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  1. That's less than we take to a 3 day shoot.
    3 points
  2. TWO ANGELS AND A HORSE His given Christian name was Victor, but everyone knew him as Hoghead: matter of fact, the wanted dodger in the Sheriff's saddlebag was headed with the black blocky letters, WANTED: HOGHEAD MATTHEWS, followed by a poor rendering of the man's likeness, a physical description: his crimes were listed, the reward was named. The Sheriff knew Hoghead was somewhere close. He'd been tracking him, and his son Jacob was tracking his little girl Angela, who'd wandered off from her horse high up and by now was who-knows-where, chasin' butterflies or birdies or picking flowers, the way happy little girls will. The Sheriff was a patient man, but part of him wanted to swat her little bottom for wandering off and leaving her saddlehorse like that. Hoghead's knuckles were scarred, his face was dirty and stubbled, and he'd just swallowed the last of his coffee. It was cold, it was bitter, but it was his, and now it was gone. Just as well, the bottom was burnt out of his coffee pot and the only way he had any left was because the pot sat crooked near the fire and it all didn't leak out the rotted out seam. Hoghead's expression was sour, he had scars visible and otherwise, and he knew the Law was after him: could he but make the Nations, he'd be safe. He'd managed to get himself gloriously lost, shaking the skilled pursuit: he'd gone into the mountains, he'd worn out one horse, stole another from a remote cabin, left the exhausted nag in its place: hardly a fair trade, he knew, but he wasn't going to go concerning himself with fairness when 'twas his neck Hangin' Judge Hodson wanted to stretch. Hoghead stood up and froze. A little girl with bright blue eyes, a little girl in shining slippers and a frilly, little-girlish frock smiled at him, tilted her head: she looked for all the world to this staring, astonished outlaw, as if she were smiling at a favorite grandfather. "Hello," she said, waving a little pink hand, and Hoghead realized ... it had been a very long time ... a very long time! -- since he saw anything as pink, as pure, as ... clean ... as the palm of this little girl's hand, raised in greeting. He raised his own hand, almost ashamed at his unwashed condition. "My name's Angela," she said, tilting her head and looking absolutely charming and innocent, "an' my horse is losted." Hoghead expected a lawman, Hoghead expected a bounty hunter, Hoghead expected ... anything ... but this. Ol' Hog went slowly to one knee, openly staring, his mouth open: he finally said, "What are you doin' clear out here, little lady?" Angela giggled, clasped her hands in front of her, turned her shoulder bashfully toward him, rotated left and right the way a giggly little girl will do: her skirts swung and flared a little, and a very dim memory of his own little sisters swam closer to the surface, and this hard man -- this outlaw, whose profession was to take what was others' and to hurt anyone who tried to stop him -- this man with a soul as stained as his unwashed hands, felt himself soften a bit at the sight, the sound, of this smiling little child. Jacob Keller followed Angela's mare's tracks. He cursed himself for ever saddling the mare for his little sis. He'd taken pains to shorten the stirrups for her, he'd made sure the saddle pad was just right, the saddle was screwed down snug, he'd hoisted Angela up onto the placid old mare's back. He thought he was going to walk around the corral, maybe out into the field, leading the old veteran nag by the cheekstrap, but the moment Angela got settled in and found both stirrups, the mare bunched up and shot ahead, driving for the far fence like a dapple-grey arrow. Jacob curled his lip and whistled, seized saddleblanket and saddle, and for the first time that day -- very definitely not the last -- damned himself for seven kinds of a careless fool! Jacob never claimed to be an expert tracker. He'd heard the town's attorney, Mr. Moulton, offer the studied opinion that "An ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure" -- he never forgot the lawyer's definition of an expert -- but fair is fair, he was pretty damned good at following someone who didn't want to be followed. Macneil was long dead, and the world was a poorer place for it, but before the man died, he'd taken a liking to Jacob and taught him what to look for, and how to look for it. Jacob's pale eyed Pa was good. Jacob was better. He urged his stallion