Sure enough, several moments of excavation turned up a small wooden box. Inside lay the labor of four men sweating out the riches of a mountain for a year and a half, a glittering horde of dust and nuggets large enough to ensure each of them comfort for the rest of his life.
Monster bird or no, they’d worked too damn hard for any of them to give up so easily that pile they’d wrested from the icy river. They fired and fired, and when it was clear to see that guns weren’t doing any good, they went after the intruder with picks and shovels.
When it was all over, a somber moon beamed down on a scene of theft and carnage. The gold was gone, and so were the bodies of young Johnny Sutter and One-Thumb Washington and a mule named General Grant….
* * *
—
There were not many physicians residing in Cheyenne at the time and fewer still who knew anything about medicine, so it was not entirely coincidental that the one who treated the Mormon rancher’s wives would also become conversant with the story related by the unfortunate survivors of the Willow Creek claim. He brought the information to the attention of Mr. Fraser, the local Butterfield Line agent who had seen to the care of the distraught passengers. Now these two comparatively learned men discussed the events of the week past over sherry in the dining room of the Hotel Paris.
“I am at a loss as to what to do now, Dr. Waxman,” the agent confessed. “My superiors in Denver accepted the report I sent to them which described the loss of the strongbox on a mountain road during a violent, freak storm, but I suspect they are not without lingering suspicions. My worry is what to do if this should occur a second time. Not only would the cargo be lost, I should be lost as well. I have a wife and children, Doctor. I have no desire to be sent to a prison…or to an asylum. You are the only other educated citizen who has been apprised of this peculiar situation. I believe it is incumbent upon the two of us to do something to rectify the problem. I feel a certain responsibility, as an important member of the community, to do something to ensure the safety of my fellow citizens, and I am sure you feel similarly.”
A thoughtful Waxman ran a finger around the edge of his glass. “I agree. Something must be done.”
“Well, then. You are positive these two men you treated yesterday were confronted by the same phenomenon as the one that afflicted my drivers?”
“There seems to be no doubt of that.” The doctor sipped at his sherry as he peered over thick spectacles at the agent. “With two of their companions carried off by this creature, I should ordinarily have suspected some sort of foul play, were it not for the unique nature of their wounds. Also, they are Christians and swore to the truth of their story quite vociferously to the farmer who found them wandering dazed and bleeding in the mountains, invoking the name of the savior repeatedly.”
The agent folded his hands on the clean tablecloth. “More than citizen safety is at stake in this. There is a growing economy to consider. It is clear that this creature has an affinity—nay, a fondness—for gold. Why, I cannot imagine. What matters is that next time it may strike at a bank in Cheyenne or some smaller community when there are women and children on the streets. But how are we to combat it? We do not even know what we face, save that it surely is not some creature native to this land. I suspect a manifestation of the Devil. Perhaps it would be efficacious for me to have a talk with Pastor Hunnicutt of the—”
The doctor waved the suggestion down. “I think we must seek remedies of a more earthly nature before we proceed to the final and uncertain decision of throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Creator. God helps those who help themselves, whether the Devil is involved or not.
“I have had occasion in my work, sir, to deal with certain individuals whose business it is to travel extensively in this still-wild country: Certain acquaintances sometimes impress themselves most forcefully on these bucolic travelers, who are usually commonsensible if not always hygienic.
“In connection with unusual occurrences and happenings, with unexplained incidents and strange manifestations, one name recurs several times and is uttered with respect by everyone from simple farmers to soldiers to educated citizens such as ourselves. I have been reliably informed that this person, a certain Amos Malone, is presently in the Cheyenne region. I believe we should seek his counsel in this matter.”
The Butterfield agent stared across at the doctor, who, having finished his sherry, was tamping tobacco into a battered old pipe. “Amos Malone? Mad Amos Malone? I have heard tell of him. He is a relic, a throwback to the heyday of the mountain man and the beaver hat. Besides which, he is rumored to be quite insane.”
