The Valley

by William Meikle

  THE VALLEY

  By William Meikle

  This digital edition published 2010 by Ghostwriter Publications, Dorset, Great Britain

  All rights reserved. This eBook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-907190-12-4

  Copyright © William Meikle 2010

  THE VALLEY

  In 1863 a group of mercenaries are hired to help out a mining town in Montana. They arrive to find the town empty and some of the buildings wrecked and strewn over a wide area. A new cave leads them to a land that time forgot, a high valley full of animals that are extinct elsewhere, but have thrived in the remote environment. But something else is loose in the land, something even older that has emerged from the cave system. Soon the remaining men are fighting for their lives, and the lives of everything in the valley.

  1

  The Walker Colt was the most powerful black-powder repeating handgun ever made. The .44 caliber cylinders held fifty grains of black powder that fired a conical bullet of two hundred and twenty grains. The pistol kicked like a mule and was as effective as a rifle at one hundred yards. Jake Stratford tried not to think about that as he stared down the barrel from less than two feet away.

  From this distance it looked like a small cannon. The pistol weighed in at over four pounds, but the hand holding it didn’t waver.

  “Ah promise you mister,” the youth at the other end of the weapon said. “If you’ve led us all the way up here just to look at a ghost-town, I’ll blow your head off.”

  Jake sat as still as he could, staring into Eric Strang’s eyes. He’d noticed the madness dancing there before, but this was the first time it had been directed at him.

  “I promised you a share of the gold,” Jake said, and was grateful to note that there wasn’t even a slight tremor in his voice. “And you’ll get it.”

  I just hope I can make good on that.

  Things didn’t look hopeful. Three weeks travelling through the tail end of one of the worst winters in memory had finally brought them to the Big Hole Valley. For the past two days the men he’d hired, and Strang in particular, had been getting visibly excited at the prospect of getting paid. Jake himself had been looking forward to a bed -- and some better company. But it looked like he might get neither.

  They’d been following the bends of the Big Hole Lake for two days now, picking their way along a track that was little more than a slush-filled bog with ruts in it. Ten minutes ago they’d turned a corner that gave them their first view of Ruby Creek.

  As ever, the mountains got Jake’s attention first. Blue and gray stone, they filled the far end of the valley like tall sentinels. They stretched off into the cloudy distance in a long arc that Jake sometimes imagined was a wall, built by giants long ago, before man walked the earth.

  He’d been brought out of his musing when Pat Nolan started to wail inconsolably, nonsense sounds coming from the big man’s mouth, like the mewling of a babe. The wagon’s wheels spun in the mud then took hold as the big man drove the four horses as fast as he could. Jake saw why when he brought his gaze down to the far end of the valley.

  Ruby Creek lay in ruins. When Jake and Big Pat left it in the autumn there had been ten huts on the left side of the creek, too ramshackle to call houses, but home to twenty prospectors intent on forcing a living out of the intractable rock.

  But no more.

  Only two huts still stood, and even from their two miles distance Jake saw the fallen timbers and ruined bases of the other dwellings. Wreckage lay strewn over a wide area, and there was no sign of any movement. Jake’s heart had sunk. At this time of day the place should be alive with activity. There wasn’t even any sign of smoke. No fires were lit, and in this temperature that was possibly the worst thing about the scene.

  Now, as if his day couldn’t get any worse, Eric Strang had stuck a gun in his face. And not just any gun. The Walker would take most of Jake’s head off from this range.

  Jake had seen something coming. The youth had been itching for a fight for days now. Jake had hoped they’d get to Ruby Creek before any outburst, but his timing was out by twenty minutes.

  “I’ll do it,” Strang said. “Don’t think I won’t.”

  That’s not a mistake I’m about to make.

  Jake had seen many men like Strang during his army days, little more than boys, wound up tight with tension they didn’t know how to release, then given enough weaponry to pick a fight with anyone that looked the wrong way at them. It was a recipe for disaster whenever it happened. The Army usually beat it out of the worst offenders. Either that or they got dead too quickly to get into any more trouble.

  Strang had never had the tension released. He was near ready to blow, and wouldn’t care what damage he did when it came. Jake had seen it in the youth’s eyes the day he hired him and had almost turned him away.

  But beggars can’t be choosers. I made this bed. Now I’d better lie in it.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” Jake said. “Or talk me to death?”

  Strang smiled.

  I’ve seen more sincerity in a two-dollar whore.

  “If there’s no gold I swear, I’ll blow your head off,” the youth said.

  Jake smiled back.

  “You’ve said that already, and I ain’t deaf.”

  Although I might be soon if he fires that thing.

  Strang didn’t lower the gun, but the dancing madness receded in his eyes and he smiled.

  “Just foolin’ boss,” he said and put the gun away. “This time.”

  Jake took his own hand from where it had hung over the butt of his pistol.

  “One day son, you and I are going to have a disagreement that might get serious.”

  “I look forward to it,” the youth said, and smiled again. This time he looked like he meant it.