ahead, following his little sister's mare's trail. "What kind of horse do you have, little lady?" Hoghead asked carefully. "She's losted," Angela sighed with a dramatic rise and drop of her shoulders. "Your ... mare ... is lost." Angela nodded, her big blue eyes wide and sincere. "But you're not." Angela shook her head, then swung her entire body again: she extended her arms and spun around like a dancer, and Hoghead remembered his own sisters doing that very thing, when he was still a boy at home. The thought of a fresh horse overrode any altruism, and his sneaky nature came to the fore. A trusting child, a fresh horse? My lucky day! "Let's find your mare," Hoghead said, and Angela's smile was sunrise-bright as she happily piped, "O-kay!" Jacob rode quicker now, as the trail was plain -- that his, he rode until his horse stopped abruptly and he realized his attention had been too much on puzzling out tracks and not enough ahead. A horse stood crossways of Angela's mare's faint hoofprints, and on the horse, a stranger. "Mister," Jacob said, "I'm lookin' for my little sister. She's on a dapple grey mare --" "You can't have her," the man interrupted. Jacob's eyes went dead pale: Apple-horse threw his head to the side as Jacob's right-hand Colt whispered from carved leather and chuckled to itself as it rolled into battery. "I'll have her," Jacob said, his voice tight: "you can stand aside or I can kill you or take you to jail." "You will do nothing of the kind," the man said, dismounting and opening his coat. "I'm not armed." Jacob holstered his revolver. "Mister, I'm a Firelands County deputy Sheriff, and my little sister is lost. You can get out of my way or I can get you out of my way." "How?" The man's insolent smile, the sneer in his voice, triggered Jacob's young pride. He swung down, unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it over his saddle horn: righteous anger fired his boiler and he paced forward. The stranger was fast: Jacob was faster, he slipped his head to the side and missed the punch, drove a quick one-two into the man's ribs, stepped back, blocked a punch: he seized the wrist, twisted, tried to down him with leverage. The man drove a fist into Jacob's wind, broke his grip: they separated, Jacob fought to get air back into his lungs. The pair crouched, then drove into one another again: Jacob's boot heel caught the man squarely on the kneecap, he seized the stranger by the throat and the crotch, hauled him off the ground, slammed him down, hard. Sheriff Linn Keller heard a familiar voice -- Angela? He dismounted, dropped the bitless reins, his golden stallion obediently halting: the big Palomino blinked sleepily, looking bored, looking like he might drop his head and take a nap. Linn catfooted around a rock, saw the man he was looking for, saw his daughter, still out of his arm's reach. Linn's left hand Colt was in his hand, the sound of its cocking lost in his challenging shout: "HOGHEAD! THIS IS SHERIFF KELLER! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM! ANGELA, BACK UP!" Hoghead weighed his chances. He'd never met that pale eyed lawman with the iron grey mustache, but he'd heard plenty about him, and he knew the little distance between himself and this pretty little girl was not enough to keep him from inheriting a thumb sized slug between the shoulder blades -- knowing that pale eyed old lawman, likely it would be through the back of his head! -- Hoghead raised his hands, slowly, waited. "Angela, back up." Angela looked disappointed. "Okay, Daddy," she said in a small, little-girl's voice. Angela turned, dejected, head down, her bottom lip pooched out and nearly down to her belly button, or so it seemed from her expression, then she looked up, brightened. Her mood went from sorrow to joy in a tenth of a second or less. "Dapple!" Jacob crouched a little, and so did the stranger. Civilization was gone, manners and gentility did not exist: here were two warriors, each intent on besting the other: Jacob, fueled by a young man's rage, against this stranger who refused to stand aside. Mighty blows they gave, and took: each grappled, seized, threw, punched, kicked: finally they drew a little apart. "Enough," the stranger said. Jacob felt one eye swelling almost shut: he wiped the back of a bent wrist across his agonized nose, realized from the bright burst of pain it was likely broken: his ribs hurt and he knew they'd hurt worse later, but he was warmed up and his blood sang with the joyful rage of a young man at war who knew he was