Chapter 8

“We can’t wait all night for those yahoos. They probably found some young girls and stopped to have fun. Start loading the cattle and we’ll have the last two haulers wait here for when they get back,” he ordered the men.

“All we do is arrange the cattle inside the trailer and drive. I don’t know nothing about gettin’ them damn critters into a chute,” one of the drivers replied.

“How hard can it be to get a bunch of stupid animals onto your trucks?” the fancy man retorted angrily.

“Since it’s so easy, you do it,” another driver taunted, getting laughter from the rest of the drivers.

“Damn it all to hell, either get busy loading those cattle or you’re all fired!” the fancy man yelled.

“Then consider us fired,” the first driver replied. “You still owe us because you guaranteed to pay us distance plus our bonus, in gold. All you told us was that we had to drive your stolen cattle to the meat packing plant; you didn’t say nothin’ about loading them. That’s what cowboys are for. So, either pay us and watch us leave or sit down and shut up until your men get back.”

“Start loading those goddamn cattle now!” the fancy man barked as he pulled a pistol and pointed it at the belligerent man.

I had enough recorded to convict everyone and didn’t want to see this devolve into a bloodbath. The fancy man screaming and blood appearing on his nice shirt made all the drivers jump. The single shot from my sled was silent. The fancy man dropped the pistol and grabbed his bloody right shoulder with his left hand. Many of the other men pulled pistols and looked around to see where the shot had come from.

They jumped again, pointing their pistols at me when I uncloaked in front of and slightly above them. “Go ahead; fire everything you’ve got at me. It won’t even scratch me,” I said. “You’ll have less than two seconds to do it because my sled’s automatic rifles will start firing with the first shot. Each of you has already been targeted by my onboard targeting system so you won’t be able to hide or escape,” I warned.

The men looked nervously at each other for several moments before some of them began tossing their weapons to the ground. As each man dropped his weapon, my targeting system changed the symbol highlighting him from red to yellow.

“How do we know...” the talkative driver started. He never finished the sentence because he raised his pistol and began firing at me. He got off a single shot that completely missed me before the targeting system dropped him. The last man panicked and threw down his pistol. “Kick all the guns to your right. Keep kicking them until the last guy on the edge of the group has kicked the guns out of everyone’s reach,” I ordered. While they did, I called the sheriff. Fortunately, some of the Sheriff’s men hadn’t responded to the ranch’s call for help.

I explained that I had just captured the guy in charge of the rustlers as well as the men hired to drive the rustled cattle to a slaughterhouse. I had almost five hundred cattle here. I also told them that two of the men were wounded.

Don uncloaked and covered me while I used quick cuffs on the men and then searched them for backup weapons. Finding none, I had everyone take a seat while I tended to the two wounded men. The medical kits in our grav sleds, enhanced by some of the supplies we had confiscated from the two compounds we raided, had plenty of the Styptic-Foam which I used to stop their bleeding. Sprayed from a pressurized can, it can be applied to the skin as a wide area topical spray, or you can use a narrow tube the thickness of a pencil lead to spray the compound into deep wounds.

Inside a wound, the spray expands, closing the wound. The clotting agents and pressure from the expanded compound stop even arterial bleeding in seconds. If you use too much, rather than creating undue pressure inside the wound, the excess foams out of the wound opening and forms a spongy reddish orange blob.

Doctors dissolve the foam when they’re ready to treat the wound. The dissolving agent allows for control when treating the wound. If they only use a small amount, they can dissolve small sections of the foam and treat small areas of the wound. Using enough of the dissolving agent will leave the entire wound open again.

When the ambulances arrived, the medics were happy to see that I’d used the foam. That eliminated the worry of the wounded men bleeding to death. All they had to watch for was shock until they got them to the hospital.

