3 Lawman

Fossil fuels are a precious premium. So when anyone used any everyone noticed. It was like burning gold. So when the girls heard the diesel motor start they all knew that Ramon was up to something. The work area for this wasn't far from the hotel, probably only a few hundred feet. The noise was still loud enough to be heard inside the hotel.

It was a cool morning. Dew was still sitting on everything when Ramon filled the fuel tank with homemade Diesel. This motor would run on up to 80 oil, so when the fryer oil got too badly burnt for food it was filtered out and moonshine was added to thin it out. He had one gas-powered motor in an old car but it ran on Ethanol which was even more expensive. He made mores selling the moonshine to customers than he did using it to run the old truck hidden behind the hotel.

As the motor fired up the smell of old fried foods filled the air with the thick smoke until the motor got running and started to warm up. The smell of bacon oil, fries, steaks, and chicken filled the air making Ramon hungry.

As the smell filled the air the girls upstairs started to wake up and move around the hotel. Guests rolled over in bed after checking the windows to see how much light was spilling in around the drapes.

Ramon was already up long before the sun came up. He no longer slept in like the guests. He woke up, made coffee and toast before throwing on his work clothes. He had chores that had to be done before the day really started.

The generator was running to turn a long leather belt attached to a grinder. He was turning old butchered bones into bonemeal this morning. The side effect of butchering animals was that you had quite a few bones leftover. Bonemeal was an excellent fertilizer for things like tomatoes since it leached calcium back into the soil that prevented root rot.

After baking the bones overnight he would come out first thing in the morning and start the process. The crusher was a handbuilt contraption that used a belt to pulverize anything put into it. It was a large steel bowl with a toothed roller on top and a flat roller underneath. As the bones were broken down the fine power would eventually fall into a collector at the bottom and be sold or traded to farmers.

Ramon slowly fed the mix of bones into the crusher. Ramon had already broken some of them into smaller pieces. Bones, teeth, and everything were broken into pieces about 6 inches long before being put into the hopper. The crunching cracking noise started almost immediately as Ramon filled the machine with leftover bones.

Slowly he rubbed his hands on his apron and turned away from the machine. The sound of crunching faded as he walked away and headed towards a furnace. Boxes of trash were sitting next to it waiting to be burned. Boxes of stacked glass bottles were sitting a few yards away waiting to be boiled before resold back to the distillers.

He was stoking the fire and watching the sun come up over the horizon. The dew was evaporating off the buildings and grass and letting off a steam over the field giving it a surreal look. The seasons were changing from summer to fall and warm days were followed by chilling nights. It was great for business when part of what you sold was warm beds and warmer companions.

As he was throwing logs onto the fire he saw a shadow coming up from the road. He ignored the shadow at first, he assumed that the person walking up was a guest who didn't know what was going on.

Ramon kept pushing on an air pump getting the wood and charcoal up to temp inside the furnace. He wanted it hot enough to incinerate the ash. Once the fire got over 800 degree's it wouldn't take much for the fire to start consuming everything but iron and other metal. He would sift through the ash for these later and sell them back to the scrap man.

"Excuse me," the voice was rugged and calm. Ramon looked over to see the rugged face of a man who had spent years in the sun.

"Bar's not open until noon. Come back in about 5 hours." Ramon said calmly while throwing more logs into the fire before returning to the manual air pump on the side of the furnace.

"No breakfast?" The man said still walking up.

Ramon shifted on his feet. He wasn't carrying a gun this early in the morning but his knife was still in the small of his back where the apron was tied off. "Breakfast for paying customers only. We call it a side benefit of staying the night. We are famous for our bacon after all. If anyone could just buy it I wouldn't sell rooms. I hope you understand. I need to get back to this fire."

"I have heard about your bacon. Nothing like it this far west. My name is James Marcel. You got a minute?" The man stopped walking about 20 feet from Ramon and lifted up the lapel of his jacket. Underneath was a weathered old star. The gold plating had worn off years ago so all that was left was a steel shape with Marshall still slightly visible.

"Little early for a lawman isn't it Marshall?" Ramon took his hands off the air pump and rubbed them on his apron again. He took a step away from the furnace as he watched the temperature gauge start to creep towards 900. "Can I fill this furnace up while we talk? It just got hot enough and I don't want it to cool too much."

James nodded and pulled out a cigarette. "Mind if I smoke while you do it?"

Ramon nodded, "That's fine, what's brought you out here Marshall?" He grabbed the first box of trash and tossed it into the fire. Ramon used a small metal poker to shove it down into the fire. Old rags soaked in cleaners and oil caught fire almost immediately. The crackle of fire sped up for a moment and black smoke came out. Ramon pushed the box on top of the pile of rags and smiled before closing the door. The rags would help get the fire spread out a little.

"I'm looking for a man. He escaped the Texas Rangers and I've been chasing him north. You have a reputation as a good stopping point and wondered if you saw him lately." James Marcel took a drag on his cigarette before looking around.

Ramon grabbed the box next to him and pushed it up next to the door to the furnace. "I see all kinds of people. Who are you looking for? Anyone on a poster lately?"

James nodded and pulled out a flyer. "Anthony Filoni wanted for crimes against nature, murder, theft, and forgery. He was being held in a cell in Dallas when he managed to break out during a prison transfer to the Port of Houston to be sold overseas."

"Someone like that isn't just killed on sight?" Ramon said putting another box down next to the first. The temperature on the gauge was reaching 930.

"Normally yes but Filoni was connected to certain families and he was sold to a mining company for hard labor. The problem is the buyer paid a premium for him so he won't rest until I have a corpse or a live man. The corpse works better for me but the buyer will pay the state double if he's alive."

