Tangled Tales II

By W.Wm. Mee

‘Tangled Tales II’ is my second collection of exerts and samples from my various works.
I hope you enjoy it and that my scribblings bring you a little respite and even joy during these troubled times as the Global Pandemic of 2020 has us all in its cruel grip.
Be strong, be safe and take care of one another.

W.Wm.Mee
St. Bruno, Quebec,
Canada

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.Wm. Mee
• Release date: Apr 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463931974

W.Wm. Mee

Wayne William Mee is a retired English teacher who enjoys hiking, sailing and walking his Beagle hound. He is also a 'living historian' or 'reenactor'. You can see Wayne's historical group on Facebook's 'McCaw's Privateers' 18th Century Naval Camp' page. Building & sailing wooden sailboats also takes up a chunk of Wayne's time, but along with his wife Maggie,son Jason and granddaughter Zoe, writing is his true love, the one he returns to let his imagination soar.Wayne would like you to 'look him up' on FACEBOOK and click the 'Friend' button or even zap him an e-mail.If you enjoyed any of his books, kindly leave a REVIEW here at Smashwords and/or say so on Facebook, Twitter, Tweeter or whatever other 'social network' you use.Thanks for stopping by ---and keep reading!!Drop him a line either there or at [e-mail]'ll be glad to hear from you!'Rest ye gentle --- sleep ye sound'

Book preview

What follows is a self indulgence; a haphazard collection of various scribblings of mine. Some of the tales are exerts from my earlier novels and some are brand new --- but old or new they all patiently await your perusal.

A writer, much like a baseball player, can’t always hit the ball ‘out of the park’. What follows however is me rounding third and running like hell for home!

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them. ‘Rest ye gentle, sleep ye sound.’

Wayne Wm.Mee,

Montreal, Canada

Sam The Cowboy

This is perhaps my very favorite ‘short story’.

As a kid I always wanted be be a cowboy. That’s one of the advantages to writing --- you get to ‘be’ --- at least for a little while --- a lot of very different kinds of people!

The good, the bad and --- you got it --- the ugly!!!

Enjoy.

***

As far back as he could remember, Sam had always wanted to be a cowboy. Living most of the year in Chicago with his parents, he had spent glorious summers on his uncle’s ranch, the Circle ‘C’, in the wilds of western Montana. His mother had been born there, but had hated every minute of it. She had hated the dawn till dusk work, the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer and, as she often said; ‘The goddamned wind all the time!’ She hated the smells and the vast, rolling vistas; she hated the animals and the rough, crude men that worked with them. And, sad to say, she especially hated her father.

Feeling as she did about the ‘West’, Marge Goodnight, several times great grand-daughter of Charles Goodnight, the legendary 19th century western ‘cattle baron’, headed ‘East’ as soon as she could. She married a white collar businessman that had never even dreamed about getting on a horse and the two of them had lived happily ever after. Well, sort of.

***

The baby had helped for awhile, named Sam after the one and only cowboy Marge ever did love, her Grandfather, Samuel Goodnight. But the ‘dark moods’ had eventually crept back into her life. Drinking had helped, again, ‘sort of’.

The truth be told, Marge Goodnight Carstairs had never been a happy person. Not as a young child, not as an adolescent, and certainly not as an adult. Her husband, a ‘mild mannered reporter’ kind of guy, secretly thought that she never would be. He also saw the effect that her radical mood swings were having on his already ‘over quiet’ son, and, as any good father would, he set out to do something about it.

At an early age Sam’s father arranged for Sam to spend his summer’s on his uncle’s ranch out in the wilds of Montana. The mother may not have liked it there on the Circle ‘C’, but her son thought he had died and gone to heaven! But then what ten year old wouldn’t? Riding horses, climbing haylofts, chasing cows, driving jeeps and tractors! And that was the work! Then there was fishing, hiking, hunting, not to mention skinny dipping in the waterhole with the frogs and shooting guns with Uncle Jim and ‘the boys’!

Sam spent his first full summer on the Circle 'C' when he was ten. At fourteen Uncle Jim was paying him a man's wages for the summer. At eighteen Sam packed his suitcase and left Chicago for good.

What about school? his mother had wailed, so agitated that she had spilt half her drink. You’ll grow up wild and ignorant like the rest of them!