The six sheriff’s deputies who responded had listened to the radio reports about the investigation at the ranch and knew who we were when they arrived. I showed them the video of the disagreement where the drivers admitted that they knew they had been hired to drive stolen cattle, and the fancy man admitted to being in charge. Two of the deputies went with the two wounded men when they were transported to the hospital. Two returned to the jailhouse once the bus they called to carry everyone was filled with the healthy drivers. The other two deputies stayed to keep an eye on the cattle.

While we waited for the men from the ranches to show up and sort out their cattle, I looked around, finding and searching the fancy man’s car. In the trunk, I found gold, silver, and platinum in coins and one hundred-gram bars, as well as duffle bags filled with G3 dollars. Don came over and I loaded them into our storage compartments and onto the sled tenders after the deputies photographed and inventoried everything.

The men from the ranches took about two hours to arrive. As soon as they did, they unloaded their horses from their trailers. Once their horses were saddled, they began sorting out the cattle. One of the ranchers was surprised to find that they had fifty of his cattle, since he hadn’t realized they were missing. “No wonder he can’t make any money,” Rodrigo commented to us quietly as an aside. They loaded their cattle into some of the huge cattle haulers and headed for home. That still left over two hundred cattle.

With almost two thirds of the cattle gone, I could see that many of the remaining cattle were the Jerseys. After looking up their brand, I gave the deputies the contact information for the dairy they were stolen from, as well as the contact numbers for the six registered brands on eighteen of the remaining cattle. The remaining cattle had inactive brands or no brands. I surmised that the rustlers had started out trying to find and capture cattle on public land, but didn’t contact the owners of branded cattle they caught.

One deputy returned and told me that the Jerseys had been purchased legally, although at a distress price because the dairy farm was reducing their operation. I commed them back since it was late enough for a dairy farmer to be up and asked if they had any good employees they had laid off.

“Yes,” he replied excitedly. “We had to lay off three exceptional employees when we downsized. They’re almost family to us. Are you interested in hiring them?”

“I’ll need to speak with them briefly, but yes, I’d like to hire them. They’ll need to move to southern Louisiana, but we’ll pay their moving expenses and provide a place for them to live,” I explained. The three families were still living there on the dairy farm, so I told the deputy that I’d be back in an hour or so.

I explained to Don, “Fancy Man bought the Jerseys legally. Since we captured him, they belong to us, now. The dairy sold them because they had to downsize. They have three employees that are like family to them that they had to lay off. I want to go interview them and see if I can get a feeling as to whether we can trust them.”

“What are we going to do with more dairy cows?” Don asked. “We only needed a few more to produce enough for our family.”

“What among your favorite dairy products do we usually have to trade for?” I asked.

“Cheese!” he exclaimed excitedly after a moment of thought.

“There’s enough property on the Arceneaux farm to keep even more dairy cows than this, as well as a larger beef herd. If we move our cattle and horses there, it will free up space nearer the house for more crops,” I commented.

“Go talk to them,” Don agreed. I was on my sled and headed north a minute later. It was only a five-minute trip. Once I found the dairy, I found a spot on the road where they couldn’t see me and uncloaked, zipping the final klick in seconds, staying the expected three meters above the ground.

Mr. Cutler saw me arrive and came out to greet me. He wondered how I knew about their operation, so I explained about helping to capture the rustlers who had purchased part of his herd. He led me inside their kitchen where I met his wife, as well as Emilio, Enrique, and Ernesto. The three men were brothers and had been hired one at a time as the dairy grew. The Cutlers hired Emilio first and he had recommended his brothers when the Cutlers needed more help.

All three men had young families and hiring the brothers felt right to me. I explained where we lived and how we currently farmed, as well as about our current small dairy herd. Understanding the Cutler’s financial situation, I arranged to have their old dairy cows returned here for now. I’d pay the salaries for the three brothers, and they’d continue to work for the Cutlers until our new milking facility was ready.

The Cutlers would incorporate the producing cows back into their herd for now. They would either sell the extra milk produced and keep the money or would donate the milk. Any cows that were too young to breed and the Jersey bulls and steers would go to our place, as would any other unclaimed cattle.