“So is half of Congress,” the doctor replied imperturbably. “Yet I believe we need him if there is to be any chance of resolving this business.”
The agent let out a long sigh. “I shall defer to your judgment in this matter, sir, but I confess that I am less than sanguine as to its eventual outcome.”
“I am not too hopeful myself,” the physician admitted, “but we have to try.”
“Very well. How are we to get in touch with this individual? These mountain men do not subscribe to civilized means of communication, nor do they usually remain in one place long enough for contact to be made.”
“As to that, I am not concerned.” The doctor lit his pipe. “We will put out the word that we require his presence and that it involves a matter of great urgency and most unusual circumstance. I believe he will come. As to precisely how he will learn of our need, I leave that to the unknown and ungovernable means by which the breed of man to which he belongs has always learned of such things.”
* * *
—
They waited in the doctor’s office. Just before dawn a light snow had salted the town. Now the morning sun, hesitantly glimpsed through muddy dark clouds, threatened to melt the serenely pale flakes and turn the streets into a boot-sucking quagmire.
Sitting in the office next to a nickel-and-iron stove were the Butterfield Line agent and a distraught, angry, and bandaged-up Wonder Charlie. Wonder Charlie wasn’t feeling too well—his splinted right arm in particular was giving him hell—but he insisted on being present, and the doctor thought the presence of an eyewitness would be vital to give verisimilitude to their story.
The clock on the high shelf chimed six-thirty.
“And that’s for your mountain man,” snapped Fraser. He was not in a good mood. His wife, an unforgiving woman, had badgered him relentlessly about risking an attack of colic by tramping outside so early in the morning.
Dr. Waxman gazed unconcernedly at the clock. “Give him a little time. The weather is bad.”
There was a knock at the door. Waxman glanced over at the agent and smiled.
“Punctual enough,” Fraser admitted reluctantly. “Unusual for these backwoodsmen.”
The doctor rose from his seat and moved to open the door, admitting a man who stood in height somewhere between six feet and heaven. He was clad in dirty buckskin and wet Colorado. Two bandoliers of enormous cartridges crisscrossed his expansive chest. In his belt were secured a bowie knife and a LeMat pistol, the latter an eccentric weapon favored for a time by Confederate cavalry officers. It fit the arrival, Fraser thought.
The man’s beard was not nearly as gray-speckled as Wonder Charlie’s, but there were a few white wires scattered among the black. His eyes were dark as Quantrill’s heart, and what one could see of his actual flesh looked cured as tough as the goatskin boots he wore.
“Cold out there this morning,” he said, striding over to the potbellied stove. He rubbed his hands in front of it gratefully, then turned to warm his backside.
The doctor closed the door against the cold and proceeded to make formal introductions. Fraser surrendered his uncallused palm to that massive grip gingerly. Wonder Charlie took it firmly, his age and infirmities notwithstanding.
“Now then, gentlemens, word’s out that
you folk have got yourselves a little gold problem.”
“Bird problem, ye mean,” Charlie said promptly, before Fraser or the doctor could slip a word in. “Biggest goddamn bird ye ever saw, mister. Killed two o’ my partners and stole our poke. Took off with m’ best mule, too. Out o’ spite, I thinks, for surely One-Thumb and Johnny would’ve made the beast a good enough supper.”
“Easy there, old-timer,” Mad Amos said gently. “It don’t do to make your head hurt when the rest of you already does. Now, y’all tell me more about this gold-lovin’ bird of yours. I admit to being more than a mite curious about it, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“And just why are you here, Mr. Malone?” Fraser asked curiously. “You have no assurance we are able to pay you for your services or even what extremes of exertion those services might entail.”
“Why, I don’t care much about that right now, friend.” He smiled, showing more teeth than men of his profession usually possessed. “I’m here because I’m curious. Like the cat.”
“Curiosity,” commented Fraser, still sizing up the new arrival, “killed the cat, if you will remember.”
