Disputed Territory
Although it was late afternoon, the Pick & Shovel Saloon was dark and quiet. Ten steps from the batwing doors brought me to the bar and its lone patron. The bartender ignored me, which was fine because I wasn’t there for a drink.
“Jeremy Sprigg?” I spoke from next to the right elbow of the man slumped over a shot glass. His head almost came up before he stopped it, but I knew it was him from the description I’d been given. Thirty, thin, brown-blonde hair and wearing a dark suit that had seen better days.
He used the mirror to look me over, and I knew what he’d see. A tall man, slender and dark-suited like him, wearing a derby hat. Probably no more than twenty-five years old, with a moustache that was meant to add some years. He got the wrong idea as intended, and lunged.
His left hand came at me with the short dagger he carried instead of a pistol. I caught his wrist and slowly pressed it against the edge of the wood. His eyes grew wide with surprise and pain, but he didn’t let go of the knife until I smashed that hand with a short, flexible sap. He let out a yelp while the dagger skittered across the surface and fell off the table, and then the bartender told me to take it outside.
“Always my intention.” I locked eyes with him until he stooped to pick up the knife. I quickly walked Sprigg to the door, one hand on the back of his neck and the other holding his right wrist, calling back without turning. “You can keep the pigsticker. We won’t be back.”
#
The town is called Kingsville, in a thinly populated part of the Wyoming Territory. A small, odd place that I’d been studying for several days. Its buildings were new, two-storied, and solidly built of wood. Although it came into being because of the rich King gold mine, Kingsville’s nearest train stop was twenty miles away and there were no plans to connect the two. Everyone who lived there was involved with the mine in some way, and the town’s main street was still its only thoroughfare.
I was marching Sprigg down the boards along that road when he started to laugh.
“Where you gonna put me, boy? Town ain’t got a jail. Or a marshal.”
“Not interested in either.”
“That’s good, ’cause I done nuthin’ wrong.”
“Morton’s Overland Express would disagree.” We were nearing the town center, and Sprigg still hadn’t guessed our destination. “There’s some missing dynamite, from shipments you handle for Mr. King.”
The rich man’s name spooked him, or perhaps it was the sight of the hanging sign ELIJAH WARNER, ATTORNEY that appeared just ahead of us. He suddenly dug in his boots, and even reached for me with his bruised hand.
“No! Not in there!” Fear gave him strength, because he stopped us long enough to sputter, “I’ll tell you everything. The drivers’ names, who’s buyin’ it, just don’t take me in there!”
I almost told him that getting into that office was the whole point, but I didn’t have the chance. Two King enforcers, large men in suits, casually stood up from chairs on either side of the door and gave me the look-over. They didn’t seem inclined to speak, so I did.
“I’m Corbett, investigator for Morton’s Overland. I need to see Mr. Warner.”
#
Elijah Warner didn’t rise from his chair when we were shown into his office. The two security men remained mute, so I identified them as Gray and Brown based on their suits. They stood behind Sprigg and me, and I started right in.
“Mr. Warner, I’m Daniel Corbett. I’m an investigator for Morton’s Overland. Your man Sprigg has been stealing half the dynamite your boss has been sending to the Stanfield mine.”
“Reselling, Mr. Corbett.” The voice was deep and thoughtful. Warner wore a tailored vest, and his suit jacket was on a hanger near the door. The office was well lit, showing rich paneling and many books. “We put young Jeremy in charge of moving the explosives the mine doesn’t need.”
“I’m aware of that, sir. But he and two of our drivers concocted a scheme where they’d steal part of each resale shipment. No one seemed to notice, so they started taking more.”
“Nothing blinds people like greed.” Warner studied me through spectacle lenses that I already knew were just for reading. He was a fit fifty-year-old with a dark beard just going gray.
“I can make good, Mr. Warner!” Sprigg babbled in a whisper. “I figured, the dynamite’s extra, so once it was away from the mine it didn’t much matter —”
Gray or Brown cuffed Sprigg hard enough to send him lurching forward, and he shut up while backing away from Warner’s desk.
“I’ve been instructed to personally inform Mr. King of this pilferage, sir.” I stated flatly. Warner nodded, removed the glasses, and stood.
“Then let’s carry out your instructions, young man.”
#
The ride to the King spread took two hours, so it was full dark when we got there. Brown held the reins to Sprigg’s horse the whole trip. All five of our mounts were quality animals, but the one I’d been given was the oldest. She’d made the trip with no difficulty and appeared to know the way, but would never outrun any of the others if it came to that.
King’s home wasn’t a ranch, but it certainly had enough hands working on it. When we rode into view, we were intercepted by several well-armed riders who trotted away into the darkness once they saw Warner. I studied the three barns and four bunkhouses as we passed, having already seen the low wooden watch towers that formed a ring around the place. Surly expressions challenged me whichever way I looked, and every one of the hands was armed with at least a pistol.
