The Sheepmen's Daughters: A SciFi Romantic Thriller

By Marc Hemminway

The title is the first clue as to the genre of this story: sheep!

But in this twenty-first century world sheep are likely a relatively unfamiliar species to most readers. Let's take a quick look at the history of these fascinating creatures.

Sheep, the Ovis Aries species, first appeared in Mesopotamia around 3

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781648956850

Marc Hemminway

The Author graduated from a small church-affiliated College, a major State University and has studied at several Ivy League and foreign Universities. "Academic study helps to 'balm' my obsessive curiosity and direct me to strange expeditions and interesting people doing interesting things in interesting places". He has held Executive positions with major international research firms and continues to be sought for his opinions and media quotes. And as Jim Williams told John Berendt in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, one of Jim Williams' real Lawyers said to The Author "I really did like your book". He currently resides on a Mountain Top in Tennessee, alone, save for the ghosts from his past adventures. The Sheepmen's Daughters is my first foray into sci-fi. The idea came from two decidedly unlikely sources: The first, a dream in which two creatures appeared to two surveyors in a Montana Valley charting a route for a railroad line in the 1800s. The second, a NYC literary agent looking for an author relatively new to fiction writing and with absolutely no experience in the sci-fi genre. Perhaps it was a dream resulting from bad shrimp and a white burgundy, and then a phone call set this tale in motion. Other than being a huge fan of Lost in Space and Star Trek-the TV series and the movies, I am that novice. Of course, I have read a bit of Jules Verne, Asimov, H. G. Wells, and several other names. One especially I found in the county library when I was told to read a novel by my seventh grade teacher. I chose a science fiction book Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. Even by today's much more sophisticated sci-fi standards, he was a writer who knew his subject. However, my newfound mentor was looking for something different "something really out of the ordinary, that has 'god-like or interstellar intervention,'" she said.

Book preview

Author’s Prologue

The Sheepmen’s Daughters is my first foray into sci-fi. The idea came from two decidedly unlikely sources: The first, a dream in which two creatures appeared to two surveyors in a Montana Valley charting a route for a railroad line in the 1800s. The second, a NYC literary agent looking for an author relatively new to fiction writing and with absolutely no experience in the sci-fi genre. Perhaps it was a dream resulting from bad shrimp and a white burgundy, and then a phone call set this tale in motion.

Other than being a huge fan of Lost in Space and Star Trek—the TV series and the movies, I am that novice. Of course, I have read a bit of Jules Verne, Asimov, H. G. Wells, and several other names. One especially I found in the county library when I was told to read a novel by my seventh grade teacher. I chose a science fiction book Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement. Even by today’s much more sophisticated sci-fi standards, he was a writer who knew his subject. However, my newfound mentor was looking for something different something really out of the ordinary, that has ‘god-like or interstellar intervention,’ she said.

You can’t get far-out enough for these new readers we are seeing emerge from the sequestered boredom imposed upon them by the pandemic. Our focus surveys tell us they prefer ‘explanations of strange things,’ so you can involve that plausible history tactic you like so much, but it must be unusual—the more unusually weird, the more likely we and our readers will love it, she continued.

This novel is the response to that call, coupled with a vivid imagination. It was my intent to keep this story a quick-read with a compelling plot line that not only explores history, but a conceivable science fiction–driven tale that just may be plausible. Plus, some unusual and interesting characters in the mix.

And please note that no person living or dead is intentionally portrayed in this work—unless described as such and then attributed to them. Keep in mind, some characters are suggestively named by close innuendo, a sly tactic akin to referencing characters in my other novels. All persona and their actions, as well as all events described in this work of fiction, are products created and devised from the admittedly eclectic mind of the author.

Note: In the interest of complete and honest disclosure, Marc Hemminway is a nom de plume assumed for this novel.

The reason is the possibly controversial theme and the liberties some may think I take with the Divine One, the Lord God Almighty, and the use of surrogates to assist in performing tasks and doing His bidding in matters related to His creations.

