Star Trek: Small Things

[TimmyWl]

This is a small story featuring the same visitor from the December entry "Son of Ham" that I wrote.

Seen here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=77051

The year is roughly 50 CE


Once upon a time there was a doctor joiner by the name of Manus, son of Remanus, son of Ham. He had located himself on the isles west of great city of Rome for promises of the future. Of the two crafts, he was the master of both, his family known for their open hearts to those with the great sickness of the skin, and the good things they had found in aiding those with other ailments.

It was to great sadness that the goodwill did not extend to those of the Empire, for even with a generation past the Prophet’s death, malice was in their hearts and for those linked with the Prophet; great misery was meted upon them. Manus, more of a doctor in his five and thirtieth year of birth, was forever mired in this fall, for he had been never the man to proclaim his allegiances to the new faith, yet be labeled as such due to a link that others had that his father’s father had served with the Prophet. Manus was oft in firmly stating that even if such a link would exist, surely he would not be in league with the Romans for gold that would continue his efforts for the poor and sick.

It was on the season past of the Prophet’s death that Manus was impinged on the honor of those of the cause. Those with the cause told of the Holy Words that they carried to the other realms of the Empire as well as those written by the Disciples. He had given them shelter as one would do. It was with great sorrow then that Manus was carried by a raid of Imperial Legion Soldiers and thrown in imprisonment.

It was in the long days of darkness with barred windows that Manus was approached by a Roman Legion soldier whom had turned to the ways of the Prophet. It did not cure him of his erratic ways, for he constantly alluded to a knife lent to Manus’s grandfather, knowing fully that his grandfather had passed on, with the constant meandering towards mere babble. Manus proved to be a wise man in stating that such tools did not come to him and that it had been passed down to his brother, Lanus. The Legion soldier was most insistent on the turn of events that had been impinged on him, forever going off on the mundane tribulations of his duty.

Then of all the turns that fate could achieve, the regular guard came in, noticing the aberration that the soldier’s garb had against theirs. A confrontation occurred between the two, with the first soldier conversing in their tongue as if he had been blessed with the gift of tongues, the shadows obscuring his face. The confrontation led into a flashing of the blades with the first soldier proving his loyalty to his faith by openly challenging his foes, disarming them in a flurry of arms, even clutching one of the blades with his bare hands, not a single inflection of pain on his face, and putting those challengers to sleep.

The soldier of the Prophet then turned to Manus and for all those that were imprisoned in the cells, going in a manner to release them, going on his own manner of how difficult it was to get his limbs warm. He released all of them, letting them go in a manner that bespoke of his craftiness, often hiding his face when possible, making the escape flawless. In this way the Holy Words were freed from their fate of fire and the followers of the Prophet lent on their journey.

Many years later, it was told, Manus described the lone soldier as a descendent of the merchant that his grandfather had helped many years ago. How this descendent managed to be inflicted with his grandfather's sickness remained to be addressed. Perhaps it was from the area that he had frequented.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Interesting...assuming this is the same Reman visitor from "Son of Ham," I would be very interested to find out at some point why he's made such a personal investment in the success of the Christian faith.

 

[Mistral]

Interesting...assuming this is the same Reman visitor from "Son of Ham," I would be very interested to find out at some point why he's made such a personal investment in the success of the Christian faith.

Me, too!

 

[TimmyWl]

Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a doctor by the name of Lanus the Lame. He had been attached to a small naval squadron devoted to the keeping of the Empire on those islands southwest of Smyrna. He was known for his cutting skills and that did not restrict to the healing craft.

As of that season, Lanus’s legion had enjoyed a lull in the fighting of pirates. He had enjoyed himself quaffing a generous gift from a grateful Greek merchant, namely in the three vats of wine that proved as gentle as silk from the far Eastern Lands. It was on that venture of allotting the wine to his craft when a soldier came up to him.

