Judas Payne: A Weird Western by Michael Hemmingson

Author:Michael Hemmingson [Hemmingson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, General, Westerns, Fiction
ISBN: 9781434411945
Google: R3g245N3p7AC
Amazon: 143441194X
Publisher: Borgo Press
Published: 2010-11-08T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

With a gunman at each wagon, the caravan took a course North away from the trail. It was three days journey to Colonel Jodzio’s silver mines. The sun was blaring down hot. No one spoke to each other—if they did, and Jodzio’s men caught them, they were beaten. The women were kept from the men, and while nothing had happened yet, regarding the women and Jodzio’s men, it was only a matter of time. Judas noticed the way Jodzio’s men looked upon the women, and those expressions on their faces, the darkness in their eyes, made Judas feel sick.

Robert Kevin Scroggins remained silent during the whole journey, somber and contemplative. Judas wished he knew some way to console his friend; but the man had been humiliated, his own wife’s nakedness exposed before everyone, his inability to do anything about it. Scroggins didn’t need to say it, he didn’t even need to show it on his face; Judas knew, and so did the others, that his manhood had been injured, and he wasn’t unable to protect his spouse. Nut neither could any of the others, so Judas assumed no one held it against Scroggins.

They were all hungry. Jodzio’s men didn’t give them much of their own food, having it for themselves.

The night before they arrived, as they all huddled in one area to sleep, a blanket afforded to each, one young man said, softly, “We have to do something.”

“Yeah, of course we do,” someone else said, “what?”

“We can’t let them do this to us.”

“They have guns.”

Everyone mumbled. Judas looked at the night sky, so filled with stars...

“We will do something, eventually,” Scroggins spoke up. Everyone hushed. “When the time is right. We have to wait. And when the time is right, we have to act quickly.”

Whispers and nods of yes, of course, when the time is right.

The captor who was guarding them approached, rifle in hand. “What’s all the talkin’ about? What’s so interestin’?”

No one answered.

“Stop talkin’ and do some dreamin’,” the guard said. “We arrive tomorrow. Y’all prolly work tomorrow. You need yer strength.” He spat out some chewing tobacco, and went back to where he was standing before.

In another part of the camp, in one of the wagons, Colonel Charles K. Jodzio was enjoying himself with bottle of bourbon, a cigar, lounging about in his long johns that needed, he noted, a good washing. He’d have the women attend to laundry when they arrived at the mine. Speaking of women, he was waiting for one now. One of his men brought a lady with short dark hair and large eyes. He liked her eyes.

The woman stared at him, almost lifeless, with those eyes.

“What’s your name, my dear?”

“Claire,” she replied. “Claire Brooks.”

“Would you care for a drink?” He held out the bottle.

“No thank you.”

“It’ll help make this easier,” he said. “I had you brought to me first because you seemed to be the oldest of the women here.”

“I’m twenty-nine,” she said.

“Most of the other ladies seem quite young. And the men too.

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