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In
the last episode shopkeeper Whitby MacMillian killed two men who were
trying to force him to sell them mining supplies. MacMillian was tired
of having his merchandise stolen so he was closing up shop and moving
on.
Episode 18
I suppose it's the same for everyone, but when
I reminisce for a time, I realize how I've seen a good many amazing
sights.
I've seen ghosts and the pyrotechnics of
shooting stars. Once, I’ve seen one of those shooting stars become a
spaceship.
I've seen dead aliens. I've met one as near
death as someone can be without actually being dead. I've seen him
miraculously survive even after I'd have bet a hundred head of cattle
that he'd die.
I've made friends with an alien.
I pray I'll never forget how everyday things
are amazing—just the fact we're alive is cause for wonderment!
I've had my breath taken away by beautiful
sunrises and sunsets, so glorious was their colorful loveliness.
Mother Nature has many jewels. The same day I
saw the sprawling, blue Pacific Ocean for the first time, I saw a
crystal clear spring bubbling up from the depths of the Earth. The
spring fed a creek at the bottom of a verdant valley full of deer,
monarch butterflies, and meadows with carpets of flowers and oak trees.
Later that week, I saw the same California
valley from a mountaintop. When a preacher tells me to imagine heaven,
my mind takes me back to that place.
None of those things were more amazing than
the change the brrkup effected in Ike Renner. If a brrkup was implanted
in everyone who was so misspent, the world would improve to the point we
couldn't recognize it. We'd all be so much better off for it.
Somehow Renner had a fattened wallet when he
first moved west. Knowing him, he probably inherited it or came by it
dishonestly. When that money ran out, Renner tried to subsist the only
way he could: by lying and cheating. As his next-door-neighbor, I was his
natural target.
Smart enough to know the difference between
right and wrong, Renner was so ashamed of his actions that he couldn't
look me in the eye when we talked. After receiving the brrkup, he became
someone who couldn't lie—to himself or others. The change was obvious.
His eyes grew clear, and he looked straight at me when he talked.
Renner became noticeably more intelligent.
Clear thinking reflected in his speech. It shouldn't have surprised me.
An honest mind doesn't accept moral shortcuts, though the liar isn't
necessarily stupid. The honest man strives for his aspirations, honing
his God-given abilities. That is the primary reason good usually
triumphs over evil. Witnessing Renner's dramatic improvement in one week
made me gasp at the thought of what changes a year would bring.
Using his newly found intelligence, Renner
asked for a job on the K-10, admitting that, "Running my ranch is a
little too much for the likes of me. I don't know enough about what I'm
doing. I never had much to do with ranching before I homesteaded."
I had been wanting to see him lying in a pool
of his own blood for a long time. I wasn't prepared to believe my ears
when I heard his words.
"Say again?"
He repeated himself.
"Why sure! You'd be good," I managed
to say after those words soaked in.
Renner's eyes widened in shock. He thought I
was one of those people who carry a grudge. I don't—not where business
is concerned. The possibility of making money makes it all the easier to
forgive.
"You won't regret it!" he said.
I try to work at forgiveness. It isn't always
easy. Obviously, he wasn't the same man he'd been before. "I don't
believe I will, Renner. You've got the makings of a darn fine ranch
hand." That was true. With the brrkup, he did. I shook his hand to
seal the deal.
I offered him a glass of an alcohol and
watermelon juice concoction that I'd made out of Jed Buckmaster's brew
and some of the season's first watermelons. I called it "Sweet
Fire." This was the new Ike Renner, nothing like the old. I wanted
to call him friend and know him better.
"None of that for me," he said.
"Do you have something without alcohol?"
"Water," I said with a laugh.
"We mashed down a good many melons yesterday and took the juice and
mixed it with Jed's Monongahela. All we got are some of the melons left.
They aren't very good, with the way we've been skipping on the
irrigation."
There was a disconcerting look in his eyes,
like his brain wasn’t working quite right. I judged that he wasn't
saying his words, rather the brrkup was speaking for him. The real Ike
Renner would have loved a drink right then. "I used to drink too
much of it and wasn't able to stop myself," he said.
I was taken aback, but not so much I'd decry
the brrkup. The Renner I used to know wasn't a loss for the world at
all. For Renner to be the man he needed to be, he was going to have to
give up some freedom. Some men couldn't handle liquor. He was one of
them, and that was fine with me. I wasn't going to tease him into
drinking.
I clapped him on the back. "It's good for
a man to know his limits." Doesn't matter what's making him say it.
An improvement is an improvement. Without the brrkup we wouldn't even be
civilly talking.
I took a swig of my cocktail. I needed it. I
had to have the grain alcohol in my system to give my perception the
kick it needed to make this day feel real.