The soldier was not of the legion that called the area their home. The soldier bore gear that bespoke his origins on Crete not of Smyrna. The soldier had the markings of the great sickness, recovered, with his hand covered by the armor of his legion. The soldier went through several tongues and finally reached to the one where Lanus the Lame could understand his meaning. He wished to take the knife back due to a lien his grandfather had given Lanus’s grandsire, only for a short while.

Lanus, accompanied by his fellow crafters of the sacred art of Ares, looked on this soldier with scorn. No man had the right to take away the arms in which a family would be bestowed with. On further request, the soldier did not have any alms to trade for the knife, known for its cutting properties against the pirates and everything else that was of the local metal works. Of his actual origins, the soldier professed his local to be of Masada, although it was clear that nothing was in that desert town to begin with, and that he was presumably lying with cause.

It was at this venture where other soldiers came on to the meadow, claiming that the first was of their company, and that he was guilty of various crimes. The first soldier professed annoyance at his new companions, glancing at the crowd around, and then requested that the knife should be borrowed at a shorter amount of the hourglass. There was desperation in his eyes and the mark of those in the Great City of Rome. It was upon Rufus Black-heart that offered his sword, citing that any good soldier of Rome would not be barren of any arms in such dangerous country. The first soldier thanked him with the others giving such an eye that would expect branding or of horrors past, decimation.

The hourglass passed with the joy resumed of the welcome wine. Lanus the Lame soon drank himself into a stupor that had all of the healers and soldiers mocking his inability to hold after three quaffs. It was upon curiosity that much searching for the first soldier was made, half heartedly, with the landscape of those isles proving to be difficulty even for hardened pirate hunters to peer in their addled minds.

It was in the resumption of Rufus’s duties as the watcher of that middling mark in the night where the stirring of the gods have the mind wander to regions only the gods know, that odd sights occurred far off in the bushes. It was accepted in that region for the stars to come down and even the legion itself, addled at the sea as any good Roman would be, to chart their ways according to those shining lights. The only difference was the stars exploding in a way that only those in war know when a ballista smashes into a wooden tower, complete with lights that only glass smiths know when the light comes through the various grains of sand, and then crashing into the second closest island to the one that the legion was on.

The alarm rang out on Rufus’s sound duties and a scouting party marched to this unworldly fire. It was a full three turns of the hourglass before the legion could arrive on their boats. The island was known for the jutting rocks and flat top. It was on this scene that the party came on a wrecked metal chariot, the scarred earth, and fire licking the scraggily trees.

Then a person stirred from the broken metal chariot. It was the first soldier, clothed in the same gear as he had been hourglasses before, the helmet cocked up, and furiously emptying the shuttle of all the major spoils. The fire licked the scraggily features of his face, his ears curved, a face crossed with those marked of the sickness and of lore that must not be explored.

To this sound the first soldier observed his crowd and in proper Latin, professed his apology for steering the metal chariot the ‘wrong way’. To this effect the blades were drawn and a challenge made upon this soldier proven to be false and of the lore that must not be explored. The first soldier stated that he had clearly brought disrespect to the Empire, laid down the sword thrust in his belt, and made the motions to surrender, clearly of a civilized man, but not of the origins his face betrayed him as.

There was much plundering and putting out the fire, all instructed by the first soldier, who was well versed in such recoveries. It was during the putting out of the fire that the first soldier bespoke of his hopes of finding what was lost, not of the cultists that had recently spread as the fire licked the bushes, in his lands. The fire was put out and the challenge was, again, of who this first soldier was.

The hourglasses turned with the rest of the Legion coming forth to this crashed metal chariot. The first soldier begged that such an incident would be contained in fear of his own mission being endangered. Rufus, in charge of the party, challenged that if he did not want to be endangered, why would he place himself in such a situation.

