The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue - Trish Hanan (easy novels to read .TXT) 📗

any Hamish nobility that heard about the rifles and rode up, he didn’t intend for any of his precious rifles to fall into the wrong hands. And if it happened that he was turning down a Hamish at the same time that a Ridge man was showing up, he and Bill worked out a signal so that Bill could take the Ridge man aside and hold him until the Hamish left. Sean didn’t want any Ridge men leaving his farm without a rifle.
“You’re giving out a lot of rifles aren’t you, Granddad?” Young Sean asked him one day late in April. Sean nodded as the latest man rode away. Young Sean sighed.
“There probably won’t be one for me when I turn sixteen in two years,” he said with a sad look. Sean grinned at him.
“Ah, lad, don’t worry, I’ve put one away for you and all of the other lads in the family plus fifty more that haven’t even been born yet,” he assured him and Sean’s eyes lit up.
“Really, you’ve put away a rifle for me?” he asked, barely able to control his excitement. Sean laughed and took him to the gold mine and showed him the two thousand rifles stored there. Young Sean was amazed.
“This is also the Donoghue family gold mine, lad, so if anything happens to me, you’ll know where it is,” he told him and ruffled his hair. Young Sean nodded.
“You can trust me, Granddad, I won’t tell those bastards the Hamish where it is,” he declared passionately and Sean hugged him.
“I know you won’t, lad, cuz you’re a Donoghue,” he said proudly and the boy beamed.
The first of May Sean and a few others loaded up some rifles and headed next door to Gannon’s Ridge. The ten Ridges in their order from Jamestown were: Adams, Lamanski, O’Brien’s, Gannon’s, O’Malley’s, Henry’s, MacDonald’s, Gray’s, Thomas’s and Chervek’s the last because a lot of Cherveks had landed there. They were the closets to the southwest and the Keetik Indians and the Indians learned very quickly to leave their fierce people alone. They didn’t eat many hearts from the mighty Cherveks.
The men of Gannon’s Ridge were very interested in the rifle demonstration that Sean and the Donoghue men gave. They were very interested in the low price of twenty gilders Sean was charging for them also. And very interested in the barrel of barley he was willing to take in exchange in the fall for a rifle now.
“Why barley?” one of them asked with suspicion. Sean shrugged.
“I make beer and whiskey and I have a need for plenty of barley,” he informed them and they all nodded and grinned. Sean handed out over four hundred rifles and then hit the other Ridges with the same offer.
“You’re going to have enough barley to last a lifetime,” Ryan remarked as they rode home after the last Ridge. Sean shrugged.
“So I’ll make a lot of whiskey, there’s always coin in selling whiskey,” he said and the brothers nodded.
After every trip Young Sean had to be taken back to the gold cave and shown that there were still enough rifles left so that he was sure to get his. He was very happy when the last Ridge was done and no more wagons loaded up with rifles were leaving Sean’s farm. Sean laughed at him.
“I’d never give away your rifle, lad, not after I promised it to you,” he assured him. Young Sean nodded but Sean could see he really wasn’t sure. A ship came in Portsmyth with barley for one of the breweries and Sean took a wagon and a couple of men, Lonnie and Todd seemed to like riding with him so he let them and headed down to see if he could buy some. The beer was so bad at Stan’s and he missed his beer. He made a deal with the Captain for some emerald chips and loaded up in the middle of the night and headed home. No soldiers bothered them and he left the two men in the forest while he went back for his licenses. He decided to go ahead and get both to save himself a trip in the fall.
“You want a whiskey and a beer making license?” the sergeant looked at Sean like he was crazy. Sean explained.
“Well, I won’t be making the whiskey until the fall and my barley crop comes in but I thought I’d go ahead and get it now so I won’t have to make another trip in a few weeks,” he explained. It was the end of August. The sergeant looked at his lieutenant and they both laughed. The lieutenant cleared his throat.
“You do understand don’t you, Mr. Donoghue, that they’re separate licenses, you have to pay for each of them,” he informed him and Sean nodded.
“I understand that, Lieutenant Foster,” he said and with a grin the sergeant handed over the correct forms. Sean took his time filling them out making sure to cross all the t’s and dot the i’s while the word spread round the office that they had a live one. A real live mountain man newly arrived from Topanga Island who thought he was going to be making beer and whiskey in Anamylia. They could barely control their hysterics.
