Robinson Crusoe 2245: (Book 2)

by E. J. Robinson

  PART TWO

  “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.”

  -Cormac McCarthy

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cowboytown

  They marched him downhill through the belly of the train yard. Robinson got his first look at the locomotives up close. They were magnificent, towering beasts made of iron and steel. Someone had taken great care to fix them up.

  The men hadn’t bothered shackling Robinson’s hands. There was little need with two pistols at his back. Or so they thought.

  He’d heard the click of their loading mechanisms and knew the explosive charge was a finger tug away. But there were a lot of steps that had to happen. The eyes registering movement. The brain sending a signal to act. The hand doing what it was told. It all added up to time.

  Neither man seemed nervous about pointing a weapon at Robinson, but he didn’t panic. He’d had guns at his back before.

  The men were largely silent. The older of the two had a gut that folded over his trousers and drew heavy breaths as he walked. If it came to it, he wouldn’t be hard to overcome.

  The second man was the problem. He was short but stocky through the chest and shoulders. He had a thick red beard, stained dark with the substance he spit out again and again. And he had wild eyes. Every time Robinson looked back at him, the man grinned as if to say, Go ahead and try.

  At the top of the next rise, a sprawling ancient city came into view. To the left was a vast collection of commercial buildings and towers. Only one was toppled over, but all were devoid of glass.

  If there was any activity there, Robinson couldn’t see it.

  The area to the right was different. The once-paved streets had been filled with dirt, and they were clogged with horse-drawn wagons, kids, and dogs. Robinson saw women walking the sidewalks in pairs, stopping to point at dresses in a window or exiting stores with bags in hands.

  Atop the corner buildings of that main road, men with rifles watched over the crowd. They all looked identical, with thick mustaches, heavy coats, and wide-brimmed hats.

  The older man nodded to one as they passed, and he signaled back. That’s when Robinson’s escorts returned their pistols to their holsters.

  On the side of a brick building, an ancient sign had been re-erected. Rust had eaten its edges, but most of the words were still clear. They read:

  W lc me to Nash ille

  But someone had crossed out the last word and written over it:

  Cowboytown

  Music wafted out over the din. Robinson recognized the sound as a piano. But this one sounded much different than the box he’d stumbled upon when he first landed on the continent a year and a half before.

  This was no tinkling of the keys. It was buoyant and spirited, with great crescendos that were accompanied by the cheers of a rowdy crowd.

  As the trio turned up this main street, Robinson noticed a man on a stepladder lighting a gas lamp. More were interspersed every fifty or so paces, suggesting someone had taken the time to reconstruct the infrastructure of this city. But who? And why?

  A few townspeople glanced at Robinson, but most paid him no attention. Almost all of the men wore belts around their waists, each displaying one of those old-style pistols and a row of cartridges lined up around the back like soldiers in formation.

  Do they hand out those weapons to everyone who passes through town? Robinson wondered.

  “Who you got there, Mox?”

  Robinson looked up to see a girl barely older than himself leaning over a balcony railing. Her face was heavily painted, and she was dressed in dainty lace clothes that left little to the imagination.

  “You find me a stud colt wandering the prairie?” she yelled.

  Mox, the red-bearded man, spit, revealing at least two missing teeth. There could have been more.

  “I think pony be more like it, Wellie,” Mox replied.

  Two more women appeared on the balcony. They were all dressed similarly and wore heavy face paint and perfume so strong they could probably smell it by the river.

  “Bring him up here. Let us look him over proper like.”

  “Why? You need a break from real men?” Mox asked.

  “Dunno,” Wellie replied. “Ain’t had one in a while.”

  The women cackled. Mox grumbled after his partner elbowed him.

  “He is a pretty thing,” a brunette said. “Wonder if he’s ridden a woman yet?”

  The third woman thrust her extremely large bust out.

  “Imagine he’ll get thrown riding these!” she said.

  Robinson looked away, embarrassed.

  “Aw, look,” Wellie said. “He’s blushing. Maybe we should give him one for free. Whadaya say, Sweetie? You wanna come spend some time with us?”

  “Boy ain’t got no time for you,” Mox said. “He’s going to see Boss. But when I’m done, I’ll come back for that freebie, if you like.”

  “Mox, you’re so dirty, I’ll charge you once for the deed and twice for cleaning the sheets!”

  Mox cursed and waved them off as he shoved Robinson down the street.

  Eventually, they arrived at the establishment from which the music was emanating. A sign overhead read Doc Holliday’s Saloon.

  Pushing through the doors, they were greeted by a sweltering heat that radiated off the mob of bodies gathered at a long bar to the left and tables in front of a stage. Gas lamps lined the walls, and iron chandeliers holding candles above added to the heat.

  On the stage, a buck-toothed man in a straw hat pounded the keys while two women in provocative clothes danced behind him. With each kick of their legs, the male customers howled and shouted bawdy things that spurred the women on.

  The place stank of hops, sweat, and vomit.

  Mox pushed through the crowd and spoke briefly to a man behind the bar. When he returned, he said, “Out back.”

  “Out back” turned out to be a horse paddock where a group of people were watching a man being whipped. His back was bloody and he cried out, begging for mercy, but no one ever answered.

