The Weird Wild West (The Weird and Wild Series)

by Faith Hunter

  “Miss?” Reghaster interrupted them. “This,” he held up the card he’d just punched, “will show whether you have a reservation.” He inserted the card into an orifice in the machine, clacked a lever, and stepped back. “Now we wait for a moment.” He sounded like he thought finding a reservation wouldn’t change matters. The teapot whistle increased in volume.

  A new clacking sounded from within the machine, and another punched card poked out of a different orifice. Reghaster removed the new card to another machine, inserted it, and again stepped back. The second machine began teapot-whistling and clacking with slender arms that slapped out of a well in its center onto a sheet of paper.

  “That looks ever so much like one of those typing machines on which Mister Twain writes his humorous books!” Miss Kitty Belle exclaimed.

  “Yes, it’s been modified for automatic writing,” Reghaster said with a sniff. The clacking stopped and he whipped the sheet of paper from the machine and looked it over. His expression of superiority quickly vanished as he read, and he ran a finger around the inside of his collar.

  “Miss, this says your registration was made by Mister Pinkerton himself.” He cleared his throat. “Would that be the Mister Pinkerton?”

  She smiled at him.

  “Oh, dear.” He read farther and said again, “Oh, dear. There is a note appended to the reservation, a note from Colonel Gimble, to accord you every courtesy.”

  “Colonel Gimble owns the Glittering Nugget, along with other establishments in the territory,” Cheyenne Walker said in answer to Kitty Belle’s eloquently raised brow.

  After confirming the reservation—and again reading the note from his employer—Reghister’s fingers veritably danced over the levers of the Babbage Analytical Engine, causing the teapot-whistle to sing merrily. After a moment—somewhat longer than the one it had taken to discover Miss Kitty Belle’s reservation—a card poked out of the same orifice as the reservation had.

  “Ah, Miss Belle, I do wish to apologize for the misunderstanding earlier, and to make amends,” Reghaster said. “To that end, I can,” his eyes skimmed the card, “I can put you in a suite. Not, of course, the bridal suite—” he blushed at that mention, “but certainly a suite superior to the simple bed-sitting room your reservation requires.” He shot an embarrassed glance at Cheyenne Walker. “That is, naturally, at no additional charge to either you or to your employer.” He briskly tapped the bellhop’s bell, and turned to fetch the key to the suite he was assigning to her.

  Cheyenne Walker accompanied Miss Kitty Belle as she followed the bellhop. Her luggage was in the bellhop’s care.

  “Mister Walker, the whistling of the Babbage Analytical Machine,” she asked, “is it steam-operated, as were the great wheels on the Samuel Clemens?”

  “It is indeed. As were the fans that propelled the Argus, and as is the Otis that will convey you to the ninth floor.”

  “The ninth floor.” She shook her head in wonder. Such a tall building would barely be possible were it not for Mister Otis and his marvelous lifting apparatus.

  “Ah, but the Glittering Nugget has twelve floors.” Walker sounded so pleased with twelve floors that a casual over hearer might be forgiven for assuming that he was the proprietor.

  An elevating room was waiting when they reached its lobby, where Cheyenne Walker and Miss Kitty Belle parted company.

  He gave the Pinkerton agent a slight bow and asked, “Might I have the pleasure of your company at dinner this evening?”

  “I would be displeased if you didn’t desire it, Mr. Walker,” she answered with a smile and a dip of her head.

  “Will six o’clock suffice?”

  “Let us make it half past.”

  “Half past six it is. Until then.”

  ~*~

  Vlanch kept a cautious eye toward the immediate environs of the Glittering Nugget, watching for any who might see him and Grubble as they slowly made their way toward the bordering trees. He knew that their forms would look to a Man like nothing so much as two jumbles of rocks: a careful observer might notice that their parts maintained their relative positions, or that they were moving in defiance of Galileo’s gravity law, that they didn’t move toward the center of the Earth, but rather sideways, toward the edge of the trackway. And even a bit uphill.

  But he saw no one looking their way, not even with the most casual of glances, much less the lingering look required to see their non-Galilean movement.

