West Wheel: The Twin Machines Chapter 11: Badlands By: Joel 'Cop' Furches   Well I been ‘cross the desert and I been cross the plain Don’t flinch at the thunder, and I drink in the rain My eyes are dry in sorrow, and I grit my teeth through pain But don’t make me wander those Badlands again   It ain’t that it’s a dry, dusty, festering hole And it ain’t that it sucks all the life from your soul It ain’t even the Scraelings or the arrows that fly But Lord God Almighty, it’s that terrible sky! Don’t lay an eye on that horrible sky!

The Land between the rolling Verttu Mountains of Landfall and the Drambapeyui of the Wyrdelands stretched far out into the unexplored reaches of the distant West, to a place the Scraelings called Poi Lakomo Collogor, ‘The Great Chasm.’  This land is called ‘The Badlands,’ and perhaps not entirely fairly.  Granted, there are vast stretches of this land that are hostile to life, and vary from deserts of rolling, sandy dunes to deserts choked with dead brush, redweed, and cactus, to deserts of hardened, rocky cliffs and canyons.  Still, even in the deserts, there were slow little rivers that would flow from tributaries from the great Rushing Horse River.

            There were areas of the Badlands that were almost green with life, and the roving Nation of Dan lived quite comfortably in these lands.  All this aside, the ground that Eric Rider was now walking over was parched and barren.  It looked like cracked, white limestone until he put his boot down on it and it turned to powdery dust.  The ten miles stretching behind him were marked by a single line of tracks with dust settling over the small, bootprint-shaped craters in the ground.  Along this path lay three emptied canteens baking in the sun.

            At one point, when he could stand it no longer, Rider had fallen to the ground and rolled around and around in the white dust, coating his clothes and hat in the dust, changing his black clothing to white.  Since then the heat soaked into them a little less intensely. 

            Not for the first time, he missed his horse.  He suspected he would never see the creature again, but it had shown up under more improbable circumstances.

            The airship that had dropped him here had dared to come no further into this part of the Badlands.  Already they had nearly run afoul of an enormous dust devil that had sprouted up from the desert below and become a swirling vortex of sand and debris only a few hundred yards off the port of the ship.  In addition to the unpredictable windstorms of the deserts, there was the high temperature that stretched into the upper atmosphere and threatened to burst the great bag of air that they used to stay afloat in the sky (or so the Captain had complained).   

            They had offered Rider an extended stay at the great hangars that sat atop a plateau surrounded on all sides with cliffs in an area further toward the Hub that they called ‘Heather’s Leap.’ 

            “I’m afraid we have a job to do, and we could use all the help we can get,” Dirk Porter had said.  He was a hefty man in his late forties with a balding head and a great handlebar mustache.  He wore a long coat and leather flight pants every time Rider had seen him, and his head seemed to more or less be consistently decorated by a pair of goggles that he never seemed to actually place over his eyes.  He was what passed for the leader of the group that called themselves ‘Jacob’s Heel.’ 

            “There’s no way that the Rifleman don’t know we’re here by now,” Dirk continued.  “We’ve enjoyed a number of years of invisibility, but I suppose all things must end.  We need to move to another location quickly and burn everything here before the Rifleman can catch up with us.  Our one mercy is that it’s difficult to get an army up these cliffs, but they can sit at the base and take pot-shots at us when we try to fly, and that would be just as bad.”

            Jacob’s Heel had more than one way to fly, Rider had discovered.  In addition to their great airships, they had ‘gliders’ which looked like enormous box-kites that a man strapped himself into, and then leaped from some high place.

            “Perfectly safe,” Dirk had assured him, “Perfectly… unless you don’t operate it properly.  Or if you catch a nasty updraft.  Or if you don’t land it correctly.  We are trying to find a way of attaching an engine to them and propel them along using fans.  The problem is that a steam engine is far too heavy.  We need something far lighter weight, perhaps operating off some form of combustible chemical.  We’ve gotten some promising results from kerosene.”

            He offered Rider the opportunity to try one of the gliders, but Rider declined the offer saying that he really needed to be getting along in his journey.

            “That’s a shame, young man, shame.  The Librarians seem to believe your journey is quite important to the struggle against the Baron.  We’ve been working in conjunction with them for years to discover new and unconventional weapons for battling the Riflemen.  As you know, the Baron has far too many men and weapons to fight conventional warfare.  We need to take a page out of Scraeling strategy and fight in unconventional ways, making raids and attacking covertly and such.  Our hope was to be of some help firing upon them and dropping baubles containing nitroglycerine from our high vantage, but we still haven’t found a way to safely transport the nitro or to fly out of rifle range.  The bags of heated air that we use to fly are fairly resilient against ordinary atmospheric phenomenon and debris, but a high caliber rifle bullet will punch a hole in them the size of your fist, and then its loss of altitude and you can imagine the rest.”

            Eric had ended up staying anyway and helping with the evacuation of Heather’s Leap: he was at the mercy of the technology Jacob’s Heel had to let him down safely from their cliff hangars, anyway.  Besides, Dirk had offered to drop him off closer to his destination in the Badlands as they were traveling to their fallback position. 

            “It’s no trouble at all.  Well, somewhat troubling, if you want the truth of it.  We will have to swing out in a wide arch into the Badlands.  Only take us twenty or thirty miles out of our way, which is a tremendous waste of fuel.  Glad to do it, though.  We’ll drop you off a couple of days walk from the town of Sansleburry.  That should be fairly close to where you’re trying to get, and they have a good well there you can refill on water and supplies.”

