Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

17. Buckaroos

Their trip to Berea Baptist Church on Sunday was memorable. Kaylee, who attended church only infrequently because of doctrinal differences, stayed at home to guard the roost. Lars, Beth, and Grace drove to church in Beth’s Saturn Vue, since it got better mileage than Lars’s Dodge Durango. They expected a light turnout. From what they had heard, the gasoline shortage had spooked many people into extreme conservation mode. Others were afraid to leave their homes unattended for fear of burglary.

As they pulled off of Blanco Road into the church parking lot, Lars chuckled and pointed to the overflow parking lot behind the church, which now had fifteen horses hitched up to a newly erected rail. Saddles were draped over a row of fifty-five- gallon drums resting on their sides, lined up in a phalanx. After they parked their car, they stepped over to the fence to look at the horses and saddles. Grace exclaimed, “Oooh, Daddy! Are we gonna get a horse?”

“Probably very soon, Anelli,” Lars replied, using her pet name, which was Finnish for “Grace.”

Beth pointed and said, “Notice that three of those are packsaddles?”

Lars replied, “That’s odd.” He made a mental note to donate some more drums, since if the trend in transportation in this new era of insanely expensive gasoline continued, the church would soon need room for more saddles. He could spare the drums, since he had a dozen that had been painted white for use in horseback barrel racing back in the 1970s, but they were now useless for storing fluid, since their bottoms were badly rusted.

After walking through the sanctuary to the building’s multipurpose room for their usual pre-church cup of coffee, they saw that the room was newly lined with two rows of pallet boxes on both sides, for donations. These were marked “Canned Food,” “Perishables,” “Women’s Clothing,” “Boys’ Clothing,” “Girls’ Shoes,” and so forth. As they walked by them, Beth said, “Let’s sort through some extra clothes and shoes that Grace has outgrown, to donate.” Lars nodded in agreement.

Ray, the leader of their adult Sunday school class, was there as usual, but he looked a bit self-conscious, carrying a SIG P250 in a hip holster, with four spare magazines in open-top pouches on the opposite hip. Lars said reassuringly, “I’m glad to see you’re packing. Thanks for making everyone feel safer. Even though the police department is right across the road, we can’t be too careful.” As they sat down at one of the classroom tables, Beth asked quietly, “Is there any way we can still buy handguns?”

Lars shook his head. “No way, hon. You’d have to trade a couple of new cars to get a decent pistol these days.”

During the “Prayer and Praise” time before the class began, when prayer requests were made, a black teenager who the Laines didn’t recognize stood up, and announced: “You folks don’t know me-or us. My name is Shadrach Phelps. My friends and I would appreciate your prayers. The three of us come from an orphanage over in Rio Arriba County that was closing down. We don’t have anyplace to go, and we’re looking for work around here, even for just room and board and hay for our horses. We’re all hard workers; we each got our own horses and tack. We can buck hay all day long, split wood, butcher deer, and we know which end of the shovel goes in the ground. Oh, and a-course we’re Christians. We’re trusting in God’s providence. Thing is, we all want to get hired on somewhere together; we’re tight, so we don’t wanna split up. Anyway, again, we’d appreciate your prayers.” Phelps gave an embarrassed grin as he sat down. As he did, there were murmurs throughout the classroom.

After the Sunday school class, the Laines approached the Phelps boys. They were talking with a widow that Lars recognized as the owner of a ranch near Bloomfield. Shad Phelps was gesturing, pointing to his friends. “I’m sorry, but if you can’t take all three of us, then I’ll have to say no, but thank you.” The woman nodded and turned away. Lars approached Shadrach Phelps and shook his hand. He looked Shad in the eye and pronounced, “My father always used to say, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, then go together.’ I’d like you young men to come work for me and my wife, at our ranch. I think that we’ll go far, together.”

Hiring the boys was a straightforward arrangement, but feeding their six horses was a bit more complicated. When Lars and Beth first took over the ranch, they found that Tim Rankin had not done a very good job of maintenance. The little brush and roller painting that he had done had left copious spatters, and the spray-painting had left obvious overspray. The elder Laines’ saddles were still there, but Rankin had “borrowed” and never returned their girth straps as well as several horse pads and blankets. At least Rankin had been vigilant about poisoning the mice and pack rats, and he had done a decent job of weed control in the pastures.

Lars and Andy were both away on active duty when Tim Rankin moved into the house. When they asked about their father’s guns, Rankin said that he hadn’t found any in the house. This made Lars and Andy suspicious, because they knew that their father owned several guns. Since these guns had mostly sentimental value, they didn’t push the issue with Rankin, who pled, “Well, if they were in the house, they musta been burglarized before I ever got there. There were a lot of strangers in the house after your dad passed on: the paramedics, the cops, the coroner, and probably more. Any one of them could have lifted your dad’s guns.”

When Tim Rankin left, there were still two tons of year-old alfalfa hay in the hay barn and about three tons of baled straw in the stable loft. As soon as his job offers to the Phelps boys were accepted, Lars started to make inquiries about hay, grain, and firewood. After much searching and dickering, he bartered a mint-condition U.S. $5 gold piece in exchange for nine tons of alfalfa, five cords of Pinyon Pine firewood, seven salt blocks, and two hundred pounds of molasses-sweetened COB-a mix of cracked corn, rolled oats, and barley. Lars felt that he got the worst end of the deal, because gold was then selling for $8,460 per ounce. Since not even counting its numismatic value, the $5 gold piece contained almost a quarter ounce of gold, Lars felt cheated.

The ranch’s pair of fifteen-acre irrigated pastures were in decent shape, but to be useful to their full capacity once again, they needed to be reseeded. The local feed store still had some sacks of orchard grass pasture blend seed on hand. It took some dickering, but Laine was able to get fifty pounds of the seed blend in exchange for three silver quarters and a box of fifty .22 Long Rifle cartridges.

Laine soon put the Phelps boys to work, broadcasting half of the sack of seed with a hand-cranked broadcaster, primarily in the pastures’ many bare spots. But the more difficult work came in the next two weeks, when they laboriously raked the seed into the soil. They also had to be vigilant in scaring off any passing birds until after the seed had sprouted. Like so many other things that had previously been taken for granted, grass seed had become a precious commodity.

It was after the orphans arrived that Lars also discovered that Tim Rankin had pilfered most of the horse-care tools and veterinary supplies for his father’s horses. There was little left other than a couple of half-empty jars of Swat fly repellent. Luckily, the boys had brought with them a pair of hoof nippers, a hoof rasp, a brush, and two horse combs. Diego Aguilar had also providently sent along a sixteen-ounce bulk can of horse wormer. Instead of using a mouth syringe like the one Lars had previously used, the boys heavily coated a mouth bit with the paste and attached the bit, just as they would do for riding. Giving a horse a double-handful of sweet feed then ensured that the medicine went down. While the “Diego method” of dosing was less accurate, Laine presumed that it was effective.