10 Pound Bag Ch. 205-209

Chapter 205 - The Value of Intel

By: Emmeran, 6 May 2022

Editor: nnpdad 11 May 2022

I dismissed the General Council but held back my Council of War; that council consisted of Sheriff, Pete, Holder and myself. When Holder returned with Amos and Timmons in tow, we were ready to begin. I asked that the shutters be closed and the lamps lit, we needed to minimize the reach of curious ears.

Once everyone was settled at my end of the table I started in.

"OK Pete, give us the full story." I was sure that there was more to it than he had initially offered, 'ears everywhere' my ass. I sat back and waited for his explanation.

"There is a band of people of half-tribes and half-white, accepted by neither." Pete began.

I knew this, Cher sang a song about it; they were called half-breeds.

"They have no land to claim their own and are from many different tribes. Many lived here until Rulo came."

Well I didn't know we chased anyone out and I suffered a small twinge of guilt.

"They are hungry, but they are always hungry for there is no tribe to help them." Pete continued on, "The Kansa lost many warriors attacking you and had a very bad hunt this summer, they ask the half-breeds to join them in stealing our herds and killing our warriors. They promise them food and slaves."

"Some half-breeds join with the Kansa, the rest come here to bring this news in exchange for winter food." Pete finished.

Story time over, time to consider and decide; nobody else was talking and it wasn't a hard decision, I went with my gut. "If what they say is true then they may build lodges on my land for this winter, we will have food for them as well. We will know if an attack is coming soon."

I turned to Amos, "Amos, we need the drone up, Pete will show you where to search. Take the extra batteries and the base, we will be tracking them constantly. We need eyes in the sky."

"Pete if what they say is true they may come after the battle, only families who did not attack us. Please gather your scouts and warriors"

"Timmons, we need the boats to move north to safety. Take the children on them if possible. Please start preparations."

"Sheriff, send out riders and call in the militia. We need any man who can fight to assemble with packs, weapons, ammunition and five days rations at 6 p.m. tonight. Have them assemble in the town square."

"Holder, bring me your sharpshooters. We will all meet here again in three hours time. I'll be at my house until then."

With that, the meeting was adjourned and preparations begun to surprise the surprise attackers. Well I didn't get to adjourn; I was waylaid by Timmons, Michelle and Sonya; back inside I went.

Timmons led off the charge, "I've got three boats here plus the skiff which we can load with supplies." He stated. "There is a cove on the eastern bank about ten miles upstream which we can anchor in and everyone can sleep on the boats. The crew will be fully armed."

It was a better plan than I had hoped for so I simply nodded and replied that we would send the drone to him with a message attached when it was safe again. That was all that he needed; he left to roust boatmen and move supplies.

Michelle was up next with a simple "What do I need to do?" request. That was simple, we needed to get the children and pregnant women on the boats and then triple the guard on the herds, as without a doubt they would attempt to stampede the herd at the very least. My last statement to Michelle was, "After you get all that rolling you will get your pregnant ass on the boat with the rest of the women and children, make sure you take enough chamber pots!"

Sonja was the more complex request, I needed maps printed out and brought to me. We needed to hide all of these records away and to organize communication during the fight. She was also to keep Kordi with her at all times until this was over; Mila, having pups to care for, would be locked away in the trailer.

Finally I was able to get away and go home. I wanted a shower and a change of clothes first of all, then it was time to gird up for war. As I rode down the surprisingly well-finished road the first bits of a plan were coming together in my mind. There were a lot of moving parts but we should be able to fully rout the enemy in one devasting ambush. We just had to know where they were. Particularly their scouts.

Holder and Amos were already at the trailer when I arrived, so was my big old truck. Part of me just wanted to fire up the truck and crash through their war party as soon as they crossed the Nemaha, it was a juvenile part of me but juvenile fantasies can be fun from time to time.

Amos was topping off all of the batteries for the drone and attaching the lowlight and IR lenses, the IR would be vital to finding and eliminating enemy scouts. Amos would do the spotting and Pete would send his scout teams to pick them off silently one by one. If they couldn't pick them off...well, Holder was cleaning the AR-15 Match Grade and he had learned how to use the night vision scope. That young man had some scary level of shooting talent and when I had finally allowed him to use that AR he fell in love with it.

I gave Amos the pump shotgun, he also had his revolver but if someone stumbled across him, he need to simply make that person disappear and the shotgun was good at that. He also had Brin to guard him and one of my walkie talkies to help guide traffic; I had to laugh at myself as the radios were still new in the box. They came in an eight-pack and were designed to do way too much, but they had the range we needed and a whisper mode so we could keep the noise down. I needed to make sure Michelle took one on the boats.

As I broke my AR-15 down and started cleaning it I had to shake my head at the ridiculous technological advantage we had in the coming fight. But it bothered me that, had we returned from down south any later there might have been real trouble.

Chapter 206 - The Nemaha Massacre

By: Emmeran, 6 May 2022

Editor: nnpdad 11 May 2022

The river ran red.

