|
Post by JW% on Dec 20, 2012 17:04:50 GMT -8
Chet climbed to the crest of the hill and looked out over the town of Avalon Mountain, watching as the sun rose and the first rays of light stretched out over the land and reached up the side of the mountain that the town took it's name from. As the sunlight struck it started to melt away the fog from the river that ran by the town and made this little nestle of some eight city blocks with buildings of various sizes the center for the community all along the mountain side.
"Chester Tigat, I swear boy, you're trying to wear me out." Annie said, puffing as she came after her young energetic son.
"He's young." Chet's father said, moving with a feral grace that implied, but did not reveal, his possible tribal heritage. As near as anyone knew Ronald Tigat was just a burly child of a Russian who came to America some years back before the push west. "Boys have energy."
"But momma, look at the view!" Chet said, pointing back east, showing that they were practically on the edge of the mountains. The land seemed to stretch forever once you left the little valley they had settled and claimed.
They weren't the only ones either. Already a small barge was drifting down the river, ready to unload from homes and small communities up the mountain, and a stage coach was making it's way up the road into the city. Dropping off people who were coming into the city, or possibly just making a stop here while moving on, over the pass into California or the Oregon territories.
All in all, just another day in Avalon Mountain...
|
|
|
Post by Adlai Stevenson on Dec 21, 2012 20:45:47 GMT -8
The railroad dick was, if it weren't obvious enough, a drinking man; wider than he was tall, with a reddened face so bloated by cheap rotgut, his beady eyes seemed to be lost in his cheeks. However, these eyes were quite sharp, and in this specific case, somewhat intimidating. Even as the tall young man in the silken black bowler unloaded the last wood-bound crate from the rusted train car and into the bulky wagon hitched by the ticket office, his rawhide-calloused hand drifted back and forth about his service revolver with every fell movement from the considerably sprier fellow.
Llewellyn Lee Gallant the Third replaced the bowler on his head with the back of a slag and soot-powdered hand, wiping the sweat from his brow and a foreign tuft of deep black hair from his peripheral vision. He noted two gazes in his direction: that of the stout lawman with a hand on his piece, and the moderately less intense stare of the wagon's present pilot, another able-bodied man-of-action under the employ of Mister Leo Higgins. The two had been commissioned by the boss man himself to venture westward to Fort Doolittle Station (little more than a Cascade Railroad camp erected over the ruins of a once fully-functioning Union armory during the days of the Civil War; whoever thought any faction of the war would possibly make the journey to the farthest western tip of the country was likely more than a bit paranoid) to retrieve a shipment of new stable equipment and other paraphernalia, recently lost in a rather rowdy round of fisticuffs over the drunken mutterings of certain unwelcome parties.
With a contented smile on his face (and a wide one, at that; the fellow's long face always made his smile look bigger than what it usually was, something he considered both a blessing and a hindrance while knee deep in a poker game), Llewellyn tipped his newly-donned bowler at the lawman and clambered up upon the wagon with the employee of Mr. Higgins.
"We done here?" he asked, as if either of them hadn't already known the answer. The driver replied with a dull snort, and with a thickly-wadded ball of chewing tobacco and phlegm expelled from his mouth, the two-horse wagon jolted to life, and the duo of hoof and wheel met dirt and path.
The wagon deviated from the path being cleared for the ever-expanding railroad, moving north from San Fransisco and presumably up through the Oregon Territories and the Canadian border. Ahead was a series of elaborate tunnels, holes blasted through the thick rock of the Cascades. The largest was meant for a future railway expansion that would eventually cut through the township of Avalon Mountain (still being held up by corrupt bureaucratic bickering, rail worker labor strikes, and the occasional bandit or injun attack down from the hills. Nearby, smaller pioneer tunnels had been holed through, mostly for exploration of the soon-to-be labeled trails as well as mapping and supplies for the workers in the vicinity. The wagon passed under the timberwork rock shed that kept any dislodged mountain rocks from crashing down on them, and emerging from the darkness unto the pleasantly toasty morning on the other side, made a straight eastward shot that would lead them back to Avalon Mountain.
Llewellyn struck a sulphur match on the side of the wagon cart, popping a freshly-rolled cigarette into the side of his mug and lighting it. He'd learned as a child that rolling a perfectly cylindrical fag was most appreciated by the piss-drunk and violent adults in the room. Kept him from earnin' himself the sting of a whoopin', and may have replaced such a painful occurrence with a coin or two for his troubles.
Just like in the penny dreadfuls, he inhaled the whispy smoke with the signature outlaw smirk of confidence and pride upon his face. Personally, he wasn't too partial to the habit of smoking, but it passed the time, and often spared his tongue from starting or complying with any conversation sparked by his temporary coworker with the reins at his side.
Sooner than later, the wagon had meandered its way into the township of Avalon Mountain, and with a snails pace to the stop, Llewellyn departed, and began unloading the cumbersome crates onto the front porch of Bentley Stables.