With an agreement reached, I gave each of the three brothers three months’ salary in G3 dollars. The three families didn’t have much to move since their furnished homes were part of the compensation from the dairy. I told them we’d give them a thirty-day notice when we needed them. When they moved, the brothers would drive two of the rustlers’ larger cattle haulers.

An hour after I reached the dairy, we had three new employees, six if you considered their wives. Emilio and Enrique were buckled down tightly on the tender sled and Ernesto was riding behind me on my sled. I gave each of them a pair of goggles that I appropriated from the rustlers hours earlier and we headed back to where the cattle were. When we landed five minutes later, their eyes were huge.

“Amazing!” Enrique exclaimed as he got off the grav sled and stood on shaky legs.

The Sheriff had finally arrived by then and wanted to know who the three new men were. I explained that I’d just hired them to deal with the remainder of the cattle. I offered to pay two of the remaining ranch hands to load the producing Jerseys into one bull hauler, but they insisted on doing it for free. They even added a few hay bales from inside the barn. The remaining cattle would be split between the two remaining large bull haulers and any extra space filled with hay bales. I made sure each of the three brothers who would be driving the cattle had a pocketful of extra G3s in case anything happened, especially Emilio and Enrique since they had an eight to ten-hour drive from here to our home. Ernesto would have the Jerseys that needed to be milked back at the dairy in about an hour.

The Sheriff finally corralled me. After being chewed out for leaving both crime scenes without permission, I spent two hours giving statements about both incidents, repeatedly. I guess he didn’t like out-of-state interference. After the first hour, I noticed that Don had disappeared. An hour later he quietly commed me and told me to hang around and keep the Sheriff under surveillance once he finished questioning me.

Rodrigo and his brother-in-law finally took the Sheriff to task for browbeating me. “He came to help because we called him. He could have told us no, but he didn’t. With his help, none of us were hurt so quit harassing him,” Rodrigo demanded.

“But he left two crime scenes,” the Sheriff insisted angrily.

“He left the first one only after enough help was there to control the situation. He hurried here to make sure the leader didn’t escape. He waited here for two hours, and nobody bothered to question him, so he left for an hour to take care of a business transaction. If it was so critical to question him, why was he ignored for so long?” Rodrigo retorted.

“You have his statement, our statements, and the videos he provided. Is there anything inconsistent between them?” Rodrigo asked.

When the Sheriff admitted that there wasn’t, he reluctantly released me. I started the monitors on my grav sled recording again, this time centered on the Sheriff. After saying my goodbyes, I started the three brothers on their way and commed Don to let him know they were done with me.

“Keep watching the Sheriff so that he can’t slip away. Texas Rangers will be there in a few minutes to arrest him,” Don replied. I saw the Rangers arrive. The Sheriff acted happy to see them right up until they arrested him, then he pitched a hissy fit worthy of a three-year-old. When I related to Don that they’d arrested him, he told me where he was, and I joined him.

Don explained that the Sheriff and four of his deputies had a scam going. Once they had determined who the fancy man was, they raided his home “looking for evidence.” The four deputies were supposed to remove the most valuable items from the home before I got there. Not knowing where I was because I had left, they had to wait until they were sure I had returned and was busy giving my statement.

Don had guessed what they were doing. He found the guy’s address from the vehicle registration and was there in time to watch and record the four deputies loading their squad cars with electronics and other valuables. The Sheriff had called and warned them when he released me, and the four deputies tried to leave. They ran right into the Texas Rangers Don had alerted.

The sad thing is that, normally, we wouldn’t have wanted any of the stuff they took. When I got there, I relaxed and let my consciousness expand, searching the entire house, finding several hidden caches of weapons, money, and precious metals that we claimed.

Rather than head for the Sheriff’s house to claim anything there, we arranged to have the goods the deputies took shipped to us and then we headed for home. We were both tired.

On the way, I explained to Don about the agreement I had worked out with the brothers. “They assured me that the three of them could handle the dairy cows and the beef cattle, but we will need an actual facility for processing the milk. The dairy will pasteurize and bottle the milk and make anything else we intend to produce, like cheese.

