Boys Become Men: Book Three ~ Mountain Ranch

They crowded the hurt children and Terry into the back seat of the cab and onto the passenger seat in the front. The oldest boys and the four Warriors, along with Carl all sat in the bed with their precious load of food. Jimmy drove slower, not wanting to jostle their new passengers as he made for the ranch turn-off. Again, they saw nobody and they reached the lower gate just as the sun set. Carl jumped out and unlocked the gate, letting the truck roll forward and through the gate. After he had relocked it, they continued up the mountain and finally reached Red Mountain Ranch. Oliver had the lights on and Emma came out to the truck. When she saw what was sitting in the truck, her screams brought ranch folk running from all directions. They carried the children inside and Jimmy parked the truck in the hay barn to be unloaded the next morning. He closed the barn door and George Shaking Tree posted two armed guards to protect the contents of the truck. They were to find that Marine Gunnery Sergeant George Shaking Tree knew what he was doing and he and his Warriors were to protect the Ranch and its folk for the many long years of the crisis.

Emma checked on the first aid work her Grandson had done as she assisted getting the children cleaned up. Terry didn't want her to help him bathe, but, after he slipped and fell in the shower, Emma insisted. The boy was blushing bright red as he tried to cover his boy parts. She smiled at him and said, "Son, I have been washing boys since Jimmy's Daddy was a baby, ya ain't got nothin' I never seen before, but yer a fine lookin' young man an' ya will find your own life's love a'fer this year be out, mark my words! He is out there just waiting fer you to find him!"

Terry hung on Emma, his wet arms wrapped around her neck. When he finally got himself under control he asked her, "Miss Emma, kin I call you Grandma, I never had one of those and I think I need one right now. Will you be my Grandmother?"

She hugged the young man, still soap covered and soaking wet, and said, "Terry, you are already my Grandson. And, yes, I think I know yore secret, it don't make me no nevermind, we all love ya' just the same! Ya won't get no hurt from anyone here about who ya' love!"

After everyone had gotten cleaned up, Emma whipped up a late supper of pancakes, real butter, topped with maple syrup and sides of thick-cut ham steaks. She had taken the maple syrup and mixed it with honey, they had lots of honey, but there wasn't going to be anymore maple syrup for a long, long time. Maple trees were not known in their volcanic mountains. She had to thin it a mite with hot water, but everyone told her it tasted just fine!

She figured that things were gonna get a whole lot tougher before they got any better, so she had best start now. Besides, sugar maple trees, along with a whole lot of stuff did not grow anywhere in Arizona, not even up in the cold mountains of Flagstaff!

The little boys got bug-eyed when she told them they could have all the milk they wanted. She offered Terry a cup of coffee and told him to go sit with the men as they were discussing what needed to be done to accommodate the new arrivals.

Terry was not sure he liked coffee, but his new Grandma was treating him like he was a man and he was damned well gonna be one, even if he had to gag down coffee. He found it weren't half bad iffin' he put a little cream and sugar in it. He noticed that many of the other men did the same.

The men were talking about starting up the old sawmill to cut some lumber to build a new bunkhouse. Jimmy said, "Gramps, suppose we run that old steam engine rather than use the diesel engine to run the mill? We got lots of scrap wood we can burn. And that will save the diesel fuel for the generator and the trucks."

Oliver agreed that was the right way to go and they began listing out how much lumber they were going to need. Albert Yellowbush said that he would start the timber crew first thing in the morning. He looked pensive and then added, "Mr. Oliver, ya know that wood is gonna be green an' we don't have time to let it dry. Is there anyways we kin get the old lumber kiln to run?"

Oliver sat for a few minutes before he replied, "Yeah, but who is gonna feed the scrap to fire the old beast?"

Terry jumped up and said, "Can me and my kids to that? We wanna help too!"

Everyone agreed that would work and Terry was beaming as he had contributed something to the discussion, like any other adult and they had listened to him. They had treated him like a man and he was damned well gonna live up to it!

They sat talking about the project until everyone's head began to nod and Emma said, "Time for bed, guys, if ya' are gonna build some homes for everyone, ya' gotta get some rest first!"

