Boys Become Men: Book Four ~ Backwoods Survival

Bear suspected "something" was wrong, but he could find nothing out of place, there were no animal or human tracks in the snow around the gate, everything seemed normal. Bear's brand new wife was complaining of being tired all the time and sick to her stomach, so Bear took her to see Doc Billings who confirmed that the couple was going to be parents in a few months! Bear went screaming out of Doc's office, shouting, "I'm gonna be a POPPA!" to anyone who would stop and listen. His announcement brought smiles to everybody's faces and the whole village congratulated the young couple. That night, flaming torches were thrown over the stockade wall and a rope pulled the gate down.

The Troopers on watch sounded the alarm as the flaming torches came sailing over the stockade wall.

The alarm that Peter Wai had contrived was enough to wake the dead, all the men and older boys came running with their rifles in their hands. They put up a barrage of bullets so fierce that the attackers went running down the hill, screaming in pain and leaving their wounded to the mercies of the villagers.

Fifteen attackers lay before the gate, either dead or badly wounded. Being neither cruel nor vicious, the folk of Susanville brought the wounded attackers inside their stockade and treated their wounds. To their amazement, the wounded attackers were all youths, both boys and girls ranging from early teens to early twenties! The villagers of Susanville were shocked, their attackers were just children.

Bear sat watching the wounded youths, unable to understand why they had attacked the village. One boy and girl appeared to be a couple and seemed more alert than the rest of them.

Bear grabbed Charley Green Bush and Peter Wai and they went over to the pair. All three men sat beside the wounded pair, saying nothing. They sat for several minutes, the young man began to squirm and they could see fear spreading across his face. The men had food with them and they offered some to the boy laying in the bed. He refused the food and turned the other way, so he could not see the three men.

Finally, the boy said, "YyyyYer gggonna kkkill uus, ain't yyya?" The young man's teeth were chattering like castanets and the girl's eyes were leaking tears. She looked so sad and fearful.

Bear replied in a soft voice, "Why did you attack us, if you were hungry, we would have fed you, even invited you to stay with us. We would have even invited you to live with us, if you had so desired."

The young man looked at Bear as if he had just crawled out from under a damp rock and said, "BbBbut yyyous issss ccccannibals!"

Bear got a horrified look on his face and shouted, "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" He continued a bit more calmly, "We are farmers, we grow food crops and raise our children here."

Bear waved his hand to attract the attention of the children peeking out from the Schoolhouse, where they had been sent for safety. He convinced about ten of the children to come to him and Bear hugged them all, "These are our children, my own child will be born in a few months, some of these children we have rescued from slavers and criminals, but they are our children now and we would not hurt any of them! The Great Spirit would strike us dead if we even considered them food!"

He asked, "Where in the world did you ever get the idea that we ate people or that we killed folk who had come to us needing a home and food and shelter?"

The young woman burst into tears and said to her companion, "Joey, they lied to us, they used us to attack these people, sending us to do their dirty work!"

The young man held the girl in his arms, tears flowing down his own face. He told Bear, "TttThey ttold uus thhhhat youss wwwas sslllave pppeople and tthat you cccapturrrred children to ddddo yyyour wwwork. When they wwwas worked out, yyyou kkkilled them and aaate them!"

Peter Wai could not believe his ears, he spoke quietly to the young man and asked him, "Do you see anyone here who looks afraid? Or, maybe they look hungry? Poorly clothed? Is there any child here who has no shoes?

The boy was in misery, they had been lied to and he was ashamed to even look at Peter. Peter lay his hand on the boy's shoulder and said, "We would welcome you to live with us, become part of our people. We neither eat people nor do we make slaves of them, we are a free folk and all our friends are also free. We welcome you here and will help you get established among us."
 
Peter went over and rang the alarm bell and shouted for all the villagers to come to the school yard. When everyone had assembled, Peter said, "These are our people and our children, do any of them look like slaves?"

He opened his arms and three small boys came running to him as he continued, "My brother and I have adopted these boys, their parents were cruelly murdered by slavers and they had no one to care for them. They are our sons now and we love them very much!"

The young man said, "I am Joey Thomas, if you will allow me to go outside your gate, the others will be hiding in the gulley just down the hill. I am sure I can convince them the folks we are with are the real slavers and I can get them to come here, where it is safe. If you will allow us to live here, we will do all your work for you."

Bear began to growl, "We don't do that either, if you come here, you must contribute to keeping our families protected and help us farm the fields, but you WILL NOT be slaves in our town! There will never be slaves in Susanville, not so long as I am Town Sheriff here!"

