Stranger, page 6
“I hear you, man, and the western lands are the way to go. Are they worth starting a war?” Washington said slowly. “Against a foe that may have a superior weapon?”
“We’ve got to do something. I ordered grain moved into safe storage and cisterns filled on the Hill. I also started the arrow-works,” Beach said. “That’s still not enough.”
“Making more work for your people?” Washington had a trace of a smile on his face.
“Clan protection comes first, and I resent the implication of your comment.” Beach rose to his feet, finger wagging in Washington’s direction.
“Easy, easy.” Ramsey gave Beach a quick glance. “Maybe we should send some of my Horse Soldiers out west. We could let them know they can’t burn our farms and run their electricity lines into our area without consequences.” He smiled, looking at Beach out the corner of his eye. “Maybe you’d like my Horse Soldiers to stick a few arrows into some Fed people to remind them who they’re dealing with. Or maybe you’d want them to go to Defiance and burn a few houses?”
“No, no,” Beach said quickly. “I’m not asking for a declaration of war.” He glanced around. The other Elders were smiling. “Instead of that, how about capturing a few of these Fed workers? Ask them some questions and then send them back. That way, we can send a message without starting a war.” “Might work,” Monahan said. “It’d get their attention.”
“Yeah, but if we send the Horse Soldiers out, let’s send a platoon or two. It’s mighty tough to get folk with guns to surrender to a patrol,” Charlie Ramsey said. “My soldiers don’t like to eat crow when talking to the Fed.”
“Sounds like a decision to me,” said Beach.
“As soon as the weather breaks, I’ll send a couple of platoons out west,” Ramsey said. “In the meantime, have Del Corso keep pumping MacPherson. We’ll meet here in one week.” Ramsey always liked to get the last word in.
Chapter Twelve
Chip Wilson twisted his hat and shuffled his feet. It was his first visit to Billy’s office in City Hall, a large, opulent room with heavy mahogany furniture and a thick oriental rug.
Chip bit his lower lip before he spoke. “Sir, we’ve already collected a couple hundred tons of steel. We’ll get the rest from the old refinery down by the mouth of the Maumee River.” He lowered his eyes.
Billy had learned about the visit of the Clan horsemen late last year. He’d ordered the land around Perrysburg cleared of Clan humans and their homes burned. That, he knew, was the way to get rid of troublesome vermin.
“You can go,” he said.
I must get the electric furnace working, and soon, Billy thought. To get a propulsion tube with the right properties, the iron must be free from impurities. His calculations showed it would take ten pours from the primitive metal melter to make a complete propulsion tube.
By the start of the next warm season, Billy thought, I shall have the tube made. It should take only eight days to complete each pour.
The undamaged iron-casting facility in Perrysburg only needed the dust, debris, and bird droppings removed. A team of workers had already started on the job. Cleaned up and connected, the furnace would be ready for operation.
Billy’s two brightest trainees, Freddy Crosby and Joyce Vargas, had repaired the furnace’s switch-gear and controls. He’d set up a gas-generator to make hydrogen, which when distilled, provided fuel for the fusion units. The process would give off oxygen, which he needed to purify the iron.
Billy had Kevin’s men collect heavy angle iron to make frames for the huge boxes that held the molds. Workers screened sand brought from Lake Erie beaches and stockpiled it in the molding area. Other workers brought red clay from the Vermilion River valley on the edge of Clan territory to use as a binder for the sand used to make the molds.
As Perrysburg grew, Billy found it required more supplies.
A steady stream of horse-drawn wagons brought provisions from Defiance. It was a jolting trip over the pothole-plagued highway that led to the only remaining bridge across the Maumee River. Initially, bandits harassed the supply wagons, slowing the work. After a brief campaign, Fed guard units captured the bandits and forced them to repair the road. As the road improved, traffic sped up.
