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"Revenge, Renewal and the Promise of a New Year" (Boot Hill/D&D)
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<blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 1841481" data-attributes="member: 8530"><p><strong>Chapter Thirty-seven, “Reaching the Leader’s Lair”, January 7th , 1882:</strong></p><p></p><p>A lantern lights the cavern at the beginning of the cave. This initial area is around twenty-foot square and the only thing in it right now is a shotgun propped against the wall near the mouth of the cave with a wooden box of shotgun shells sitting on the floor beside it. The back of the cave has a tunnel approximately five feet wide and seven-feet high that heads deeper into the mountain. The tunnel looks to go for approximately fifty feet before curving downward and to the right. There appear to also be some smaller tunnels branching off to the left from the main tunnel.</p><p></p><p>Jake looks at his arm and smiles back only for a moment. "Alright, Geronimo's messenger it is." and he pats Nanuet on the shoulder. "Follow Billy's direction and call out to them. Tell 'em that Deadeye's gang is here too if they ask any questions or whatever. Ruby, why don't you go after Nanuet. If things aren't going well, distract them or something. If things start goin' south just hit the floor and I'll start shooting. And Katherine you follow me. If anything bad happens... well, remember I have some dynamite; light it and run like the blazes." Jake stops talking shrugs his shoulders and tries a halfhearted grin. On the way by he takes the shotgun and a couple of pockets full of shells.</p><p></p><p>The cavern goes for approximately fifty feet before curving downward and to the right. There are some smaller tunnels branching off to the left, but based upon the tracks Nanuet concludes that they are currently not being used. The group continues for another hundred feet reaching a “T” intersection. Nanuet again studies the tracks and determines which one is the most traveled. </p><p></p><p>Nanuet notices an area just prior to a wide curve in the tunnel where the tracks indicate that some of the people who passed this way stopped and turned to the side. He examines the stone walls at this point and finds a section of wall that looks wrong. Closer examination by him, Ruby and Jake discover that a stone is actually hinged in place to a small metal box imbedded into the wall. The box is opened to reveal a pair of musical instruments inside, namely a metal bell, four inches high with a five-inch handle, and a small metal flute-like instrument.</p><p></p><p>"I wonder why they would keep these hidden," Katherine said quietly. "Of course, they don't seem like the kind of things cattle rustlers would have anyway. I mean, what are they doing with a piccolo?" She resisted the urge to reach past the others and pull the small flute out. "I'm not the musical instrument expert here" Jake says looking Katherine, "and obviously they did use it for something. Maybe the signal Billy Claibourne mentioned?"</p><p></p><p>Ruby comments "Probably the signal he was talking about. But let's not leave it here for them to signal each other in case of trouble." Ruby takes a handkerchief out of her pocket and quietly takes the items out of the box. She makes sure they are wrapped up so they won't make noise and closes the box back up. As she places them in her pants she thinks "It's a good thing these clothes don't fit, the pockets are huge!" "We ready to go on?"</p><p></p><p>Nanuet says, “Yes, the longer we wait here the more can go wrong with men we have tied up outside. I am sure someone will come and check on them soon. They said we should just let them know we are here by yelling out. Jake decides it is a fine time to make sure the shotgun is loaded and then holds the gun vertically in his left hand behind him, blocking it's view.</p><p></p><p>Nanuet yells further into the cave "I AM A MESSENGER FROM GERONIMO, I NEED TO SPEAK WITH HARVEY KNOWLES" In the moments while they waited for an answer, Kate took a few seconds to settle herself. Jake had asked her to play along, and she was going to do that. She took a deep breath and changed her posture. Her shoulders pushed back and she put her weight on one hip. It was all in the attitude, she decided. She would just follow Jake's lead and bluff her way through this. A voice from around the bend that sounds like it is no more than 50 or 60 feet away yells back to Nanuet "Who are you? And where's Claibourne?"