absolutely in the right! The stranger looked no better: Jacob had genuinely taken his measure, and Jacob heard ribs crack when he drove his elbow into them, or his boot heel, he was satisfied the man's knee should have broken when he drove the stacked-leather heel hard into the kneecap. "You fight well," the stranger said: he wiped a hand across his own face, and the damage was gone: he straightened, all sign of injury, of exertion, just ... gone. The stranger took a step toward Jacob, took another. Jacob could not move. The stranger's hands were feather-light as they passed across his face, down his ribs: everywhere he'd taken a blow, the hands passed over, the pain disappeared: Jacob's eye wasn't feeling swollen, his cheekbone -- he thought he heard a crack when he got hit below the eye -- there was no pain. The stranger stepped back. "You fought for your sister," the stranger said. Jacob could move again. He reached up, touched his nose with the backs of two fingers. No pain, he thought. He looked at his bent fingers. No blood. "You did not fight for yourself," the stranger said. "You fought to keep your sister safe. You knew you could not do that until you found her." Jacob turned his head a little, eyes locked on the stranger, debating whether to go for the gunbelt still hung over Apple-horse's saddlehorn. The stranger changed, Apple-horse screamed, Jacob seized his stallion's cheekstrap and was hauled off the ground for his troubles. "How's for coffee?" Linn asked in a mild voice. Hoghead's hands were still up, shoulder high: he looked warily at the pale eyed lawman. "M' pot's rusted out," he admitted, "an' I run plumb out of coffee." Linn nodded. "I've enough for two. Angela?" Angela came scampering past Hoghead -- out of arm's reach -- she ran over to her Daddy, hugged his leg happily, looked up with an absolutely adoring expression. "Angela, if I fetch out the coffee pot, could you get us some clean water?" "Okay, Daddy!" she piped, her voice as happy as her beaming expression. Linn looked at Hoghead. "Stand easy," he said, "and don't go anywhere." Hoghead stared as the lawman went back to his saddlebags. Likely going to get a set of irons, he thought, I'll fight him then, I've got a knife and a hideout gun. The Sherff untied a canvas poke behind his off saddlebag, pulled out a blue-granite coffeepot and handed it to his little girl, who ran happily downhill to where a stream bent against the rock. "Stoke up the fire," Linn said quietly, tossing ol' Hog a cloth wrapped bundle. Hog caught it, smelled it, looked up, surprised. "Ground that one yesterday morning." Linn's face was unsmiling, but Hoghead heard no threat in the man's voice. Linn used a stick to shift one of the fire rocks, brought the little blue granite pot to level: he opened the cloth bundle -- it contained two smaller bundles -- he untied the smaller bundle, dumped it into the cold water. "Ground eggshells," he explained, seeing Hog's eye catch a glimpse of small white particles falling into the pot. "Helps settle the grounds." "My Mama used to do that," Hog said slowly. Linn went back to his stallion, back into the cloth poke, pulled out two tin cups: he got into the saddlebag, fetched out the wanted dodger, brought it back. "Can you read?" "I can read." Linn handed him the dodger. Hoghead read it, read it again, stared at the poor quality engraving of a man's face. "That don't look like me," he said. "No it don't," Linn admitted. "How do you know I'm him?" Linn's pale eyed glare was answer enough. Hoghead looked at the wanted poster again, stopped at the bottom. "Hodson," he grunted. "Hangin' Judge Hodson," Linn echoed. "I'm not takin' you there." Hoghead's surprise was genuine as he looked up at the Sheriff. "We're goin' back to Firelands. Food's better, the bunk doesn't have bugs and Judge Hostetler is a fair man." Linn was good at reading men, and he read relief in Hoghead's shoulders as they sagged just a little. Two men drank scalding coffee on a mountain trail while a pretty little blue-eyed girl watched them, hugging her knees under the drape of her skirt. Jacob seized his screaming fear, his hand flat on the Appaloosa's neck: with word and with caress, he calmed the stallion, and the stallion, with the familiar voice and the familiar touch, calmed enough not to haul Jacob off the ground again and drag him along behind like a black-suited kite tail. Jacob turned to what used to be a man: he buckled the gunbelt around his middle, looked very directly at this terrifying vision, all eyes and wings