I am a Christian and worship God. I believe God created heaven and earth; His Son, Jesus, came to earth and performed miracles, saved sinners through grace, grants forgiveness, and was born of the Virgin Mary. I, in no way, mock God with this writing. It is fictional, yes. Do I believe God employs Greco-Roman gods in accomplishing His tasks on earth? Am I a follower of the ancient aliens theory? In truth, I must be, since realizing that the Creator does not always confide in us all that we think we should be told.

Do I believe that it is possible to speak with God, to reason with Him, and to persuade Him to alter His rules?

My beliefs are that, yes, we reason with God every time we pray. He and Jesus surely accept our pleas for forgiveness of our sins and, in granting forgiveness, change their minds about us.

And hopefully not invoking the wrath of learned theologians, my belief in a forgiving God and Savior, that while His punishments may be swift and just, an eternity of roasting in the fiery flame may be reserved for the most heinous, egregious sins. But that some transgressions thrusting one into the Fiery Furnace do not last for all eternity.

These feelings stem from my intellectual curiosity and intuitive reasoning, both gifts from my creator.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victim he intends to eat until he eats them.

—Samuel Butler

Chapter One

Let’s not kill them. These two have done nothing to harm us and they look so peaceful, the taller one said to her companion.

Yes, but you know that most of these human species persons supposedly are here to protect us. After all, we are ‘their flock’ and ‘a good Shepherd always looks after his flock,’ but so be it. They have yet to abuse us like the cowmen do, so we will not mention this encounter when we return to our safe place.

One of the two men who were camping under the Montana sky was speechless. He had pretended to be asleep. Now he was too stunned to even move. The voices he heard were coming from two creatures, standing upright, watching Bob Russell and his coworker for the Western Railroad, Chip Houston, sleep under a full late summer moon.

Bob reached for his .30-30 Winchester and poked his sleeping friend awake.

Did you hear that? Did you see those two…creatures?

Chip turned toward Bob and shook his head, replying, I was in a great dream about my wife back in Fort Worth. What the hell are you clamoring about?

Bob laid down his rifle and rubbed his eyes. Maybe I was dreaming, but these things were real! They spoke, then talked about whether to kill us. I didn’t move but to turn my head a little, then squint a look. Damn, I can’t believe what I think I saw and heard.

Chip pulled on his boots and was walking toward the supply wagon when Bob focused his sleepy glare, shouting, Where the hell are you going?

I’m gonna check the jugs to see if you’ve been into the whiskey stash. You are sounding drunk, crazy, or both?

Bob Russell laughed nervously and decided that since he and Chip would have another three hundred miles or so surveying the proposed railroad route, and many nights just like this, he best level with his surveying pardner.

OK, Chip, you’re right, but I haven’t been drinking. I was awakened by voices, female voices I heard as plain as I’m hearing you. These two tall females, I knew they were female because despite being rather wooly, they were shapely, with breasts and rather attractive facial features as well. Their voices and physical appearances sort of reminded me of female sheep having shed their wool.

Chip would never have taken seriously these comments, delusional and irrational as they sounded, from anyone apart from his wife and his only brother. But in this case, he knew Bob, had seen his smiles and friendly demeanor with Chip’s own family and kids when they departed for this long survey. It was like a longing for a family of his own who would miss him when he was away as much as Chip’s apparently will him. So yes, he knew Bob was being truthful, wasn’t lying, or at least he believed he had seen something real…not a dream or hallucination.

Well, if you say so. You don’t appear to be feverish, cracked, or off neither.

Bob grinned. But how would you explain these curious breeds of nature? We’ve certainly passed sheepherders along our path, some herding less than the bands of one thousand sheep with only one or two sheepherders keeping watch over their flocks. Some of the larger sheepmen have many bands on their ranches. We surely can’t be the only ones who’ve seen these living beings. What do you suppose we should do?