The young man stood and kissed the girl who had accompanied him and he whispered to her, "Jan, wait here for me and protect our baby, I will return as fast as I can."

Bear screamed, "You are expecting a baby, DOC, git yerself over here and check this young mother to be out, DO IT NOW,"

He screamed for his deputies to come help this young man, Joey, in what he needed to do. The deputies walked with Joey to the main gate and Joey told them, "Wait here until I call for you, otherwise my people may be frightened and run away."

As Joey headed for the gate, Peter Wai joined him and said, "I will go with you and maybe together, you and a Chinese man, we may convince your friends to join us."

As the two young men walked down the hill, Joey asked, "What do you do here?" He was sure that the young Chinese man was a servant or laborer.

Peter smiled and said, "My Brother and I are Journeymen Blacksmiths, we repair all the farm machinery and repair almost anything else that is metal. Our Papa is a Master Blacksmith and he even made the machine that grinds our wheat for flour!"

Joey was thinking, "Oh God, I pray they will let us live here with them, our baby is coming and I fear for his or her life!"

The two dipped down into a shallow gully, where there were about twenty teens standing there and an older Mexican looking man holding a rifle on the group.

Peter looked at the man and shrieked, "YOU!" He leaped from the bank and dragged the man from his horse, pounding him with his fists for all he was worth. He picked up a large rock and began beating the man's head, smashing his face until it was clear the man was dead!

Tears were pouring down Peter's face as he cried, "That is the man who killed our Mother and our niece's parents down in Fresno! He is a murderer and a thief! He stole our Papa's gold coins! He raped our Mama before he slit her throat, while his henchmen held guns on us!"

Joey held Peter until the young blacksmith could again gain control of himself. Joey called out, "These people are not the slavers, they have welcomed us among them, we can live as farmers and be safe and free!" He continued, "The people we are with are the renegades and slavers and we must get away from them as fast as we can!"

Bear brought his Deputies and the Rangers turned out to help bring the teens back to the stockade. When they learned that even more people were being held by the slavers down at Shallow Flat, The Rangers began to plot and plan.

The Rangers brought out the hanging ropes and they began making plans for a raid. Hoping to catch the slavers unaware, they planned the raid for that very next night. Joey begged to go with them, he told them, "There are young children in their main camp and people they gathered on their way up here. Let me form a squad of our own folks and we will go with you!"

Bear was a little cautious, be was pretty sure all the newcomers were good folk, but, they hadn't yet proven themselves. He suggested they go with the Susanville Rangers. Joey agreed, he knew his guys were honest, but he wanted Bear to approve of them. Besides, he planned to ask Bear if he could join his Deputies as soon as they got back from the raid. He had just signed on with the County Sheriff as a Deputy in his hometown when the collapse ruined everything.

They passed out what food they had carried to the starving young folk. The newcomers were a little shy at accepting the food, but Joey assured them that they would not have to pay some awful price for a few sandwiches and fresh fruit.

They formed a party of twenty Rangers and volunteers, Bear led them down the hill to Shallow Flat. They came upon the camp and looked on in horror as they saw young girls being fondled and abused. It was almost more than Bear could do to hold his men back, finally, about midnight, he feared he would lose control of even the Rangers, so he let out a wild Piute Indian Cry and they charged the camp.

The first man to be hanged was the leader of the slavers, Hector Ramirez, and his henchmen soon followed him.

The captives were all tied together and Joey stood before them, "Please, let these men free you, we were wrong, the people of that town are good folks and will help us take care of our children. They ask that we join them, not as slaves, but as free people. They are farmers and will give us our own land to work, our children can go to school, they will even help us build our own homes, where we can raise our children in safety."

He continued, "This is Mr. Peter Wai from Fresno, he and his brother are Blacksmiths in Susanville. They are Chinese, one of the School Teachers is black and the Sheriff, Mr. Tall Tree Walking is a Piute Indian. They do not discriminate, they will accept us all!"

Joey walked among the captives, using Bear's own knife to slit the ropes that were binding them. Small boys and girls were hugging his legs as he walked through the captives, slicing their ropes.

The older youngsters gave their sandwiches to the small children, who were starving by the looks of the speed the sandwiches disappeared. The former captives asked Joey questions and wanted to know where Jan was, he replied, "She is resting in the village, the women of the village are caring for her and our unborn child. Maybe there is someone in the village who can make us man and wife before our baby is born. We are going to live with these people, I will even be a farmer, I will do anything that will allow Jan and me to live here!"

Bear stood and announced, "Let us return to our town, breakfast is waiting for us to return, come and join us."