I figured I'd made the right decision even
though the fifth commandment condemned killing. As far as I knew, there
wasn't a law in the Bible about taking away someone's free will. If
there was, slavery would have found few defenders in our Christian
nation. Still, this wasn't the evil of slavery, which I’ve always been
opposed to. Renner wasn't owned by anyone, and he was just following the
Golden Rule—which everyone should do.
I had some doubts about my righteousness,
seeing how Renner wasn't in control of actions. In a way, he was dead.
But on the other hand, he wasn't. He still breathed, ate, drank and did
all the other things that come with being human.
Renner and I whittled away the hours of the
afternoon. In time, he told me how broke he and his wife were.
That was my opening to bring the conversation
around to business. "Since you're not interested in running the
Lazy-R, I'd be happy to take it off of your hands," I said.
"You'd do that?" he said,
flabbergasted. "Why?"
"I have my reasons—and a few
conditions," I said.
Warily, he asked what they were.
It was good for him to be wary. That cheered
me. Common sense.
"You understand how your spread isn't
going to be worth much if anything to anyone in the condition it's in
right now?" I said.
He nodded.
Even with the brrkup, I believed it impossible
to be too clear with him. You couldn't assume he'd understand anything.
"Someday the land is going to grow itself back, and it'll be mine if
I buy it from you now, right?"
"I'd think as much," he said
carefully.
"When I buy it, I won't be giving you
charity or a handout. The money would be there to give you a new start. I have a feeling that's all you and your wife need."
"That's your condition?" he said,
excited.
"That's all," I affirmed. "All
I want is for us to be clear on this. I need to have something to reward
Nuñez and Guzmán with. They've been loyal to me. They deserve a chance
to be in business for themselves. They can't homestead because they're
Mexican citizens—and I wouldn't want them to. I want to keep them on
if I'm still in business."
I told Renner how I planned to give the land
to them when it was worth giving. "With all the trouble we've been
having between the drought and the range war between us, many others
would've left to try their luck finding silver in the mountains around
Contention."
I assured Renner he would always have a place
with us if everything worked out. "Even if I die or move on, Nuñez
and Guzmán are good men. They might talk funny sometime, but they
aren't the type to cheat anybody."
"Thanks," he said, shaking my hand
vigorously. "This will all work if I have anything to do about
it," he said, offering his hand.
"I think so too," I agreed, beaming,
returning the handshake. The eager way he reacted made me more
optimistic than I usually am where promises are concerned.
"We'll have to talk about a price
then," I said.
"You're a good man, Buck. I know you
won't cheat me or take advantage of me," Renner said. "You
know how desperate my family and I are for money. You decide."
I gulped when I heard that. I might be a
generally good person, but I wasn't the one with a brrkup in my head. I
could cheat him at will—and considered it for too long because of all
the trouble he gave me. The greedy part of me argued that we deserved
compensation for the trouble he put us through. On top of it, I’d done
him a favor when I brought Graax over and had him put a brrkup up his
head. Still, I had the conscience Renner lacked before. I couldn't do
it. Cheating never leads to happiness, they say.
I agreed to pay back my loan to him over the
next twenty years at four percent interest. "You put some of that
money in the bank."
Reading his crestfallen face like a broadsheet
headline, I could tell he thought he'd get the money all at once.
"Can't afford it without a loan. Twenty
years is a standard term," I said. "Anyway, it will take some
time for the land to heal. I'm being more than generous with you."
Furthermore, from what I knew, the bank in
Contention City wasn't readily making loans on agricultural property.
They too were busy betting on the silver rush by funding the
businessmen.
"This way you'll be making a little
interest money on your property too, instead of the bank," I said.
The wastrel brightened at the thought.
Making payments might help keep him out of
rough financial straits for the next twenty years.
If the Thomas brothers had been implanted with
brrkups, Jack Brucker wouldn't have been shot and killed. The brothers,
too, would also be alive and contributing to society as well. Any able
body can do some good if they’ve got a mind to.
Brucker had been both a first-rate sheriff and a
fine person. Still, I knew the brrkup could make a difference in public
safety in a way Brucker could only have dreamed of. The thought was
awe-inspiring and regrettable at the same time.
If the brrkup and pleebk acted on every villain
the same way it acted on Renner, anybody could be sheriff and succeed. I
knew I was going to fall far short in any way someone compared me to
Brucker. He could have outshot, outhit and out thought me—as he could
have done when compared to almost any man. His life was the dough of
legend.
Comparing the two of us, the only thing I had in
my favor was knowing about the brrkup. It boggles my mind to think of the
things Jack Brucker could have done with a tool like that at his disposal.
Some things we can only speculate about.
Without the brrkup in the picture, you'd want a
man closer to what Jack Brucker was, if one could be found. Finding
another Jack Brucker was like finding another samurai in Arizona.
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