The four adventurers had fought tooth and nail -- so to speak -- against the rat swarm. The vicious swarm had hurt two of the pards, and the gunfire in the tunnel had affected everyone's hearing, even if only temporarily. The effects on Windham had ebbed almost immediately, while the others struggled to hear each other. They all found themselves speaking in loud voices in the aftermath of the battle.

The professor set to patching up Tommy and Tracy as soon as the rifleman had smothered the fire. As curious as ever, Jake went to the end of the tunnel with one of the lanterns, peeking in to see what they had fought to discover. The Texican found a large irregular space filled with mounds of mud, effluvia, and other debris piled up around the small steam that wove its way through the cavern and spilled into the tunnel. The place smelled foul, but nowhere near as bad as Jake might have expected.

He saw a few rats scattering, but only a few. No sign of the swarm with its dangerous nest-mind. Richardsen felt certain the men's efforts had effectively dispersed the swarm and made it safe to enter the cavern. More importantly, he saw rays of sunlight across the cavern, flickering over the stream. Evidently, this cavern had a way out, although he couldn't see an exit from here. Soon enough, after Jake had informed his pards of his findings, the men followed the stream into the cavern and around a craggy bend to find an opening leading to a small bluff amidst the canyon walls. Similar to the bandits' hideout, but much smaller, this relatively flat butte is surrounded by steep walls and a deep drop off a sheer edge. The stream forms beneath a sort of slowly-dripping waterfall along one of the walls and meanders into the cavern. The fresh air explained why the cavern didn't smella as bad as it might otherwise in a lair of hundreds of rats and piles of who knows what else.

The professor took advantage of the daylight to tend to the men's wounds out on the bluff. They all rested briefly, here, with Jake and Earnest gradually recovering their hearing. The muffled, stuffiness in Tommy's left ear remained, although he could now hear the others in his right ear. That left ear felt like someone had stuff a wad of cotton deep into it.

Thoughts of searching the cavern passed through all four of their minds, although it seemed less than urgent after the defeat of the rats -- not to mention the disagreeable nature of digging through the muck, which was obviously required if they hoped to find anything.

---------------------------

OOC: The Judge is allowing a little time to pass and summarizing some of the events here to move things forward. We are also resetting all Bennies at this time, although anyone may still use the Benny that was just awarded by the Judge, for anything involved before we move to searching the cave. See below.

By the professor' fob watch, it is about 2:30 p.m. when the four pards have rested and healed and are ready to do whatever they want to do next. They know it takes about 1 hour to get back to their basecamp, so they have some time left to search this cavern if they choose to do so. Their guess is they could perform a good search and still have time to make it back to their camp before nightfall, but not to do much else.

The Judge will follow-up with rules about searching the cavern, but first, let's do an Interlude during the time of healing and resting. The heroes should feel free to post narrative and dialogue, too, but each player who posts narrative for an Interlude shall earn a Benny, as usual. If you want to use the Benny earned from the rat battle (sorry Earnest, you already used it), to get a different card for the Interluder, you may do so, Just request that and the Judge will draw again. As usual, you can decline to participate in the Interlude, but you won't get the Benny.

Interlude (see Savage Worlds p130 for a reminder of how this works)
Earnest - King of Hearts
Jake - Five Clubs
Tommy - Ace Clubs
Tracy - Two Hearts

Edit in aqua above for clarity
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:36, Mon 21 Feb 2022.

                                                                 ~~Interlude~~

The man was dead, sure enough. Jake had kicked Jenkins in the head and the man's body had shown no reaction. Between that and the hole in his chest, his status seemed rather conclusive.

"Got what you deserve, you bastard," Jake growled. The Texican took off his old slouch hat and mopped some of the sweat from his forehead. In this case, it was mixed with blood -- Jenkins had fired first, and his near-miss had caused sharp-edged rock shards to pepper Jacob's face.

Jacob had not intended for it to come to this. Not that he had expected to hear that his family's homestead had "gone for taxes" when he had returned home after the war. Come to find out, Alois Jenkins had been buying up lots of acreage in the area. No one knew where he had gotten the cash to pay the back taxes on the land that he had acquired, but the stories being told all involved the sale of the rot-gut whiskey that Jenkins was known for making to Union occupation troops. After all, they were the only ones in the area who had any ready spending money.

