Under duress

(This is the FIRST EPISODE written and edited by Carl McIntyre)

PREVIOUSLY: “Well, Tom,” Mac replied as they went into the town Marshal’s office, “We’re rounding-up the survivors and bringing them here, you need to get the doc to treat the wounded, and you need to get the dead buried. My friends will drag the carcasses off the street for the undertaker.”

“We don’t want them in our cemetery.”

“No need—we’ll load them in a wagon and take them out-of-town for burial,” Mac replied, “I don’t think the townsfolk would appreciate the smell of rotting corpses. By the way, who is the County Sheriff?”

“There is no sheriff,” Tom Smith replied, “Sheriff Dodd died a few weeks back, and his deputies don’t want the job.”

Mac smiled, “I know who will take the job, at least on an interim basis.”

Who COULD Mac have in mind?”

Season 13—Adventure 2—Pioneer Moosehead County—Episode 5… “Well Tom,” Mac’s grin was perfectly evil, “Boomer is available, and I’m sure he’ll accept the position until an election is held.”

“He’ll take the job?”

“He’ll have no choice—I’ll twist his arm—as hard as necessary.”

“Good,” Marshal Smith replied, “Bring him over to the county courthouse—any judge there will swear him in.”

Judge Aloysius James McLeod was bored—he was engaged in a huge amount of menial mental ditch-digging—in other words: record keeping, when he heard a knock on his chamber door.

Delighted at the interruption, he opened the door and found a very-tall man and a significantly shorter man—both dressed in buckskins—with the larger man smiling, “I understand you are in need of a sheriff.”

McLeod smiling widely replied to Mac, “Yes we are, are you interested?”

“Uh, no,” Mac rumbled, “Mr. Boomer here, is.”

“No—I’m not.”

“Yes, you are!”

“Yes, I are,” Boomer cracked, “Under duress.”

Judge McLeod administered the oath, and Boomer swore. To the oath, that is.

Boomer swore. To the oath, that is.

“You’ll find the sheriff’s office and jail just down the hall outside to the left, and I expect, Chief Deputy Amos Pierce will be there as well—buried, as I’ve been in paperwork.”

“Thank you, Judge McLeod, I know Deputy One-Eye and we’ll get along just fine.”

“He lets you call him that?”

“He does, he lost a bet with me at a gambling joint up in O’Rourke’s Drift, Saskatchewan.”

“He LOST a bet?”

“I cheated.”

“AW CRAP!” Amos Pierce exclaimed, “YOU?”

“Hello Amos,” Boomer grinned, “How are you?”

“Still suffering the indignity of being cheated—when I was supposed to be doing the cheating,” Pierce laughed, “Hello Mac, any chance you can keep this guy in line?”

“None whatsoever.”

To be CONTINUED…