The next day, Jimmy and Carl got out the old horse drawn road grader and began leveling a plot of land next to the crew bunk house. They had decided on a single story building that would hold twenty small apartments. Oliver sketched out what he had in mind and, by dark there were cedar sills in place of foundations. The cedar had been soaking in the old mill pond for years, so they were straight with no splits.

It wasn't going to be fancy, but it beat the tar out of camping out, they figured to put some wood fired stoves in the rooms and fit some smooth sanded pine boards over the flooring timbers, so everyone would have a nice, smooth floor under their bare feet! The double planking would be warmer, also, as it got mighty cold up that high as soon as the snow began to fall in the winter.

It took them a couple of days to reconnect the old steam engine to the saw line and clean out the boiler. Neither had been run in years, not since Mr. Oliver had purchased the diesel engine right after the War with Germany and Japan. He had tried an electric motor at first, but it made the generator lug down too much when a big log was going through. The power company had been promising to run a line in to the ranch, but they never did and now it wouldn't ever happen.

By the end of the week, the first logs were heard screaming through the rip-saw! The huge flywheel on the steam engine carried the log right through without lugging down. The smaller cross-cut saw had only a small steam engine on it and they had to be careful not to lug the engine down and burn the circular saw blade. That blade was irreplaceable now!

It took them a couple of days to coordinate how they were going to do the work, many of the men had never seen the old sawmill in operation. It had always been cheaper to buy the lumber in town, but that option no longer existed.

The kiln could hold two carts of sawn lumber and Terry had his older boys began feeding the kiln firebox with saw ends and scrap and he put the younger boys to collecting the scrap. Jimmy and Carl pulled kegs of nails out of the storeroom and Albert had a construction crew ready as soon as the first framing timbers came out of the kiln.

The timbers were rough cut, they had not bothered running them through the planer and sander. The flooring and inside walls would be sanded and the slabs they planned to make into doors all would be sanded.

The building started to take shape slowly, the carpenters could outpace the kiln, so it was a start and stop situation. There was no way they could enlarge the dry kiln and the thicker lumber and the door slabs took several days longer to dry in the hot kiln. It was no use trying to hurry the wood through the dry kiln as that would only result in warped or split lumber.

The youngsters didn't mind their cramped sleeping quarters. They had formed a nest in the downstairs play room and invited the Indian children to join them.

At first, the Indian children were hesitant to join the white children. They had always been told that white people didn't like Indians. Little Tommy Pfister put a stop to that, he struggled over to where Albert's people were living, he was still having to use a crutch and his foot did not want to heal. Mr. Oliver had made him a proper crutch, and he could fly around the ranch on three legs almost as fast as the other boys could on two legs!

He stomped up to Mr. Albert's cabin and said, "Send out your guys, we gots a meeting up at the house fer all of us!" Albert's two boys, Kevin and Ronnie stuck their heads out the door and Tommy grabbed them, "Tell your friends to come on we's is waitin' fer ya!"

Tommy went to each door, demanding that the children inside come up to the ranch house! Tommy was such a friendly, outgoing little boy, he soon had a trail of young Indian children following him as he rounded up all the tribe's children and herded them into the meeting!

Miz' Emma served them all milk and chocolate cookies fresh out of her oven. By lunchtime, all the small children had forgotten there was a difference between White children and Indian children, a difference that would never again be part of their lives! Many "Best Friendships" were built that morning and, in the not too distant future, those friendships were going to save their lives!

Tommy organized the younger children to pick up the mess the carpenters were dropping and carry it over to the combustor to heat the dry kiln. They carried bags of nails and ran errands for the carpenters and carried jugs of lemonade for the workers. They built small sledges to transport the wood waste to the combustor to be burned.

The carpenters were shocked to see their own sons alongside the white children carrying lunch trays out for them to eat! The Ranch Folk had always treated them well, but, now they were being drawn into the Family. Indian children were asking their parents' permission to join the "nest"!

Albert and his wife, Samantha came to speak with Mr. Oliver and Miz Emma. Oliver just chuckled and showed them the door down to the basement. When Albert and Samantha Yellowbush looked down the stairs, they saw a pile of children all snuggled together under the blankets, fast asleep.

Little Tommy Pfister had his arms draped around Georgie Yellowbush and both boys were sound asleep with smiles on their faces. It was a friendship, and more, that friendship would outlast time itself! They were already a couple, only they didn't know it yet.

