Westward Weird

by Martin H. Greenberg

  No, acorns out of a slingshot do not count.

  McAllen looked at that most perfect barbacoa steaming in the Devil’s grip, and reckoned if he didn’t take it from Old Scratch’s hand, he’d be next up on the spit. But like I said, he reckoned if he did take it, he’d be bound then and forever more in service, like that Faust fellow out of the old days in the Germanies.

  Death or barbacoa?

  That right there was the temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen.

  What would you have done? This here’s the point of the story, ain’t it?

  What would you have done?

  Really and truly, on your best swear, what would you have chose?

  ~ * ~

  They heard the shot at the Broken Bow Ranch, clear as if someone had loosed a round off the porch of the bunkhouse.

  Folks heard it in Fort Caspar, too.

  Later on some claimed they heard it in Laramie, reckoned the noise for a boiler explosion or some such, but the railroad ain’t reached Laramie yet that year, so you can figure on them being liars or at the best misguided in wanting to be part of history their own selves.

  But the howl that followed, everyone heard that clear on to Fort Benton in one direction and Omaha in the other. Like a storm off the plains grabbing up sod houses and snapping telegraph poles it was. Anger and pain and rage and loss that caused drunks to stop beating their wives for a day or two, and sent even the randiest cowpokes scurrying into the revival tents for a good dose of prayer and preaching.

  You see, Eustace Prudence McAllen shot the barbacoa spit right off the posts and dumped the Devil’s dinner into the ashes and sand of the firepit below. He resisted temptation and bought himself a ticket straight to Heaven on account of nixing Lucifer’s vittles and vexing the ambitions of evil that day, in that place. Hell didn’t let out for dinner, see, on account of what he done.

  The earth split open so that the Devil and his minions could chase themselves straight down to Hell, taking that ruined carcass with them.

  When Williamson and a posse of his hands came the next morning on the bay mare’s backtrail looking for McAllen, they found him lying flat on the ground deader than a churchyard dance party. His clothes were nearly burnt off his body, his hair turned white as the Teton glaciers.

  One last piece of crispy barbacoa was stuck between his teeth, and Eustace Prudence McAllen had the expression of a man who’d died with his hands on the gates of Heaven.

  They buried him where he fell, on account of none of the horses would sit still for the body to be slung across. Williamson kept the LeMat revolver, which the metal of them double barrels looked to have been frosted but never did thaw, and dropped that piece of barbacoa into a leather pouch to take home and study, for even then he knew it for what it was.

  There weren’t no more range fires for a long time after that. Some folks took that to mean McAllen had been the torch man, but Williamson and his hands knew better. They kept their dead compadre’s name clear, and they kept the herds well away from the edges of the badlands.

  Even now, if you ride out west of Casper toward Hell’s Half Acre—for the Devil don’t cook there no more, so it ain’t his kitchen now—if’n you ask around and folk like the set of your shoulders and the light in your eyes, there’s a barbacoa pit run by some of Williamson’s daughters and granddaughters. McAllen’s Barbecue, they call it. Place ain’t on no signpost or writ down in no tax rolls, but it’s there.

  Head for the badlands and follow the scent. Just mind who’s eating on the porch when you get there, because even the Devil himself can be tempted back to this corner of Wyoming when the wind is right and the cuts of meat are just good enough.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE LAST MASTER

  OF AERONAUTICAL WINTERS

  Larry D. Sweazy

  T he platform was rickety, leaning deeply to the left, each post bound with an unknown variety of a prickly vine that had climbed up about six feet, promptly froze, and died—just like everything else within sight.

  I found the air to be pungent, more of an assault on the nose than the frigid cold. The smell of rotten eggs was so prevalent that I thought I might not be able to breathe again until we had fully arrived at our final destination, some three hundred feet in the air above us.

  Steam escaped from a nearby fumarole, and not far from us, an unused geyser boiled, ready to blow upward. The Yellowstone River was frozen over; there was at least a foot of crusty snow covering the ground for as far as the eye could see. The wind tapped at my face, and the thought of climbing even higher into the sky seemed like one of the more foolish things I had ever done.

  “The contraption ain’t been used in several years, Mr. Lockwood,” the guide said. He was a wisp of a man named Harry Norman, gaunt in the eyes and uncertain in every move he made. If the man had ever eaten a meal in his life that he’d found to be enjoyable, I would have been surprised. A shame, really, to think of such a thing, no pleasure in food, or anything else, by the look of the poor old sod.

  It wasn’t the bad smell of eggs that provoked my thought of a fine meal, just a desire to be somewhere else; in the warm restaurant of a fine hotel or an even not so fine hotel. . . but as far away from the stench and cold I’d found myself in as possible. As with most of the predicaments I encounter, it was much too late to back out now.

  “I can see that, Mr. Norman. Are you sure it still works?” I asked, rubbing my hands together, still cold even in the thick fur mittens I was wearing.