            Eric had remembered to thank them for the trouble.  It was difficult for him to get used to so many people going out of their way to help him.  It made him uncomfortable, and he thought he would be glad to be out of the company of these friendly, talkative men.  Now, in the depth of the Badlands, he wasn’t so certain.

The day had dawned dry and windy with an ominous gray cloud cover that seemed unshakable.  The bat that had roosted on the deadwood tree above him at night had been replaced by some black bird.  Rider didn’t know or care if it was a crow, a raven, or a blackbird.  He suspected all three names belonged to the same species of bird, but anyway, he didn’t like it. 

He didn’t like much of anything that happened out here in the badlands.  The Badlands were a place God made for the Scraelings to roam on spiritual journeys.  Last night when he had looked up at the night sky, he could not make heads or tales of what he saw.  Pinks and Purples and colors he’d never seen before glistened across the galaxies while the moon hung orange on the horizon at five times its normal size.  A Scraeling would have been able to read these signs like a book.  Rider just rolled over and tried to fall back to sleep.

Eric had was determined to make town today.  Being around groups of people made him uneasy, but it wasn’t near as weird as being out here in the badlands.  He pulled his dust-stained hat down low on his head and wrapped his bandana around his nose and mouth in preparation for the walk.  From the gusts of wind he was feeling, it was going to be a dusty trail in. 

The dark bird followed him again today, wheeling around in the sky on the many drafts and currents in the desert.  Now it swooped, fluttered, and landed a few yards away in his path.  He threw the bird a dirty look and cussed at the thing to go away.  It fluttered and danced on the ground, eyeing him from the left and then the right eye, over and over.  He considered throwing a rock at it, but he didn’t have the energy.

A thought bubbled to the surface of Rider’s mind. 

It all looks the same.  Ground, Sky, Mountain… they’re all dreary shades of brown and gray.  You  could get lost trying to tell which way’s up.

The Scraeling sat in the distance tending a little fire that burned without smoke.  As Rider neared the creature, he could see that this Scraeling looked a few years older’n dirt, and that was fer sure.  The creases that formed his (her?) face were like land markers leading up and up and up to eyes that, if opened, were very close to shut.  White hair in loose braids cascaded from his scalp like a milky waterfall.  Eric wondered if this was the same Scraeling he had met in the cave beneath the earth when he had been fleeing the bloodhounds.  It seemed unlikely, but by appearance alone he could not tell the difference.

The Scraeling held a stick that was about the fanciest thing Eric had ever seen.  He guessed it was made mostly out of wood, but rabbit fur lined most of its base, dyed in black.  Above the rabbit fur were bands of colored beads in yellows, blacks, and reds.  Eric guessed it must have been some tribal design.  Branching out from the beads were deer antlers with a circular piece of leather stretched between them, woven on the edges and bearing patterned paintings on it.  Feathers hung from the top.  Eric’s fascination with the stick was broken when the Scraeling began poking him with it.

Rider looked at him angrily and backed away from the poking.

The Scraeling was saying something in his own language.  At least the one he had met in the cave had spoken some broken English.  Clearly the Scraeling was as annoyed with him as he was of the Scraeling. 

The stick stopped poking him and slammed into the dirt near his toe.  Eric jumped.  The Scraeling was still talking in Scraeling speak and drew the stick along the ground.  Then he slammed it into the ground again and began dragging it along, the whole time staring at Eric through squinting eyes and talking, talking, talking.  Eric tried to ignore the crazy red man and continue walking, but when he did, the old man simply blocked his path and then kept drawing in the dust.  The Scraeling continued talking.  No, now it sounded like he was singing.  Rider grimaced.  Their eyes locked for the first time, now and Eric stiffened.  The infinite sea of gray in the Scraeling’s eyes gave way to mesas and plateaus, and swimming between them canyons of fog.  There he saw a wound, a scar, a deep, deep recess in the earth.  He felt it was a wound he, himself had inflicted.  He felt accusation and guilt.  Rider the drifter was shell for Rider the Offender, and deep within him a darker self cracked a grin.  A reckoning would be made for this crime, and he must pay it.

Then the Scraeling stopped talking and turned to walk away.  Eric stood motionless eyes never leaving the Scraeling until he was lost from sight in the blowing dust.  Once the man was out of sight, Rider took another step along his journey.  Then he caught site of what the Scrayling had written in the cracked earth, and his jaw slacked.  The dark bird settled to the earth and began pecking at the image.  He stood motionless for a long, long time. 

Rider made town around sundown.  The trail had been uneventful save for the stagecoach that had nearly mowed him down.  The trail was dead silent, then suddenly the stagecoaches’ thunder was right there on him, and Rider had to dive to get out of its path.  Then the coach and its thunder were gone again.  Eric was nearly certain the coach had been straight black with tatters hanging off it.  The driver wore a deep-hooded Indian blanket covering his entire body, and the horses had been mad black stallions with frothing mouths.  Eric just dismissed it as more strangeness of the Badlands, and thanked his lucky stars he was making town tonight.  He hated the Badlands.

Things started making sense again when he hit town.   Cowpokes hooting and hollering in the streets, the lively music coming from the saloon, and even a few ladies, doing their best to look well dressed despite the dusty nature of this corner of the earth.

As he walked down the street, a boy shouted at him, “Hey, Stranger!  You’re going to have to go see the Sheriff if you’re new in town!”

Eric raised an eyebrow, the dust crusting his face enhancing the expression.  The boy pointed to the building at the corner of town.  Eric waved at the boy and headed toward that building.

Some deputy sheriff was sitting on the front porch of the Sheriffs Office with his feet pitched up on the hitching post. 

“Howdy,” the Deputy said amiably.

Rider nodded in turn.  “Boy sent me down this way.  Said I’d need to see you before I got comfortable.”

