“I’m open to any ideas,” Jimmy said.
They talked about it for most of the evening and all of the next day, but no one could come up with anything that would allow them to stop Benson and not get killed.
The wagon company was camped right out in the open, above the water, with no place around the wagon camp to surprise Benson with any kind of attack. And at night, the company had two men standing guard at all times. Usually one of them was one of Benson’s men, or Benson himself.
Finally, they all agreed to try to warn one of the men of the wagon company when he got away from the train. It was the best plan they could think of.
Jimmy and Long, just before dawn on the second morning, met one of the younger men from the train while he was out trying to gather wood for a fire. He wasn’t much older than they were, and looked very tired and worn out. His clothes were tattered and he looked underfed. Fighting wagons along this trail could do that to a man.
After they had told him about Benson and his two men, the guy had only nodded. “Thanks for the warning, but we don’t trust them either. We won’t let them get the drop on us.” He patted the six-shooter he had tucked into his belt.
“If you need our help, we’re camped back down the trail,” Jimmy said.
The guy nodded. “We won’t. Thanks again, though.”
“Just don’t tell Benson we’re behind you,” Jimmy said.
“Oh, trust me,” the man had said with a shake of his head, “I don’t even talk to those men.”
With that, he walked back toward the wagon company carrying an armload of sticks.
Jimmy had no doubt that the warning wouldn’t help. If Benson followed his true nature, that man would be dead very shortly.
But there was nothing he or the rest of them could do, so they went back to waiting.
Jimmy wasn’t so sure how rested they were getting in the extreme heat. The air just seemed to take any energy he had out of his body, and it wasn’t until long after the sun went down and the air cooled that he even started to feel like moving at all.
One night, around the campfire, Josh and C. J. filled them all in on what was coming for them in the desert.
“Most companies start across the desert at night,” Josh said, “leaving the camp near the Sink to cross the fifteen miles that it takes to even reach the drop down into the Forty Mile Desert.”
“It’s well over fifty miles from the last water to the Truckee River,” C. J. said.
Together, they all worked out a plan.
Jimmy hadn’t liked the sound of anything that was coming.
Fifty-five miles in sand, without water.
They were going to have to be very, very ready for the crossing.
Finally, coming back just after dawn on the third morning, Long reported that the wagon company, with Benson and his men helping them, had started to make the crossing. “They left one wagon behind,” Long said, “but no people.”
“We go tonight,” Jimmy said. “Let’s move up to their old camp and get ready. That will give them a full day’s head start. We don’t want to catch them somewhere out there in the middle of that sand.”
“Good idea,” Truitt said. “They won’t be stopping, that’s for sure.”
“Neither will we,” C.J. said. “Stopping in that desert is the quickest way to die.”
“Sounds like a good time,” Zach said, shaking his head.
“Before we leave,” Jimmy said, “we need to make sure every water bag is full, every canteen.”
“I’ll have the stock well watered,” Long said. “But we’re going to need every drop we don’t drink for the horses to get them across as well. And we’ll have to pack extra grass.”
When they reached the campsite beside the sink, they could clearly see the six wagons kicking up dust far out on a vast open expanse of light brown sand.
They found shelter under some trees and settled in.
For Jimmy, the heat of the day seemed to drag on and on.
California was just over those mountains in the distance. Somewhere, between here and Sacramento, he needed to get his father’s gold mine deed back from Benson.
He just didn’t know how yet.
All of them tried to stay in the shade as long as the sun was out, and from where Jimmy was sitting, by mid-afternoon, he could no longer see the dust trail from the wagons.
Tomorrow, instead of resting in the shade, they would be moving in the heat. Once you started across the desert, there was no stopping.
A lot of things had happened on the trip west, but right now, what faced them frightened him more than anything had frightened him before.
But they had no choice.
If they stopped, they died.
PART TWENTY-FOUR
STARTING ACROSS HELL
AS AN ALMOST full moon came up over the hot desert, they broke camp. Every canteen, every water bag was brimming full. Then, with each of them taking one last, long drink from the fresh water near the camp, they started off.
“Stay between the wagon wheel ruts,” Long said, taking the lead as he usually did. “Safer in the dark.”
Jimmy was last in line and was leading one packhorse.
Zach led another packhorse behind Long.
Then it was C.J., Josh, and Truitt in that order.
They kept close to each other and after a while Jimmy noticed that his eyes had adjusted and he could see pretty well in just the light from the moon.
They moved steadily.
As the night got cooler, Long had them pick up the pace. They needed to cover as much ground as possible when it was cool and dark.
They made the fifteen miles to the edge of the desert without any problems. The moon was directly over their heads as they reached the edge of the Forty Mile Desert.
They stopped for a few minutes rest on the top of the ridge before dropping down the steep incline to the desert floor.
At first, Jimmy didn’t understand what he was seeing. The trail was framed all the way down the slope to the level desert floor with piles and piles of white.
