Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  “I am his secretary.” The man pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “What would this be concerning?”

  Chance smiled. “I’m Alfred St. James. You recently ordered some special power-coupling equipment from Hyperion Electrical in St. Louis. I was on my way to Seattle, but decided to stop in and see how those devices were working for you. You did get my wire, didn’t you?”

  The little man blinked, then glanced back at a tiny desk with a telephone receiver perched on it. “Western Union delivered no wire.” He attempted to close the door.

  Chance’s foot stopped him. “Perhaps Mr. Van Sloos has a moment for me.”

  The secretary sighed, resigned, it appeared, to the fact that he’d never get the door closed. He crossed to his desk, ran the phone’s crank around several times, then picked up the earphone and spoke into the mouthpiece in hushed tones. Because the man raised a hand to hide his mouth, Chance didn’t bother to click the telephoto lens into place in his eye and read the man’s lips.

  The secretary nodded once, then replaced the receiver. “Mr. Van Sloos has deigned to see you.”

  The man opened a door in the cabin’s far wall, and waved Chance on through. Chance smiled and entered a very small, featureless box—barely suited to being a line shack on the range, much less the office of the mine’s managing director. As he spun around, the secretary slammed the door. Bells sounded, then the entire room descended.

  Chance took the elementary precaution of stepping out of line with the hidden lift’s door, but stopped short of filling his hand with the derringer in his jacket pocket. Assuming hostility where eccentricity could suffice as an explanation wasn’t going to get him what he wanted. It’s best if it’s a peaceful negotiation.

  The lift came to a rest with a creak and a groan. Chance opened the door onto a subterranean office that had been gouged from the rock and built out with tall shelves. Books filled them, walnut paneling upon which hung oil paintings of hellish landscapes stood between them, and a parquet floor—fitting since the room was big enough to host a ball—united all. The furnishing ran to the baroque, with lots of gilding and embroidery. Red velvet curtains covered what bare rock had escaped paneling, and blood-red satin sashes did the same for the ceiling. And behind at least one of those drapes there’s a door into the mine itself.

  He turned toward the slender-legged desk, which held an electric lamp at both forward corners. Instead of seeing a man seated in the high-backed chair, he saw the chair’s back. Van Sloos, it appeared, had a flare for the dramatic.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Van Sloos. I am—”

  “A liar.”

  Chance blinked his good eye. “I beg your pardon.”

  “A liar.” The chair slowly turned around, revealing a scarecrow-thin man, with straw-colored hair and a scar over his left cheekbone. “I would recognize your voice anywhere, Chance Corrigan, even after all these years.”

  Chance’s left eye clicked in for a closer view. The man’s emaciated state, and the way his hair had thinned, would have denied Chance vital clues to his identity. But the scar, that triggered memories. It began as a straight line along the man’s cheekbone then, under the eye, it curved down and around in a distinctly sickle shape. “As I recall, you were always a more accomplished liar than I was.”

  The man rose. His dark suit suggested the prosperity his cadaverous body belied. “I was told you’d come. I know you killed Alex Gavrilis. I told the Brotherhood I wasn’t afraid of you.”

  Chance shook his head. “You haven’t changed at all, have you, Bertie? You’d never have called Gavrilis ‘Alex’ while he was alive—at least not in earshot of your brother and his cronies.”

  Bertie Palmerstone slowly smiled. “Oh, how they used to laugh at you, Corrigan. Smart boy from a tradesman’s family, thinking he was worthy of our company simply because a benefactor bought you a place at college. We shared many a chuckle over you—especially after the accident and your apparently illusory death.”

  Chance laughed sharply. “You’re not fooling me, Bertie. You were never part of it. Randolf couldn’t tolerate your presence. Likewise his friends. When you were off scheming, they laughed at you, too. They loved telling stories of your misadventures.”

  “Liar!”

  “They roared at the story of your burglary of that convent in England and your being driven out by eighty-year-old nuns wielding brooms.” Chance’s smile sharpened. “Or, especially, the unfortunate affair of you bursting out of that confessional, ready to conduct a Black Mass. On Easter. At Notre Dame. In front of the Archbishop.”