“We’ll have a small enough operation that we can probably hire war widows and single mothers to do the work while their older kids are in school. We can use one of the houses along Stinson Road as a daycare facility and hire two more women to watch the younger kids.

“I guess it’s starting, isn’t it?” I commented to Don as we neared home.

“What’s starting?” he queried in return.

“The Lucky Jim stuff,” I answered.

“Possibly,” he replied thoughtfully. “Maybe it started earlier and kept building until you were almost forced to accept the role. Maybe it’s some sort of test to see how you respond now that you’ve accepted it. Or, maybe it’s starting, like you think.”

“I wonder what’s going to happen when I join the Marines. Even while he was trying to set things up in Cuba, the last Lucky Jim was running around the country like a chicken with his head cut off trying to do everything and still keep his farm going.”

“Yeah, but he already had good people running everything on the farm. Remember when he captured the yacht? When he finally got back to the farm, his foremen had everything under control even though they had just started their first harvest. When the first Lucky Jim left on his frequent trips, everything was still functioning when he got back.”

“I guess,” I replied dubiously.

“What do you think about everything we’ve managed to claim this last week?” Don asked.

“Honestly? I feel like a vulture feeding on a carcass,” I replied.

“You don’t have to claim things if you don’t want to,” Don said.

“Yeah, but since this interferes with my hunting and fishing, I do it to help make up for what I can’t provide. Besides, you’re not able to work on my training. That will leave me less prepared when I join the Marines, which increases the chances of me not making it home. I want to have enough saved so the family doesn’t suffer if I don’t make it,” I replied.

“Don’t worry about your training. I could teach you everything else you need to know in a week or so. A lot of what I intended to do was practicing more assaults and reviewing military tactics. If you enlisted today, I’m confident that you’d come home. Like I tell people, you’re already better trained than I was when I left the Marine Raiders and came home.”

It was late morning when we got home. I warned Aunt Peggy that two trucks loaded with cattle would arrive late this afternoon. Someone needed to wake me when the trucks arrived, so I’d be awake enough to fly the drivers home. I told her about the Jersey cows and about deciding to move the non-dairy cattle to the Arceneaux place where we would build a new, larger milking shed, and then build a small dairy. The dairy would bottle the milk and make ice cream and cheese. They could even make yogurt and cottage cheese if they wanted to.

After helping Don carry our weapons inside, remove the ordnance from our grav sleds, and clean the guns on mine, I reheated the breakfast the women had saved for us while Don carried the precious metals and cash inside. We were both so hungry that the reheated breakfast actually tasted good. After eating, Don and I headed for our respective rooms and crashed.

Soft lips kissing my face woke me up. “Meanie,” my stepsister Janice pretend accused when I cracked one eye open.

“Who, me?” I asked, playing along.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Last night was my turn to be with you and you didn’t come home.”

“I suppose I could make it up to you now, especially since you seem to have lost your clothes somewhere,” I teased.

We were both a sweaty mess when Sally stuck her head in the room and warned us that dinner was almost ready. We showered quickly and made it to the table with two minutes to spare. Don, and Janice’s mother, Yvette, arrived a minute later. They also had wet hair from having just showered and Yvette had the same well-satisfied look that her daughter did. Mother and daughter grinned at each other, and then at Don and me.

At dinner, the women were laughing, telling us about the dogs. Evidently, Jack and Joe got into a shouting and shoving match this morning. Two dogs intervened. Each dog grabbed the pant leg of one of the boys and then pulled them apart.

Emilio and Enrique had arrived, had already unloaded the cattle, and joined us for dinner. The two men talked excitedly through dinner, asking lots of questions. After dinner, I took them for a quick tour of the Arceneaux farm and showed them the empty houses they could choose from.