</p><p></p><p>While Nanuet stops to decide a response the four hear the sound of distant footsteps upon the rocky floor from somewhere up ahead and around the bend. They also hear the distinct sound of a shotgun being closed shut. He yells back “I am Nanuet, I come here with a message for you from Geronimo. I told your men outside the cave that the message was for your ears only. I am unarmed, your men have checked me. I need to speak with you.” The voice yells "Hold on a minute". The four now hear a number of strange sounds that resemble metal machinery moving including some grinding noises and a loud clang. The voice then says "Okay, you can come forward now." </p><p></p><p>Nanuet does as instructed. He rounds the bend which continues to curve, then sees a metal doorway at the wall thirty feet before him. The door is ajar and there is a chamber on the other side but he cannot see in it. A man holding but not pointing a shotgun is standing in the tunnel beside the door. Nanuet also notices at a point approximately seven to twelve feet before the door there is a five-foot square section of the tunnel floor that looks rather unusual. Across this section is a three-foot wide and five-foot long wooden bridge supported by metal bracing across it. On both sides of the bridge the floor looks normal except for where the bridge is literally going through it. He concludes that this is another false-floor illusion similar to the one back on the ledge trail and that the man had done something to make the bridge move into place. The man nods his head back to the door and says "Knowles is inside Injun. You can go see him."</p><p></p><p>Jake motions to Ruby and Katherine to come close and whispers "How much time to we give him before we do something? I wonder if Jack or Dell should yell down the hallway that Deadeye is here?" Ruby replies "Not long. I'm not sure what he's going to accomplish in there. Hopefully he can bring Knowles back out and we can ambush him. Otherwise we'd better pray they don't reset whatever machinery they had to adjust to let Nanuet in."</p><p></p><p>Nanuet moves forward and enters the room. The man follows and shuts the door behind them. Kate, Jake and Ruby hear the sound of the door closing. Nanuet is surprisingly calm as he enters the room. He takes a moment to survey his surroundings and attempts to spot anyone hiding using his keen eyes and infravision. </p><p></p><p>Outside, Jake comments, "Well, we can temporarily take charging through the open doorway with guns blazing off our list of options." Ruby says nothing but starts moving forward, staying against the wall and moving slowly. She gestures for Jake and Katherine to stay where they are and puts her finger to her lip for them to be quiet. </p><p></p><p>Ruby reaches the weird floor she stops and examines it. She determines that the "floor" to both sides of the bridge is only an illusion. She lowers her head down through the illusion on the left side of the bridge. Underneath is a deep pit that drops down for as far as she can see. Metal braces coming up from the wall on the rights side of the bridge support the bridge itself. The metal braces all have hinges on them and she concludes that they are mechanical rather than magical in nature, and that some type of device is used to have them raise and lower the bridge. When lowered the braces would fold into themselves like an accordion and lower the wooden bridge to be parallel the right wall. </p><p></p><p>She reaches the door and peering through the keyhole determines that there is a large chamber on the other side from which she hears at least two male voices, neither of them Nanuet's. She looks to the crack on the side of the door and concludes that it is currently shut but not locked. Ruby goes back to Katherine and Jake and tells them what she found out. </p><p></p><p>Nanuet has gone through the door into a large irregularly shaped chamber. The man with the shotgun follows him and shuts the door behind them. The room is roughly shaped like a fat letter “X”, with the diagonal side that they can see running for sixty feet and being approximately twenty feet wide. The entrance to the chamber starts at the lower right hand (southeast) corner. There are two men seated at a table in the center of the room at the intersection of the X. He can only see the beginning of both side hallways the other directions. </p><p></p><p>From the entrance way he can see at the opposite end of the chamber from where they are standing there is a blankets hung across a wooden bar, creating a makeshift doors The blanket is pulled partially to the side and they can see a doorway behind into a darkened room. He can make out that the far room has a large canopy bed inside. </p><p></p><p>The chamber itself is not what he would have expected from a cave, as it is both well furnished and lit up by magical light. A coat rack with five hats and two coats is in the room near the passageway where they have entered. Mexican-style woven rugs cover the floor. Six high-backed and quality made wooden chairs with red velvet cushions are around an elaborately made wooden table at the intersection of the four hallways. Bookcases filled with books are along the