Tommie was a hustler, he organized the smaller children into teams to keep the construction site cleaned up, bring break snacks to the men building them their new home and seeing to it the lemonade jug was always full of lemonade and ice, with plenty of clean glasses. His crew of smaller children kept the fuel box full so the bigger boys could feed the kiln combustor with scraps and run any errands the carpenters needed.

When the building was finally completed, everyone voted to call the new family quarters, THE TOMMY PFISTER CABIN! The families were delighted to be in their homes, they did not have running water in their old village and this new home had both hot and cold running water and each apartment had a wood stove that provided both heat and a place to cook their meals.

Someone would have to stoke up the hot water boiler each morning, but usually a single stoking would provide hot water all day, until it was bath time. Then, someone would go out and shove some scraps in the firebox and that would hold them until the next morning.

All the Indian children thought it was worlds better than the open fire they had used for generations and husbands had been told by their wives that they were NOT going back to the "old ways" ever again!

Each apartment had a toilet and a bathtub and there were communal showers on the end of the building for those who wanted showers. Instead of using scarce cement for the shower floor, the older boys had gathered flat rocks and laid them on the ground like paving stones in the showers. The soil was volcanic gravel and the shower water drained away before the floor could flood and the fine gravel held the flat stones in place.

Occasionally, some boys were sent with bucket to scrape up some more sand and to use brooms to work it in between the flat stones to replace the sand that had washed away. By the time enough soap had been used to clean themselves, the soap residue and the sand made a hard, cement-like filling and the sand brigade could be halted.

The smaller boys decided they wanted to continue in their nest in the basement and several of the Indian boys made the same choice, Georgie and Paul Yellowbush were among them. Georgie had made friends with Tommy Pfister and when he told his Daddy about how he felt, Big George held him and told him not to worry about it, The Great Spirit would make that decision. Right now, he needed to help and protect his friend, Tommy, it looked like his foot was not ever going to heal properly and they might even be forced to amputate it.

Georgie looked up at his Papa and asked, "What do ampitate mean?" When George told his son what it meant, Georgie screamed, "NO, NO!" and ran down to the basement and held his new friend tightly, ready to do battle with anyone who would hurt his Tommy! Yep, they were a young couple!!

Winter was beginning to show its ugly head, the night temperatures were dropping and there was light frost on the ground each morning. The Cowboys moved the herd into the winter pastures, where they were more protected from the weather and the horses were brought up to the barn.

The older boys hauled firewood in the wagon for the main house, the cowboy's houses and the apartments, there just wasn't enough precious diesel fuel to waste burning it in the furnaces.

Finally, they awoke one morning and discovered they were snowed in!

Jimmy and Carl broke out the sleigh and hooked up the two carriage horses to it. They loaded the back of the sleigh with firewood cut to stove length. Billy and Andy jumped on the back of the sleigh and delivered stove wood to each apartment, the crew bunkhouse and the cottages.

When they got to the main house, they loaded up Miz Emma's wood box as she was dropping butterscotch cookies onto the cooling rack. Jimmy grabbed a handful as he ran back out the door, with a cheeky grin on his face as she waved her mixing spoon at him. He knew from her smile, that she had expected his raid and had made plenty for everyone.

As Jimmy drove the sleigh back to the barn, he noticed buzzards circling the spring down in the lower pasture. He said, "Guys, let's go check that out, there may be a yearling calf that we missed and it has foundered in the snow." More and more buzzards began showing up and Jimmy had the trotters going full out, he was sure something was bad wrong, something bigger than a foundered calf!

They had left the gate open, in case a cow had been missed, so it would not be trapped in the pasture. Jimmy aimed the sleigh through the gate at a full gallop, barely clearing the gate posts and headed for the clumps of willow bushes that surrounded the spring. He circled the spring and brought the horses to a stop before they all jumped out of the sleigh.

Jimmy spotted what looked like a dirty bed sheet stretched over a pole that had been placed over two willow bushes. When he looked inside, he let out a screech that sent the buzzards flapping into the air. He detested the nasty birds, but his Grandfather had told him they were necessary because they cleaned up whenever an animal died so it didn't stink up the place with rotting meat.

There was an older boy inside the makeshift tent, his arm was all bloody and two smaller boys were laying on either side of him in an attempt to keep him warm.

