There was no sound. Occasionally, during the day, a magpie might cry out or a loosened rock rattle down the hillside, otherwise nothing – not even the sound of a high-flying aircraft that seemed so common in Death Valley.

At night, Gil was certain he’d heard someone prowling about. It would take nearly two-weeks before Gil would see the lone figure wandering along a trail higher above the camp – an old man in a well-worn leather beaded vest, a floppy, lifeless looking sombrero, leggings made from strips of faded OD-green canvas and rather large six-shooter hanging from his bony frame.

He’d been warned to stay clear of the old Indian because of his unending suspicion of others living or visiting the high desert. However, Gil, being curious didn’t think there could be much harm in finding the old man’s trail and seeing where it led too.

Night after night, he watched the ghost-like figure wander east along the upper ridge, then return a few hours later, heading back the way he’d came. Gil had found the rocky path the Indian traveled, though he could find no foot prints to support the fact that indeed the old man had ever walked that way.

He was scouting the ground, looking for any trace of a foot-fall, when he heard a subtle sound from behind. Startled, Gil turned to see the very ancient looking Indian walking up the ridge towards him.

Gil noted the gun tied to the man’s hip as he approached. He stepped back off the path and allowed the Indian to pass.

He felt for his pistol on his hip as he watched the old fellow continue up the trail without a word. Gil studied the man as he passed, seeing he had only one good eye, the other being an empty socket – thus the name ‘One-eyed’ Jack.

Gil would see the man a half-dozen times before the two spoke a word, then it was One-eyed Jack who asked, “You seen an old goat go by?”

“No,” Gil answered.

“She’ll be back, I guess. She’s old, forgets like me.”

The next time they met was the same day that old man Smith returned as promised. With him he brought more supplies, including some dried beef, canned beans, more canned pears and coffee beans, something the mine-site had been lacking.

The old Indian saw the dust kicked up by the truck first and quickly but quietly slipped over the ridge top out of sight. It would be another three days before Gil would see the man walking the path above the mine again.

Smith got out of the truck and pulled the tailgate down. “You gettin’ on okay by yerself? Was afraid you might have lit out too. Pleasant surprise to see yer still around.”

Gil tried not to let the comment get to him. He might have been a tramp, but he was also a man of his word and when he shook hands on something, he aimed to see the thing through.

Rankled by Smith’s comments, he unloaded and halt the supplies in to the shack while Smith refilled the trucks’ radiator. Gil noticed that in one of the boxes were a number of Reader Digest paperbacks, newer in date than some of the magazines still resting on the shelf in the back of the hovel.

With the radiator filled again, Smith grinned at Gil, “Looks like yer doin’ fine. See you in 30 days.”

Smith wasted no time in firing up the truck and returning to the rutted roadway. This time Gil didn’t stand around watching as the vehicle disappeared – he wanted to go through the supplies, putting stuff away and seeing what else might be in them as a surprise.

Gil looked at his pocket watch; ten before one in the afternoon. The trip took near six-hours to make and old man Smith seemed in a hurry to get back to Carson. “This here’s a diesel generator. Key to the gate is inside the cabins door post. It powers all the light, those in the shaft and the one’s around the site, but I ‘spect you’ll be needin’ it, ‘less somethin’ goes bad out here.”

“Try not to shoot anyone, course, if they try shootin’ you, do whatcha gotta do to stay alive,” he added. “And if yer any good with yer hand, you might pound a few more nails in that door frame and the window sill too. A bit warped after time. I’ll be out to see you around the first.”

Gil grabbed his rucksack out of the back of the truck and stood watching as the old man and his old truck bounced and squeaked heading back in the direction they’d had just come. He thought about the day’s journey, the many turns and bends in the road, the number of cross trails and the springs that dotted the way back.

Thirty-days; it would be a long time to not know another human’s voice, but Gil had been alone before. His last job was for Fractured Bob Johnson in Death Valley where Gil had spent a month doing assessment work and where he had the company of a couple of dogs, three goats and a mule.

Here, he had none of that. And since the day was still young, Gil decided to do some simple exploring. He had made a mental note of the encampment’s set up as they’d rolled into the site.

The mine entrance was in the center of a horseshoe-shaped rise with the gate to the compound to the right of the shaft. From the porch of the shack, that would be Gil’s home through the summer, he could see the straight-away of the road as it approached the gate.

It disappeared in a hard left some fifty-feet from the claims opening. But by that time, it would be obvious that a vehicle was approaching and therefore Gil knew the shack’s positioning was instrumental in keeping the site safe from the vandals, or ‘hooligans,’ as Smith called them.

Finding a thin footpath above the mine’s shaft, Gil walked up to have a look at what might be on the other side of the 30-foot berm. It was exactly as expected, dry, dusty and flat to the west.