“I get the sense that your Mr. King likes his privacy.”
“There are hostiles in the area.” Warner answered as we dismounted.
“No native tribe ever lived in this part of the territory.” I responded, letting the mask slip a little. King’s three-story white house glowed in the starlight, and now I could see iron bars over every window.
“You’ve done your homework.” Warner motioned me toward the porch. “The tribes shunned this entire region, for reasons unknown. But settlers have been here for some time, and many of them resented Mr. King’s efforts to purchase their holdings.”
“Why would settlers be a problem for a mining outfit?”
“Because Mr. King likes his privacy.”
A uniformed butler opened the main door before we reached it, and I admired the portal’s stoutness. Thick wood reinforced with iron, with brackets for barring timbers the size of railroad ties. We filed through a darkened front hallway that was adorned with oil paintings and thick carpet, and then the butler knocked at a mahogany door.
“Enter!” Barked a commanding voice, and we passed into a room with the brightness of a new dawn and half the space of a ballroom. A crystal chandelier blazed overhead, and strategically placed lanterns illuminated every nook and angle. Cream-colored paneling alternated with red half-pillars on all the walls, and the floor was varnished to a high shine. Finely upholstered seats were scattered around tables that would have done justice to the best sitting rooms in New York City.
Even so, the main attraction was a high-backed chair on tall legs against the center of the far wall. At the time I guessed it was plated in gold, but later I decided it was probably solid. Seated well above eye level and wearing a long robe of red satin, Moses King waved us toward him. Still a bull at the age of sixty, he boasted a full head of gray hair with a beard to match.
“Mr. King, this is Daniel Corbett. He says he’s an investigator for Morton’s and that Jeremy has been stealing some of our dynamite.”
King grinned before craning his neck to look past me. “Sounds like you got your hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar, Sprigg!”
“Mr. King, I can explain —” I expected one of the security men to silence him, but all it took was a casual lift of King’s hand. He turned hard eyes on me.
“Sharp work, Mr. Corbett. How did you detect this theft?”
“Two of our drivers abruptly started living above their means, sir. I joined them at a bar one night and, after a few drinks, they confided the secret of their good fortune to me.”
“Trust seems to be in short supply these days.”
“Speaking of supply, I did want to ask you a question. The dynamite that Mr. Sprigg was selling for you was supposed to be excess, but it’s actually the exact amount of explosives you buy in that same period of time.”
That was meant to jolt him, but King kept smiling. “And how would Morton’s Overland know how much I purchase? I only use them for the resale.”
“I’m a good investigator, sir.” Although I’d orchestrated this confrontation, I drew a breath before touching it off. “Can you tell me why you keep buying dynamite you don’t seem to need? And how you produce so much gold using practically no explosives?”
“Gladly.” His eyes seemed to glint. “That’s because we don’t mine the gold. That’s done for us.”
I glanced at the others, to see Warner smirking at me and looks of knowledgeable indifference from Gray and Brown. Sprigg hissed, “You’ve just cooked both our gooses.”
“Perhaps not, Jeremy.” King chuckled. “I don’t get to tell this story much, so listen well Mr. Corbett. When I opened that mine ten years ago, it was with low expectations. And I was proven right. My workers bored the main shaft and then a few branches, but the only thing they produced were rumors. The miners said they heard scraping sounds in the rock all around them, and felt drafts that shouldn’t have been there. Of course I dismissed their superstitions, but that didn’t yield any nuggets. The whole thing was proving pointless when a miracle occurred.
“One morning I went to the mine and no one was there. Tents, tools, provisions had all vanished, and to this day I have no idea what happened to that crew. But what was missing wasn’t nearly as interesting as what I found.”
“Which was?”
“A haystack-sized pile of gold nuggets. Just outside the mine’s entrance. I’m not a particularly intuitive man, but I know a deal when it’s offered. So, I had the gold carted away and didn’t replace the missing workers. Whatever’s down there, young man, it knows when a proposal’s been accepted. A week later, there were three haystacks. And every month during the dark of the moon, there’s a dozen massive piles of that gold waiting. All I have to do is collect it — and keep prying eyes away.”
“Which is why you drove off the settlers.”
“Drove off? I paid the smart ones three times what their rotten spreads were worth, and would have bought every acre of the others if they hadn’t been so stubborn.” His mirth slid away. “You’ve got a set of prying eyes yourself. Did you know that Harvey Morton and I came out to this territory at about the same time twenty years ago? We’re very good friends.”
I gave an obvious gulp.
“Harvey would never dispatch someone to question me, so would you mind telling me who actually sent you?”