Regardless of how he came by the money, Jenkins had used it to buy the land owned by his neighbors when the cash-starved Texans could not keep up with the taxes that had been levied. Southerners had coined the name "carpetbaggers" for the Northerners who had flooded down after the war, eager to take advantage of the destitution that was rampant in the South at the time. But even worse than the carpetbaggers, to the thinking of ex-Confederates, were fellow-Southerners who also took advantage of the situation; these they called "scalawags" . . . and other less pleasant names.

Jacob's mother had passed during the war years, seemingly losing the will to live after hearing that her only son had been killed in the fierce fighting in the cornfield on the Confederate left flank during the bloody battle at Sharpsburg (known as "Antietam" to the Union forces). His younger sister, Jessie, had run off with a sweet-talking, flashy Mississippi gambler-man shortly thereafter, and had not been seen or heard from since.

Jake's father, Joshua, had not lived to see the coming of the war. He had been a good man, but a poor farmer. He had chosen land that depended upon rainfall to water the crops that he stubbornly attempted to grow -- and rainfall was never very reliable in west Texas. Worn out from years of hard toil and that some years had not even yielded subsistence-level harvests, he had passed during the freezing cold of a harsh winter.

So, perhaps it was not surprising that there was no one to even attempt to pay taxes on the Richardsen homestead. Well, other than Alois Jenkins, that is. Not that it would have mattered, not really.

"Ain't nothin' to be done about it, boy. It was all done legal and proper. It went for unpaid taxes. Mr. Jenkins owns that land now," the sheriff had gruffly told Jake when he had inquired. It seemed clear enough that the lawman felt little sympathy for anyone who had worn the gray -- or, in Jacob's case, now, butternut -- during the war.

Jacob thought that something might be done if he walked out and spoke to Jenkins himself. What was done was that Jenkins lifted a rifle and fired at Jake before a word was spoken. Perhaps the sight of the rough-hewn, nut-brown man wearing butternut and carrying an Enfield rifle had spelled trouble to the moonshiner. Or perhaps he had recognized Jacob Richardsen, and given that he was standing on what had been Richardsen family land, that had, in Jenkins' mind, meant trouble with a capital "T".

His reflexes and shooting eye honed by years of warfare, Jake instinctively returned fire. And Alois Jenkins had dropped to the ground, where he lay still and unmoving.

And so it was that Jacob found himself staring down at the man he had just killed. To his way of thinking, he had fired in self-defense. But he doubted that the Sheriff he had talked to earlier would see things that way.

The Texican leaned over and picked up the rifle that lay next to Jenkins' body. It was a shiny new Winchester. Jacob had first seen repeating rifles during the siege of Petersburg (just outside of Richmond), late in the war. Those had been Henry repeaters, which the envious Confederates had dubbed "that rifle that you load on Sunday and shoot all week long."

"May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat," Jake muttered, voicing a saying that dated back to the old country. He decided then and there to keep the Winchester, which would technically make him a thief as well as a murderer in the eyes of the local Law. Hell, it wasn't like they could hang him twice.

~~After all, it ain't lieke Jenkins'll be a-needin' it whaere he's goin'. I reckon the wood would catch on fire, and the metal would melt awaey.~~

Jacob pulled out a bandanna and wiped away the sweat and blood from his forehead. He glanced up at the west Texas sun, which burned down with a white-hot malevolence. Replacing his hat, he looked about himself.

"Tieme to get a move on, Jacob. Ye'll have to leave this place behind, and never look back. Ain't lieke I got anything to bind me here no more, any damn waeys. Nuthin's left here for me."

He glanced down at the fine repeating rifle that he now held in his hand. "I christen thee 'Widder-Maeker'. And I purely do ah-preshiate yore waitin' 'til I claimed ownership uhv thee afore ye commenced to livin' up to thy naeme."

