by Matt James
Zietz stalked forward, squeezing his gun hard with both hands. The cold rain was making it difficult to grip the firearm. He carefully fingered the trigger and slowly stepped up to the edge. In the flash of the lightning high above, he leaned out over the drop and pointed his gun straight down, expecting to see three badly injured, or with any luck, deceased pests. His aim was steady—even with a stream of water running down his nose and chin.
Nothing. Zietz saw nothing.
What? He looked around and confirmed that his targets were MIA. Where did they go?
One of his men staggered up behind him and was nearly shot point-blank. Zietz seethed. Few men had ever enraged him like Jack. Zietz never failed, but with this one, he seemed to be failing at every turn.
“Th—they got us from behind, and—”
Zietz raised his hand, quieting the bumbling man. “Find them.”
Rob Terry nodded hard and turned to leave, but stopped. “Which way did they go?”
The question was met with a gun barrel, though Zietz didn’t pull the trigger. He stepped up close to the shorter man and leaned in, nearly touching noses with him.
Zietz took a deep breath and repeated himself. “I said, ‘find them.’”
17
Black Buffalo Resort and Casino
Cascade, Wyoming
Creed’s world was shattering. The improvements he had made to his beloved casino had cost him a fortune. Now, the people that had loaned him the money were repeatedly calling for their repayment.
Plus interest, Creed thought, shaking his head at the amount he owed.
Zietz was still out hunting for Jack Reilly and the Durhams. So far, it had not gone well. The day was still young, though. News traveled extremely slowly in Cascade, especially with a large portion of the police force under his beck and call. Creed even had a local judge as a poker buddy. But it started to feel like Creed may have reached too far out of the norm. The California investors weren’t some chumps he could swindle. He may have initially thought that, but not any longer.
His intercom buzzed. “Sir, I have a Eugene Taft on the line again.”
Creed’s eyes narrowed. “Not now.”
“But, sir, he keeps calling...”
Until now, the investors had only reached out to him via email and not a phone call. It was a sound strategy and would show a paper trail. Typically, he would give them a halfhearted report with little to no information. This time, he would have to bullshit his way through a conversation with someone Creed figured was a lawyer.
The kings of bullshit.
“Tell him I’m not here,” Creed replied.
“I’ve done that several times already, sir.”
Creed groaned. The new girl had done her job and kept him from being disturbed. But even she would start asking questions if he was quietly hunkered down in his office while skirting all contact. He had also been here when Jack Reilly took out three of his finest men, including Zietz.
He took a deep breath and answered the phone. “Yes, this is Creed.”
“Mr. Creed, finally. This is Eugene Taft.”
“Hello, Mr. Taft. What can I help you with?”
The other man snickered. His voice was soft and hoarse. “I think you know why I’m calling.”
Creed broke out into a sweat. “Yes, well, about that…”
“I’m calling to tell you that I’ll be in Cascade soon, and I expect you to be there to meet me.”
“Yes, well, I have an…appointment.” He pretended to rustle through a stack of paperwork. “Once I’m done here, I have to go—”
“I’m sure you can reschedule your ‘appointment,’ Mr. Creed.” His voice got low. “My superiors’ position will be heard.”
Creed stood, angered and agitated. “Now, you listen here. I—”
“Good day, Mr. Creed.”
The line went dead, and with it, Creed’s confident demeanor. He had screwed over countless people over the decades, but none of them had the testicular fortitude to do anything about it. Most of the time, they would go after him with legal suits. Luckily, none had stuck. This one, however, felt different. Jack Reilly’s involvement, as well as Eugene Taft’s impending arrival, made Creed’s spine tingle. He dove into his desk drawer and checked over his gun for the sixth time. For the first time in his life, Creed might just have to kill someone to guarantee his safety.