To this the first soldier bespoke of his own peoples enslaved and the long bickering that only great families knew. To this the first soldier bespoke of the grandeur that was of the Empire and the light it promised, pausing at the mention of the cultists, abbreviating it to a curious absence of words. To this, the first soldier promised that if the legion had kept his arrival secret, that he should service the legion with blades that would enable their district success.

It was upon this that the first soldier enabled the arriving party of his healing crafts and maps of his metal chariot of the nearby pirates. It was upon the arrival of the tribune that such a promise was mulled on, the long face of the first soldier growing longer as Rufus lived to his name, and that the gleam of fortune shined upon the eyes of those arriving.

Perhaps it was that lure of fortune that the hourglasses spun to the bright light of the day. Perhaps it was the changing of the glasses that made the first soldier come to the realization that such a fateful escape was not possible. Of these fickle threads that fate weaves, the first soldier was of the utmost grace when he broke free from his bonds, broke among the crowd, stunning the crowd with a light that proved to be indescribable, leaped into his metal craft, actually kneeling to the stunned crowd of his apologies, then stunning the gathered parties with a light that went beyond any glass smith’s intricate design or a mosaic placer’s craft.

The metal chariot had disappeared. The earth had clearly shown that it had driven itself beyond the cliff into the water. Left behind were the spoils that he had deliberately left, with written words of his on how to use them, Rufus’s blade, and the various pieces of metal. For this aberration no answer could be found.

Though many in the Legion have attempted to solve this odd tale, the words that the first soldier had in the spoils proved to be a gods-send, for word had arrived in the rest of the legion that the pirates had struck a nearby convoy, and the needs of the Empire overwhelmed such contemplations. Lanus the Lame proved to be faithful in his medical skill, using the first soldier’s kit in healing the wounds, even with the tribune being of that faith that most of the spoils were given over to Neptune that had swallowed the first soldier’s chariot. Rufus, as can be expected, lost his blade when the pirates drove a ballista near his face.

 

[TimmyWl]

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a time keeper of a small town in Cyprus. He had kept time faithfully even as many soldiers crossed the lands and sea in the name of the prophet. He had a mission in gathering wood nearby when he came across a man in armor that spoke of the empire past. The man was looking out to the sea

The time keeper kept on his task with the curiosity lending itself to the man on the beach. Out of the many hours the task burned into the time keeper’s limbs with the man still on the beach. He provided a modest entertainment, far better than those soldiers passing through with the banners and various colors on their ships.

The time keeper finally asked of the man on the beach for assistance in regards to the wood. The man on the beach helped with the sunlight casting a fearful image on his scarred face. He was no more different from those returning from the battles, of the little number that existed, the merchants carrying the stories rather than those that did make them.

The time keeper saw that the man on the beach had great strength in his arms. The man on the beach could not stop from babbling in different dialects, for the base one, as the time keeper hand learned from the monks in the main towns, had the purest form he had ever heard. The time keeper asked the name for the man on the beach with curved ears. He did not give his true name and the time keeper did not give his.

They rested and the man on the beach expressed his frustration that for all the words he had heard of the Prophet, he could never quite come close. The time keeper put forth the suggestion that maybe battling was not the answer. The time keeper pointed to his prized occupation of the village tower, the clock he had made from his family tools, and the bell that would ring at the will of the monks.

The man on the beach threw his greave in a half hazard form. His forearm was covered in the same tunic as the knights bore. It was then that the man on the beach with the old armor expressed his will to see this clock and the time keeper assented. The man on the beach, as vain as he was, put the helmet back on his war ravaged features.

The man on the beach stayed in the village for a fortnight. The time keeper could tell that the man on the beach had a great weight upon his shoulders and showed him the carving his grandfather had made for the church. The man on the beach with his clawed hands and weary face prayed in the dialects he knew. He assisted the time keeper with the clock, the features coming out on the slide, all enacting the prophet’s birth and the man on the beach had that burden arise repeatedly with the movements of the arms.

