“She’s so beautiful,” Patty said, almost sighing. “We have to help her.”
Now both Stan and I were shaking our heads at my girlfriend. Everything was screwy about this assignment and it was making me slightly annoyed. No one was in danger, I wasn’t saving anyone, not even a dog, and I wasn’t playing in a poker tournament. So far all I could see was a complete waste of a perfectly good evening.
Sherri again came back to a place in front of us. “Will you help me?”
“A couple more questions,” I said. “So you need this riddle to find the Janus key?”
She shook her head. “I know where the key is at.”
“So why do you need the lost riddle?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.
“Stan,” Sherri said, smiling at my boss, “If you wouldn’t mind taking us all out of time for a moment, I’ll answer Poker Boy’s question.”
He shrugged and an instant later the sounds of the casino stopped around us. And so did everyone and everything else.
I loved being able to step between an instant of time. One of my abilities was also to take myself and others out of the natural time flow. But Stan was a ton better at it and wouldn’t have to strain to hold this for hours.
Sherri pointed to a place in the air behind her and an image like a three-dimensional movie appeared.
“That’s new,” Screamer said, looking puzzled.
“Learned it from you, actually,” Sherri said, smiling at her husband. “It’s a projection from my mind.”
“I can’t do that,” Screamer said.
Sherri looked almost longingly at her husband. “We both have our new powers. I would love to talk later.”
I was starting to get the clear understanding that she wasn’t a god, but only a superhero like three of us at the bar. And she was learning new superpowers as she went along just as all superheroes did.
She turned back to the image she was projecting in the air as everyone in the casino remained frozen in their instant of time around us.
The image showed what looked like an old ghost town from a height of about a thousand feet in the air.
“Virginia City,” Sherrie said. “South and slightly east of here.”
The view came down and focused on some old buildings, then flew inside like a bird going through a wall. “Yellow Jacket Mine,” she said. “Part of what most people think of as the Comstock Lode.”
The traveling view of the image floating in the air went straight down, under some water and finally came into a flooded huge cave.
Sherri went on narrating the tour that was coming from her own mind. “The Yellow Jacket Mine broke into this huge cave and couldn’t contain the flooding and had to retreat. No pump could ever clear it. It’s over three thousand feet under Virginia City and the water temperature is over one hundred and fifty degrees.”
At the bottom of the huge cave was a stone stand with a clear glass bubble covering it and protecting what looked like a very old key from the water.
“That’s the second Janus key,” Sherri said, her voice wispy.
“Why couldn’t these stupid keys ever be hidden above ground?” I asked, shaking my head. My warning senses were going off big time just looking at that key so far down underground and underwater.
“So why the lost riddle?” Patty asked, the spell of Sherri’s beauty clearly now broken by the little tour underground.
The image of the submerged cave vanished and Sherri just shrugged. “Not a clue what the riddle does,” she said. “Or even what it is or why it’s lost. I just know it’s attached to this key in some fashion. And we don’t dare touch the key until we understand what the riddle is all about.”
I just shook my head. “This is a very strange hobby you and your sisters have.”
Sherri laughed high and light. “Don’t you think I know that? But after you guys helped my sister get the first one, Mom thinks it would be a good idea to get all four of them and get them really protected. So she’s trying to help us.”
I didn’t want to say that having a key three thousand feet underground in one-hundred-and-sixty degree water wasn’t already pretty protected, but what did I know? Lady Luck thought this was important for some reason. And she was Stan’s boss and Stan was my boss, so by that reasoning I thought this important as well.
Stan let us slip back into the normal stream of time and the noise from the restaurant and distant casino slammed back into use like a tidal wave. And the wonderful smells from the restaurant came back as well, making my stomach rumble again.
“Okay,” I said, trying to grab onto something that made sense in all this. “Tell me when I get this wrong.”
Stan and Patty nodded and Sherri and Screamer just sort of looked at each other.
I ignored them and started trying to check off what I knew. “The four keys each have one side of the face of Janus on them. Right?”
Sherri and Stan both nodded.
“Apart they keep the doors locked, the Titans in the future, and the war between the Gods and the Titans stopped,” Sherri said.
“Got that,” I said. “And no one wants to start that war again.”
“Exactly,” Stan said.
“Does this Janus still exist?”
“No,” Sherri and Stan said at the same time. They clearly did not like that question and I made a note to ask what happened to him at a later date.
“So why would anyone associate a riddle with a key?” I asked. “And then lose all record of the riddle? I’ve only been around this superhero and god world for a short ten or so years and I’ve come to realize that all you folks have very long memories.”
“Good question,” Stan said. “But the battle between the Gods and the Titans was long before any of our times. Long before Atlantis.”
I nodded to that. I still have never asked exactly how many years all this stretched back. Another question for another time in my history lesson.
I leaned back and just stared up at the back bar. No one else said a word and Sherri moved back down the bar to serve another waitress with a tray full of dirty glasses and a long order of fresh drinks.
