have done an eagle-bird proud.
“Why, it’s a swamping balloon!” Longarm assured his mount as he made out the spider-webby line following the big yellow globe skyward. “It’s a captive balloon, being flown like a kite by someone on the ground with a mighty expensive hobby! Those hydrogen-generating wagons cost a heap, and the scrap iron and sulfuric acid you have to fill ‘em up with don’t come all that cheap!”
He heeled his mount into a faster uphill walk as he thought back to all that the pretty Mam-zell Blanchard had taught him about ballooning, and other French notions, at the Omaha State Fair. They’d met up there because it took something as big as a state fair to finance the sort of ballooning stunts he’d learned from her. His survey figures for Cedar Bend didn’t list four hundred permanent residents, and even when you counted cowhands and nesters from all around, the only way anyone could profit from a captive balloon just hanging around up yonder would be to charge each passenger quite a lot per ride.
But as he peered heavenward, Longarm failed to see any passengers or even a sensible passenger basket under that big balloon. He’d just asked his mount’s opinion on what that all meant when they both had the liver and lights scared out of them.
The box dangling from under the mighty high balloon blew up with a blinding flash, followed shortly thereafter by a horrendous bang and rumbling echoes from the rises all around. So it was a good thing Longarm had been aboard a bucking bronc before.
There was no horn on a McClellan saddle to grab onto. So Longarm let go of the lead rope and hung on to the saddle for dear life as the spooked pony crow-hopped all the way back to the bottom of the draw.
By that time the echoes had faded, he had his mount under control again and, as he’d hoped, the paint had not seen fit to carry that packsaddle up out of the draw towards such a noisy sky.
As he swung down to retrieve the lead line, he told both ponies in a soothing tone, “Nobody’s out to bombard us. Some fool pluviculturist is trying to make it rain. I just read in the Scientific American how some jasper called Dan’l Ruggles just patented what happened up yonder.” Neither pony argued about that. As the three of them headed back up the same slope, Longarm saw that same balloon still floating a whole lot higher, and idly wondered if he was fixing to meet the famous Rainmaking Ruggles. His picture in that magazine had doubtless been posed for on a bad day. The poor bewhiskered cuss in the stovepipe hat had looked as if his invention had scared him shitless.
The notion of setting off dynamite in the sky to make it rain had hardly been the basis of the Ruggles patent, of course. Folks as far back as the first Napoleon had noticed that all those cannon going off made for wetter weather than usual. Soldiers even further back had cussed about “General Mudd” slowing down their wars. So a gent by the name of James Espy had decided it was the smoke and heat above a battlefield that made such places so muddy. But his plan to water Penn State by burning big bonfires clean across the state, all at once, hadn’t struck anyone as practical before the war.
Lots of war vets had come home in blue or gray to bitterly remark on all the damned mud they’d had to march through as the drizzle wet their damned powder. So a Texan named Dyrenforth had piled up enough explosives to start the war over and blasted hell out of the dry Texas skies till a dry Texas newspaper reported, “General Dyrenforth attacked front and rear, by the right and left flank. But the blue sky remained clear as the complexion of a Saxon maid!”
Ruggles’s new patent involved getting the explosives up high in the sky where it might matter, without losing an expensive kite or balloon in the process. The scientific pluviculturist dangled his explosives a safe distance below the balloon on a lighter line branching off from the main one. Two copper wires were braided up yonder with three strands of hemp, so a simple charge from a blasting box could detonate the dangling dynamite at will.
So far this afternoon it didn’t seem to be raining. The dark smoke had drifted away on the high breezes, and there didn’t seem to be another whiff of cloud in that mighty arid-looking sky.
“That’s likely why they’re paying to have their summer sky shaken a mite,” Longarm muttered with a thin smile as he forged on up over the rise.
Then he reined in near a fence post beside the wagon trace, regarded the view to the south, and murmured aloud, “Now, ain’t that sort of pretty!”
Some cowboys and most Indians would have disagreed, but Longarm had to admire hard work and the fruits of the same. He saw no cedars where a cluster of frame structures faced him on the far side of a gentle bend in Beaver Creek. For that matter he saw no beavers, and there was hardly enough water running along the braided sandy channel to justify the title of Creek.
They’d built at such a respectful height up the far slope to show that when it was raining in the Smokey Hills to the southwest, you got more of a river than any creek around that bend. There was nothing in the way of a bridge across Beaver Creek. You didn’t need bridges to cross such prairie watercourses in dry weather, and in wet weather any bridge you might build tended to wash out. They still spoke in awe up in Denver about the time a flash flood in Cherry Creek had picked up the Larimer Street Bridge and just wiped away some of Downtown Denver, like the thunderbird had been cleaning a blackboard with a big old eraser.
Some friendly Arapaho had tried to warn the founding fathers of Denver about Cherry Creek. Longarm was inclined to agree with the folks even other Indians called “The Grandfather Nation” that the best way to get along with their Matou or Great Medicine was to ride it with a gentle hand on the reins. The folks of Cedar Bend had been smart enough to build above the high-water mark down yonder. Whether you got rain in the right amount by setting off bombs in the sky was another matter.
They seemed to be reeling that balloon back down toward an ant-pile scurry of distant folks on the far side of the valley. Whether anyone yonder knew his ass from his elbow remained to be seen. It was easier to see why they’d hired somebody to try.
The fenced-in forty acres of barley to his left looked sort of dry, but it was starting to head up and they’d likely fetch a crop on such ground water as the thrifty barley roots could still reach. As he heeled his hired bay downslope he saw other barley and a big patch of rye on the same southward-facing slope. Over yonder, facing north, he saw many more acres planted to flint corn, which was about shoulder high so far.
You planted hardy flint corn this far out on the high plains, even though an Eastern farmer’s first thoughts would be against it. But while it was true the north slopes of prairie rises caught pure frozen hell in wintertime out this way, the warmer and drier south slopes were cruel to corn in summertime. You could barely hope to grow barley or rye where the sun and south winds could hit full blast.
That balloon was about down now and sure enough, he could make out a couple of big red circus-style wagons over yonder. A lot of that corn to his south had been planted low enough for irrigation, if those tall sunflower windmills along the far edge of town meant anything. But as was ever the temptation of mankind, some of that corn and a lot more barley had been drilled in halfway up the far slope. So they had to hope, pray, or pluviculture some
