The Jessie James Archives

by Craig Gallant

  Nearer to White Tree crouched the remnants of the war party, their turquoise flames guttering in the darkness. There were not many left.

  “Well, now, I guess we know who the curly wolves are, don’ we, boys?” The young man laughed and his friends quickly joined in. “Figure we better clean this up, call it a night?”

  A resounding shriek echoed from above and a streaking blur fell from the trees overhead. A creature out of nightmare dropped among the outlaws; a grotesque amalgam of man and some mysterious bird of prey. Hands hooked into brutal claws, glittering talons erupting from fingers, sank into the eyes of an outlaw. The man spun, screaming, down into the dirt. The nightmare vision’s head slashed down again. Its vicious, hooked beak tore into another man’s head, sending a shower of blood across his companions.

  White Tree shrank back for a moment. He had never become accustomed to the changes wrought by the Great Spirit upon its most potent warriors. The familiar form of Chatan was scarcely recognizable within the twisted, violent creature tearing into the outlaws before him. But the elder was a warrior still, in his heart, and he gestured at the rest of the war party.

  “Move forward! To Chatan!” And with that, White Tree ran towards the startled outlaw posse, the thrill of battle singing in his veins. Behind him, the remaining men and women rose up, the flames in their eyes and along their weapons roaring back to azure life.

  The young outlaw leader grinned to see the renewed attack and waved one of his altered pistols into the shadows behind him.

  “Guess you were right, Clem! Let’er rip!” The man’s smile turned savage as a quick clattering from the darkness was followed by an explosion as if the world was ending. A seemingly unending spray of crimson bolts flew from the shadows, slashing out with the constant hammer-blows of an automatic weapon.

  White Tree felt as if he’d been kicked by a horse and found himself flying sideways through the air. An alarming numbness spread out from his side, but not before he felt burning heat as a wash of blood ran down his ribs. His head was spinning as he landed in the soft grass, the ironic counterpoint to the violence and the pain resonating in his mind. All around him, the few remaining warriors were pounded off their feet, their spirit fires extinguished and their blood spraying across the cool grass.

  Through the haze of pain and despair closing down around him, White Tree watched as the spirit creature that was brave Chatan slashed through the outlaws. The young outlaw leader danced among his own men, many standing still in shock, and cracked blast after blast against the young warrior. Chatan leapt into the air, spinning around as he soared over the heads of the outlaws, landing lightly behind one large brute wielding a massive meat cleaver. The talon-hands arced up, blood-spattered claws hooked to strike.

  “Watch it, Smiley, somethin’ behind ya!” The young man had spun around with the Warrior Nation scout, and as Chatan landed, ready to strike, the outlaw was bringing both of his pistols into line with the warrior’s bare chest.

  “Fly away, birdie!” The young man sneered, and then fired both pistols. The dual streaks slashed out, striking Chatan in the chest and blowing him backwards into the trees. The azure flame in his eyes, wide in surprise in the moment before the outlaw fired, were quenched before his body tumbled to a halt in the dirt.

  White Tree slumped down, his vision fading and his mind beginning to wander. Who would recover the artifact… if there even was an artifact in Teetonka valley? His people needed him. The chiefs had entrusted the wellbeing of these young warriors to his care…

  The elder felt the cool grass against his cheek and fought to claw his way back into consciousness. There was so much that needed to be done. But he was so very tired, and the leaden numbness from his side was spreading across his entire body.

  “How many’s that?” A voice on the edge of his awareness dragged him back. The voice seemed so young.

  “Twenty, Billy. We got ‘em all.” Another voice, harsher and more grating. “Well, twenty one if you count the old one, but o’ course we ain’t got his yet.”

  The voices drifted back and forth, but seemed to wander closer. White Tree felt the Great Spirit summoning him, and was filled with a sudden desperation to answer the call. Something within him screamed that he needed to flee this life and listen no further to the voices closing in.

