“What makes you think these beings aren’t going to be onto us doing all this work at the mouth of the canyon?”
“Two reasons. Most of their activities seems to occur at night and two I’d say they spend most of their day mining the left over gold out of that defunct mine of yours.”
“Really? You really think there could still be gold!”
“Yes, now less talk and more work.”
*****
Work went better than expected with almost the whole town helping out and the upshot of it was that we now had some time to kill. The sun wouldn’t set for at least another two hours.
Both Edgar and I had crept back to where we had seen the alien vessel hovering in the narrow canyon. It had still been there and that fact verified we had eased back from the canyon rim to wait for sundown.
In a low voice I asked, “Edgar when I first got here there was something about me surviving that snakebite that troubled you. What was it?”
“Not troubled, intrigued is a better word.”
I decided to go all in and confessing softly I said, “I’ve been led to believe recently that my origins lead to places not from this world. Does that make any sense?”
“It certainly does.” Edgar affirmed.
I glanced at him and he explained, “As I told you before that snake that bit you exists nowhere else other than this immediate area. Do you know what an elephant is?”
I nodded and he continued, “Well by my nearest calculations of the potency of a single bite from that snake I’d say even an elephant would succumb to a bite.”
“You’re saying I’m not human?”
“Not at all. There are plenty of venoms, diseases, and you name it that generally always kill their victims, but there are those few who survive. Those few survivors mate and share their immunities with the next generation and then you see immunity in the next generation after that. Given enough time almost everyone comes to have immunity to something that once killed almost everyone. Look at Europe for instance. The black plague virtually wiped the population out, but those who survived are now for the most part immune to it. My theory about these snakes, especially now that I see all that’s happened in the past few days, is that they came from somewhere else. I’m not referring to somewhere else in the world either. It’s possible that ancestors of yours came from the same place off world where these snakes live, and thus had a built up immunity to the venom.”
Shaking my head I said, “I know I was born in the mountains of East Tennessee. As a boy my great grandfather was yet alive. We were all born in the mountains, not some other world.”
“No doubt you were, which would explain through the length of generations away from the exposure to the venom of that snake why you almost died from it. The more time that goes by the less resistance there seems to be to things not exposed to in a long time.”
I shook my head still finding it all hard to believe, but the facts were what they were.
“Your name is of great interest and I believe a clue to the off world past your ancestors experienced.”
Looking at him I asked, “Taran?”
“No, your last name of Collins. Collins and another name, that of Gibson, along with a half-dozen others form an Appalachian bloodline of some note. Ever look at yourself in the mirror Taran?”
“Of course I have!”
“Well then I bet you’ve noticed that while you’re white enough to be thought of as European your features are somewhat darker and more exotic than the typical individual of European descent.”
“It’s said that there was some intermarrying with people of black skin color early on in our family and I think my grandmother was part Cherokee.”
“All probably so, but your ancestry is even more complex than that. Feel at the very back of your head.”
I did so and felt a protrusion of bone off the back of my skull that formed a sort of round nodule. I’d known I’d had it, but never really thought twice about it.
“What you’re feeling my friend is referred to as an Anatolian Bump. The more scientific name for it is Tuberculum Turcum. Anatolia is the region in the Middle East where the Turks of the Ottoman Empire came from. Their people group it’s said migrated there from Central Asia. Now the question you have to ask yourself Taran is how did a man, who comes from the mountains of Appalachia, come to possess so many diverse traits from peoples all over the world, but in all the history of your family I doubt there have been few who have actually married outside of the mountain families of the surrounding communities much less left the area as you have done.”
I had no answer for him. Going on he said, “Melungeon is the name for the unique bloodline of your family and of the others I mentioned. The meaning of the word is hard to come by as it finds elements potentially derived from the languages of at least five different people groups, which would be West African, Turkish, European, Asian, and even Jews. It’s a mystery Taran. What’s even more interesting is that there is old folk lore in the mountains of Appalachia that there were white men existing in the mountains before the first colonists came over from Europe. As colonists kept making their way westward they kept running into communities in the mountains that they couldn’t place the date of origin to. There’s little to be conclusively said as it’s all been poorly documented, but the stories do remain. I’m sure you’ve heard a few of them.”
I had. I looked toward the edge of the canyon still hearing the humming of the alien vessel. Looking back to Edgar I asked, “What do you think happened?”
Edgar shrugged, “Pastor told me about your vision, well not exactly, I had to beg the story out of him. What if there are other worlds out there such as you saw? With the kind of technology back there in the canyon on display I don’t see it as an impossibility for such vessels to be able to travel between worlds. We know these creatures from the time before the creation of man obviously hate us. What if some time in the past they took slaves of this world to serve them on worlds outside of the dominion of the authority that God gave to man to possess and rule over this world? On such foreign worlds with relocated people gathered from all over the Earth the resulting mating of them would’ve resulted in blended features the likes of which you exhibit. For such a blended people to reappear on Earth in an unlikely spot it would seem to echo of some past strife off-world. Perhaps your great ancestors escaped and were able to make their way back at some point. They settled in the mountains and have been blending in with the rest of humanity ever since. It’s a plausible theory anyway given all the facts and circumstantial evidence to support it.”