Carl and his brother, Billy, joined Jimmy and got the attention of one of the little boys in the tent, the child's teeth were chattering from the cold and he tried to speak, '....IiIs yyyou Annngels, aaare wwwe deaaad and goin' ta' hevin?"

Carl shouted to Jimmy and Andy, "Bring the sleigh robes, hurry, we gots three troubles in here!"

Billy climbed into the tent and held the two little boys, "No, we ain't no Angels, that be's for sure! How did you guys get here?" The little boy replied, "We runned, sir, they was hurtin' us n' wes runned."

The child looked over at the hurt boy and continued, "Ours big brother Gordy comed to get us an' the Master shooted him with a big gun. This were as fer as we could go, Gordy were hurt bad sir, kin ya fix him?"

Jimmy was standing there, holding the hand held radio, "Red One this is Red Three, over."

His Grandfather must have been at the radio in the house because the reply came immediately, "Red Three, Red One, I hear you loud and clear, is there a problem? Over."

Jimmy replied, "Red One, Red Three, yes sir, there is a problem, we have three hurt kids down at the spring in the lower pasture, one is hurt pretty bad, we suspect he was shot. We are loading now and will return to Ranch as soon as we can. Over."

Oliver sent back, "Red Three, Red One, hurry up the hill, we will get ready to assist, Red One out."

They loaded the boys into the sled and draped the old bed sheet and the sleigh blankets over them to try and keep them a little bit warmer as Jimmy pushed the trotters to their limits racing back up the mountain to the Ranch.

The horses were giving their all, as if they sensed the urgency from their driver, Jimmy. Flecks of foam were spraying from their mouths and nostrils as the horses raced up the mountain and the sleigh was swaying as the runners sped over the uneven ice and snow.

It took almost an hour for the horses to make the pull up the cattle trail, it was steep and the horses were the trotters, not the big old Clydesdales that Jimmy was fervently wishing he had hooked up! The two horses were blowing heavily, they were near exhaustion. The Clydesdales had hooves like snowshoes and the trotters' smaller hooves kept slipping and sliding on the ice that was just under the coating of snow.

Fortunately, the older brother was unconscious, they could see he was severely injured and, if what his younger brother had said was correct, he was bleeding from bullet holes! Jimmie and Carl did not try to inspect the older boy, Gordy, for his wounds, they both felt getting him back to the warm house as fast as possible was the best thing to do.

It was a long, hard pull back to the Ranch and the horses were all lathered up and Jimmie could feel rivulets of perspiration drain from under his arms and down the small of his back.

Oliver had alerted everyone at the Ranch that there were incoming hurt boys and George, along with his Warriors, were standing at the kitchen door waiting for the sleigh to arrive. Two big burly Indian Warriors gently slid the wounded boy out of the sleigh and carried him into the warm kitchen, where Emma had laid blankets on the work table.

Two more Warriors each picked up a small boy each and hurried them inside to get warmed up. Carl and Jimmy followed, while Billy and Andy put the horses away and put up the sleigh. It took a while, the trotters were overheated and all lathered, the horses had to be cooled down and brushed dry before they could put the horses' blankets on them.

The horses snorted and stomped their feet while they were getting brushed down, it was feeding time, why wasn't there grain and corn in their nose bags?"

Inside the house, Emma was boiling water while George was consoling the two small boys. He was trying to get the boys to tell him what had taken place and how it was they were living under a bed sheet in the lower pasture. Oliver began cutting the jeans off the older boy and, as he exposed the boy's back, he saw a peppering of buck-shot holes in the boy's skin.

He and Emma spent two hours digging lead shot from the boy's back, fortunately, the boy remained passed out. George said, "Let me go get Paul Black Stone, he was a medic in 'Stan."

He stepped to the door and let out a piercing whistle that was answered from the apartments at Tommy Pfister House. A short, powerfully built young Indian man arrived, carrying a battered US Navy MedPac that had his name on it. He went immediately to the boy lying on the blanket and carefully examined him.

He grunted and said, "You done good Mr. Oliver, but there are still some lead shot in the boy's back. I am gonna have to dig for them."

He gave the lad a shot of a painkiller and waited until it had taken effect. As soon as the boy stopped groaning, Paul began removing little round BBs of lead shot. Some he had to probe some so deep they required stitches to close the wounds. He was muttering to himself and, even though he was speaking in his own Indian Tongue, everyone in the room knew exactly what he was saying!