“These look in order, Mr. Donoghue,” the lieutenant said and he choked back a laugh. Then he looked at Sean. “That will be one thousand gilders for the beer making license and one thousand gilders for the whiskey making license,” he spoke firmly waiting for Sean to collapse into rage or tears or both like many men had before him. Sean calmly reached into his pack and pulled out two cloth bags. He opened one and began pulled out gold coins and stacking them on the lieutenant’s desk. The soldiers watched in awe as he casually stacked ten stacks and then opened the other bag and made another row.
“You’ll find its all here, Lieutenant Foster, I’ll take my licenses and be on my way now, if you don’t mind,” Sean said calmly and the lieutenant’s mouth dropped open.
“But you must be mad, you don’t even own a brewery, you have to have a brewery to make beer and a distillery to make whiskey,” he stammered. Sean nodded.
“And I do. I have a two-hundred and fifty gallon brewery and a hundred gallon still,” he informed them and went on to say that he only made beer and whiskey as a hobby, it relaxed him after a long day of farming.
“I only intended to sell my beer to one tavern, Jefferies on the Ridge and maybe Gannon’s but they’ll have to come get it if they want it, I’m not making that trip,” he informed them. They still looked shocked.
“You’re going to pay two thousand gilders so you can make beer and whiskey as a hobby?” the sergeant yelled. Sean shrugged.
“I like to make beer and whiskey and I wouldn’t have to pay anything if it wasn’t for you Hamish and your silly taxes, you’re the one who make it so expensive for a simple man like myself to enjoy his hobby,” he explained patiently. The lieutenant took the forms into the major’s office and told the major what the mad man had said. Major Walters snorted.
“These Anamylian mountain men are the stupidest men in the world. Where the hell did this fool get all this coin to piss away like this, that’s what I want to know,” he snapped as he signed the documents. The lieutenant shrugged. He went back and handed Sean his documents and the mad man left. The soldiers were in a bad mood all day; he had really spoiled their fun.
Sean went home and heated up the processing room and made a batch of beer. Then he chopped down six Peanja trees in anticipation for all that barley he was going to have to make some whiskey. He was in a very good mood for the rest of the month.
Fall harvest came and the whole Ridge was busy as everyone prepared for winter. Sean went back to Portsmyth after all, he and Ryan needed warm clothes, sweaters and long under-garments and scarves and hats and stuff. He was really looked forward to snow but he worried about he effects of it on Ryan, after all, he had lived forty-eight years in a tropical temperature, how would his body react to the bitter cold once again.
“Ah, you worry too much, Granddad, I was born in this land remember,” Ryan chided him as Sean picked up yet another sweater and held it up to see if he liked it. Sean grinned.
“I guess I do worry, lad, I’m sorry, I’ll try not to fuss over you like a woman,” he told him and Annie snorted.
“Why do men always insult women like that, for your information men are filthy pigs,” she declared. The men all laughed.
“Women are always saying that about men,” Sean informed her and she looked surprised.
“They are?” she asked and he nodded.
“Men say women are fussy and dumb and women say men are idiots and pigs,” he told them. “I guess everyone’s got to insult someone,” Sean said with a grin. They all laughed.
Sean made a dozen batches of whiskey and stored them in his aging room he had dug in the side of the mountain. He built a nice wooden door for it and marked it for spring of sixteen ninety-eight, eighteen months from now. Then he concentrated on his beer. He made two batches of that and had them aging. If they sat for a little while it wouldn’t hurt it, beer that sat in the cold only got better.
In between making beer and whiskey Sean chopped wood and picked apples and peaches, butchered the head of cattle and two pigs, hunted for deer with his rifle and went in search of honey which he found without bears. He guessed all the bears had wandered off because of all the people moving into the area. It was really getting crowded on the Ridge with all the new people moving in during the past forty-nine years. It was really lucky that he had helped the Malweenahs because they would have surely lost their valley by now.
The middle of November brought the first flurries and Sean and Ryan rushed outside to see their first snow in almost half a century. Annie watched from the porch and snorted.
“They’ll both catch a death of cold and die,” she muttered but even she had to smile at the delight on their faces. Sean collected enough for a snowball and threw it at Ryan who laughed.
“Ah, Granddad, how I wish Chris were alive to see this, he’s never seen snow before,” he said with tears in his eyes. Sean wrapped his arms around him.
“Ah, lad, I bet there’s snow in heaven and I bet its not even cold like this,” he told him and they went inside before it got too bitter. They didn’t want to catch cold and prove Annie right.
Sunday they all bundled up and attended Church services. Sean got a lot of admiring glances from the local single girls which he was used to but none of them stirred anything in him like Maggie had. Some of the men were interesting though but he didn’t want to get the reputation of being Fey and the morals