  The room’s pallid light reduced the flush of Bertie’s cheeks to a grey smudge. “They would never…”

  “They did. Happily. Your occult dabbling provided endless entertainment.” Chance’s chin came up. “In fact, you’ve got no more reason to love the Brotherhood than I do.”

  “No, no, we have nothing in common.” Bertie punched his desk, then did his best to cover the pain. “I am a Palmerstone! I am one of them.”

  The indignation in Bertie’s voice prompted Chance to laugh harshly, but he caught himself. “You weren’t one of them. Yes, you are a Palmerstone, but Randolf was the heir. You were the spare. You have never had an original idea in your life; and you never fully think through the ones you’ve stolen. The Brotherhood tolerated you simply to fend off boredom.”

  Bertie’s head came up. He stared at Chance, naked hatred blazing his eyes. And stared past him. Clearly the words had penetrated—not opening a wound, but reopening one. “You’re wrong, Corrigan, incredibly wrong. On all counts. But none of that matters. I’ll show you. I’ll show them.”

  Chance opened his arms. “Here, with this? A coal mine? Your brother and his friends are becoming the masters of the world. Even if you supply them every speck of coal they need, you’ll be nothing more to them than a servant.”

  Bertie laughed low and cold, in tones Chance had heard many times before and always associated with irredeemable insanity. “Oh, I understand them and their desires, Corrigan. I understand yours as well.”

  “What is it you think I want?”

  “Me, dead, of course. To hurt my brother.”

  Chance shook his head. “As always, wrong.”

  “I know better than to believe you.” Bertie sucked at a knuckle. “But, let’s pretend. Why are you here?”

  “You ordered things from Hyperion Electric. I’d used the same equipment to improve the spider constructs that Gavrilis was using to build his dam at Aswan.” Chance shrugged. “I assume you’ve converted one into a burrowing device. I need it. How much?”

  Bertie snorted. “Is that it?”

  “I don’t see much more on offer, here, though I find the Black Barts interesting.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who did you steal the plans from?”

  The man’s nostrils flared. “How dare you!”

  “There aren’t that many people who can do that sort of work, and you’re not one of them.” Chance smiled. “No matter. Now, about the burrower…”

  “No! No! Absolutely not!” Bertie thrust a quivering finger toward the surface. “Be happy I let you live, Chance Corrigan. And I advise you to leave Chimney Springs as fast as you can. I’ll spare your life now, but not always. Run while you can!”

  Chance stepped back toward the elevator, but paused in the doorway. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I doubt you are sincere in your concern.”

  “Oh, I am, Bertie, I am.” Chance sighed. “Your follies always ended badly. At school, someone could always cover it up for you. Here, people might react less kindly if you hurt them.”

  “The locals know that to vex me is dangerous.” Bertie’s brown eyes became slits. “And, soon, I become yet more dangerous.”

  “I’m sure you believe that.” Chance nodded a brief salute in his direction. “I don’t. And based on past experience, I’m thinking no one will get a laugh out of it this time.”

  * *
*

  Chance made it back to the surface unmolested. The secretary saw him out of the office, and the patrolling Black Barts ignored him as he headed back to town. For his part, he noted their presence and that passing automatons tipped their hats at each other, but paid them little attention other than that. That they could acknowledge each other made sense, and was proof that Bertie clearly had stolen the technology.

  He only thinks of himself. No reason he’d think to put that into his creations.

  Bertie Palmerstone’s residence in Chimney Springs had come as a surprise, and forced Chance to recall things he’d gladly, long since forgotten. At university, Randolf Palmerstone, Alexander Gavrilis and others had formed their own secret society: the Pharaonic Brotherhood. Sons of politicians and industrialists all, they’d planned for world domination via a return to feudalism. They somehow considered this plan enlightened.