At least one hundred men died on the banks or in the water of the Nemaha river that chilly autumn morning. Five score raiders who thought they had the element of surprise and stumbled into a cross-fire ambush. The Pawnee bowmen shot first, half a heart-beat later the black powder rifles thundered from the tree line and the Kansa were caught naked on the northern bank of the Nemaha river.

Some turned to run but the near constant crack of high-powered rifles filled the gap while the black powder guns reloaded. There seemed to be an extended pause of silence. The Kansa and their allies were stunned and the silence was deafening and then somebody yelled 'Fire" and the rifles thundered again. Any surviving raiders broke for the river and the sharpshooters with their out of time weaponry made them pay. Their would be no survivors tales this day. The Pawnee had waited far too long to have their revenge for the devastation of a peaceful village a decade earlier. Many of our warriors had been part of the effort to clean up the murdered and desecrated bodies of those women and children.

The Pawnee fell upon the wounded with the wrath that accompanies a centuries-old blood feud, any who may have slipped away from the massacre found that Pawnee scouts were behind them and died a coward's death.

The bodies were stacked and burned; any bits left over were buried later. It was as if a hundred warriors had walked off of the face of the earth. The spring floods would arrive eventually and almost all evidence of the one-sided battle would be washed away. But for that morning the Big Nemaha ran red and it was all Kansa blood.

While we cleaned up the battlefield the Pawnee war parties streamed south, where they would loot and take slaves from every Kansa camp that they found. All the warriors anticipated new slaves and fresh females to be taken. It wasn't quite genocide but the Kansa would no longer exist as a power on the plains. The math had just changed for everyone even peripherally involved, even Henry Leavenworth would be rethinking plans once the news got out. The citizens of Rulo were only involved to the extent of defending their homes, we reported it as a Pawnee/Kansa event the entire way.

Getting to that point had taken some effort and extreme coordination. It was true that there weren't many good fords on the Big Nemaha river but it was actually less true this time of year. We let our drone show us where we had to be. Without that drone we would have had to cover at least three viable ford points, without that drone we wouldn't have been able to silently pick off the Kansa scouts. Without that drone we wouldn't have been able to finely position our fighters to create interlocking zones of fire.

I was able to sit in the bunkhouse down by the stock pens with Amos and make minute adjustments via the handheld radios. We were able to point out each of the Kansa scouts on a map to Pete and he marshalled his men forward to ambush and eliminate them. When the field was set I was able to move to my sniper's nest to sharpshoot and oversee the battle.

We had trusted men embedded with each of our units, Sheriff ran the Rulo militia and he had three squads with black powder rifles. He had a hand held radio as well.

Holden had a sharpshooter with him using the 30.06 and I had one near me using Holden's long rifle; Holden and I each carried a radio in addition to our AR15s. Pete and his scouts had already cleaned up the Kansa scouts and headed upriver to the next ford to cross over and get behind the Kansa. They were joined at the river crossing by nearly 50 additional hard-riding warriors from the main Pawnee village up on the Platte River. The devastation was to be complete and final.

The die had been cast the moment the sun went down and the drone went up; the IR told us everything we needed to know. The first pass above the southern bank of the river showed their main force hiding in the tree line at their chosen ford. We compared the IR pass to the map we had made earlier in the day and knew just where to position our troops.

From that point Amos and I spent the rest of the night searching for and overseeing the destruction of the Kansa scouts. We would crisscross the sky looking for the tale tell signature and then use the radio to direct the Pawnee teams to them.

As dawn approached I moved to my sniper spot, I was carrying my AR-15 and M1911. Amos was watching the Kansa raiding party as they prepared to ford the river at first light, there were at least one hundred in their attack group. We had all been notified via radio and all of our defenders rechecked our weapons and said our prayers.

We knew the moment the first Kansa started to ford, we could just barely see them in the early light of that autumn morn. We watched as they struggled to lead their horses across, the animals being none to happy to cross a river even when it was full light.

We watched as they assembled on the north bank of the river just dozens of yards away. Their horses were snorting and stomping their feet, the warriors assumed it was from the cold river and tried to calm their mounts. Their leaders gathered together for one final conference and somewhere off in the distance an owl softly called out signaling the end of the Kansa tribe.

The Kansa warriors knew the sound of arrows being released but the sound of the horses and the river muted that distinct noise. Moments later the arrows found flesh and the rifles roared with thunder.

Death had come to the Nemaha Valley and the river ran red.

Chapter 207 - The Victory Lap

By: Emmeran, 6 May 2022

Editor: nnpdad 11 May 2022

I climbed up onto the dais and brought the music to a halt. We called our little musical group the Hobbled Band because we hobbled together anyone who could play anything or sing all the words to a fun song and called them a band.

I dismissed the band from the stage for the moment; they needed a break anyway. We were halfway through our victory celebration and it was time to hand out medals to those individuals who deserved to be remembered in ignominy. Yep, nobody actually got hurt on our side during the fighting but several had taken minor injuries before and after the actual action.