Bob wasn’t the thinker. He didn’t use big words like anomalies or mutations, much less know exactly what the words meant. But he was the most curious one of the two. And the more adventurous also. So Chip wasn’t too surprised when the reply came and was Well, we have a couple of hours before sunrise. I vote we get some sleep, then make this location our base camp for a few days or so. We are ahead of schedule, so time is on our side. Then let’s go on a walkabout, er, rideabout, see what we can see. At daylight, let’s see if we can track anything. Sheep, as we have observed, are cloven hooved so shouldn’t be too difficult. If these are lady sheep. We came through some cattle herds a few days back, but there were smaller bands of sheep around the same grazing areas. Let’s see what we can find. OK with you?

Chip smiled, nodded affirmatively, and threw another log on the fire. What the hell? Since we are here, may as well make history, I suppose. I heard you, been reading them Australian dime novels again, I see.

They both remembered that they had assured the big railroad bosses that if they got behind in their surveying tasks, they would winter in Montana as long as their pay was equal to the hardships of a Montana winter. How bad could it be? They had discussed the riskiness, but the need for earning money for their goals of owning their own land and herds overrode the longing for home. If others can do it, we sure as the devil can, too, they agreed. So what the heck, got a wagon and sturdy horses; plenty of elk and trout for the taking. So here they were and about to get an adventure tale to tell their grandkids to boot!

Chapter Two

A lonely life for the Montana sheepherders keeping watch over their flock.

Dawn broke in Montana on a bright yet crisp September day. This part of the valley where they were making their base was indeed paradise. Or damn close to it.

As Chip’s Uncle Tom would have said, You can at the very leastest see Paradise from here!

Only a few hearty homesteaders braved the weather but relished days like this. Despite their small percentage of the 365 days annually, the abundance of game, trout streams, and challenges to live here made an enticing reason to brave the challenges.

The terrible winter had wiped out many cattle ranchers who had come from the lower plains, some for the same reasons sheepmen had come here after that costly winter..

Many immigrants had come here after passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. Settlers included a mixture of freed slaves, women, and refugees from around the world. Their migration was awarded with 160 acres of public land for a ridiculously small fee. Unfortunately, many Native Americans were forced off their land to make way for this flood of new Montanans. The migrants and their like were soon to populate the Western United States.

It’s been theorized that the settlers under the Homestead Act came naïve and ill prepared for the challenges of surviving in Montana. They didn’t plan well enough to make a go in the dry terrain. No one told them that ten acres just wasn’t enough to support many livestock. The grass just wasn’t there. Then there were the winters. Even mild winters were harsh, but when the bad winter came blowing in, the rancher settlers simply weren’t prepared.

Stories of that time that Bob had read said that winter was called the Big Die-Up. Records, sketchy as they may remain, show the winter began early in the fall and hit with a vengeance. The signs were there: beavers were observed gathering wood earlier than usual, birds began flying south, and cattle, by accounts later by their owners, grew thicker coats than previously. Animals seem to have an uncanny weather forecasting system; Bob had heard from his grandparents.

He mentioned this to Chip the next morning as they drank tin cups of strong coffee and chewed hardtack and jerky. Chip recalled that an old foreman on the first rail line project he worked mentioned his trip to a relative’s ranch in Montana. He told of seeing what he said were millions of dead animals scattered over the landscape when winter was finally over. He recalled that his relatives were devastated financially and emotionally; their losses were crippling.

A lot of people died here, Chip said.

The old guy told his team, I couldn’t get home, couldn’t even get to the railhead. Neighbors of my folks died in their homes; froze to death. I learned when I got back to Texas that that winter changed the way cattle ranchers operated their ranches. Before the winter, cattle had roamed free out on the range. There weren’t fences to contain them or be tended and maintained. This open range was vast. Part of where we plan to run our survey. Hell, pardner, we’re sitting on historic land here. The ranchers had huge herds, and the ranchers didn’t stock up feed for the winters. They simply let the cattle fend for themselves. And they had done their foraging for grass well until the fall came along. Am I talking too much?