When he had finished, he turned to Oliver, his eyes blazing red with anger, "What happened to this young man, who did this terrible thing to him?" Oliver told him what little they knew and then Paul picked up the young man and held him in his arms, "I will care for this boy, I lost my wife and son in a fire while I was in Afghanistan, The Great Spirit has seen fit to send me a new son to care for and I will take his brothers, too!"

He glared around the room, daring anyone to challenge him. No one said a word!

He gathered the brothers and he carried the hurt young man back to his own apartment, where he laid him gently on the bed and covered him up before stoking the woodstove with more wood. He had begun a stew and he added more vegetables and meat to the pot, telling the small boys that supper would be ready as soon as they had gotten cleaned up. They could take showers or a bath, but they were going to get cleaned.

He gathered up an armload of towels and an old tomato can of homemade soap as he herded his new smaller sons downstairs, where the shower room awaited them all.

It was several days before the boys were able to tell their story. The two younger brothers were living in an orphanage that was nothing more than a slave pen. The boys were rented out to labor for whoever would pay the Master his price. The older boy had escaped and waited until he could spring his two younger brothers. Their escape had been going good until the Master woke up and shot at them with his shotgun he always carried, as they were running away.

As the three boys recovered, they told of their experience and the best any of them could understand, the boys had been a part of an orphanage that had been taken over by criminal slavers. From their description, they had been held in an old warehouse on the outskirts of town, and there were still a few boys being held there.

It wasn't until the older boy was up and around that they felt safe enough to tell what their names were, Gordon Bozeman and his two younger brothers, Robby and David. Gordon was sixteen and his brothers were nine and seven.

All three blossomed under the care of Paul Black Stone, for all his rough looks, the man was a gentle and kind father to the three boys. Paul had done two years of the University before he had been called up by the Navy as a Chief Petty Officer Corpsman and he valued education greatly.

He had a large collection of books and each evening he sat down with each boy and helped them read. He saw that his oldest son, Gordy, was interested in the medical books he had, so he encouraged the boy and, by the following summer, Gordy was assisting his Papa in treating the medical problems of the folk living on Red Mountain Ranch.

All three boys asked if they could have their Papa's name and soon, everyone knew them as the Black Stone Brothers! Gordy's study of his new father's medical book would prove of great value in the future and he would eventually replace his father as the community's Medicine Man.

Spring comes late to the high mountains, by late April everyone was ready to be released from the house and begin working outside. Gardens needed planting, the fields needed turning and both the cattle and the horses were anxious to be let out to pasture.

Everyone had "spring fever", the willows down on the creek had budded out and Emma's small planter of herbs she had started was ready to be transplanted outside for the summer.

By May, it was evident that Tommy Pfister's foot was not going to heal and Paul told them that the foot should come off or otherwise it would turn and poison the boy's whole body. Already it was puffy with the early stages of gangrene.

Paul sat with Tommy and Terry and explained to the two youngsters that Tommie's foot was diseased and it had to be removed. He drew pictures of the bones and how the blood flow had been damaged and that Tommie's foot was not going to survive.

It took two days for Tommy to accept that his foot had to come off and he would allow Mr. Oliver to carry him into the kitchen workroom, where the operation was to take place.

Georgie Yellowbush had to be shooed out of the operating area in the kitchen, he stood guard at the door and refused to budge. That little boy had stolen his heart and when Georgie had given the boy his name, Georgie and Tommy had their very first kiss.

Paul Black Stone did a neat job and folded a flap of skin over the bone in hopes that someday, the technology would come back to fit the child with a prosthetic foot.

Tommy was so glad the awful pain was gone at last Paul thought he was going to have to tie the child to the bed to keep him from running around the house with his crutch!

Georgie moved in with Tommy and waited on him hand and foot. George had to reconcile himself that he had gained yet another son that he would have to share with Terry Pfister, the boy's older brother. That Georgie and Tommy was a couple, as young as they were, was evident to everyone and Big George was a huge man, he only had to glare once at a couple of his own people before they learned to keep their mouths shut!

What will the summer bring to the folks at Red Mountain Ranch? How much longer will the black days continue to plague them and how will they survive them?