Bear had a boy and a girl riding his shoulders as did Peter Wai. All of the Rangers had a child hanging on their arms, some even had two! As they approached the stockade gate, the alarm bell began to ring and the hastily repaired gates swung open.

There were armed men inside the gate, but, when they saw the former captives and their sorry condition, they stacked their rifles against the stockade wall and ran to assist the new folk to enter their town.

Soon, there was the smell of frying bacon and biscuits being baked. Jan rushed out to Joey, hugging him as she stuffed a warm biscuit in his mouth, covered in fresh butter and berry jam! Joey rolled his eyes back and grinned at his wife, pure teenaged boy joy shone on his face.

Jan was smart enough not to ask if it was her or the food!

The village children got the new children lined up at the pump with a bar of homemade soap and started washing their hands.

Mothers brought out pans filled with crisp bacon, fluffy biscuits and pots of jam and fresh butter. Worried parents looked on as their children ate the first real meal they had eaten since the world came crashing down around them.

When children came shyly asking for another biscuit, they were given two more, one for each hand! The next trays of food to appear were filled with scrambled eggs and pancakes, a delicacy the new comers had figured they would never see again.

When the new children had eaten their fill, and their tummies were bulging, the older boys and girls of the town took them over to the bunk house and helped them shower and get cleaned up.

New clothes were stacked on the bunks and clean, fluffy towels were there for them to dry themselves. Some of the children wanted to stay in the showers, they had almost forgotten what warm water felt like. They expected to be shooed out, but no one said a word while they enjoyed the luxury of a warm shower until the water began to run cold!

Joey and Jan stood with the newly arrived adults, tears flowing freely as they came to understand that they all were accepted and would be allowed to live in Susanville.

They were allowed to eat their fill of the food, women brought out more food as long as the newcomers were eating. When one hesitated to take another pancake, three more were put on their plate and they were handed butter and a jar of honey to put on them!

They were handed fresh crushed apple juice to drink and asked if they would like to taste apple leaf tea. It had been sweetened with honey and they drank it until the cask was empty. There was also blackberry juice and cut fresh melons on the table.

The newcomers cried and begged the people of Susanville to forgive them in believing that they were slavers and cannibals. Peter Wai and Sheriff Bear stood side by side as they told them that they would assist them in building their new homes in the small town and that they could do any job they were capable of to help support the village.

The new folk lived in the bunkhouses while new homes were constructed. Meadow Valley sent wagon loads of lumber and building materials as the men of the village set about constructing homes with the new folk assisting in anything they knew how to do.

Joey gathered the men from among the newcomers and they started working alongside the villagers. The houses were small and simple, but they were weather tight and secure.

The young children were gathered up and found themselves in school. Some of them had never been in school or received any kind of schooling before. Nor had they ever even seen books, they had no idea what they were.

Joey asked around about someone who could marry him and Janet. Bear told him about the Shaman of his people and the lay minister down at Meadow Valley. He and Jan began making plans, Jan was already beginning to show her pregnancy and, when she went to see Doc, he told her she was going to have twins! Her screams of joy brought Joey running, fearing that something was wrong.

They were both dancing through the village, screaming and shouting their joy! They both became good friends with Bear and his wife, Nancy Tree Walking Tall.

Bear accepted Joey into his group of Deputies and Jan started helping at the school. She was good with the younger children and she got many of them to start reading their very first books! She patiently helped them with new words and explained the things they were reading in their new books.

The day finally came when the Old Shaman and the lay minister from Meadow Valley arrived to marry the young couple. As soon as the "knot was tied" Joey and Janet disappeared into their new house and nobody saw them again for three days!

It would not be very long that Joey Thomas would be appointed Chief Deputy for Sheriff Bear Tree Walking Tall and Janet would become the first grade teacher at the school, positions they both would hold for many years. The walls of the stockade had to be extended yet again and Susanville was rapidly changing from a village to a small town.

Jake and Jason came up from Meadow Valley for a visit, they had finally accepted that they would never see their parents again and that they were likely dead. They both needed to get "out of town" for a while to let their sorrow drain out of them.

They brought their adopted sons with them and they all spent the remainder of the summer enjoying the hospitality of the folks in Susanville. Jake and Jason brought an Army Radio with them and installed it in Bear's Office. They also brought a small, steam operated generator to charge the batteries and Peter Wai grabbed it.

In less than a week's time, Peter and his mate and brother, Carl, had rebuilt the little generator set and made it possible for lights in Doc Billings' surgery and treatment room, in addition to charging the radio batteries.

Susanville was growing up, there were over two hundred people living there and one of the young men who had just been rescued, asked Jake for some help starting a general store and trading post. They decided on an old building near the front gate and they planted a sod roof to keep the building cool in the summer.