He walked across the top of the horse-shaped sill towards the east. At the mid-point the earthworks connected to a natural-made, larger and much higher hillside and farther to the east and south, more open, wind-blown land covered in creosote bushes and other scrub.

Having seen enough of what lay outside the ridge that held the mine, Gil returned to the cabin to see what it might hold. Along it’s side was a rough stack pile of dried wood, some already chopped, some still needing bucking, “I’ll find the saw later,” he reminded himself.

He also found the water source for the area, a narrow iron pipe that jutted out of the hillside from behind the wood pile. It dripped slowly into a rocky basin that appeared to be visited by several animal’s including quail, mice, snakes and a coyote or two.

Inside the cabin, he learned that the majority of the living space was roughed out of the hillside, with just the front part being a wood frame. Smith was right about the door, warped it was difficult to open and close properly and would need to be one of the first things Gil would need to take care of come the following day.

With the door still open, he explored the depth of the cave that served as the majority of the shack. He found several half-burned candles. two lanterns and four glass chimney lamps, which he moved to the front of the abode.

Lighting one of the lanterns, he returned to the back of the chamber, where he located an old wooden bed frame with a flat board in the place where a mattress would usually be, and a shelf filled with ancient looking books and newer, though a few decades old, magazines that had obviously been left behind by past occupants.

“It’ll be good to have something to read again.”

Back at the front, Gil checked on the cast-iron stove that shared the wall with a counter. It seemed to be in good working condition, save for the possibility of a bird or a rodent having made a home of the pipe that rose up from behind the antique ‘smoke-belcher.’

Under the counter, he located cans upon cans of food supplies; mostly beans and peach and pear-halves, but no can opener. “No problem, I can use my pen-knife unless I trip over it someplace along the way.”

Gil spent the next few hours straightening and rearranging his living-space before retrieving a rather large piece of already bucked tree to prop up against one of the two post that held the roof up over the porch. There he would sit, watching that day’s sun fade, while eating half-warm beans directly from the can with the only utensil he could find, a bent spoon, followed by a can of pears, also half-warm.

Completely shot, the leaf-springs in the old pick-up majorly squeaked every time the old man drove over a rock in the road or struck a hole in the middle of the ruts left by years of worn travel back and forth from the mine. He drove without a care as he explained what Gilroy’s duties were for the next four-months in the Nevada desert.

Tired of hitching rides, Gil, as he like to be called, longed to settle down for the summer and perhaps winter if he could find a job that would last that long. The last several hundred miles as seen some change from the hot dustiness of Death Valley to the cooler climate of Sierra Mountains.

From the back of a truck hauling chickens to Reno, Gil had watched and enjoyed the change in the land he was seeing. He decided that Carson City was as far as he’d go after nearly an entire day’s travel breathing in the less-than-delicate odors of chicken feathers and droppings.

Before he pulled away, the truck’s driver told Gil of a possible job. “You jus’ head up the street there and you’ll see a stone wall. That’s old man Smith’s and he’s lookin’ for some help out at one of his mines.”

“Some 80 miles out in the middle of nowhere,” Smith stated. “You sure you can handed bein’ alone? Last feller didn’t even last two weeks. Up and walked away, leaving’ everything behind, includin’ what I owed him for his time.”

Gil nodded, acknowledging that he was listening, knowing the old man wasn’t really looking for answer. As he did so, he also studied the terrain, what road they turn of off and on the dirt track they were following, the flatness of the hard, white playa and the mountains that still seemed impossibly distant but towards they sped.

“It’s jus’ a few hundred yard’s outside the boundary of the Walker Rez. So don’t be surprised if you see an injun or two wandering about the hills. Mostly harmless, save for One-eyed Jack. He thinks everyone’s out to jump his claim and he’s always got a hog-leg on’em,” Smith continued.

He suddenly slowed to make a sharp bend in the roadway, barely avoiding a large rock that jutted up from the sun-baked and cracked earth. “Easy to go around, than to move,” Gil thought.

A few minutes more, Smith slowed the truck to a stop and without a word got out. He pulled a large half-rusted tin with a heavy piece of twine tied through a hole in it, from the bed of the truck and walked out into the desert.

Gil was quick to follow. Hidden between clumps of creosote bushed and smallish sand dunes, was a hot springs, that Smith proceeded to dip the can into.

Still hot he set it on the ground beside himself and pointed, “Don’t go trying to get a drink or bathe from one of these hell-holes, son. They’ll boil yer meat right off yer bones in a minute.”

He picked the cooling tin up out of the sand, by the thick string tied too it, and headed back across the desert, through the scrub to the waiting truck. After a few more minutes and after having consumed a ‘roll-yer-own,’ Smith popped the cap off the radiator and emptied the tin’s content into the belching chasm of the trucks’ belly.

Less than a minute later, they were back in the truck bouncing farther and farther from civilization. And Gil was wishing the trip was over.

