I was having a good dream, when the knocking finally woke me up. Someone was at the door. I got out of bed and the knocking resumed.
"Hold your horses, I'm coming," I hollered out.
I put on some pants, and some slippers, which I kept by my bed. They had been a treat to myself, to combat the cold floors. After putting on my pants and the slippers, I slipped on a heavy robe and made my way to the door.
Opening it, I saw it was my boss, sheriff Carl Wangle. I told him to come in and stop letting the heat out. After shutting the door, I went to my pot bellied stove. I opened the front and looked in. Hot coals were still visible, so I put more wood in it.
Both of us stood next to the stove as I asked him what was up.
"Bill Jacobson has been spotted over by the 8/H ranch. I'm going to head out that way and I will be gone a couple days. That will leave you in charge of keeping the lid on the town," Carl told me.
"Want some coffee?" I asked, making my way to the kitchen.
"No, I have to get back to the office, and get ready to go. Since I will be gone, you can suspend night patrols, except for maybe an early one around 7 PM. Other than that, just show up at the office in the morning about 6:30 AM and I will give you your final instructions then," the sheriff explained.
I nodded as I loaded kindling into the kitchen stove. I had fired it up when I had gotten home this morning, as I normally do, and the wood caught quickly. I dipped out some water from the water barrel and put it in my coffee pot, then put grounds in the basket. I also filled the water reservoir in the stove with more water.
I had brought this camp coffee pot with me from the future. I figured it was not too technologically advanced. It was something anyone could manufacture in late 1877, really.
Carl stayed and talked to me for long enough, that he did wind up drinking a cup of coffee. He watched me put sugar into my cup, and grimaced.
"You're ruining a perfectly good cup of coffee doing that, you know," he said about my putting sugar in my coffee.
"You drink your coffee your way, and I'll drink my coffee my way. How's that?" I asked tongue in cheek.
He grinned and drank some more coffee.
I pulled some bread out of the breadbox, and got some butter from the pantry. The chill in the pantry kept the butter nicely. As a matter of fact, everything I wanted to keep chilled went into the pantry on a shelf by itself. Good way to keep leftovers, really.
"Say, Carl? Do you remember I asked you to let me go for a couple weeks over Christmas? I have to head to Denver and see my folks. I promised them you know," I reminded him.
"I remember. Should be no problem. You won't be paid for the time you're gone though, just so you know. I already asked and they wanted to know if you were drunk, asking to be paid, and gone, at the same time," Carl said with a grin.
"Can't blame a guy for asking. I call it vacation pay," I said grinning.
"Well, with very few exceptions, the town don't pay someone for not doing something. Maybe the mayor or the town council can get a deal like that. You and me? Forget it," Carl bemoaned.
There was another knock on the door. I raised my eyebrows at this. Hardly anyone ever came to my house. I went and answered the door. It was the water man, asking if I needed more water, yet. I told him to fill 'er up. He and his sons had me topped off in just a couple of minutes, and I paid him for his work. Ten cents. Seemed fair, considering he had a wagon, and he and his boys were out in this cold. Ten cents went a lot farther in 1877.
As the sheriff was getting ready to leave, I put in a final word.
"You be careful, getting Bill Jacobson. He is the most likely person to have killed Sheriff Haydon," I reminded him.
He nodded and left. I made sure the door was shut and got about the business of eating, since I was up. Damn, I had been asleep for only four hours. It was going to be a long day, but I had to get used to being up during daylight hours, again.
It was getting towards dusk, and I fired up the Aladdin Lamp. I had had to refill the reservoir as the lamp used kerosene like a thirsty person drinks water. Still, it gave out a nice bright light. It was a comfort to have a bright light, actually.
I started reading a book I had brought back with me. It was a mystery, and a pretty good one at that. I went to bed around eleven that night, and set my alarm for 5 AM. After tossing and turning a bit, I finally fell asleep.
It had gotten a lot colder during the night. It had to be below zero, out there. I was sure that the sheriff would cancel his trip, but he didn't. I was surprised, considering he had a long ride ahead of him to the 8/H ranch.
The 8/H was actually two ranches. The main ranch was located at the base of the mountain, but the portion the sheriff was visiting for the next few days, was the summer ranch. There were very few cattle up there during winter, I was told. Made sense to me.
The sheriff was bundled up and on the road by 7. It was going to take him about two hours of riding to get to the lower headquarters of the 8/H. I shuddered at the thought of being out in this cold, and silently wished him a good ride.
I made a few rounds during that first day he was gone. There was not much business being done, due to the cold. As a matter of fact, the temperature dropped even more during the day.
