Chapter 10: Open Battle

Jesse made arrangements to have the snow cat repaired and asked around for a used snowmobile. He found a second hand Polaris that met his needs. Jesse and the seller struck a deal and Jesse promised to bring in cash the next day. Jesse mounted up and Marie got on behind him.

They stopped at the Emporium and entered. Saul rushed to greet him. Jesse hugged the small man and told him, "That Barrett shoots dead nuts at a half mile." He smiled down at his dearest friend, "You ornery old fart, you taught me to fight and to shoot and you did a damned good job of it.

Then he noticed the two FBI men. He stepped back quickly and stood balanced, waiting for whatever happened next. "What do you two want in here? These are my friends." The unspoken message in his words was he would kill to protect his friends.

"Ease off, Morgan. Actually we came to buy a few things and head back to Denver. We were given bad intel on you. It came from upstairs."

He shook his head, "I don't like that, not one bit. Our info on you was way off. It was as if your name was put on some loser's profile and forwarded on out to us as being you." He shut his mouth fast as if he said more than he meant to.

He nodded toward Saul, "Your friend told me how he helped raise you. He said, prone you can plug a grapefruit at two hundred yards, if you have a decent enough firearm."

Jesse smiled quietly, surprised at the turn around in attitude. "Well," he said softly, "When this trouble is resolved, maybe we can go shooting some day, or perhaps hunting next season. This year's limited season is about over, but there is always a next." If they wanted to start over, he was willing.

"What do you need, Jesse?" Saul asked.

Before he could answer Miriam ran out of the back and hugged Marie. "Was you going to leave without saying goodbye, let alone, hello?"

"No, of course not. We just got here," Marie told her. "Jesse wanted to say hello before we headed back to the ranch. "We had more trouble and had to come into town to get it taken care of." She told Miriam what happened when they rode out to look at the livestock on the South Ranch.

"What is the matter with those people?" Miriam gasped. "Surely there is nothing on that land to be worth so many deaths. "If they were a bunch of crazy Arabs I could understand. But here? This is America. Such things don't happen in America. We came out here to get away from all such craziness."

"We don't know what is going on either," Jesse told her. "I agree with you, nothing," he emphasized the word, "nothing is worth this crap. I am almost ready to give these bastards whatever it is they want just to get some peace and quiet. I thought I left this over in the sand box." He shook his head. After you take care of these two gentlemen, I have a few things I want to talk to you about."

"We got what we came for the "meaner" FBI agent told them. "There is one question I would like to ask you." He looked at Jesse.

Cautiously, Jesse asked, "What is it"

"What was that stuff you used on us? You seemed to be all over both of us at the same time, you never even raised a sweat and took us both out as if we were little children."

Jesse looked at Saul and Miriam. They all three grinned at each other. "Jesse, you evil kid, you used krav lev on these two gentlemen?"

"Uh ... well, yeah. It seemed a great idea at the time." Jesse laughed, "Nothing's changed, it still works, too." He looked at the two FBI agents and smiled.

"What's krav lev?" the other agent asked.

"Used by someone properly trained, it is the most lethal form of hand to hand in the world. I once saw Saul here take out three would be robbers in the time it took me to tell you about it."

Both agents looked at Saul dubiously. Waiting for the punch line to a joke he had not heard yet, the agent said, "and?"

Miriam smiled and told them, "Krav lev is the Israeli Army's own method of hand to hand combat. It operates on the theory there are only two rules in combat. The first is, keep moving and the second rule is win. Unlike the oriental martial arts or any of the sporting forms there are no formal moves. It is aggression in its rawest form. Keep moving and win."

Saul interrupted, "When Jesse went into the army, his first training sergeant was hospitalized because he wouldn't stop picking on our boy here. They begged him to stay in the army and teach unarmed combat."

The two agents nodded and started to leave. "I never knew Jews could fight," one told the other. They walked outside.

"Oh the smug ignorance of some people," Miriam murmured. Saul smiled.

Here's the map, Jesse," Marie told him and handed him the manila envelope containing the map. He nodded as Marie handed him the map.

"Is this some sort of joke?" Saul asked and started to hand the map back. "The ink on this thing is not five years old."

"I believe it to be nearly eight or ten years old. I believe the vellum is authentic and old as it seems to be. However this is a beautiful forgery, one almost any expert would spot in minutes. Yet the map is fairly accurate, according to Jesse." She looked at Jesse.

Jesse smiled and said, "You remember when I was a kid, how you told me about invisible inks? Miriam, you gave me a copy of Poe's story about the purloined letter right around that time, remember?" She nodded. "I think the map was copied onto the surface of this old Vellum to mislead anyone who did not know the key to it and act as a guide to the person who did know. Nothing else makes any sense to me."

"Ah yes, circles within circles." Saul seemed to become transformed into another person as he stared at the map. "Miriam, will you please watch the store?" he asked his wife. She nodded yes at her husband's already turned back.

"This is beautiful," Marie exclaimed as they entered the living quarters at the back of the store. She stared in amazement at an old walnut dining room set. The table and chairs, the antique china cabinet were all the works of a master wood worker. She lovingly caressed the dining table.

"Come," Saul told her impatiently. He had no time for chit chat. He led the way into another room and turned on the light. A small worktable sat in the middle of the room. Racks of hand tools, ranging from wrenches to a small jeweler's lathe, rested along one wall. The old man carefully placed the map on the table. He removed a common infra red heat lamp from a peg on the wall and plugged it in to the receptacle hanging down from the ceiling. He turned it on and placed it close to the vellum. He used the lamp to heat the map.

"What are you looking for?" Marie asked. To her Saul's actions were as arcane seeming as a sorcerer's spell.

"It seemed best to eliminate the most obvious first, heat sensitive invisible ink," he told her. "Many times common substances such as lemon juice were used to write invisible messages. Even during World War Two both sides in Europe employed such techniques. There seems to be nothing heat responsive written here."