‘And free!’ his father had thought, inwardly wishing he could run away with his son.

As though reading his father’s thoughts, eighteen year old Sam had squeezed the older man’s thin, soft hand. Come and visit me, Dad. We'll go riding up into the mountains again!

Milton Carstairs knew with a certainty born of desperation that he would remember that seemingly long ago ‘adventure’ he had shared with his son for the rest of his days. It glowed in his memory like a golden ray of sunshine, pointing him down a path he should have taken had he been a more 'forceful' man. The memory lingered on with him as one of his few 'secret treasures', right up there with the first time he held baby Sam in his arms.

It had taken years, but Milton Carstairs had finally talked Marge into ‘a short visit’ back to the Circle ‘C’ to ‘bring Sam back home for the start of high school’. Reluctantly, Marge had agreed.

Several hectic days later, dressed in clothes his son had lent him, including worn boots, greasy leather 'chaps' and a battered Stetson, Milton had looked on with pride as his sixteen year old son had roped, caught and saddled two of Uncle Jim’s many horses, loaded them up with three days supplies, tied on sleeping bags and slid a used but well oiled Winchester into the saddle scabbard.

What’s that for? Milton had asked his son, both concern and excitement clear in his voice.

Sam had grinned as he handed his father the reins. It’s comin’ on fall in the High Country, Dad. Grizzlies like to feed-up on berries before winter.

Grizzlies? Milton had stammered.

Sam’s grin had widened as he easily slid into the saddle. Long as we don't piss 'em off, Dad, we'll be fine.

The father's gin was nearly as wide a his son's.

Those had been the three most glorious days of Milton’s rather uneventful life! Following this oh so strong, competent young man up trails with breathtaking views and dizzying heights, Milton could hardly stop himself from weeping for joy. They rode past rushing streams boiling with frothy foam and studded with cold clear pools that reflected back a perfect sky. They wound through forests of shimmering maples and quaking aspens, all ablaze with the colors of autumn! They spent crisp, cool nights round their crackling fire, looking at the multitude of stars and watching Rainbow trout sizzle and blacken as they roasted on a stick 'injun style' over the glowing coals. They ate fried bacon and sourdough biscuits Sam made each morning, then saddled up and rode off into the sunrise, the air so crisp and clear that it brought tears to Milton's eyes. The aches in his back, buttocks and skinny thighs were well worth it to spend such a magical time with his son.

Over the years since then, Milton often caught himself reliving that glorious adventure over and over in his head --- especially on the long, dreary drive home from the office back to Marge.

***

Ten years later.

Circle ‘C’ Ranch, Montana

When Sam was twenty five and had just been promoted to assistant foreman of the Circle ‘C’, his mother died back in Chicago. ‘Pills, booze and an overall disappointment with life in general and me in particular’ was how Milton thought of it, though, as usual, he kept such thoughts to himself.

After the funeral, a very small affair, Sam and his father brought the ashes back to the Circle ‘C’ and buried her in the family graveyard, a beautiful windswept hill overlooking a mountain valley.

I doubt Marge would have wanted this, Milton had said as Sam dug the hole beside his grandparent’s graves. She didn’t exactly like the outdoors.

Bullshit! Big Jim Goodnight had replied with his usual bluster, draping a massive arm around his diminutive brother-in-law and pulling him in close. Marge never knew what the Hell she liked or disliked! Flighty as a newborn colt, she was! Never sure just where she was going!

Milton shrugged, not wanting to speak ill of the dead. Marge was always --- moody.

Marge was always a royal pain in the ass, and everybody knew it! Big Jim barked. Still, the Circle ‘C’ was where she was born and it should be where she rests. Our parents and grandparents are all here. Great-grandparents too. Ol’ Charlie himself is said to be buried out here somewhere, but I think that’s a bucket o shit. He probably was shot to death down in Texas or Arizona. One of those places he went to steal more cattle and chase loose women! Big Jim took a small silver flask out of his pocket, held it up to the wind, took a belt and offered it to Milton, who, not wanting to seem rude, took a wee sip.

Big Jim took the flask back, had another belt, and waved it again at the wind. That’s my brother’s mound over there. Damned fool let a mustang roll on him when he was about young Sam’s age. Neither one of them, brother or sister, ever had a lick of sense between them! Not like our Sam here!

