Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 20
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 20 of 56
CHAPTER 20
Albert let his words die out, leaving the rest of his sentence up to the Captain’s imagination.
“You may be big and strong and fast,” the Captain said, “But we are well-armed. Besides our rifles and sidearms,” he added, patting his, “We have long guns and mountain guns. We could shoot you all dead right now. There’s only, what — about two dozen of you? I can order each of my men to aim their rifles at one of you right now. In fact” —
Before he could do that, though, we all flew into action. Well, Alex and Terri were the only ones who literally flew into action; the rest of us jumped and ran and leaped and bounded into action.
As Terri and Falcona flapped their powerful wings against the soldier’s faces and the rest of us got a purchase on some part of their attire or anatomy with our teeth or feet (Ocero had to only apply a little bit of pressure with his right forefoot on the Captain’s right boot to keep him completely immobilized), Ooga seized the rifles out of their hands, simultaneously grabbing one with his left hand and one with his right, and then throwing them back over his shoulders into a pile.
Yukyuk, chuckling the whole time, had seemed to go berserk, first standing on her hind legs and flailing away at the soldiers with her front legs, then reversing polarity and kicking her hind legs out at them. This increased the hilarity of the occasion, from her opinion, but augmented the terror greatly from their point of view.
Drako hissed and puffed out her charcoal black neck and, when she saw an opportunity to do so without getting stepped on, dashed in and untied the laces of the soldiers boots with her teeth, causing them to stumble around and feel even more discombobulated than they already did.
Rinky champed his rubbery, duck-like bill and brandished the venomous spurs on his back legs. The soldiers, though, didn’t know about the poison claws, so were more confused than frightened by his display.
The Captain’s men were quickly overwhelmed and the battle came to a halt. The soldiers were then divested of their pistols and these, along with the pile of rifles and the Captain’s confiscated sword, were thrown into a pit the Elephants and Jowls had dug with their tusks and horn.
As a coup de grâce (she hadn’t gotten “much show” up to this point in the action), Alexis darted over to the Captain, who was raving like a madman, crying foul, and threatening us all with revenge, and clipped off a small piece of his left ear with her beak (this was, you might recall, her ‘signature move’ when we had engaged the Belgians in an ‘animated conversation’ in the Congo in 1885).
“Who are you, anyway?” the Captain angrily demanded to know, holding his hand over his ear and grimacing. “Is this truly happening, or am I having a nightmare?”
“We are real,” Albert said, “And we are here to stay. We are the Eco Defenders.”
“The Who-Whatsums?” the Captain asked, dumbfounded.
“You heard him, Captain,” Ravelle said. “We have all the Animals on our side,” (or soon will, he thought to himself) “as well as the good and brave humans. You would be wise to just shut up and listen.”
The Captain did have at least a modicum of sagacity; he did then ‘shut up.’ He was at least smart enough to know when he was defeated. And more than a little curious about how it all came about, to boot.
Albert and Ravelle and Alexis explained to him, in the hearing of all the soldiers, what was expected of them: Stop hounding the Indians, and make good on the Fort Laramie Treaty by giving the Sioux the land in South Dakota the government had agreed and promised to cede to them.
“Or what?” the Captain challenged.
“Or you will be opposed by the Animals” — Alexis said, “and the former slaves” — added Ravelle, “and many other right-minded people” — added Albert, “and the Indians” — a member of the Sioux tribe piped up, as she walked up and joined the peace ultimatum.
It turned out that her name was They Are Afraid of Her. She was not tall. She had red, curly hair. But there was something about her bearing and tone of voice that did cause all to pay heed to her words.
“This was a mere skirmish, for demonstration purposes,” Albert told the soldiers. “If you ever harass the Indians again, you will have a real Battle Royale on your hands.”
“We can assemble animals of all types at the speed of Peregrine Falcons,” Alexis said. “When the call goes out, animals will hear it from miles away and come running and galloping and stampeding to the scene.”
“And the Indian tribes will unite as one in fighting for our collective rights,” said the Sioux woman with the unusual name.
“We will be with you,” assured Ravelle, speaking for his fellow former slaves. “We will be ready and willing to fight oppression anywhere, any time.”
Having been given no other practical option, the soldiers returned to Washington, D.C., and the Captain delivered the message from the Eco Defenders to army brass, the President, and the Congress.
So it turned out that we didn’t have to do anything about the mountain guns (‘skinny cannons,’ as Albert had described them) after all—which goes to show you that sometimes you plan for things that never happen, and sometimes things happen that you didn’t plan for. But it all worked out. Being ready for anything and quickly taking action when action was needed was what worked for us.
To make sure that they were never used, though, we gathered up all the other weapons we could find — mountain guns (the Elephant siblings grabbed these ‘skinny cannons’ by their barrels by wrapping their trunks around them), sabers, and all other instruments of warfare — and gave them a burial in the pit the Elephants and Ocero had dug, which already contained the sidearms, rifles, and the Captain’s scimitar. To be more specific, we cremated these weapons. The humans on our team and Ooga threw a kindling of boards and hay into the excavation.
Terri and Alexis then grabbed smoldering bits of brush from the barrack’s chimneys and dropped them on top of it all. After that, we all stood around the shallow chasm and blew with all our might, trying to ignite the small fire into a conflagration. Progress was slow and minimal until Tubthumper and Chumbawumba stepped forward, directed their trunks at the pile of ordnance, and blasted away. The flames shot quickly up, sparks popped and scattered about, and we backed off. We watched with satisfaction as the instruments of deadly destruction went up in a blaze of glorious disarmament.
Later, after a few failed forays around the country testing the resolve and resourcefulness of us Eco Defenders — all of which turned out the same as what had occurred at Wounded Knee, and need thus not be delineated — the anti-Indian forces finally capitulated, gave the Native Americans their land back (everywhere!) and ceased from harassing them.
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