The Deputy smiled, “Just a way we have of keeping the town peaceful.  Like to ask potential troublemakers to keep on moving.  Haven’t seen your face on any wanted posters.  You’re not a trouble maker, are you boy?”

“Nahsir.”

“Good, good.  So what is it you do, Son?”

“I’m a gunslinger.”

The Deputy pushed his hat back and looked at Eric’s empty holsters criss-crossing his waist hanging by his hips.  They were still well oiled and attached to gun-belts that held no bullets.

            “Where’re your guns, Gunslinger?”

            “I haven’t gotten to that stage of my career, yet.”

            “Good, good.  We don’t cotton to gun sharks with cutters around these parts.  I got something to help you along with your career, though.  Don’t go nowhere.”

So saying, the Deputy disappeared into the office door, reappearing a few minutes later with a length of rope.  He walked over to Eric and draped the rope around his neck.  With a few quick jerks of his hand, the Deputy fashioned a handsome noose, gently adjusting it to Eric’s neck like a tailor straightening a necktie. 

            Eric looked down at the Deputy’s handiwork and said nothing.

            “I’m giving this to you because you’re going to end up with one o’ these things around your neck eventually, should you manage to make it in the gunslinging field.  If you don’t make it, you’ll end with some lead in your gut and a box o’ pine.  Now you’re sure you didn’t just stash a pair of Dewey’s in the stable, or on your horse and make up some fool tale about being a gunslinger without guns?”

            “Didn’t come in on a horse.”

            “No horse, and no guns?  Son, you’ve got a death wish for certain.  How’d you make it through the Badlands without a horse?  Nevermind.  Anyone fool enough to wear holsters without a pair a Smoke Wagons ta go with ‘em oughta be strung up by his toes.”

The Deputy waved his hand.

            “Alright, boy, I’m satisfied.  Don’t be staying ‘round these parts too long.  You’re a troublemaker if I’ve ever met one.”

            “Thank you, sir.  One thing, though; could I get a gun-reclaim slip for my trouble?”

            “Boy, you better git ‘affor I finish the job on that noose!”

            “I need that slip.”

            “What for?”

            “I need something to put up for a round at the poker tables.”

The Deputy rose up and muttered, “I oughta be shot for giving in to some stupid tenderfoot kid…”

He returned with the slip and pressed it into Eric’s hand. 

            “Congratulations, son, you are now the proud owner of two fictitious Colt Peacemakers.  Now get out of my hair before I show you some REAL guns.”

Eric tipped his hat to the Deputy.

            “Many thanks, sir.”

            “Drop dead, kid.”

Outside the Saloon, Eric had removed the noose from his neck and nearly tossed it in the gutter, but something had made him hold onto it.  It now nested comfortably at the bottom of his satchel.  A bat smacked against the overhang above the saloon door, grabbed hold, and began to crawl into roosting position.  Eric tried to ignore it, but his eyes glanced involuntarily in its direction.  It stretched its tiny wings and rotated its head to look defiantly at Rider with its beady black eyes.  Eric felt a bit unnerved and hurried into the saloon.

The usual ruckus of a saloon was in full swing.  This place was large and bore all the creature comforts of opulent cattle-town.  Lanterns hung from wagon wheels on the ceiling and they hung from all the walls to light the place as brightly as it could be lit.  The bar stretched the length of the left wall and was stocked with all the finest.  Several card games were in motion at the tables, and beyond that, billiards.  On the stage at the back, a few sultry dance-girls were moving in a manic fashion to the beat of a ragtime tune the piano player was pounding out.  Eric made his way to the bar and took a seat, positioning himself in a place where he could stake out the card games without being obvious about it.  The bartender meandered over and asked Eric his pleasure.  Eric was desperately thirsty from the trail.  He had seen at least four windmills rising over the town and assumed they must house water pumps.  The thought alone was enough to bring his dry saliva glands back to life.

            “Water,” Eric voiced greedily.  The bartender eyed the tall stranger, caked with dust with his hat brim pulled low so it hid his eyes.

            “This is a bar, friend.”

Rider shrugged.  If he had any money to slip the bartender, he would have.  Now, more than ever, it seemed necessary to make some quick cash.  Eric removed his hat and ran his gloved fingers through his dark hair.

            “I’ll be back.” Rider said, and walked over to a table where the closest card game was taking place.

            Tony was glancing up from a hand that was one card shy of a flush when he first saw the scrawny kid who looked like he’d just been drug through hell and didn’t know it.  The kid was looking all squint-eyed at the group, his eyes darting back and forth from the cards to the players with what looked like shrewd interest.  Tony removed his cigar from the corner of his mouth and grunted,

            “What do YOU want, kid?”

            “I want to join your game.” the kid said.

            “Game’s full,” Tony replied with a shooing gesture.

            “Now wait just a second, Partner,” the player next to Tony spoke up.  “You got any money kid?”

            “I got this,” Rider said, showing his gun-slip.

            “Two Colts, eh?” Tony said with some interest.  “You ever play before kid?”

            “No,” Rider replied honestly.  The other players eyed one another mischievously. 

            “Come on sit down, partner.  We’ll teach you the plays.”

The kid sat down and Tony explained to him the nature of the game in a woefully short explanation.  The kid nodded along in a silent and unnerving way. 

“You’ll pick the rest up,” Tony said, “You look like a sharp kid.”

            Problem was, he DID look sharp.

            They took the kids gun-reclaim slip and one of the guys slid a small stack of chips across the table to him.  They had given him half of what a pair of guns like that was worth.  Joke was on them.

