EMP 1500 MILES FROM HOME (16 page)

"I didn't want to worry you and I never thought it would really happen," he paused. "Where did you meet Wayne?"

"He showed up at my trailer looking for water."

"He sure is a big guy, and Yeti, wow, that boy is big."

"Yeah Dad, we found him on the way to the ranch."

"You could have done a hell of a lot worse for a traveling companion than Wayne."

"I know Dad, believe me, I know. It has not been a cakewalk coming home."

"No, I suspect it wasn't. When I met Cap at that conference a few years back, all he could talk about was his son-in-law, Wayne. He is really proud of him. He said Wayne is a lot sharper than he thinks he is, and is just a good person. He was glad his daughter married him instead of the dreck she usually brought home."

"He is a good person, Dad."

"And you are in love with him?"

"Yes. I fell for him very quickly. He is gentle and thoughtful..."

"And younger than you. What about children?"

"I'm not too old to have children, Dad."

"No, but you are getting close."

"Well, that would be up to Wayne anyway. I love him but I don't think he wants me."

"Of course he wants you, Daughter. You are a good-looking woman, and I saw the way he looks at you. He is just a good man trying to be faithful to his wife, a wife who may not even be alive now."

"I think she is, Dad."

"That old Indian stuff of your Mom's, huh."

"Yeah."

"God, I miss that woman."

"Me too Dad."

Wayne

Ranch life was good. George taught me more than I thought there was to know about horses and gave me a lot of riding practice checking fences. After a month he said I knew enough about horses to get by.

It was getting colder. It had not snowed yet and, at an elevation of 6500 feet, that surprised me. George assured me that the winter weather around Mountainair was better than I would encounter further to the east. He encouraged me to stay on for the winter and start for Indiana in the spring. As much as I wanted to get home and see Lucy and Ben, I agreed with him.

For one thing, my shoes were wearing out. I used a sewing awl to re-sew the seams and patch a couple of holes with leather scraps, but it was obvious I would need shoes before I could travel east.

One day, George, Yeti, Julie, and I rode to a neighboring ranch. The ranch manager there, Old Bob, made custom boots. I traded him two 30-30s, an M4, and some ammo for six pairs of boots; two for Julie, two for Yeti, and two for me. He said they would be ready before spring as he had everything he needed on hand and would get right on it.

Old Bob also made the three of us stay on our feet setting posts and carrying bags of feed the rest of the day. I figured he was a shrewd old duck and this was his way of getting some extra work done. George just watched from the porch. By nightfall we were all three tired from the work. It wasn't until then that Old Bob measured our feet. He also took plaster casts of the soles of our feet.

When we started back to the Double H, I mentioned to George that I thought that was an odd way to do business. George laughed and said. "Old Bob knows what he is doing. He wanted to measure your feet when they were swollen after a day's work. When you get those boots you will be able to walk all day in them and they will feel like air on your feet. I have worn his boots for years now. I wouldn't have any others." George glanced at my feet. "For your boots Wayne, Old Bob may have to tan a few more hides."

Julie was happy on the ranch after our time on the road. I spent much of my free time planning the trip in the spring. I went to Mountainair once and posted a few handwritten bills looking for men who would like to travel to Indiana in the spring. George said I might get a few takers. I also made a couple of trips to surrounding ranches with the ranch wagon and traded for stuff I would need for the spring trip. Julie usually went with me and Yeti sometimes did. As usual, Yeti made some excellent suggestions and turned out to be a better trader than I was. No matter, my goal was just to use trade to get home to my wife and child. I didn't want to make a career of it.

We had been at the ranch for a little more than two months. It was now December and the temperatures were between 20 and 40 degrees most days. I figured I had enough good weather left for one more trading trip. The ranch I was going to visit was about forty miles from the Double H. Ambrose, the rancher, and I met in Mountainair. He invited me out to see what kind of trade we might work out.

I loaded George's light wagon with trade goods and my gear and then hooked up one of the half Percheron horses to it. By now I was better with horses so I decided to make this trip solo. Besides, Julie and Louisa were canning beef on the wood stove and George was teaching Yeti the basics of blacksmithing.