Beneath Devils Tower
Crook County, Wyoming
The world around Jack and the others was a combination of sedimentary and igneous rock. It made sense since the monument had been formed eons ago by the upheaval of subterranean magma. Like a rising mole or wart, the Spearfish Formation was driven high into the sky. In this case, it was forced heavenward by the unmatched might of planet Earth.
The men’s route had been naturally formed and was a vertically cut corridor of jagged edges and rising and falling ceilings. Jack led the way and stepped lightly, ducking around an outcrop and started slipping almost as soon as they got moving. Hawk tried to catch him but was unsuccessful. Jack was too heavy for him to handle by himself. Luckily, Bull was there as well. He latched onto Jack’s arm and arrested his fall. The jerking motion tore something around the wound in his shoulder, and he cried out in agony. It was too much for him to handle. Jack dropped to the rocky ground, curling in on himself. He didn’t lose consciousness, though. It just really, really hurt.
He moaned and pawed at the affected area.
Bull threw off his pack and dove into it. He looked up at his nephew. “Help him get his coat and shirt off. I need to inspect the injury.”
Hawk helped Jack do just that. In the process of getting his jacket and shirt off, Jack let loose a few blood-curdling shrieks and a handful of filthy expletives. Neither Durham looked pleased about what they saw, which told Jack that the injury was worse than he initially thought.
As the beam of the flashlight hit the injury, Bull told them what he had found. “No bullet. And it’s bleeding heavily.”
“No shit, Sher—” he growled, buried deep beneath a new wave of pain. “Never mind. Can you patch me up?”
“Of course,” Bull replied, digging through his pack again, “but it’s going to hurt.”
Jack shrugged, wishing he hadn’t. The movement of his shifting shoulder muscle was unbearable. His eyes locked onto the objects in Bull’s hands. In his left hand was a bottle of rubbing alcohol. And in his right hand was a set of needle and thread. Hawk held a packaged bandage in his mouth while he held onto his flashlight and Jack’s clothes.
“Well,” Jack said, closing his eyes, “let’s get this over with.”
The next five minutes were excruciating. And Jack was the one making it that way. Bull did a fantastic job. Jack’s constant howling and bucking made the work that much more difficult. Sewing up a moving object wasn’t easy work.
“Take this,” Bull said, handing Jack a pill. “Eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen.”
Nodding, Jack popped the thick “horse pill” into his mouth, rinsing it down with half a bottle of water. With extreme care, and with the help of Hawk, Jack slipped back into his bloodied t-shirt and jacket. Once he was redressed, he eased the compromised joint back and forth and up and down. Bull had wrapped it heavily, using the thick gauze and bandages as a padded, makeshift harness. His range of motion had been significantly cut down, but at least he could stand and get moving again. He patted his dear friend on the shoulder and stepped away.
Their flashlights illuminated the way perfectly. The passage was wide enough to walk through without too much trouble. Jack had no idea where they were headed, but any place was better than back the way they had come. Down here, there were fewer bullets.
And I should know.
The discomfort would’ve been much less if he hadn’t slipped and almost fallen. The wound he had started with initially didn’t feel as bad as it did now. Even by his standards, Jack had been careful. He knew better than to just rush into danger. But the more time that passed since his mil
itary days, the more he seemed to do it. He was becoming increasingly reckless as the years went by.
“Easy does it, Jack.” He rolled his shoulder a little. He felt the skin around the gunshot wound pull. “Easy does it…”
“What do you think it is?” Hawk asked, sounding nervous.
Bull answered this time. He was bringing up the rear—watching their backs. “I believe we will find a tribute to the fable.”
Jack looked behind him. “You don’t believe in the Seven Sisters, do you?”
“No, not in the least. But I do believe that there was something built in their honor.” Bull shrugged. “Not all of us believe in the old ways, Jack. Even I’m not too proud to admit that some of my people’s stories are…”
“Out there?” Hawk finished.
“Yes,” Bull agreed, “‘out there.’ But that doesn’t mean that a devout few wouldn’t go above and beyond to create something to memorialize them.”