            As the game opened, Eric’s sharp black eyes watched his opponents carefully.  The one who had done most of the talking was a bulky guy with a Southern-style blanket wrapped over his shoulders and a cigar protruding from his yellowed teeth beneath his thick black mustache.  The second player was clearly a cowboy fresh in from the trial.  He wore the loose, dusty shirt and jeans.  Eric guessed the cowboy also must have a bit of a gambling addiction, too.  The cowboy hadn’t even taken the time to remove his leather cuffs or chaps.  Thick strings of beads and Scraeling talismans were wrapped around the cowboy’s neck and wrists.  They bore the stylized image of the badger, a guardian spirit that warded away the mischievous spirits.  Eric guessed that symbol was also the brand on the cattle the cowboy drove to keep numbers of cattle from disappearing mysteriously on the trail.  Or turning up day at a time with their belly slit open and all their organs removed.

            Rider had respect for cowboys willing to chance the Badlands.  The Badlands were Scraelings Land.

            The other two at the table were older men, probably shop-keeps from the town, finished a day’s work and enjoying a little entertainment.

            “Ante up,” the cigar man said.

One of the shop keeps, a man with graying hair and a ghoti who had grown a bit round in his middle age, leaned across, took one of Eric’s white chips and threw it into the center, whispering, “We start the game by putting one of these in.

            “That represents money, right?”

            “Yes.”

            “Will I get it back?”

            “Only if you win this round.  That’s why it’s called gambling.”

Eric considered this, and then shrugged.  “Okay.”

            “Glad to see you’re so sporting, lets deal.”

The cigar man shuffled the cards once and shot them out of his hand with a casual skill.  Eric judged by the virtue of his deal that the cigar man was no slouch with a smoke wagon, either.  The men picked up their cards and looked them over.  Eric seemed to watch them do so and imitate their action.

            Eric spared only a brief glance at his cards.  He had a three-of-spades, two sixes, and two nines.  Two pair wasn’t bad, but it still put his odds of winning the hand fairly low, maybe half-and-half.  He watched the faces of his opponents.  The cigar man’s face was impassive.  His facial muscles relaxed with calculated effort, save for his lips, which drew in and out, taking quick puffs at his tobacco.  He arranged and re-arranged the cards in his hand.  The man had nothing he could bet on, but Eric’s guess was that the man’s arrogance would cause him to bluff all the same.  The cowboy was holding his cards with one hand and unstringing a beaded pendant from around his neck with the other.  His mouth whispered continuously as if invoking some Scraeling spirit.  The cowboy was a hard man to read.  His face seemed to continuously be slackened in shock, his eyes so wide they blazed like beckons from his dusty, unshaven face.  Eric wondered what horrors the man had witnessed in the Badlands.  The next was the older of the shopkeeps.  His grey sideburns running far down from his black bowler.  He watched the cowboy with impatient eyes, waiting for the man to place his bet.  The younger shopkeep sported blond hair and a middle-aged face, wrinkled prematurely from so many days in the hard, hard sun.  He was also watching the cowboy, but impassively.  Eric’s guess was that the impatient one had nothing worthwhile in his hand.  The serious threat was the impassive man.  His hand was most likely the superior one.

            Cigar man glanced up from his cards, looking at the cowboy. 

            “Well get on with the betting ya’ol cowspook!  This ain’t no staring competition.”

Without comment the cowboy threw a single white chip into the center of the table.  The next man matched.  The younger shopkeep with the impassive eyes was next.

            “I’ll see you and raise you five.” So saying, the man threw his white and red chip into the center.  The cowboy threw his hand down and cursed in the Scraeling’s tongue,

            “Tort!  I knew it!  Another curse is placed upon me!”

And suddenly Eric saw that it was not an addiction to gambling that had drawn the cowboy directly to the table after the trail.  The cowboy was using the game of poker as a test of how his fortunes had changed after his trek through the badlands.  The man feared the many curses of the Scraelings spirits that visited him, and poker showed him how bad it was.

            The rest of the table didn’t seem to react to the cowboy’s strange behavior.  This being a cattle town, they must be familiar with this kind of thing.  The older man matched the younger man’s bet.  Eric sat watching with a blank look on his face.  Cigar man nudged him with the toe of his boot. 

            “You’re next gunman.”  This he said with irony.

            “What do I do?” Eric asked.

            “You put in six dollars worth of chips unless you’re real confident of your hand.  If you really think you can win, you put in more.”

Eric matched the bet.  The cigar man followed suit.   

Then they got their cards.  Eric took one card, exchanging his worthless three for an equally worthless seven.  Looking at the stacks of chips everyone else held, Eric decided bluffing would be useless in this case.  He could not, with his remaining nine dollars, raise the stakes to the point they would threaten anyone’s security.  The older shopkeep did not raise the pot, but the younger one did, and the older shopkeep and cigar man both matched. 

            “Can I stop playing if I don’t think I can win?”

            “Sure, sure, just call out like our friend here did,” Cigar man stated.  Eric did so.  The younger shopkeep ended up winning the pot. And they anted up for the next round.

The deal went to the cowboy.  The man took the cards and began forming six separate rows.  He began placing cards in each row, doubling the number of cards in the next.  All the while his lips moved as if counting.

            “See here, now, what are you doing?” the old shop keep spoke up for the first time.

            “Shufflin’” the cowboy explained in a distracted tone.

            “Shuffling indeed!  He’s stacking the deck, right in front of our faces!”

            “Relax, old man,” cigar man spoke, “This ain’t no card-trick, I can vouch for that.  Watch the way he deals, too, it ain’t usual either.  If’n you believe in fate, then he may be cheatin’ but that’s the only way.”