  Mox approached two figures near the back. The nearest was a tall, lanky man in a light blue suit with a pencil-thin mustache and oily hair parted dead center. Next to him was a woman dressed all in white, including a wide-brimmed white hat.

  “’scuse me, Mr. Dandy, but we found this cub here skulking around by the rail yard. Thought Boss might want to see him.”

  Mr. Dandy glanced back at Robinson but never really looked at him.

  “You know thinking is not your forte, Mox,” he said. “Get rid of him.”

  “Yessir,” Mox said.

  As Mox returned, Robinson noticed the woman in white glance over her shoulder at him. She was pretty, but there was a harshness that radiated off her.

  Mox shoved Robinson back toward the saloon door. But Robinson figured he’d done enough waiting. He slammed his head back as hard as he could. It connected with Mox’s nose, producing a sickening crack.

  The older man reached for his pistol, but it was too late. Robinson jabbed two thumbs into his eyes. Then he whipped around, punched Mox in the gut, and pulled his head down to meet his knee.

  As Mox fell, the Big Hat with the whip struck out at him, but Robinson let the leather coil around his arm before wrenching him forward and punching the man in his throat.

  Robinson kicked him into the path of a fourth man, pummeling him with shots while swinging his human shield to fend off blows. The fight ended when Robinson raked his remaining boot down his attacker’s shin and kicked him in the head when he fell.

  In the time it would take to climb a flight of stairs, Robinson had incapacitated four men. But as he bent down to pull his tomahawk from Mox’s belt, he heard a click behind him.

  “That’ll be about enough of that,” the voice said.

  Robinson turned to see the woman in white pointing one of her two shiny pistols right at him.

  Robinson sighed and
dropped his axe.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Boss

  The woman in white had called for more men. Once Robinson was secure, she holstered her pistols.

  Three of the injured were sent to see someone named Doc, but Mox refused to go. He was ordered to escort Robinson to a building across the street through a door marked ‘Theater.’

  To his surprise, Robinson was ushered into a room with hundreds of chairs, most of them full of townspeople hooting and laughing. Robinson was forced into one in the back.

  A cone of light projected photos on a large screen at the front of the room, only these photos were moving. The images were scratched and faded, but the voices nearly matched the performers that loomed larger than life.

  Most of the performers were dressed like those of Cowboytown. They wore long leather pants that swung open by the ankles, wide-brimmed hats, and pistols. When a man with a star on his chest was assailed by three men with black hats. tThe hero fended them off and pulled his weapon. Three rapid blasts of smoke felled the assailants, and the crowd in the theater stood and cheered as the music swelled.

  “They’re called picture shows,” the woman in white said. She’d slipped in so quietly, Robinson never even heard her sit down beside him. “Ever seen one before?” He shook his head. “Few have. Cowboytown might be the last place in the Americas where you can see one.”

  “Cowboytown?” Robinson asked.

  “Why don’t we go upstairs where we can talk?”

  They exited the theater and walked up a flight of stairs, passing through a room that held the picture showing machine. Beyond it was a small office. Robinson was directed toward a seat. The woman sat opposite him. Mox, Mr. Dandy, and the other men filed in behind them.

  “Way back when this land was first settled,” the woman said, “hard men were needed to wrestle it from the wild. Men like those you saw on screen. Many pushed cattle—hence the name, cowboy—but others worked and enforced the land in other ways. When I first stumbled upon this city, it was a lawless town. Fella that ran it before me did so with an iron hand, but any place given enough time and people will pull toward civilization. The trouble was it was always lacking that special something to pull people together. When Mr. Dandy discovered the movies, people were in awe. It gave them something. A spark of hope. Identity. Something. Since I was starting in the same place as those men from way back when, I decided it was a …”

  The woman snapped her fingers, and Mr. Dandy finished her sentence.

  “Methodology worth emulating.”

  “So this town,” Robinson said, glancing around, “and your uniforms, are what? Affectations?”

  The woman looked at Mr. Dandy with an eyebrow raised.

  “Young man has a vocabulary,” he said.

  “And a two-dollar accent,” Mox said, as he wiped the blood from his nose with a dirty piece of cloth.

  “They call me Boss,” the woman in white said. “I run this town. And this is Mr. Dandy. Where you from exactly?”

  “Up north,” Robinson said.

  Boss eyed him as she pulled a slender bag out of her pocket and took out a paper stick. She put it to her lips, and a man with a match put fire to it. The woman inhaled and blew out smoke. Then she spit a few grains of residue out.

  “Quirley?” she offered and Robinson shook his head.

  “How does it work?” Robinson asked of the projector.

  “A series of light-refracted images are captured on celluloid,” said Mr. Dandy. “Then, they are run through the machine at a brisk enough pace to mimic the illusion of real-time motion. Depending on the strength of the light source, this device can project those images onto any surface of our choosing.”

  “And this celluloid is from before?”

  “Celluloid has a remarkably short shelf life. Most picture movies turned to dust right after civilization. But back then, some smart fellows discovered you could preserve pictures by separating the reels into colors and storing them in salt mines, one of which we discovered. All I had to do was find a way to remix the colors to make a new master. To our good fortune, the original purveyor of these films was a collector of the western genre, such as you see here.”

