White Fire p-13

by Douglas Preston

  “I was once told a story so dreadful, so distressing in its particulars and in the extent of its evil, that now I truly believe nothing I hear could ever frighten me again.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Would you care to hear it? It is not for the faint of heart.”

  As he listened to the conversation taking place beside him, Pendergast reached forward, poured himself a glass of wine, found it excellent.

  “It was told to me during my lecture tour of America a few years back. On my way to San Francisco, I stopped at a rather squalid yet picturesque mining camp known as Roaring Fork.” Wilde pressed his hand to Doyle’s knee for emphasis. “After my lecture, one of the miners approached me, an elderly chap somewhat the worse — or, perhaps, the better — for drink. He took me aside, said he’d enjoyed my story so much that he had one of his own to share with me.” He paused for a sip of burgundy. “Here, lean in a little closer, that’s a good fellow, and I’ll tell it you exactly as it was told to me.”

  Doyle leaned in, as requested. Pendergast leaned in, as well.

  “I tried to escape him, but he would have none of it, presuming to approach me in a most familiar way, breathing fumes of the local ubriacant. My first impulse was to push past, but there was something about the look in his eye that stopped me. I confess I was also intrigued — in an anthropological fashion, Doyle, don’t you know — by this leathern specimen, this uncouth bard, this bibulous miner, and I found myself curious as to what he considered a ‘good story.’ And so I listened, and rather attentively, as his American drawl was nigh indecipherable. He spoke of events that had occurred some years earlier, not long after the silver strikes that established Roaring Fork. Over the course of one summer, a grizzled bear — or so it was believed — had taken to roaming the mountains above the town, attacking, killing…and eating…lone miners working their claims.”

  Doyle nodded vigorously, his face concentrated with the utmost interest.

  “Naturally, the town fell into a state of perfect terror. But the killings went on, as there were many lone men upon the mountain. The bear was merciless, ambuscading the miners outside their cabins, killing and savagely dismembering them — and then feasting upon their flesh.” Wilde paused. “I should have liked to have known whether the, ah, consumption commenced while consciousness was still present. Can you imagine what it would be like to be devoured alive by a savage beast? To watch it tear your flesh off, then chew and swallow, with evident satisfaction? That is a contemplation never even considered by Huysmans in his À Rebours. How sadly lacking the aesthete was, in hindsight!”

  Wilde glanced over to see what effect his words were having on the country doctor. Doyle had grasped his glass of claret and taken a deep draught. Listening, Pendergast took a sip of his own glass, then signaled a waiter to bring him a menu.

  “Many a fellow tried to track the grizzled bear,” Wilde continued, “but none was successful — save for one miner, a man who had learned the fine art of tracking while living among Indians. He conceived a notion that the killings were not the work of a bear.”

  “Not the work of a bear, sir?”

  “Not the work of a bear, sir. And so, waiting until the next killing, this chap — his name was Cropsey — went a-tracking, and soon discovered that the perpetrators of this outrage were a group of men.”

  At this, Doyle leaned back rather abruptly. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Wilde. Do you mean to say that these men were…cannibals?”

  “Indeed I do. American cannibals.”

  Doyle shook his head. “Monstrous. Monstrous.”

  “Quite so,” Wilde said. “They have none of the good manners of your English cannibals.”

  Doyle stared at his fellow guest in shock. “This is no matter for levity, Wilde.”

  “Perhaps not. We shall see. In any case, our Cropsey tracked these cannibals to their lair, an abandoned mine shaft somewhere on the mountain, at a place called Smuggler’s Wall. There was no constabulary in the town, of course, and so this fellow organized a small group of local vigilantes. They cognominated themselves the Committee of Seven. They would scale the mountain in the dark of night, surprise the cannibals, and administer the rough justice of the American West.” Wilde toyed with his boutonnière. “The very next night, at midnight, this group gathered at the local saloon to discuss strategy and no doubt fortify themselves for the coming ordeal. They then departed by a back door, heavily armed, and equipped with lanterns, rope, and a torch. This, my dear Doyle, is where the story turns…well, not to put too fine a point on it, rather ghastly. Do steady yourself, there’s a good chap.”