The barrel of a revolver pressed against the back of my neck, and one of the heavies searched me. He took the sap, along with a small pocket gun that was part of my disguise and stepped away.
“You’re selling so much gold that it’s got some interests back east worried. They don’t understand how a strike that’s this productive has only one mine.”
“So, you’re a Pinkerton.”
“We never sleep.” I gave their well-known motto. “And we’re never alone.”
“Overplayed your hand, young man. Now I’m sure you’re alone.” He looked past me. “Elijah, take our guest out to the tree and work your magic on him. Find out everything he knows.”
“With pleasure, sir.”
“Elijah means that, Mr. Corbett. Before he found the law, he was a bounty hunter. He can make people tell him what he wants to know.” King looked at the ceiling, then back at Warner. “When you’re done, leave what’s left of Mr. Corbett at the mine’s entrance.”
King’s eyes seemed to pull in all the light in the room. He leaned forward, his hands clasped so hard the knuckles turned white. “I envy you. Years ago, I let my curiosity get the better of me, and I hid in the grass out there during the dark of the moon. I saw some of the creatures that live in that hole, depositing my gold outside. Hideous, unnatural things that were beautiful nonetheless. You’re going to see them first-hand.”
#
The tree that King spoke of was tall for the region, in a bowl-shaped depression that protected it from the prairie’s high winds. I already knew it was Warner’s interrogation spot, but my eyes were still drawn to a cord of split wood stacked nearby and a stout chain hanging from one of the tree’s branches. Because my hands were now bound in front of me, Gray held my horse’s reins when we stopped beneath that chain. Brown helped Sprigg dismount.
“Mr. King was generous in calling me a bounty hunter.” Warner’s voice became whimsical. “I rode with a loose group of gangs in Texas collectively known as the Comancheros. We trafficked in whiskey, guns, cattle, loot, and people.”
“Army cleaned them out a while back.” I answered.
“I had the sense to leave twenty years ago. But some things go with us.” He motioned toward the chain, where I now made out a set of manacles. “Like the secret of making people talk. All you need is a good hot fire. Jeremy, would you start placing those logs inside that ash circle?”
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“What really tipped you off about this place, Corbett? I’ve gone to great lengths to disguise what’s going on here.”
“Your workforce. Payroll’s big enough, but you’re hiring gunslingers, not miners.”
“No one can go near the mine without our leave. How did you learn that no one’s actually working it?”
“It’s a dangerous business. An operation this size would be sending the personal effects of dead miners out on a regular basis. You send none.”
“Jeremy.” Warner growled. “Did you perform even one of the duties we assigned you?”
“Mr. Warner, it just seemed like a waste of time! Buying cheap watches and used Bibles and posting them back east to people who don’t even exist!”
“That was all part of a very important subterfuge, which you ruined. Your greed brought this man to our doorstep.”
Sprigg had run only three steps when Gray shot him in the back. My horse shied at the report, bringing me broadside with Warner. I swung my left leg up over the saddle horn just as the other shots rang out, throwing my bound hands around the lawyer’s neck. We both crashed to the dirt, and barely escaped being trampled by the five now-empty mounts that briefly bucked and whinnied before running off into the night.
Warner punched me once, a blow to my temple that left me stunned. I raised my hands and blocked two more furious swings before a tall man wearing a long duster and a black Stetson rushed up. He smashed the butt of a Winchester into Warner’s head, knocking him flat, while two other men rode in.
I surveyed the scene, already knowing what it would contain. Gray and Brown had joined Sprigg in death. The tall man tossed Warner’s pistol away and then quickly searched him with one hand before turning to me.
“You all right, Daniel?” He asked in a deep voice that rose out of a long beard.
“Yeah, boss.” I extended my hands and “Peach” Randall, one of the two horsemen, quickly untied me. “I did warn them I wasn’t alone.”
#
“Mr. Warner, my name is F.N.B. Todd.” My boss looked down at our prisoner, who sat there grimacing and rubbing the side of his head. Peach and another operative named Tom Emerson sat their horses just above the depression’s rim, on watch. Emerson had brought my gun belt, and I now held my Colt revolver on Warner.
“What do the initials stand for?” He asked.
“Fire ‘n Brimstone, sir.” Hearing that from a man with a John Brown beard spooked most suspects, but Warner seemed not to care. “My associate Mr. Corbett says you think we’re Pinkertons, which was our goal. But now that we have you in our hands—also one of our goals—I can tell you the truth. We’re agents of the United States Secret Service.”
“Your department regulates gold mining, Mr. Todd?”
“Our purview is wide.” F.N.B. looked up at the stars and back down. “Your production is far too large for a single mine that employs no miners. And the territorial governor received so many letters from your neighbors that he felt duty-bound to get them off his desk and onto ours.”