Quite true, Jack thought, recalling the prayer temple he had found in Poland. Even if you didn’t believe in Jesus Christ, like the temple’s architects, you could appreciate their spiritual fervor and their work. Mostly everyone, no matter what their belief system was, could recognize a work of art when they saw one, like the Notre-Dame cathedral or St. Peter’s Basilica.
Jack stopped, finding the first signs of human civilization since their rope ladder discovery. He shined his light into the descending passageway and found something terrible.
Stairs.
“Wonderful,” he said, flexing his lower back.
The roof above the staircase was low. It had been built for people much shorter than him and Bull. Hawk didn’t seem to have any trouble with it, though. He was five or six inches shorter than Jack. The steps were narrow and unbelievably steep. One false step and you went down hard. And there would be no telling when you would stop.
“We’ve got to be directly under Devils Tower by now,” Hawk said.
“Probably, yeah,” Jack replied.
“Aren’t you impressed?”
Jack nodded. “Absolutely,” he glanced back at Bull, the only person he’d told about what he had found during his trip to Auschwitz, “but you should come to Poland next time I go. I could show you some really wild stuff.”
“Poland?” Hawk asked. “Really?”
The stairs stopped, and with them, Jack’s train of thought. “Yeah,” he replied, mentally lost, “really…”
The chamber beyond the steps was huge. It was taller than it was wide and had been formed entirely out of black, volcanic rock. But besides a depression at the center of the space, there wasn’t anything else to see. The three men headed for the anomaly and gazed inside.
“Fire pit,” Bull announced, voice low.
“Over here,” Jack said, pointing his light at the ground around it. There was a worn path that circumvented the six-foot-wide hole in the ground.
“Ceremonial dances,” Bull deduced.
“To whom, though?” Jack asked.
“Them…”
“Them who?” Jack asked.
The rangers turned and found Hawk staring straight up. Jack didn’t know what had gotten the younger man’s attention, but it was enough to silence him—a feat that wasn’t easy. He was about to add his light to what Hawk was looking at but became transfixed on something along the near wall. There, carved into the igneous stone, were what looked like a giant pair of human feet.
“Toes?” He scratched his head and looked up. “Hey, guys, take a look at—” Everything he was about to say left him. Instead, all that was left was, “uh…”
Jack was shocked. He looked back at the feet and then traced his light from that point upward. Next were the legs. They disappeared beneath a simple yet elaborately carved skirt.
Even though the creation was made entirely of black stone, you could still see the design’s artistry. It was beautifully preserved and expertly polished too. It glowed when the artificial light touched it. Fifty feet up, Jack paused on a pair of delicately built arms. They came together in a petite set of childlike hands wrapped together in an evident attitude of prayer. Twenty feet above that was a face.
“It’s them,” Jack whispered, showing his light around the room. He came back to the first young girl’s face. It was framed by long, flowing hair. “I can’t believe it. It’s them.”
He spun and counted them aloud. With every number Jack announced, he landed his light on that sister’s face. “One, two, three, four…” Each one was slightly different than the next. They were conceived as a whole and then constructed to be their own distinct individual. “…five, six, seven.” He blew out a long breath. “The Seven Sisters.”
Not a single piece of the sisters was out of place. From what Jack could tell, they were one hundred percent preserved and built directly into the walls of a naturally formed hollow beneath Devils Tower. They weren’t put together. They were cut out of the stone itself.
“It’s so clear now,” Hawk said.
“What is?” Bull asked.
“Roosevelt’s letter.”
Jack understood what he meant. The letter did make perfect sense now. First, it said, A wealth of a nation. Indeed, this was a treasure to behold to the Lakota people—all of its sister tribes too. Anyone who told the sisters’ story would appreciate it. Then, there was the part that said, The seven rest in the bear’s womb. Roosevelt didn’t mean a literal ‘bear.’ He was most definitely talking about Devils Tower or its Native American moniker, Bear Lodge. The last line in the president’s letter was still something Jack wasn’t so sure about.
