Along the river’s edge, men drove teams of horses, mules, and hardbacks. They oared boats through the midnight waters and manned the great barges and rafts out beyond the pylons. They operated the huffing steam-powered winches that pulled tramloads up the trestles’ inclines. They tended the fires that burned in the bellies of pistoning machines that belched black smoke and white vapor with each gasping breath.
Men climbed on the bones of the beast itself, walking the beams and spars that hung over the water. They clambered along the span in a hundred places, hung from ropes, leapt from girder to girder. They hammered, sawed, worked bellows and pumps. They cut wood and metal. They pounded and hefted and grunted and shouted and cursed and laughed and sang as they all, a thousand and more, worked and sweated together: two full regiments, a hundred teamsters and drivers, a score of cooks, ten smiths, four surgeons, and one very overwrought colonel.
And the bridge grew.
Ironwork sprouted upward along the scaffolds like rime. Trestles formed and interwove their straight lines into twin curves of dark filigree, two arcs canted in toward one another until, at the apex, they became one elegant structure that crossed the wide Missouri in a single, graceful step.
The arch was complete, and the scaffolding was dismantled. The river foamed as timbers and boards plunged down from a hundred feet above, then only eighty, then just forty. The Missouri carried it all away, a scrap at a time, until the only thing left was the arch, as beautiful and dark as a lady’s eyebrow.
Herron sipped his coffee, tasted its bitterness, its bite, and watched men swarm the arch. They attacked it from both sides. First, the welders with their tiny suns, dripping fire onto the water below. Then the riggers, dragging miles of cable behind them, lacing it into the pulleys like ants threading a series of gigantic needles.
The riveters returned, and more welders, and hundreds of men surrounding small, steam-driven cranes. With a cacophony that made the air shudder, they assembled the planks of the bridge deck, attached it to the cables, and moved forward, using it as a platform from which to assemble the next plank.
They met in the middle and then retraced their steps to solidify and strengthen the deck. In their wake came the carpenters, and the railmen, and more. And more.
Herron drained the last cold swallow from his cup as the locomotive hissed and sighed its way up the incline for the first weight tests. Shafer was headed his way, slowly, the grime of days and the debility of sleepless weeks on his face. He stopped in front of his general and hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the bridge.
“Done, with time to spare, sir.”
“Three days,” Herron said.
“Yes, sir. Three days.” There was no tone of pride in the colonel’s voice. Only weariness; weariness, and something else.
“How important was it?” Herron asked. “The iron, I mean. The quality of the iron.”
Shafer sniffed the fragrant air of a full spring morning and turned to view his creation.
“If she makes it through the first sub-zero winter, she’ll last for a while. Beyond that, I’d say she’s good for ten years. Maybe twenty, eh?”
“Not a thousand?”
Shafer expelled a breath of bitter humor. “No, sir. Not a thousand. Not this gal.”
Herron shifted his feet, feeling uncomfortable for no reason he could specify. “Well, even so,” he said as he regarded the reflection of the rising sun off the arc of metal. “Even so, well done, Colonel.”
The colonel did not turn and Herron could tell by the tightness in the other man’s shoulders that there were some strong emotions flowing through his subordinate. “Thank you, sir,” the younger man said. “I hope the president makes good use of it.”
The plume of smoke drove upward from beyond the rise of land. It was a long, black trail that shoved its way up into the air above the green prairie. Storm Arriving could hear the machine, even from this distance. He and his small patrol rode up to the top of the rise.
The huge iron hardback wheezed like an old bull as it rolled down the twin rails that scarred the land. It left a smudge in the sky and a stink on the wind. It pulled several gaudily-painted cars behind it. Some of the cars had openings in their sides, and out of two of those Storm Arriving saw the puffs of gunsmoke bloom. The muffled reports came a breath later, but the train was too far away for the vé’hó’e inside to do them any harm.