  The waiter brought over a menu, and Pendergast turned his attention to it. Three or four minutes later, he was jarred from his perusal by Doyle’s sudden violent rise from the table — knocking his chair over in his agitation — and subsequent flight from the dining room, his face a mixture of shock and disgust.

  “Why, whatever’s the matter?” Stoddart said, frowning, as Doyle disappeared in the direction of the gentlemen’s lounge.

  “I suspect it must be the prawns,” Wilde replied, and he dabbed primly at his mouth with a napkin…

  * * *

  …As slowly as it had come, the voice began to fade from Pendergast’s mind. The sumptuous interior of the Langham Hotel began to waver, as if dissolving into mist and darkness. Slowly, slowly, a new scene materialized — a very different scene. It was the smoke-filled, whisky-redolent back room of a busy saloon, the sounds of gambling, drinking, and argument penetrating the thin wooden walls. A back room, in fact, remarkably similar to the one in which Pendergast was — in the Roaring Fork of the present — currently situated. After a brief exchange of determined voices, a group of seven men rose from a large table: men carrying lanterns and guns. Following their leader, one Shadrach Cropsey, they made their way out the back door of the little room and into the night.

  Pendergast followed them, his incorporeal presence hovering in the cool night air like a ghost.

  53

  The group of miners walked down the dirt main street of town, casually and without hurry, until they reached the far end, where settlement ceased and the forests mounted upward into the mountains. It was a moonless night. The scent of wood fires was in the air, and in the nearby corrals, horses were moving restlessly about. Silently, the group lit their lanterns and proceeded along a rough mining road, which made its way by switchbacks up, and then farther up, passing beneath the dark fir trees.

  The night was cool and the sky was pricked with stars. A lone wolf howled somewhere in the great bowl of mountains, quickly answered by another. As the men gained altitude, the fir trees grew smaller, shorter, twisted into grotesque shapes by incessant winds and deep snows. Gradually the trees thinned out into matted thickets of krummholz, and then the cart path broached the tree line.

  In his mind, Pendergast followed the group.

  The line of yellow lanterns advanced up the barren, rock-strewn slopes approaching Smuggler’s Cirque. They were now entering a recently abandoned mining zone, and around the men appeared ghostly tailings, like pyramids, spilling down the sides of the ridge, the gaping holes of the mines above, punctuated by rickety ore chutes, trestles, sluice boxes, and flumes.

  Looming in the darkness to the right was an immense wooden structure, set into the flat declivity at the base of Smuggler’s Cirque: the main entrance to the famed Sally Goodin Mine, still in operation now, in the early fall of 1876. The building housed the machines and pulley works used to raise and lower the cages and buckets; it also enclosed the two-hundred-ton Ireland Pump Engine, capable of pumping over a thousand gallons per minute, used to dewater the mine complex.

  Now all the lanterns went out but one: a red-glass lamp that cast a bloody gleam in the murky night. The cart path divided into many winding tracks cut into the hillsides rising above the cirque. Their objective lay above, the highest of the abandoned tunnels high on the slope known as Smuggler’s Wall, situated at an altitude clos
e to thirteen thousand feet. A single track led in that direction, carved by hand out of the scree, switchbacking sharply as it climbed. It came over a ridge and skirted a small glacial tarn, the water black and still, its shore dotted with rusted pumping machinery and old flume gates.

  Still the group of seven men climbed upward. Now the dark, square hole of the Christmas Mine became visible in the faint starlight against the upper scree slope. A trestle ran from the hole, and below it stood a tailings pile of lighter color. A jumble of wrecked machinery was strewn about the slope below.

  The group paused, and Pendergast heard a low murmur of voices. And then they silently divided. One man made his way up, hiding among boulders above the entrance. A second took up a covered position among the scree just below the entrance.

