Dragons of Deepmarch Mine

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Orren Braddock corrected that by blowing the holy hell out of Deepmarch Mine, and he visited misery on a lot of people by doing it. The things he woke took up residence all around the territories and weren’t much interested in going back to sleep. Men like me found ourselves in a new line of work. Instead of claiming bounties on the type of men who preyed on others, I started hunting creatures that preyed on people like they were food.

I closed the spyglass, marveling at how little it was when it was down to its smallest. Just a metal ring that fit in the palm of my hand. Not for the first time, I wondered whether Braddock might let me keep it as part of my pay when this mess was sorted. The skies were clear, at least for now.

“They should’ve listened to Reverend Hart,” I said. “He says he saw something similar when he was overseas doing missionary work. People went where they weren’t supposed to, and they woke things they weren’t prepared to handle.”

“Men like Braddock can’t hear a preacher’s words,” Walter said, walking his hands along the spokes of the wagon wheel to help himself stand. He knuckled his back as bones popped loud enough for me to hear. “But they should’ve used the common sense found within the average garden mouse to stay well enough away from Deepmarch Mine.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were voicing dissent against Calamity’s very own robber baron.”

Walter looked up at me. He was a little short, and I’m a lot tall, so that’s the way most of our communication happened, and it made him grumpier the longer we talked. “When you reach my age, Mr. Ambler, you worry less about the feelings of pompous blowhards like Orren Braddock, and more about the state in which you’ve left the world.”

“I put you at right around fifty, Professor. With the white hair and whatnot, I reckon some would say sixty, but that’s not so. In my line of work, fifty would be long in the tooth, but for a librarian like yourself, you’ve got another ten, maybe fifteen years. Be a shame to miss out on them because you upset the likes of Orren Braddock.”

In response, Walter straightened his shoulders, adjusted his spectacles on the short bridge of his round nose, and muttered, “I am not a librarian.”

“Apologies,” I said, touching the brim of my hat. “I mistook the way you filled the Mabrey house with books as some indication that you enjoyed their company.”

“My books are not for pleasure,” Walter said. “Just as you do not work for Orren Braddock out of either respect or greed.”

I smiled. Walter never spared two seconds for dancing around the point. He meant Emmy, of course. “I do think, occasionally, when this is all over…”

Walter cut off my words and my smile with a pragmatic scowl. “Only if one of these reptiles eats her father before you kill them all. She has her pick of every man from San Francisco to New York City, and likely would prefer one who knows how to eat with cutlery.”

I was pretty sure that cutlery meant knives and forks and such, but I knew it was just Walter’s way. You can’t admire a man for shooting straight and then get angry when he takes aim at you. All I could do was take my lumps and admit that the old man was right. Emmy Braddock would marry some tycoon’s son and move off to some major city, and by this time next year, I’d probably be just a couple bones lying to one side of the Valley near Deepmarch.

“Ah, our friend returns,” Walter said.

“You divine that with one of your doohickies?” I asked, pointing to the assortment of metal rings and amulets and talismans Walter wore whenever we left town. The Mabrey house was pretty near full of things like that, too, and some of it stank bad enough that some neighbors had asked Reverend Hart if they might be condemned to hell for living next to an occultist.

Walter touched the rim of his spectacles. “Only using the magic of corrective lenses. Should I worry that my life is in the hands of a gunslinger who’s not only gone soft in the heart but also suffers poor eyesight?”

“Ah, our friend returns?” Martin Adakai asked from about six feet behind me, raising the pitch of his normally deep voice and throwing in some gravel to mimic Walter’s. “That has to be the most bookified thing ever said in the territories.”

I glimpsed Walter rolling his eyes as I turned, smiling, to shake my friend’s hand. It would be a fine thing to say that Martin was the only man who could sneak up on me, and attribute it to some mystical quality of his Navajo heritage, but it would all be lies. Martin could be a sneaky cuss, but I’m just another bounty man. I’m good at what I do, but I’m far from perfect.

Martin did not return my smile, and my heart sank.