  “Still,” the young voice again. “These folks are pretty far afield. And they’re all a lot younger than you’d expect, exceptin’ pops, here.”

  White Tree’s spirit tried desperately, but the voices called him back, and he was unable to deny them.

  A burning pain flared in the body he had forgotten, dragging him screaming out of the shadow realm between life and death. He could see nothing but a red-tinged blur and the voices speaking above him were distorted and strange, but still he could not sink away.

  “So, old man, what brings you so far from the new hunting grounds?” The voice lowered towards him, circling ever-nearer.

  There were things White Tree must not say. Knowledge he dare not pass on to one so clearly tainted by the evil of the ancients. But what were they? He felt the most sacred knowledge slipping from him, and tried desperately to retain it. He felt his dry lips, salty with his own bloody, forming the words, giving shape to the sacred trust. Teetonka. The artifact. He remembered. He remembered, and his lips smiled as he felt a vague tugging across the throat of his body, and his spirit was allowed to drift downward once more, into the Spirit Realm, to continue his journey.

  In a blood-drenched clearing far above, a young man’s face creased in a very similar smile.

  Chapter 1

  The Union packet boat, Lincoln’s Gift, roared up the wide waters of the Missouri River. It kicked up a frothing wake behind it. The massive RJ-1027-powered engines that took up the rear third of the small craft thundered out across the water as red-tinged flames shot from the exhaust pipes along the boat’s flanks. It had the sleek, hard lines of a predator as it slid in an easy back and forth motion that tore the river into foaming waves that were left to pound the distant green banks as it past.

  On the shore to either side, keeping pace with the boat, two outriders hunched over the control consoles of their armored steeds. Heavy iron bodies stretched over eight feet long from scooped nose fairings to flaring exhaust funnels. A pair of long metal skids hung below the trim bodies, skimming a foot over the grass and brush growing along the river’s edge. The Iron Horses had made their first appearance nearly twenty years ago, but they were a common sight throughout the western territories in modern times.

  Slung high on the front of each vehicle, to either side of the rider’s dust fairing, hung a pair of heavy weapons. The lead ‘Horse on either bank was armed with rotating Gatling cannons, RJ-1027 telltale lights winking among the boxy firing mechanisms of the weapons. Rocket pods nestled in the weapon mounts of the rearmost vehicles. Their massive bores seemed to scent the air ahead for trouble.

  The crew of the Lincoln’s Gift was sweating horribly within the armored confines of their crew compartment. The heat of the summer sun blazed down from above. Combined with the furnace bellow of the massive engines, the temperatures inside were barely tolerable whenever the boat was battened down for full thrust. All viewports were closed and sealed; cutting off nearly all circulation of outside air and leaving only the narrow vision slits to navigate by. The crew was out of uniform, wearing only soaked undershirts above their blue trousers. Only the most inhumane officer would hold any crew to standard codes of dress during the very rare Treasury run out to the territories.

  The coin to run the territories was almost always transported by Union Heavy Rail; the enormous armored behemoths that growled along the railways of the continent. Occasionally, due to maintenance schedules, military movements, or some other, less-obvious intrusion on the status quo, one of the armored Union packet boats had to make the run instead. On those trips, the crews knew that more than the standard oversight would be in effect.

  Each man’s mind wa
s never far from the heavy strongbox that sat in the boat’s small, locked hold just aft of the crew compartment. Holding the bullion necessary to keep the western territories operating for a month, the gold would have been enough to set up the four men pushing the packet boat westward as petty kings for life. If only it were not marked by the government for easy tracking. And, of course, if only they could spirit it away from the Federal agent that accompanied each shipment.

  There were rumors among the men and women of the packet boat that a crew had tried it once. No one could agree on what happened to them, but the details of every version were gruesome enough that no one had turned traitor in living memory.

