Chapter 208: The Anthem of Autumn

Editor: nnpdad 11

We gave everyone the next day as a holiday. We had a stressful little bit there and with the fighting, hiding, worrying and hangovers it was best just to let everyone who didn’t have to go to meetings to have a day to relax. I even got to play with the puppies for a little while and I got to play with Mouse too.

But even as a declared holiday chores still had to be done, animals and children fed and wood brought in. Wood burning season was back, adding an extra chore to everyone’s day. You could hear the song of the saw all day, every day. Modern movies and television always showed people splitting wood like it was a big deal. Splitting wood was simple and kind of fun, manually cutting the logs to be split was where the real work was. Hopefully you had a friend to help you in the task as using a two man saw was much faster; but either way it was back breaking, muscle building work.

I spent a big part of the day poring over numbers, with Sonja’s guidance of course, and talking to people who needed my approval or input on a project. One of those projects was Doc Browne’s house and office; there was a dispute on how we wanted the downtown to look and shop. That kind of crap drove me crazy so I just made a command decision; there would be a café between the doctor’s office and the bank and a dedicated clothing store between the bank and the law offices. We still had to add the cobbler, the green grocer and the butcher to the mix, probably on the other side of the street. I pointed out that I wanted to build a small hospital in the next year or two. We’d build him a temporary clinic for now.

They countered by arguing that we were too small to support that sort of economy, which was a valid argument. But it was also dinner time and I had been missing Matilda’s cooking for far too long. So we broke for dinner and I asked my fellow twitchers to stay and dine with me. Once we were alone I revealed my trump cards – all three of them. A soon to be founded town called Independence which would be the trail head for both the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon/Mormon Trail. That brought the conversation to a stuttering halt.

I pointed out that we could try to divert those trails through Rulo but we would be far better off to take advantage of historical facts and be the first in to Independence with our trade company and our stores. Independence also turned out to be a location where many people realized they had overloaded their wagons, we should be prepared to purchase and warehouse heavy household items in Independence and other spots on the trails. We needed to also set up the first river ferry at Independence to solidify our control over the trails flows. I was very adamant about the fact that we didn’t want to be Independence but we wanted to be the primary merchants in Independence. We could then funnel the money back to Rulo to strengthen our little city. We would also use that money to build a rail ready bridge across the river near Rulo to insure the trains ran near but not directly through our town. Light rail and trolleys would do the rest.