It was at the end of the fortnight, when the time keeper had returned from repairing the one in the city, that he found his dwelling bare. The monks in the village told that the man on the beach had left a calling for him. The calling was on the beach that he was found on, a walking stick elegantly carved with the effigies of the time keeper’s daily perils with a small miniature clock where the hand would grasp, the sound of the waves erasing any other path that the man on the beach had took.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

So did the Reman take something from the timekeeper, or were you just saying that he'd vanished?

 

[TimmyWl]

He vanished actually.
---
The story comes from the old time keeper that ran the village clock. Supposedly the abbot of the church didn’t take to the insistence of the local knights that those of the heathen faith should be killed. There were struggles and the abbot ended up being run out of his parish.

It was about five years after the running out, the whole punishing by trial by the local bishop that the time keeper’s niece came back into town. Rumor had it that the niece had inherited her family’s precious metal tools and a knife that could cut through the finest steel. She might have been of the other faith, due to her mother being of that sect, and her grandfather being of an eccentric lot. She went by the name of Ruth Carver.

Ruth managed to get the same job as her uncle, restoring the time clock to the former status it had enjoyed. She even opened her own shop, defying the local bishop on such rules, and made her opinion well known. It was during her restoration that she came upon a mystery of sorts. She had found in the many peopled circle of figurines that would come out to chine, a figure that wasn’t supposed to be there. It had the features of a Roman soldier, the type you only hear from the monks and nobles, bearing a staff with her uncle’s own skills woven into it. The figure, known to most on the island as the Scarred One, would always move his mouth to the wooden priest and the noble, being something of a charm against bad things.

Now, Ruth Carver kept asking about this figure, especially to the Abbot of the church, whom said that that it was a charm, not to be disturbed. She made a statement unto herself by altering the Scarred One’s motions to be that of a protecting sort. Many here approached her on that, asking her to restore the Scarred One’s old motions back. After all, on the day she had altered the Scarred One’s motions, the heathens of the ‘Land sank seven of our ships at sea, and a new tax had been placed on the village itself.

There’s a story of how a knight pushed his men to great glory in the ‘Land. He pushed so hard that his company crumpled under an ambush and he himself ran off into the bush. Later he came back, protesting his innocence, and did it again.

Ruth Carver restored the figure after the Mayor made his wish known. It was only a week after that she came into the town questioning if there was a scarred knight in the nobleman’s town. She spilled the incident over ale, telling of a scarred soldier appearing in the nearby trees, asking for her uncle. The scarred one was awed by her knife that she carried and of the faith she belonged to. The knight even professed his outright refusal over the knife and spoke of a misguided map.

No one in the tavern spoke after that statement. She might have been spinning tales of Cathay and Pastor John. The one fact that made it close to everyone in that tavern was the words of detail that she said that the scarred man had – scars that healed over, a face recovering from the sands at the speed of the waves hitting the shores, and the very same stature that the Scarred One of the clock had. It was on the bravery of Red, the constable for the sunset and night that came up with the fact that it was the Scarred One.

Ruth had the features of that same noble that marched his men to great glory of the ‘Land. It was the features of the people in the tavern that stilled her. The Scarred One in the clock had driven the noble that disgraced the abbot away to the sands of the ‘Land and their knives. The Scarred One in the clock had preserved the clock from fire, with his staff pointing the way. He had come back – and even though the Abbot and everyone else would like this tale to be false, The Scarred One is still in that clock, never moving from his stance in between the noble and the farmer.

 

[TimmyWl]

(Something from the Temperal Investigations...)
---
In our agency, the joke is that most of our investigations come to naught, due to the perpetrators. They are usually human, high profile, or a high profile human going after alien. We’ve gotten the reputation of being the janitors, if you will, of these two classifications, with the most recent being the new admiral returned from the ‘Quadrant. As much as she says that it was all to get her ship back from those new lands, the whole inquiry was closed, and remains as an interesting tale on how the future can save the present from alien threats.

