hadn’t preordered he never would have received them from his dealer.

  There were a couple of sealed cans of military surplus 7.62mm x 51mm NATO and .45 ACP ammunition each. Opening the other side of the cabinet Craig found several unmarked cardboard boxes. He opened one up and found a packing slip. His eyes widened. This guy had some real connections, back in the day.

  Craig stood up and looked at the other two guns the display cabinet held. The top one had to be the weapon the ammunition in the unmarked boxes was for. He took it down. Like the Calico, it was something he’d never seen before. He looked at the display card for it.

  The weapon was a Hawk MM-1 close support weapon firing 25mm grenades of various types. That was what was in the boxes. 25mm grenades for the MM-1. It was basically a gigantic revolver with a butt stock and vertical fore grip. The revolving drum held eighteen of the 25mm grenades. This was definitely going in the cache to take back to the Retreat.

  He suddenly noticed that two of the boxes were different from the others. He opened both of them. The contents were identical. While there were six boxes of the loaded grenades, ready to go, the other two boxes contained extra projectiles, boxes of primers, and canisters of powder. Apparently the cases could be reloaded after firing. There were enough components to reload all the rounds in the six boxes three times. The tools to do the reloading were in one of the boxes.

  Checking the last box in the cabinet, Craig found it filled with large drum magazines, loaded with 20-rounds each of 12-gauge shotgun shells. He finally looked at the other weapon in the display. The information card said it was an AA-12 full auto shotgun. It was fitted with another of the 20-round drums. Another cache item.

  Craig kept looking, the light from his windup flashlight glaring eerily on more of the glass fronted cases. One glass case contained nineteen versions of the Colt 1911 pattern semi-auto pistol. Another, very large wall display covered by curtains, not glass, contained the primary individual infantry arms for the US Army during WW II. They included a Colt 1911A1 pistol, Garand M1 standard rifle, Garand M1 sniper rifle, M1 Carbine, M3A1 “Greasegun” submachine gun, Thompson M1A1 submachine gun, a Springfield 1903A4 sniper rifle, M2A1-7 backpack flamethrower, M-1897 pump shotgun with heat shield and bayonet lug, a BAR, and a pair of M2A1 “Pineapple” hand grenades.

  Looking the hand grenades over carefully, Craig was able to determine that they were inert. So was the flamethrower. Checking the submachine guns and BAR, he found that they, like the M14E2 and the Calico, were operating full-auto capable weapons.

  Cabinets flanking and below the display held bayonets, clips and magazines, ammunition, and accoutrements for all the working weapons.

  Craig whistled. This man had money before the war and liked to spend it. “And had good tastes,” he whispered to himself as he continued his perusal of the contents of the vault. There was a display case of Winchester Lever action rifles and carbines, another case holding various Colt Single Action Army revolvers.

  One relatively small glass front case held four additional Thompson’s, in addition to the one in the WW II display, each a slightly different version. Two had 100-round drums in them, the other two 30-round stick magazines. The base cabinet contained two more 100-round drums, ten 50-round drums, and whole boxfuls of 20-round and 30-round stick magazines. There were four of the large sealed tins of .45 ACP ammunition, and a variety of magazine pouches.

  He didn’t know if the man actually competed in Cowboy Action Shooting, but he had a case full of the proper guns and accoutrements. The fancy hat he didn’t care for. Craig liked the Rouge River hat his Mother gave him. The cuff guards also held no interest for Craig. Neither did the fancy spur straps. However the cavalry gauntlets would come in handy. He took them out of the case and set them aside. Also added to the pile was a well-worn railroad chronometer pocket watch on a gold chain with a pen knife fob. He didn’t have a good watch. All the cheap battery operated ones had long gone dead.

  The suspenders he would take, too, he decided, since they had a derringer holster on each side, and were all leather. He wouldn’t have considered them, except for the collection of derringers that was on display. The old ones, percussion and rim fire, he passed on. The modern ones were a different story. Between the American Derringer Corporation models and the Bond Arms derringers, Craig found several that he would take with him, in various calibers.

  Craig wasn’t much of a pump shotgun user, but he saw, and had only passing interest in, the civilian version of the Winchester 1897 pump shotgun similar to the military one in the WW II display. But he saw the IAC replica of a Winchester 1887 lever action 12 gauge shotgun and decided it would be goin
g with him, too.

  The Marlin 1894 lever action in .45 Colt was tempting, but he decided it would go in the cache he was going to make. So would the beautifully set up Remington Rolling Block .50-140 Sharps target rifle. It had a period looking scope with modern glass.

  The Ruger New Model Blackhawk .45 Colt revolver was identical to the one he already had, except it was a 7½ inch model. It he would also take. There was a pair of other Ruger single action revolvers. New Model Blackhawks, in .45 Colt, with 5½” barrels, nearly identical to his.

  There were three coach guns in the display, one a custom modern Greener 10-gauge hammer style. The other two were modern Stoeger side-by-sides, both 12-gauge. They would go in the cache.

  He took out the Buscadero style wide leather gun belt with the drop holster on the right side. It was plain, unadorned leather, with oil finish. And unlike most of the belts in that style that had twenty to thirty cartridge loops in a single row, this one had two rows, one above the other, for a total of forty-eight loops for .45 Colt cartridges, shifted slightly to the right side.

  That left enough room for six loops for 12 gauge shot shells and six for .45-70 cartridges on the left. It went into the to-take pile that was growing, as much for the Cold Steel Natchez Mediterranean style Bowie knife in a scabbard on the left side of the belt and the derringer buckle. It held an American Derringer Corporation .45 Colt two-barrel derringer.