Lore of the Underlings: Episode 6 ~ Meeting Minyon by John Klobucher Page A

slope at
breakneck speed. Indeed so frantic was its run that everyone
watched it land aground with a bump and a bounce in the valley
below. Then and only then was it possible for a peeled eyeball or
naked pupil to catch what you’d call a half-decent look and size
the whole thing up.
    This double-high, double-deep, double-long
wagon had seen its better days. A heavy five-wheeler of rotted
pynewood built long ago by hands now still, it was pulled by a
brace of young bull chevox with muscular legs and sleek coats of
black. A feisty and impatient pair, their power seemed almost too
much for the cart, which creaked as if ready to break apart.
    “Crack! Groan… Crack!” whined its weak back
axle.
    And due to some massive cargo inside,
something grunting and alive, it cut deeper the ruts in which it
drove.
    “Wooo! Pig! Sooie!” cried the driver.
    The burly man turned his brawny team hard
with a good, quick jerk on their worn leather leads, steering them
sharply off to the left and a cart lot midway to the tent. Still
they did not slow their stampede. Not these beefy beasts. Not a
bit. Not yet…
    A small boy egged them on, a-cheer. “Go cart
go! The swiner’s here!” The ragamuffin jumped for joy and threw his
arms up in the air.
    Then against the battle tent’s billowing
backdrop of canvas colored in browns and greens, this chase scene,
the saga of raging bulls in a field of screams, played out at last.
Not a moment too soon the reinsman called “Whoa now!” and pulled
back strong to park the twain. But his two-pack did not even react.
The bullocks kept going — the yoke on him. And the spoked spinning
wheels of the big bucking chuck wagon stirred up a cyclone of true
grit that sent a dozen denizens flying or diving for their lives.
“Think quick!” Thank goodness none were hit.
    “Masher! Basher! I mean it! Whoa or you’ll be
dog meat!”
    Suddenly the bulls held up and their joyride
came to a violent stop.
    “Umph!”
    “Grunt…”
    Thump!
    Just a porklet’s whisker short of a crash
with a score or more of other road craft.
    “Well done bully boys!” laughed loudly the
man climbing down from his rickety rig. “Now let’s give the ladies
their due of this bedeviled pig.”
    Then in a manner that seemed routine the
filthy but friendly-looking driver tugged on a long and hairy vine
hanging there by the speedwagon’s tailgate. That action tipped the
whole contraption releasing a pitted and pockmarked ramp — a steely
sort of hand-plated grate likely made of cold-rolled ironwood —
that opened up down to the waiting ground with a cranky scraping
sound.
    But that noise was very soon drowned out by
an even louder din, the buzz of a sudden swarm of children, urchins
who flew in from nowhere it seemed to meet the welcome wagon.
Trailing them almost majestically with the warmth and cool of their
would-be queen, there came a handsome and matronly woman.
    “Good Mr. Swillyum!” she called to the man, a
caring sincerity in her tone. “Sweet Meeting Day dear swiner.”
    Two of the wee tots leapt into her arms
without the slightest notice.
    “Have you brought us something plump? Fresh
meat for our firepits this morn?”
    The soily fellow wheeled around and beamed
back at the woman. “Mother Huggum, halloo! Tip-top o’ the dew-time
ta you!”
    Something big banged on the sideboards of the
now inert transport, in the deep black hold of it.
    “Yes indeed, by my beard I have! The best of
the beasts I’ve ever reared.” He unlet a latch on the wide, weighty
tailgate and let it go — GONG! — with a warning… “Watch yerselves
kiddlings. Stand off. Look out!”
    But before the small fry could react a pair
of flaring eyes peered back from the trunk of the rank delivery
truck. They came with a growling, fang-toothed mouth on the
underside of a muzzled snout that dripped a venomous mess from
nostrils too red and boogered to be missed… a pug-nosed,
puss-kissed face like a fist… dog-eared with frog warts