Monk Punk and Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus

by Aaron French

  Still, I had pay to earn.

  “O’Shea of the St. Louis Daily Times at your service, gentlemen.” I puffed my cigar and eyed them to see what came next. Meanwhile, a warm washcloth scratched across my shoulders as Molly scrubbed earnestly at another layer of dirt.

  “Too hard, mon chéri?” she asked.

  The two cowpokes ogled Molly, and I figured that both of them together couldn’t scratch up the five dollars needed to get her attention. Of course, I’d met Molly just an hour ago, but gold eagles talk and there’s a certain charm and advantage to a newsman.

  I glanced at the auburn-haired whore. “Not at all darling, but the water is a bit tepid.”

  She signaled a cross-eyed boy who lifted a bucket of steaming water off a pot-bellied stove and dumped it in the tub. He sprinkled some perfume from Paris but I knew better. Even Molly with all her finery and French words was from somewhere south of Topeka and east of Texas.

  I slid deeper into the steaming water. Outside, the wind buffeted the wavy glass of an ice-covered window as the first snows of winter came howling. The frigid wind slipped through the loose boards that made up Dyer’s Hotel and Saloon.

  “We got a letter.”

  “From the boss,” added the other.

  “Well, don’t just stand there gawking at the pretty lady. Read it.”

  The tall cowpoke stared in no particular direction. “I can’t read,” he confessed and the shorter one shrugged his shoulders.

  I dried my hand and motioned for the note. The cowpoke reached inside his duster and a crumpled paper emerged. The words were scribbled in coarse lead strokes.

  O’Shea. Come at once. Got to see to believe. Joe.

  That would be Joe Shaughnessy, superintendent of the Union Pacific construction crew for the Transcontinental Railroad and fellow Irishman. Despite the fact that I knew he’d have a fine bottle of whiskey, I let out a frustrated puff of smoke. I had hoped for a few days rest before moving on.

  “How far have the tracks gotten, boys?”

  “’Bout thirty miles west.”

  “Can we hitch a ride?”

  “Nope. Locomotive got stuck in Nebraskie. Won’t be here for weeks, they say. Missouri River done took out a trestle near Omaha.”

  “Not even a supply runner?”

  They both shook their heads. “Broke down. ’Sides, supplies are already got ’til the tunnel gets through.”

  “How about a freight wagon?”

  The taller cowpoke wrinkled his face and I figured they’d already told me more than they actually knew. Shit, following the train tracks in the snow meant four days, maybe five, in the saddle.

  “Tell the stable to get my horse ready and wait for me in the saloon.” From the vest pocket of my clothes, I flipped them a silver dollar. “Buy yourself a couple drinks but no getting into trouble.”

  The two cowpokes grinned.

  “Jeez, thanks Mister. How long you gonna be?”

  “I don’t rightly know, boys.”

  I winked at Molly. There was something else I hadn’t done for a month, and I wasn’t about to leave Cheyenne just yet.

  ***

  No matter the season, there is a beauty to the Great Plains. In spring, endless stretches of delicate flowers and deep grasses ripple in fragrant breezes as far as the eye can see. In summer, the heat turns everything a bristly golden brown, and hot winds blow gritty dust while the scent of sage permeates the air. In autumn, the cooler days tell the badgers and foxes and beavers to burrow and nest before the ground is speckled with frost.

  But now, it was winter, the driving wind and snow were a mighty bitch, and the two cowpokes and I huddled under dusters and blankets as our horses followed the steel tracks along the scar the construction of the railroad had made. Under the God-forsaken gray skies the world was lifeless, my toes and fingers were frozen stiff, my ass ached, and the memories of Molly and the too familiar itch in my crotch was all I had to pass the hours.

  Miserable as I was, I had no desire to return to the comforts of Saint Louis. After Lee surrendered, and I no longer held a commission as a War Correspondent, I found employment with the St. Louis Daily Times. A Mississippi steamboat captain suggested I’d find adventure out west, which I must admit, had been true. Between Indian raids, cattle rustling, saloon brawls, faro, and the general sin and corruption that the railroad brought, I made a fine living describing it all to the yokels back east.

