Chapter 16:
My first life was a bore, so now I got another 7?!
It was true that after having claimed to have been thrown off my horse on the first day, I had avoided riding a horse, fully aware, that this time it might really throw me off. But in the end, I had to accept the fact that I wouldn’t be able to entirely avoid it.
So I decided to get to know the horses a little at first. Arthur, who because of his name was usually called Art or Arty or something along the lines, had taken a great liking to the horses the sheriff had bought and had taken care of them in return for a decent wage, considering that he didn’t have any bills to pay at his age. He was Elizabeth’s and Frank’s son. I didn’t know this during our first meeting but the shade of red his hair portrayed made it more than clear who had to be the mother.
After spending a few weeks of petting, feeding and cleaning the horses under Art’s guidance, I felt that it was finally about time to learn how to ride a horse. Couldn’t possibly be more difficult than driving a car, considering that the horses had a brain on their own. If only I had known how wrong I had been.
My first attempt started off well. Art had shown me how to fasten the saddle and how to mount the horse. So I guided the pure-white horse out of the stable and climbed on top of it. This had been the easy part.
Now the horse, which had been called Lady by the sheriff, only had to start moving. My first try was to just gently pet it on the side and say something like: “Let’s go!”
My friendship level with Lady wasn’t high enough for this.
She looked at me, shook her head to fend off a fly and stood still.
I tried several more things. Nothing worked. So I had to lead her back to the stable in the end without having improved my riding skills at all.
This was why everybody thought of me, without even exaggerating, as a bad rider.
“So your horse threw you off and you walked all the way here? What happened to you? I mean, your clothes?”, I asked the boy.
He looked down onto himself and shrugged.
Whatever had happened, he didn’t seem to be in the mood to tell something about it.
“Well, we will talk later. Recover first.”, I ended the talk in a way that made it seem like it had been my decision to do so, not his.
The people in the saloon returned to their talks. Frank, Gav and I sat in silence and waited until the boy had started to recover from his journey. Something about the way he looked made us uneasy. Was he robbed by bandits? Or had it been something worse?
“How about you finally tell us what happened to you? Because if there is something bad going on around here it will for sure be bad for us as well.”
Gav started another attempt to make the boy speak.
The boy looked up at him.
“Let’s start with a name. That’s something you can tell us, no?”
“Jeremiah”, the boy replied in a growling tone.
I had grown accustomed to these pseudo-western names by now. Of course I knew that they were real names, but somehow, I still couldn’t free myself from the feeling that they were sounding almost too american to be truly american.
“So, Jeremiah, what happened to you? Really? No excuses or stories.”, Gav continued to investigate.
He seemed to be the one of us the boy was at least somewhat willing to talk to. So we sat back and listened.
Jeremiah looked at him and suddenly his strong façade started to crumble. His eyes filled with tears which he tried to hide, firstly by blinking them away, then after this turned out to be futile, by wiping them away quickly, which only turned the dirt on his face into a muddy paste.
Gav put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry. It’s over now. Tell us whenever you feel like it.”
It was clear that he had been through hell and that asking further questions would just damage the little trust we had gained by feeding him.
After he had calmed himself down a little, he silently started to speak.
“They came at dawn….”, he started.
We sat in silence. There would be time for further questions later.
“We didn’t have the means to fight them. We were just normal miners. They killed my father. And whoever was resisting them or their demands….”, his voice broke as he spoke.
“They took over the town and live off the money we earned by mining. Everybody gets the bare minimum of food while they live like kings.”
“Who?”
“20 to 30 people. Led by this Victor Troef. A guy who came some months ago by boat and since then only made trouble.”
As this name was spoken, everybody in the saloon turned silent.
Even I, not having been too long in this world or rather not too involved with its news outside of this town, had heard about him.
If there was one person I would have preferred to not stay near my town, it was Victor Troef.
Knowing his reputation he wouldn’t stay in his captured town but would try to gain more men and then expand his domain. Thinking that this half-starved boy managed to walk here, his town couldn’t be too far away as well. Meaning that we might as well be next on his list.
I looked at Frank.
“We will need an awful lot of weapons and ammunition. Also we need to give message to the officials this is a matter they can’t just ignore.”, I said.
“I will travel south tomorrow before dawn. We can’t allow ourselves to waste any time.”
I turned around towards the people in the saloon.
“Everybody else, clean and ready the weapons you already have and make sure you know how to use them! We need to be prepared for whatever steps we take next!”
The people silently nodded.
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