I tried to ignore my rumbling stomach and my desire for a cinnamon roll and just think.
On the back bar were a number of bottles of Jack Daniels, all with different colors and added names on the labels.
There were other bottles of the same brand, but different types back there as well. I stared at that for a moment and then it suddenly hit me what we were dealing with.
Being able to put things that made no sense together to make sense was one of my super powers, it seemed, and if I was right, I had just done it again.
“Stan, could you call Laverne to come and help us?”
He nodded and a moment later, without him moving, Lady Luck appeared, taking the empty stool to my right.
In my fondest dreams as a poker player, it never would have occurred to me that I would be sitting at a bar with Lady Luck herself.
Sherri finished the orders and came down the bar as her mother appeared.
“You want your usual, Mom?” she asked, smiling. Clearly the two of them had a good relationship.
“Later, honey,” Lady Luck said. “First I want to hear what Poker Boy has to say about all this.”
For the first time in a long time I wished I actually drank. I had a hunch I could use one right now. I took a deep breath and turned toward one of the most powerful gods that existed and asked the question I needed to ask.
“Do the keys have names besides one, two, three, and four?”
Lady Luck looked at me for a moment, then laughed and said, “I don’t know, but I know who to ask.”
She vanished.
I decided I could breathe again. It felt good.
I took a sip out of my Virgin Bloody Mary as Patty touched my leg and sent a calming sense through me.
“You think the key might have a name?” Sherri asked, clearly puzzled.
Stan just smiled and Screamer sort
of smiled. They had seen me ask these kind of questions before that got right to the heart of a problem.
“Just an idea,” I said.
It seemed like forever, but then suddenly Lady Luck was again sitting at the bar beside me.
And she was laughing.
“The one you all retrieved from the Titan’s city under Vegas was called Mystery. The two that have not been found yet are called Enigma and Dilemma.”
Then Lady Luck smiled at Sherri. “The one you found, dear daughter, is called Riddle.”
Sherri clapped her hands together and did a little dance as she laughed and smiled. “It’s not protected!”
“I’ll get it,” Lady Luck said, smiling at the joy her daughter felt.
She vanished and then a moment later reappeared holding the key that had been under three thousand feet of Earth and very hot water. She wasn’t wet at all.
She started to hand the key to her daughter who held her hands up. “I don’t want to touch it. Just get it safe and sound.”
“I will,” Lady Luck said.
Then she turned to me. “Once again, Poker Boy, thank you. And to your team as well for taking the time to help with this.”
It never got old having Lady Luck thank me for helping her.
Never.
Then Lady Luck looked down the bar at Screamer and smiled. “Talk to your wife. If you two got back together, she’d make a great addition to this team.”
“Mom!” Sherri said, but Lady Luck was already gone.
For the first time Stan really laughed. And hard. And that also was a rare thing as well for the God of Poker.
“Great seeing you again, Sherri,” Stan said. “And listen to your mother. We could use you.” Then he vanished.
Sherri actually blushed.
Patty smiled at Sherri and then at Screamer and touched my leg. “Come on, I’m dressed up and I think I need to do some dancing.”
“Dancing?” I asked, looking at her. In all our time together she had never told me she liked to dance. Ever.
She winked at me and squeezed my leg just a little higher and I got the message. “Oh! Dancing.”
A moment later we were in the living room of her apartment in Las Vegas, leaving Sherri and her husband alone in a crowded casino in Reno.
“Wasn’t she beautiful?” Patty asked as she headed for her bedroom.
“Sherri?” I asked. “She was all right, but not as beautiful as you by a long ways.”
“You sure know how to say the exact right things,” Patty said.
She looked back over her shoulder at me and smiled a “dancing smile” as her dress vanished, leaving her totally naked and me totally speechless.
What Came Before…
Nineteen-year-old Boston native Jimmy Gray had been traveling with his parents and older brother, Luke, headed west to find a new home and new riches.
Before even reaching Independence, they were attacked and robbed by Jake Benson and his gang. Jimmy’s parents were killed, his brother wounded.
In one of the wildest towns in all of American history, Jimmy Gray, a sheltered, educated son of a banker from Boston, suddenly finds himself very, very much alone.
But then, through some luck, he finds other young men about his age and down on their luck who might be able to help him.
Together, the five of them head west after Benson.
They end up hunting buffalo as he always dreamed of doing, but then they are hit with a massive flash flood and Jimmy is left alone, his friends more than likely dead.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BUFFALO JIMMY
PART THIRTEEN
ALONE AGAIN
THE MORNING LIGHT was barely allowing Jimmy to see the narrow side canyon around him. The air was bitingly cold, and Jimmy was soaking wet from the long night in the rain. He needed to get dry and warm quickly, before he got sick. He knew, without a doubt, that this kind of cold and wet could kill a man out here in the wilderness faster than any wild animal.
Faster than a killer like Benson.
Jimmy had to get dry and warm up as soon as he could, somehow.
