The Funeral and the Canyon
May 16 1875
The next morning, Cole awoke in his chair, tired, a little hung over, and still grieving for Dusthaven and its people. The events of the past few days were fresh in his mind, and he found himself reliving the moment when he first arrived in Dusthaven and saw the happy, laughing children in the town square. Then he remembered the events that led to the town's near destruction and the painful sight of the remains of their ruined homes and lives. His heart felt heavy with sorrow.
After a quick breakfast of bacon and beans, he saddled up Nevah and headed back into town. When he got back into Dusthaven, he found people gathered in the square around Clara Mason, the woman whom he had seen at the train station a few days ago. She was a strong, stout woman with curly black hair and piercing brown eyes.
There may have been better leaders, or leaders with more experience, but when the tragedy struck this little town, Clara was the first to step up to the plate. Of all the people of Dusthaven, Clara seemed to know what to do, and who was best suited to do it to get the town through its present predicament. Everyone had rallied to her without question. She and Dr. Zeismer had set up a station to look after the wounded in the square, but on her advice people were going all over town on various errands.
Cole found a number of bodies in the town square, some covered by sheets, others not. Among them were the bodies of Reverend Elias, Tawakoni, and Sheriff Hank. More bodies were brought to the square to join them while Cole watched. He walked to Clara Mason and saw her face fall as he got close, and a nervous look come into her eyes.
“Good morning… Clara, is it? I was at the train station a few days ago when you came in. Did you ever find your fiancé? “
“No,” she said quietly, moving subtly away from Cole’s gaze. “No one’s seen him for weeks. But at least he missed this.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Cole asked. Clara looked like she would rather swallow razor blades than be this close to him. While Cole knew he was unattractive, this reaction was beyond what he usually received. “Just come to the funeral. Pray for Dusthaven,” she said. Cole got the feeling she was trying to be diplomatic.
Cole tipped his hat to Clara and walked toward the remains of the saloon. He hadn't gotten too far when he heard approaching hoofbeats. He looked up and saw a rotund, middle-aged man with salt and pepper whiskers and a rumpled brown suit ride past. The man rode into the town square, stopped in front of the crowd, and plopped down off his horse.
“Who’s in charge here?” the man demanded in a commanding voice. Everyone looked to Clara. He didn’t look impressed, and the feeling appeared to be mutual.
“The Right Reverend Gideon Harper, at your service,” he said, although the way he said it told Cole he wasn’t at anybody’s service. “I was on the circuit over in Red Rock and I heard about what happened here. Sounds like y’all need a preacher.”
“Can you preach a funeral sermon?” Clara asked him.
"I believe I can do justice to this solemn occasion," said Harper. Cole noted that the other townsfolk shared Clara's dubious look at the man. He didn't blame them. Harper seemed friendly enough, but it was like there was something oily lurking beneath his surface. Like a viper hiding under a friendly demeanor, waiting to strike. At least, Cole mused, he didn’t seem as crazy as Elias was.
In the early afternoon, everyone gathered in their Sunday Best at the town cemetery. This ramshackle collection of old grave markers was ensconced on a lonely hillside near the outskirts of Dusthaven. A lonely cedar tree clung to life in the arid, uneven ground at the center of the graveyard, but little else seemed to grow there. Some of the graves had dry flowers, but most were only lonesome mounds of dirt. The gravediggers had scarcely finished digging out the new resting places for those lost.
Cole found himself standing near a weathered wooden grave marker as the service began. A worn metal cross on a sinew string hung around it in silent memorial to the faith of the person buried there. It was marked with a simple epitaph "Beloved Wife And Mother".
Nearby, Gus the town blacksmith kept a close eye on a teenage girl in a black dress, telling her there had better not be any "funny business" next to her mama’s grave. He noted that most of the townsfolk avoided Gus, and especially his wife’s grave.
Also nearby was a hawk-faced man with a scar across his left eye, who was also watching the blacksmith and the girl. Cole turned to the man, and asked him if he knew what was going on with Gus and the girl. The man shrugged. “The girl’s his daughter. Folks around here say Gus’ wife was some kind of a witch, and they say the girl takes after her ma.” The man paused to spit out some tobacco juice. “I never seen nothing, that’s just what I heard.” The man didn’t seem inclined to speak any more about it.