The mountain man turned and stared at him out of eyes so black that the agent shrank a little inside. “Way I figure it, Mr. Fraser, in the long run we’re all dead.”
With the doctor and the agent nearby to assist his memory, Wonder Charlie related his story of the devil-thing that had attacked his camp and killed two of his partners. Then Fraser repeated what his set-upon driving team had told him. He and Charlie argued a little over details of the creature’s appearance, picayune disagreements involving color and size, but basically they and their respective stories were in agreement.
When they’d finished, Mad Amos leaned back in the rocking chair into which he’d settled himself. It creaked with his weight as he clasped both hands around a knee. “Shoot, that ain’t no bird you’re describing, gentlemens. I thought it weren’t when I first heard about it, but I weren’t sure. Now I am. What came down on you, old-timer,” he told Charlie, “and what lit into your stage, Mr. Fraser, weren’t nothin’ but a full-blood, gen-u-wine, honest-to-goshen member of the dragon tribe.”
“Your pardon, Mr. Malone,” said the doctor skeptically, “but a dragon is a mythical creature, an invention of our less enlightened ancestors. This is the nineteenth century, sir. We no longer cotton to such superstitions. I myself once had an encounter with a snake-oil salesman who guaranteed to supply me with some powdered unicorn horn. I am not unskilled in basic chemistry and was able to prove it was nothing more than powder from the common steer.”
“Well, y’all better readjust your heads a mite, ’cause that’s what got your gold, and those stealings ain’t no myth.”
“He’s right, there,” Wonder Charlie said sharply.
“I had thought perhaps a large eagle that normally resides only among the highest and most inaccessible peaks…,” the doctor began.
“Haw!” Mad Amos slapped his knee a blow that would’ve felled most men. His laugh echoed around the room. “Ain’t no eagle in this world big enough to carry off a full-grown mule, let alone twenty pounds of gold in a Butterfield steel strongbox! Ain’t no eagle got bat wings instead of feathers. Ain’t no eagle colored red and yellow and blue and pink and black and everything else. No, it’s a true dragon we’re dealing with here, gentlemens. By Solomon’s seal it is!”
The Butterfield agent spoke up. “I cannot pretend to argue with either of you gentlemen. I have not your scientific knowledge, sir,” he told the doctor, “nor your reputed experience in matters arcane, Mr. Malone. The question before us, however, is not what we are dealing with but how we are to be rid of it. I care not what its proper name be, only that I should not have to set eyes upon it.” He eyed the mountain man expectantly.
Some said Malone had once been a doctor himself. Others said he had been captain of a great clipper ship. Still others thought he’d been a learned professor at the Sorbonne in France. General opinion, however, held to it that he was merely full of what the squirrels put away for the Colorado winter. Fraser didn’t much care. All he wanted was not to have to explain away the loss of another strongbox filled with gold, and there was a shipment of coin coming up from Denver the very next week.
“That’s surely the crux, ain’t it? Now, you tell me, old-timer,” Malone said to Wonder Charlie, “how many appendages did your visitor have streamin’ from his mouth? Did he spit any fire at you? Was his howling high-pitched like a band of attacking Sioux or low like running buffalo in the distance? How did he look at you…straight on or by twisting his head from one side to the other?”
And so on into the late morning, Malone asking question after question until the old miner’s head ached from the labor of recollection. But Charlie persisted. He’d liked Johnny Sutter and One-Thumb Washington, not to mention poor ole General Grant.
* * *
—
Canvas tents pockmarked the side of the little canyon, their sides billowing in the wind. Piles of rails and ties were stacked neatly nearby, along with kegs of spikes, extra hammers, and other equipment. Thick, pungent smells wafted from a single larger tent, while others rose from the far side of the railroad camp. One set of odors indicated the kitchen, the other the end product.
