Chapter 39

It seemed like every time I thought I could take Terri, Johnny, Jimmy, and the Damsel Carla back to Jacksville something else would come up. Nothing really dangerous or anything of the sort, but there always seemed to be some little administrative snafu sticking its head up to keep things roiled.

I finally had Johnny and Jimmy go back to Jacksville and I sent a message with them requesting Conroe and about a dozen of his guards to make the trip with a wagon load of cast goods and other merchandise to sell in the new store. I wanted them down here to keep a lid on while we held an election for mayor. I had my heart set on Jenkins becoming mayor and there seemed to be more toughs dropping into town to stir things up.

They didn't seem to be organized or anything of the sort, but I was getting a hint they were being sent in from somewhere with the express intention of causing trouble. I intended to enforce the rule about only long time residents voting in the election, but I was getting the idea there was someone with their own ideas about how the election should go working behind the scenes.

Johnny and Jimmy had been gone about a week and a half when things started getting difficult in town. Jenkins had been sending a couple of men down to the inn every morning to help keep things running smoothly, but this morning they weren't going to be enough. We had eight customers for breakfast who came in to cause trouble and I knew it. Terri wasn't officially working at the inn any longer, but for the last couple of days she'd been backing me up behind the counter with her bow easy to hand.

The new rowdies were getting restless and causing minor troubles when Conroe and the boys made their appearance and I was happy to see them. Hell, even Johnny and Jimmy had come back with them. It settled things right down when they all walked into the inn with their bows in hand and Conroe came up to me and reported, asking if we were having troubles.

"Well we were until you made your appearance Conroe. We seem to have some customers this morning who want to cause trouble. They keep getting in the way of the serving girls while they're trying to work and generally making a nuisance of themselves," I said, and I wasn't whispering.

"Should we start killing them at once, Hero Jack?" Conroe asked.

"No, I don't think so. Just capture them and we'll take them out back, build a good fire, and begin asking them a few questions. Remind your men to do their best to only wound any of them who try and cause a disturbance at first," I said, and it was the loudest thing I'd said all morning.

"Johnny, why don't you watch the door with your sword to make sure none of them get out before we've dealt with them," I said, and he drew his sword at once.

I pointed out the troublemakers to Conroe and he detailed a few men to round them up. It was fairly easy to sort them out since all the real customers had already finished their breakfasts and gone on about their business.

There were twelve men still inside the inn and they had a little organization about them since they rose and drew their own swords, as if to fight their way out.

"Bows men, and remember to only wound them so far," Conroe called out and arrows started flying right away. Soon six of the rowdies had arrows in their arms or legs and the rest dropped their swords at once. Conroe sent a couple of rather burly men to tie hands behind backs and soon enough we were marching our captives out the back door.

It was easy to see who the ringleader was now since all the others were watching him as if for guidance on what to do. I had a little news for them though. All the guidance they were going to get now would be coming from the flat of a sword upside their heads - or else from the short clubs all of Conroe's men seemed to be carrying.

We adjourned to the back and Conroe had a fire built and a couple of long irons heating in it in no time. Several of the captured men asked questions and tried to complain about their treatment, but the short clubs served us well in keeping order.

I decided to cut to the chase here though and I had the obvious leader brought up for questioning first. He seemed surprised we had picked him out of the bunch and I didn't even bother to tell him why he was first for the treatment. At a word from me he was stripped naked and tied down spread eagle to hastily driven stakes.

I reserved the questioning and hot iron wielding to myself. I took out an iron and used it to singe his pubic hair off without really damaging him at first. He was begging and pleading before I had half of it burned off, and come to think of it, the hot iron so close to his genitals might have his attention.

By the time I laid the iron alongside his dick he was ever so eager to answer the first question and he gave up the name of the real instigator right away. Apparently the town's long time storeowner was worried about the competition he was about to get and he had hired this bunch of toughs to discourage the civic improvements.

I sent a couple of my hometown boys out to the colonel's former digs to fetch Jenkins and most of the men he was training for police type duties while we encouraged the rest of our captives to disrobe. There's noting to make grown men feel helpless like being naked out in front of God and everybody while there is a madman wielding a red-hot iron.

Half an hour later Jenkins appeared with twenty men dressed for police work. I sent them to fetch the storeowner in question and all the men hanging around his store or his home.

An hour later the twenty of them came back with the storeowner and six more men. Our new guests were promptly stripped naked and I did a little more hot iron work, starting with the storeowner.

I wasn't sure about the finer points of the law here on Chaos, so I'm not sure the confessions the hot iron and I coaxed out of the storeowner were strictly within the law. Then again, most Chaos law I was familiar with went along the lines of the one with the strongest force of men got his way. Anyway, I knew they were the rules we were going by now.

It seems that storeowner Jones had a few slaves of his own. Nothing major or anything and he wasn't part of any slaver conspiracy, but he was holding four women slaves and in fact his wife had been bought as a slave.

Well of course we couldn't have any of that going on. I sentenced him to forty years of indentured servitude to the town at large and he got an s in his forehead before the stench from his burning pubic hair had cleared completely.

I'd had his wife and the slaves brought over to watch his punishment and I declared the store to belong to his wife now. It did leave us with a problem though. We had over a dozen men who could be declared slavers now since they had been in a slavers pay and had been helping him try to take over the town.

I held a separate trial for them, but gave them a break on sentencing. I gave them one year of indentured servitude to the town and promised them they would be released without the branding if they served out their full year. I set them to cleaning up the streets of the town right away and I had their promise to fix up all the buildings in town and keep the streets and their noses clean for the full year lest they be caught, branded, and get the full thirty years which was fairly routine.

We released all the prisoners then, but some people just can't seem to get the details straight. Not an hour later the former storeowner was back in the inn with his former wife complaining he wouldn't do as he was told. I whipped out my sword and pushed it through his heart at once. What good is an indentured servant that won't take orders?

Everything else seemed to be going fine though. The towns new indentured servants were cleaning the shit from the street and also repairing shutters, fallen eaves, sagging doors, and the like all over town. The stable owner was benefiting from their services too.

There had been two stables practically together for years, but one owner had died a couple of years ago and no one else had taken the place over. Since the labor was available now the stable owner was having the two businesses combined and his building was being expanded and repaired with the materials from the other building which was being dismantled.

It had been a busy day and the next one was even more so. An election was held and Jenkins was declared mayor at the end of it. He was charged with hiring a good town guard and chastened this time to make sure the guard spent their time guarding and not out on the road waiting to throw up an ambush.

Conroe left one of his burly boys down here to train the guard and then direct their actions. I had a talk with the dead store owner's wife and she seemed like she knew her business and so we shelved the plans for opening our own store here and I promised her regular shipments of what we manufactured for sale on consignment.

Hell, my work here was done and I decided we could leave in the next day or two. Jimmy came to me then and wanted to know if he could stay. It seemed he and Janey had taken a shine to each other and he wanted to stay and help her run the inn.

"I really don't know much about running an inn, but Janey said she could teach me as long as I knew how to keep things to a dull roar in the common room."

I gave my blessing while reminding him the bow he had belonged to the Hero's Ranch. I left it with him on the promise he would use it to help keep the town free of thieving assholes.

That afternoon I sold off the horses we'd gathered on our trip to the stable owner and I made sure all of ours were ready to leave in the morning, then I retired to the inn, ate an early supper and talked Terri and the Damsel Carla into going to bed early.

We left the next morning, but with one hell of a lot more protection than we'd come with. Conroe and his men were with us after all, and they rode in such good order that any group of bandits wouldn't dare to try them. We had a pleasant trip even if it was a little longer than I remembered.