Both men, each so different, each a ‘father’ to the young man in their own way, smiled at one another. Suddenly Big Jim’s smile widened.

Christ! Why didn’t I think of this before? Milt, ol’ pard, you’re stayin’ here with us!

Misunderstanding his brother-in-law’s intent, Milton nodded. Well, I told them at the office I’d be gone all week. I suppose I could stay a few days longer. Part of his mind conjured up that magical ride in the mountains he had once taken with his young son. Perhaps they could ---

Gone a week? Jim boomed. ‘Hell, Milt, you’re gone for good little buddy! You’re movin’ in with us and that’s final! What do ya say, Sam? You don’t mind if your old man bunks in with us at the Circle ‘C’, do ya?"

Twenty-five year old Sam, having just lost a mother, looked up from digging her grave and smiled. He might have just lost a mother, but at last he had finally found his father.

***

The next three years were the happiest of Milton Carstairs’, up until then, rather uneventful life. Big Jim ‘hired him on’ as head book-keeper and accountant and the three of them lived in the sprawling main building.

Milton did indeed ‘ride up into the mountains again with his son’, not once, but many times. Sam showed his father the towering peaks, the rolling foothills and the vast flat prairies from both jeep and horseback. They hunted and fished in all the ‘secret places’ Sam had discovered in his solitary childhood. They even skinny dipped in the freezing glacier blue waters of a trout pool Sam had found as a youngster all those lonely years ago. Big Jim came along a few times, mostly on the hunts, but the majority of times it was just Milton and his oh so competent son.

Milton died of cancer during his fourth winter at the Circle ‘B’. He went fast and he went happy, with his son at his side and facing his beloved mountains. They buried his ashes the next spring alongside Marge. The wildflowers were in full bloom.

You alright, Sam? Big Jim had asked, offering Sam the battered silver flask. The two men sat on their horses amidst the above mentioned wild flowers. The half dozen other people that had been at the short ceremony had already headed back to the ranch. Sam took the flask, waved in the air over his parent’s graves, took a sip and handed it back. Ya, Uncle Jim, I’ll be fine. Think I’ll ride up to the high pastures and check on the herd. Be back in a week or so.

You sure, son? Lot of snow left up there yet. Take a couple of the hands with ya?

Sam’s smile widened. You goin’ soft on me, Uncle Jim? Worryin’ like an old mother hen about her chicks?

Big Jim returned a smile of his own. Maybe-so. Way I see it I aint got but one chick left in this world and that’s you. He nodded at the field of graves, old and new. The flask passed over them all in silent salute. Each one of us gets there in the end, Sam. No sense rushin’ it.

I’ll be fine. I just need some time alone is all. Sam leaned over and squeezed the big mans forearm. You taught me well, Uncle Jim, his gaze turned to his father’s fresh grave. "You both did.

***

Shorty and his Blackfoot wife, Raven, also lived in the big ranch house. Shorty had left the bunkhouse and moved his beautiful young bride into the main house right after the wedding. (This fall would mark their fortieth anniversary!) Back then Raven had taken one look around the rather ‘dusty’ ranch and shook her pretty head. ‘Men!’ she had said. "Little more than pigs in a sty! Shorty! Boil me some water n' lots of it!’ Since that day almost forty years ago you could eat off the floors in the main house, and God help you if you tracked in mud!

Shorty, a long, gangly man who stood six feet five in his battered boots, had been Big Jim’s foreman for years and, stooped and bent now, was more than content to have Sam relieve him of most of the work. Shorty now saw to the upkeep of the many buildings and corals while Raven continued to take care of the cooking and housekeeping.

For many years before he died, Raven’s father, Paylaw, an old Blackfoot shaman or holy man, used to often visit the ranch. Paylaw had a lined, weathered face; long, iron-grey hair and pale green eyes that saw all the way to your soul. He’d just appear at the kitchen table, his half-wild pony hobbled outside, stay for a day or a week or a month, and then vanish. As the Blackfoot reservation ran alongside the Circle ‘C’, the old gentleman often turned up with a deer or an elk for the ranch-hands. Sometimes a gutted animal would just be hanging in the barn.