left-hand side of the hallway. Standing in and at the far end by the entrance to the northwestern chamber is a wooden case with glass doors housing several rifles. </p><p></p><p>Several paintings in gold frames are propped up against all of the walls; most being paintings of desert landscapes and a few are portraits of regal looking wood elves. Unlike the cavern leading to the room, this room does not feel at all damp and is actually somewhat warm at around seventy degrees. A woodstove with a coffeepot is then seen near the table along the side hallway leading to the northeast chamber. He can see that the stove has no vent pipe and has no smoke is coming from it although puffs of steam are coming from the coffeepot. The two men are inside the room seated at the table and drinking from tin cups filled with what appears to be coffee. </p><p></p><p>"Which one of you is Knowles?" he says in an even tone. One of the men at the table says "I'm Knowles". He stands up and approaches Nanuet, as the one with the shotgun walks past Knowles and back to the table where he picks up a mug. The two of them exchange a few words about Claibourne's incompetence. As Knowles nears Nanuet "You say that Geronimo sent you with a message for me?" </p><p></p><p>Outside, Ruby says, "We should try to distract those two and get them out here. I think I have a way but how can we quietly subdue them when they get here? I'm thinking we hide on either side of the door and whack them over the head when they come out." Ruby smiles mischievously at Katherine. "You'll see. Now stand over on this side of the door and leave some room for me. Jake you stand on that side of the door and get ready..." </p><p></p><p>Ruby starts whispering under her breath. Suddenly a group of little tiny glowing lights appears in the middle of the room they are in. They are bouncing around but basically staying in the same spot. Ruby pushes herself up against the wall and slowly pushes the door open, actually hoping that it squeaks. The door opens up a bit, but based upon where they are currently standing Ruby, Kate and Jake cannot see inside. There is no indication that the people in the room have noticed yet and so Ruby pushes the door a bit more, this causing a squeak. </p><p></p><p>Nanuet then notices the door open up a crack behind him. It then opens wider, and there are some sort of sparkling lights outside. "What?" the man with the shotgun exclaims. Knowles tells his companions "Not sure, some type of Apache light creature I think, probably harmless. Must have come up through the pit. I'll see if I can talk to it." The man opens the door further and steps out into the tunnel.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Silver Moon, post: 1841481, member: 8530"] [B]Chapter Thirty-seven, “Reaching the Leader’s Lair”, January 7th , 1882:[/B] A lantern lights the cavern at the beginning of the cave. This initial area is around twenty-foot square and the only thing in it right now is a shotgun propped against the wall near the mouth of the cave with a wooden box of shotgun shells sitting on the floor beside it. The back of the cave has a tunnel approximately five feet wide and seven-feet high that heads deeper into the mountain. The tunnel looks to go for approximately fifty feet before curving downward and to the right. There appear to also be some smaller tunnels branching off to the left from the main tunnel. Jake looks at his arm and smiles back only for a moment. "Alright, Geronimo's messenger it is." and he pats Nanuet on the shoulder. "Follow Billy's direction and call out to them. Tell 'em that Deadeye's gang is here too if they ask any questions or whatever. Ruby, why don't you go after Nanuet. If things aren't going well, distract them or something. If things start goin' south just hit the floor and I'll start shooting. And Katherine you follow me. If anything bad happens... well, remember I have some dynamite; light it and run like the blazes." Jake stops talking shrugs his shoulders and tries a halfhearted grin. On the way by he takes the shotgun and a couple of pockets full of shells. The cavern goes for approximately fifty feet before curving downward and to the right. There are some smaller tunnels branching off to the left, but based upon the tracks Nanuet concludes that they are currently not being used. The group continues for another hundred feet reaching a “T” intersection. Nanuet again studies the tracks and determines which one is the most traveled. Nanuet notices an area just prior to a wide curve in the tunnel where the tracks indicate that some of the people who passed this way stopped and turned to the side. He examines the stone walls at this point and finds a section of wall that looks wrong. Closer examination by him, Ruby and Jake discover that a stone is actually hinged in place to a small metal box imbedded into the wall. The box