Not at all! I love history of this place, and frankly, I’m fascinated. Go on.

Chip beamed. He was proud that someone else finally found this fascinating as he did when his uncle told the story repeatedly. No wonder I remembered it, he thought. Uncle Tom said that damn winter changed the way ranching and farming were done in the Western States.

Looks like the sheepmen came a-running, and despite the grazing differences, the cattlemen saw their cattle dead, but while a few adapted to sheepin’, mostly the sheepmen saw a new spot to head toward. And what I hear they did in droves. So back to your idea of tracking these dream beings you heard and saw. Maybe we can run into more historical data about them and their ancestors. What about that? Saddle up, we need to get going. Creatures of unknown origin move quickly, I think…or maybe I dreamed that odd fact?

They secured their gear and their wagon. The wagon had been purchased from a herder giving up on the weather despite the resiliency of his block of sheep. They gave him $200 in gold from their company cash box, and he threw in a couple of mules, plus, all that was left in the wagon.

The sheepherder’s wagons were about seven feet wide and eight feet long. The one Chip and Bob purchased had bunk beds and a table that slid underneath the beds. They preferred to sleep under the stars, and since they had no livestock to care for, other than their horses and two mules who were bred for the Montana weather, the colder weather meant close quarters. Theirs had a small stove in which they planned to burn wood or chips when the temperature got brutal.

But for a few days, Chip and Bob would secure their wagon and use the mules to pack supplies just in case, along with their surveying equipment. They both wore sidearms but would take their long guns along.

Chip cherished his .50-90 Sharps he had bought from the widow of an old buffalo hunter. With it went the legend that her husband Jordan had loaned the rifle to his friend and famed buffalo hunter Billy Dixon who used it in the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, Texas, in defending the fort from an attack of between 700 and 1,200 Comanche forces. Dixon also carried the Sharps at the Battle of Buffalo Wallow and, for his actions, became one of eight civilians ever to receive the US Medal of Honor.

Chip paid the Widow Millsaps $35 for the rifle, two boxes of shells, and a promise. She had made him swear to never sell her husband’s rifle, but pass it along to a relative, specifically his son Jackson of whom she had become most fond. Chip took giving his word seriously and took the heavy but deadly piece along. Jackson needed to age ten years or so before he got his inheritance.

These damn mules have to pull their weight on this expedition too, he laughed as he strapped his cased weapon on his pack mule. Within easy reach should we need it. Buffalo jerky can feed us well if we smoke it right.

There was a friendly, unspoken rivalry between the two surveyors as to which was the better tracker. Game mostly, rarely men, mostly mule deer or as they moved north, they looked forward to elk and maybe bison. As Chip re-dyed the pack animals and rechecked the wagon, Bob had circled to the berm where he creature he observed had stood. He dismounted and searched the soft grass. He searched level grass and touched the smallish prints. He was baffled at his findings.

He called Chip to come take a look. They stared at the prints, then each other, and then back to the prints again.

I’ve never seen anything like this. Have you? Bob asked.

The prints they were mesmerized by were not hooves as expected from what Bob had described as sheep standing upright. The prints were well, bizarre, a word Bob had seen in a library book once.

Looks to me like cloven feet. See the split up the foot-like appendage, but those are toe prints. Six of ’em, three on each, er, hoof, I guess you’d call them. What did their hands or front or top feet look like?

Now you ask the questions! The prettiest one was cradling a lamb, so its hands were not visible. The other one had her top limbs folded and her ‘hands’ under them. I didn’t exactly ask ’em to ‘put up your hands’ while I was scared outta my mind!

Chip mused that this was an evolutionary change in whatever these things were. He reasoned that to stand upright required more strength and larger feet to balance and enable support of the weight on only two limbs if the creatures had evolved from animals moving on all fours.

