mouths. It’s enough to make you shit if you weren’t so worried about dying. Out there today, she kept her back to us the entire time she was facing down the Indians. I reckon this Shaniah showed the Utes her real face, and that’s what spooked ’em. They probably thought she was some kind of witch.”
Chee nodded. There was logic to the major’s words. And it did explain what happened when the woman appeared.
“So while I admire your initiative, I’m not so sure I think we’re ready to capture and control one of these things yet. Not until we learn a little bit more about them.”
Right then, Chee understood even more why Hollister had made such a good commander. He had taken Chee’s input, even encouraged it, and given it thorough consideration. And while he hadn’t outright rejected it, he had shown Chee the holes in his argument but had done so in a way so as not to discourage him. He had made a command decision. But he had included Chee in the process. Hollister was the kind of officer men fought for.
“Here we go,” Monkey Pete said from the desk. He rose and shuffled back to the table where the two men sat, spreading the map out.
“Inside your circle, Major, there’re six abandoned mining towns I know of.” All of them were on the Front Range of the Rockies, and spread from a point about one hundred and thirty miles north of Torson City all the way up into Wyoming. He pointed to each one.
“How many of them can we reach by train?” Hollister asked.
“These four should still have spurs,” the engineer said, pointing out the locations on the map. “The trains don’t run there no more, so I don’t know what shape the tracks will be in, but we can get close, I expect. But this one, the mine is closed but the town is still there. Train runs in once a week.”
Hollister looked at the first spot, a town called Absolution. It was a silver mine, nearly played out but, according to the map, still working. “This might be the place!” Hollister said. “If they want to turn people, wouldn’t this be the perfect place to start?”
A small number of people, controllable, and a mine for the daylight hours.
“It’s as good a place as any to start,” Chee said, nodding his head in agreement.
“Monkey Pete, how long to get there from Denver?” Hollister said.
Monkey Pete put his hand on his chin, calculating the amount of time it would take to be under way. “The horses are loaded up on the stock car. We’re ready to go. It’s a couple hundred miles to Absolution, and it’s about a seven percent grade. Even with our extra speed, it’ll take us most of the next day to get there. If we get started right away.”
“Well my good man, let’s see what this train has got. Get us going to Absolution and don’t spare the whip!” Hollister said.
He scurried off, happy to have his train running again.
Chee reached inside his shirt and fingered his medicine bag. He had a feeling he was going to need it. Something had bothered him ever since he and Hollister had ventured into the Torson City mine earlier. It was the bats. Chee knew that bats were night creatures. They wouldn’t normally leave their nests and fly out in the daylight unless they had to. The bats had swarmed out from deep in the mine. Something had scared them recently and when Hollister and Chee had ventured there, they were upset again, frightened enough to ignore instinct and fly out into the daylight sky.
Chee squeezed his medicine bag and wondered what that could be.
Chapter Thirty
Slater watched the train leave the warehouse. It confirmed his suspicions that his adversaries had learned something from the mysterious woman who had ridden to their rescue that day. She must have given them a clue or a direction to go in and now they were on the trail. Depending on where they went, it would be much harder to contain the situation now. Harder, but not impossible.
As the train departed, Slater confirmed the warehouse was still guarded by Pinkertons: two men at each entrance and two others regularly patrolling the perimeter. Whatever was in there, Pinkerton didn’t want anyone finding out about it. The train shifted onto a siding and slowly rolled westward. Slater had anticipated they’d be going soon and had stationed his men along the most likely routes, with instructions to report back and to follow the train as far and as long as they were able.
He pulled the collar up on his duster. Even though it was early summer it was unseasonably chilly and rain was coming. Leaving the train yard, he rode through the streets, and was at the senator’s mansion in a few minutes. He found Declan inside, sitting in front of the fireplace in his study. The bottle of brandy on the table next to his chair was almost empty. The man was good and drunk. He’d been like this for the last two weeks. Ever since he’d realized his son had been telling the truth. It had unsettled him and he hadn’t gotten a handle on how he could fix it. Slater found it mildly disgusting.
“They’re gone,” Slater said.
“Where?” Declan asked.
“I don’t know yet. I’ve got my men tracking the train. We’ll hear soon enough.”
“What are we going to do, Slater?” Declan asked, sucking down another big swallow of brandy.
“Whatever we need to,” Slater said.
“I don’t think that’s going to work this time,” Declan muttered.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning even if Hollister finds these… things and succeeds in killing them, us killing him isn’t going to be overlooked. I got a telegraph from Washington today. Nobody knows anything about him.”
“So? Isn’t that a good thing? No one will miss him when he’s gone.”
“You don’t get it,” Declan grunted, rising and leaning against the mantel. “The only things I could get my hands on were his original army records and the fact that his release from Leavenworth was signed by President Hayes himself. That fancy train, the Pinkertons, a mysterious warehouse big enough to hold that gussied-up train-all of it takes massive amounts of money. You don’t hide something like that, especially in Washington. If anyone knows anything, they’re not saying a word. Which means they either don’t know or…” He let his words trail off.
“Or?” Slater prodded.
“Or it goes all the way to the top, to the president himself. And that means people are watching Hollister’s back. Which means our ‘usual methods’ won’t work.”
Slater shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry, Senator.”
“You sound awful damn confident,” Declan said.
“I seen what happened in Torson City with my own eyes. That many men, gone without a trace. If Hollister gets mixed up with… in it
… he ain’t likely to survive it. And even if he does, it would be easy to make it look like he didn’t,” Slater said.
The senator was quiet a moment, turning Slater’s words over in his mind. He smiled. “By God, you are an evil sumbitch. I hadn’t even considered that,” Declan said.
Slater smiled, taking the glass from the senator’s hand and draining the rest of the brandy. “It’s what you pay me for, ain’t it?”
Chapter Thirty-one
The night sky was overcast, but there was enough moonlight behind it to give light to the Front Range, where Shaniah rode Demeter, trailing along with Hollister’s train. It was heading north, not into the mountains, and thus her horse had little trouble following it. Of course the stallion would not be able to keep up such a pace forever. But she had captured Hollister’s scent and she thought she would have no trouble tracking him.
He intrigued her even more, now that she had faced him in the open. To Archaics, humans were no more than enemies or prey. Viewed the same way a human might view a bear or elk. It had been hundreds of years since