  “And what do you use for power?”

  Chuckles filled the room. Then Boss nodded to one of her Big Hats.

  The man plodded to a door at the rear of the room. When he opened it, Robinson felt his chest tighten as a familiar, earthy musk flooded out.

  Renders held by chains trudged upon machines with moving canvases beneath their feet. Animal flesh hung from hooks in front of them kept them in perpetual motion. Their faces bore agony. The room filled with wails.

  Robinson felt his stomach turn but didn’t look away until the door closed.

  “Their movement powers a series of generators that, in turn, produce a modest electric current,” Mr. Dandy said.

  “Kinetic energy,” Robinson said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Dandy said, surprised. “Not many have a comprehension for it.”

  “Or care to,” Boss added. “So, now that we’ve answered your questions, how about you answer a few of mine. Starting with your name and what you’re doing in my town.”

  “My name is Crusoe. And I arrived here by accident. I was canoeing downriver when I was overturned. I made it to shore and stumbled upon your train yard.”

  “Why were you on the river in the first place?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman. She was taken from me.”

  “By who …?”

  Robinson thought it best not to mention the Bone Flayers, so he said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Brigands. They had a boat.”

  The woman scowled again. “Brigands on a boat,” she repeated. “On the Great Missup. Well, don’t that take the rag off? How long ago was this ‘woman’ of yours taken?”

  “Five months, four days, and seven hours.”

  “He’s a damned liar,” Mox said. “This boy’s lying! No man can survive that long in the wild by himself.”

  Boss looked Robinson over, noting the scars on his body and the hardness of his eyes. “I suppose it depends on the man.”

  Boss took another inhalation of her paper stick. This time, she let the smoke waft out of her mouth and up her face.

  “The problem I’m faced with is that we have no proof to confirm your story. Far as I know, you could be a gentleman of the first water. Or you could be a charlatan looking to slip in and poison my city from the inside. Cowboytown has a lot of enemies. The type that’d have no hesitation in sending spies or even …”

  She snapped her fingers again toward Mr. Dandy.

  “Saboteurs,” Mr. Dandy added.

  “Now, if you’d come in the regular way, via the port, you’d have seen a big old sign on the way into town, barter, buy, or sell - all commerce accepted. But you didn’t come here with business on your mind. And that leaves me in a uh …”

  Fingers snapped.

  “Precarious position,” Mr. Dandy offered.

  “Now, I run a straightforward operation, Mr. Crusoe. Everything on the up-and-up. I even keep a ledger of all transactions in Cowboytown. And nothing goes down without my say-so.”

  She pulled a worn book from her jacket and set it on the table.

  “The man taking the whip out back? His name’s in this ledger. An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s wage. But when one of my men caught him sleeping on his watch, he knew the ledger must be settled. You suppose that’s fair enough?”

  “I guess,” Robinson said.

  “Glad you see it that way. Because it brings us to our dilemma. You got no business being here. So what do I do with you?”

  “You could let me go,” Robinson said.

  “True,” Boss agreed.”But, as I see it, that would be doing you a favor. Now, I’ve already shown you some hospitality. Showed you a picture movie. Let you talk with one of my whores. Then there’s a matter of
you beatin’ up my men.”

  “He got lucky,” Mox said. “Gimme another chance, Boss, and I’ll—”

  “What do you want?” Robinson asked.

  “In lieu of goods, I’m apt to take services. You might be between hay and grass, but you fight like hell, Kid. Can you shoot a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t matter. These things can be taught. It’s gravel in the belly that can’t. And I reckon you, Mr. Crusoe, got that in spades.”

  “How long?” Robinson asked.

  “Few months should right the ledger.”

  “Impossible,” Robinson said. “Every day I’m delayed is another day my friend’s life is at risk.”

  “There is the transport,” Mr. Dandy interjected.

  Boss glanced at him, and some secret communication seemed to be going on beneath the surface. Boss seemed hesitant to reveal it.

  “My associate Mr. Dandy is speaking of a business arrangement we have taking place a couple weeks down the road. We’ll be transporting a special commodity we produce to some real dangerous folk. The kind of people more likely to give it to you in the neck than uphold their end of a bargain. You savvy?”

  “Then why do business with them?” Robinson asked.

  “It’s a large order. And these aren’t exactly the kind of folks you say no to. I need men that can hold their water. I figure if we have enough of them we might uh …”

  Snap, snap.

  “Dissuade any feasible chicanery,” Mr. Dandy said.

  “Do this,” Boss said, “and I’ll call it square. Hell, I might even make it worth your while. Room and board at the hotel. Hooch and whores to a limit. What do you say?”

  What could he say?

  Robinson wasn’t being given any real option. His choices were slavery or death. Death he could deal with—at least it came on his terms. But a life under the thumb of others? He knew the bitter taste of that meal from his days on the Isle. He’d seen what having a master had done to Friday. Boss had said a couple weeks, but there was no guarantee he’d be released, even if he survived this dangerous transport duty.