  The man in the dark suit stood calmly at the rear of the crew compartment, despite the horrific heat and the constant shifting of the boat beneath him. His eyes were hidden behind dark, smoky goggles. However, a gleam of crimson occasionally escaped, hinting at advanced augmentation of some kind. He wore a massive Union blaster strapped to one hip, and the weapon did all his talking for him. The agent had not uttered a single word since boarding back in St. Louis. The crew went about their work, casting an occasional daunted look aft.

  Otherwise, took no notice of the large, dark figure in their midst. Lieutenant Truett kept his gloved hands tight on the helm and his mind focused on the river ahead. Each bump and shudder registered through the old wooden wheel. He read the signals like words in a child’s chapter book. He had been aboard packet boats since the War Between the States, and had captained Lincoln’s Gift for nearly five years. He never looked forward to his turn at the Treasury run, but his daddy had always told him when he balked at work as a kid that the soonest run was soonest done. He took that advice to heart each time he shut down the hatches and viewports on the old Gift and prepared to the run the gold to the hayseeds running amok out west.

  The Lieutenant kept his hands on the wheel steady as he peered out the tiny slit to starboard. He could just see the two escorting Iron Horses soaring along on the bank of the river. Even after all these years, it seemed strange to watch such heavy machines floating on cushions of thickened air. The boat crews never knew the men and women who rode herd on these trips. They joined the boats just outside of St. Louis and flew along with her to Kansas City, where they peeled off and presumably made the return trip.

  He shrugged; each to his own. When they got to Kansas City, the gold would be the agent’s trouble, and Truett would be free to enjoy the entertainments barbarian society for a night before returning to civilization. If the cavalry boys were alright sucking dust for most of a day and a night, that was their lookout. Mama Truett had not raised such a dummy.

  Truett’s second in command, Engineer’s Mate Hadley, waved a hand in the Lieutenant’s peripheral vision to get his attention. The only way to communicate in the compartment, when the hatches were all secured and the engine was roaring out at top speed, was with gestures. With a rapid fluttering of hand signals, Hadley indicated that they should be stopping soon. Each packet boat running full out needed to stop every four hours or so; long enough for the engine components and hull seams to be inspected for wear and damage.

  The Lieutenant nodded and flashed two quick gestures to Seaman Graff, the signalman. He moved to the signals station as Truett gunned the engine into a quick surge of power that sent the boat roaring ahead of the ‘Horse escorts. There, the flickering signal lamps would be more easily seen. Graff worked the controls for a moment, slamming the handles back and forth several times, and then rushed to a starboard vision slit. He nodded to Truett as he turned and moved to a port slit, and then straightened up, giving the commander an “okay” sign with his fingers.

  Truett pulled back on the throttle of the boat, easing the power down gently so as not to swamp the small craft with its own surging wake. He nodded to the fourth member of the crew, Gunner’s Mate Travis Stint, who immediately moved forward and worked the anchoring controls. A shudder ran beneath their feet as the barbed iron dropped from the bow. The metal bower fell into the debris at the bottom of the river and snagged there. After a moment of gentle drifting, the Lincoln’s Gift swung slowly to its anchor against the soft but persistent push of the current.

  The commander brought the enormous engines down to a low idle and then cut them completely. The silence within the close metal chamber was heavy, the ringing in the crews’ ears pushing in on them uncomfortably. The agent continued to stand, unmoved and unmoving, his face immobile behind the dark lenses.

  “Alright, boys, let’s get this done so we can get moving again. I don’t relish the idea of sitting here with a fortune of gold for ballast.” Truett nodded to Hadley and Graff. “See to the inspection, but keep it quick. I don’t want us to shake apart before we get to KC, but I don’t want to sit here all day either.” The older man turned to the gunner. “Stint, stand your watch as usual. Man the cupola cannons and keep those cavalry boys honest. No napping while they’re supposed to be babysitting the president’s coin.”

  The men saluted and moved off to their areas. Truett turned to the agent and smiled grimly. “Agent, if you would care to conduct your midday inspection of the cargo and sign off?”