The shopkeep looked like he would say more, but looking around and finding no one else protesting, he sat back and awaited his hands.  When the cowboy had placed all the cards in columns as if he intended to play solitare, he scooped each column up and put the deck back together.  Then, rather than dealing around the table, he began forming five columns of five cards.  After each column was formed he danced his fingers over them in a choose-a-card-any-card fashion.  Finally his fingers settled on the forth in the row.  He looked straight up at Eric who sat across from him.

            “And this one is for you.”

Then he wordlessly selected a hand for each of the players, seemingly at random, as if a voice only he could hear was telling him which hand belonged to which player.

Eric pulled the same trick of studying faces.  His luck would be up if he didn’t win this hand.  And he would only win if everyone was nice and didn’t raise the bid out of his range.  He was the poorest player on the board and a greenhorn when it came to gambling.   Now was when it came to his advantage.  The cowboy had dealt him two fives, a four, an ace, and a wild card.  Everyone else’s faces held the pensive air that indicated decks which had potential, but were worth nothing in themselves.  The old shopkeep kept his bet low, as did the young one.  Eric’s bet was next and he threw in all his chips.  The old shopkeep looked at him and said, “I hope you know what you are doing, son.  If you lose this round, you lose a pair of pistols.”

Rider nodded.  “I understand.”

Cigar man, started to outbid Eric, smiling at his own devilry, when the cowboy placed a hand on his shoulder.

            “You let the kid be, Tony.  He’s out this round anyway, if he loses.  Give him a sporting chance.”

The man named Tony gave the cowboy a hard look, ready to come back with a cocky remark.  Something he saw in the cowboy’s eyes seemed to change his mind.  His face was a shade paler as he went back to his cards.  Eric marked this.  The cowboy may have been ravaged and shaken by the Badlands, but he had also been hardened.  And for an instant, Eric felt a pang of guilt for his deception.  Still he had represented himself true in one respect: he was flat broke.  This cowboy had, no doubt, just collected his wages.

            Eric took one card.  Turning it over coolly he noted that it was another five.  He now had a full house and nothing left to lose… save two fictional guns.  True to the cowboy’s (and Eric’s) wishes, no one bet this round.  They all simply turned their cards over.  Eric looked down at the table.

            “Did I win?”

            “Seems that way,” the young shopkeep grunted.

            Rider rose without a word.  Of the thirty-five dollars in chips sitting on the table, Eric took twenty and his gun-slip.  He flipped a white chip to the cowboy.

            “Your ante for the next round.  Blessed trails.”

            “Bless the curse that cursed me.  Good fortune is with you, friend, your help was none of mine,” the cowboy replied fingering the white chip.  Eric placed his hat on head and tipped it to the table. 

At that gesture time slowed to a crawl for Eric.  Chemicals and electricity hung in the air as his senses came to full attention.  Something deadly was about to happen.  The fine muscle movements rippling across the faces of the people at the table told Eric of the immediate future.  First the cigar man would rise and pull the gun hidden in his waistband.  He would call Eric a cheater and demand he return the money and the gunslip to the table then leave before trouble started.  This man expected Eric to do just as instructed.  His expectation of full compliance made him dangerous and difficult to predict if Eric refused, which is just what Eric intended to do.  As dangerous as this man was, he was only Eric’s secondary concern; for as this man pulled his gun, the younger shopkeep would be slipping a concealed derringer out of his boot.  This man WAS deadly, no question.  As the cigar man was raving and shaking his weapon, the shopkeep would simply hide his gun beneath his hat and shoot Eric through the heart.  The cigar-man with his large weapon and belligerent attitude would be blamed, no question asked, and as he hung twisting in the wind the next morning, the younger shopkeep would walk away whistling and holding all the chips.

            Eric could see the guns coming out even now.  Cigar-man was bearing his yellow teeth and his eyes were widening in fury.  Shopkeep was pretending his leg itched.  The glint of dull silver shone from cigar-man’s army revolver, now halfway out from under his shirt tail.  Dodging a bullet, Rider mused as two gun barrels began to point his direction, was pretty near impossible once it left the barrel, superhuman speed or not.  A few legends in the Way of the Gun had mentioned men who had apparently mastered the art of dodging a bullet, but what they actually taught you was to know your environment, know your opponent, and exploit both to your maximum advantage.  What Eric had never learned very well was to talk his way out of violence.

            Rather than even trying to talk the two men out of their decision, Eric slipped his chips into the pocket of his duster and took a step toward the table in a lazy but fluid motion that gave the shopkeep and Cigar-man time to get their guns all the way out.

            “You—,” cigar-man began to yell.  Before he finished the profanity he had chosen, Eric’s boot flew up under the corner of the table, snapping the derringer out of the shopkeep’s hand and flipping the table up into the air.  A flurry of chips and cards filled the air and the flying table-top slapped the cigar-man’s gun hand throwing his aim off to the side.  The gun cracked and a bit of the floor splintered over near the bar.  Even as he saw this, he was in motion rolling under the flying table and shooting his arm up like a piston, grabbing the cigar-man’s revolver by the barrel while at the same time planting his elbow in the man’s gut.  The man’s grip loosened on the gun and Eric flicked it into the spittoon by the bar where it landed with a satisfying ‘Plunk!’  Eric spun and plucked the shopkeep’s derringer out of the air before it even hit the floor and rolled back to where he had been standing when the action started.  Those distracted by the now-settling cards from the flipped table would never have noticed him move at all.  He was finished disarming the situation about five seconds before the piano player plucked his last note, silencing his craft in reverence for the more respected art of violence.  When the stunned members of the saloon could see clearly what was happening cigar-man was starring blankly at his empty gun hand while young shopkeep was rubbing his and casting a bitter look at Eric who stood calmly removing the rounds from the derringer.  When he held the two bullets in his hand he tossed the gun back to the shopkeep who caught it before really thinking about it.