The patrol watched in silence as the train continued onward. Far away, miles away down the dark line of the train’s metal road, lay a larger darkness like the shadow of a single, unseen cloud on the land. To one side of the metal road they could see the dark walls of the bluecoat fort, and on the other side of the road were the dwellings of other vé’hó’e who had come out into the People’s land.
As Storm Arriving scanned the landscape, he saw more of the square vé’hó’e lodges scattered through the prairie. Around each lodge the earth was no longer green with spring growth. Blackness surrounded the vé’hó’e, for the first thing they all did was to plow up the ancient grass and tear up the earth. Nearly everywhere Storm Arriving looked he saw their buildings, their marks.
“We cannot bring the People here any longer,” he said. Others around him agreed.
“Nowhere south of the Sudden River,” Black Willow said. “It is no longer safe here.”
“Not any more,” Storm Arriving said. “This is now a place of war.”
“What shall we do?” asked Issues Forth, the youngest Kit Fox in the patrol.
There is nothing we can do, Storm Arriving wanted to say, but he refused to utter words of such frustration. He looked back at the others in his small patrol. “We are not a war party,” he said. “We cannot beat the bluecoats with four fours of men, and no one expects us to do this.” He turned once more to face the prairie, the metal road, and the dark, sprawling stains that the vé’hó’e put on the earth. “We shall do what Three Trees Together sent us here to do. Look, listen, and return with news.”
His soldiers grumbled at this. They wanted more. They wanted action and blood. They wanted to protect their lands and drive off the invaders. Storm Arriving understood them well.
“And once we have seen all there is to see and heard all that we can hear, we will draw lots. Six will fulfill our mission. They will return with our news. Ten will stay.”
There was general acceptance of this plan, but Storm Arriving wanted to be sure. “Does every man agree?” he asked them.
“Yes,” they all said. All except Issues Forth.
“What will the ten who stay do?” he asked.
“You are new to the path of war,” Storm Arriving said to the young soldier. “And you do not yet think like a soldier. The ten stay behind to do what other patrols are surely doing to the south and the east.” He pointed to the vé’hó’e. “Burning homes, killing animals, drawing the bluecoats out of their fort and slaying them on open ground.”
He looked directly at the young Kit Fox, a look of challenge. “It is a shame that we have been reduced to raiders in our own country, but we will stay. We will stay and we will make it as dangerous here for their families as they have made it for ours.”
Issues Forth met his gaze, and when Storm Arriving raised an eyebrow, the young man smiled.
“Come,” Storm Arriving said to them all. “We will rest at Killdeer Creek and wait for nightfall. Then we shall see what there is to see.”
“No,” Vincent said. “The cap has to be tighter.” He reached over and with thumb and forefinger rocked the blasting cap off its seat at the end of the stick of wood carved to the shape and size of a dynamite stick. “If it’s not on tight, the primer will blow the cap off the dynamite. The cap goes bang, but not the stick. Try again.”
George and the old trader sat outside on a lonely hillside, far from the work site and even farther from the lodge where they stored the explosives and fuse. On the ground between them were several knives, pliers, and other tools, scattered wood shavings, and a length of Bickford mi
ner’s fuse.
The afternoon was warm and pleasant with a gentle wind from the west—the birthplace of all weather according to the Cheyenne—and George would have liked nothing better than to lay back on the spongy grass and bask in the gentle sunlight while watching the clouds tumble across the sky.
But he could not. Time was limited, and George wanted to make sure they got the gold they needed by the end of the Moon When the Whistlers Get Fat. If they could do that, he and Vincent could travel back to Winnipeg with the gold, pay off McTavish, and return with their weapons and supplies by the end of summer. With that end in mind, he tried again with the blasting cap.
The copper-clad cap slipped easily over the end of the carved stick of wood. George handled it gingerly, for the cap itself could deliver a hurtful explosion. While half of the cap was just an empty sleeve that slid over the main charge, inside that sleeve was the primer—fulminate of mercury—that would detonate the explosion. And, while Vincent had said that you could play catch with a stick of dynamite, he had repeatedly pointed out that these blasting caps were not nearly as forgiving.