Billy realized the warm season was coming to an end and felt a sense of accomplishment. The workers had finished the electric line and opened a machine shop to make parts for the furnace. The unit of Fed guards sent to Perrysburg built a ditch and revetment defense around the foundry while off-duty. More workers arrived over the warm season, opening shops and starting a weekly market.
Farmers took over the empty farms nearby to supply meat and game to the newly opened market. Some had even planted a winter wheat crop, which would be ready by the start of the next warm season.
Soon, he realized, Perrysburg wouldn’t need food from Defiance. Yes, I will make the propulsion tube soon.
“Golly-gee, my butt hurts,” Todd Sinkton said. “I’ve been in this saddle way too long.”
Ramsey had assigned him to guide the platoon of Horse Soldiers sent to the mouth of the Maumee River. He’d been on horseback for the entire week.
“Bitch, bitch, bitch. All you ever do is complain.” Shig Matsuo laughed as he rode alongside Todd on an old road. “Here, you’ve got a chance to see the beauty and richness of our western lands.” He pointed to the flat horizon, vividly green shimmering under the bright summer sun.
Yesterday, they had passed south of Sandusky Bay and now headed northwest through the flat area that had reverted to marshland. From the road’s elevation, they could see ditches and waterways, lush with rushes and sedges and full of waterfowl.
“All I hear is your complaints about a blister on your bum.” It was Shig’s first trip away from home. “Where’s your spirit of adventure? It’s a beautiful day and we’re on our way to redeem the honor of the Clan.” Shig had just been promoted to squad leader.
“Let me share something with you, Shig.” Todd winced as his horse jolted him. “It’s the definition of adventure. D’you know what it is?”
“No.” Shig cocked his head to listen.
“Adventure is some poor bastard having a bloody miserable time in a God-forsaken place, miles and miles away from home with no friends or help and surviving to talk about it. High adventure is being farther away, having an even more atrocious time, and in serious risk of losing his life.”
“Ah, you have no sense of adventure.” Shig laughed. “We’re almost there. At least, if what you said was true.” The column halted beside a pond streaked with floating green algae and rimmed with reeds. A flock of iridescent mallards, squawking noisily, ran across the water’s surface straining to get airborne. Blue herons, motionless on stalk-like legs, stared at them, their long necks swiveling.
“See those things over there?” Todd pointed to the tiny finger-like objects jutting into the clear blue sky. “That’s the old petroleum refinery at the mouth of the Maumee. It’ll take us an hour to get there.”
As they rode on, Todd brooded. He was getting too old to spend his life out on the frontier. He missed his wife and children. Why did it have to be me who has to bring the troops out west? He knew the answer was he’d brought the news to them about the Fed’s electricity and knew the area. However, he thought, do the Clan Elders have any idea what we go through? Do they even care?
As the sun sank toward the horizon, the column worked its way through a maze of crumbling roads and flooded, reed-filled ditches. The flat land, no longer drained, was now swamp and nourished vast flocks of waterfowl. The old power plant, jagged and torn from a long-ago explosion, dominated the area. The main building was now a mound of brick and concrete rubble. The smokestack had somehow survived to stand tall and straight. It was now the lookout tower and lighthouse for the Clan’s harbor at the mouth of the Maumee River.
When Billy equipped the factories in Defiance with electric motors to drive their metalworking machines, gun production rose. That caused a shortfall in black powder. As a result, farmers put in niter beds that matured over the winter to produce a large supply of saltpeter in the late spring. The Fed traded guns with the Lima-Findlay Alliance to get sulfur from the old refinery. By late spring, the black powder shortfall had become a surplus.
The Fed army doubled in size. The captains of the guard used the bandits as an excuse to get more recruits and guns. After the army eliminated the bandits, they turned their attention to brigands in outlying areas. The Midwest Federation incorporated some of the smaller and more distant farming communities. The Fed’s influence and territory grew.