Paylaw especially seemed to like spending time with young Sam. Those first magical summers Sam had spent on the ranch, he was often out riding with Paylaw. The old Blackfoot taught the young child much of the ‘The Way of the People’: how to ride bareback, make a complete camp with only a blanket and a knife, how sneak up on a deer or elk and how to prey over the body after the kill; even how to tickle a trout out of a mountain stream.

Sam was twenty-one when word came from the Reservation that Paylaw had passed on. Apparently his health had been failing all that winter and, come spring, he had saddled up his old pony, took his best pipe and his Medicine Bag and rode up into the High Country. A week later the pony found its way home alone. Sam’s jaw stiffened when Big Jim gave him the news. Tears had threatened to fall.

Aint nothin’ wrong with cryin’ over a lost friend, son. Big Jim had rumbled. "Hell, I’ve been blubberin’ ever since Raven told me this mornin’!’

Sam’s tears had flowed then, flowed like a fast rushing mountain stream. He had come to love that old man as much as he did Big Jim or his own father. The feeling, it went without saying, had been mutual all around.

Said he was a cowboy, when he was young.

He could handle a rope, he was good with a gun.

My momma’s daddy, was his oldest son.

And I thought, he walked, on water.

He was ninety years old back in ’83.

I loved him, and he loved me.

Lord I cried, the day he died,

And I thought, he walked, on water.

***

Wayland Crow

Still on the ‘Western Theme’, I’d like to introduce you to another one of my very favorite ‘characters’. This one is a tad darker than Sam. Wayland Clarence Crow is a modern, fourth generation lawman from Robert Lee, Texas. Born in the right place but at the wrong time, Wayland doesn’t do too well with ‘modern’. But when the you-know-what hits the fan, he’s the guy you want on your side.

I’ve used Wayland in two of my modern ‘present day’books. I’ve also crossed him over into science fiction/alternate history by making him the central figure in my ‘end of the world’ EMP series, ‘Desperado’.

We first see him in ‘God’s Cleansing’. Come on in; he won’t bite --- as long as you behave yourself.

***

Wayland’s ‘namesake’ at the top left

Sheriff Wayland Crow glanced up at the picture on the wall of his office in Robert Lee, Texas for what must have been the godzillionth time. It had hung there for almost ten years now, ever since he took office. It was actually a blow up of an old tin-type his grandmother Mable-Beth had given him just before she passed away. Fresh back from his second tour over in ‘towel-head country’, he’d just been elected the county sheriff and had gone to see the woman that had all but raised him and his two brothers as her own. Wayland’s mother had died giving him birth --- another bit of baggage that he carried around along with all the rest. The old tin-type and the Colt .45 Peacemaker had been Mable-Beth’s parting gifts --- that and a stern admonishment to ‘smile more, marry a nice Texas girl n' make some babies!’

You’ll make a good daddy, Wayland. And a good husband, she’d said, her breathing getting harder even then. You’ve got the gift.

Oh? he’d said back at the wrinkled ninety year old. What ‘gift’ is that?

Mable-Beth had smiled and gently touched the back of his hand. Patience, Wayland. You’ve got the patience of Job himself! Just mind that temper of yours, you hear?!

A week later she was gone. Wayland had the tin-type blown up and hung on the wall, where it has stayed for the last ten years. He started carrying the Peacemaker instead of his old Smith & Wesson revolver then too. As for the wife and babies, well, he was still working on that.

He looked up again at the picture and saw his namesake staring back at him across that large gulf in time. The place was damn near the same --- it’s just the damn centuries that were out of whack!

Wayland's 1873 Colt .45 'Peacemaker'

***

You all packed up? Mavis Dupree, Wayland’s part time secretary asked him.

Mavis wore several hats in Robert Lee. Besides working for the Sheriff’s department on Saturdays, she helped out Wynona at the school library on Monday and served as the court clerk on Thursdays and whenever else Judge Campbell needed her. In a thriving metropolis like Robert Lee, all told that gave her three, maybe four days work a week. Mavis was also the town’s leading full time ‘match-maker’, and she had been doing her level best to hook Wayland up with the beautiful out-of-work anthropologist and part time school librarian, Wynona McFee. Wynona was a rancher’s daughter from over San Angelo way who had gotten her masters in ‘Primitive Island Cultures’ at Dallas University, but the only job she could land was the school librarian four days a week here at Robert E. Lee High. Thanks mainly to Mavis’s relentless insistence, Wayland and Wynona had been, to use a quaint southern phrase, ‘stepping out together’ for almost a year now. Though they still lived apart, they had gone on several ‘short vacations’ together, the most recently being a weekend in Dallas seeing the new Humanities Museum that had just opened up and the musical, ‘Les Miserable’. Wynona had freaked out at the ‘South Sea Islander’ exhibit. Apparently they had gotten both the style of grass skirt wrong as well as the facial tattoos on the life-like manikins.