“You found them,” I said.

Martin nodded. I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen him shed a tear. We’d been through a lot of battles, and Martin had been dry-eyed and level-headed through all of them. What an animal could do to a person, though. A woman. I didn’t want to think about it.

“The dragons all cleared out?”

Martin nodded again. There hadn’t been many Mabreys to start with, but these had been the last. With their parents and grandparents gone, Ethan and his sister Pearle, who had drunk her share of men under the table and handled a rifle better than most, had taken up their guns and gone off to find either a reckoning or an awful demise.

“Let’s get the Reverend.”

Walter perked up at that. “I could send the message.”

“The last thing they want is one of your spirit boxes delivering news like this, Professor. This sort of thing, you’ve got to deliver in person.”

Also, Pearle had been Emmy’s friend. I slid the spyglass disc into my bag and walked to my horse. Walter was already climbing his way onto the wagon. For such beautiful country, there was about to be a lot of ugliness.

***

By now it’s probably crossed your mind that I was working for the man who unleashed dragons—real, fire-breathing, St. George and Chinese New Year dragons—into these United States. And, the answer is: yes. I was, due in no small part to both my own father and Emmy Braddock’s big brown eyes. All I ask is that you hear me out before casting judgment, and then, if you still think I made the wrong call, I won’t argue. I’m not sure I did the right thing going back to Calamity, either.

When I was kid, and the war ended, I thought I was one of the lucky ones. My father came back to the little gate in the fence surrounding our property, and he walked back through the same door he’d left by a few years earlier. But it didn’t take long to realize that Pa wasn’t the same man who’d said good-bye. He’d been at Gettysburg with the 20th Maine, and he’d seen men do things at Little Round Top and Devil’s Den that haunted him till the day he died.

He brought some of that evil back with him. Mostly, it was bad dreams. Sometimes, when he was deep in a bottle, it was worse. I don’t talk about what he did to Ma, or the reputation he got around town for violence and even outright cruelty, but I believed Ma when she told me that he wasn’t the man she fell in love with anymore. After Ma died, I figured that I didn’t have much call to stay in a place just because I’d been born there.

I was still young, not even twenty, when I first came to Calamity and met Emmy Braddock. At first she was just the most beautiful girl I’d ever met, and she liked it that way. I was the only fool in the territories who didn’t know about her daddy, and all the mines and railroads and senators he owned. All I knew was that I could spend hours lost in those eyes of hers and never find bottom, and she liked the way I saw her.

After a few of her daddy’s men came along and made it clear that Calamity had rolled up its welcome mat, the first thing I thought was that it’s not fair to hold someone’s father against them. Simple as that. We both had the misfortune of being raised by men who didn’t see things quite right. I lit out of there, as requested, and eventually became a respectable bounty man, among other things. I met Martin Adakai soon after, and he wasn’t as pretty as Emmy, but he was a lot better to have by my side the next time a few rough men came calling.

When the dragons showed up, I heard what town had been at the center of it all, and while most people were heading out, Martin and I were riding in. Along the way we met up with the professor, who was interested in the dragons for reasons I’m not sure I ever fully understood, and that’s what got us through the door at Orren Ranch. Emmy’s daddy remembered me, that much I could tell, but he needed someone with my reputation for standing my ground when trouble comes—even though the last time we’d met had been the last time I’d run from anyone, or anything.

Those thoughts ran through my head every time we rode by the sign on the edge of town. Some inspired artist had decorated the broad wooden planks with a painting of Satan, all red and thorny, hopping away from a cloud of smoke after some enterprising miner dropped the plunger on a charge of dynamite. If that didn’t capture Calamity in a single image, I doubted anything ever would. I just couldn’t tell if I’d come back to be the miner or the guy on the other side of the dynamite.

***

“Good day, Blaine,” Reverend Hart said. His face was long, with dark circles around his eyes that had taken the appearance of bruises, and he always seemed bent to one side when he walked. I’d heard of priests who beat themselves for their own sins and those of their congregations, but Hart was a Methodist. It wasn’t in his nature.