I explained about the danger from gators but assured them that we’d have the entire Arceneaux property fenced in to keep the cattle and employees safe. They assured me that the farm was far bigger than we’d need for the dairy herd and any cattle we raised for meat. They suggested that we use part of the Arceneaux place as pasture and grow oats and feed corn on the remainder. They knew of a small dairy that had closed a month ago where we might be able to buy their equipment. The dairy closure was the reason the Cutlers had to reduce their operation.

Despite the late hour, Don was still talking with the contractors when we got ready to leave. Everyone was smiling so that was a good sign. While they were together, I told Don that we had a possible lead on a small existing dairy we could buy and move the equipment here.

“Change of plan,” Don told the contractors as he laughed. By the time I made it back from dropping off Emilio and Enrique, one of the contractors had been chosen to start fencing the Arceneaux property beginning tomorrow. I also had information about the closed dairy. I got the com number for the owner’s agent and called the agent on my way home. The dairy was definitely available to purchase. The building itself was in poor repair, but the equipment was in good condition.

After the contractors left, Don let me know that he’d contacted his work. A new model of grav sled they released for testing today superseded the ones we were using. “They’re allowing me to keep all ten of the current version that we’re using. When they found out that we’ve been helping the military and law enforcement, they donated them and even replaced the pencil sticks and 10 mm ammo we used.”

Thursday

Don and I had talked on the way home yesterday and decided that the best way to make sure the hunting was done when I was busy elsewhere was to pair the boys up and have them hunt in teams. The boys were adequate hunters if they hunted the old-fashioned way. The way I did it now, though, should make it easier for them. Pairing them together would provide an extra margin of safety and make them more efficient.

Before loading two more of the new grav sleds with ammo, I spent a couple hours showing Kevin and Jack how I usually hunted now. I pulled up the map I had and explained what each icon meant. They are both bright boys and quickly understood the need to hunt only on public lands unless they had permission to access private property.

Next, I showed them how to use the grav sled’s targeting system, both as an advanced scope for their hunting rifles and for targeting multiple targets. I had them practice by targeting our cattle and making a practice strafing run--sans ammo. Both boys were almost giddy once they understood how to use it as well as how easy it made hunting. Once I was confident in their abilities, I loaded each of their sleds with twenty rounds of 10 mm ammunition.

While I was flying back and forth yesterday, I had also been scanning everything beneath me, looking for game. I intended to return to a section of public lands where I’d spotted a lot of signatures yesterday. First, I took the boys to Austin and got them hunting licenses for Texas. They already had them for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

The boys were surprised when we reached Austin in less than half an hour. While they’d seen me go higher than three meters on my new grav sled, they had no idea it could go high enough that they could freeze or run out of oxygen. As a safety precaution, I programmed their grav sleds to stay within five hundred meters of the ground.

Once they had their licenses, I turned in the ears of the coyotes and the affidavit from the rancher. Then I asked for and received a listing of the VFW offices in the state, as well as any other charities that accepted donations of fish and game. Since I would insist that the boys hunt together for a couple of years, between them, they’d bring home far more game than I did. I’d refined my techniques each of the last three years to better use the abilities of the grav sleds and to accommodate the growing number of requests for help from farmers and ranchers, leading to the increased amount of game I brought home. The boys would be the beneficiaries of my refinements.

Buying meat at the store, when it’s available, requires cash, something many families living near us don’t have a lot of. That our family would barter with them for the meat made it much easier for them, especially since we’d accept a promise of future goods or services.

Many of the families in the area showed up during planting and harvest to help us with our crops, paying off their debt. Others showed up when I brought home the produce from the farmers I helped. When I did, the women in our family needed extra help canning or drying it. Their time was what many of the people bartered for the meat and other food they got from us. Others traded goods with us, especially Old Man Spencer who grew sugar cane and processed it to make sugar. He even contracted with me to make deliveries for him using my grav sled since I didn’t have to buy fuel for it or follow the convoluted roads in the area.

A delivery that I could make in five or ten minutes could take him an hour or two to make because he had to stick to the roads with bridges over the bayous, and other waterways. I made the trip as the crow flies.