Electricity gave the gun makers and factories a voracious appetite for steel and there was never enough until Billy found that steel rails from the old railroads were made from high quality steel. Though the metal in the rails was good enough to make guns, it required a lot of machining. Captain Ed Kerr sent out Fed guards on patrol who also collected steel scrap for the furnace. He wanted the furnace to cast steel rods and bars for the factories to make more guns.
The guards ranged widely seeking sources of scrap steel. Each patrol made it a point to bring salvaged scrap back. Soon, they found the old oil refinery just south of the mouth of the Maumee River was an excellent source of scrap metal. The refinery became a regular destination for patrols.
Chud Pepperdine stared out from the lookout toward the south. As leader of the Maumee Harbor, he wanted to be first to know when the Clan contingent would arrive.
The harbor was tucked in the lee of a twenty-foot-high wall made from large gray limestone boulders. It was an old dredging impoundment area surrounded by water on three sides, which provided shelter for the harbor from storms.
Within the impoundment, long since filled, was the Clan’s settlement. It stood well above the water level of Lake Erie and was home to a small village. Neat limestone cottages with bleached thatch roofs stood apart from the rows of gray wooden barracks that could hold two hundred troops. To the east were a dozen weather-beaten warehouses. All the buildings huddled close to the shore side of the impoundment up against the wall that protected them from direct attack.
The narrow road on top of a rocky break-wall was the only connection from the impoundment area to the shore. A gaunt gray guardhouse sat astride the road as an integral part of the fortifications.
The anchorage for the harbor was far from the road, well out of bowshot range. Fishing sloops and multi-mast merchant vessels bobbed at anchor, their rigging rattling in the breeze. Several dozen families who lived at the harbor had defended it from Fed raids in the past.
Chud, as leader of the Maumee Harbor, had reported the raids to the Clan. The Clan had promised reinforcements, but never delivered them because the Elders were convinced the harbor was impregnable.
However, when they received Todd’s report last fall of the Fed’s incursion at Perrysburg, the harbor now received regular boats with the supplies long requested from Rivermouth, the main port on the Rocky River.
Now he waited for two platoons of Horse Soldiers to arrive—seventy-two of the Clan’s best. He could see the Clan contingent riding along the road on the break-wall.
“Chud, you ol’ pecker.” Todd punched him on the arm in a playful fashion. “It’s good to see your ugly mug. I swear you get bigger and fatter each time I see you.”
“Todd, you skinny, frog-faced little shit, you haven’t changed a bit.” Chud smiled. “You still getting a sore ass from riding that bony nag? I tell you, you ought to come and live here. Bring your family; learn how to live right. Maybe then you’d put on some weight.”
“Yeah, sure Chud,” Todd said. “Give up my farm and all I own, just to swill beer in this rat-infested swamp?”
Chud was always pleased to have company, but he saw impatience flash across the faces of the tired soldiers arranged in columns behind Todd. This was a chance to hear some news and learn what his old friends back on the Hill were doing. He knew something was brewing, for this was the first time in years two platoons—six whole squads—had been sent to the harbor, not to mention the sailboat that came earlier in the week, loaded with provisions and hundreds of bundles of arrows—ten thousand in total. He was sure something had twisted the Elders’ britches, but they hadn’t told him.
“Chud, this is Commander Chris Kuchinski,” Todd said.
“Your fame precedes you, Commander Kuchinski.”
“Hello, Chud.” Chris Kuchinski was tall, with a lean wiry build, and seemed almost ageless. She had a grown son, a long-dead husband, and a proud history of fighting for the Clan.
“There’s hot water in the bathhouses. Supper in an hour in the meeting hall.” Chud’s voice boomed over the now-silent clan soldiers. Still talking, he led the weary soldiers to the stables and the barracks.
After a hot shower and a change of clothing, Todd felt better. A generous dollop of lanolin had eased the pain in his sore butt. He made his way to the large meeting hall made from rectangular blocks of limestone. From within, he could hear the clink of dishes over the voices and the occasional burst of laughter.