I pushed papers around a bit, and then had nothing to do for most of the day. 1877 was a boring time, with none of the modern activities you could engage in for self entertainment.
During one of my rounds during late afternoon, I stopped by my house and fired up the kitchen stove, and the living room stove. I wanted a nice warm house to come home to when I got off work in the evening.
There was no moon that evening. The wind had picked a bit, making it really bitter, outside.
This is the way my life went for three days. Get up at 5:30 AM, go out and have breakfast somewhere, stay at the office all day with the exception of making rounds. I guess the cold kept people from acting like fools, and kept them home. There were no problems during the sheriff's absence.
I was at home grinding coffee beans. When you bought coffee in the 1800's, it did not come pre-ground for you. I had had to learn the fine art of coffee grinding. Not much to it, really. I had bought a grinder from the mercantile to ground the beans up. I did experiment with how fine a grind I wanted, though. It was an interesting process, and kept me entertained for a while.
There was a knock on the door. I left the kitchen and went to answer it. It was the sheriff.
"Damn! I wasn't expecting you back this late," I said after letting the sheriff in.
"Wanted you to know I was back. Had a shoot out with Bill Jacobson, and he didn't make it. He died about an hour after I shot him. Just dropped him off at the undertakers, and then put up the horses," Carl said warming his hands by the kitchen stove.
"Coffee?" I asked?
"Please. It was a long cold ride, let me tell you," the sheriff responded with a shudder.
"You eat, yet?" I asked thinking he probably hadn't.
"Nothing since I left the 8/H earlier today," he responded.
"Let me heat you up some stew I had earlier this evening. I still got some left," I said, going to the pantry and getting the pot with my left over stew in it.
I always made enough food to have left overs. Worked out fine that way. Soon, Carl was chowing down on stew, a chunk of bread, and drinking coffee. He polished off the stew pretty quick, and I added some cheese, which he also ate.
While he was eating he told me how he had come to shoot and kill Bill. Seems that Carl had gotten the drop on Bill; but when they were talking, later, Bill had tried to pull a small derringer from his boot. Carl had been forced to shoot him.
Finally, Carl was done eating, and was sipping on his third cup of coffee.
"I don't know what it is about your coffee, Steve, but it is the best tasting in town, except for widow Larkins. That woman could make mud taste good," Carl said fondly of the widow.
"Say, Carl. Might not be any of my business, but have you thought about marrying the widow and settling down?" I asked him curiously.
"I have. However, she's not ready to remarry yet. I don't want to seem pushy to her," Carl answered simply.
We talked for a while more, and then Carl started yawning. I looked at the clock. It was only a bit past eight in the evening. He left to go home. Of course, he had spent time on the trail as well as having killed someone. That would have produced an adrenalin rush, to say the least, as well as an emotional result.
For some reason, I had noticed that men, woman and children were not acting traumatized the way the 'head doctors' in my time had always maintained people who lived like this were prone to be.
In this time, people tended to spank children for infractions as punishment. No 'time outs'. Yet the kids were not growing up to be mass murderers! Amazing, isn't it?
The spankings were not abuse, but they could be harsh. I had already witnessed a couple and was glad it wasn't me getting spanked. Yet the children did not kill their parents, for some reason. Go figure.
Oh wait, maybe these people were too stupid to realize they were being traumatized? Sure, that was it! They just don't KNOW they were supposed to resent being corrected, or living like this.
I snorted as I came to the end of the thought. My doctors at the VA had wanted me to see the psych guys due to my wound. I went, told them I had no resentment against the enemy or my own country, and they couldn't figure it out. It had taken me several visits to make my reasoning clear to them, and then I stopped going.
Oh well, there was no reasoning with certain thought processes. When you confront a person whose thought process was set in concrete, just nod and move on. You are not going to change their minds with mere facts; it's just not possible.
The next day I went into work in the morning, only to find Carl had beaten me there. Actually, he said he had spent the night at the jail house. It was getting closer to my vacation back to the future, and I reminded him of my upcoming trip. He looked at me.
"I remember, Steve. Now stop bothering me about it, or I will find a reason to cancel your little vacation," Carl said sourly.
Everyone is entitled to have a bad day, and this was Carl's day. I'm not sure what set him off, or made him so down, today. I offered to do the rounds, and he accepted. As I made the rounds, I considered what I would do on my "vacation."
I was planning to spend more time here in 1877, almost 1878. I liked the simple life of the time period. I just had to make sure all my 2007 bills were handled, and my parents and sister were comfortable with my being gone.
Now, what to do...
Edited By TeNderLoin