Shatto's Way

by Roy F. Chandler

  Governor Kellog again proposed that Shatto's Way submit to a cooperative and sharing program. Toby read that as "give or we will take."

  He procrastinated by requesting details of the Governor's proposal. In so doing he sought to buy time—to what end he was not sure.

  In village meetings there were suggestions that they send a sniping team in and assassinate the Governor. No one doubted that without him his mob would destroy itself.

  In the end they tabled the idea as a last resort; the chances were great that Governor Kellog took care against such attempts. His enemies or their survivors must be legion, and if he moved about carelessly he would surely have succumbed long before.

  Other suggestions were acted upon. Compulsory training was initiated in rifle marksmanship, cover and concealment, and target identification. No one was exempt and each individual was required to have ready their rifle and ammunition.

  The training gave them a sense of doing something, and Toby did not doubt that their increasing proficiency would create a stubborn resistance, but he did not delude himself by thinking that it was an answer.

  Hanna's Rangers proved invaluable as instructors during the training, and their example encouraged others who feared they lacked the strength and skills required. While his people learned to creep and crawl and to expose as little as possible while squeezing off careful shots at the center of whatever showed, Toby plotted.

  He planned and abandoned, hopeful that each failure brought him closer to a defense that would be practical and that could prove successful.

  Certain points did become clear. It seemed probable that Governor Kellog might be waiting until the fall harvests were in. Winter lay ahead and the Governor had many mouths to feed. Watching the now almost weekly courier's obvious interest, Toby figured he was as concerned about their crops as he was their cave or medical center. If that was the case, Shatto's Way had a full summer to prepare.

  In case his estimate was wrong, Toby equipped a security team with their best radio and established a continual watch just above Clark's Ferry. That warning would give the village a full day to act. How to act still escaped them.

  If the community was forced to take to the hills, it would not dissolve into a mindless flight. Reassembly points were established and supplies stored there. From those areas they might rally or retreat in good order.

  Their trading had brought in armaments and explosives in surprising quantities and Toby could think of no better time to use them. In his secret heart he longed for a single atom bomb to remove the menace for all time, but he would have settled for an antitank rocket that could take out the Governor and his armored vehicle with a single shot. As he had neither, it was only daydreaming, and as the season marched on an intelligent plan became urgent.

  It occurred to Toby that there was no strength in allowing the Governor's army to march up their lane before confrontation. Bringing their homes and shops under attack offered no advantage. Somewhere to the south they would have to make their stand. Perhaps the terrain itself would provide answers. In midsummer he took Chop and went to find the right place.

  +++

  When the Governor came he would march up the Susquehanna using the old highway. Toby was sure of that because the road along the Juniata had been blocked in a number of places and washed out in others, The Governor's courier always came up the Susquehanna, and he would be informing his leader of the practicality of that route.

  Even Governor Kellog was short on fuel it seemed, and it was reported that until needed, the armored car was pulled by a team of horses. It would be important to immediately disable the armored vehicle and neutralize the mounted machine guns. If they fought on the road, the car-mounted guns could cause havoc and he had nothing to match their firepower. Toby gave destruction of the armored car top priority in his thinking.

  The highway below the Liverpool ruins was a barely passable mess. Burned or dismantled vehicles littered it and the violent rains a year earlier had undermined pavement and potholes of all sizes speckled its surface like bomb craters. Trees had fallen and in places, rock slides had spread their rubble across lanes. It was hard to believe that less than two years earlier they had sped effortlessly over the same highway.

  They walked as far as New Buffalo before turning back. Even that distance was too far to bring all of his fighters. A warning might not give them time to get in place. That is, if he could just settle on a plan to begin working out.

  They camped along the river a few miles north of New Buffalo and retired early to avoid having their fire disclose their location. Chop seemed to drop off immediately, but Toby found himself thrashing and twisting uncomfortably, his mind racing over possible but mostly impractical schemes to defeat a superior force.

  He woke with the dawn, still tired and scratchy-eyed. The morning sun glinted from the shale cliffs rising on the road's west side and he lay watching the shift of shadows as it moved across the rocky face.

  He sat up with a grunt, startling Chop awake, then scrambled from his sleeping bag to stare up and down the expanse of thinly wooded but brushy flatland where they had slept.

  Chop looked around, "What is it, Tob? You see somebody?"

  "Huh? Oh, no, Chop. Lie back awhile. I've got just the beginnings of an idea."

  He wandered toward the road, walking sort of erratically with the old 180 rifle swinging from his shoulder. Chop rolled out and began putting together a breakfast fire while he kept one eye on Toby's progress.

  Toby stood awhile on the road looking both ways, then kicking at the pavement as though he was mad at it.

  He watched the cliffs for a few more minutes then tramped around in the brush they'd been lying in. If there was anything special about this place. Chop didn't see it. Probably Toby was just walking around thinking about some other spot. Chop let it go and began cooking.

  While they were eating Toby asked, "How much dynamite do we have. Chop?"

  "Hell, you know better than me, Toby, but I'd guess three or four cases, countin' what old Mantis left."