"Mister Higgins!" Llewellyn hollered, taking one box at a time while his compatriot hauled pairs of heavy crates underneath his grizzly bear arms. "Got'cher delivery here!"
|
|
|
Post by Fiery Firefly on Dec 21, 2012 23:15:37 GMT -8
"Right here boys. Learn to use those peripherals of yours," Mister Leo Higgins had been sitting on the far side of the porch, enjoying a cigar something she could only do on the porch, considering how her grandmother hated the smell.
Yes her . It was a complicated story, but essentially Mister Leo Higgins was infact a Miss Leonora Higgins, pretending to be a man to bypass the property laws of Avalon Mountain. A secret that was not known to this fine gentlemen however.
She took another drag and got up, "Thanks a lot Well, and um... you...." she turned to Lllewellyn and the other man in turn. She found Llewellyn's name to be too much of a hassle to pronounce, and the other man wasn't interesting enough to her, to have her remember his name.
"Anyway thanks. We were running low on feed and I was afraid them horses were going to starve. And then here you come and save the day," she chuckled. "Listen Grandma made some of her famous chili. It's so good that she managed to get Rans out of the stables. Why don't you go join him?"
|
|
|
Post by Adlai Stevenson on Dec 22, 2012 11:02:13 GMT -8
Llewellyn faked a smile and chuckled behind his teeth, hat in hand. "It's Llewellyn, sir. Like 'Loo-El-Ehn'. Like . . ." the young bandit-wannabe attempted to draw another comparison, but it fell flat. ". . . Llewellyn. Chili sounds splendid, Mister Higgins, thank'ye."
With the last of the boxes stacked and counted, Llewellyn clambered up the wooden porch, stomping out his cigarette into the planks before entering the ranch.
|
|
|
Post by Penny Royals on Dec 22, 2012 11:49:37 GMT -8
"Daddy! Daddy!"
The small feet running through the high grass, the ground muddy with the rains that had been falling lately, had alerted the older man almost immediately that something was happening. He turned from where he was- shearing a few sheep to take the wool out and sell it before the cold came. Tawny was a few yards away, breathing heavy, her voice tired. He paused, setting the shears down and getting up onto his feet and taking a few steps into her direction. She ran right up close to him, panting heavily, and reached her hands out to him. In them was a big egg.
"Ethel..." she heaved, "Ethel finally laid an egg..."
The man smiled, gently taking the egg away from her cupped hands and holding it before ruffling her hair.
"Well, looks like we may have a dozen now that Ethel's done," he replied, handing the egg back to her as she straightened back up. "How about you go up into the house and get the basket and put this one on top? We'll head out to town in a little bit."
And so Tawny bounded off to grab said basket, and Haldor went back to shearing.
|
|
|
Post by JW% on Dec 26, 2012 15:53:01 GMT -8
The Bently Stables weren't entirely unoccupied when the wagon pulled up. Harold Irons, county martial, was waiting there with a relaxed swagger, watching as they unloaded the wagon. He was grizzled, his face sunken with heavy creases and weathered so that you thought his boot leather was softer than his face or his hands. But for all his aged appearance, he moved with a young mans assurance that all would be right with the world, as long as he was there to fix it.
Harold wasn't a small man. In fact, the town sheriff looked to be easily physically dominated by his partner. The white suited man with the tin star however wasn't here at the moment. What was, was the black smith.
Metal smith really, but since he worked a lot with iron rather than the more delicate matters, and of course had some clear african heritage in him, everyone called Roger the town black smith. Wide lips in a simple open smile, thick eyebrows over open curious, some might say naive eyes, and a pair of shoulders and arms to put a packmule to shame, Roger looked at the wagon with what looked like simple minded wonder.
"Gonna need a hand with that?" Harold asked Roger as a particularly heavy wooden crate was unloaded from the wagon.
"Nuhp." Roger replied in the negative with a grunt, lifting the crate of iron ingots. He lifted with his thick treestump legs and seemed to carry the load with more ease then should be possible.
Despite appearances, Roger was far from slow minded. He was thick fingered, making most of his work blunt force shaping rather than the fine gearing of the gunsmith/jeweller/watchmaker, but Roger was an artisan at what he did, and when it came to math and figures, one of the sharpest in town. When he spoke at town meetings, which was rare, he was a voice of reason that even the mayor listened to. He just looked at everything with a childs wondering eye, as though he wanted to take it all apart to figure out how the wagon worked, how the load was distributed on the axels, how the horses pulled and turned, and then put it back together in a more logical and efficent manner.
Harold watched Roger head back to his blacksmith shop, then swaggered up to ask, "Ya'll got a mail bag for me?"
|
|
|
Post by Fiery Firefly on Dec 28, 2012 18:21:45 GMT -8
"The name's David sir. David Archer." the other man said completely annoyed by his boss' forgetfullness.
"Oh sorry," Leo shrugged, "And Well, maybe your mama should of named you something that can actually be pronounced. Like Leo." Of course, back in Carson City people had trouble pronouncing Leonora correctly. Her mother had cursed her and her 5 sisters with fancy frou frou names like that.
