quirt as she rode hard back the way she had come. Vanishing into the trees almost as mysteriously as she had arrived.
Hollister looked at Chee, who still seemed ready to jump on his horse and ride the woman down.
“Huh,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Monkey Pete, what does this train have in the way of maps of the territories?” Hollister asked the trainman.
After their encounter with the mysterious woman Shaniah, they had finished their inspection of Torson City, buried the three bodies and returned to Denver just after nightfall. Slater and his men had shadowed them all the way back, but had offered no interference.
“We’ve got all the maps you might need, Major,” Monkey Pete said. From a cabinet in the main car, he pulled several metal tubes and set them on the table in front of Hollister. They had finished their meal, and Jonas wanted to get moving. The encounter with the mystery woman had given him pause at first, but now it felt like he was closer to something, to finding what he was looking for.
Chee sat across the table from the major, quiet and lost in thought. He’d been like that since the woman appeared. Hollister was not surprised that Chee had been right. It had been a woman following them. He was beginning to learn that Chee was right most of the time. At least about Deathwalkers and mysterious women.
“Cheer up, Chee. You’ll get to shoot somebody soon,” Hollister said.
Dog lay on the floor of the car, theoretically asleep but his eyes slitted, always close to Chee.
Monkey Pete was fishing through the maps, finally settling on one, pulling the rolled paper from inside the metal tube, and unrolling it on the table in front of them.
“This is a Central and Pacific railroad map, Major. Printed just last month. It’s probably the most accurate and up to date of any. What is it you’re looking for?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. But something Declan’s kid kept saying is sticking in my craw,” Hollister said. “He kept saying, ‘mine,’ over and over. At first I thought he was talking about Torson City, then maybe something personal or a possession he’d lost there when those creatures attacked. Or he was referring to the men he lost. But now I wonder if he meant something else. Chee and I found blood down in the mine. Like maybe they ambushed those men.”
Hollister opened his copy of Van Helsing’s journal and went to a page he had dog-eared. “Dr. Van Helsing has some notes about ‘suspicious’ attacks out here. There’s a half dozen places where a group of people were murdered in the last six years, and it was put off as Indian massacres. He and Pinkerton weren’t sure that was the case.”
He thumbed through the diary, marking the locations on the map.
Hollister picked up a charcoal pencil and pored over the map, putting marks on Torson City, the spot in Wyoming where he’d lost his platoon, and where the half dozen attacks noted in the journal occurred. When he was finished, he was not surprised to find that three of the eight spots were mining camps. There had to be a connection.
“Van Helsing also thinks these things are mountain creatures by nature. They come from Eastern Europe, where I understand it’s very hilly, and the altitude doesn’t seem to bother them like it does us. If they were hiding out or had a remote home base, I expect it would be in the mountains somewhere.”
Curiously enough, the spots on the map made a rough circle from Torson City on the southern end to the spot in Wyoming just west of Deadwood where he’d been attacked. The circle was a few hundred miles in diameter.
“I don’t know, Major, that’s a lot of territory,” Chee said. “And what if some of those were Indian attacks? Makes it even harder to pin down.”
“I don’t disagree, Chee. I’m just trying to suss it out. One of the two places we know for sure they attacked was a mining camp. I’m wondering if there’s a reason for that.”
“What kind of reason?” Monkey Pete asked.
“I don’t know, but I remember something from when… from Wyoming, they don’t like moving around in the daylight. Van Helsing said enough sun is fatal to ’em. So they like the dark. What’s darker than a mine?”
“But there’s got be dozens of mines within that circle you’ve drawn. Maybe hundreds,” Monkey Pete said.
“True. But how many abandoned mines? That’s where I expect they’d be hiding. They wouldn’t be holed up in a working mine. Unless they’d killed or did what Van Helsing called ‘turned’ everyone working there first.”
“Turned?” Chee asked.
“I read it too,” Monkey Pete chimed in. “The creatures drink the victims’ blood first and then make the victims drink the creatures’ blood. Turns ’em into a vampire. I want you boys to promise me something… if them things ever gets a’holt of me and starts turnin’ Monkey Pete, you promise me you’ll shoot me dead.”
Hollister looked at the engineer, his face a curious mixture of surprise and some form of admiration for the man’s mind. “Sure Monkey Pete. You just promise me you’ll do the same to me.”
“Oh sure, Major, I’ll be happy to shoot you,” he said.
“But just to be clear, only if I’m being turned into a vampire. Not for any other reason,” Hollister said.
“We’ll see,” Monkey Pete said and turned his attention to the map again.
Chee shook his head. “It seems kind of thin, sir.”
“I don’t disagree. But we got nothing else. And these other attacks in mining camps makes it a connection, no matter how thin it might be,” Hollister said. “And I’ve been thinking, maybe when they attacked Declan’s group, they were hiding in the mine. The sun went down and out they came. If you can’t be in the sunlight, a mine is the perfect spot to spend the daylight hours. There are mines all over the west. Maybe this is how they’re moving and gathering a group large enough to make whatever move it is he has planned.”
Chee nodded. He had to agree, reluctant as he was. It made sense.
“Let me see that map,” Monkey Pete said.
He took it off the table and sat down with it at the desk. Making marks with the pencil, he muttered to himself as he worked. “I’ve driven trains for Mr. Pinkerton all over this territory. I may not know them all, but I can tell you a lot of the mines that have played out…” His words trailed off.
Jonas filled his coffee cup and looked across the table at Chee. The young man sat there looking all jangled up, like the weight of the world was on him.
“Something on your mind, Chee?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Chee answered.
“Chee, I told you about calling me ‘sir.’ Now we had a good first effort in the field today. You did good work out there. When I was in the army I wasn’t the type of officer who didn’t value input from his men. If you got something to say, I think you need to tell me. I don’t want to have to give an order.”
“The woman, sir,” Chee said.
“What about her?”
“She’s the key to this. I think we should try to capture her. If we want to find these things, she’s the one who can lead us to them.”
Hollister paused while he measured the young man’s words.
“Let’s say you’re right. Suppose this ‘Shaniah’ is part of this. How do you suggest we go about catching her?”
Chee shrugged.
“And if we do catch her, what if she turns out to be one of the creatures like you figure? I mean, she scattered them Utes in seconds, and God only knows how. She had her back to us, but I’m wondering if she didn’t show ’em her real face.”
“Her real face, sir?” Chee was curious.
“Yeah. Back in Wyoming, when they attacked my platoon, they came at us, and their faces… they change somehow. The eyes turn bright red and their jaws get long and they get these big-ass fangs coming out of their