Ramon put on a leather glove and opened the door before shoving another box of rags, paper, and other waste into the furnace. The same metal poker shoved it down the small ramp and a small blast of red ash flew into the air as the box hit the fire. Ramon turned around and looked at the Marshall. "Got a picture?"

James reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a photo. Ramon pulled glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on before taking the photo. He didn't need the glasses at all but he learned that misleading people and giving them the wrong idea generally worked in his favor.

Ramon took the photo and lifted the photo up into the air to get some light on it. He moved it around like he was focusing on it and then nodded. "Yeah, we had him a few nights ago. He packed up two days ago and moved on. I know he headed west, I'm guessing he went towards the mountains."

"Did he have anyone with him?" James took the photo back and looked at Ramon.

"Nope, just him. I can get my head girl down here. She knows about everything that's going on. She can let you know if the girls heard anything else. I just remember that he signed up for a room of one." Ramon put his glasses back into his pocket and took the glove off the table before tucking it into his pocket.

"Yeah, that'd be helpful. If he's got a two-day head start I don't want to hang around too long." James turned towards the hotel. "You sure you can't spot me breakfast? Maybe a coffee?"

"Sure, follow me. Let me top the furnace off first and make sure the grinder is still full." Ramon pulled out the glove.

"Making bonemeal? Much market for that here?"

"Traders come through all the time. I sell to them or trade for things like fruit and veggies. The soil here is too salty for much to grow. I get some small veggies but I don't have the time to run a hotel and do the whole farmer dan schtick."

James nodded, "Yeah that's fine. Here I will help."

Ramon used the glove to open the door. He grabbed the first box and slid it into the hole before pushing it in. James grabbed the last box and put it up near the door. "Damn that's hot," he said under his breath.

Ramon chuckled. "Put it on the edge and I will push it in."

James sat it down and Ramon used the poker to shove it in. That was all four boxes of trash. Ramon closed the door and shut it. He watched the furnace temperature. It was creeping up to 950 degrees. Ramon ran the handle on the air pump and watched the tank build up 15psi of air pressure. It wouldn't be enough to get it high enough. He would need to fire it up again tomorrow.

Ramon walked over to the crusher. The noise of breaking bone had started to subside The bones were breaking down to finger-sized pieces. He grabbed the box and tossed the rest in nonchalantly. He checked the bottom of the old wooden box for anything left over. Nothing showed up in the bottom so he nodded and put the box next to the crusher.

"Let's go see about getting you some coffee. I made a pot before I started this morning." Ramon said and walked him into the back door of the hotel.

Ramon walked him into the front room, he didn't have a choice. He knew having a Marshall in the back would make people far more nervous than having him in the front. Here the guys with warrants would mind their manners. Cheffie was already up frying eggs and bacon. Large thick cuts of last night's bread were sitting on skillets frying in one side of salted butter.

Ramon brought him a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs. "Let me go get my head girl."

Just as James was finishing up the last egg Ramon walked in with Liz. After a full night of sleep and a hot bath, she looked entirely different. She wore a long black dress with a corset top that stopped below the chest. A frock top was the only thing keeping her assets restrained. It wasn't erotic but it set the image of what lied underneath, and sex appeal was the name of her game. The curl in her hair was teased up and she had a light coating of pink dust on her cheeks.

A short 15-minute conversation was all that was needed to confirm what Ramon had told him earlier. She confirmed that the photo was the same man who was there before. She told him he had raised some trouble with one of her girls and she had to separate them. She then told how he had left the next morning on his own headed toward the Rockies.

James nodded as he drained his coffee and then put the mug on the table. "At least I'm headed in the right direction. You happen to know how he paid?"

Ramon nodded, "Bullets. He paid in half a box of 223 caliber slugs, full metal tips."

"You take a trade on that kind of thing?" James shook his head and looked at them both individually.

Liz piped in first, "The girls are allowed to trade for whatever they think is valuable. We don't take just the currency of the land. Could be gold, could be groceries, could be whatever the woman wants. It makes the girls feel in control."

"The house takes a cut of whatever they trade for at the end of the month," Ramon said taking the plate before putting it on the counter.

"Was he carrying a rifle?" James said nodding to the distinctive rounds.

"No," Liz pulled out a chair and sat down. "Telilah said she saw him remove a 45 caliber, some kind of blacked out piece. Looked like police or ex-military. Maybe he stole it from the guards if he broke out. He said he didn't need them more than he needed across the Rockies."

"I think that's all I needed then. Thanks for the breakfast, if you hear of anything report it to the locals and they can get it to me." James nodded and patted his chest where his badge was. "Us cops always have a way of getting in contact with each other."

They both thanked him for stopping by and promised to do just that. They were lying of course but they promised anyway. Ramon walked him to the door. Liz stood just one step behind Ramon and waved politely as he stepped through the door.

They watched him get into an old black police cruiser. Hidden in the black paint was a slightly faded light black texas star. If you didn't see it straight on you would have missed it. Ramon noticed the reinforced rear doors and trunk. He guessed the car had tons of propane running the old V8.

"You burning this morning?" Liz said smiling as she waved at the car as it backed out from in front of the hotel.

"Yeah, dumped the boxes right in front of him. The crusher is making our batch of meal for this week's trade. They should be coming in a few days." Ramon said under his breath. "What about Talilah?"

Liz sighed and read between the lines "She's fine, for now. She freaked out with the car out front. If she doesn't get her shit together..."

Ramon shook his head. They both understood that witnesses were a bad thing. They trusted the regulars and bribed them by paying off their bar tabs. Most of them were drunks and unreliable witnesses. Especially with no physical evidence.

"Just get her calmed down." Ramon turned away from the door and headed to the front desk. From there he turned into the hallway headed back to his room.