Warner shook his head. “Mr. King’s going to hang you all by your balls.”
“Hanging is something that should greatly concern you right now. Men under your command murdered Sprigg in front of my entire team, and you helped kidnap Mr. Corbett.” F.N.B. squatted down. “As a man of the law, surely you see it’s time to turn state’s evidence against Mr. King. Tell us what’s really going on out here.”
The lawyer seemed to be forming another brave statement when a female voice called from beyond the rim. “Halloo! Don’t shoot. I’m coming in.”
The tone said this wasn’t a request, so my boss stood and called, “Come in, then.”
A short woman wearing a slouch hat with the front brim folded back emerged from the gloom in front of Randall. She walked past him, and slid down the incline on worn boots. Oversized trousers rose from those boots to disappear under a hip-length coat wrapped in two holsters. Both revolvers were arranged for a right-hand draw, so I pointed my firearm at her.
“Lower the shooter, kid.” Now that she was close, I could see she was almost forty. A plain face, with two short ponytails that curled into the air on either side. “I’m a lotta things, but quick-draw artist ain’t one a them.”
She studied Sprigg’s corpse and then glared at me. “Stupid son of a bitch. Why’d ya pull him outta the saloon in front a everybody like that?”
“Who are you, ma’am?” F.N.B. asked.
“Put that ‘ma’am’ nonsense in the outhouse where it belongs. I’m Annie Meadows, and I have the nearest spread on the other side of the mine. It ain’t much, but nobody’s takin’ it from me.”
“Meadows, if you see me clear of these men —” Warner didn’t get to finish that.
“Aw go to Hell, Elijah.” She walked right up to my boss. “Why you talkin’ to him anyway? Professional liar, and a traitor to humanity. You wanna know what’s happenin’ around here, you come with me now.”
“I’ll be happy to hear what you have to say. But first we’re going to finish interrogating Mr. Warner. Then we’ll be taking him to Cheyenne.”
“You stay here much longer, one a King’s patrols will get ya. They ride in shifts, night and day, keep people away from the mine. And they heard those shots.”
“My agents fired simultaneously, so, there was one report for Sprigg and one more for Warner’s men. These riders you speak of will assume it was a hunter who missed the first time.”
She drew with an easy grace that caught us all off guard, and shot Warner in the head without looking at him. Randall, Emerson, and I all pointed our weapons at her, but F.N.B. hadn’t moved. She gave me a quick wink and said, “Well that’s three reports.”
“Where’s your horse?” F.N.B. asked, and she gave a brief, sharp whistle.
Five other riders trotted up, men and women. Ranchers from the look of their outfits. Pistols, shotguns, and rifles, but none held in a threatening manner.
“We won’t be surrendering our firearms.” F.N.B. said stiffly.
“I wouldn’t ask.” Meadows was already ascending the slope to where one of the new arrivals held her mount. “Where we’re goin’, you’ll be needin’ them.”
#
It was a three-mile ride to the mine, but the vegetation changed remarkably in that short distance. Already sickly in appearance, the tall grass grew brittle and desiccated as we went. I leaned down to touch one of the higher stalks, and its tip snapped right off.
“Think that’s bad?” One of the riders, a black man in a battered Stetson carrying an old Army carbine, commented. “Other side of the mine, everything’s dried out for miles. Trees, grass, bushes, everything. Been that way for years, and spreading.”
“How is any of it still standing, if it’s been dead that long?”
“One a the thing’s we can’t figure out. Looks dead—but it ain’t.”
King’s patrols followed the same schedules and routes, and I quickly surmised that every member of Meadows’s group knew how to evade them. We stayed off the main track headed to the mine’s old entrance, but even so I could see the ridge that contained it rising above the grass. We went all the way around, staying concealed, until reaching a clearing where Meadows had us dismount.
“I’m gonna show you the back a that ridge. Nice, flat slope goes right up ‘til it falls straight down. Main shaft was cut into the cliff face, but the things that live in there don’t use it.”
“Things? What do you mean by that?” F.N.B. asked as we took our rifles off the horses.
“Can’t be described, mister. But you’ll see ‘em. They come home just before sunup.”
She led the way, and we four agents silently followed through the grass. The sky was taking on that bluish gray tint that heralds the arrival of a new day, but the barren state of the ground soured my mood. Even the dirt under my boots felt wrong, granular when it should have been solid. What could be causing this, if not what these people claimed lived inside that ridge?
Low hills dotted the plain, and we went up one to find that the grass there had been carefully thinned out. Meadows signaled us to crouch, and we wound up crawling forward on our bellies to reach the hill’s summit. Peering through the stalks, I made out the steady rise that was the back side of the mine and noted the complete absence of vegetation. The half mile between us and the start of the incline was open dirt. Fallen rocks were evident at the base of the slope, but a pointed finger directed my eyes to a series of dark lines almost at its top.