  Harry Norman looked up to the sky at our destination, cupped his eyes against the bright midday sun, made even brighter by the reflection off the snow, then eyed me with a look that held more than a tinge of fear. I was certain his breath would freeze right in front of my very eyes and break into a million little pieces.

  “You’d be best off if it didn’t work at all, I’ll tell you. That place is infested with evil, and I swore I’d never lead another soul to the top of it, and I ain’t real happy about standing here again, mind you.” He wore a pair of pearl-handled Colt .45s, both exposed on his hips, and within easy reach of his gnarled, bare fingers. They weren’t red or bothered from the cold. It might as well have been summer for all Harry Norman was concerned. I accounted the oddity to assimilation, to the years he’d spent surviving the Wyoming winters. Word was, the man had been in the valley long before the contraption, as he called it, had been built.

  I nodded, believing every word Harry Norman said. He didn’t look happy about our presence. He didn’t look happy about anything, really.

  I glanced quickly over my shoulder. Raul was staring at me. He was as tall as a mountain, well over six feet, his shadow reaching out past the platform nearly twice that far. He was so ever-present in my life that I sometimes could not remember when he had not been standing behind me, or next to me, on one adventure or another.

  As it was, he was buttoned up in a buffalo coat, not a speck of snow, ice, or moisture of any kind to be seen on his person. A leather case sat at his feet, not a scratch on it, either. I have never seen Raul without the trusted case within his reach.

  I am as accustomed to Raul’s fastidiousness as I am to a bad turn when it shows itself, at the least welcome time. His weapons are concealed. But I would never bet against Raul Scarlato because of that.

  “I have paid you good money, sir,” I said to Harry Norman. “I shall expect nothing but what has been promised to me.”

  Truth be told, it had taken nearly every cent I could access to convince Harry Norman to allow us upward.

  The invention was a one of a kind, an anomaly, but also a testament to the reach for greatness and the workmanship that it took to build such an amazing thing. Or something more sinister, if one was to believe the tales and the fear that was frozen permanently on the old man’s face.

  “Money and evil is regular bedfellows, Mr. Lock-wood, but a man’s got to eat, and buy himself entertainment once in a blue spell, or at least when the opportunity such as yours
presents itself. But I am only intent on honoring your purchase because of the letter sent up by Buffalo Bill Cody himself, I’ll tell you that.”

  The letter I carried from Bill, the same Buffalo Bill of legend, proprietor of the famous Wild West Show, was stuffed inside Harry Norman’s coat, along with what was my money—not Bill’s.

  Luckily, the letter was of true origin, and our mission direct and straightforward for the most part. There was one certain requirement left out of the directive. Bill and I knew no man would allow us within a hundred miles of the place if our escapade was fully revealed. We would have been killed on the spot, along with our quarry, if success came to us as we hoped.

  “Opportunities or foolishness?” Raul’s words were thick with his Italian accent. Even I had to strain, at times, to figure out what it was he had to say. Other times, I ignored his words even when they were clear. His stoic face never showed an ounce of pleasure from being right, but I could see victory in his eyes dancing like a twelve-year-old boy scoring a run in cricket.

  As a former member of the Cortzzzieri, the protectors of royalty and kings in his home country of Italy, Raul has taken every assignment from me with the oath of honor and a promise of not quitting until a satisfactory outcome has been achieved ... or death, whichever one comes first.

  “What’d he say?” Harry Norman asked.

  I shrugged. “Pay him no mind; he is only my manservant, and has no currency in matters of consequence such as this. We need to go up.”

  I heard a slight, indistinguishable, exhale behind me, but did not look over my shoulder this time to give Raul the pleasure of knowing I had heard him. Still, he stood at attention, another common pose, waiting for whatever was next.

  Manservant, of course, might have been too strong a word since I am neither a royal nor a king. I am only the bastard son of a generous man, who is a king. Luckily for me, I have not led the life of a pauper, nor was I cast out into the street, left to beg for my supper. A taste of gruel would leave me looking much like Harry Norman, as I think of it, and that would have been a sad turn of events for my palate and my joy of humanly comforts.

  I know the value of my own good fortune, leading an exciting and privileged life as I do and have. But my lack of station has not been without consequence. There is not a bottomless pit of money available to me for my every whim and favor. I still have to earn a living, even though I do receive a small allowance, bestowed on me annually through a tangled network of banking drafts, so that it may not, of course, be traced back to the king. As long as I keep the secret of my lineage, I will be rewarded with an annuity and the freedom to pursue my curiosities and desires—and the constant presence of Raul is mine to keep and rely on.

  It is a fair deal, and without question, I will continue to honor the arrangement for as long as I shall live.

  My mother was just a young scullery maid who caught a traveling prince’s eye. There was never a question that the future king owned the loss of her virginity. It would have been understandable for the prince to consider my mother nothing more than a conquest, and move on down the road, but that is not what happened. Somehow, moral responsibility came in to play with the man, and my mother and I were hurried out to the country and tucked away in the sweetest cottage one can imagine. It was an idyllic life, at least until my mother died, and I was forced off to a horrible boarding school that only got better once Raul showed up. Sad thing is, the king went on to marry another royal, and the queen, a beautiful woman in her own right, who knows nothing of me, has not been able to produce a son for the king. There are six daughters lined up for the throne.