The poor guy had no sons, only daughters. Two were war widows and lived with him, helping him and his wife Martha with the work. A third daughter married a commercial fisherman and moved to Florida with him years ago. Their youngest fought in the Drug Cartel War and didn’t make it home.

The two war widows were Don’s age. Each woman had two daughters near my age. If they were home from school when I showed up to make a delivery for Old Man Spencer, his granddaughters would flirt with me nearly as much as my sisters did the last few months.

Once we took care of everything in Austin, we headed for the area where I had spotted what looked to be dozens of feral porkers yesterday. Halfway there, I got a com from a farmer I had helped three years ago.

“Jim, this is Joe Vega. You helped me get rid of the feral pigs tearing up my fields three years ago,” he said.

“I remember; your place is southwest of Nacogdoches, near the river. The pigs were in the woods along the southern border of your property,” I replied.

“Damn but you’ve got a good memory,” he laughed. “I was wondering if you might have time to help me again sometime in the next few days. The pigs are rooting up the first field as fast as we can plant it.”

“You’re in luck. My brothers and I were headed towards Longview from Austin. We can be there in a few minutes. Where should we meet you?” I asked.

“We’re out in the south field, standing in our pickup trucks trying to shoot any of them varmints we see,” he replied as someone in the background fired a rifle.

“We should be there in five minutes. We’ll approach from the north, so nobody shoots in our direction,” I assured him. Someone else fired a rifle just before we hung up.

“Change of plans, guys,” I commed Kevin and Jack. We turned west until I located his farm on my map display and then engaged the autopilot. We’d aim for the center of his property and head south from there.

“We’re coming in right behind you,” I warned Joe after I commed him. He had a huge grin on his face when he turned and saw me.

“My sensors show at least thirty out there and we only need a few. How many does your family want?” I asked. Joe looked at his wife who was standing in a pickup truck right next to the one Joe was in.

“Do you care if we give them to friends and neighbors?” she asked me.

“Not at all, most of the ones that you don’t want will be donated to charities,” I explained.

“We’ll take a lot of them,” she warned.

“You should probably start calling people and tell them to come on over. We’ll have pigs for them before any but your closest neighbors can get here,” I promised.

I showed the boys how to split the area between them and how to make sure their targeting systems were aware of their brother’s sled.

Then I changed one of their ammo magazines for one of mine so they’d each have plenty of ammo.

“Wow, I’ve never seen a grav sled with built in ammo,” Joe gasped.

“These are older experimental models made for the military. My uncle tests the newest models and has me use them to see how well they hold up to prolonged use when he’s done,” I explained.

“We’re ready Jim,” Kevin said excitedly about twenty minutes later. I had watched their progress as they targeted the pigs while flying back and forth over the area four times, approaching from all four compass points in case any of the pigs were partially hidden. They scanned from just above the treetops and could easily see the rotund, four-legged shape of each target on the screen.

By scanning from so close to the ground, they could find targets even smaller than seven kg, probably down to five kg.

“Start your runs from a hundred meters behind us and let the sleds handle the run automatically. Make sure you’re strapped in tight,” I warned.

“We are,” both boys answered right away.

“Go get ‘em,” I said. I watched the sleds approaching from behind us. For ten minutes, the sleds crisscrossed the field and nearby wooded area picking off targets until they were all accounted for.

“I think we’ve got them all,” Jack exclaimed excitedly once they had finished.

“Come on back and I’ll show you how to do the next part,” I told them.

“That’s it?” Joe’s wife asked incredulously.

“That was the easy part. Now we gather them up. You might want to move your pickups over to the hard-packed farm road you used to get out here. The trucks will get much heavier with pigs loaded in the back.”

While they moved the trucks, I showed the boys the extendable poles I used to grab the pigs. They were each three meters long once I extended the three sections. At one end, I hooked a slip knot with a big noose. I showed them how to get it around both rear legs before pulling on the rope to close the noose. When it was tight enough, I could drop the sled and then lift the pig’s rear legs up.