Daniel Yee had a good eye for bargains and, within a year, his little store was bustling with business. Jake and Jason had staked him and remained silent partners.

The store drew customers from the Indian reservation as well as the town itself. Local housewives began trading their homemade clothing for such items as sewing needles, tableware and tools. The Wai Brothers spent their spare time making items for sale in Danny's store and it was not uncommon for them to be paid in tubs of butter, fresh vegetables or even salted meat or fish!

Danny kept a stock of small size clothing hidden in the back room and, whenever he spotted a child who needed a new set of britches or a shirt, that child was soon decked out in clothing that fit him or her. He never charged for those clothes, whenever he was asked, he would just smile and say, "What comes around, goes around."
 
The road between Susanville and Meadow Valley saw regular traffic, trade between the two communities increased and the Rangers started patrolling the route. The Ranger detachment in Susanville grew and was commanded by a Provisional Lieutenant, who reported to Bear. Bear had also become the "de facto" Mayor of Susanville.

With the Trading Post and the Rangers in Susanville, many of the Indians moved closer to Susanville. There were still raiders and slavers prowling the desert lands and, more than once, the Rangers went racing across the desert to rescue Indian people from the slavers. The day the Rangers rescued a group of young Indian Children was all the Indians could take, they moved from their traditional village and asked for sanctuary at Susanville.

The stockade was, once again enlarged and the population grew to over four hundred people! The government of CalVada began taking notice of Susanville and soldiers were sent to begin a small fort. Provisional Ranger Lieutenant Boyd Saunders was promoted to Provisional Captain and given command of the fort and the Rangers. Boyd left a squad of Rangers under the command of a Sergeant, to help Bear and his Deputies and the remainder moved out to the fort. Whether the fort had an official name or not, everyone referred to it as Fort Piute and that is what it became.

Everything was growing, Jake and Jayson had to open up the lumber mill full time and wagon loads of freshly sawn lumber were a common sight on the road coming up from Meadow Valley. Jake and Jason were exploring the idea of getting the old railroad running between the two communities! They simply did not have enough horses OR wagons to support the freight traffic between the two towns. Both towns were literally splitting at the seams. Both had expanded their walls and still, they were running short of room!

There were several old railroad men in the two communities and they knew the tracks between Susanville and Portola were still in pretty good shape. The possibility of going as far as Oroville, where the Provisional Army had their Fort was even more exciting.

Meadow Valley was only a short distance from Portola and the rails ran along the side of the small valley where their lumber mill stood. They found a couple of old steam locomotives in the County Museum down in Portola and there were flat cars scattered all over on sidings and rail yards. They even found several old passenger cars. The mechanics from Meadow Valley Lumber swarmed all over the cars and the two locomotives, freeing up bearings and replacing rotted floors on the cars. The pipe fitters and plumbers worked over the two locomotives, repairing the boilers and running gear. In a short time, the shriek of a steam railroad whistle was again heard between Portola and Meadow Valley.

It took another year to clear the right-of-way and replace rotted ties, before they could even think of summer trips up the grade to Susanville. The old snow sheds were gone and the snowplow engine could not be salvaged, so winter rail service would have to be limited to the lower elevations.

The happy day finally arrived when the Iron Horse came steaming into Susanville, loaded with lumber and passengers. The locomotive had originally come from Texas and had been housed in rail road museum in Portola. It could not get up to full speed burning wood, but it could pull fifteen heavily loaded freight cars anywhere along the newly opened tracks.

Regular freight service began between Portola and Susanville and all the tiny communities that had been inhabited before the great crash. Most were uninhabited now, but, with the restored rail service, people would begin to move into the area and businesses would be started to take advantage of the rail service.

Provisional Major Evan Mason, Commandant of Rangers, assigned a squad to "ride the rails", he had no plans of allowing banditry to gain a foothold while he held Ranger Command!

He had been fighting bandits and worse since he was a boy during the Great Crash, there was nothing he had not seen and the only thing that sent him berserker was children being held in slavery! Anything else, he could handle reasonably well and orderly, slavers were to be slaughtered immediately! If he could figure a way, even before that!

Slavers of children were to be slaughtered even sooner than immediately, the recent legislature had passed the punishment for slavery, death. There was no other level of punishment. The new law was confirmed by the Governor and every County Manager of the entire new state of Cal-Vada.

There were four trains a week, two in each direction and the State of Cal-Vada began to grow. As civilization began to return, huge loads of lumber and building materials were transported out of Meadow Valley. Jake and Jason had to put three shifts on at the lumber mill and the plywood mill was running flat out!