            “You might want to see the Sheriff.  There’s a gun law in effect here in Sansleburry.”

The crowd was in stunned silence.  At a glance, he could tell at least four other people were carrying concealed firearms, probably more. 

            Eric licked his dry lips.  He really wanted to go to the bar and get himself that drink of water, but the way the situation was shaping up things were going to get more violent if he stayed in the saloon much longer.  He cursed his luck.  Water could be gotten elsewhere, but he wasn’t even going to be able to cash in his chips tonight.  He had been lucky that no one got hurt… so far.  But his luck wouldn’t hold out if he stayed for the bar-fight that was about to occur.  With no other word, he set heel to the room and, five seconds later, was on the street.

            The night crowd seemed to be coming out now.  Cowboys, fresh from the trail were immerging from the Bath and Barber Shop, all dolled up in their finest town-clothes.  Most of these were probably headed to one of the Saloons or the nearest Madame’s place to spend their free night and well-earned trail cash on sin of various sorts.  These cowboys, like the one he had seen in the Saloon, sported various Scraeling charms and tattoos even in their casual off-trail life.  Eric glanced at the bat, fluttering from its perch and wondered if there was a charm for ridding himself of the creature.  The streets were well-lit, but the pall of the badlands still hung strong over this place and the bitter cold of night was beginning to assert itself.  Despite the dingy cloud cover of the days, nights in the badlands seemed always to come with clear skies.  Above the street-lamps Eric could make out The Barbarian, Mother Bear whose tail lead to North Star, and also Mother Bear’s son.  These of course were the Scraeling’s names for the star-figures, but since the Great War a good deal of Scraeling beliefs and crept into everyday life for the intruding whites.

Rider was stopped by a familiar voice from behind.

            “Gunslinger!”

He turned slowly, bare hands showing to look directly into the smug eyes of the Deputy Sheriff of Sanslebury.  “I knew’d you was trouble the moment you rode into town, Gunslinger.  Now here’s what’s going to happen.  You’re going to come nice and slowly down to my office where you will be spending your night in th’box.”

Eric considered defending himself.  Whatever offense had been committed was AGAINST him.  But it was a stranger’s word against the town’s respected businessmen.

Of course, there was another option.  Eric eyed the Deputy’s gun hand.  A quick feint to the left and a dart to the right would throw his aim off as Eric’s duster billowed out in the other direction.  He could roll under the shot.  Eric remembered the chart he had been made to study in his childhood town of Stellaterra.  They had conducted drills, shooting a wooden man in just the right spots to paralyze him or render him unconscious or stun him all without killing him.  In theory a sharp jab with his fingers would do the same thing to the Deputy.  Then he could grab the man’s gun and he’d have a gun of his own… and what then, he thought?  The shapes of spades that were seared into the flesh of his palms screamed with pain at the very idea.  He had to face the fact that he may never hold a gun again.  The second his finger closed around the trigger of the gun, the moment he took aim with his cool, dark eyes, his hands would erupt in flames, or leastwise FEEL as if they did. 

And without guns, what was he to do?  Disarm an entire town?  He’d seen them.  Most of them were carrying despite the sham of a gun law.  Could he jab them all at their nervous points?  There was no good end to this.  The jeers of the Guncoach, Harley Park, jolted through his mind.

“He’s a failure, Eric is!  In any other platoon he wouldn’t even be able to train with a pair o’ lead chuckers!  If it weren’t fer my kindness, he’d be nothing at all!” 

In reality, this was no horrid circumstance.  He was likely to be thrown in a jail cell for a night as a slap on the wrist for trouble making and then released.  It would save him the trouble of finding lodging for the night, and he may even get a free meal out of it.  What Eric did not like was being caught off-guard; forced into a position of weakness.  It reminded him acutely of things he’d rather not remember.

Deputy Sheriff Tadrum had anticipated a troublesome shift, and it had put him in a bad mood to begin with.  He was a sarcastic man with a flair for the dramatic and a temper which, when lit, was not easily diffused.  It was bad enough that a bunch of Cowpokes were coming off the trail all rallied to get liquored up and in trouble.  They all knew about the gun-law, which meant they would surrender a few plough handles with smiles on their mugs while tucking their other guns and knives in their boots and belt straps and who knew where else.  They came this way often enough that most of them were adept at smuggling guns through.  He hadn’t the time or inclination to go searching each and every one of them and the horses they rode in on for hidden weapons.  Then, as an additional headache this aimless stranger walks--doesn’t ride, but walks--into town looking suspicious as hell and claims to be a gunslinger right to the Deputy’s face, bold as you please.  He was probably some dumb kid who picked up a pair of gun belts but was too yellow or too broke to get some actual guns, and too stupid to keep his trap shut in front of the law. Only something about that angle didn’t make sense.  The man obviously survived a trip through the badlands, for one thing, which is a feat no greenhorn would pull off without a ton of luck.  He could have come from one of the closer towns.  Trent, maybe, or Parry, though he spoke in the dialects of neither towns and did not look like a native to either place.  So, too, he had ridden into town from the direction of the badlands, and the dust caked on his ragged duster not to mention his lean, parched face seemed to attest to the gray-brown Weirdlands beyond.  Tadrum knew not what to make of the kid, but gave him the usual threat, using a bit of rope he had recovered from the street soon after the cattle had been driven through and into the corral to form a noose for the kid.  A little souvenir for his visit to the town of Sanslebury.  The rope had caught his attention because it bore the Scraelings weave that was less Scraeling and more Cowboy.  It was thought to have some manner of charm to it, but so did everything the cowboys wore and used.  They were more superstitious than the Scraelings themselves.  Tadrum felt he had given the kid enough to think about during his hopefully short stay in Sanslebury so that he would stay well-free of trouble, but not half an hour had passed and he saw the stranger fleeing from the Saloon followed by Brad Toadrow and Calvin Prost, both members of the town council, who claimed that the kid had cheated at cards and then started a brawl when they had caught him at it.  Deputy Tadrum’s patience wore through at this point.  The night of drunk and disorderly behavior from the cowboys was just starting and already this kid was starting fights.  Predictably enough, the kid had headed straight toward the stables and that’s when Tadrum had stopped him.  The ‘Gunslinger’ turned around when Deputy Tadrum had called on him without the air of surprise or panic he usually got from people who found themselves looking down the business end of a lawman’s persuader.  He held his hands up in surrender and leveled his coal-black eyes at the Deputy.  They darted up and down the Deputy in a way that looked suspiciously like he was sizing the Deputy up for a fight. 