‘They’re supposed to look like Queequeg did in the old Gregory Peck version of ‘Moby Dick’, not some Sioux Indian on the bloody warpath!’

Wayland had thought they looked like a proud warrior culture that he would have enjoyed being born into, even with the grass skirts. As for ‘Les Miz’, Wayland was surprised to find that he had liked it --- but not half as surprised as Wynona!

In the year they had been ‘stepping out together’ however, they had never actually been in each other’s company for more than three days at a time. This thirty-three day ‘Grand Adventure Cruise’ they were going on was something else altogether! It started at Rome and ended in Sidney Australia, with, according to Wynona, an unplanned number of ‘stop offs’ at different islands on the way home across the Pacific. As she had the whole summer off and Wayland’s part-time deputy, Elmer Fisk, would cover for him for as long as he was away, time was not a problem --- at least, time ‘away from work’ wasn’t. Wayland was still a little ‘antsy’ however about being with Wynona for five weeks straight. Secretly, he was sure she would be fed up with him a week or so into the cruise.

Packed? Packed for what? Wayland asked Mavis as he was going through the latest wanted posters. There were several for out of state crimes and one for a gas station robbery and murder down in Dallas.

"Jesus H. Christ, Wayland, for your big cruise you and Wynona are going on! That’s all the girl’s been talking about now for over a month!" Mavis was fifty something and feisty as hell. Rumour had it that she and Judge Campbell were an ‘item’. Truth be told, Wayland didn’t care one way or the other. They were both good people and he wished them well whatever they intentions. Mrs. Crow’s youngest son firmly believed in minding his own business, and expected others to do that same --- though he wasn’t fool enough to think that most people would.

Oh, that. Ya, I’m about ready.

You got your dinner jacket yet?

My what?

Dinner jacket. You know, a fancy suit jacket for when you sit at the captains table. And shoes too! You can’t go wearing those run down cowboy boots to a fancy sit down dinner!

Wayland saw nothing at all wrong with his battered and scuffed old boots. They were, after all, mighty comfortable. I got that dark grey suit I wear at weddings and funerals. That’ll do just fine. Besides, me and Wynona got our own table. I’m not too partial to eating with strangers.

Mavis tossed down her pencil and fixed Wayland with her fiercest frown. "Well, if you'd make ‘friends’ with some of them they won’t ‘be’ strangers now, will they?"

Wynona’s the talker, Miss Mavis, you know that. Me, I’m the quiet, silent type.

You’re the pain in the ass type is what you are, Wayland Crow --- and you damn well know it too!

He cracked a smile and suddenly it was clear what a beauty like Wynona saw in him. He didn’t show it often, but there was a gentleness under that rough, weathered exterior that belied his four years in active service overseas and ten years in law enforcement. Why, Miss Mavis, I do believe you have found me out! And all this time I thought I had you fooled.

Just then Elmer Fisk, his part-time deputy, came rushing in, which in itself was strange, because the one thing that Elmer rarely did was rush. Wayland, we got us some bad trouble!

Do we? What kind of trouble, Elmer?

The red faced deputy pointed at one of the wanted posters on Wayland’s desk --- the one about the gas station thieves and murderers from Dallas. You see there where it says they drove off in a candy-red pick-up with a couple of bullet holes in the tailgate? Well, it’s parked over at Eddy’s Diner!

They inside? Wayland asked, all signs of that gentle smile having vanished.

Elmer nodded. Sitting at a booth in the back. Looks like they’re having the lunch time special.

Just two of them?

Elmer squinted. There’s other folks in there, but them Dallas boys are off to one side.

Good, he said, drawing the hundred and fifty year old Peacemaker and slipping in