  The agent nodded once and turned to a small hatch behind him. Spinning the lock wheel with practiced moves he knelt down to reach inside the hold and pull out a compact iron box. He grunted slightly at the weight, but the container slid out easily enough. He leaned in to open the lock with a key he pulled from around his neck. Truett tried not to watch over the man’s shoulder, but the temptation proved too great. That much gold in one place was enough to make even a loyal man like the Lieutenant entertain impure thoughts.

  The officer whistled and shook his head. He knew it would never do any thief any good, even if they could take out the escorts, peel open the packet boat, and kill the crew. Each of the heavy coins gleamed in the soft red light of the compartment’s RJ-1027 bulbs, but he knew they would gleam with a tinge of red no matter what color the lighting was. Each coin was enriched with the mystical substance that had changed the world in the last months of the war. The government was jealous of its wealth, and it tracked these government coins with the greedy obsession of a miser. Without this gold, and the structure and stability it paid for, the western territories would soon devolve into utter chaos, threatening to drag the rest of the republic down with them. It was a sobering thought, and more than enough to quench the impure thoughts of a moment before.

  “Are we just about ready?” Truett stood up and glanced around the crew compartment. Hadley was still trapped in the broiling confines of the tiny engine room while Graff had moved through a crawl hatch forward to check the seams below and to the bow. Stint gave an all clear, and the agent, pushing the strongbox back into the hold, nodded over his shoulder as he spun the locking wheel tight.

  “Just replacing one of the coolant hoses, sir.” Hadley’s voice was muffled, buried within the maze of pipes, tubes, and arcane components that made up the enormous engines.

  “Got a small leak at junction two, sir.” Graff shouted from below. “Giving it a quick splash of sealant and we should be good.”

  Truett settled against the small pilot’s seat. He wiped the sweat beading down his forehead with the back of one hand and tilted towards the vision slit, hoping for a slight breeze. Of course, there was none. The lieutenant rested his forehead against the warm metal anyway in the hopes one may come up before it was time to push forward again.

  Hadley was backing out of the engine room and Graff had just scrambled back into the crew compartment, gleaming with sweat, when Stint tapped at the collar of the cupola. “Sir, something strange on the south bank – off to port, I mean.”

  Truett slid off the jump seat and to a vision slit on the port side of the boat. “A little more information, if you please, Gunner’s Mate?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. The cavalrymen over there seem a bit jumpy. And I thought I saw—“

  Truett swung his head back and forth in front of the slit trying to
find the Iron Horses in the tight field of vision. He found them after a moment and could see that they were, indeed, moving about. One man had dismounted and was moving away from the river, a large blaster rifle raised in a firing position, but sweeping back and forth as if unsure of a target. The other cavalryman was still mounted, but his ‘Horse was operational, hovering on a cushion of blurred, dense air and swaying slightly as he brought it around to face away from the river as well.

  “Damnit, what do they think they’re doing?” Truett muttered. “Stint, anything from the two on the north bank?”

  “No sir!” Stint’s voice had ratcheted up slightly with this change in routine. “They’re watching those two, opposite, sir.”

  Truett, still bent to the vision slit, shook his head. “Hadley, prep the engines for restart. Graff, be ready with the anchor. If there’s something going on out there, I want to be somewhere else as quick as possible.”

  The agent had moved to another vision slit and was watching the two cavalrymen as well. The man on foot was moving deeper into the trees along the bank, while the active ‘Horse was pushing up after him, Gatling guns swiveling, searching for prey.

  A furious detonation erupted on the north bank of the river. A dragon’s breath of blast wave pushed out over the water and set the packet boat to rocking in the sudden, vicious swell. Truett rushed to the starboard bulkhead and pressed his eye to a vision slit there.

  “Stint, talk to me!” The commander’s eye roved over the bank. He could not to see what was happening within the restricting little rectangle. With a violent mutter, he stood up and began to spin the securing wheel to the larger hatch. “Toss this over for a game of soldiers.” He rumbled. If he could get the larger hatch open he’d be able to see more clearly, better know what should be done—