This all changed of course, with him. Although he is not the only alien threat to the ‘stream, he is currently the only one that has specifically chosen to be in our history, and pass himself as human Christian, where he is not. He is, by all common description, a sub-species from that broken up Star Empire, one of those that were designed as a beast of burden.

We think that he managed to get his technology from the late war and the current problems in that sector. Our agency was not spared from the surprise of that war. Several of our …memory alphas one could say… was over-run with their intrusions even reaching Earth itself. Somewhere along the line, one can assume, the data was recovered by them, and they built a time machine.

Let it be said that he is the most challenging culprit that we are currently tracking. He passes himself as human and tends to drive home the point that as a citizen of Earth, we are not privy to our own rules, and tend to be self-serving in our agendas of the day. Even with this fact being true, it does not give him the carte blanche to go around our history, directly interfere with our early history that gave way to our own status as an interstellar power.

We did capture him once. This was about the time when an uppity general declared his incorrectly seized fiefdom in the former union to be free and as a service of Earth, had to put him down. The first go around, the guy actually welcomed imprisonment. We suspect that is where he became more a fan of our history and dragged our own prosecutor in whether or not he could classify as a human under the charter declared in San Francisco. He actually won that round and it was only through the ramming of our late chief that he was put down.

Of course that didn’t happen. Somehow, and it has been proven by our own investigators, that he bolted. We are currently tying him down, just as our fellow services in the former Union are with his own kin. This current set back is only a sign of his kin’s impertinence, with him as the main culprit our service is tracking down, with two of our best investigators killed by his hands. We are doing our best and it is threats like him that make our service vital for the service of Earth.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Wait, whoa...so these DTI guys are trying to stop this Reman guy from doing things that are actually contributing to Earth's rise as an interstellar power?

That's hardcore, on their part...

 

[TimmyWl]

Father Red was a good man. He came all the way from St. Louis to help us. Even though St. Louis is far and away from Last Post, Montana, he made the effort. Some say that he was actually going to Bozeman or Helena, maybe all the way to Laramie. The one thing that got him was the people – and still is – in full defiance of the storms that always come from the North to make things all so white.

It was under Father Red that he came in. He served the town nigh twenty years before he moved on. We did get a name from him – Drake Sulla. The general thought of his origins at the time was a wagon trail gone wrong or a merchant fallen from the Black Hills without a single sign to help him on his way. In any case, Father Red took him in, and he became the sheriff for a while.

He was an odd one at that, Drake Sulla. Father Red told many that Sulla was a Roman name, some general long ago, along the lines of Grant or Sherman, maybe even Sheridan. They didn’t exactly have the books we have now so everyone took it as a St. Louis thing. Everyone thought that Drake’s ramblings involved the Brits and their bizarre ways in dealing the Indians. Drake always was the handyman when it came to tools and the rail. He managed to push the Mayor in having us linked with Bozeman in relation to the coach – maybe the telegram station – with the wires spanning the one day’s journey to the next town.

It was in the great storm and that war in some Cuba place that hung the town up. Father Red had gone off on a healing mission to the local reservation they had in between us and New Berlin. It was a small one when the winds began to kick. The last telegram we got from Bozeman was a stampede of their cattle going our way. Then it was that snow, the pale white everywhere, and the ice cutting through the wood. Everyone was huddled in their homes, the roofs caving in, and the whole town going crazy in the storm.

Drake was never the man to stay still. He kept on moving, giving encouragement to those trapped under the roofs, and keeping them alive. It was only after the storm had abided when the question came of Father Red. The man went on a long ride on his horse to get the priest.

We waited about a week for him to come back. It was then that Father Red came, asking about Drake. A posse was sent to hunt for the poor sheriff. For three days they searched. They did find his horse about two days west of the path going to the reservation. From what we can tell, Drake was riding on that path when the horse veered off, no control at all, as if he had been plucked from his own saddle. We never found him. Father Red almost cried at that, actually wept for Drake, the first man that had come to him asking for a baptism, built his church up, and did everything for him as he became part of Last Post.