            “You got me,” he said in a dead voice from which Tadrum could not tell if he was speaking in irony, bitterness, or earnest.

“Alright kid, lets get you down to the slammer.  Reckon you have a long night ahead of you.”

As they left, something dark fluttered around in the corner of his eye, but as he turned to look for it, it darted up into the indiscernible darkness beyond the oil-lit glow of the streetlamps. 

Rider sat in a jail cell slaking his long-suffering thirst with a drink of well-water from a tin cup and enjoying a meal of oats soaked in boiling water that was too much water and too little oats.  Getting arrested had turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to him.  The accommodations weren’t great, but they were better than he could have afforded. 

The Deputy Sheriff had been vigorously ignoring him for about an hour now, while rifling through a yellowing dime novel entitled Blackjack: The 21 Kills of ‘Kid’ Jimmy.  Rider was simply praying that the man would not suddenly feel a pressing need to search through his rucksack.  Or that, if he did, he would dismiss Jack Rider’s Peace Journal as just another book.

Finally, to Rider’s relief, Deputy Tadrum rose, blew out the oil lantern and said,  “Welp, that’s a good night for me, Gunslinger.  Won’t be seeing you again since its the Sheriff hisself that will be running you out of town, come sunup.  Hope never to see you again, but please, feel free to use the hemp necktie I done gave you.”

Rider wondered if it was standard procedure for them to leave the jail unguarded at night.  He had to admit that there was very little he could have done to escape.  Unlike the jail in Chickweed, this one had a concrete floor and brick walls.  If he had a week or two, he might be able to think of something, but he doubted it.  At any rate, escape wasn’t really necessary.  He tried instead to get some sleep.

Sleep was never something that came easy for Rider.  Even when lying in his trailbed, he would roll about restlessly and wake every few minutes.  Mostly he didn’t remember his dreams, which was a blessing.

He must have slept some, though, because he woke to the feeling that something was distinctly wrong.  He sat up, alert, and looked around his cell.  The door was swinging wide open, creaking quietly to itself.  He frowned.  There was no one else in the jailhouse with him, of that he was fairly sure.  Whoever had opened the door must have left after they did the job.  He stood on his cot and looked out the bars of the window.  It was that perfect time of night when it was too late for even the most dedicated reveler to still be awake, but not so early that the hard workers were up.  A familiar looking stage-coach rattled far down the street.  It had the look of a death-carriage.  Rider wondered if there was to be a funeral in town in the morning.  He sat down on his cot again.

It didn’t take much imagination to figure what this was.  ‘Dangerous Drifter Shot While Trying to Escape,’ the town news would read tomorrow, and the Sheriff would be hailed a hero for his ability to keep the outsiders in line and the townsfolk protected.  The only question became who would go to this trouble and why?  The most obvious answer would be that one of the shopkeepers he had humiliated when he disarmed them in the Saloon had bribed the Deputy to set him up.  The Deputy would not take much persuasion.  It was clear he did not care for Rider, anyway. 

Rider’s mind worked frantically.  If he stayed in the cell, they might become frustrated that he wasn’t taking the bait, and simply walk in, shoot him, and say he had tried to escape anyway.  In fact, if they were that determined to kill him, they might not stop trying until he left town in the morning.

On the other hand, leaving now would be willfully walking into a trap.  He did not have much in the way of options.  Once more he looked out the window.  There was something different this time, but it took him a moment to spot it.  It was something so bizarre, even looking at it, it took him time to figure out what it was he was seeing.  In front of the saloon there was a sign hanging from a pole on chains.  On that overhanging ‘Saloon’ sign, there crouched a figure.  It was very difficult to make anything of this figure in the dark, save that it looked to be a man with something hanging from his side.  It almost looked like a sword. 

For a moment he remembered his father’s saber, hung above the fireplace in the

mansion.  His brother, Joc, had once told him that every one of the Muskethom had such a sword in their families.

            “Before we used guns, we used swords,” he had said, “Our gun-fighting styles were adapted from sword-fighting styles.  Why do you think the masters taught you sword-play before they ever handed you a gun?  Why do you think advanced sword-styles are still part of your curriculum?” 

            The figure crouched on the ‘Saloon’ sign seemed to sense that Rider was watching him, because Eric blinked and he was gone.  Desperately, Rider looked around on the ground and rooftops to see where he could have gone, but there was no sign.

            Rider was now convinced that walking out that door might be one of the most dangerous things he could do, but waiting in this cell any longer was certain death.