  So here I was trailing behind Lucky Jim and his pal Shorty in search of a news story. Ahead of us were the Laramie Mountains, barely visible through the blowing snow and raging winds. Beyond, was Laramie City, a town that smelled like a million polecats. Just last summer I’d reported on the lynching of the Long Brothers at the Bucket of Blood Saloon and I’d hoped never to visit that cesspool of humanity again.

  My hayburner stumbled and I kicked it to pick up the pace. I’d been half-asleep and Lucky Jim and Shorty were nearly out of sight. My horse broke into a reluctant half-trot and I caught up.

  “How much further?” I shouted over the wind.

  “Two, maybe three miles.”

  We bent our heads to conserve heat and in an hour I got the whiff of campground smoke. Looking up, I could see a temporary city of canvas tents surrounded by stacked iron tracks and thousands of railroad ties. Just beyond, crews of Chinese and Irishmen were leveling ground and laying tracks, even in this weather.

  Shorty took my horse and I was grateful for the warmth of Shaughnessy’s tent. After frontier pleasantries and a few snorts of Tullamore Dew, feeling crept into my fingers and toes. As I lit a cigar, Shaughnessy got straight down to business.

  “Watch this,” he said.

  From his desk, covered in plat maps and letters of correspondence, he lifted a set of railroad tie tongs from a drawer. He dropped them to the dirt floor.

  The tongs moved.

  About a half an inch.

  “Damn. How much do those weigh?” I asked, downing another shot of whiskey.

  The tongs jerked erratically and then edged forward.

  “’Bout ten pounds. It’s happening to every damned piece of iron in the camp. Nails, tools, skillets, even the goddam railroad tracks. We got to keep everything tied down or it just crawls away.”

  We watched as the tongs scrabbled forward another few inches. Then, as dramatically as it started, it stopped.

  “Comes and goes,” said Shaughnessy. He threw open the flap to his tent and framed in the opening was a snow-covered peak. “That’s where the damn thing’s trying to get. Last week we let a hammer just keep going. Took it four days but it worked itself all the way to the mountain.”

  “Got to be powerful magnetism,” I said.

  “Agreed,” said Shaughnessy. “The problem is I’ve got to blast a tunnel through that mountain.”

  ***

  A shrill scream rent the air as the Chinaman’s arm was ripped from its socket. He tumbled from his mule and blood spurted into the air and fell as half-frozen reddish lumps onto the snowpack.

  Before anyone could dismount, the Chinaman became still. Lucky Jim alighted from his horse and nudged the motionless body with the toe of his boot. He didn’t have to say what we all knew.

  It had been eleven days and the railroad tracks were now three miles closer to the peak. I’d ridden out with the survey crew to the base of the mountain. The Chinaman had been carrying a pickaxe with a leather strap slung over his shoulder. Without warning, the pickaxe flew to the mountain, leaving a gaping flesh hole of shattered bone and gore.

  A fierce tug at my pants nearly pulled me off my horse. I unbuckled my belt in haste, and watched it soar into the bright blue and cloudless winter sky. My horse reared violently and I yanked the reins tighter as the bit and stirrups tried to follow.

  Thank God the magnetic force left us a few moments later or I would have ended up trampled. Still, in that short time, all the hand tools had ripped through their carrying sacks and disappeared skyward. Even the heavy surveying equipme
nt had sailed toward that ominous mountain.

  As Lucky Jim calmed our horses and the surveyor dug through the snow to scoop up soil, we hoisted and tied the dead Chinaman’s body over his saddle.

  We headed back to camp.

  That night Shaughnessy and I were summoned to the surveyor’s tent. As we entered, he looked up from a microscope, his eyes tired and bloodshot.

  “Something odd,” he said motioning to the sacks of soil taken on our surveying trip. “There’s not a trace of iron in this dirt.”

  “Damn magnetism,” said Shaughnessy.

  “It’s not magnetism,” corrected the surveyor with surety. “There’s nickel and cobalt present. If it were magnetism, all the ferrous elements would be missing.”

