Chapter 8: Val

They say first impressions determine how you feel about someone or something from then on. My first impression of The Town was not very good. In fact, The Town never had a chance to make a first impression on me because we ran across Garth the blacksmith before we even saw it. The guy pissed me off with his arrogance. Hell, we were the Seniors, the Patróns, and he hassled us for a good five minutes. He made some half-assed apology and Dad seemed OK with it, but I was so pissed I didn't even notice my surroundings as we rode down the hill and then to the town center.

It was only when I heard what they were going through that I was able to put my damned pride aside and understand what he did when we first met. It was no less than what I'd do if a couple of men I didn't know rode up to our place even if they hadn't done anything evil yet.

It was disturbing to hear about the troubles. Of course, I was disturbed that some gang wannabees existed in this world in the first place, then that they could come into this peaceful place and almost kill one person and kidnap an innocent child. But up till now, the idea that we were going to be leaders in this new world had been almost academic. Sure, we were talking about taking a bunch of women to bed, but we were also the law and I hadn't really thought about what either of them meant. In short, we were responsible for all these people and they were counting on us to handle the problem. Anything short of finding, capturing and bringing the criminals to justice would not be acceptable. Banishing them and threatening them if they came back wouldn't work; that had already been done and their answer was the assault and kidnapping. I don't think anyone would accept providing shelter and food for them for several years or the rest of their lives as the prison system had in the old days. The only acceptable punishment would be putting all involved to death. And not after housing and feeding them for a couple of decades before doing it. More like finding them guilty and taking the straight out to a tall tree and using a rope.

There was no failure possible. If we didn't make things right, we would no longer be looked upon with the trust and loyalty we had without doing anything to earn it other than being here. And we had more than the people of The Town to answer to. We had all future generations and the existence of humanity dependent upon us doing the right thing.

I ended up between Garth and Susan when we sat down on the bandstand. When Amanda told everyone how she found her husband lying on the ground unconscious with her son missing, I glanced over at Susan. She looked like she was struggling not to cry, so I reached over and put my hand on her thigh, squeezing it a bit in a show of support. As soon as I did, she grabbed my hand. I tried to pull it away, thinking it was bothering her but she let wouldn't me, in fact she used both hands when it looked like she was going to lose it. She relaxed when I did but soon she was holding onto my arm with both hands, just above the wrist. Shortly after that she was leaning against me, the side of her face smooshed against my shoulder.

When the gong sounded to let us know that one of the three scouts was returning, there was an unspoken agreement that everyone would stick around and see what he had to say. That didn't stop them from leaving their seats and wandering around. A lot of little groups formed and I could see some spirited discussions going on in addition to the normal things people who don't see each other every day talk about.

The bandstand cleared off as well. I noticed that Amanda was acting much the same as her daughter, clinging onto my father as he went from group to group. As I made my way over to check out the horses, Susan continued to hold onto my arm with both hands.

I decided to see if I could communicate with Bev from this distance. Up till now, the farthest I was aware of was when Grace called us from her place.

Do you know that you can think of a complete event within an instant? Take our trip today. All the things that happened, the deer we shot and cleaned, the feel of the horse underneath me, the encounter at the top of the hill, the ride down, the speeches, Susan holding onto me, the reactions of the crowd – all of this can be experienced at as a concept in a fraction of a second.

That concept can be communicated to another person in less time than it takes to snap your fingers. Once I sent that to Bev, she did the same thing to me. I saw her helping out with the difficult birth of a foal, riding around on the ranch for a couple of hours, talking to some of our workers and working with my mother in the garden for the past hour.

She told me that it looked like my father and I had found our first eager women and laughed when I asked her what she meant. I thought Susan had just needed some comfort because of what had happened to her family. Bev told me she probably did but that Susan's idea of comfort was probably a lot different than what I was thinking. Her parting thought was "You know your duty. Do whatever you have to do."

I took a closer look at the girl who was hanging on to me. Now that Bev had yanked my head out of my ass, I could see the sexuality smoldering just beneath the surface. To use a ranching term, this girl was definitely in season. No, that wasn't right. We weren't in the good old USA where you weren't a real person until you reached the age of 18 or even 21. Around here, everyone pulled his weight, and when you reached the ripe old age of 14, you were adult enough to bear children, marry, pretty much whatever you wanted to do. This was no girl next to me; this was a woman.

Once again, I needed to shit or get off the pot. It's one thing to talk about wandering the countryside, spreading my seed. It's quite another to be confronted with someone I'd never even seen a couple of hours ago who's making it pretty obvious that she wants to bear my child. Considering that I was a virgin six months ago, at least by my subjective time line, and that I had never been with anyone but Bev, this was kind of a shock.

Let's face it. This was the high point any adolescent male's dreams. A woman, enthusiastically ready and willing to screw, no strings attached. Definitely in the no brainer, what are you waiting for, don't be an idiot category. Yet, to me, it wasn't.

When we first got together, I made a promise to be faithful to Bev. To be honest, her love for me was so great that I believe she would have been OK with me being with others, as long as I came back to her. She would probably have gone along with sharing me with another woman. But I decided I wanted Bev and only Bev and vowed that to her, unsolicited.

I felt like I was being forced to become an Alfie or one of the stud stallions or, heaven forbid, Jimmy.

But then I took a look at it. I had been given a tremendous gift. I could have been obliterated along with 99.99999% of the people on this planet but I wasn't. Instead, I was beefed up, enhanced, made better than any mortal that had lived on this planet before. And I'd been commanded to spread that, to improve the stock of mankind. It would certainly be pleasurable. It was time to throw out the Puritanical, Calvinistic ideals that had contaminated the species and go forth and be fruitful. As Bev had reminded me, it was my duty. I'd known it intellectually but not deep down inside, in my gut, the way Bev did. It had only been a subject of conversation. Now it was becoming real. It was time to step up to the plate. As they say, it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it.