  Lookouts in place, the rest — four men led by Cropsey, now holding the lantern himself — entered the abandoned tunnel. Pendergast followed. The shutter on the red lamp was adjusted to produce only the faintest glow. Arms at the ready, the men walked single-file along the iron rails leading into the tunnel, making no noise. One carried a torch of pitch, ready to be lit.

  As they proceeded, a smell came toward them, a smell that became ever more awful in the hot, moist, stifling atmosphere.

  The Christmas Mine tunnel opened into a crosscut: a horizontal tunnel driven at right angles to the main tunnel. The group paused before the crosscut and readied their weapons. The torch was lowered, a match was struck, and the pitch set afire. In that moment, the men rounded the corner, weapons aimed down the tunnel. The smell was now almost overwhelming.

  Silence. The flickering flames disclosed something in the darkness at the end of the tunnel. The group cautiously moved forward. It was an irregular, lumpy shape. When they drew close, the men saw that it was a heap of soft things: rotting burlap, old gunnysacks, leaves and pine needles, chunks of moss. Mingled into the material were pieces of gnawed bone, broken skulls, and strips of what looked like dried rawhide.

  Skin. Hairless skin.

  All around the heap lay a broad ring of human feces.

  One of the men spoke hoarsely. “What…is this?”

  The question was initially answered with silence. Finally, one of the others replied. “It’s an animal den.”

  “It ain’t animal,” said Cropsey.

  “God Almighty.”

  “Where are they?”

  Now their voices were rising, echoing, as fear and uncertainty began to set in.

  “The bastards must be out. Killing.”

  The torch sputtered and burned as their voices rose, discussing what to do. The guns were put away. There was disagreement, conflict.

  Suddenly Cropsey held up his hand. The others fell silent, listening. There were sounds of shuffling, along with guttural, animalistic breathing. The noises stopped. Quickly the man carrying the torch doused it in a puddle of water, while Cropsey shut the lantern down. But now all was deathly silent: it seemed likely the killers had seen the light or heard their voices — and knew they were here.

  “Give us some light, for Jesus’s sake,” whispered one of the men, his voice tight with anxiety.

  Cropsey opened the lantern a fraction. The others were crouching, rifles and pistols at the ready. The dim glow barely penetrated the gloom.

  “More light,” someone said.

  The lantern now threw light to the edge of the cross tunnel. All was silent. They waited, but nothing came around the corner. Nor were there sounds of flight.

  “We go get ’em,” Cropsey announced. “Afore they get away.”

  No one moved. Finally Cropsey himself began stalking forward. The others followed. He crept to the crosscut. The rest waited behind. Holding up the lantern, he paused, crouched, then suddenly swung around the corner, wielding the rifle like a pistol in one hand, the lantern in the other. “Now!”

  It happened with incredible speed. A flash of something darting forward; a gargling scream; and then Cropsey spun around, dropping his rifle and writhing in agony. A naked, filthy man was astride his back, tearing at his throat, more like a beast than a human being. None of the other four could fire; the combatants were too close together. Cropsey screamed again, staggering about, trying to shake off the man who tore at him with nails and teeth, ripping away anything he could reach: ears, lips, nose; there was a sudden spurt of arterial blood from the neck and Cropsey went down, the monster still on top of him, the lantern falling to the ground and shattering.

  Simultaneously, as with a single mind, the other four began to shoot, aiming wildly into the darkness. From the muzzle flashes more figures could be seen, bellowing like bulls, running toward them from around the corner of the crosscut, a melee amid the wild eruption of gunfire. The two lookouts came charging down the tunnel, aroused by the din, and joined in with their own weapons. The guns roared again and again, the flashes of light blooming within clouds of ugly gray smoke — and then all went silent. For a moment, there was only darkness. Then came the sound of a match, scraping against rock; another lantern was lit — and its feeble light illuminated a splay of corpses, the four cannibals now just ruined bodies scattered about the tunnel, taken apart by heavy-caliber bullets, lying like so much ropy waste atop the sundered carcass of Shadrach Cropsey.