There’s a plinth – as the good Father said – made on the exact spot that he vanished. Of course then the whole thing about Cuba broke out and Father Red had to walk that fine line. He was a good man.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Wow, now he's moved up to the 19th century? Late 19th, I'd say, judging by what looks like references to the Spanish-American war.

And again, Sulla seems like he's putting himself in a position to be helpful, not destructive. DTI is after him--yet I STILL haven't seen them point to a single instance of Sulla's causing any sort of negative effects in the timeline...

 

[TimmyWl]

It was immediately post-war, right at the cusp of the great shearing. Every department got cut, especially the agents with their hoity ways, and their magnificent machines. The shearing even got to our department, still recovering from the raids, the loss of about three listening posts out there. We never got the data back. With them turning out to be our new enemies, the Star Empire crumbling, one can see how things looked bleak

It was in that wake that he came in. He was, as many in the department knew as, a political appointee. He had gotten through based on his service on the fabled Enterprise. He never let anyone forget that, often telling of great stories about her captain, her officers, the grand adventures that never ended.

The breakup of the Enterprise was inevitable. They were simply too good and with the war; one would almost expect them to run into some sort of fate. After all, the original one crumpled with that whole escapade involving an exploding planet, some inventor, and that whole mess involving that inventor. They have yet to give our department the full story on that.

Anyway – he took it hard – too hard in fact. The man changed to this foaming dog – the type that goes off in the deep end. When we captured that soldier in the bushes of Montana, he was only too happy to cite the Time Code against the poor soldier. Our mission at the time was reformation, rehabilitation, and release. It still is, if one is asking about it.

He botched it. They botched it in the way that the soldier was labeled as a criminal, for no humanoid could ever have the technology of time travel, especially those that killed the beloved Captain of the Enterprise. He managed to recruit support from the higher ups on that shaky idea. Everyone wanted a scrape goat, the soldier was the ticket, and after all, if one is to get funding from Earth, they might as well get a good reason for it.

Many times Cards-man, for that was the nickname most of the department gave him for his never ending praises of that captain, pointed out that the soldier had no rights under the law. It’s no wonder that the soldier bailed. Cards-man got out of whack, hijacked his own device, and went off. Last anyone heard he was leading an exclusive task force with a budget to boot.

The whole thing is wrong to begin with. It has that smell of an Enterprise crisis – the type that a captain goes after an alien threat from the directives of the future – all of a gallant ride. The exact results are never addressed, hanging in the wind, as the current mess in the former Union. Our department would love to help our agents find threats to the ‘stream. The only subtraction is the current Admiral, her ship, and that mess. We’re not a preventive department; that was taken away from us due to the last re-organization. People in San Francisco don’t understand the complications when time travel isn’t regulated as any good mode of travel is; they just expect the results at the end of a gun and all the glories of a legend- like that new one, and I'm unclear if Cards-man even knows about his legend being dispatched to regions of forgetting.

 

[TimmyWl]

This story belongs to the mess that was post-war, on those capital worlds. An officer and his staff had been planning to execute orders issued by Earth to root out possible rebellious elements in his force. Then they got ambushed by one of those converts, completely human in their ways, alien in their visages. This convert was polite at least, supported by a couple of others. They were a bit polished in their English and they argued passionately about their captive.

It was one of the captors that convinced the others to let the officer go. He introduced himself as Drake, a sharp difference amongst the fellows, actually giving a name. The staff was also let go. That small band soon vanished in the chaos that was the post-war. The officer even modified his plans by letting those rebellious elements find new planets beyond the capital worlds.

It was only later that the officer was detained again. It was Drake, again, this time older than those years that had passed in between the incidents. Drake pleaded with the officer to change his course, as any good human would do, to allow his people recognition by Earth or maybe some relief from the persecution that Earth had. The officer pointed out that it wasn’t his fault; the blame was to be handed over to high command. It was then that Drake asked the officer point blank on what could be done to solve the problem. The officer simply stated that good governance could be the answer all the way from Earth. Drake took notes and left.