We stood outside the church doors. Most conversations I had with the Reverend took place with him on the steps, the doors closed behind him, and me on the ground. Not looking up, exactly, but always looking in. Martin and Walter let me do the talking.

“Reverend,” I said. “I was just out with Martin and the Professor, looking for the Mabreys.” The Reverend touched his cross when I mentioned Walter, but he didn’t interrupt. I’m sure my face told him everything he needed to know, and he wanted the formality of speaking the words to be over as quick as possible. “You’ll want to send some men out to get the remains. The dragons have moved on.”

“Was there any sign that they injured one of the creatures?”

I knew the answer, but it wasn’t mine to give. I glanced at Martin.

“No,” he said, his voice steady, resolute.

Reverend Hart’s eyes dropped at the news. He set his jaw, then nodded. After a moment, he met my eyes, which not a lot of people do when they’re talking to a bounty man, either because they fear us or because they hate us. Between the eye contact and his habit of calling me by my given name, the Reverend always impressed me. He said, “I’ll have Thurlow send a few of his boys out.”

Thurlow was the town’s undertaker, and his boys were three of the surliest drunks I’d met. A dragon that bit one of them would probably fly off rather than get a mouthful of the other two.

Martin and I said our farewells, and Father Hart disappeared into the vestibule.

“Would have been faster if we just wrapped the bodies and put them into Professor’s wagon,” Martin said.

“There are things in this wagon that would not mix well with blood,” Walter said. When Martin leveled a somber glare his way, Walter seemed to shrink without moving.

“You are from the East,” Martin said. “Is that not where they burned people for doing what you do?”

“That was a long time ago,” Walter said. “The world has grown into a more enlightened state.”

Without another word spoken, Walter snapped the reins and got the wagon moving towards the Mabrey house. What had been the Mabrey house, at least. Now, Calamity was fresh out of Mabreys, and that was the message I needed to deliver to the man who had hired me to keep the dragons away.

“You are going to the ranch,” Martin said. He wasn’t asking.

“I suspect I am,” I said.

“You do not want me to come with you, even though I would.”

“I suspect I don’t.”

“Because you are not going with the intent to tell the robber baron what happened. You are already talking to his daughter in your head.”

I leveled my own somber glare, which did nothing to wither Martin. Finally, I said, “There may be some truth to that.”

“Professor is not here to tell you this, so I will. Emmy Braddock is the most dangerous person in Calamity. You will kill more than dragons in this town if you and her father disagree.”

“I don’t think he would have said it using those words, exactly.”

“He would have bookified it. I tell you the way it will be. You must walk carefully on that ranch. Her father does not like you, and he is the sort of man who will burn down the house on his way out the door, just to make sure no one else ever lives in it.”

I smirked. “You really have spent too much time with Walter. This can’t be healthy for any of us.”

Martin’s expression remained unchanged.

I laughed but it came out forced. “It’s all right. It’s not like I’m going to let this town go to hell just because I can’t get along with her daddy. We’re all adults, and what happened was years ago. I’m just going out to the ranch to let him know about the Mabreys and get his thoughts on what we should do next. He may want us to go on a dragon hunt!”

“Fathers are never rational when it comes to their daughters,” Martin said. “And men are never rational when it comes to the women they love. Walk. Carefully.”

I refused to let my smile go, because he was right, and I already knew it. I’d known all along. “I’ll bring back a lance if it’s time for the dragon hunt. Nobody should fight a dragon without a lance.”

Martin had said his piece. Finished, he turned to walk over to the Old Silver Dollar. His intent was clear. By the time I was done talking with Emmy and her daddy, he’d have cleaned up at the faro table and left me with nothing but a bottle and old memories for company. If I didn’t love that man so much, we’d probably have killed each other a long time ago. I let out a long, weary breath. Not much looking forward to either of the conversations ahead of me, and trying not to think about Martin’s bloodshot eyes earlier on the edge of the Valley, I swung back into the saddle and rode for the Orren Ranch.