I nodded. What more was to be said?
Had my ancestors really overcome such obstacles as these beings in the canyon below us in order to return to Earth?
It seemed like more than just a plausible theory to me as I mentally took in the unique looks of my family’s appearances in comparison to people away from the cloistered mountain community I had been raised in. My great-grandfather’s skin had been very dark. Since his time most of my family had married lighter skinned European women and the tone of our family’s skin had lightened considerably from what his had been.
More than that were some of the stories I had been told as a child, stories about fantastical lands and the monsters that dwelled in them. Stories that didn’t fit into the reality of Earth, at least not for a very long time.
I remembered my great-grandfather singing once in the forest in a language I couldn’t understand. It hadn’t been Cherokee or any European language and certainly not the backwoods English that we’d spoken almost exclusively. He had been an intense individual. Most of my family were.
Above all as a family we craved the right to be free to do as we pleased. That was something I strived to maintain to this day and it had gotten me into a lot of fights.
I stared upwards into the darkening sky overhead that stars were already faintly starting to appear in. Did I have a legacy that had come from up there somewhere in the distant past?
Di
d I have a destiny to return?
Glancing at the sun now low on the horizon I touched Edgar’s sleeve and said, “Let’s go and get this party started.”
Chapter Nine
Mirror Reflection
I wasn’t too sure about this plan, but we were people of limited means faced with desperate circumstances. Some things were just going to need to be hoped for. I certainly knew that I was praying that my hopes would not be denied.
Edgar had been for the idea of me riding up the canyon with a lit stick of dynamite in hand to which I then threw at the said enemy beings before lighting a shuck the heck back out of there. Even by my standards that was a bit obvious in terms of raising suspicions.
Instead I had chosen misdirection of a more innocent nature. I was deliberately hunched over the saddle as one might expect of an old man and behind me I led a mule packed down with all the essentials needed for gold mining.
Where the dynamite ploy might fail to attract the desired response I was pretty sure that the threat of their gold discovery being found out by humans was something they wished to avoid. They’d have no choice but to chase after me and kill me. Being killed was an all too real possibility in this scenario.
Rounding the last bend in the canyon separating me from the mine I beheld the hovering vessel and several of its occupants. They stood taller than me by at two feet and just as the indian had said they had white hair that fell down past their shoulders.
I’d never been creeped out more other than having to witness the body of a woman metamorphosis into a reptilian form of dark ugliness. With a faked shout of surprise I let go the leads of the mule and wheeled the Appaloosa back the way I’d just come. He bucked forward with a will even as two electric bolts of power zipped by me to blast solid rock into crushed powder.
The Appaloosa ran hard in our attempt to escape and I prayed that it would be enough. We turned a corner and became blessedly out of range of their weapons, if only for a moment.
I heard the droning hum behind me up the canyon abruptly go high pitched and I urged the horse faster. I still had a quarter of a mile before I reached the mouth of the canyon.
I hung over the horse’s mane doing my best to aid the animal in its flight from certain death. I glanced back and gave a start at the sight of the hovercraft closing in fast.
I jerked the reins hard and the horse swerved to the right. The canyon wall off to our left exploded terrifically and rock chips slammed into me and the horse.
Glancing to the side I saw the ship right there flying sideways so that its observation window faced us. Once again I saw the faces of beings I never wished to see any closer than I already had.
Drawing my gun I fired it in rapid succession at them. Hopelessly I watched my bullets smash into the glass of its observation window to only then bounce off and go pinging off elsewhere.
My actions though impotent did seem to anger my enemies enough to the point of distracting them from realizing the narrowness of the canyon. The vessel bumped hard into the side of the canyon and then ricocheted over to my side to crash off my side of the canyon with a metallic chink of grinding metal.
The ship’s progress had slowed radically and rounding the last corner I saw the mouth of the canyon. The canyon narrowed to a narrow channel that two wagons would’ve spanned across and just where it opened up onto the plain it divided into two channels with an up-thrust remnant of stone dividing the two.
The channel to the right was higher and clear of obstruction. It had been the route used by the minors to transport supplies and gold bullion through. The other route led to a depression where runoff water collected just before where the canyon opened up onto the plain.
I reached the turn and swerved the Appaloosa down the left channel of the canyon mouth. Two power bolts slammed into the up-thrust of rock that divided the two channels.
The Appaloosa hit the stagnant water pond and sent muddy scum flying everywhere. We hogged on forward through the slop tripping the ropes holding the calcium carbide in suspension above the murky water. Several wooden crates worth of calcium carbide slid into the stagnant water and immediately a steamy vapor began to rise up.
We hauled up out of the muck and I barely had the time to duck under the wooden underside of the mirror wall that we had constructed out of the room length mirrors of the saloon.