“Watch those smudges.” Meadows murmured. “They’re deep, vertical shafts meant to look like crevasses. That’s how they come and go.”
The stars were gone and the horizon was pale, but my eyes were so focused on the holes that I almost missed the motion on the flat below. A sphere half the height of a wagon wheel emerged from the grass and rolled away from us, toward the incline.
“Are you daft, woman? That’s a tumbleweed.” F.N.B.’s whisper came from the other side of Meadows.
“Keep watching.” She ordered, so I returned my skeptical gaze to the bouncing tangle of thin wood while trying not to laugh. That is, until it went straight up the slope even though there wasn’t even the slightest hint of a breeze. It jounced along, careless of the incline, and dropped neatly out of sight into one of the smudges.
My mind was proposing logical explanations for what I’d just witnessed when a second one appeared and followed the same path. The word ‘coincidence’ was just arriving in my brain when yet another of the rolling bushes bounced into view and pursued its twin up the slope. As each one reached the summit, it hopped as if bouncing on a stone and then dropped into a crevasse.
A dozen more arrived that way before the sun’s rays burned the horizon, at which point they stopped entirely.
#
“So, what’s your plan?” F.N.B. sat at a long wooden table in the midmorning sun, facing Meadows. We’d ridden to her small ranch, where a sizeable number of people had already gathered. Those of us who’d been up all night were now eating beans and biscuits, but the others were busy with an intriguing variety of wagons. Several were loaded with upright barrels separated by folded blankets. Five more looked like the trucks used by city fire departments, with chubby water tanks and two-man pumps like a seesaw. Three others had early-style Gatling guns mounted on them.
“My plan?” Meadows dropped her spoon. “My plan was to keep buying cheap dynamite from Sprigg until we had enough to blow that whole ridge apart. Then you came along.”
“Seems you’re ready to proceed anyway.” Peach pointed at the multiple revolving muzzles on the Gatlings.
“No choice. With Warner missing, King’s patrols are gonna be ‘specially alert. Probably more of ‘em, too.”
“He’s not missing. By now they’ve found the bodies.” Randall offered.
“Nah. When you snatched Sprigg, we knew we had to act. The call went out, and as you can see there’s plenty a people who want to end this here and now. Some a them took those bodies away, and rounded up most of their horses. Right now King has to be thinkin’ you’ve got his lawyer. Any luck, he’s got his troops out searchin’ for you, makin’ sure you don’t get to a train station.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle, and Meadows noticed. “I see why you hired this one. He catches on fast.”
“So do I.” F,N.B. answered, pushing his empty plate away. “My party and I can’t leave the territory now. But that’s all right. I have a responsibility to find out exactly what’s inside that mountain—and I can’t go back to Washington babbling about some tumbleweeds.”
“Jacob.” Meadows spoke to the black man who’d chatted with me the night before, seated next to her and clearly one of the group’s leaders. “Tell Mr. Todd what your son saw in there.”
“Best he tells it himself.” Jacob looked at three youngsters loading one of the wagons. “Joseph! Come on over here.”
Joseph was tall and thin, wearing overalls and a long shirt. He trotted up, and I guessed his age at fourteen.
“Months ago, my son volunteered to look inside that ridge for us.” Jacob gave the boy a proud glance. “We lowered him into one of those crevasses on a rope at midday, just to see if they went straight down unchecked. Tell ‘em what you saw.”
“Got dark awful quick, but once I hung there for a bit I could see better.” Joseph’s features remained calm, but his voice trembled. “They left the openings all cracked and rough, so they’d look natural from outside. Ten yards down, the walls are as smooth as your palm. Straight, too. Once I could see, I noticed there was this double spiral of rocks sticking out, like little steps goin’ up and down. They crisscrossed regular, so I’m guessin’ that’s how something would climb outta there if it had to.”
“Did you get close to the walls?” F.N.B. asked. “How’d they look? Shaped with a chisel? A hammer?”
“Those shafts are wide, sir. But I swung back and forth until I caught one a those rock-steps.”
“And?”
“Wasn’t tools that did this.” He shuddered. “Teeth, and lots of ‘em. Whole wall felt like a tree stump gnawed by a beaver.”
“Thank you, son.” Jacob patted his shoulder. “Go back and help the others.”
“Joseph.” I raised a hand. “Was there a draft in there?”
He gave me an appraising look and nodded. “Not strong, but I felt it. Carried a smell.”
“What was that?”
“Like a rattler den. A great, big rattler den.”
