888888
It wasn’t fair. Not only did he have a nickname he didn’t like – Kibbey – but he was also sleeping in the stable with the horses. Horse and hay, flatulence and flies, though it seemed odd that there were so many flies at night. He wondered if a fly got zapped by lightning, would it be resurrected.
Even the popcorn they delivered to him was stale and a little soggy from the humidity it picked up from the air. He had a bag of his own, but it had started raining again, so he couldn’t pop it outside. He looked around to see if the blacksmith’s workshop was part of the stables or nearby.
There was not a blacksmith’s forge, so he was on his own to create a fire.
He understood that the Kidd was the hero, having shot the pistol out of the floor-faced man’s hand. He knew that kibitzers were not easily or fully accepted into society. They were witnesses and scribes, and they reported to an authority most didn’t know about or understand. He certainly wasn’t sure why he had been selected. His family were not kibitzers. Nor any of his friends. And when they came in the middle of the night and told him he was selected, they did not give him a chance to say goodbye to his wife and two sons. Only a short note, quickly scribbled. It read: I’ve been selected. Don’t wait up.
He wasn’t sure how long ago that was, what his wife was like now, if his sons even remembered him.
The Kibitzer piled some hay in one area of mostly dirt. It was turning cold. He’d need the fire for more than popcorn.
Popcorn was his only solace. Bags of it turned up at the oddest times in the oddest places. He took it as a sign he was doing a good job.
He kept a book of matches dry and buried deep in a saddle bag. They were hard to get and he usually sparked a fire with a piece of flint and a piece of steel he carried; but they were both wet from rain. He was also too tired to try.
He added a piece of dried horse manure to the hay pile.
He found the matches, walked back to the pile of straw and dried other things and selected one from the box.
It was then somebody, head draped in a hood, stepped into the stable and tossed a torch on a larger pile of hay nearby. As the man left, he said, “Don’t wait up.”
At least that’s what the Kibitzer thought he said. The words were muffled by the hood. The words stunned him. By the time the Kibitzer recovered, the fire had spread to other parts of the stable, and the culprit was gone, and the Kibitzer was trapped.
(To be continued.)
Booker's Blog 