George picked up the wide pliers and, keeping the entire assembly as far away from himself as possible, gripped the lower portion of the cap’s sleeve.
“Easy, now,” Vincent coached him. “Remember that the wood is harder than the dynamite stick, so it will give you more resistance. It won’t take half the pressure to crimp a cap onto the real thing. There you go. Bon. Now the fuse.”
George put the capped stick down on the soft grass while Vincent picked up the coil of cord.
“This,” Vincent said, “is your common, everyday miner’s fuse.” He took the end of the coil and with a knife cut off a yard-long piece. He handed it to George.
It was like a stiff but still flexible rope, nearly a quarter of an inch thick. He inspected the end and saw a dark internal core wrapped by a twisted fabric sheath. He picked at the core with his thumbnail and chipped off a piece.
“It’s made from a paste of black powder,” Vincent said. “This type will burn one foot each minute. There are other types—faster, slower—but they’re all basically the same.” He slapped George on the arm with the coil of fuse. “Important,” he said. “Always test a length of fuse so you can see how fast it burns. You must test your fuse, so you know for sure what it is. Not knowing can kill you...or someone else.”
George looked at the length of fuse in his hand with a bit more respect. “I thought fuse was just...fuse.”
Vincent smiled. “Generally, yes. Usually, yes. But don’t bet your life on it.”
“Have you tested this?” George asked.
Vincent made a face of indignation. “Mais oui,” he said and smirked. “Now, put the fuse in the cap.”
George took up the stick again. In the end of the blasting cap’s copper jacket was a hole. He put the cut end of the fuse into the hole. It was a tight fit but the fuse cord was stiff enough for him to push it—gently—inward.
“Bon,” Vincent said. “Now you just light it and back away.” He rattled a box of matchsticks. “Ready?”
George grinned. He took the matches and the stick and walked to a spot several yards away. He set the stick down and knelt, his back to the wind. Normally, the matches would have been a precious commodity out here on the prairie but Vincent had brought several large boxes worth back from Winnipeg. George took out one match, slid the box closed, and scraped the match across the surface of a nearby stone. The match lit and he brought it to the fuse. Nothing happened as the small flame encircled the end of the fuse. Flame and black powder shared the same space for a moment, and George watched the jute fibers begin to darken and curl. Then the powder came alive with smoke and hissing sparks. He leapt back in surprise, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Back away,” Vincent said. George complied.
Steadily, the spitting fire crept along the length of fuse. George, now back at Vincent’s side, watched it with fascination. He heard everything around him—the friendly chatter as the crew worked the slope of the mining site, the thud and check of pick and shovel, the songs of birds, the whispering wind—but his eyes were unable to look away as the sputtering flame slowly consumed the fuse. He was entranced by the power it represented. His life, his career, all had been put to the exercise of control over nature. But this...this was the essence of that nature.
This was raw power.
The fuse shortened. The fire approached the cap. George prepared himself. The flame touched the cap, disappeared.
Silence.
Bang!
The stick jumped in the air. Men looked up from their work. The stick tumbled end over end. The remnants of the copper cap fell to the ground with a timid clink, followed by the thud of the stick.
“That’s it?” George asked. “That’s all it does?”
The old man looked up at him, quizzical. “What did you expect?”
“I expected—I don’t know—an explosion. Something bigger, anyway. Not just a Fourth of July noisemaker.”
Vincent got up and retrieved the stick they had used. The end of the green wood was frayed like a hank of old rope. “Noisemaker?” he asked calmly. Then he walked over to the small wooden box that held the other blasting caps. He took one of the caps. “Noisemaker?” With a smooth underhand motion he lofted the cap up and away. It landed ten yards away, exploding with a sharp report that spat dirt back to where George stood. He held up a hand to ward off the debris.