I gotta admit, Bob, I thought you were either dreaming or telling a thumper about these things. But I ain’t never seen anything with hoofs or feet like these here.

Excitement, fear, trepidation, and from Bob, a strange sense of arousal. All these emotions filled their minds as they mounted up and followed the foot prints to the southeast, an opposite exit path to the entrance into the valley they made earlier on their survey route.

Chip pulled the map from his saddlebag and commented, Looks like they are heading to a box canyon from this map. But it’s an old map and a narrow space for any trail that passes through to the canyon, appears in that area at least. I’m guessing these creatures may have a camp or something up there. We’ll see, I guess.

They stopped for a midafternoon rest near one of the many streams brimming with trout. Both men noticed that they had descended from their previous elevations on their journey. This causes the sun to drop in the west sooner, so light was already beginning to fade. They decided to stop for the evening. Their prey was proceeding in a discernable path toward the eastern peaks. No chance of rain so not much to be gained by a push from here. Besides, both guys had become fair fly fishermen and a nice trout dinner was enticing.

God sure made a beautiful place here, didn’t he? Chip asked.

Bob was deep in thought and only nodded. Chip was the religious one: read his Bible every morning at sunup and prayed last thing every night. Bob had been raised in a churchgoing family. His mom and grandmother had led him to church on every Sunday until he went away at eighteen. Now he rarely thought about God, although he felt he surely was a righteous sinner in many folks’ eyes. He didn’t plan it; sin sometimes just happens, he believes.

I’m certain religion probably gives comfort to old folks. So when I turn forty-five or maybe fifty, I’ll give it another try, he said out loud.

Chip ignored the comment and pulled in another nice-sized brown.

Dinner and breakfast! Hardtack and trout! Good eating! Healthy, too.

I hear ya, Bobby boy. Nice place this be. And it supplies us with a bounty of good vittles too. I’ll even do the cooking tonight. Look at them stars! Your God is supplying our every need.

Chapter Three

The moon was near full; its light was exactly right to illuminate the camp surroundings, but still allow a view of the sky and all its twinklers. That’s what Bob Russell remembered his mom and dad told him they were called; twinklers as a name for stars had stuck in his mind to this very evening.

They loved to go out as night fell, to the field across from their ranch house. There they would just lay on their backs in the grass and watch the stars and the nightly show that shooting stars and meteors provided. Bob remembered the safety he felt between his mom and dad; all was right in his world on those evenings.

Tonight was one of those full moon nights. Yet Bob recalled a couple of times when he saw his parents scared in a way he had never experienced with them in his ten years of living. The first night he saw their fright, he still remembers looking first at his mother who gasped and pulled him closer while his dad embraced both him and his mom as they stared at an object hovering over them in the sky.

It was round and brightest lights he had ever seen. They were flashing and a sound kinda like a freight train was coming from the flying machine. It descended into the field and a light-like eye looked at them. Their small, modest herd of cattle didn’t seem to notice the contraption hovering in the air, just above the cattle and the field.

Bob, despite his young age, knew that his parents were in fear. A fear he had never seen the like of. His mother was trembling, and that was scary. The look on her face was one of horror, and he thought he saw tears running down her cheeks. He turned to his father, and while he recalled him defending their herd from a pair of mountain lions, the look then was one of concern for his family and not fear of the cats attacking his herd and then turning to the smaller human trying to stop them. As one charged toward him, there was no fear as the lion required two shots to stop him.

But this thing descending to just above their heads was flashing like a thousand lanterns. The noise was like the rustling of the hundreds of birds Bob had seen that blackened the sun with their wings. Whirling wings, a noise that was really scary.

Later that summer, in the small church his family attended every Sunday, the nice lady teacher at Sunday school told them about a man in the Bible who saw a huge wheel, one like on a wagon that spun through the air with flashing lights. She showed the young Sunday schoolers a picture of the wheel with people and little angels