I ventured forward to the cut line and just sat there in the saddle taking inventory of the situation. I was looking down a gentle slope at a small homestead with a cabin and small livestock shed with a small wooden corral next to it. The chimney on the cabin was smoking merrily and the entire homestead was neat and tidy. It was apparent that someone was actively plowing a field and preparing to plant.

It was late afternoon and I was feeling a bit reluctant to wander down and make acquaintance this late in the day, a stranger showing up at supper time is considered rude by most of the folk I grew up with. My other option was to double back a mile or so and set up camp next to one of the brooks I’d seen, I could then return in the morning and make a noisy approach to introduce myself.

I sat there considering what might be best and smoking a cigarette, Brin was out scouting somewhere and the afternoon weather simply called for a little relaxation. It was a pretty little scene down below and while I knew that whoever it was had just survived a harsh winter and was hard at work to prepare for the next one. Everywhere I looked was spring green, vibrant and reassuring in the sunshine; flowers were sprinkled everywhere throughout the stump field and the little splashes of color brought their little hollow to vibrant life.

The voice in my head was singing joy at the beauty, the gruff voice behind me was saying “Now Mister, you stop right there.”

I just sat there and took another drag off of my cigarette and wishing I had brought along cigars instead. I obviously wasn’t going anywhere and I knew better than to react, so I just sat and smoked.

“Mister, I told you not to move!”, disembodied voice exclaimed.

So I put out my cigarette, it was down to the butt anyway and decided to turn this into a conversation. “You told me to stop and here I sit stopped, I hadn’t been going anywhere anyway. I was just enjoying the scenery, someone down there has a pretty nice homestead setup, I was thinking that if I had any talent I’d love to paint a picture of that.”

“Mister, that someone would be me and I don’t recall sending out invitations for visitors.” Mr. Gruff replied.

“Well now,” I said as I started to gently ease the hammer back on the first barrel of my shotgun, “see that was what I was contemplating, it seemed rude to ride down to an introduce myself at supper time, I thought I might just backtrack and camp out until the morning.”

The deep rumbling growl from behind us told me that Brin had come back; I took that moment to click the hammer into the fully cocked position and thankfully it was almost silent. I heard shuffling behind me and took that moment to wheel my horse and drop off to the ground behind it. I looked back over my saddle and along the shotgun barrel to see what my new friend looked like.

Well, he was in a quandary and he knew it, he was caught between an angry dog and a shot gun, his musket swinging back and forth. I was in control now. I was looking at a large black man, well not really black but more of a half-breed, kind of like most Americans are in the modern day. Purity of race doesn’t truly exists, never has and never will, DNA typing proved that fact out pretty damn quickly in the modern age.

“I’m not looking for a fight”, I said, “but my dog Brin doesn’t take well to people threatening me and while I know you have one shot in that there musket, this here scatter-gun of mine has two and will definitely end you. What my shotgun doesn’t get my dog Brin definitely will, so it might be best if you just point that musket away from us and we can have a proper introduction.”

The panic in Mr. Gruff’s eyes was glaringly apparent, he had something he needed to protect and that protection need might be greater than his survival need; he was extremely dangerous at this point and I needed to defuse the situation quickly or there would be blood. Blood out here would lead to emotional agony and great hardship for many people and I needed to move us past that and get us past that quickly.

I was playing it by ear and needed to clear the air, “I’m your new neighbor and have a homestead down by the Big Nemaha, I’m travelling north to find the trading post at Fort Atkinson as I find myself in need of some goods. Maybe we should just head down to your place and put your wife in charge of these guns so we can restart on a more friendly basis.”

He thought about that for a moment and then nodded slowly, his response telling me that his woman was no pushover and he trusted her to protect him. So off we went, silently side by side winding our way through the stumps down to their quaint little homestead.

I was taking a major chance here but I didn’t feel that I had a choice, I needed to be in good standing with my neighbors if I wanted to survive out here. Either that or I’d have to kill him and take over responsibility for his family and I had the feeling that was more than just a wife.

Walks like that seem to take forever even if we were only going a couple of hundred yards, there was still a chance of somebody losing their sand and making a mess out of this situation; I was careful to keep the gelding close to me so I could dodge behind him and use his body as a shield if need be.

The tension and the situation made me consider that I might have let my hand to hand combat skills deteriorate to far, I need to start running classes when I got back to camp to bring the entire team up to snuff. I wasn’t a Kung Fu warrior by any means but I had learned a few things along the way, however if you don’t practice you may as well have never learned. I’d always had better things to do than to spend six hours a day on a mat practicing hand to hand combat. I did however have the Marine Corps training and I had a buddy who rose to 3rd Level black belt and he showed me a few of the important basics. My buddy Kevin may as well have lived at that dojo but to make and keep his black belt rating he practiced and exercised constantly. Constantly meant always; he left the Corps and it was his life from sun up to sun down – that is simply what it takes to be a high-ranked blackbelt.

Kevin introduced me to the fact that there were only a few top level black belts in the entire world and all of them were elders with decades of experience. Decades of experience means daily practice usually of at least four hours each day, martial arts are a shit ton more complicated than a new cooking technique. However the basics were useful as long as you practiced them, just don’t go challenging any ninjas.

We arrived and I tethered my mounts to his corral fence setting Brin to guard them, they’d all starve to death there if something happened to me before I released Brin; Rottweilers are like that. With that done I went to meet the lady of the house and possibly the decider of our neighborly relationship.