  They’d never formally invited Chance to join, but were happy to use his genius at invention to further their plans. And while they’d never had any intention of letting him into their club, they were quite free in telling him that they’d make him rich enough to be their equal, provided his experiments bore fruit. The promise of wealth, and other inducements, had blinded him to their true nature.

  And I paid the price for that blindness.

  Bertie had entered university two years after Chance, despite being a year older than him. Bertie tried too hard to join his brother’s circle of friends. They gladly tormented him, making Bertie look for new and different ways to garner power and prove himself both worthy of their company and of use to their group. Whether a mad scheme to marry into European royalty, or somehow track down the Templar treasure that had gone missing in Paris centuries before, Bertie’s desperation had driven him further and further from reality.

  Chance couldn’t recall much in the way of specific detail on the host of schemes Bertie had hatched. The fact was that he’d been too busy working to ingratiate himself with the Brotherhood to concern himself with a failing rival. Despite that, however, he had a vague sense that Bertie’s plans had become increasingly unsavory, and could only imagine the occult depths to which the man had sunk in the decade since Chance had last seen Palmerstone.

  Chance made it back to Main Street, then turned south past the Golden Fortune Saloon and Gambling Emporium. The smoke drifting out was as foul as the piano was out of tune. A bit further on he walked by the Western Union office. He glanced quickly up through the alley between it and the Grand Hotel. Even knowing what to look for, he couldn’t see the wires he’d spliced into the telegraph lines the night before.

  Chance paused in the lobby to ask for his key. The small, wizened woman who’d previously warned him about the coffee, plucked the brass key from the mailbox, but didn’t hand it to him.

  “I wouldn’t be telling a man his business.”

  Chance smiled. “But.”

  “Seems a few people saw you go out to the mine this morning.” She put the key down on the counter, but covered it with a liver-spotted hand. “No business of mine, but the Finns, they are a suspicious lot.”

  “Finns?”

  “Most of the miners, they live to the west, they is all miners from Finland.” She jerked a thumb at a folded copy of the Chimney Springs Gazette. “Front half is English, back is Finnish. They is always a bit close, but since Van Sloos closed the mine to them, they’s been getting angry. Talk is you might be working for him.”

  Chance raised both hands. “Just from St. Louis checking on something he ordered. If it helps, he kicked me out.”

  She nodded once and extended the key to him.

  “I have to ask.” Chance accepted the key. “Why did he lay the miners off?”

  “They was fixing to stage a strike. Back wages.”

  Chance frowned. “If they weren’t getting paid, shutting down doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Welcome to Chimney Springs.” She cackled. “Passenger train from Denver be up this afternoon. Likely you’ll want to be on it. I’ll prepare your bill.”

  Before Chance could respond, a tinny voice sounded loudly from Chimney Spring’s main street. “Kaveli Nieminen, your time of reckoning has come.”

  The old woman closed her eyes. “It’s Azrael!”

  She offered no further explanation, so Chance stepped to the boardwalk in front of his hotel. He looked south, toward what appeared to be an abandoned church. That Black Bart is special.

  He instantly catalogued differences between Azrael and the other Black Barts. This one wore a black neckerchief and a higher hat. The boots featured silver spurs, which looked great, but were little more than ostentation on a machine that would never sit a horse. The most notable difference between Azrael and its peers was that Azrael moved fluidly. Instead of its arms hanging stiffly, they swung with its steps. The automaton’s knees bent. The fingers flexed and Chance imagined a very quick and smooth draw with either of the two pistols it wore.

  The automaton stopped in the center of the street and looked north. “Kaveli Nieminen, face your doom as would a man.”

  Chance couldn’t suppress a grin. Azrael looked every inch the hero of Western adventure dime novels, yet spoke with diction and vocabulary born of Palmerstone’s Ivy League education. He suspected that the taller hat hid an elongated head, wherein machinery drove the voice and enabled coherent speech. Always wanting to make yourself superior.

  Further up the street, from the saloon past the Western Union office, a long, lean man strode through the bat’s-wing doors. He wore blue jeans and a patched work shirt. He hurriedly fastened the big steel belt buckle securing his gun belt. He carried two Colt Army Revolvers, but in blued steel, not the shiny silver of Azrael’s pistols. Yet despite the impressive hardware, he looked utterly unsuited to gunfighting.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans. “I am a man. If your master was a man, he would face me himself.”