            Noiselessly, Rider crept from the cell and grabbed his things from the Sheriff’s desk.  He donned his hat and duster, swung his pack over his shoulder then faced the door.  No sound but his heartbeat met his strained ears. 

He placed himself beside the door, with his back against the wall.  He then grabbed the door handle and pulled it open hiding himself between the door and the wall.  No gunshots burst in his ears.  No voices sounded in the night.  Nothing but the moan of the wind met his ears.

Rider stepped out from behind the door cautiously and peeked around the frame.  Nothing.  With a burst of speed, Rider threw himself from the doorway, flying over the porch without touching it, and rolling to his feet in the street.  Without pausing to see if any bushwhackers waited to ambush him, Rider began running in the snaking pattern he had been taught to avoid gunfire.  He ran at full speed Northward and did not stop until the town was far, far behind him.

The early start he had gotten thanks to his scare in town put Rider on the path to arrive at the Graveyard of Serpent’s Tears with plenty of light left to search for clues.  Rider was actually becoming hopeful that he would know of the location of the Twin Machines by tonight, and finish out a decade of searching.

Beneath the hopefulness was a burning fear.  He was afraid that time and weather and people would have wiped this graveyard clean, that the Librarians had been wrong, and that no clue existed, or, the most maddening prospect of them all: that the clue would be there but that he would be too dense to find it or to grasp its meaning.

The walk had been steadily uphill as his northern trek had taken him on a slow eastward drift towards the highlands.  Now the salty desert plain he had been trudging for days gave way to tan rocks, the skies began to become less grey and hazy and almost take on a bluish pitch, and Rider was surprised to see that the sagebrush was giving way to scraggily evergreens that became ever more robust as he crept higher. 

Rider had been stopping to check the journal frequently, every hour or so, and compare his position against the track of the sun across the sky.  Every time he stopped, he had the odd sense that someone was following him, but there was never anyone to be seen.  There was an old Scraeling trail that would lead to the canyon, and it had been tricky to pin down.  He found it several times and then lost it just as quickly as it snaked off into a false trail or disappeared across a flat stretch of rock.  Then the sound of rushing water met his ears, and he knew he must be close to the waterfall that the journal described as ‘Serpent’s Tears.’  He knew he must be close.  And he was almost right.

It took another hour of walking for Rider to realize how much sound carried in these hills and that the waterfall was projecting an echo from miles away through the canyons. 

Then, just when he thought he was hopelessly lost in the trails, false trails, and false echoes of the maze-like canyons, Rider spied something wholly remarkable.  Just over the rim of a canyon, he could see great spirals of red painted on the canyon wall by intelligent hands.  Approaching the rim of the canyon, Rider could now make out the spectacle that was unquestionably the Graveyard.  The walls were all faded murals painted by dedicated and primitive artists.  The ground was entirely obscured by a vast sea of poles shooting up from the dirt of the canyon.  Each pole was decorated with a unique combination of beads or woven nets hung with feathers, or the painted hides of animals, or painted skulls, or bundles of arrows, or decorated buffalo hide shields, or any of countless other mementos to the life of the bygone Scraeling Brave that each pole commemorated.  Eric could now count himself among the very few white men to ever lay eyes on a Scraeling Graveyard.

At the center of the narrow canyon sat a large, circular stone that Eric could only guess was the table around which his father and the Benaquinn Chieftains had sat almost sixty years ago.  It was a sight to behold, but the novelty was lost on Rider.  Instead, he spent his time thinking about how he would get down there.  The walls of the canyon were sheer sandstone, chosen no doubt as beautiful canvass’ for the Scraeling artists, but bad for climbing.  He had about twenty feet of rope in his bag, and this drop was probably close to forty feet.  Working his way around to the canyon mouth could take until dark, and it would be very hard to search for clues in the dark while simultaneously fighting off the bands of coyotes that would be descending from the mountain to look for food.

Eric reached into his sack to find his rope.  What he pulled out was not his rope, but rather a rough noose tied into a hemp line.  He continued to pull and was pleased to find another ten foot of rope he had accidentally taken from a Deputy Sheriff with a dark sense of humor.  Tied to his own rope, he would have almost enough rope to drop onto the top of the closest of the Scraeling death-poles.  Not a great plan, but it would have to do.

Noose-first, Rider tossed the hemp rope over a sturdy branch of a nearby tree and lowered the noose to his level.  He then threaded the bottom of the rope through the noose, then pulled until the whole thing was tight around the branch.  He hung from it to test the branch, and it held with hardly a sway.  He quickly tied his own rope to the bottom, and lowered it into the canyon.

He was immediately disappointed with the length of the rope.  Even hanging from the very bottom of the rope, it would be a risky drop from the rope to the nearest pole.  He was as likely to skewer himself as he was to stick the landing.

During the time he had been at the edge of the canyon, the feeling of being watched had intensified frighteningly.  Rider decided the time for thought was over, and he began climbing down.

Moments later, he was hanging from the end of the rope, his boots dangling out over empty air.  The sway on the rope was severe, and he was only in position to drop to the nearest poles for moments at a time before he would swing wide in one direction or another.  He began counting off the heartbeats between swings, then he let go and dropped.

For a brief instant, he was falling dizzily, then the tips of his toes touched wood with more force than he liked and he tried to absorb the fall with his knees as best he could. 

He sat squatting between two poles while he teetered, waving his arms out at his sides to try to steady himself.  He had made the landing.  He cautiously pushed himself up to a stand and looked around.  He was here.  He had made it.  He almost smiled for the first time in recent memory.  Then the bloodcurdling scream froze his heart as the red savage launched itself at him across the canyon, swinging two tomahawks in a maneuver that would soon bisect him.  The good feeling left him, and his life returned to normal.