  Jake left him smiling and looked back. The last two of the travelling band were almost a hundred yards behind. The Squire and the Greyback deserter were deep in conversation, and probably hadn’t even looked up at the town ahead yet.

  And best not to alert them before I have to I reckon.

  Jake kicked his horse forward to catch up with Pat and the wagon.

  The horses pushed through the slushy mud that now caked the wagon almost up to the canvas.

  “Slow down Pat,” Jake said as he came alongside. “You’re pushing them too hard. The Creek ain’t going nowhere, and we’ll get there soon enough.”

  The big man was crying, his eyes puffed and red, his mouth wet and slack.

  “Something’s happened,” Pat said. “I knew we should never have left. Look at it Jake. It’s gone. The Creek’s gone.”

  It certainly looks that way.

  “Maybe it ain’t that bad,” Jake said. “Maybe there’s just been a big storm. We’ll get it back as it was in no time.”

  “Do you think Jake?” Pat said. “Do you think?”

  Telling Pat what he was really thinking would have been like kicking a puppy, and Jake hadn’t yet sunk that low. But one of their band of travelers had. There was a hollow laugh behind them. Jake had heard that too many times in the last three weeks.

  “A storm? An act of god more like,” the deep voice said. Jake didn’t have to turn to know who was there. The Pastor rode up beside them.

  Although if he’s a Pastor, then I’m Jesus H Christ.

  Despite the cold the Pastor, as usual, wore only his long leather duster over a thick black cassock. Jake knew that under the folds somewhere sat a pair of army-issue Colt revolvers that could be deployed in less than a second. On the day Jake was hiring, the Pastor had k
illed two men out in the street in front of the saloon, took them down in three seconds flat and never blinked an eye. Jake had known there and then that this man would be travelling to Montana with them.

  But I don’t have to like him.

  For now the man looked almost serene. Long white hair escaped from beneath a wide rimmed hat, and the sun glinted off a pair of small round spectacles, the reflections momentarily hiding the piercing blue eyes beneath. When he smiled ice cracked in a salt and pepper beard that he kept meticulously trimmed close to his cheeks. He had a black bible in his hand. Indeed, Jake had rarely seen him without it.

  He raised the bible and started to intone in a bass voice that sounded perfectly suited to church talk but was strangely incongruous out here in the wide open spaces.

  “I will raise my fist against you, to roll you down from the heights. When I am finished, you will be nothing but a heap of rubble. You will be desolate forever. Even your stones will never again be used for building.”

  “He’s big on destroying things is he, this God of yours?” Jake said.

  The Pastor smiled grimly.

  “He has a message for every occasion, if you will only listen to him.”

  “I ain’t big on churching,” Jake replied. “Never saw any percentage in it for me.”

  But the Pastor was already back with his head in the book. His lips moved as he read the words under his breath and his eyes had taken on a zealous glint that was equally as frightening as the madness that danced in Strang’s younger eyes.

  “Why would God punish us?” Big Pat wailed. “We ain’t done nothing. Have we Jake? We ain’t done nothing to nobody.”

  Jake kept quiet. Images of naked children, bleeding and screaming in the mud came readily to mind. They were never far from the surface, even over a distance of many miles and many years.

  I’ve done plenty big man.

  Enough to send us to Hell.

  More than enough for us all.

  2

  “...and then I cut off its balls and ate them, fried, with a few onions.”

  The Squire laughed uproariously at his own story, the waxed ends of his moustache quivering and his belly threatening to burst through the silver buttons of his red serge jacket.

  Frank Collins smiled. Not quite as politely as he’d done the first time he heard the story, or the second, but it was a smile nonetheless. He guessed that was why the Squire latched on to him as the one who would be captivated by tales of far off wars, hunting and wenching. The Squire never tired of telling his stories, but it was easy to tire of listening to them. The other men lost patience days before. Even Big Pat, who loved stories more than most anything else, had quietly taken himself off to the relative safety of the wagon.

  Slowly, during the course of the journey, the others had taken to riding ahead, putting distance between themselves and the Squire -- taking themselves out of earshot. Frank stayed behind with the Englishman. Frank could be relied on to listen. But after three weeks of it he knew more than he would ever want to know about how to bed women of different color, how to kill a tiger, and how to fight the fuzzy-wuzzies.

  Still, the stories of old battles kept the memories of his own, more recent ones at bay, for a while at least. And he was able to drift, not really listening, nodding occasionally in the right places, muttering enthusiastically in others as the Squire expounded.

  Then the Englishman went and spoiled it.

  Of course, all is fair in love and war,” he said in that clipped English accent. “Fighting men like you and I know all about that…”

  Fighting men like me.

  Frank almost laughed, but the bitterness was too close to the surface. Frank’s battles had started on April 6th the year before, and ended on April the 7th. He staggered off the field of Shiloh, the only survivor of a group of twenty volunteers for the Southern Cause, too terrified to lift a weapon, too inured against the blood and screaming to notice the dying as he walked over them.

  He had walked away, and kept walking, always heading north and west, hoping to get far enough that he would not remember the hell he had left behind.