  “You are not welcome in Chimney Springs. This town belongs to Dominion Brimstone. Leave off this strike talk, and I will let you and your family leave.”

  “How? We have no money. You have seen to that.”

  “You die for nothing.”

  “I worked for nothing.” Nieminen nodded to the other miners who’d ventured out onto the boardwalk. “We all did.”

  “You barely worked at all. Do you promise to leave?”

  Nieminen frowned and, with no further warning, drew as fast as he could. He filled his right hand with a pistol, aimed and fired. His first bullet hit Azrael in the right shoulder. It ricocheted up, ripping a hole in the automaton’s hat brim.

  And accomplished nothing.

  Azrael drew smooth and fast, mocking Nieminen’s draw. Azrael’s first shot struck the man’s drawn pistol. It drove the gun wide, sending the Finn’s second shot into a post five feet from Chance. The bullet not only blasted the pistol from the shooter’s hand, but a piece of it tore the man’s right thumb off.

  Azrael’s second shot proved a revelation to Chance, and the third confirmed it. Both bullets slammed into the miner’s belt buckle, jackknifing him forward and knocking him further down the street. He bounced once in a cloud of dust, then sprawled on his back, leaking from belly and hand. Spectators covered their mouths, or their children’s faces with their hands, but none rushed to help him.

  Magnetometers! Chance studied Azrael as the automaton holstered its pistol. Hitting the man’s Colt revolver seemed like fancy gunplay, but the automaton really targeted the only thing it could sense. One or more magnetometers—one likely located where the eyes ought to be—let Azrael aim at concentrations of metal. A pistol or belt buckle made for great targets. The magnetometers also further explained how the other Black Barts got from iron ball to iron ball on their patrols.

  Azrael raised its voice again. “Learn from this fool and cease your dispute with the mine. You can see how it will end.” The automaton fell silent and marched up the street toward his fallen foe. He spared him no glance, but continued past, and turn
ed west on Station Street, disappearing toward the mine.

  Chance returned to the hotel’s lobby.

  The woman slid a piece of paper onto the front desk. “Dollar and a quarter is what you owe, Mr. St. James.”

  “Actually, I’m going to extend my stay.”

  She gave him a gimlet eye. “Azrael ain’t too discriminating about what he’s willing to shoot.”

  “I saw.” He grabbed up the copy of the Gazette. “You got any influence with the Finns?”

  “I hire some of their womenfolk to do cleaning, some cooking.”

  “Tell them to gather what they can and leave Chimney Springs, tonight. They have to be gone by morning. Maybe go to Five Oaks, back east of here. It’s important.”

  “I can tell ’em to find them a Moses and light out like the Hebrews out of Egypt.”

  “Tell them they’ll get a wire when they can return: when Van Sloos is gone.”

  Her eyes tightened. “You’re a bit more than a salesman from St. Louis, ain’t you?”

  “A bit.” Chance smiled. “How’s the hardware store fixed for copper wire?”

  “They have a fair bit left from running a phone line down to Five Oaks.”

  “Good. Don’t be alarmed if you hear some hammering.”

  “I’m half-deaf anyway.” She smiled. “And if you’re getting rid of Van Sloos, I ain’t to be minding losing the rest of my hearing, not at all.”

  * * *

  Chance started on his fourth cup of coffee despite his confidence that the first three had seriously begun to melt his teeth. Unfortunately they’d done little to lift the fog resulting from his lack of sleep. One minor benefit of the coffee was that it had killed enough of his taste buds that he didn’t have to endure the sensual experience that had arrived at his table for breakfast. Times it’s better just not to know.

  “Chance, there you are.” Hubert Palmerstone sat at the table without invitation, as if they were old friends. He used a corner of the gingham tablecloth to rub street dust from the shaft of a walking stick. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

  “That would be one of us.”