The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper

The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper

       by Double Glasses Reimer

you sniveling piece of pumpkin pie

The wind shifted sharply as they rounded Danger Point. Chet called for more windlass. Danny tried to play it out but the ropes caught and for a second their sails billowed uselessly. Fear gripped Danny's heart and his hands fell weakly to his sides. At that critical moment, however, he remembered what his father had always taught him, that in the hour of need the Lord can be depended upon to care for his children. Chet fell to his knees, praying with real conviction, and found himself suddenly strengthened enough to rise and tackle the sails once more. He shouted out encouragement from the foremast and soon they had their small ship plying the waves with the stout heart they all knew she possessed.  

       "Say, Joe, nice dreams?" called Chet to that sleepyhead tousling his own hair as he was wont to do when he first entered the world of the waking. Frank, on the steps below him, pushed at his brother, wanting to see what the chatter was about. He wore a nightshirt still, the one Fenton Hardy, his father, had presented him from his own extensive wardrobe. He'd purchased it in Istanbul on assignment there many years ago, an assignment of such a secret nature that he still would not discuss it, even with his sons to whom he entrusted most of his clandestine dealings.

       "What happened up here?" he suddenly shouted when he noticed the debris littering the upper deck. Frank was Joe's older brother and spoke always with an authority that the younger sometimes resented. Branches and bracken lay awash along the rails; bird feathers and flotsam had the deck resembling a nuisance ground.

       "We'll fill you lazy dudes in over breakfast," Chet laughed and instructed Danny to set the course straight ahead and tie the wheel in place. They filed into the hold for a bite of the fine food Fenton's cook, loaned to them for this trip, prepared with a good will each morning. The currents now less noticeable and the winds decidedly decreased since they'd rounded Danger Point, their sleek yacht rose and fell like a seagull on the briny in the stiff breezes off Cataraz. The sun shone down with a benign countenance. All seemed well. An hour from now, however, their strong backs and quick minds would be required of them against a threat far more fearsome than the waters had been.

       Fenton Hardy had made them a loan of Samuel the cook for a reason that he dare not tell his sons. He knew of the wildness of their project but also of its connection to evils greater than the boys had imagined. He battled within himself whether to let them go or even to alleviate their surprise on discovering later just what they were dealing with. But, his professional duty came before family needs. The agency had informed Fenton of the menace to the entire nation--nay, to the world--of the Ring of the Deadly Viper. Somewhere, off the east border of Spain, a group of gold diggers had set up a missile base with which it meant to disrupt the lava flows of the Kinley Range and divert its hidden wealth into a secret valley of which they alone knew the location.

       The accumulation of wealth in and of itself concerned the agency less than the possession of weapons of such massive destructive power as to be able to burrow far into the earth and there set off blasts enough to cause quakes and start and stop lava flows. Such activity threatened the fragile seismic stability the Pacific's tectonic plates. And, nations along the Pacific Rim might themselves be ready to employ nuclear weapons against the threat if they became aware of it, this threat of the villains busy in the remote Spanish mountains. Samuel was to keep an eye on the situation and inform Fenton at once if the boys came up against trouble they could not handle. An old hand at such encounters, with youngsters of great intelligence and experience already, despite their youth and boyish appearance, Samuel had willingly agreed to accompany the expedition, and he cooked with a hearty will the food that would prepare them most effectively for the onslaughts ahead.

       They dined today on Spanish sardines and toast and drank coffee imported from Germany. When their hunger was satisfied--all except Chet, whose appetite was an endless source of marvel among them--they stretched out on their bunks for a brief respite. They were all too aware that the next leg of the journey would require all their strength. A few minutes later a resounding "huzzah" from near the launch brought them all to their feet.

       "What was that!" Danny whispered. The boys raced to the deck and froze. Beside their ship loomed a vessel of such gigantic proportions that it made their boat seem like a skiff in comparison. It bristled with soldiers holding automatic weapons, all pointed at them.

       "Anzaitolic croajva ta slit maijolivic blie!" shouted a sailor in a voice that left no doubt about his mood.

       "Pardon me?" Frank replied, hunching up his shoulders to indicate that he did not understand. The commanding officer motioned toward Frank and shouted an order to his men. Ropes were flung over the side and twenty sailors swung down to them in an instant. The intruders tied the boys' hands and hustled them toward the ropes. The men above hauled away and soon the quartet stood aboard the dangerous vessel. No one had thought to look below decks where Samuel had hidden himself in a cubbyhole he had discovered in the kitchen under a counter. He stayed there, and when the other ship left he radioed Fenton the terrible news. What transpired next will have to wait till the next installment of "The Curse of the Ring of the Deadly Viper."    

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

       by Dan Gerous

the trail leads home

the trail leads home

i will no longer roam

despite the drive

despite the drive

i'm glad to be alive

hell's gate is past

hell's gate is past

i'll see my home at last

i'll never leave

i'll never leave

my wife again to grieve

she'd love to leave

she'd love to leave

her man at home to grieve

. . . frontiersman who knows little of the culture to which he comes and carries with him a harpoon instead of rifle. Barbed wire indicates unwanted technological advancement into a peaceful world better experienced in its sparsely-populated, free-range-animal-and-human thereness.