The mirror had been in ten foot segments of which there had been three. We’d stacked the three ten foot sections of the mirror one on top the other to form a ten foot wide by twelve foot tall wall of reflection.
I rode clear of the mirror wall before pulling the Appaloosa up. I glanced back just as the enemy craft peeled around the corner into the left channel of the canyon mouth. The vessel came to a gravity defying stop over top of the stagnant pool of water at the sight of what must’ve seemed to them for a moment to be another ship.
The angel, in the form of the old indian, had possessed the ability to summon such a ship of a similar design howbeit one that was grander somehow than the one now before me. My hope was that in the rush of the chase they would mistake the reflection in the mirror as that of a ship belonging to their angelic enemies.
That seemed to have worked, but our plan for the gas to thin the air enough for the hovering craft to sink hadn’t!
A cloudy smog rose up and engulfed the craft, but still it did not sink. The bright power of its weapons pulsed and the mirror wall shattered to pieces, but that wasn’t the end of it.
The very air of the canyon channel seemed to disappear in an engulfing outburst of flame. The shockwave of flame knocked me off my horse as the Appaloosa bucked in terror.
Looking up I blinked at the sight of the hovercraft half sunk into the muddy pond of water. I hit the ground hard with my fist in jubilation!
We hadn’t thinned the air, but what we had done was create an explosion primarily rooted above the craft, which had drove it downward into the muck of the pond of water. Somehow our venture had worked, just not the way we had planned it though.
Looking to the mesa I prayed Edgar hadn’t failed on his part of the plan. With an explosion that knocked me flat again the walls of the canyon and the up-thrust of rock that had divided the two channels completely disintegrated and spewed outward to pound down on top of the vessel mired in the mud.
The longest part of our preparations of the day gone by had been taken up by drilling holes with the drill steel augers into the sides of the canyon walls. We had packed the holes full of dynamite and then we had laid the leftover boxes of dynamite all along the canyon wall’s base.
The air hung heavy with smoke and dust and coughing on it I felt a massive headache form instantly as I breathed in the cordite fumes of the exploded dynamite. The wind blew and the dust drifted back up the canyon.
Looking up I confirmed that all trace of the enemy had been buried beneath a load of rock and debris. I waited to see if it would pull free of our trap, but no movement occurred. We’d done it!
Suddenly I was mobbed by screaming people and I about passed out from the pain of the sound.
“We did it Marshal!” Edgar was screaming.
“Yeah, now easy with the noise will yah.” I said groaning, as I clutched at my head.
Fresh air was helping the headache go away and before long I could bring myself to open my eyes. When I did I beheld a town unified.
Chapter Ten
Ministry Begun
Six months later
I made my way down the busy street. Buildings were going up almost everywhere. In the past several months the population of the town had swelled by at least four times in volume. The town of Orlaca was once again a thriving place thanks to the resurgent supply of gold discovered in a different vein from the one mined out previously.
Business was booming, but for me it was time to leave. I hadn’t had much of any trouble in being marshal these past few months, but with the return of prosperity I knew that would be short-lived.
Drifters from all over would flo
ck in. Miners and prospectors would be killed in ambushes for a few pinches of gold dust. Saloons and their ilk would open up everywhere.
The old saloon was already back up and running. The first shipment of dance hall girls had just arrived yesterday and another saloon was going up just down the street not too far from the church.
Truly the Bible had it right in stating that, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” The town had been a better place without its newfound wealth for sure.
Perhaps I was old-fashioned, so what if I was. I preferred life away from the maddening crowd.
I stepped into the general store and Angus looked up. He leaned down to lift several parcels onto the counter.
I stepped close to the counter and smiling I said, “I knew you’d have it ready even though I only gave the list to you an hour ago.”
Angus shrugged, “A man has priorities and you are of the utmost priority in my eyes.”
I reached my hand across the counter and Angus shook it firmly. I’d made good friends in this town. The town I wouldn’t overly miss, but the friends I had made I would.
Gesturing to one of the new repeating rifles on the wall I said, “I’ll take that to and about a thousand rounds of ammunition to go along with it.”
Angus grinned and took the rifle down and laid it on the counter and then began stacking boxes of bullets on the counter beside it.
“Fixing to do some shooting Marshal?” The Widow O’Brien asked, from where she stood off to the side.
Looking to her I smiled, “Maybe. I like to be prepared anyway.”
Coming to me she grasped my forearm briefly before saying, “May God be with you in your travels Marshal.” Before then moving on out the door.
Turning back to Angus I dove into my pocket for the money to pay, but Angus waved his hand and said, “Your money is no good here.”
I dug out the bill money in my pocket anyway and laid it on the counter, “It’s liable not to do me any good anyway Angus. I appreciate the gesture, but if a man deserved to profit it would be you.”
Grudgingly he took the money, but then said, “I’m taking this, but if I run across someone in need I’ll give it to them.”
“Sounds good to me Angus.” I said with a nod.
I’d tied a mule I had bought up outside earlier and now I began to make trips in and out of the store packing the mule down with supplies. Fully loaded I led the mule down the street to the stable yard.