and light. "You're an angel," Jacob said -- a statement, not a question. Yes. The voice was little more than a whisper, heard in his mind and not with his ears. "You were sent to delay me." Yes. "Is my little sister safe?" Jacob had the momentary vision of his little sister, looking with interest at his father and another man, drinking coffee beside a small, smokeless fire. "Will she remain safe?" Yes. Apple-horse pulled, hard, his eyes walling: he was dancing, clearly unhappy, and suddenly this terrifying apparition with more eyes and more wings than Jacob could easily count, just ... ... disappeared ... ... and Apple-horse stopped fighting. Jacob stood, staring at where the angel had been, then out of habit he looked to the ground for tracks. He saw Angela's mare's prints -- here, one track, where the sand was pocketed, and there, where the steel shoe scarred a rock -- Jacob stepped into the stirrup, followed the tracks, considering he was pretty damned lucky this fellow didn't put his hip out of joint. "You realize," Hoghead said, "the man you're after is dead." "Which one?" Linn grunted. Hoghead set the cup down, smiled, stood. "Thank you for the coffee," he said, and he disappeared. Linn blinked, looked around, looked at his little girl, who was looking up at a shallow angle, smiling as if hearing something very pleasing. Jacob met his father and his baby sister riding toward him. Each stopped, each looked long at the other. "Sir," Jacob said, "have you noticed anything ... unusual?" "Daddy was tested!" Angela's voice was almost joyful in its certainty. Father and son turned and regarded the pretty little girl as she walked her mare between the two lawmen, stopped. "Daddy could have shotted the man 'cause the poster said dead or alive but he didn't. He made coffee." Jacob looked at his little sister, raised an eyebrow. "Daddy could have taken him back to the bad judge that likes to hang people but he was gonna take him to Judge Hots-tetler 'cause Judge Hots-tetler is fair!" Angela emphasized the word fair! with an emphatic nod of her head, setting her curls a-bounce as she did. "An' den da Angel disappeared!" Angela's words were almost a happy shout, and she spread her arms overhead as if to illustrate the burst of a great soap-bubble. "Angel," Jacob said slowly. "Jacob, what did you see?" the Sheriff asked, and Jacob smiled with half his mouth and said "I reckon I could ask the same thing, sir, but you asked first, so here's what happened."
    3 points
  3. Definitely dressed for the ride, not the slide
    2 points
  4. I've seen those here in Ohio.
    2 points
  5. @Alpo I'd never heard of them before.
    1 point
  6. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that those are like sansabelt - they don't need suspenders (or braces, if you prefer) or a belt. They stay up by themselves. Now if this is so, it seems like they would show the waistband. Not the guy's arm and a carrot.
    1 point
  7. Do you get these (Moth) stick cocoons in the U.S?
    1 point
  8. That all depends on the car and its driver. In my old RX7, or AB's WRX, I would look at a sign like that with a smile. Heck, in my old Neon R/T I would've enjoyed it, and I would look at it as a challenge in my Wilderness, which seems to handle better in twisties than it has a right to.
    1 point
  9. Motorcyclism Suggested for you · · On this date, December 30, 1912, Lee Humiston, using a 1,000 cc twin cylinder chain driven Excelsior circled the banked one-mile oval track at Prince’s Playa del Rey, California in 36 seconds flat to become the first motorcyclist in the world “officially” timed at 100 mph. One week after his milestone accomplishment, “The Humiston Comet,” as he was promptly nicknamed by the press, surpassed Jake DeRosier’s record for 100 miles, trimming nearly seven and a half minutes from the fatally injured rider’s best time. Excelsior had won the race to the magic 100 mph mark and they had smashed the Indian-held record for the 100-mile distance as well. The publicity was enormous. Every school boy in America knew that a man had traveled at 100 miles per hour on a motorcycle, and that he had accomplished this feat on an Excelsior built in Chicago.
    1 point
  10. My neighbor is a farmer whose six sons and daughters fit that description perfectly.
    1 point
  11. First time I drove a KZ 900 and grabbed a handful of throttle, nearly lost the boys on the taillight . Good God those things were quick. 0-140 in a blink.
    1 point
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