  And he knew that the Men in the aboveground cave possessed gold and gems. If the cave were shattered, he could get into it and find that gold and those gems, keeping his promise to his mate.

  They kept up their cautious movement.

  ~*~

  Half past six found Cheyenne Walker ensconced at a table that gave him a clear view of the entrance to Placer’s Poke, the Glittering Nugget’s dining salon. His wait for Miss Kitty Belle wasn’t excessively long, merely long enough to pique his appetite for her company.

  When she arrived, the maitre’d bowed her in like visiting royalty; he seemed nearly overwhelmed by her glory.

  Walker stood as if physically drawn to his feet. “You look spectacular, Miss Kitty Belle,” he said, his gaze traveling appreciatively over her brocaded skirt of crimson arabesques on a field of ebony. He liked that there was no bustle, and the way her jacket was patterned in reverse of the skirt’s coloring. It hung open down the front framing the pale pink of a ruffled blouse. The jaunty angle of the hat cocked on her crown teased a smile from Walker’s lips. Brilliant feathers cascaded from one side of the hat, and the opposing, higher, brim was speckled with seashells. He added his bow to that of the maitre’d.

  “And you, Cheyenne Walker,” she said as she eased onto the chair drawn back for her by a waiter, taking in Walker’s freshly brushed frock coat, ruffled shirt, and string tie held beneath his chin by an onyx clip, “look quite dashing yourself.”

  On the maitre’d’s recommendation, she had quail in puff pastry, and Walker ordered pheasant with figs. They shared a bottle of sauvignon blanc.

  Once sated, they engaged in small talk over coffee. Until she said casually, “I heard a rumor that an engineer on a routine inspection of the steam works vanished. Have you heard about that?”

  Walker cocked his head. “I thought you were on holiday.”

  “I am. But a detective can’t help but overhear things and wonder about them.”

  He shrugged. “I also have heard that rumor. I’ve also heard that the engineer, by name of Hyram Scott, was later seen in the Yellowstone territory spending gold and attempting to sell diamonds. And I heard he was doing the same at the same time in Dodge City, Kansas.”

  “Well! And where might he have found gold and diamonds?”

  “Not from any of the guests here. At least, none have reported such a theft. Neither was the security of the hotel’s safe breached.”

  Miss Kitty looked out the window, at the climbing face of the Front Range behind the hotel. “Gold has been found in many places in Colorado. It could be that there is gold near here.”

  “And a Dwarven gold mine?”

  Her eyes went unfocused for a moment, then she said, “I’ve long been fascinated by the workings of steam. Do you think I could visit the steam room?”

  “Certainly. I’m sure the hotel’s manager will allow us to examine the basement.” Although he did wonder about her sudden change of topic.

  “Sir.” An attendant interrupted, leaning in to whisper into Walker’s ear.

  “Thank you. I’ll be right there.” Walker rose to his feet and essayed a bow to his dinner companion. “I fear duty calls, Miss Kitty. My table awaits me, along with gamblers who wish to attempt to divest me of my money. Shall we meet again for breakfast, and then hence to the sub-levels?”

  She tipped her head and graced him with a smile. “I’m sure you will be able to pay for both our breakfasts.”

  ~*~

  The din of the steamworks grew from almost inaudible to nearly deafenin
g as Cheyenne Walker and Miss Kitty Belle descended a long flight of stairs tucked away behind the accounting office. There were whistles and clanks and pings and pops; all the sounds of metal expanding and contracting as it heated and cooled, containing the steaming-hot water it directed from boilers to destinations through pipes. All of which pipes had welded valves joints that sometimes, Walker knew and Kitty Belle suspected, sprang leaks.

  Chief Engineer James Bankey, who had been alerted by the manager to expect visitors, met them in a small, gas-lit anteroom at the foot of the stairs. Conversation was possible so long as one spoke in a loud voice.