For an older manuscript, ‘Aristopia’ is a quick read, if not a frustrating one for anybody who loves history.  Written in 1895 by Castello N. Holford, the book is only about 240-pages in length and 35 short chapters in total.

Billed as an ‘Utopian novel,’ it’s considered to be the first novel-length, alternate history ever written about the founding of America. The story-line however reverses the normal Utopian ideal by instead of imagining a better society at a future time or in a far-off place, Holford creates a fictionalized founding of the United States.

In the end, for me, it wasn’t so much a Utopian story as it is a fanciful tale that couches the ideals of Socialism in such a way that it becomes appealing to the general masses. Further evidence of this can be found in the final few pages; advertisements for other books of fiction about social and economic change and finally, reformation, which would eventually become the cornerstone of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1901 presidential platform, “The Square Deal.”

Each ad comes with a side note like: “A story of the Struggles of Honest Industry under Present Day Condition” and “A powerfully Dramatic Novel, dealing with the Struggles of the Poor in City and Country.”  Historically speaking, when ‘Aristopia’, was first published, the U.S. was beginning its transformation from a Constitutional Republic to the democratic nation of today.

‘Arena Publishing Company,’ the publisher that put ‘Aristopia,’ on book shelves is known to have specialized in fiction and non-fiction books on Progressive causes of the era. Though in existence from 1890 to 1896, Arena had been known by other book-mongers as “the notoriously radical Arena Publishing Company.”

Lastly, I’m working on a new ‘chapter’ story that I hope to have finished soon, with the first installment being published tomorrow. I am trying figure out how I can have the main character interact with this book, which he finds a Nevada mining camp where he’s employed as a caretaker.

It’s such a strange thing to wake up thinking about, especially after 23 years, today. This early morning thought goes back to the day after Dad died in July 1995.

My step-mom, Jere’ and I had a lot of things to do that day in preparation for my father, her husband’s funeral. Before we headed out for the day, we sat out on the porch of their condo and drank coffee from a matching set of blue plastic Thermos coffee mugs.

As I sat there, I recall thinking, “Did Dad drink from one of these cups while sitting out here with Jere’?”

As I clear out old notes,  I’ve found one I’d written October 19, 2009 after reading the following paragraph in the New York Times:

“‘People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.’

The Democratic parties planning is far greater, more advanced and long-term than most people can or even want to believe. The push to legalize cannabis has very little to do with over-regulation, state or personal rights or even medical care and everything to do with the Second Amendment.

In fact, both the legalization of marijuana and the right ‘to keep and bear arms,’ might be ushered in under all three area’s mentioned above. In the end, it will cross the threshold under state vs. federal law, with state rights winning out.

The sudden rush to destroy our current healthcare system is at the heart of this planning. By making healthcare unaffordable, more and more people will be seeking ways to self-medicate themselves to relieve their physical and emotional pain and discomfort.

Once healthcare is permanently crippled, more people will turn to ‘medical marijuana dispensaries,’ where the applicant, customer, patient must fill-out paperwork, thus registering as a marijuana user. Once their name is in ‘the system,’ it can be used to cross reference for anything, including gun purchases and applications for carry-concealed permits.

Not only can the state come in and separate a registered marijuana user from their firearms, this information can also be transmitted to the federal government for use. All it takes is one state enacting such a law, and soon others will follow, until the confiscation of guns and other weapons is happening in all 50 states.

There are those who say that ‘gun laws’ and ‘marijuana laws’ are separate issues. These are same people who claim that ‘state law’ and ‘federal law’ are separate issues, but unfortunately, the two often cross the line into the others domain.

In the end it must be remembered that an unarmed citizenry is exactly the kind of citizenry ripe for “fundamental transformation.”

Well, let’s time-hop to 2018 and the Nevada Department of Public and Behavioral Health’s website which has this to say, “The Medical Marijuana dispensaries of the State of Nevada are authorized to sell medical marijuana to card holders from the states above if the patient presents a State or local government-issued medical marijuana card.”

Then there’s the fact that in 2011 a Las Vegas medical marijuana patient challenged the law when a gun store refused to sell her a firearm, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 ruled that a federal government ban of gun sales to state-legal medical marijuana patients does not violate the Second Amendment. This has set-up a legal battle that’s more than likely heading for the supreme Court of the U.S.

President Trump recently indicated he’d support a congressional effort giving states autonomy over their marijuana laws. This comes on the heels of a bill introduced by Senators Republican Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat,  that would protect states that have legalized marijuana from federal interference.

For years I purposely didn’t talk about my military service. It seemed that every time I did, some smart-ass, wanna-be-tough would try to pick a fight with me.

Once, it was woman. She was mouthy, mouthy, mouthy and she wouldn’t let up with the haranguing.