“Noisemaker?” Vincent asked again, and then chuckled. “Show some respect.” He closed up the box and picked up the coil of fuse. “Anyway, you’ll feel differently tomorrow after we clamp one onto the end of a real stick of dynamite. Believe me.”
The next morning the crew stood at the mining site, waiting expectantly. During the past few weeks they had followed a promising vein of gold down deep into the ground as it plunged under the shelf of rock that formed the backbone of the ridge. To follow it further, they needed to break up that rock—a solid mass of a hundred tons at least—and move it all aside.
The medicine men had not been pleased at the prospect. The war chiefs, however, had been convinced by the obvious, albeit limited success achieved by patrols using the small number of rifles George and Vincent had brought back from Canada. They wanted more, and to get more they all agreed that more gold was needed.
Thus, as the sun rose and light flowed out across the plain and up onto the ridge like a tide, George and Vincent waited with the others and watched as Stands Tall in Timber presided over the rituals that would allow the excavation to continue.
Four men from the mining crew had volunteered for the honor of participating. They sat facing the rising sun, in a semi-circle around a large drum made of stretched whistler. Behind them, Stands Tall in Timber stood near a small fire. The holy man, keeper of the Sacred Arrows, sang in wailing tones of the spirits, of honor, and of sacrifice. He tossed dried sprigs into the fire and George smelled the sharp bite of juniper, the earthy caress of sage. The song was sung once to each corner of the world, once to the earth, and one final time to the sky. The men beat the drum slowly, a deep and constant pulse, and the sacred herbs played sensuous counterpoint.
The drumbeat stopped and Stands Tall in Timber drew from within his shirt a bundle of red cloth. He unrolled the bundle, producing four pieces of roughly woven cotton and a small, thin-bladed knife.
George, his emotions an admixture of revulsion and awe, watched as the Cheyenne holy man went to the first of the four volunteers. With sure, practiced movements, he took the man’s left forearm, touched the knife to the skin, and slid the blade underneath. The man grimaced but did not cry out, his every muscle, every tendon, tautened as he fought his own body’s desire to protect itself. The knife cut through the skin, leaving a rectangular flap the length of a finger. Stands Tall in Timber reversed the blade, severed the flap of skin, and handed the man a piece of cloth with which to bind the wound.
“Tabarnaque,” Vincent swore as S
tands Tall in Timber took the piece of skin, laid it by the fire, and moved on to repeat the rite on the second man.
George looked over. The old trader’s skin was ashen, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly agape, his upper lip curled in disgust. George had known of this sort of ritual; Storm Arriving had undergone a similar sacrifice and bore the scars on his chest with pride. Having lived with the People for two years, George now felt he almost understood this rite that Vincent only saw as the acme of primitive behavior.
But it was not savagery. George had learned that much. It was simply the point at which the traditions of the People were farthest removed from the world of the vé’hó’e, the point of greatest disparity. The skin sacrifice was the greatest demonstration of an intimate philosophy: the People’s connection to their mother earth made manifest, obvious, and impossible to ignore.
“It’s inhuman,” Vincent whispered.
“No,” George said as the last man’s offering was placed by the fire. “It’s nearly godlike.”
Vincent turned with a start. “Are you mad?” he asked.
“No,” George said. “And neither are they. This restores the balance.”
“What balance?”
“The balance we will upset when we blow the earth apart.”
“Pff. Nonsense. Heathen nonsense. How can you condone this? It’s brutal.”
George smiled a little. “It is their way.”
Stands Tall in Timber began to sing again, a slow, low-toned prayer of thanks. George felt the hair on his neck prickle.
There is a power here, he said to himself. Though perhaps only in my mind.
The song ended and the four volunteers, their forearms wrapped in red cloth, stood. Stands Tall in Timber spoke quietly to each of them, and then walked down the slope toward George.
“It is done,” the holy man said. “The sacred persons who guard the world have been properly honored. You may proceed.”
The Spirit of Thunder Page 23