  So far it wasn’t working. When he’d met Jake in that bar in Fort Laramie he’d been wondering how much further he could get. Jake offered him a share of a pot of gold but the money was of little interest to Frank. Solitude was what he was after.

  And if this English blowhard ever shuts the hell up, I might just get some.

  Besides, he had no intention of earning any of the gold. If he was called to shoot anyone, he knew he’d never be able to do it. He still carried a weapon, but he had not fired one since that night in Shiloh. The very thought of ever pointing one at a man again made him tremble and sweat until only a bucketful of whiskey would help.

  He was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed that the Squire had, for once, gone quiet.

  Frank looked up.

  “Looks like our billet might be a bit more rough and ready than we have been led to believe,” the Squire said.

  The sight of the ruined settlement ahead actually cheered Frank greatly.

  If there is no one left, there will be no one to shoot.

  The Squire was soon off on another story, involving himself, a Maharajah, a girl and a clandestine meeting that went wrong. For the first time in days, Frank enjoyed the tale.

  He even had a smile on his face as they rode into what was left of Ruby Creek.

  3

  Jake was still getting off his horse, but Pat had already jumped down from the wagon and was throwing rubble aside, tossing eight-foot lengths of timber like kindling.

  Jake walked over and put a hand on the big man’s shoulder.

  “They ain’t here Pat,” he said softly. “There ain’t nobody here.”

  “There ain’t no bodies Jake,” Pat shouted back. “Why ain’t there no bodies?”

  I’ve been wondering that myself.

  There might be no bodies, but there was plenty of blood. A swathe of frozen gore lay near Jake’s feet and stretched from one of the huts down to the creek. Over at the corral it looked like someone had been throwing buckets of red paint around. Fat bloated flies rose lazily in the air.

  Something got at the horses.

  His first thought was that it had been bear, but the flattened huts had taken too much damage for bear to have done it. Above them on the hillside a new scar showed where water and rock had flowed; taking the turf away with them to show scoured rock beneath. The creek banks were much wider and steeper than they’d been in the autumn. Suddenly Jake realized what had happened.

  They had a flood. A big one too.

  That didn’t explain away the blood, or the lack of bodies, but one explanation at a time was enough to be going on with.

  For now.

  “Where are they Jake?” Pat said. He still had tears running down his cheeks. “Where have all the folks gone? Where have the horses gone?”

  Jake had no answer, and seeing the big man so distraught nearly brought tears to his own eyes.

  “Ain’t no use in getting into a lather until we can see what’s what. Get the wagon squared up and the horses seen to Pat,” he said. The big man would need something to do to keep him busy, and that was all Jake could think of at the moment. “I’ll check the huts.”

  The damage was as bad as it had looked from a distance, if not worse. Four huts had gone completely, not even the foundation poles remaining. A long muddy scar on the ground was all that was left to show for the month of back breaking work Jake and the others put in building them just last summer. The other fallen huts were in various states of disrepair. One had a single wall still standing; but it looked like a good gust of wind would finish it off quickly. Pieces of bedding and linen lay partially frozen on the slushy mud. Everywhere Jake looked he saw reminders of what the place had been; a duster coat here, a pair of eye-glasses there, and a coffee pot with a broken spout that he remembered drinking whiskey out of on a stormy night last autumn.<
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  The remaining huts had some signs of damage. White scars showed in the log walls where something had torn gouges in strips from the timber, something that had been trying to get inside. Jake started to think about bear again. He un-holstered his pistol and opened the first door, warily.

  The small cabin was empty. More than that, it felt cold and musty, as if it had been that way for a while. He felt the stove. It was stone cold, almost icy. Over in the far corner the beds were still rumpled as if someone had just recently got up, and there was a pair of boots lying under one cot that looked like they could belong to George.

  What’s happened to you big brother?

  There was no sign of any recent activity, but there were two sheaves of paper on the table, stuck into the wood with a knife. Jake’s heart fell as he recognized the blade. It had belonged to their father, and had been passed down to George on his death. In all the time since the old man died it had never left the belt at George’s side. For it to be here, now, showed Jake, more than any ruination of the town, that something terrible had happened.

  He tugged the knife from the table and flattened out the papers. They were the blank end pages from a book, probably Irish Jim’s large bible.

  The pages were filled with George’s neat, almost dainty, writing which was one of the constants of Jake’s life, all the way up from Miss Courtney’s Junior School to the letter that George had written that got Jake out of the penitentiary a year early. His heart sank as he read.

  “Jake. I scarcely know where to begin; things have gone to hell so fast.

  “It started yesterday. Sad Sam was setting the powder up in the mine, and there was an accident I guess. The first we knew was when there was a muffled whump. Ten seconds later a chunk of the hill came down on top of us, then a flood of water and rock. Next thing I knows I’m up to my balls in freezing water and there’s screaming going on all around me. Just as well we learned to swim in Johnson’s creek all them years ago or I’d be a goner and not here to write this. We lost most of the huts. Them is washed away to God knows where. Three horses, Dan Culhoun, and Sad Sam went with the huts I guess. Leastwise, we've looked everywhere and they ain’t nowhere to be found.