#
“You wanted my plan?” Meadows returned to F.N.B. “We’re goin’ tonight. See those hand pump wagons? Full a kerosene. The barrels are full a dynamite, with fuses. Some of these folks are gonna go up that slope with the wagons and pour kerosene into those holes.
“The rest of us are gonna be out front with the Gatlings and every rifle we can muster. When the kerosene’s all dispensed, the ones on top will signal the ones on the ground, light the dynamite barrels, and drop ‘em in.”
“You think whatever lives in there will come out the front, into the gunfire.”
“Nuthin’ burns like tumbleweed, so at least part of whatever’s down there is gonna want to get away from the flames and the blast.”
“Those weren’t tumbleweeds we saw.”
“Yes and no. See, we caught a couple a them on their way home one night. Steel cages, dropped right on ‘em.” Her eyes took on a distant look. “They’re still dried wood, just changed by whatever’s in that mine. Instead a bein’ a dead bush rolling anywhere the wind sends it, these have little mouths and eyes at the ends a the branches. That’s how they direct where they go.”
“Can we see the ones you caught?”
“Don’t have ‘em. Soon as the cages dropped, things went crazy. Slammin’ into the bars, eyes fulla fury, mouths snappin’ away. But then they rolled around a bit and reorganized themselves. Narrowed their shapes, started forcin’ their way out ‘tween the bars. Couldn’t have ‘em carry the word back to their lair, so we doused ‘em and lit ‘em up.”
“So, they do combust.”
“And every one a them little mouths screamed like a soul in Hell. Burnt to cinders.” Meadows exhaled. “I’m serious that somethin’ inside that ridge is doin’ unnatural things. Changed those tumbleweeds, the grass and the trees too. I swear even the water tastes funny.”
She stopped, done talking and waiting for an answer. F.N.B. pondered the latest information and then made eye contact with Peach, Emerson, and me. Getting a nod from each of us, he pointed at the gun wagons.
“At the end of the late war I was a captain in a blue regiment besieging Petersburg, Virginia. They brought us a section of Gatlings just like those, back when they were new. I figured they were the future of warfare, and learned everything I could about them. I can help you deploy those to maximum effect.”
“Good. Bought ‘em a piece at a time from a crooked armorer at Fort Laramie.” She smiled. “Not even sure we assembled ‘em right.”
“Then let’s go make sure.”
#
The daylight hours were consumed by preparation, and much of the night by a staged movement to the mine. King’s patrols were active, but we easily avoided them and I started to believe most of his gunslingers were looking for the Pinkerton detectives who had snatched Elijah Warner.
At one in the morning, under a glowing full moon, I rode one of the kerosene wagons up the slope toward the crevasses. The wheels had been muffled with burlap, and the teams were led by men and women silently holding their bridles. F.N.B. was somewhere in the grass on the cliff side of the mine with the Gatling guns and most of the displaced ranchers. Peach and Emerson had volunteered for a new part of the plan where they would slip up to the main entrance and position two barrels of kerosene to either side of the opening.
Joseph had been asked to assist me, and I’d already found him level-headed and bright. Each wagon carried a hooded lantern so we wouldn’t fumble with flint and tinder when it was time to light the fuses, and he was keeping ours safe. Each of us carried a foot of the treated rope that miners call slow match, and we’d light them using the lamps. We’d then use the smoldering cords to ignite the barrel fuses.
The climb was eerie, as the moon gave the dirt slope a grayish tint and every step by man or beast sounded like a gunshot. Standing up, I studied the dark smudges near the top of the incline until they resolved into four wide chasms. I climbed down as the handlers slowly turned the wagons so that the pumpers were broadside to the holes and the ones carrying dynamite barrels were facing downhill. A mix of men, women, and youngsters started offloading the barrels or paying out the hoses while I took a quick look into the abyss.
Not knowing the scent of a rattlesnake den, I still recoiled at the stench rising from those fissures. To me it smelled like rotting meat, and I was only too happy to leave that odor behind on my way to the summit. Joseph came with me, holding the lantern we would use to signal Meadows and the others, and soon we were both on our stomachs looking over the edge. A hundred feet below us the surface was rock-strewn dirt for three hundred yards and then tall grass where F.N.B. and the Gatlings would be waiting.
When I tapped his arm, Joseph raised the sack on the lantern once, dropped it back in place, and then did it again. Well out in the grass they sent the same signal, and we gave it back to let them know we’d seen it. We’d signal again, three flashes next time, when we were ready to light the fuses and drop the barrels. I smiled when the first horse team pushed into sight below, still well inside the grass, turning to give its Gatling the widest firing arc.
I waved to the folks behind me, and watched the alternating rise and fall of the pump handles begin. A light breeze wafted across the ridgetop, calming me. Down below, Peach and Emerson came trotting along next to the cliff face, each with a kerosene barrel lashed to the saddle. I exchanged a happy grin with Joseph just before the whole thing went to pieces.