is opened to reveal a pair of musical instruments inside, namely a metal bell, four inches high with a five-inch handle, and a small metal flute-like instrument. "I wonder why they would keep these hidden," Katherine said quietly. "Of course, they don't seem like the kind of things cattle rustlers would have anyway. I mean, what are they doing with a piccolo?" She resisted the urge to reach past the others and pull the small flute out. "I'm not the musical instrument expert here" Jake says looking Katherine, "and obviously they did use it for something. Maybe the signal Billy Claibourne mentioned?" Ruby comments "Probably the signal he was talking about. But let's not leave it here for them to signal each other in case of trouble." Ruby takes a handkerchief out of her pocket and quietly takes the items out of the box. She makes sure they are wrapped up so they won't make noise and closes the box back up. As she places them in her pants she thinks "It's a good thing these clothes don't fit, the pockets are huge!" "We ready to go on?" Nanuet says, “Yes, the longer we wait here the more can go wrong with men we have tied up outside. I am sure someone will come and check on them soon. They said we should just let them know we are here by yelling out. Jake decides it is a fine time to make sure the shotgun is loaded and then holds the gun vertically in his left hand behind him, blocking it's view. Nanuet yells further into the cave "I AM A MESSENGER FROM GERONIMO, I NEED TO SPEAK WITH HARVEY KNOWLES" In the moments while they waited for an answer, Kate took a few seconds to settle herself. Jake had asked her to play along, and she was going to do that. She took a deep breath and changed her posture. Her shoulders pushed back and she put her weight on one hip. It was all in the attitude, she decided. She would just follow Jake's lead and bluff her way through this. A voice from around the bend that sounds like it is no more than 50 or 60 feet away yells back to Nanuet "Who are you? And where's Claibourne?" While Nanuet stops to decide a response the four hear the sound of distant footsteps upon the rocky floor from somewhere up ahead and around the bend. They also hear the distinct sound of a shotgun being closed shut. He yells back “I am Nanuet, I come here with a message for you from Geronimo. I told your men outside the cave that the message was for your ears only. I am unarmed, your men have checked me. I need to speak with you.” The voice yells "Hold on a minute". The four now hear a number of strange sounds that resemble metal machinery moving including some grinding noises and a loud clang. The voice then says "Okay, you can come forward now." Nanuet does as instructed. He rounds the bend which continues to curve, then sees a metal doorway at the wall thirty feet before him. The door is ajar and there is a chamber on the other side but he cannot see in it. A man holding but not pointing a shotgun is standing in the tunnel beside the door. Nanuet also notices at a point approximately seven to twelve feet before the door there is a five-foot square section of the tunnel floor that looks rather unusual. Across this section is a three-foot wide and five-foot long wooden bridge supported by metal bracing across it. On both sides of the bridge the floor looks normal except for where the bridge is literally going through it. He concludes that this is another false-floor illusion similar to the one back on the ledge trail and that the man had done something to make the bridge move into place. The man nods his head back to the door and says "Knowles is inside Injun. You can go see him." Jake motions to Ruby and Katherine to come close and whispers "How much time to we give him before we do something? I wonder if Jack or Dell should yell down the hallway that Deadeye is here?" Ruby replies "Not long. I'm not sure what he's going to accomplish in there. Hopefully he can bring Knowles back out and we can ambush him. Otherwise we'd better pray they don't reset whatever machinery they had to adjust to let Nanuet in." Nanuet moves forward and enters the room. The man follows and shuts the door behind them. Kate, Jake and Ruby hear the sound of the door closing. Nanuet is surprisingly calm as he enters the room. He takes a moment to survey his surroundings and attempts to spot anyone hiding using his keen eyes and infravision. Outside, Jake comments, "Well, we can temporarily take charging through the open doorway with guns blazing off our list of options." Ruby says nothing but starts moving forward, staying against the wall and moving slowly. She gestures for Jake and Katherine to stay where they are and puts her finger to her lip for them to be quiet. Ruby reaches the weird floor she stops and examines it. She determines that the "floor" to both sides of the bridge is only an illusion. She lowers her head down through