  “Mr. Walker, Miss Belle,” Bankey said, giving them a satisfied look. So often visitors came clad in their holiday finery, such clothing destined to be ruined by the oil and dirt and steam beyond the anteroom. These two, at least, wouldn’t complain about the state of their clothes after they left: Walker wore a canvas overcoat and trousers, and Kitty Belle a well-worn denim skirt and matching jacket, much more suitable clothing for their visit. “I’ve been instructed to accord you every consideration,” he said as though delivering a rote presentation. “So I can, for a short time, spare Thomas, one of our apprentices, to escort you about and answer your questions—to the best of his necessarily limited ability, him being only an apprentice.” He indicated a sturdy young man standing at his left shoulder. “Is this satisfactory?”

  “It is more than satisfactory, Mr. Bankey,” Walker said. “We had thought we might have to stumble through your environs unguided and be abjectly ignorant of what we looked on,” he jibed, suspecting Bankey would rather visitors wandered unattended provided they didn’t touch anything.

  Bankey snorted. “Not likely I’d allow civilians to traipse about my workings and get into who knows what mischief.

  “But since I must,” he grudgingly added, “you had best wear these.” He reached into a pocket of his grease-stained overalls and drew out two sets of ear mufflers. “Without these, it might be hours after leaving here before you can hear normally again.” After adjusting the mufflers on Walker and Kitty Belle, he resumed his own, as did the apprentice.

  “Now, Thomas,” he said in an even louder voice, one that sounded through the mufflers as from a distance, or penetrating a dense fog, “take good care of our guests.”

  Beyond the foyer, the din was so great that the mufflers hardly seemed to reduce the noise. Walker quickly saw that some of the sunlight funneling into the cavernous space was deflected to an array of mirrors on the ceiling, reflecting it to bathe the space with light.

  “How do we not hear this inside the hotel?” Miss Kitty shouted, leaning close to Cheyenne Walker’s ear.

  He leaned close to her ear and shouted, “It’s not directly under the hotel. It’s under the sun-towers.”

  She didn’t strain her voice replying, merely nodded as she recalled the group of parabolic-mirrored towers such as she’d seen in other locations—only not so many together. Indeed, they stood at a slight distance from the hotel. The earth would absorb the sound and vibrations of the steamworks. She remembered that the mirrors captured the rays of the sun, and focused them to heating mirrors under the boilers. One tower for each boiler, she assumed.

  While there was space around each boiler to allow easy access for the engineers who tended them, elsewhere passages were tight, and people moving from one place to another sometimes brushed against hot pipes, scorching their clothing or smearing grease on them. Cheyenne Walker and Miss Kitty Belle were no exception. It wasn’t long before she looked at her sleeves and skirt and decided she’d likely have to discard the garments after this expedition. A penetrating glance told her that though Walker’s coat and trousers suffered more than her clothing, they were of a sturdier material than hers, and would more likely survive the steamworks to be worn another day.

  Thomas didn’t attempt to talk to them, but rather contented himself with gestures, and tracing patterns in the air. Probably describing the inner working of the steam in the pipes.

  The wending path the apprentice led them on eventually reached a wall, where the constant din was less. Walker drew him close and asked about the stony nature of the wall.

  Still signing rather than strain his voice, Thomas indicated that the basement was dug into bedrock. Nodding his understanding, Walker then asked if Thomas had known Hyram Scott. When the apprentice nodded, Walker asked if he knew what had happened to the man. Thomas spread his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.

  “Where was he last seen?” Kitty Belle shouted.

  Thomas looked into the distance, then waved a “follow-me.” He led them to another section of the bedrock wall, where he again spread his hands, this time with a shrug.

  Before either of them could ask who had been the last person to see Scott, a whistle, far louder than any they’d heard before, blasted through the steamworks. Thomas’ eyes and mouth popped wide, and he signed them to stay put, then dashed off.

  “I think we should find our way out,” Walker mouthed, but Miss Kitty wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was staring at the wall they stood next to. Walker’s eyes followed her gaze.

  The bedrock here had been disturbed.

  There was a filigree of cracks in the face of the rock. In a couple of places, flakes had chipped off, so the cracks seemed to be wider under the surface than on it.