I set out after breakfast. I wore a holstered pistol, a forty-five Colt semi-auto, and the Mosin was leaning against the seat beside me. A Vietnam-era M16 was just behind the seat. So far there had been no trouble on these trips and I didn't expect any on this trip either. My path was on the back roads and I was not going to pass through any towns or villages.

I was still wearing my wingtips because my boots weren't ready. Yeti and Julie had theirs, but mine would not be ready for a week yet. I did have a cowboy hat. It was an old hat Julie found in the tack room. It was too big for anyone else on the ranch, but still too small for my melon head. Julie took some scrap material from another old hat she found and spliced a couple of wedges into my hat so that it fit me. I now had a two-tone hat, but it fit well and the seams were waterproofed. Except for the shoes, I now looked Western. I even had a bandana that Julie made for me because the regular ones were too small to tie around my head, and nearly too small to tie around my neck.

As Cap often told me, being too big, too small, too fat, too thin, too smart, or too dumb were really disadvantages that must be overcome in life. I did wonder about the too smart thing, but, since I met Yeti, I thought I understood that better too. Yeti was simply too smart to fit in with most folks, and too big and fat too. Well, he fit in just fine with Julie and me. George took a liking to him as well.

I made about 25 miles before making camp. The Horse, Misty, could have gone farther, but I didn't want to push her. It was about 15 more miles to my destination, so I thought I should be there well before dark the next day. The night was uneventful and I was on the way about an hour after first light.

Just before noon, I felt a slamming pain in my temple. I heard the sound of the shot as I was falling from the wagon seat. I passed out when I hit the road.

When I came to, I was tied up in the back of the Double H wagon. My right eye was crusted with blood and I had a headache that an entire bottle of painkillers wouldn't have touched. My hat was lying next to me. It had two holes near the edge of the crown where the bullet had passed through. I couldn't see who was driving the wagon, but I could hear horses behind the wagon. I assumed that meant there were several attackers. I guessed they were bandits.

My legs and hands were bound. All I could do was wait. Before long I passed out again. Head wounds will do that, I hear.

Two men dragged me out of the back of the wagon, none too gently. I discovered the ground where I was dumped was just as hard as the road had been. Then they picked me up, I think it took three men, and carried me to a small building. They tossed me through the door and I found out that the floor in the building was even harder than the dirt outside.

I fell face down and managed to roll over. There were seven men in the building. They looked like hell, but then I was sure I did too. Two of them came over and untied me. I was surprised to see one was a dwarf.

"Damn, you are a big fellow," The dwarf said as he worked at the knot binding my hands.

I put forth my best verbal greeting and said "Uh."

"My, well-educated too, I see." Soon they had my hands and feet free. The dwarf started cleaning my head wound with a rag and some water. "It is just a graze," he said. "You will be fine—or at least as fine as it gets here."

"Where are we?" I asked.

"As best we can tell, somewhere near Liberta, New Mexico."

"I have never heard of it."

"Me either," the Dwarf said, "but Jerry over there is from around here. That's where he thinks we are."

"Why are we here?"

"We are basically slaves. We work in the mine out there."

"What kind of mine is it?"

"The Boss—that's what he likes to be called—says it is a gold mine, but I don't think there is any gold here. The geology is wrong."

"Do you know about geology?"

"Yes, I majored in it in college."

"So the Boss is just plain crazy?"

"And mean! I think he is a low-functioning psychopath at best."

"That doesn't sound very good."

"No, it isn't. By the way, I am Dave."

I shook his hand. It was small but exceptionally strong. "I am Wayne."

"How did you get so big?"

"How did you get so small?" We both smiled and I knew we would be friends.

It was almost dark when they took me from the wagon. Now it was dark. I could tell from the lack of light showing through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. I spent almost an hour talking with some of the men in the candle-lit building. Apparently each of them had been captured and brought here.

Three of them had creases on their heads too. Dave said that some western folks used to use a rifle to crease wild horses and take them down for capture. He said he figured they killed some of the horses too. It seemed to me that anyone who would capture slaves the same way cared nothing about whether they lived or died. That would be good to keep in mind, until I escaped anyway.