---

OOC: The rifle claimed by Jacob during this story would have been an 1866-model Winchester. The model referenced in the rules is a Winchester '73. Perhaps the Texican "traded up" to a more recent model at some point, while retaining the same name.

A Club was drawn for Jake. The above story reflects the following Club-based theme: "Backstory: A tale of misfortune from your hero's past, perhaps revealing something of his Hindrances or a dark secret."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:07, Thu 24 Feb 2022.

In reply to Judge Messalen (msg # 1):

Earnest settles on a rock, grateful for a rest after the battle, and puts away the first aid supplies. He shakes his head, thinking:

Bandits, rats and spiders! How did you get yourself into all this Earnest!

He stretches his bad arm then picks up a good-sized rock and proceeds to raise and lower it to work on the arm. He does this for a while until it starts to ache a little. Next he gets out his notebook and pencil to write some notes about what they have observed so far, but he finds his right hand shakey from the exercise.

Bad arm and a bad ear... and only 28...

He shakes his head again and rubs his hand, momentarily chuckling to himself as he thinks of Jake's arm raising and how it sometimes reminds him of an eager student that wants to answer a question.

After a minute of rubbing the shakiness subsides and he writes his notes about the cave and the peculiar animal behaviors they have observed. Once finished, he sits back, looks over at his friends and sighs.

A fine bunch of fellows... I do hope we manage to avoid any more injury...

---

OOC: I decided to go with Downtime (using the exercise as 'practice') with some introspection; sorry it's a bit short, but I think it gets the point across.

In reply to Earnest Nicholas Samuel Ringgenberg (msg # 3):

                                                            ~ Interlude ~

Tommy was very thankful for the professor's expertise in quickly working to care for his wounds. After some time resting in the sun and fresh air of the high butte he felt a bit more like himself. The hearing in his left ear was muffled or maybe more than muffled, he couldn't exactly tell. He turned his head side to side listening to the casual conversations between the others with each ear. He repeated the experiment with his right ear fully covered, his glove pressed up tightly against it. It did seem as if all his hearing was indeed coming from his right ear at this point.

This deafness brought to mind a school yard fight with a boy named Lester. It was one of those fights which had been brewing for months. Lester was not fond of Tommy, more specifically Tommy's mouth. It was always spouting wise cracks and puncturing Lester's holy Joe attitude at every turn. Looking back Tommy could see it had just kept building up, he'd actually taken an instant dislike to Lester more so than the other way around. Probably because he was the headmaster's nephew and a Jackeen as well. Tommy thought of him as a spoiled wealthy snob but in truth Lester was no where near upper class just a bit luckier and further up the ladder than most at that school.

It was a good fight and a fair fight. Lester had clearly been in a few scraps before and he was bigger. He caught Tommy on the ear with a solid punch as Tommy moved into take him to ground. Wrestling him down Tommy got a few punches in before he was thrown off and it was broken up by the teacher.

Sitting in the headmaster's office with Lester they were made to wait and wait as always. Eventually the headmaster addressed them
"What's all this about? You boyos not getting along these days"

After a pause Lester spoke first "It's nothing"

Tommy said "Yeah just throwin shapes ya know"

Tommy and Lester's eyes met in tacit agreement to not say more

Lester was excused and as the door closed Tommy felt another blow on the same ear Lester had hit
 "You're not to speak with him, touch him, rile him up. Do you hear me Pearce?"

 "No sir I cannot hear ya, ma ear seems a bit bajanxed today" Tommy replied , cupping his ear for effect

 "Hear me now"  yelled the headmaster into Tommy's left ear

 "Yes sir. You'll have no trouble from me, I will treat him like he's real British not just pretending to be"   said Tommy, knowing immediately it was below the belt for any true Irish man

With no lack of malice on the headmasters part both ears were boxed this time and then Tommy was told to go. His ear swelled and ached for weeks. He remembered the trouble he had hearing and how difficult that made some parts of his life. All the compensating he had to do to was surprisingly quite difficult.

Resting on that lovely butte he could only hope that like before his hearing in that poor, cursed, left ear would return but at the moment he was going to have to live with it once again.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:40, Mon 28 Feb 2022.