  Walker drew a folding knife from a pocket of his coat and used its blade to pry a flake from one of the cracks. Not only was the crack wider under the surface, there was what looked to be a foreign, whitish substance inside it, bulging toward the surface. He used the point of his blade to scrape off a little of the substance and touched it to his tongue.

  He leaned close to Miss Kitty and said loudly, “Lime.” Someone had used cement to seal the cracks—from the inside!

  Walker removed the muffler from his right ear and pressed it against the cracked surface. Miss Kitty did the same. They exchanged astonished looks.

  While they were considering the cemented cracks that widened beneath the surface, and the sounds they’d heard from beyond it, Thomas reappeared and waved at them to follow him. In a few moments he had them back at the entrance to the cellar.

  Inside it, the apprentice said his first words to them. “Mr. Bankey hopes you enjoyed your visit. Now it’s time for you to leave.” He held out his hands to receive the mufflers they’d worn. As soon as he had them, he left the two with nothing to do but climb the long flight back to the ground floor of the Glittering Nugget.

  ~*~

  Upon gaining the ground floor, they retired to their own rooms to refresh and change into clean clothes, agreeing to meet again in the Placer’s Poke. They were shown to a table in an alcove, where they were unlikely to be overheard by other diners. They waited until the bread and cheese plate they ordered was served before they began talking about what they’d seen—and heard.

  “Ladies first. What did you hear?” Walker said, daubing mustard on bread for a chunk of cheese.

  “It didn’t sound like the sea in my ear, like a conch shell makes,” she said. “There was a faint two-tone beat, a sort of high-low, repeated in different registers.” She shook her head at the memory.

  “Punctuated by faint clinks, as a pick might make striking stone,” Walker said.

  She nodded. “Most peculiar,” she agreed.

  “Did you notice the patterning of the cracks?”

  She poked her fork at chunks of cheese while remembering the face of the wall. “Again odd. It was as though the wall had been reassembled.”

  “After having been broken through from the other side.” He peered unfocused into a never-never for a long moment, before slowly saying, “There are old legends of Dwarves mining for gold and gems in the front range. But the legends always put them in remote locations where hardly anybody ever goes. Certainly no place where a white man ever stumbles across them. I wonder if it’s possible that Dwarves are mining here.”

  Miss Kitty Belle looked at Cheyenne Walker and nodde
d sagely. “I suspect that on the other side of that repaired wall, there just might be a Dwarven mine.”

  “Do you think that’s even remotely possible?” he asked, surprised.

  She shrugged. “I don’t advise opening that wall to find out. The little I’ve heard of Dwarves, they seem disinclined to welcome visitors to their mines.”

  ~*~

  Vlanch and Grubble, still slowly moving, had at length penetrated the forest at the edge of the avalanche trackway and were working their way to a spot directly above the Glittering Nugget Hotel. They increased their speed and headed uphill, aiming for a field of boulders above the trees. Particularly for a giant boulder that perched just above the beginning of a knife-edge ridge that plunged a short distance down the slope.

  ~*~

  On the morrow, Miss Kitty Belle and Cheyenne Walker joined an expedition of hotel guests for a picnic high on the slope above the hotel. On preparing to leave his room, Walker had glanced at his Gladstone bag, in which his Buntline Special revolver was stored. A second’s consideration told him neither grizzly bear nor mountain lion would attack a sizable party, so he had no need of it.

  The group consisted of some ten vacationers, led by a mountain guide named Beavertrap Jackson, and accompanied by a small coterie of hotel staff bearing food, drink, dinnerware, and silver, as well as tablecloths on which to lay out the provisions. It was cool under the trees. Not bracingly, but cool enough that there was little perspiration dripping off the group of mostly flat-landers. The slow amble at which they climbed aided in keeping them relatively dry. After a walk of close to an hour and a half, they reached a patch of nearly level ground where rustic tables and benches had been erected to receive the cloths and provisions.

  “So much for roughing it,” someone in the group quipped, which elicited relieved laughter from most of the group.