       Laconic surpasses garrulous, with the proof of that being the hero drawing his gun regularly on the talkative one who, as a consequence of speaking when he should have been shooting, finds himself bloody in the dust (with a chicken pulling at a vein in his neck) instead of standing over the one there in that condition. Heart attacks and cancer never plague cowboy mankind and come into their force in those who mistake the city for a place to live. Children do not speak, and seldom are seen except when happened upon dead and mutilated by the rampage of outlaw band or Indian war party. The smoking remains of a log cabin and the knowledge that the loved little ones lie there in the charred remains, with burned gingham dresses and singed slingshots, tell the reader all he ever will or needs to know about their silent existence. Adults appear complete with girlish figures already formed and manly muscles firm and broad, indicative of a commendable potential for the strength under fire soon to be required of them.

       Wesley became conscious, too, of the scarcity of money in the world, how many no-good patriarchs had it at their disposal, and how some few generous patriarchs had it in banks in large cities and with which they had purchased great tracks of fine ranchland. Most members of the roving society, in contrast, lived from hand to mouth, owning a six-gun, a single set of clothing, and enough coin to purchase a satchel of tobacco to have to hand

       Music came by way of a single instrument in the hands of a shortsighted farmhand and then it would be a guitar or a harmonica. Occasionally a piano graced a wealthy, good rancher's parlor, but these were only said to have been played at a time when no member of the cast of domestic workers, busy at any given hour, were present to have heard it. Organs, mentioned once or twice, belonged in churches, but since church-going remained a staple in the lives of all, yet never actually saw itself in the act of happening, they played insignificant roles in the lives of the ones one intended to be.

       When Wesley died the Wild West died, too. Guitars are now played by so many. I, myself, belong to a bluegrass quartet and play a wonderful vintage C. F. Martin D28. Ladies smoke cigarettes almost more regularly than men do. Children call out their needs into the middle of adult conversation. The lonely individual earns our pity rather than our respect. Long guns no longer stand at the ready in glass cupboards. Indians, First Nations Canadians, pick wild rice, perform marriage ceremonies, act as legal judges, and in all ways participate in the promotion of social groups. Dresses now seldom contain any gingham. Tobacco pipe smokers have left the country. Wickedness in patriarchs can be found or seen hardly at all. No one reads Zane Grey. It has been years since I considered cracking a Western mysrlf.   

The Jism Trail

The Jism Trail

       by Dan Gerus Doug

ride rails

carry pails

eat snails

furl sails

pieced tails

heavy hails

lost grails

white males

hazy trails

snore maize

Wesley grew up reading cowboy stories such as Riders of the Purple Sage and The UP Trail. When he turned sixteen, however, a tractor tipped onto him at a culvert and he died, so this proclivity had done him no good.

       He learned many lessons of value in these Westerns, some of which came to their meaning in him slowly. A girl riding bareback did not mean shirtless but saddleless. This discovery--and thus value--featured in his education. He thought of the bareback girl regularly. But let me dwell not on matters animated by their sexual content and I already regret making the above my first example. Others abound, which many I will attempt to present without that appeal to the libido of readers that makes writers susceptible to criticism of the sort that belittles their intelligence, and for good reason since writing sex is the easiest means by which writers of fiction entertain and teach.

       Sometimes in stories sex hardly appears and in fact is inferred without being shown. Then again, often sex plays a pivotal though arbitrary role in the narrative. Too frequently sexual material enhances a text. But, then, at times, it hardly appears except as a moment the reader approaches and is not allowed to witness in its completion. When sex "enhances the text" the text suffers the danger of becoming episodic, becoming simply a graphic series of pictures that leaves the reader irate and unsettled for its prevalence.

       I will make only one more reference to this subject for I wish to illustrate Wesley's cowboy narrative schooling. This example is of the 'absence of information' variety. Wesley found himself pondering a young cattle herder's "activities" on the range when Zane Grey had him spend a "breathless" hour alone behind a copse of poplars, emerging "satisfied" as if he had just come down the Chisholm trail with the long labor of bringing a herd to market completed.

       Wesley also learned that old men of sturdy build and lonely constitution excite general interest, as if such characters live here and there in a world of their own making, solitary, savvy, wily in survival, and loved by all good people though satisfied to have nothing to do with them. Further to that, Wesley discovered that young women socialize always and always come away with the heart of the lonely cowboy devoted to them from some critical moment of first encounter onward with an unbridled though unspoken passion, one fierce as ever can be imagined in our ordinary passage through this life.

       Tobacco, and especially hand-rolled cigarettes, makes the solitary life bearable. Tobacco pipes remain the solace of the old, the lonely old Indian matriarch outside her far-flung cabin or adobe hut, and the frontiersman who knows little of the culture to which he comes.

to be continued.   

  

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