The current state of the United States has once again degraded as Congress passes legislation it refuses to read, and pretends that its handing corporate interests and foreign powers a blank line of blanket authority for them to just "fill in whatever they want" somehow is not treasonous on their part.
Threats by the jackass useful idiots of the illegal Obama Administration to use asymmetric warfare on us in recent days and weeks now abound. Barriers of good and morality set in place by Christian faith benefit society, yet it is that Christian faith that Obama the Usurper has engaged and employed and supplied Islamic terrorists in literal genocidal actions and war against. If the multitudes of racist hypocrite and jackass useful idiots who hypnotically follow Obama more blindly than most late 1930s German Nazis followed Hitler really want a religion of death which Islam is, to replace Christianity and the beauty that life brings with that which naturally follows what happens to a corpse, then the barriers of life's restraint will be removed, and things of great horrific destruction or extremely painful and tortures of life totally unimaginable to the life loving and peaceable Christian, become obvious to those to whom the barriers are removed. The jackass useful idiots who adore and worship Obama their lover of death and destruction are 100% incompetent to bring about peace and security (let alone prosperity), which peace and security and prosperity a Christian Faith naturally brings about in the American Culture, or they knowingly conspire to destroy the American Culture and all the people in it in the same Gotterdammerung Wagnerian insanity that possessed the doctor poisoned Adolf Hitler (from 1938 on) whom gradually made Hitler more and more insane through prescription drug and prescription injection quackery until he almost saw Germany annihilated in war and destruction largely because of that arguably medically induced dementia.
So as a diversion from all the bad that could be harped upon, I try to insert a bit of levity with a fictional old west that never was, but would be funny in a fictional setting known to be just fictional, and a diversion away from the ills of today for just a matter of minutes or more, depending on how long you might muse upon it. I have also tried to write in such a way that you might have as much fun in the retelling as you would in the reading. I hope you will enjoy this next installment. -- Brianroy
June 18, 1882 Stampede!
The new Pastor wasted no time getting settled in town, and the way he did it was by preachin' to the women of the town first, and having late morning and early afternoon tea and coffee and lemonade and dainty stuff that was pot lucked by the women in town to show off their baking skills one to the other. In less than a week, the wife was draggin' me out of the breakfast chair by the ear and orderin' me to go help build that new dang chapel, about 3 1/2 blocks away, down aways then left, across the street and a block down turnin' right and goin' south of Beth's General Merchandise Store. I wasn't two steps down out the front door before she in all her 5 months of being with child and bulging, buried her right shoe right in the middle of my sittin' place, just as Sheriff Bond was a lookin' over as he was passin' by on his black mustang. But it got worse, as her shoe stuck, and there I was, slowly a runnin' down the rest of the steps and up the path to the front white picket fence gate wincing and loudly groanin' in intense pain, feelin' as if I was a draggin' a dead weight, and the little woman one foot out in the air like so and the other stuck up in my sittin' place, with her a wavin' her arms and a bouncin' up and down off the ground a cussin' at me from behind. The Sheriff was a laughin' so hard he fell off his horse. When I looked behind I saw I was in even more trouble and was a hurtin' so bad I couldn't pull her foot out. There I was, a bent over holding onto the white picket fence gate with both hands for dear life, and a crowd was a quickly gatherin' to see my predicament.
One of the wife's sisters and her mother came over, all a flustered and embarrassed, and with the Sheriff they pulled the wife's right foot out of her shoe, and then the Sheriff pulled the shoe out of where she with what must have been a running kick had so forcefully lodged it. After which them women told the Sheriff to take that shoe and to burn it. Me. I had to git over to Doc MacDonald's for some help of my own. It was two weeks before I could saddle a horse again, and three weeks before I could sit almost without pain again. By that time, I had gotten the entire framin' done and was a layin' the final touches on the roof, as the school marm along with the Pastor and his wife, and some others took all the small children of the town (around 60 of them), south of town to picnic just north of the waterhole that was filled in by 4 mile Creek. I told them who was in charge of the children that a new herd was a comin' up from south a ways and was less than two days out; but between the Sheriff, the Town Council, and others objectin' to my objectin', they paid me no mind.
On June 18, at about 10 in the mornin', I was drinkin' from my second pail of beer, wipin' my brows of sweat, checkin my .45s to make sure they wasn't a comin' loose out of the holsters, and lookin' out to the horizon south. And there I saw the incomin' herd of more than 3,000 cattle clear the last hill about 4 miles south of the watering hole, comin in from the southwest. I called out a ways and got Beth's attention, as she was out writin' in a little book or somethin', and told her to send out a rider to git them kids back into town. She said not to worry, and that Marshall Jackson's dynamite was ready, and short fused in a large sack (which she pointed to) with a pencil she then put back behind her right ear. "But Beth", I cried down, "the Jones Cattle from Texas has just cleared Bishop's knoll!" Beth then called out to Henry, and sent him a runnin' to Lars' Livery, in the opposite direction to fetch a horse and ride.
As Henry disappeared around the corner, Beth called up that my wife was out there with my children, and as she said that my hair stood up. Then all of a sudden, dust clouds that took me a few short seconds as I whirled around and screamed down to Beth with all my voice I could muster, and yelled, "STAM-PEDE!!! STAM-PEDE!!! Beth! Cigar! Light it! I'm a comin' for the dyna-mite!!!"