“Why’d he hide it?” Jack asked. It was more of a rhetorical question than anything else.
Still, he got an answer.
Bull stepped up next to him. “To protect it.” He gently nudged Jack with his elbow. “Sound familiar?”
It did. Jack had done the same thing with his discovery in Poland. He decided to keep his findings to himself for fear of modern man abusing it. In all of his wisdom, Roosevelt had come to the same conclusion regarding Devils Tower.
Hawk joined them. “You really are like Roosevelt.”
Jack smiled and winked at him. “Grandma did always say I was a ‘man out of my time.’” He gazed back up at the nearest sister. “I guess she was right.”
18
Devils Tower
Crook Country, Wyoming
The storm hanging over northeast Wyoming had gotten worse in no time. Zietz and his men were gathered beneath a trio of closely growing pine trees. Unfortunately, the growths didn’t block out the rain and wind entirely. Zietz’s legendary tenacity had faded after losing Jack and the Durhams. Now, he was just like the three people awaiting his orders. He was drenched and cold—miserable.
His mind went back to last night’s conversation with Meredith. Her advice—her command—was to “fix” the situation. Zietz had failed her. This was different too. It was the first time that his failure could cost him and his family their lives. Zietz’s past string of successes had seriously clouded his judgment. Even Hawk had surprised him. He expected the young man to wither under a challenge. Instead, Hawk had shown up in a big way. That was apparent when he stood his ground back at the hospital.
Zietz was both shocked and confused. Everything he knew was gone. In a matter of hours, his world—his life—had been burned to the ground by a man he had only just met. But Jack wasn’t the only one to blame. Creed’s insatiable lust for ‘more’ had gotten the best of him. The deal he made with the California investors was one that he should’ve never made. The casino needed an update, yes. But it didn’t need a remodeling on the scale that Creed had ordered. It was a waste of money and the very reason Zietz was cowering beneath a tree in the rain. Even though Creed was, by far, the wealthiest person in Cascade, he was still “small-time” compared to the people he was trying to ghost. Creed was a bloated carcass floating belly up in an ocean full of ravenous sharks.
Creed’s people only included Zietz and a han
dful of hired goons and dirty cops.
The investors had their fingers in national and global affairs. They were the epitome of influence and power.
“Damn you, Creed,” Zietz seethed. “You did this.”
“What do we do?”
He didn’t hear the question. He was too lost in his rage.
“Zietz?”
A gust of bitter wind snapped him out of it. He would like nothing more than to leave, find Creed, and kill him. But Jack Reilly and his friends were still a more explicit liability. Zietz peered around the pine tree and paid close attention to the grim cloud cover. It moved quickly. With any luck, the gale would subside shortly. Then, they could get back to work.
The hunt was just beginning.
Jack ran his hand across the priceless vestige—a relic from a time long lost. It was as smooth as glass and contained hardly any tool marks. The precision that was on display rivaled that of the Great Pyramid. This wasn’t nearly as old. Jack didn’t think it was, at least. Regardless, the builder’s abilities were just as impressive as those on display in Egypt.
The men’s combined lights landed on a void in the far wall. They gave the firepit a wide berth and stopped just outside of the tunnel entrance. Like the passageway containing the rope ladder and the narrow staircase, this one had been naturally formed as well. And like the other corridors, Jack noticed that this one had also been widened by hand. It was clear of any jagged edges and outcrops of rock.
Hawk, having taken up the mantle of videographer, had started recording everything since their discovery of the sisters. He would treat these videos the same way he had treated Creed’s situation. He was going to release videos to the world once he reacquired suitable cell service. Everyone deserved to know what they had uncovered.
“How did they build this?” Jack asked.
He thought back to his conversation with Eddy. He had joked about finding ET atop Devils Tower.
Hawk replied with a question of his own. “And who are they?” He was thinking the same thing. “As far as I know, the Lakota weren’t known for stuff like this.”