Once inside, Todd peered into a tureen of fish chowder. Small red skin potatoes, onions, and big chunks of fish swam in a rich creamy broth. Melted butter streaked the surface along with tiny flecks of red pepper and chopped green cilantro.
Damn, he thought. That smells good.
He watched the children bring in fresh-baked bread, crisp and crunchy. Chud kept glasses filled with the dry white wine that came from the Erie Islands. Meanwhile, helpers ladled chowder into the soldiers’ bowls, while at the same time, Chud kept the conversation going. It was dark before the yawning soldiers finally pushed themselves away from the tables and headed back to the barracks.
Chapter Thirteen
The next day, Shig Matsuo led his squad across the causeway and formed up. He had been given the task of scouting out the area and gathering information. He also had been told to capture a few Feds as long as it didn’t require a pitched battle. It would be a long ride to the Perrysburg area, where Todd and the scouts had encountered the linemen.
Barely underway, wending their way along the bank of the Maumee, as they drew close to the old refinery, Shig heard a loud clang.
“Whoa.” He raised his hand.
The line of soldiers became motionless.
In the distance came the crashing sound of metal hitting against metal.
“What in hell is that?” Shig stared at a maze of strange equipment, rusted and overgrown with weeds and vines.
It had an odd look—almost magical—with tall metal structures reaching abruptly for the sky. It smelled alien, like the oil they bought from the fierce mountain people in Pennsylvania.
Shig put his index finger against his lips and gave the signal to dismount. “Benny,” he said, voice pitched low. “Go take a look-see, quiet-like, and get back to me.”
The young scout nodded and disappeared into the vegetation.
Shig motioned for the remainder of the squad to secure their horses.
In less than ten minutes Benny reappeared. “Sir,” he said, slightly out of breath. “There’re a bunch a people doing stuff with the, er, whatever.” He pointed at the refinery towers. “About eight of them.”
“Are they armed?”
“They’ve got guns, but only two look like guards.”
“Have they heard us?”
Benny squinted his eyes. “Naw, I don’t think so. They’re too busy doing whatever it is they’re doing.”
“Okay, listen up.” Shig huddled his squad together. “This group will do fine. We want to capture them. Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to. We want them alive. Got it? We’re sending them a message, not declaring war.”
Shig pointed to Benny. “Lead us to them, nice and quiet.”
Benny led the squad quietly toward the sounds, through mounds covered by tall weeds. As they approached, voices and the sound of metal banging against metal got louder. The scout held up his hand for them to stop as he peered around the edge of a crumbling concrete block building.
Shig crept forward to join Benny and saw a half dozen people working on a tall metal structure. There were two guards leaning on their guns, talking. He motioned for the squad to pull back.
“Okay, you, Jones, take four to the left. Burke, you take four to the right. Wait until you see me move in, then all move at the same time. We’ve got to get the jump on them, before their guards have a chance to use their guns, okay?”
Silently, the soldiers surrounded the work party. “Freeze,” Shig yelled. “Don’t move, hands up.”
At the sound of Shig’s voice, the Clan soldiers, a dozen men in their characteristic drab brown, rose as one, with bows drawn and aimed.
“Drop your guns and you won’t get hurt.”
The workers and the guards stared. One by one, they dropped their tools and guns. Slowly, they raised their hands.
“Burke, have your men get their guns.” Shig motioned for the rest of the soldiers to spread out.
Burke brought one of the guns to Shig. “Take a look at this.” He held out a shiny, polished rifle.
Shig inspected it and saw that it was new, rifled and well made.
In addition, the black powder looked as good as any wet-milled powder made by the Clan. They didn’t look like a typical farmer’s gun. Workers were carrying fine quality weapons? Didn’t make any sense to him.
Shig went to the prisoners. “Okay, you’re under arrest for trespassing on Clan property.”
“But we were just collecting scrap.…” One of the prisoners said.
“Shut up, get in line.” Shig gestured to the Clan soldiers. “Alright, let’s get the prisoners back to the harbor.” He pointed to the north, in the direction of the lake.
