Excerpt: The Sun & The Stone

Next came an engangement which shall forever be remembered simply as the Battle of I-94. It would be another sign of things to come and the first great test of both the Brinists and The Rangers.

Up until now they had been dealing, largely with the militia forces that guarded each town.

The Rangers were the army of the Cooperative and as a result was under the direct control of the Board of Representatives and the Chairman. Upon joining the Cooperative each town was given a cache of weapons and ammo to help defend themselves and keep order within their borders thus giving rise to the town militias which were under the direct control of the towns themselves.

So far two of these armed militias had done battle with the Brinists and both had lost. At Hood a small detachment of Rangers had been dispatched to collect some extra supplies of ammo and arrived just as the battle began.

Colonel Richard, commander of the Fort Charlie garrison was closer to the 'front' as a result he was better informed as to recent events then the Chairman and General Price in Jericho. When he recieved word of the destruction of Hood he was determined to do something about it. He decided the best course of action was to take the battle to the enemy, to cut off their advance into the heart of the Cooperative and drive them back.

Joined by what remained of the Hood militia he and roughly six hundred rangers set out from the fort and established a fortified camp site at the top of a hill almost right ontop of the old interstate highway the clan was using.

Dean Richard, local historian and grand son of Colonel Richard agreed to show me the site of the battle. During the drive we talked a lot about the war and what has happened sense and we talked about our grandfathers.

He explained to me that there are no maps or geographical records about the battle but he did have several well detailed accounts about the terrain. We came to a stop on the top of a short hill with steep slops over looking a rather lovely scene of blooming flowers scattered acrossed a vast green prairie.

"This is the spot that best fits the various descriptions we have" he said. "I have come here several times and did some digging here and there and found shrapnel, and bits of wood right here so i believe that this is where the rangers established their base. Where they dug the trenches and set up the barricade"

"So they would be here, all the way a crossed the top of the hill and the Clan would be down there" i said taking in the whole scene.

"Yeah and as you can see it's a fairly effective killing zone, because there's trees but they're spread out, not a lot of them to provide any real cover and the steep slop will slow your attackers down and exhaust them even more"

"All the while you'll be picking them off with your rifles or blowing them away with some of your bigger guns" i said.

"Exactly. The open area gives horses and calvary plenty of room to manuver down there so infantry would be at a disavantage but much of the Clan was mounted anyway"

I was begining to see how the Ranger Colonel was using the terrain to his advantage, well to the best of his ability. The descriptions of his defenses sound impressive and his men were well armed, in the end though it was his troops, not General Scott's, that were fighting an uphill battle.