Half a mile away a single rifle shot broke the stillness, no doubt from one of the guards posted by F.N.B. to warn us if King’s men were coming. That was confirmed by a volley of gunfire that crashed like thunder, and then I saw the grass to my right rippling with the approach of many riders. I watched Peach and Emerson drop their barrels at the entrance while more shots rang out, ragged, uncoordinated, and then I was running back down the slope to the pumpers yelling for them to go faster. Hoisting myself up, I joined a youngster who was even then raising and depressing the pumping bar as fast as she could.
The oily smell of kerosene was all around us, and on the other side of the ridge the steady banging of a Gatling gun began. Fearing F.N.B. and the others would be overrun, I shouted for the dynamite teams to light the fuses and drop the kegs.
Instead, someone dropped a lantern. It smashed, creating a small pool of fire that spooked one of the teams. That wagon went bucking off down the slope, with dynamite kegs bouncing off the back. Voices all around me shouted to get down, and I was in the air when the first blast tore the night apart. A hot wind whipped me as I fell, landing hard on the scree and astounded that the pumper wagons hadn’t burst into flame.
Panicking horses now took all the remaining wagons with them, fleeing along the ridge or back down it, and shadowy figures chased after them. Scrambling to my feet, I ran to the puddle of flame created by the broken lantern while pulling out my length of slow match. It puffed into life, and I raced to the middle fissure where two ranchers were holding out the fuses for four barrels. Joseph rushed past me, lantern in hand, to do the same for the next hole over, and then the fuses was spitting sparks and they were heaving the explosives into the abyss.
On the other side of the cliff, all three Gatlings were hurling lead as a steady backbeat to the wild rifle and pistol shots that rose up through the night. I quashed my concern for F.N.B. and the others, grabbing the nearest dynamite barrel and rolling it up the slope where willing hands took it from me. Joseph was wrestling another one around an exposed rock, so I skittered down to help him. We were both leaning forward, pushing, when the crevasses erupted like a new volcano.
We simply hadn’t dropped enough explosive to do the damage that now ensued, so there must have been dangerous gas collected down there. Whatever it was, it shook the whole ridge in an earthquake upheaval that knocked me and Joseph flat and then rained small and large rocks all around us. When I looked up, the openings were gone and so were the humans who’d been around them. The edge of the ridge looked like a giant had taken a bite out of it, and I stumbled around the huge crater to see what was transpiring below.
I wished I didn’t. The open space before me was a maelstrom of fighting and already littered with dead bodies. I clearly saw F.N.B. on the back of a gun wagon, working the crank on the Gatling gun and taking down mounts and riders. Meadows was kneeling next to a wheel, firing and cocking a Winchester. I even saw King on horseback, ridiculous in his billowing red robe, rallying his troops just before the inhabitants of the blasted mine emerged.
It looked like the entrance had been dammed up with those tumbleweed things, the way they burst forth in hundreds like they’d been shot from a cannon. Some were enormous, as tall as a man, and when they collided with a horse, they simply knocked it down. One of Peach and Emerson’s kerosene barrels exploded at that instant, lighting several of the spherical bushes. I swear they shrieked like a demonic chorus before racing off into the grass and igniting it.
That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Right behind the tumbleweeds was the reason Joseph had smelled rattlers in the mineshaft. There were so many of them that I thought an underground spring had burst open and gray water was flowing up and out of the entrance. A moment later the moonlight and the fire showed me they were snakes, but no kind I’d ever seen before. They were big around as a human thigh, and their heads were even larger.
They rushed across the flat by the thousands, their collective rattle rising above the furious gunfire. Fleeing in panic, they ran straight into the rearmost of King’s horsemen and simply took them down. My eyes were frozen wide open in shock when I saw those massive heads rear up and bite at riders and horses with impossibly distended jaws that must have been filled with chisel-like teeth. They were so grotesque and unearthly that they only killed two of the mounts and the men in their saddles before the other horses screamed in animal terror and raced away with King and his men desperately trying to hang on.
The wall of giant serpents surged across the flat with breathtaking speed, sending most of the ranchers and their mounts fleeing as well. The team that had pulled F.N.B.’s gun wagon must have been unhitched before the fight because he was still there, working the crank with the barrel aimed low.
He was harvesting a good number of the snakes, the bullets chewing a narrow path through the writhing reptiles. Peach appeared next to him, snapping a new magazine home on top of the gun, and then Emerson ran up and handed Peach another one that must have fallen from a gun wagon that had run off. Meadows tossed the empty Winchester away and drew both pistols, standing with her legs braced and firing even as the onslaught slammed into them. The wagon exploded in a storm of wood splinters and leaping rattlesnake scales and snapping jaws.