She kept asking me, as tried to enjoy my beer, while sitting at the bar in the B and S Club in Crescent City, “So, Killer, how many deaths would take to end a war?”

“I would hope none,” I answered several times as politely and as calmly as possible. Still she wouldn’t let up.

“So if you don’t want to kill, why train to do it?”

“To prevent it from happening – a strong defense is an even stronger offense.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for noticing,” I quipped without thinking. It set her off again and again she started in on me.

“So – how many lives would you say it should take to take to end a war?” she asked.

Without taking my eye’s off of her in the mirror, I answered, “One.”

She wrinkled her face and laughed, “One!? How’s that?”

Slowly, I got up from my stool, pulled out a ‘fiver’ from my trouser pocket to pay for my beer, “Keep the change,’ I offered the bartender, who refused my cash before I answered: “One — mine. If I could stop a war with one death, I’d die to end it. It’s what Marine’s do.”

She was speechless for about 15-seconds, jus’ enough time to walk around the pool table, out the door and into the night’s rain. I never again wore my uniform while at home.

The bright red Sno-Cat crept its way carefully across the ice-covered landscape. Inside, two men, both experienced hunters, sat hoping to bag this seasons limit of one polar bear each.

It had been a four-hour trek before Jim saw the first possible sign of their quarry. He pointed out the faint tracks to Steve, who operated the vehicle.

They traveled another two-hundred yards before stopping for a closer look.

“That ain’t a bear track,” Steve stated, “Somethings off about it – like it’s walking on two legs or something.”

“You mean like Bigfoot or the Abdominal Snowman?” Jim smarted-off.

“No, I mean a Yeti or Sasquatch,” Steve joked in return.

The pair continued following the tracks up a slight rise, ending near a deep gash in the ice. They died swiftly, attacked before either could scream or fire a shot.

---

Ned hadn’t been as lonely as he figured he’d be, still he looked forward to getting home to his wife within the next few days. He’d been out hunting all week and it had been very successful.

He quietly hummed a folk-tune his father had taught him as a child, while stripping his last kill of its skin. As he did, Ned found himself still astonished at the pinkness of the fresh meat.

Once finished, he gathered up his bounty and set off in the direction of home. As he pushed through the blowing snow, into the darkness of the Alaskan bush, Ned continued to hum the little tune.

---

It had been nearly a day-and-a-half without word from the two hunters. Finally the decision came to send an aircraft up to find them.

It was slightly over an hour when the bush pilot requested that Alaska State Troopers be called as he had found the Snow-Cat and what remained of the hunters. It took a few hours more for a couple of troopers to arrive.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” the pilot told them.

They motored towards the area the pilot pointed out and within minutes they found the bloody scene. Quickly, they realized that all that remained were the men’s clothing, fully intact, covered in blood.

Within hours the area was crawling with all available officer from every state agency, searching for clues.

---

She was sitting at the kitchen table, willing herself to stop crying when she heard Ned push in the front door, stomping the snow from his large feet. Vivian quickly dabbed her eyes, hoping to mask the fact that she had been teary-eyed since her doctor’s visit earlier that day.

Ned rounded the corner, where Vivian met him. He immediately knew she’d been crying.

They hugged and kissed before he asked, “What’s wrong, honey?”

“I can’t have children,” she blurted out, “Allergies!”

“I’m sorry. I know how much you enjoy those little morsels.”

After a moment’s pause, “So how about some Baked Alaskan?” the Sasquatch offered while holding in his massive and hairy hand, the two hunters he’d bagged, filling this season’s limit.

Thanks once again to blogger ‘RayNotBradbury,’  and her prompt. Honest, I simply stopped by to read what she had written, when the little turd on the hamster wheel running my brain, got loose. When this happens, strange stuff leaks out and gets all over the Internet…

Fear has me and again I’m having a strange reaction to it. Fire-fights in BFE tend to do that. But this time, it’s different. My brain keeps reciting a short little ditty, that goes like this:

“I wish you were here,
Dear,
In this hemisphere,
As I sit on the porch sipping a beer.”

For the hundredth time, it’s forced its way through my head and it’s annoying as hell.  So frigging annoying that I wanna yell at the asshole who wrote it, cursing:

“Fuck you, Joseph Brodsky.
See,
Rhyming about a brewskie,
You damned prick, is pissing me off-skee.”

It was zero-dark-thirty and the entire base was seemingly up, prepping for a ‘Forced March.’  I’d been up a little while longer double checking my equipment, before having to head to the parade deck to start inspecting other’s rucks.

As I wrapped up third’s squads inspection, someone in the squad called for a prayer, asking me if I’d do the honors. I began with, “Lord hear our prayer…and ended it with, “If God be for me, who can be against me?”

Out of the darkness an anonymous voice boomed, “A pissed off Master Gunny.”

In unison, we all shouted, “Amen!”