  “Then what the hell is it?” I asked.

  The three of us stood in silence.

  No one knew.

  ***

  Eight days later, the explosion that blew the first hole of the Laramie Tunnel sprayed us with gravel while the heavier rocks fell nearer the mountainside. That afternoon an Indian on horseback appeared on the rise. Maybe it was coincidence or maybe noise travels a long ways in Wyoming.

  Rifles were raised not knowing if the intruder was hostile. Most Indians had been rounded up for their own safety and were in South Dakota or Oklahoma. Still, there were renegades, bandits, and ornery folk that just refused to go.

  Shaughnessy lowered his field glasses as the Indian approached the camp. “Nothing to worry about. Just an old man looking for booze.”

  But the old Indian hadn’t come for firewater.

  He’d come to warn us.

  Lucky Jim had lived with a half-breed whose Indian family, when they caught up with her, took exception to his amorous relations. He’d been lucky enough to get away with his scalp. However, he’d also learned to speak some Indian. With his help, and the old Indian’s broken English, we managed to figure out what he’d come to tell us.

  When the world was in darkness and covered in deep water Naschuai, the Spider God, fell to earth. Lonely, he dried the land, planted forests, and from leftover mud, he created the First Man, the First Woman, and all the other creatures.

  In those days, the Spider God lived with the tribes and told them how to hunt buffalo. How to dance. How to make fire to survive the cold of winter. How to make children.

  Many seasons passed and the Spider God became famished for he was not of this world. Twelve tribes banded together to save the Spider God by bringing him many stones, but in the end he went into the mountain to hibernate like Tschai, the Bear.

  At that point I stopped listening to the droning of the old man. Over the last three years I’d heard dozens of these stories involving Coyote, Bear, Eagle, or Badger. And although it was superstitious horseshit, I have to admit it added a certain flavor to my dispatch.

  Ancient Indian God Threatens Transcontinental Railroad.

  It was a fine report, detailing the odd magnetism, the mysterious death of the Chinaman, the ancient legend, and the threat to the railroad.

  Now I don’t mean to sound callous about our red-skinned friends. I was there when General Sherman said, “The only good Indian I ever saw was a dead Indian.” For the official record, I do not proscribe to that school of thought.

  At the edge of the camp, I slipped the old Indian a ten dollar gold piece and sent him on his way before the railroad thugs figured he was going to be trouble.

  ***

  A general uneasiness swept through the camp as word of the old Indian’s story moved from soup pot to soup pot and bunk to bunk. By day six of tunnel digging, work had slowed to a crawl and Shaughnessy was furious. Threats were exchanged as workers demanded more pay and railroad goons worked over the ringleaders.

  In all this confusion no one but I noticed the inexplicable magnetic force had disappeared. And on clear nights one could see a narrow ray filled with dancing lights, like the aurora borealis, appear from the summit of the desolate mountain. Focused like the narrow beam of a half-shuttered lantern, the colorful lights reached to the stars.

  As the days passed, the tunnel progressed steadily deeper into the bowels of the mountain. When completed, the shaft of the Laramie Tunnel was to be slightly more than two thousand feet long.

  The crews worked ’round the clock. The mostly Irish crew worked day and drank all night playing dominos. The Chinamen worked the afternoon and smoked opium while they played a game called mahjong. Ex-slaves, criminals, Confederate deserters, and the ignorant toiled all night.

  To extend the tunnel, the workers drilled by hand into the dense stone and packed the holes with black powder. Then, they’d run for daylight as the fuses burned. It was a hard way to earn six dollars a month. In the first week over a half-dozen men were blown to bits when their lanterns sparked the powder prematurely.

  On a good shift, the tunnel would move forward twenty or thirty feet. On a bad shift, the roof would collapse and nothing happened until the debris was cleared.

  Life was uneventful for nearly three weeks.

  “Everybody’s dead,” I heard someone hollering as I looked up from my notes. The cry had traveled through the camp from man to man.