The state capitol in Portola was undergoing a massive rebuilding effort and its population was increasing at landslide rates.

All along the rail road right of way farms and small communities sprang up and the Rail Road began a mail service. Jake and Jason were the largest contributors to the Rail Road and both men were determined that the Rail Service would benefit all the people living in the area.

Unfortunately, with the railroad also came bandits, thinking they could profit from robbery. The Rangers soon disabused them of that idea, there were gallows at each end of the line and a Judge ready to hold court as soon as the train got in! The only punishment allowed by the new State Legislature for Train Robbery, Slavery and Child Kidnapping was Death By Hanging!

The new laws being enacted by the Provisional Legislature also held no provisions for plea bargaining, trial farces or executive pardons. If you were guilty, you became an ornament on the gallows or a nearby tree as soon as possible! There was no procedure for clemency or a retrial, you were found guilty and you hanged that same day!
 
There were several known deposits of low grade coal in the area and Jason took a group out to see if they could be worked. The most promising was found at Chilcoot up on the Sierra Grade.

Jayson asked around for those who had some mining experience and, after some hard work opening the coal bed, they built a dragline and delivery chute alongside the rail siding. They had located some gondola cars that had been abandoned during the crash and coal started being delivered to both ends of the tracks and to the lumber mill.

With the coal, they were able to run the boiler and generator full time and they found another generator and boiler system at an abandoned mill that they hauled up to Susanville and rebuilt it for power in that community.

There was little lumber in the Susanville area but there was plenty of grass for cattle. A handling facility was built for meat cattle and a large refrigeration plant beside it for ice to transport fresh meat wherever the railroad served.

The old hospital had a power plant in Portola and that system was restored to service, providing electricity for the capitol. They also restored telegraph service between Susanville, several waypoints along the tracks, Meadow Valley and Portola.

Telephone service was beyond them at that point, but they did have radio service between Portola and outlaying stations that included Susanville and Meadow Valley. They had the ability to manufacture a few solid state chips, but manufacturing vacuum tube type electronics was still beyond them.

For the first time since the crash, people were not governed by the sun, they had electric lights for the night time. There was a problem gathering sufficient light bulbs, but two enterprising young men were experimenting on producing their own light bulbs. They were not as long lasting as the bulbs the older folks remembered, nor were they as bright, but there WERE lights and sufficient quantities of them were being manufactured for everyone to have lights in their homes and businesses.

Soon, even the town streets were lighted and schools could be lighted for dark days and nights, so older people could go back to school to learn new jobs.

It was only a matter of time before they would be successful in restoring even more services remembered fondly from the times before the great crash. One enterprising man, whose last name was Wai and claimed Peter as his Daddy, opened an ice cream store in Portola and was doing a land office business. That he had the features of a Negro mattered not at all. He was soon opening several more stores in the other towns. Before only a few years passed, he was opening parks and playgrounds, all supported by his ice cream sales. The parks and playgrounds were free to all children who wanted to play in them.

Cas's son, Donald opened a restaurant next door to his Uncle's Ice Cream Parlor and raided his Grandpapa's memory for Chinese Food recipes. The Restaurant was always crowded and a line stood at the door, waiting for an empty table!

Two enterprising young men, who had originally been captives of the slavers, figured out a way to restart a small papermill and the first thing they sent to market was toilet paper! They then brought newspaper paper on the market. The first newspaper started up in the state Capitol, Portola.

There would still be bumps in the road to recovery and Jason and Jake occasionally mourned for their parents, but, on the whole, everyone was happy and the State Militia kept the Mexican gangsters on their own side of the border.

They were opening a small college down in the state capitol of Portola and they hoped to be able to include a medical school there, also. Trade was opening up with other regions and there was talk that the telegraph line would be extended all the way to Salt Lake City!

Food was plentiful and there was no hunger anywhere, crime was at a minimum and the new coinage was working out just fine. Many things that the oldsters remembered were still not available and probably would not be for generations yet, but all one had to do is watch the shining faces of the children as they came running home from school and they would understand that those things were not all that important.

One of the most important things from the past was recently made available. The elders grinned in joy when it was announced that the small mill that was making toilet paper was expanding and would include paper towels in their products.

Civilization is returning and everyone is working hard to make sure mistakes of the past are not repeated. Those who prefer to steal and commit crimes are still among them to be sure, and the new society remains fragile, only hard work by determined people will prevent what they are building from being stolen for the benefit of those who wish to live on the backs of their fellows. The punishment for stealing and other crimes once thought to of lesser importance was made hanging offences. No second chances and no leniency was allowed for repeat offenders. Hopefully, the crying sob-sisters would not get those new laws changed.