Everyone in the building was bone-tired and most were soon asleep. Dave and I talked for another hour.

"How did they capture you?" I asked.

"I was headed west on Highway 60 when my car stopped. The next day some military guys came along in a truck. They said they were National Guard and were rescuing people who were stranded on the road. They brought us here."

"All I see is men. Were there any women?"

"Yes," Dave hung his head, "these are some really bad people."

"Like something out of a horror movie?"

"Yeah, the women are all dead. They killed them one at a time in front of us."

Dave and I talked for a while after that. I did my best to get his mind off of the worst. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't. After a while we blew out the candles and went to sleep.

A banging on the door woke me. There was light in the window cracks now. After the banging stopped the door opened and three men with rifles stood there. "Come on you garbage, let's get going. It is time to go to work."

I followed the others out of the building. We climbed into the back of a waiting wagon. "What, no breakfast?" I asked.

Dave said, "relax big fellah, there will be some swill at the mine."

I didn't relax, but I did look around. All I could see were low rolling hills and sparse vegetation. The men with rifles would have no difficulty shooting anyone who tried to escape.

We soon arrived at the mine. I estimated it to be less than two miles from the prison shack. The mine entrance was a hole in the side of a small bluff. There was a large tailings pile outside, so I figured it was a pre-existing mine. There would not have been time to dig that much since the End of the World. I followed the rest of the prisoners into the mine.

Just inside the mine was a large pot of what looked to be gruel. I have never seen gruel and have no idea what it looks like, but this looked like gruel to me. It was cold and it tasted as bad as it looked. I was not able to eat it. Several of the men laughed. One said, "You will learn to eat it. It took me two days."

We were allowed ten minutes to eat. Then the tools were brought in and we were put to work. It was all pick and shovel, drill and double jack, or single jack. They put me to loading a cart with a shovel. It was heavy work and tiring. My head still hurt and the work made it worse, to the point of double vision a couple of times. I kept working anyway. I didn't think there was much choice.

Only the guards spoke. We were not supposed to speak unless requested to do so, that is if you can call being told what to do at gunpoint a request. The day passed slowly. No lunch showed up and there were no breaks. I observed that the other men just slowed down every now and then, or went to the water barrel, to rest. I also doubted they were working to their full capacity. They were dogging it, so I did the same. I saw no point in working myself to death.

About an hour before dark the guards shut us down and collected the tools. There was another pot of gruel at the mine entrance. I still couldn't eat it, though my stomach was growling and hurt from hunger. After ten minutes of gruel time, we climbed into the wagons and the procession moved out.

Back in the building, which Dave called 'Prison Central', I discovered there was a crude outhouse built onto the shed. It had no door, but it was a three-hole special. "What about showers?" I asked Dave.

"Once a week they run us through the pond, clothes and all."

"Something to look forward to?"

"Yeah," Dave grinned. "We are a stinky bunch but after a while you don't notice any more."

"That is a blessing."

"One of the few, Wayne. One of the few."

Things went on just like the first day for almost a week. By now I ate the gruel, but it still tasted bad. My head felt better and I was constantly trying to figure out how to escape. I wanted to get back to Julie and Yeti, and I wanted to see Lucy and Ben again.

Julie

"Dad, Wayne should be back by now."

"Maybe he is staying at Ambrose's ranch for a few days.

"I don't think so."

"Well, give it a few more days and we will go look for him. I would like to talk to Ambrose anyway. I'll bet we will find Wayne there, if he doesn't show up here first."

I was frustrated. I knew Dad was right, or at least I suspected he was. But I missed Wayne and I was worried."

Yeti

I agreed with Julie. Wayne should be home by now. Something was wrong. Wayne had been gone four days longer than he said he would. Wayne was a man of his word. He wouldn't be late if he could help it.

"George."

"Yes Yeti."

"I am going to look for Wayne."

"I take it you are not asking permission?"

"No Sir. I will go on foot if necessary, but I would like to borrow one of your big workhorses."