  Chop's eyes squinted and he began studying the cliffs a lot closer.

  "Ok, how about primer cord? I know we've got a lot of blasting caps."

  "Must be a mile of it, Tob'." Awed, he added, "Holy hell, you're going to blow the mountain down on 'em!"

  Toby only grunted, frowning a little as he ate.

  When he was finally ready they walked up onto the road and stood looking south. To their right the cliff rose a hundred feet or more with large boulders clustered along its base. In building the road, the cliff had been cut well back so falling debris would not roll onto the pavement.

  Chop looked it over dubiously, judging distances, and shook his head. "It's too far, Toby. Some will reach the road but most will just lift off the cliff face and pile up at the bottom."

  "Uh huh, that's the way I figure it too, Chop."

  "Maybe we could mine the whole damned road and just touch off the works when they're in the middle."

  "I've been looking for a place like that since we started out but the pavement's still too good. Lots of bad places sure, but not enough broken that we could place charges and get all the wires buried without making it too obvious.

  "Buried charges aren't as good as they look in movies, Chop. The blast mostly goes up without enough out. I've read about people standing almost beside those kind of explosions getting away untouched."

  "Maybe, Tob, but if we weakened 'em some I'll bet we could shoot hell out of 'em from the cliff tops." His voice grew excited, "Hey, maybe we could throw dynamite down on 'em from the cliffs!"

  The ideas had merit but lining up a dozen or more dynamite throwers wasn't too sound. They could kill and wound some, no doubt of that, but what he wanted was a wipe out as thorough as it had been at the Kin Kora killing ground.

  He thought he had a plan that could do that.

  "What we've got to do, Chop, is destroy them. It's got to be done so completely that they can't rally or escape t
o come again." He hesitated, then continued more softly, as though awed and appalled by what he was saying, "My God, Chop, we're talking about killing three hundred or so men!"

  Chop Clouser nodded sort of stiffly, as though recognition of how many men that really was had just begun to reach him.

  "We can't resort to throwing and hoping, Chop. Hell, armies fight battles without that many people killed outright and here we are a bunch of rank amateurs trying to do it in one shot." Chop twisted uncomfortably but said nothing.

  After a long moment, Toby looked up and sighed audibly, "Well, my friend, here's the way we're going to do it."

  Chop could feel him working at the plan even as he spoke, using the telling to firm it in his own mind and weighing how it sounded to himself as well as to Chop.

  "First, we'll get them to stop and bunch up about here where the cliffs are highest and where the brush is thick down to the river.

  "Right then is when we have to get rid of that armored car. Assuming that Kellog comes rushing up in it the way they claim he has before, we'll do it with a single charge of dynamite buried in the road.

  "The trick will be to get Kellog's mob to take cover off the road. We can do that with rifles.

  "Now once they are in the brush we fire both ends. Unless it's raining that stuff will really burn. But, the big thing will be that we'll have the trees loaded with dynamite that we can set off at will."

  Chop whistled with excitement, his eyes glowing and his head nodding on his thick neck as Toby went on.

  "Ok, that should route 'em back across the road into cover behind those big boulders under the cliff. Probably some will already be there and we'll have to ignore them and make it look safest to go there."

  Toby paused to look upward and Chop's gaze followed. The big man gasped, "Oh my God!"

  "That's right, Chop. Then we drop the whole damned mountain on them."

  +++

  The plan needed refinement of course. Men weren't cattle and you couldn't herd them casually. Chop wondered if some wouldn't try the river and Toby had to agree. Some might try a crossing or attempt to drift downstream and Toby was aiming to get them all. They found an answer they both liked. They would prepare four or so rafts camouflaged like duck blinds and anchor them at good shooting range. Any who tried to swim the river would get a hot reception from gunners hidden behind each raft's thick logs.

  When they spoke going home it was of the plan, and when they marched in silence it was because they were thinking of the plan. "Damn thing seems more complicated the longer I think about it, Toby."

  "Yeah, makes you want to toss it all up and just shoot it out. We can't let go though, Chop. If we don't win big, there will be hell to pay. So a good plan is worth any effort we have to give it."

  A little later he went on, "Security is going to be tough, Chop. We've got to drill holes in those cliffs and get charges buried. Then we've got to fill the trees on the river side with dynamite all wired to different circuits so we can blow what we want to just when we need it."

  "The rafts will take some building too, Tob."

  "Maybe we can build 'em up by Liverpool and float them down at night. Once they're against the bank no one will notice them and that way we won't be attracting more attention to the ambush area."

  Chop thought awhile. "The way to peel that cliff off is to drill down from the top maybe five feet back in.

  Hell, that's just shale and it'll break loose easy as pie."

  "What'll we dig with, Chop? We'll need to go down a good way."

  Chop was ready for that one. "We'll bring the tractor down with my old post hole digger. With an extension, we ought to get down ten feet or so. It'll be worth the fuel, Toby. Only fast way to do it."

  "Oh, I'm not arguing, Chop, but is ten feet enough? We've got to . . . "

  "Enough? My God, Toby, that cliff will probably loosen another ten feet below that! The secret is to tamp the holes good and tight so they don't blow out like a gun barrel and waste power. Man, we'll bury that crowd deeper than a grave . . . if we ever get 'em there, of course.