the illusion on the left side of the bridge. Underneath is a deep pit that drops down for as far as she can see. Metal braces coming up from the wall on the rights side of the bridge support the bridge itself. The metal braces all have hinges on them and she concludes that they are mechanical rather than magical in nature, and that some type of device is used to have them raise and lower the bridge. When lowered the braces would fold into themselves like an accordion and lower the wooden bridge to be parallel the right wall. She reaches the door and peering through the keyhole determines that there is a large chamber on the other side from which she hears at least two male voices, neither of them Nanuet's. She looks to the crack on the side of the door and concludes that it is currently shut but not locked. Ruby goes back to Katherine and Jake and tells them what she found out. Nanuet has gone through the door into a large irregularly shaped chamber. The man with the shotgun follows him and shuts the door behind them. The room is roughly shaped like a fat letter “X”, with the diagonal side that they can see running for sixty feet and being approximately twenty feet wide. The entrance to the chamber starts at the lower right hand (southeast) corner. There are two men seated at a table in the center of the room at the intersection of the X. He can only see the beginning of both side hallways the other directions. From the entrance way he can see at the opposite end of the chamber from where they are standing there is a blankets hung across a wooden bar, creating a makeshift doors The blanket is pulled partially to the side and they can see a doorway behind into a darkened room. He can make out that the far room has a large canopy bed inside. The chamber itself is not what he would have expected from a cave, as it is both well furnished and lit up by magical light. A coat rack with five hats and two coats is in the room near the passageway where they have entered. Mexican-style woven rugs cover the floor. Six high-backed and quality made wooden chairs with red velvet cushions are around an elaborately made wooden table at the intersection of the four hallways. Bookcases filled with books are along the left-hand side of the hallway. Standing in and at the far end by the entrance to the northwestern chamber is a wooden case with glass doors housing several rifles. Several paintings in gold frames are propped up against all of the walls; most being paintings of desert landscapes and a few are portraits of regal looking wood elves. Unlike the cavern leading to the room, this room does not feel at all damp and is actually somewhat warm at around seventy degrees. A woodstove with a coffeepot is then seen near the table along the side hallway leading to the northeast chamber. He can see that the stove has no vent pipe and has no smoke is coming from it although puffs of steam are coming from the coffeepot. The two men are inside the room seated at the table and drinking from tin cups filled with what appears to be coffee. "Which one of you is Knowles?" he says in an even tone. One of the men at the table says "I'm Knowles". He stands up and approaches Nanuet, as the one with the shotgun walks past Knowles and back to the table where he picks up a mug. The two of them exchange a few words about Claibourne's incompetence. As Knowles nears Nanuet "You say that Geronimo sent you with a message for me?" Outside, Ruby says, "We should try to distract those two and get them out here. I think I have a way but how can we quietly subdue them when they get here? I'm thinking we hide on either side of the door and whack them over the head when they come out." Ruby smiles mischievously at Katherine. "You'll see. Now stand over on this side of the door and leave some room for me. Jake you stand on that side of the door and get ready..." Ruby starts whispering under her breath. Suddenly a group of little tiny glowing lights appears in the middle of the room they are in. They are bouncing around but basically staying in the same spot. Ruby pushes herself up against the wall and slowly pushes the door open, actually hoping that it squeaks. The door opens up a bit, but based upon where they are currently standing Ruby, Kate and Jake cannot see inside. There is no indication that the people in the room have noticed yet and so Ruby pushes the door a bit more, this causing a squeak. Nanuet then notices the door open up a crack behind him. It then opens wider, and there are some sort of sparkling lights outside. "What?" the man with the shotgun exclaims. Knowles tells his companions "Not sure, some type of Apache light creature I think, probably harmless. Must have come up through the pit. I'll see if I can talk to it." The man opens the door further and steps out into the tunnel. [/QUOTE]
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