I had to fight Susan a bit before she would let me lift my arm but she snuggled up to me willingly when she realized I just wanted to put it around her shoulders. I leaned down and kissed her. It wasn't a passionate open-mouthed, tongue swapping kiss, but there was a little moisture and a lot of promise. She sighed and leaned against me, opening the eyes she'd closed when I kissed her, like twin suns gazing up at me.

We heard a horse riding up and everybody turned. "We should get back," Susan said to me. "That's one of the scouts we sent to find the criminals."

While everyone got settled down again, the scout handed over his horse to one of the kids, got a mug of mead, drained half of it and made his way up to the stage.

"This is Hector," Garth said, introducing him to my father. "Hector, this is Burt Hendrix, the Senior, and this here is his son, Val."

"Well, I sure am glad to see you the both of you. We have some real trouble." He looked at Garth. "Al and Sam got grabbed."

"You might as well tell everybody at once," I said, leading him to the front of the stage,

"Well," he started, "we didn't have any problem picking up their trail. There were three horses and one of them would stray off the path they were traveling every once in a while. We figured they had Michael doubling up on one of the horses and he'd act up every so often, spooking the horse."

"If there's anyone that could get a horse to do what he wants, it's Michael," Amanda said. "He's been riding almost since he could walk and he thinks nothing of getting on horses I'm afraid of."

"We thought it was something like that," Hector answered her. "We figured he was probably kicking it."

"I wonder why they didn't just take a horse when they grabbed him. It would have made a lot more sense," I put in.

"We don't think they got much sense," he responded. "They have a leader, and none of them seem to do much of anything unless he orders them to. Al said he bet they couldn't think of anything to do but bluster when we told them they were dead men if they showed up again. He thinks they went back, got their orders to pick up the first kid or woman they ran into and to take out anyone that got in their way and that's what they did. Nobody told them to take a horse so they didn't.

"So anyway, we tracked them about 25 miles, just east of north from here. We came upon a valley and that's where they have their camp set up. We tied the horses up at the top of the slope, then snuck down and hid behind a boulder so we could see them."

"How much room is there at the top of the hill?" I asked him.

"Oh, as much as you want. It's all pretty flat, then it slopes down to the valley. It's nothing like this place. It's maybe a hundred yards across, then it goes back up. There's trees and stuff up top but there's lots of room if you're wondering about where to put our horses if a bunch of us ride over there."

"Good man, Hector, that's exactly what I was thinking. I noticed some people came to this meeting in wagons. Could they get there and would there be room for them?"

"There's a few places where it gets tight, but they should make it. We rode side by side when we were tracking but there were three or four times one of us had to fall back for a spell. But there was always room for two of us."

"Good. Go on with your story."

"The camp was nothing much. The first thing we saw was a couple of lean-tos, one big enough for one person and the other fairly long. There was a tie rope running between two trees and there were eight horses tied to it. Three of them were all lathered up and left there wet. The other five looked to be in real bad shape.

"There was another tree and it had three chains attached to it. One of them was around Michael's neck. He looked OK. There's a bruise on one cheek, like someone slapped him pretty hard. He's dirty as all get out but I didn't see any other damage and he seemed to be able to move around alright.

"The other two chains were tied to a couple of women. It's hard to tell but one looked about 15 and the other was 17 or 18. They were both naked and were both in real sad shape. They were slapped around a lot while we watched and Al and I had to hold back Sam a couple of times when he wanted to run down there and go after somebody.

"We counted fifteen different men during the four hours before it got dark who raped one or both of those two. No part of them was out of bounds and both of them were bleeding from between their legs and in back. Like I said, they weren't too gentle, either in their fucking or in slapping them when they didn't do what they wanted fast enough.

"They had a bucket of water and they let the boy have some a few times but they made sure they put it just outside the women's reach. Twice one of the men took a ladle of water and told one to open her mouth, then splashed it on her face. Then he did the same with the other one. They only got a few drops to drink, then they tried to scrape what was still on their faces into their mouths.

"The horses didn't make out much better. They got a bucket of water between the eight of them and they could all reach it, but one or two were able to keep the others from getting much of it. The only thing they had to eat was grass, and they'd been there so long that there wasn't any left that they could reach.

"Like I said, they had two shelters. The leader's looked pretty good. He had four branches stuck in the ground and some skins stretched out on top of them. They were long enough to make three walls and a roof, with the front open. There was an overhang, maybe a foot and a half or so, in front. They probably could have fit four or five people laying down side to side in there. The leader is the only one we saw go in there.

"The other one was a lot wider and had two poles on each end and another two sets inside for support. The skins didn't go down to the ground in back and there wasn't any overhang in front. The leader had a pile of sheepskins for a bed but the men in the big tent had to get by with blankets or nothing. The skins on the leader's tent were all sewn together neatly but whoever did the others did a lousy job. There were a lot of gaps and if it ever rained, I doubt it would stay dry anywhere in there.

"Most of the men looked like they hadn't eaten in a long time. When it came time for dinner, the big guy warmed up a chunk of meat that had been cooked previously. When he'd had his fill, he tossed it in the grass in front of the fire and six or eight of the men scrambled for it. One would take a bite out of it, then another took it from him. Four people each got some of it, plus the leader, but that left the rest hungry. We counted a total of 22 men, including the leader.