I buried my face in the ridge so I wouldn’t see it, but I wasn’t quite fast enough.
#
“Mr. Corbett.” When I raised my eyes, Joseph was next to me. He pointed over the edge, and I reluctantly looked.
The ground seemed to be moving. Hundreds of the snakes, some normal in size, were slithering and wriggling away from the mine. The ugly yellow grass swayed with their passage, but they weren’t in a rush because the flames and the shooting had died out. Their constant rattling filled the air like a chorus of katydids.
“I found one of the pumper wagons, sir.” Joseph whispered, and at first, I didn’t know what he was saying. He pointed again, this time with grim purpose. “Mr. King’s place is that way. And those serpents won’t like the fire any more than the tumbleweeds did.”
The thrill of revenge flew through me, and I stood. The snakes were still moving, but even now it was apparent there weren’t many of them left in the mine. I looked at Joseph.
“The grass they altered is nice and dry.”
He gave me a broad smile, and we stumbled our way off the ridge.
#
We located the back of the snake migration by their sound and the waving stalks of grass, and we kept the wagon team calm by not getting too close. Joseph worked the pump while I drove, pouring kerosene out the back as we went. We created a vast incendiary semicircle in the grass, and stopped pumping only because the tank was empty.
We drove the wagon far enough away that the team wouldn’t get spooked, and then separated. Each holding one half of the slow match length Joseph hadn’t yet used, we touched the smoldering ends to the oily grass and quickly stepped back. The wall of fire rose up tall, and then marched away from us as the rattles on the other side called out in alarm.
I drove us to a small hill overlooking the King ranch, and as the sun was starting to rise we watched the tidal wave of terrified snakes roll over the place just ahead of the flames. Most of the gunslingers were already gone, and the few that were left fired a few shots before the torrent of flailing scales and delirious jaws collapsed the watch towers.
King appeared on the porch of his fine house, all alone, still wearing the robe. The red satin was torn and soiled, and it settled on the boards when he knelt and raised his hands in wailing supplication.
The snakes didn’t hear his cries for mercy.
#
Joseph and I found his father tending to wounded survivors back at Annie’s place. We helped him with that for the rest of the day, and then crept back to the mine just before dark.
The top of the ridge still looked like a volcano, but the evidence of the battle was already disappearing. The snakes had torn everything in their path to tiny bits, but there was one last surprise from the mine that was now hard at work collecting those fragments.
“Tumbleweeds. Snakes. Now this.” Joseph murmured on the hill where we lay prone.
Stepping gingerly on thin hind legs, bats the size of horses were combing the open ground and the flattened grass. Their eyes were a glowing ruby red, and their cheeks slowly distended with the items they were picking up with dagger-shaped teeth. Once they’d collected enough, they’d gently shake out black wings wider than a condor’s and gracefully fly to the top of the ridge. They disappeared into the yawning opening we’d blasted the night before, and before midnight they’d sanitized the entire battlefield.
Exhausted as we were, Joseph and I still had the capacity for wonder when we watched the bats flying up in great numbers and dropping to the ground in front of the mine entrance with bulging faces. They carefully deposited mouthfuls of gold nuggets, leaving and returning with more, finally using their wings to shape a single pile the size and dimensions of a haystack.
“I know a deal when it’s offered.” I whispered once they were finally gone.
“Huh?” Asked Joseph.
“Something King said to me.” I spat in the dirt. “Whatever’s in that hole wants to keep doing business.”
#
We returned later that morning with two wagons, and took the gold back to Annie’s place. We distributed it among the survivors, and then I sat down and wrote this report. It’s taken a couple of days, but there was no hurry because Jacob and Joseph were off gathering the supplies we’d need.
After they returned, we rigged kerosene barrels for our backs and miner’s lamps for our heads. We prepared numerous torches and filled shoulder bags with shells for our shotguns. When the last survivors leave Annie’s place tomorrow, we’ll wave goodbye, and they’ll probably beg us to go with them. One of them will be carrying this report, with instructions to deliver it to a certain federal office in Cheyenne if we don’t show up there within a week.
Once they’re gone, the three of us will walk into the mine. We mean to find out what intelligence or ghoul or creature made those tumbleweeds and serpents and bats and changed the very ecology of the region. If we can, we will kill it.
If you’re reading this, you know we’re overdue and probably perished inside the mine. You knew F.N.B. Todd, and now you know how he and the rest of the team died. You know that whatever’s in that hole is still alive.
And I know you can convince the right people in our government to finish this. If I were you, I’d send the entire army with every kind of explosive known to man. You owe that to the dead and to the living, because whatever is down there has immense, evil plans for this world.
###