  It was over.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Pendergast opened his eyes. The room was cool and quiet. He rose, brushed off his black suit, bundled himself up, and let himself out the back door of the saloon. The storm was in full blast, the fury of it thundering down Main Street and shaking the Christmas decorations like so many cobwebs. Bundling his coat around himself, wrapping his scarf tighter, and lowering his head against the wind, he made his way through the storm-shaken town back to his hotel.

  54

  At eleven o’clock that morning — Christmas Eve day — after buttering two hundred pieces of toast, washing twice that number of dishes, and mopping the kitchen from wall to wall — Corrie went back to her room, bundled up in her coat, and ventured out into the storm. The idea that Kermode or her thugs might be out in this weather, waiting for her, seemed far-fetched; nevertheless, she felt an electric tickle of fear. She consoled herself with the thought that she was on her way to the safest place in town — the police station.

  She had decided to confront Pendergast. Not so much confront him, exactly, but rather to make another pitch about why he should share with her the information he’d apparently gotten on his trip to Leadville. The way she saw things, it was unfair of him to withhold it. She had, after all, discovered the Swinton connection and shared the name with him. If he’d found information about the old killings, the least he could do would be to let her include it in her thesis.

  The wind and flying snow came buffeting down the street as she turned onto Main. She leaned into it, holding her cap. The business district of Roaring Fork was relatively compact, but even so it proved a damn long journey in a blizzard.

  The police station loomed up through the blowing snow, its windows glowing with yellow light, perversely inviting. All were apparently at work despite the storm. She walked up the steps, stomped off the snow in the vestibule, shook out her woolen hat and scarf, and went in.

  “Is Special Agent Pendergast in?” she asked Iris, the lady at the reception desk, with whom she had gotten friendly over the past ten days.

  “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “He doesn’t sign in and out, and he keeps the oddest hours. I just can’t keep track.” She shook her head. “Feel free to check his office.”

  Corrie went down into the basement, grateful for once for the heat. His door was closed. She knocked; no answer.

  Where could he be, in a storm like this? Not at the Hotel Sebastian, where he hadn’t been answering his phone.

  She turned the handle, but it was locked.

  She paused for a moment, thoughtfully, still grasping the handle. Then she went back upstairs.

  “Find him?” Iris asked.

  “No luck,” said Corrie. She hesitate
d. “Listen, I think I left something important in his office. Do you have a key?”

  Iris considered this. “Well, I do, but I don’t think I can let you in. What did you leave?”

  “My cell phone.”

  “Oh.” Iris thought some more. “I suppose I could let you in, so long as I stay with you.”

  “That would be great.”

  She followed Iris back down the stairs. In a moment the woman had opened the door and turned on the light. The room was hot and stuffy. Corrie looked around. The desk was covered with papers that had been carefully arranged. She scanned the surface with her eyes but it was all too neat, too squared away, to expose much information.

  “I don’t see it,” said Iris, looking about.

  “He might have put it away in a drawer.”

  “I don’t think you should be opening up any drawers, Corrie.”

  “Right. Of course not.”

  She looked frantically around the desk, this way and that. “It’s got to be here somewhere,” she said.

  And then Corrie caught a glimpse of something interesting. A page torn out of a small notebook, covered with Pendergast’s distinctive copperplate handwriting, its top part sticking out of a sheaf of documents. Three underlined words jumped out: Swinton and Christmas Mine.

  “Is it over here?” Corrie bent over the desk, as if looking behind a lamp, while “accidentally” pushing the notebooks with her elbow, exposing a few more lines of the torn page, on which Pendergast had printed:

  mete at the Ideal 11 oclock Sharp to Night they are Holt Up in the closed Christmas Mine up on smugglers wall there are 4 of

  “Really, Corrie, it’s time to go,” Iris said firmly, with a frown on her lips at noticing Corrie reading something on the desk.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. Now, where did I leave that darn phone?”