Then it suddenly dawned on him what he was actually looking at.
Bones.
Thousands of animals’ bones lined both sides of the trail down the hill like a horrid decoration of a nightmarish garden path.
“Ready?” he asked everyone, tearing his gaze away from the bones.
“Not really,” C.J. said.
“We’ve come this far,” Truitt said, “we can’t let forty miles of sand stop us.”
“One at a time down this slope,” Long said, mounting up and starting down between the rows of white animal bones gleaming in the moonlight.
Long made it to the bottom fine, and so did Zach with his pack horse.
Truitt went next, then Josh, both signaling they were at the bottom with a whistle.
Jimmy sat on his horse at the top, watching C. J.
Everything seemed to be going fine until suddenly, about halfway down, C.J.’s horse stumbled and went down, dumping C.J. into the deep sand.
C.J. rolled down the hill and came up spitting sand.
Long and Zach, on foot, quickly climbed back up to him while Jimmy led his horses down slowly from the top.
C.J. was fine, but his horse had broken a leg.
They got the supplies and water off the horse and distributed to the other horses. Then C.J., with Long’s help, saddled their best packhorse with his gear.
The horse with the broken leg had been one Jimmy’s father had bought in St. Louis. For some reason, it suddenly felt as if he was going to lose another member of his family.
He felt sick.
As Jimmy watched, and Long turned his back, Zach did the hardest job he had ever had to do.
He led the horse over to where there was a large pile of white bones that were piled almost waist high.
Then, with one clean shot from the rifle, he put the suffering horse down.
Just like with much of what they had had to do on this tri
p, there just wasn’t a choice.
It was life, or it was death.
And to Jimmy, here in the Wild West, there didn’t seem to be much between the two.
Continued next month...
LITTLE DEATH
She is the only person I know
who would jump from a warm bed,
go down one flight of stairs to the door,
in bright light,
and call her dog
without clothes on.
Across the street an old man
sits wrapped in a shawl
made forty years earlier by his first wife,
eyes circled with bathtub rings
from the binoculars he has held
watching my door waiting for her.
He has been sitting there for twenty-six years.
She is twenty-five.
Naked, she stretches,
hands at mouth,
legs apart,
calling her dog.
He feels an old warmth.
One hand holds the glasses tight,
his other hand fumbles,
grasps the old revolver.
She laughs, turns,
a flash of white back up the stairs.
I watch her approach, complaing of the cold,
laughing at her dog.
I feel an old warmth.
She moves to smother me.
The shot rings out, unnoticed.
She kills us both simultaneously.
USA Today bestselling writer once more returns to his favorite character, Poker Boy.
Poker Boy and his team must figure out why the 13th floors of every major building in Las Vegas were about to disappear. Was it magic? Was it an evil plan to destroy Las Vegas? And who had the power to do such a thing?
One of the more puzzling mysteries that Poker Boy must solve. And he does it in his normal strange and funny way: He asks stupid questions.
This story originally appeared in Fiction River: Hex in the City and is part of my monthly focus to let readers of this magazine read some of my stories from WMG Publishing’s other main publication.
THE 13TH FLOOR PROBLEM
ONE
AS A PROFESSIONAL poker player, I don’t have any superstitions. Not a one. I don’t believe that if I won a tournament with one sock inside out, that I needed to always wear one sock inside out for good luck. I know for a fact that Lady Luck, actually named Laverne, paid no attention at all to how my socks were worn, or if I threw salt over my shoulder, or if I walked under a ladder.
She was just too busy. Now don’t take me wrong, I wouldn’t want to cross her, but she just wasn’t the type to pay attention to the small stuff.
In life and in poker, I have had my fair share of good luck and bad luck, even though as Poker Boy, I know Lady Luck likes me, and my team. In fact, one of her four daughters, Terri, the Queen of Clubs, has just joined my team of superheroes.
My team works to save the world when it needs saving and it is often Lady Luck who gives us the assignments.
As it happened, just luck or coincidence or whatever, most of my team was having lunch in my office when we learned about what we came to call “The 13th Floor Problem.”
My office, actually it’s my team’s office, but everyone calls it my office, floats about five hundred feet above the top floor of MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. It has windows on all four sides, floor-to-ceiling, with a view that was worth more than I wanted to ever imagine.
How it stayed in position was beyond me, even though Stan said I was the one who put it there and kept it there. As far as I was concerned, it stayed in place by some sort of magic I didn’t understand. There were a lot of things in the world of gods and superheroes that I didn’t understand and how my office worked was one of those things.
The office was, of course, invisible, and, as Stan said, out of phase with the real world so that if a plane hit it, the plane would pass right through. I’m sure if that happened, it would give everyone in the office a heart attack. The last thing I wanted was a plane passing through me.
But the office did have a wonderful view of the Strip and the airport and the entire city around it. Patty Ledgerwood (aka Front Desk Girl and my girlfriend and sidekick) and I often came up here at night and sat together and watched the stars and the planes landing and the cars on the Strip and all the bright lights spread out below us. As I said, a view worth more than I can imagine.