The line from Denver to Cheyenne was comparatively new and in need of regular repair. The crew that had laid the original track was now working its way back down the line, repairing and cleaning up, making certain the roadbed was firm and the rails secure.
The muscular, generally diminutive men swinging the hammers and hauling the iron glanced up with interest as the towering mountain man rode into camp. So did the beefy supervisor charged with overseeing his imported workers. Though he came from a line of prejudiced folk, he would brook no insults toward his men. They might have funny eyes and talk even funnier, but by God they’d work all day long and not complain a whit, which was more than you could say for most men.
“All right. Show’s over,” he growled, aware that work was slowing all along the line as more men paused to track the progress of the hulking stranger. “Get your backs into it, you happy sons of heaven!”
The pounding of hammers resumed, echoing down the canyon, but alert dark eyes still glanced in the direction of the silent visitor.
They widened beneath the brows of one broad-shouldered worker when the stranger leaned close and whispered something to him in a melodic, singsong tongue. The man was so startled he nearly dropped his hammer on his foot. The stranger had to repeat his query more slowly before he got a reply.
“Most unusual. White Devil speaks fluently the tongue of my home. You have traveled that far, honored sir?”
“Once or twice. I’m never for sure how many. Canton’s a nice little town, though the food’s a bit thin for my taste. Now, how about my question?”
The spike driver hesitated at that. Despite his size and strength, the worker seemed suddenly frightened; he looked past the visitor’s horse as though someone might be watching him.
Mad Amos followed the other man’s gaze and saw only tents. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “I won’t let the one I’m after harm you or any of your friends or relatives back home. I will not allow him to disturb your ancestors. Will you trust me, friend?”
“I will,” the worker decided abruptly. “The one you seek is called Wu-Ling. You will find him in the third tent down.” He leaned on his hammer and pointed. “Good fortune go with you, White Devil.”
“Thanks.” Mad Amos chucked his horse’s reins and resumed his course up the track. The men working on the line watched him intently, whispering among themselves.
Outside the indicated tent he dismounted, pausing a moment to give his horse an affectionate pat. This unique steed was part Indian pony, part Appaloosa, part Arabian, and part Shire. He was black with white patches on his rump and fetlocks and a white r
ing around his right eye. This eye was unable to open completely, which affected the animal with a sour squint that helped keep teasing children and casual horse thieves well away.
“Now you wait here, Worthless, and I’ll be right back. I hope.” He turned and called into the tent.
“Enter, useless supplicant of a thousand excuses,” replied an imperious voice.
Seated on a mat inside the tent was a youthful Chinese clad in embroidered silk robes and cap. He wore soft slippers and several jade rings. There were flowers in the tent, and they combined with burning incense to keep out the disagreeable odors of the camp. The man’s back was to the entrance, and he gestured with boredom toward a lacquered bowl three-quarters filled with coins.
“Place thy pitiful offering in the usual place and then get out. I am meditating with the forces of darkness. Woe to any who disturb my thoughts.”
“Woe to those who meddle with forces they don’t understand, progenitor of a hundred bluffs.”
The genuflector whirled at the sound of English, only to find himself gaping up at a hairy, ugly, giant White Devil. It took him a moment to compose himself. Then he slipped his hands (which Mad Amos thought might be shaking just a little) back into his sleeves and bowed.
Mad Amos returned the bow and said in perfect Cantonese, “Thy ministrations seem to have exceeded thy knowledge, unomnipotent one.”
A hand emerged from silk to thrust demandingly at the tent entrance. “Get out of my tent, Devil. Get out! Or I will assuredly turn thee into a lowly toad, as thy face suggests!”
Mad Amos smiled and took a step forward. “Now let’s just settle down, inventor of falsehoods, or you’ll be the one gets done to. I can’t turn you into a toad, but when I finish with you, you’ll look like a buffalo carcass a bunch o’ Comanches just finished stripping.”
The man hesitated but did not back down. He raised both hands and muttered an important-sounding invocation to the skies.