Beth and I grew up in the same home, and we are cousins. She knows when I am dead to rights serious, and the way I was a riskin' my neck scurryin' off of that chapel, she wasted no time gettin' a cigar, bitin' of the end, a lightin' it and then pullin' out the bag of 14 charges of Sheriff Jackson's dynamite of 4 sticks for each charge and the 20 second fuses apiece in them. I hopped my Palomino, raced over to Beth, grabbed the dynamite, bit into the cigar and muttered, "Yeck! No wonder you'se still a widow!" And rode off at a hard gallop toward the water hole.
As we rode hard toward the hole, I didn't have to sink spur to make the good ole' boy ride. And I could kinda hear the town alarm bell a ringin' behind to gather up the men of the town any time there was a posse or fire troop to be had. But I couldn't wait, my wife, my kids, and the town kids....
And then it happened, my vision went narrow like the road, time slowed to molasses, and I scanned out to try and figure if we could get ahead of the stampede as I charged that good ole boy across the fields at a high gallop, a prayin' we would make it in time, a prayin' he wouldn't tire, a prayin' we wouldn't trip in a gopher hole or nothin'. Minutes passed, and I saw that there was some stir and that quite a few of the children were out in the fields well past the water hole, and right in the path of more than 3,000 half ton and more longhorn steers. Most of those children had gathered up in a bunch, about 20 of them, about a half mile from the hole, and away from any corral fencin' and wagons that could deflect the cattle path as they went around the water at the hole, if they did.
When I was within half a mile of the children from the northeast, the Stampede was about that or slightly more from the children from the southwest. And all theys could do is stand in a group like scared sheep, clingin' on tight to one another in a cluster bunch. I took a couple of deep puffs on the cigar Beth gave me, and ran me a Calvary pattern I used in the War. At about 13 rods from the children, between them and the incomin' stampede, I lit and threw down 10 dynamite charges, and they blew less than 8 or 9 rods ahead of the the herd. As they blew in a v-line I took to a center position between the children and the stampedin' herd. As they blew, I couldn't quite tell through the dust that was kicked up that the herd was a splittin' perfectly in loops away to the right in a circular run, and to my left to an area south of the waterin' hole and down along 4 mile creek. As that was a startin' to come about, I threw the last 4 dynamite charges which I lit with Beth's cigar, with 2 charges to the right and 2 charges to the left at the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock hand positions, if you was to say the on-comin' stampedin' herd was my 12 o'clock. As soon as I threw the last charge, my Palomino bucked and threw me for a loop, but I landed in a way where I bounced off my back and instinctively drew my right .45 and fired 3 shots as a longhorn came through the dust right at me and dropped him some 30 feet away. I tangled with my left .45 as scanned the dust, but I must have looked down, as another 3 came besides. I shot one to the right once in the neck and he veered off left, but another steer had charged full on into me, and was a carryin' me toward the children. My .45 from my right hand had flown off, and I was later told was found on that longhorn's left horn. Just before we reached the children, I was able to fire off my left .45 through the right eye of that critter 4 times and pump the last two into the other steer a few yards behind to my left, just before we hit a gopher hole, and I took the full brunt of an 1100 pound steer in the fall, and stoppin' where my head was less than 3 feet away from the nearest child.
Summarizin' Diary Notes made on October 10, 1882
Regardin' My Recovery.
Here I leave off personal family notes regardin' kin and certain opinions on other matters of a personal nature. But startin' from June 18th....
For more than 3 days I was laid out cold, with folks expectin' me to be a dyin' while a prayin' in vigils day and night, and in turn cookin' and a providin' for me and mine for the next 2 months, until Beth put me to work at the counter of her General Store for two more months before the Town Council would let the Sheriff put me back to work as Deputy again. Folks after that were so often so nice to me, regular like, as they was all relieved. Theys even forgave me for skunkin' the town after that, with a certain exception I told you about earlier. No longer did I have to hear them yellin' "Skunk!" (as they did for almost a month) from all different directions whenever I was around. And folks I never knew by name before would come to visit and thank me personal like for savin' their kin for weeks and months after it was long past. I sometimes remember that Stampede Day and sometimes I wonder because more and more what happened seems more dream-like than a memory. Yet there it was and there it happened on June 18, 1882.
I reckon I was never as brave as that day, you never would have know'd I had reined back on bravery on the inside, because like in the war between the States for the Confederacy, you were always tired goin' into battle and then you got used to always a bein' scared. But you got the job done, and then you went home, only to find you couldn't ever really go home anymore. You could only hope that one day, you could make a new home and a new paradise on earth for you and yours, and to live peaceable like to the end of your days, never havin' to see violence again. And when that couldn't happen, you use what you learn, and at the right time git all that bravery back and more besides you ever had, and fight like angels against the powers of Hades and all their demons to make the world safe for your children and the children of your children, which you hope you lives old enough to see reared up in more peace and liberty and prosperity than even they git as well.
Anyway, that's how it was for me. - Deputy B., retired. (June 11, 1898)
No comments:
Post a Comment