I had decorated the office so it looked like an exact replica of the 1960’s diner booth the team used to meet in. The Diner, as the place is called, is in the downtown Vegas area on a side street a block from the Horseshoe Casino and Hotel.
Just as in the Diner downtown, this booth had slick, red seats on three sides. I had added wooden chairs that could be pulled up to the end of the booth and a couple tall, tree-like plants behind the booth to give the place a little less cold feel.
The booth filled most of the room and could seat eight in a pinch.
There were only three ways to get up to the office. I had put a door leading to Patti’s apartment and another door leading to the Diner in downtown Vegas. You step through and you were instantly in the other place. Otherwise you had to teleport.
I could teleport, but besides Stan, the God of Poker and my boss, I was the only one on the team who could. Everyone else either hitched a ride here with me or Stan or used the door from the Diner.
I was told it was rare that a lowly superhero like me could teleport. Or step between instants of time. But I had learned how to do both. I figured if I could learn it, so could other superheroes, like my girlfriend, Patty. She was a superhero working in hotel hospitality area of the Gods.
She was willing to learn, so we had worked on it a few times, so far without luck. But we had time and one of Patty’s superhero traits was extreme patience. She had to have that to put up with me at times. I was a professional poker player, after all.
It had become a habit for the team to have lunch together in my office around the big booth at one in the afternoon. We all liked the view and the companionship. Sometimes being a superhero could get lonely, at least that’s what others told me. As a poker player, I always had people around me. It was part of the job.
And I was lucky enough to be tangled up with Patty.
Screamer and his wife, Terri, were sitting at the table working on burgers and vanilla shakes that Madge from the Diner had brought up. Having the great food and milkshakes from the Diner in downtown Vegas just a step through a door away was a great benefit.
Screamer had been a member of the team since we started. He was a superhero working with the police and could, with a touch, connect minds and be inside another person’s mind. He got his nickname Screamer from making hardened criminals scream in fear from the images he put in their heads.
Terri was Lady Luck’s daughter and a superhero in the beverage side of things. She and Screamer had been separated for a number of years while he got his newly acquired brain-reading powers under control. Now that they had worked out a way to be together, they never seemed to be apart.
Patty worked at the MGM Grand front desk and was on lunch break, so she still had on her front desk outfit and her long, brown hair pulled back tight. She nibbled at a salad while I worked at a cheeseburger with a huge basket of fries. I had switched away from my standard vanilla milkshake today for a cherry Diet Coke. Patty was mixing my fries with her salad, taking a bite of lettuce, then a fry.
Stan, the God of Poker, and my boss, also had a cheeseburger. He had on his standard tan slacks, tan shirt, and tan vest. He was the most nondescript man I had ever met. You could almost look right at him and not notice him. That made him downright scary on a poker table.
I had just taken a huge bite of my cheeseburger when Laverne, Lady Luck herself, appeared, pulled up a chair, sat at the booth, and grabbed one of my fries. Between her and Patty, I was going to be lucky to get any of them.
Laverne wore her normal gray silk business pants su
it and had her hair pulled back tight, giving her face a stark beauty and sternness. She just radiated power and toughness.
And not once being around her did I fail to get nervous. Having Lady Luck herself just come to have lunch with you was a stunning thing I would never get over.
“Hey, Mom,” Terri said, working at her hamburger and leaning against Screamer.
I managed to get most of the ketchup off my chin and nodded to her. Stan just kept working on his cheeseburger.
Madge appeared out of the door from the diner and smiled at Laverne. “Anything I can get for you?”
Madge was the waitress and the owner of the Diner downtown. She was also a superhero in the food and beverage industry and seemed to have been around the world of the gods for a very long time. She was fairly short and clearly overweight and she always wore a dress far, far too tight and too short for someone her size. She had a gruff way about her, but was always willing to help out the team where she could. She knew everyone, which had helped a few times on different assignments we had tackled.
Laverne shook her head. “Thanks, Madge, but we have a problem we need to get started on.”
I swallowed the last of the bite of my cheeseburger I had been chewing on and pushed the rest away. When Laverne came looking for us like this, it meant eating was going to take a back seat very quickly.
Besides, my stomach was already twisting from my sense of looming danger, so putting more food down there wasn’t a good idea at the moment.
“What’s happening?” Stan asked, then took another bite of his cheeseburger.
“All the thirteenth floors are vanishing,” Laverne said, as if she said a statement like that every day.
Then she took another fry.
“No building or hotel in this city has a thirteenth floor,” Terri said, looking puzzled.
“Floor Twelve B or the Fourteenth Floor, whatever they are called,” Laverne said, shrugging. “They are all vanishing. They will still be there, so no building is going to fall down, but the floors will become totally invisible by midnight.”
Smith's Monthly #8 Page 4