  "That tractor will draw a lot of attention, though."

  "Sure will. Maybe we'd better do that first. We can leave the holes empty in case anyone gets nosy. After a week or so we can slip down and put in the dynamite.

  "I think we ought to plan on being ready in two weeks, Chop."

  Clouser looked sharply at his friend. Toby's special intuition had been part of their growing up and Chop had seen it work enough to respect it. "Then we'll have to really hump along, Tob. You think it's that close?"

  "Well . . . they could be getting restless down there. We've strung them along for months, and more than a little harvesting is going on south of here. Even though it's early for us, they just might not wait too long. We'd best be ready."

  Later he suggested, "Take a couple of older men who will work steadily and dig those holes, Chop. Put down a lot of them, we want at least two hundred yards of that cliff to come down."

  "Well, that'll be forty or so holes, Toby. It'll take a while."

  "I'll put Johnnie Freet onto the rafts. I'll give him one of the chain saws and a week to get done.

  "Meantime, I'll make up dynamite charges. We'll hook the entire cliff with primer cord so it'll all go at once. How much per hole, Chop?"

  "Only one stick, Toby. We just want to lift that cliff face off so that it falls straight down. One is enough; all tamped in it'll shake the whole face loose just like we want it."

  Chop hesitated, "I still don't figure how you're going to stop 'em cold and get that armored thing up front."

  "Well, I'm working on that. I'll have it right by the time you've got the holes in . . . I hope."

  +++

  He figured out the best way pretty quickly, but he didn't make any announcements about it. All his people knew was that he had a big, permanent-looking sign made up that said:

  500 yards ahead

  ROAD CLOSED BY SHATTO'S WAY

  BE PREPARED TO HALT FOR INSPECTION

  How he would use it they could only guess.

  John Freet went off to make rafts. He planned to build four, each of which could hide prone gunners. Toby emphasized the importance of the rafts looking like small sandbars with lots of dead stuff lodged against them. He also insisted they each have two anchors ready so they wouldn't drift and a hatchet aboard so they could cut loose if they had to. Toby planned no suicide duties. If the rafters were close to being overrun they could chop their anchor lines and the current would swiftly take them beyond reach.

  Chop picked two taciturn older men to go along for the hole drilling, but word of what was going on spread anyway. They could only hope it didn't get beyond the village, but who could know for sure?

  Toby divided his people into groups and began training them separately. They didn't know the overall plan, but each knew its part.

  Delaying a week after drilling the dynamite holes was emotional torture, but they did it. If someone curious came to examine their noisy work he must not find carefully prepared explosive charges. The wait was probably unnecessary as the fine threads Chop had placed in strategic places remained unbroken.

  Toby and Chop went alone to lay the charges, but Freet's crew drifted the rafts downstream and tied them to the bank upstream of the ambush. Toby looked them over and squeezed the younger man's shoulder, "They're just right, John, good job." It wasn't a big compliment but Freet glowed with it.

  Only Freet and Bill Long stayed to help with the dynamite. The rest started for home. They worked as a team, learning where each charge was placed and checking and rechecking the crimping and insertion of each blasting cap.

  The explosives had been rolled down on the doctors' bicycle-wheeled cart. It seemed like a tremendous amount of dynamite but in laying, the pile dwindled swiftly. Forty-five sticks were tamped in along the cliff top.

  Each had a detonator imbedded with a pair of turns of the explosive primer cord wrapped around it. Each cord was pro
perly attached to the main primer cord running the length of the ridge. At the north end, two electrical detonators attached the primer cord to wires running to a good vantage point. From there, just touching the exposed wire ends to a hat-size military explosive generator would start the chain reaction that would blow it all within a split second. After laying the charges they felt nervous walking around underneath the cliff. Just knowing what waited up there was enough to bring sweat.

  It was a lot harder to place Toby's charges in trees.

  He had made them up in bags of roofing nails which he hoped would spray those hiding beneath.

  The wire had to be hidden so that someone passing on the road would not see it and investigate. They got it done to Toby's satisfaction and laid aside the final lengths that would have to cross the road and lead up to the generator at the detonating point.

  One final charge had to be placed and it was a big one. Where rubble and potholes narrowed the highway to a single car width, they dug a tapered hole that remained square all the way to the bottom. Into it they placed a four-stick dynamite charge and covered it with fist-sized stones. Then they carefully replaced the pavement so that it looked commonplace. That wire and the tree wires were buried and led up to the detonating point. Extra care was taken to disguise the wires' placement because, at that point, the road might be closely examined by their enemy.

  Finally they were done, and Toby knew he'd held off long enough without explaining the whole plan. If he could not make it for any reason, someone else would have to do his part, but with everything in place he believed Shatto's Way had a reasonable chance for survival,

  +++

  Chapter 29

  "This is my plan and I'll want to run through the whole thing before you make comments. Once you've got the big picture we can work together on any changes."

  He gestured toward the ambush site and started in.