In the faint light, he slowly eased himself and his two horses down off the rock ledge he had reached during the flood. The canyon was no more than a hundred paces across and the walls were as tall as three Boston banks. The stream flowing through the bottom of the canyon now was only a fast torrent, not at all dangerous-looking. But he could see the water-marks up the rock walls where the water had been last night in the flash flood. He had been lucky to survive. He had no idea how the rest of them could have.
Yesterday, there had been an easy path through the rocks. Now the way down to the main canyon and the wagon trail was completely blocked by boulders and brush and walls of mud. In one place, the water was flowing under some boulders that were far too big to get a horse over. It was clear he wasn’t getting down the canyon and back to the river that way, at least not with two horses. He was going to need to find another way out.
He took a deep breath and shouted, “Zach! Long!”
His shout echoed among the rocks and then died under the sounds of the stream.
Nothing.
No one shouted back.
He had to keep believing they were alive. He had lost his parents, and left his sick brother Luke in Independence. He couldn’t lose his friends as well. He had to find them.
Or at least find their bodies.
He shivered and felt light-headed. The cold and wet was clearly getting to him. He had to keep moving, find a way to get dry.
He headed back up the side canyon, sometimes wading in deep mud, other times climbing over rocks, looking for any trail up and over the steep rock walls. Finally he found a path that he could get the horses up to a ridge line and then work his way around and back down to the river.
At the top, in the morning sun, he stopped, took off his wet clothes and wrung the last of the cold water from them, letting the sun warm him as best it could so early in the day.
He had some mostly dry extra clothes in his saddle bag, so he put those on, then put on his light coat, and then put back on his heaviest coat. He would be sweating this way soon enough, but that was what he needed to do to get warm.
An hour later, as the warmth of the sun had him warmed back to normal, he headed back down into the wide valley that ran along the side of the North Fork of the Platte River. It took him almost three hours to go the few miles down to the trial, the riding was so rough.
No wagon companies were in sight in either direction. With one look at the wagon trail, Jimmy knew why. Every stream that flowed out of the hills above the river had flooded last night in the storm. And now the trail was cut with deep gashes, sometimes up to the height of ten men deep. Those streams would take time to work wagons through or around. The next company through here was basically going to have to build a lot of new trail.
The river itself flowed dark brown with mud and much higher than it had yesterday. There was all kind of debris floating in the river, and as Jimmy watched, the canvas top of one wagon floated past.
Jimmy rode back to the mouth of the canyon he had been trapped in, then on foot he searched the length of the huge gash in the ground from the canyon wall to the river’s edge, looking for any signs of his friends.
Nothing.
More than likely, they had been swept into the river. Maybe a couple of them had made it out downstream.
He headed down the trail they had come up yesterday. The going was slow, as he had to pick his way over one washed-out gulley after another. But finally, he reached a half dozen men working out ahead of a wagon company, trying to find or build a new trail through the area.
Jimmy talked to all of them, asking if they had run across any boys about his age along the river.
“Nope,” one man said. “Just a number of dead horses and cattle floating past. Sorry.”
Jimmy sure hoped those horses were from a company of wagons up the river farther. He didn’t want to think about any of the
m being his friends’ horses.
By the middle of the afternoon, he gave up his search and turned back west. He might as well go on to Fort Laramie. Maybe the rest of the Wild Boys would be waiting for him there. More than likely, if they had searched for him and couldn’t find him, that’s what Zach would have them do.
They would be there. He had to believe that.
PART FOURTEEN
BENSON SHOWS UP
FINALLY, ALONE AND TIRED, Jimmy came face-to-face with the killer of his parents.
With the light just barely tinting the sky on the morning of the second day after the flash flood, Jimmy had worked his way into the settlement beside the military buildings of Fort Laramie. There were a large number of saloons spaced with even more general stores than Independence had. He knew the stores sold expensive supplies for those who needed them at this point of the trip west. This would be the last major re-supply stop until the west side of the Nevada Territory. Entire wagon trains full of supplies had left Independence ahead of the main rush of settlers to stock these stores.
The town was laid out on a gentle slope, and to one side were hundreds of Sioux Indians camped in groups of lodges. Long had told them that his people would be here, trading with the settlers, but Jimmy was still surprised to see that many camped that close to the town and the military buildings.
On the other side of the town were a good three hundred wagons filling a hillside and a wide valley. Smoke drifted lazily through the crisp, clear air from all the morning campfires.
Jimmy had rode into the mostly still-dark town, moving down the main street looking for any sign of his friends or their horses.
Nothing.
Luckily, he had saved what was left of his father’s money when scrambling for safety in the flood. He needed a new tent and bedroll. He pulled his horses up to a general store that was just opening.
Suddenly, the man he hated the most walked out of the saloon right beside the store.
Jake Benson stood right there in front of Jimmy on the wooden sidewalk, not more than twenty paces away.
Smith's Monthly #5 Page 4