As the men entered the kitchen, they saw a short old woman, dishing out some rabbit chili to another of the workers at the ranch, a large rather intimidating man, who was the textbook definition of a "Gentle Giant"
"You sure you want a second helping, Mr. Kellet?" asked the old woman Bess Bentley, "I should save some for the rest of the boys..."
"If its no trouble ma'am," Ransom Kellet said, "Its mighty delicious"
Bess chuckled and dished him another serving. She looked over and saw the Llewellyn and David, "Come in boys."
As she served them chili, Leo walked in still smoking her ciggarre.
"Leo, put that out." Bess scolded. She might have looked like an old pushover, but undeerneath that brittle woman was nerves of steel, formed from her younger days taming the Frontier.
Leo laughed and blew a little smoke in her grandmother's face, playfully. She was very close to her grandmother, and Bess was the only one in town who was onto her little secret. She meant no harm.
"You're such a rude young man," Bess has never once slipped up about Leo's gender. At this point, even she forgot sometimes that she had no grandson, "No wonder none of the women in town want you,"
"I don't want them either," Leo said taking a seat, "Why should I have a wife to nag me, when I have you Grandma? No, I'm gonna stay a bachelor, the way I like it."
She knew there were rumors in town, pertaining to her lack of interest in women. She didn't care, though Bess kept wanting her to get a wife and let her in on the secret. But that'd be just unfair to the girl, who came wanting a husband, and ended up with a wife. Besides the only real issue was getting another boy in the family to take over the stables, and luckily her sister Henrietta, had a baby boy only a few months ago and with five sisters, surely there'd end up being a few boys who'd be able to inherit the stables.
|
|
|
Post by Adlai Stevenson on Jan 1, 2013 8:04:30 GMT -8
"Thank'ye kindly, ma'am," Llewellyn bowed his head as he removed his bowler in the doorway, a show of respect for the home of his employer and his spunky fossil of a grandmother.
Grandma Bess always brought a smile to his face and a warm feeling to his gut; she was a constant reminder of the old maids and seamstress down in Mexico, or the Territories. Abuelas. Singing old, sad songs in a language he still couldn't wrap his head around for the life of him while he crawled and toddled over wood and stucco floorboards in the dry heat of the desert that made him want to cry out but sapped the tears straight out from his eyes before they fell.
That, and the old gal made a mean bowl of chili.
"If ol' Ransom hasn't sucked the pot dry, Missus Bentley, I'd be partial to a bowl m'self," Llewellyn said, nudging the older ranchhand with a light elbow.
Had it not been for their respective skin colors, many a passerby could have easily thought the boy and girl were brother and sister.
They climbed the coast on a rambling jaunt of a northwest trail in a rickety stagecoach that had seen significantly better days, keeping mostly to the main roads and by the developing railways, traveling in fits and starts. They made a brief stop in Sacramento before making the week-long journey northern bound, setting up camp in a thickly-forested, lush green valley at the base of the Cascades. The black boy was uncomfortable there; the silence got to him easily, and he was always wary of an injun attack or bandit ambush, even this far up and away in the sticks. The white woman was decidedly unmoved by such concerns.
It was a crisp mid-morning by the time Bernadette Chadron and JC Avon rolled into Avalon Mountain, the former dozing lightly within her stagecoach while the young boy held the reins. His youthful vigor was unquenchable. With a smile and a kick at the back of his seat, the black boy sought to awaken his guardian.
"Berna, we're here!"
". . . yeahhhsthat'schuhhhmmmm . . ."
". . . Berna?"
A dull thud against the side boards. An ungrateful groan.
"Mmph, yeah, JC?"
"We're here, Berna."
The white woman with the tattooed face poked her head out of the now-opened stagecoach window. She winced at the sun. "Thank you, JC, but where's here, exactly?"
"Uhhh . . ." JC squinted at something. Bernadette could feel the coach slow down as he presumably read from the sign by the township's entrance. ". . . Ah-vel-ehn Mountain? Ah-vel-oon? Ah-veh--"
"--thank you, hon. Another happy landing."
Bernadette surveyed the town of Avalon Mountain before them. Another place, more customers, and maybe some time to kick back and relax . . .
|
|
|
Post by Fiery Firefly on Jan 7, 2013 15:38:04 GMT -8
Ransom flinched a little. He didn't particularly liked to be touched. He pushed his second helping of chili toward Llewellyn, "You can have it. I should probably get back to work," The kitchen felt way too crowded to him.
"Thats all you do, Ransom. Come on relax" David said, "Spend some time in a place that doesn't smell like horse shit..."
Bess smacked David on the side of the head, "There will be no language like that in my home. If you want to swear so badly, go to the saloon." Bess served as a maternal presence in the Stables, not only to her granddaughter but also to the stable hands.
Leo laughed, "Rans go do what you want. I ain't gonna stop you,"
He nodded and left the room.
Leo began making small talk, "So how was ya boys trip?"
|
|