Six months passed and Drake resurfaced again. The officer by this time had managed to acquire a budget to aid his district into formal reconstruction. Everything seemed to go smoothly. Then he encountered Drake on his doorstep, this time weathered with grief. It was to the officer that Drake confided that maybe the kindness could be given to his people now that fortune had smiled upon the officer.

By this time, the officer had come to the conclusion that Drake was one of those people that traveled. As regulated, and perhaps blinded by his own success by having a budget, the officer had noted the department that had specialized with this mode of travel. The officer told this to Drake, saying as much to his face, the commitment that Earth had to the natives in their own homes, not in illegally occupied land.

It was to this that Drake cried out his frustration. Perhaps out of this, he left, leaving the officer on his doorstep. A day later, the officer vanished, not to be seen until a year, where a ship discovered him in a deserted outpost in Phobos, one of Mars’s moons. As for Drake, some say he surfaced on Prime, in one of those new churches sprouted by an Earth non-profit group, asking for forgiveness from a priest. The priest reported to have given him the Word, and it was upon this that caught Drake’s eye, with his fate ultimately unwritten.

To this, those based on Earth proclaimed the guardians of time, launched their case.

 

[TimmyWl]

Note; It's Moscow, Idaho, not Moscow, the capital of Russia.

---
It was after the second Great Storm. Everyone was messing around in fixing Last Post from that mess. Red’s Groceries had to be righted up due to the snow. Karl’s cows had to be taken out of Sled Pit. Then there were the graves, especially Sulla’s, which had been almost lost.

Everything was coming back on in Last Post. It was only during the accounting that he came up as a helper in the church, mending the steeple, and making a path to the main road. He had aged nearly six years, far younger than those of his generation, especially those that had gone to Cuba and back. There was a great deal of talk on what happened.

He never did tell a straight story, telling of some nonsense about rival planes and biased judges up north. He had this cough and the old men told that his sores had sealed up somehow. He asked about Father Red and the year, due to the relative neglect the pastor’s office had. Someone told him that Father Red had passed. He wasn’t as grieved as Red was.

On the account of his previous action, the sheriff offered him the post of deputy. He took it on the condition that if anyone from Canada was asking for him, he wasn’t there. Most of the town took this as a joke, since the last person that came from there had been selling gramophones and he had been searching for Butte.

In the twelve years that passed, there was never a visitor who asked for him. There were visitors from Boise, Moscow, Helena, but never that part of Canada where a good Sheriff would be plucked off his horse. The only trouble that Drake had with anyone was convincing outsiders to settle in Last Post, causing this ruckus with Bozeman, getting this rivalry on who could get the next mail plane going to California, or even a strip where the plane could land.

Drake would always say that Last Post had potential – it had to seize it else some other town could get it. He kept that for about three years until the Sheriff had to remind him that Bozeman wasn’t St. Louis. That kept him quiet. It was around that time that he became the curate for the church, not actually preaching, concentrated on the upkeep of the programs, leaving that for Father Wall, all the way from Bend.

There was something that Drake said, when we went over there, a good part of them in Georgia when it ended, that everything comes to an end. He said this as the news came over the wire about how they became a republic and we won by default. There was a whole mess of telegrams from those that that actually got to France about how it went silent in the lines. Drake said that even though they didn’t catch up, perhaps time would, and the sign post out of town would be his once more again. Everyone thought he was a bit morbid on that, especially Father Wall, who was changing the sign post to a marker of peace, that giant stone pillar where Drake disappeared, noting that Drake could have been a wee bit happier with the war ended.

Drake shrugged his shoulders, looking off to the wind. It was a bit cold that day with the hats not quite going so far as unreachable. There was guns going off and all he did was look to the west.