  My only interest is in the present. I know nothing of the interior of castles and the requirements of more stringent manners than what is currently expected of me. America has not yet aged enough to demand all of the suffocating rules of everyday life that the Europeans have to navigate just to survive.

  Now, being at the end of my fiscal year, and down to the last few coins in my purse, I have found myself in the midst of a frozen adventure, and most certainly, I am not lost to the question of how I got into this mess in the first place.

  There was a lovely, curvaceous, Scandinavian blonde in Minneapolis who whispered my first name, Ethan, in my ear more than once, and made it sound like she was saying, “Even.” There is no way that was true, however, because I will always be in her debt for the memories on a string of almost unbearably cold nights. But that is another story. I got involved in this adventure because I needed the money, plain and simple. That and an adventure at the behest of Buffalo Bill Cody was an offer I could hardly refuse.

  “You’ll be takin’ your life into your own hands if’n you go up, Mr. Lockwood, but I won’t be responsible for the outcome,” Harry Norman said, trying to warn us off one last time.

  “I have not asked for a warranty, Mr. Norman. Just a ride. Besides, I have protection.”

  Harry Norman looked Raul up and down with an unbelieving smirk on his weathered face. “Suit yourself,” he said “But I would be worried about another way down if I was you.”

  Raul glanced at the case by his feet. “I will see to it that we get back down, whether the elevator fails or not, signore. It is my duty to have a backup plan.”

  The old man let out a definable groan of disbelief, then pushed up to the top of the platform with an arthritic limp.

  I followed, holding my breath. Buffalo Bill told me that the ride up would be one of the more harrowing aspects of my journey. At the moment, I did not disagree with any of his speculations, but as I have said, it was too late to turn back now.

  A shadow pushed over my head as Harry Norman attempted to spin an iron spoke three times the size of a wagon wheel. Metal on metal argued and complained from the cold and lack of use, but finally broke free with a great heave from the seemingly weak, old man. The effort looked to have drained Harry Norman of all of his energy. His face was ashen gray.

  I looked upward, focusing, for the first time, on the elevator that would take us to the contraption, or the skystead as it was more widely known.

  I do believe that Elisha Graves Otis himself would have been in awe of the contraption if he were standing before it, and still alive, of course.

  Advancements in technology had been rapid since 1853, when Otis first invented the elevator, but it was the skystead that was the greater accomplishment of the two. Greatest failure, as well, hovering over us, like an island in the sky, that would have and should have provoked an unbound amount of wonder and amazement in the capabilities of mankind.

  The skystead was nothing less than a town that had hoped at one time to become a city, propelled and held upward, by the power of the earth itself. In this case, the steam that was captured from the entire Yellowstone caldera.

  The town, New Ithaca, floated on pillars that looked very much like the smokestacks of London. There was no factory here, just an opportunity and a hopeful amount of construction, given over to greed, miscalculation, and of course, the unforeseen manifestation of evil. That evil was said to have escaped from the bowels of the world ... or hell, depending on one’s beliefs. That bit of information bore me no comfort. Only a bounty, so to speak.

  The ground in the skystead of New Ithaca was a light platform constructed of a wood frame fifty acres wide. Hard woven grass and buffalo skins strengthened the foundation, and as I saw it, the construction was a feat worthy of a wonder of the world. The fact that such a thing floated in the air— still, after all that had happened—was a complete success of engineering skill. Even the underbelly of the skystead was an incredible sight to behold.

  New Ithaca had been built by a small group of investors, hoping to populate an inhospitable land.

  Buffalo Bill Cody was one of the main investors, who, of course, lost his entire investment once the project . . . failed, as it were. It nearly bankrupted him, and the plan he has shared with me would help avenge that loss. That is, if Raul and I were successful in our quest.

  The eleva
tor arrived at the foot of the platform just as a heavy push of wind spun around me.

  Flecks of diamond-hard snow crystals stabbed at my face, and somewhere in the distance, I heard a wolf howl. Whether it was a warning or a coincidence, I’ll never know, but the howl sent a shiver coursing up and down my back like never before.

  Deep in the recesses of my mind, I remembered Raul reciting the motto of the Corazzieri upon our first meeting: “Virtus in periculis firmior,” which means “Courage becomes stronger in danger.” I drew no comfort from the motto, and I doubted it to be true at the moment.

  “You know what to do if we don’t come back?” I said to Harry Norman.

  He nodded his head, and broke my gaze. “It’ll be about time, that’s all I have to say about that. About damn time.”

  ~ * ~

  The elevator jerked upward, and I watched Harry Norman become a smaller man, the change of perspective not lost on me. I have never been one to consider myself fearful of heights, but my knees trembled as we inched slowly toward the gates of New Ithaca.