  There had been no explosion, so I joined the running throng that surged to the tunnel entrance. Iron tracks now pierced the mountain about fifteen hundred feet, and two bedraggled tunnel-diggers had emerged into the daylight on a rail handcar. I barely recognized Shorty, who had taken a job as a digger since being a horse wrangler didn’t pay as much. Shorty slid from the handcar and slumped against its wheels.

  “Dead,” gasped the digger that wasn’t Shorty.

  Although they were covered in blood and grime I could see something was horribly wrong. Shorty was white as a ghost and his fingernails had fallen out. A pinkish gruel oozed from irregular welts that covered his face and exposed hands. Rolling onto his side, Shorty frantically shoved the snow aside and started to eat the soil below.

  Two men restrained him.

  “Shorty,” I shouted over the voices of the frantic men encircling the two diggers. “What happened?”

  Shorty’s head wobbled as he focused on me. He spit a wad of saliva and dirt encased in a pinkish gruel.

  “A light came like a shiny rainbow.”

  It was the only poetic thing I’d ever heard Shorty say.

  And then he died.

  I looked up to see if the other digger had some answers but whatever he knew would go to the grave as well.

  ***

  “I need men,” said Shaughnessy, standing atop a flat wagon. A grumble swept through the assemblage at the tunnel entrance, but no one stepped forward.

  “Mr. Shaughnessy,” someone called out, “no man is going into that tunnel ’til we know it’s safe.” From behind the group of Irish workers came the clatter of the Chinese workers whose words were indecipherable but whose concurrence was clear.

  “I’ll pay ten dollars a man,” Shaughnessy conceded, bit no digger came forward.

  “You’re a bunch of pathetic cowards,” Shaughnessy concluded as he motioned to the surveyor and me. “We’re going into the tunnel and I want a shift of men ready to work when we return.”

  A foul storm had swept from the north and the approaching clouds bespoke heavy snows. However, word had arrived that the tracks to Omaha were clear and the supply train would arrive within days. Shaughnessy was behind schedule and progress is what he needed.

  He was convinced the workers had struck a pocket of underground gas. We had waited overnight for the gas to clear, and now the three of us lit candles to enter the dark tunnel. We had removed all metal from our bodies and were weaponless.

  The candle flames flickered across the rough walls and our hollow footsteps were the only sound to be heard. We could have taken the railcar but Shaughnessy felt a measured approach was safest.

  After a hundred feet, we came to the alcove where the black powder was stored. Here, amongst the stacked barrels of explosives, we found a wooden birdcage with three f
rightened canaries. They were alive but apparently had nothing to sing about.

  “Bring them,” said Shaughnessy moving deeper into the tunnel. The surveyor followed us, a dripping candle in one hand and the cage in the other.

  In a quarter mile, we found to the first bodies. These men had died on the run, every few feet we had to step over another corpse, arms outstretched toward the distant tunnel entrance. Under yellowish flames, I could see welted faces flecked with dried pinkish goo, their eyes shrunken in their hollows, and their skin pale and translucent.

  I stepped on a rail as I maneuvered to get around a trio of bodies and was surprised as the rail snapped under my weight. Shining light on it, I could see it had turned to a dusty brittle substance.

  “Over here,” I cried, and my companions came closer. Shaughnessy bent to examine the rail. I walked deeper into the tunnel and crushed another long section with my boot.

  “It’s defective,” he said.

  “Can’t be,” said the surveyor, resting the birdcage and scooping rail debris into a cloth bag.

  “Well something is sure the hell wrong with it,” said Shaughnessy.

  There had been a hundred and twenty men working in the tunnel and they were all dead—lifeless and deformed like the first unfortunate men we encountered. It was a gruesome sight, as though we had found an entrance to Hell.

  And then, I looked above me. I had suddenly realized not a single tool was to be seen.

  But there they were.

  Stuck to the roof of the tunnel, dozens of pickaxes, shovels, chisels, drills, and bits. From the largest tool to the smallest, they were suspended above our heads. I spied a wooden broom. Climbing on a scaffold, I poked with the broom handle to dislodge a pickaxe.

  “Look out below,” I said.

  I prodded a pickaxe head, and when I did, it turned to dust and drifted to the tunnel floor.