I called them up one by and had them line up behind me on the dais. They were half drunk like most of the rest of the village and had no idea what was about to happen. In my Marine Corps days we had a tradition of awarding homemade medals for injuries or wounds suffered not from warfare but from doing something dumb or just being an overall klutz. I decided to bring that tradition here.

"The men you see here before you were injured, wounded or maybe even just rudely insulted while performing their duties to defend our town today! We take this moment to recognize the suffering they endured to protect our homes and our happiness. I took the liberty today of having medals created to recognize their sacrifice and we shall award those now."

In reality I had just gone down to the metal works where we formed and poured iron into a quick mold, we didn't bother polishing them or even cleaning up the edges. Our smith had been laughing too hard at the time. We hung those with white bandage cloth and called it a joke. The medal itself simply had a pair of crossed crutches on the face of it. Not fancy, just fun. I looked at the list of names and made a quick decision.

"OK folks, I'm going to be calling these men up one by one and tell you how they earned this honor, please hold your applause til the end and we'll celebrate them all at once!"

I looked at the list in my hand and rolled with it.

"First of all we have Peter, Peter please step forward carefully, very carefully", I was talking quite loudly and projecting my voice over the crowd.

"Folks I want to assure you of one thing, all five of these men fought with bravery and honor during the battle this morning, they all did what was asked of them or even more. We are recognizing them for what they did before or after the battle. So remember that as I read these awards off.

"Peter has been awarded the Iron Crutch award. After the battle was over and clean-up finished, Peter managed to trip on a root and badly sprain his ankle. Fifty other warriors had managed to avoid this trap as had Peter himself just a few hours earlier. Peter, for unnecessary klutziness after the battle we award you the Iron Crutches." I hung the medal around his neck. "Please carefully go back and wait while I call the others, Peter."

There were a few chuckles and guffaws from the crowd but they still didn't quite get it.

"Andrew, please come up." The man named Andrew walked forward with a slightly confused look on his face. "In the hours preceding the battle Andrew was severely bitten on... the buttocks?" Andrew was turning bright red, "Is this true Andrew? Is this why I saw you standing while you ate earlier?" Poor Andrew merely nodded and I heard several giggles out in the crowd.

"Andrew - do you happen to know the name of the mule that bit you?" Several men in the crowd looked like they were going burst trying to restrain their laughter.

"Bitey," Andrew quietly replied.

Now it was time to get the laughter rolling.

"Folks I am proud to award Andrew the Crossed Crutches award for injuries sustained by being bitten on the buttocks by a mule named 'Bitey'!" The crowd was beside themselves and several of the guys were rolling around on the ground.

I hung the medal around Andrew's neck and sent him back to the line.

"Calm down folks, we have three more to go. Stefan, please come forward." Stefan was shaking his head No and trying to back off the stage but Peter and Andrew shoved him forward.

"Folks, Stefan here slipped and seriously injured his wrist while waiting in ranks for the battle to begin. It seems that Stefan felt the urgent call of nature and whilst trying balance himself in the dark happened to slip and injure his wrist. Doc Browne responded to the emergency with the appropriate first aid and cleaning supplies! Thanks Doc!"

The crowd was still laughing, obviously this wasn't as funny as Bitey.

I hung the medal around Stefan's neck and sent him back into line.

"Dennis, Please step forward!" Dennis limped up to revel in his shame, he knew what to expect now and apparently planned to ham it up.

"Dennis injured his knee during the clean-up phase, that was rather unpleasant business and we thank you for bravely do that. Many a lesser man would have lost their breakfast doing that job."

Dennis hammed it up, "Yeah, I lost my breakfast also but that was before..."

"Dennis, it says that you stepped on a dismembered body part causing you to slip and fall. Wait it says you stepped on WHAT!?!?! I can't say that here Dennis, there are children and ladies present. Next time please be more careful and gentlemen you might want to be careful when Dennis is walking around you and the family jewels."

I hung the medal around his neck and he proudly held it up for everyone to see, most of the guys didn't see though - they were too busy laughing.

"Finally we get to Troy, Troy please come up here and show the people your hand."

Troy's left hand was wrapped up in bandages, it actually looked pretty bad.

"Troy was injured after the battle and the clean-up while waiting to march back home. Troy was cleaning and sharpening his knife like any good warrior should when he was told the story about his friend Andrew being bitten by a mule named 'Bitey'! I seems he lost a little control trying to sharpen and roll around laughing"

The crowd was rolling once again and Troy walked back to the line with the medal around his neck.

I called the entire line forward.

"Fellow citizens of Rulo I present to you the winners of our Ignominious Medal. With this Award they each get a pint of my good bourbon and free beer for the rest of the evening. Thank you gentlemen and enjoy your just rewards!"

I walked off the stage to have a conversation with Michelle about a mule named Bitey.

Chapter 208 - The Anthem of Autumn

By: Emmeran, 6 May 2022

Editor: nnpdad 11 May 2022

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.