Harper's funeral service was not impressive. He got a good deal of the details about those who had died mixed up, his sermon was disjointed, lacking any comfort for the townspeople. He didn’t demonstrate much empathy for them. Finally the townsfolk turned away in disgust. Harper finished the funeral perfunctorily, but did not remain at the gravesides to chat. The townsfolk looked relieved to see him go.
As the clergyman walked back to his horse, he very nearly stepped on a dirty piece of cloth lying on the ground. Looking at it more closely, Cole saw that it was a handkerchief, covered in blood and with a strange metallic smell. Whoever owned that, he surmised, was in bad shape indeed. He stiffened when he heard one of the townsfolk whispering to his lady friend, “It was him. Viper Callahan. He was right here, watching the funeral. Looked like twenty miles of bad road. I saw him.”
Cole thought that he knew where Viper was headed- Coyote Gulch. He wasn’t sure what Dr. Hollister might have left out there, or if the ghosts were really gone. He didn’t want to go out there without a guide, though. Tawakoni wasn’t going to be guiding anyone anymore, and Owley was nowhere to be seen - probably off chasing after Josie Vise.
No one in town seemed much inclined to talk after the funeral, not that Cole could blame them. He felt at a loose end - everyone, it seemed, was doing something to help the town recover except for him. Walking up next to the remains of the saloon, he saw a slightly-ragged and dirty man looking wistfully at the building. “So,” Cole said. “You don’t have a job either?”
“Nope,” the old party replied. “I just got back from camp and this is what I find. Looks like someone took a Gatling gun to it.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Cole. He extended a hand, and the dirty, grizzled man shook it warmly. “Cole Bridgewater.”
“Ezekiel Pike,” said the other man. “Zeke. Most folks around here call me Prospector.”
“Do you know anything about Coyote Gulch, Zeke?” Cole asked.
“Fair bit. I reckon that White Feather fella knows more than me…” Zeke looked a little sad then, “or at least he did.”
“He was a good man,” said Cole. “I think that Viper Callahan was here today.”
“The outlaw? That bunch has made staking my claim hell.”
“I was planning on finding out what he was up to, but nobody wants to go out there. They say that place is cursed by whatever unholy experiments Hollister was doing.”
“I don’t blame ‘em,” said Zeke. “But I ain’t got anything to do this afternoon. And I spend most of my time out in the badlands, looking for what’s left of that gold vein.” It didn’t take long for Cole to get Nevah loaded up as Pike loaded up his mule Jake. Heading out of town, it didn’t take Zeke very long to find Callahan’s tracks. The outlaw didn’t seem to be hiding them very well. As Cole had suspected, they headed straight for Coyote Gulch.
Coyote Gulch - 10:00 am
The badlands appeared much as it had the other times Cole had gone out. Even most of the wildlife didn’t appear interested in them. Cole was surprised, though, to find more of the strange ivy near the mouth of the canyon - ivy that was completely wrong to grow in a desert waste like this.
Zeke examined the carvings on the wall and crossed himself. “This place is weird,” he announced. “I haven’t seen carvings like this since I saw the pyramids in Mexico. And they didn’t have these vines on them. And this,” he picked up one of what Tawakoni had called Apache Tears. “You don’t find this except around volcanoes.” Seeing that Cole looked surprised, he added “I’m a prospector. I know my earth.”
As they walked into the Hope’s End mine, Cole noted that the strange ivy had grown more in the past couple of weeks, rather than dying as he expected. And there were other things that didn’t belong - strange beetles of a type that Cole had never seen before.
Not far from the old mining camp, they came across what they sought. Viper Callahan lay face down in the middle of the canyon floor, with the strange beetles swarming all over his body. Cole had never seen a body in this condition before - Callahan looked like he had lost a good deal of his hair before dying, his flesh covered in strange burns. Many of the beetles that crawled on him were dead.
As Cole drew back, he noticed that the beetles were not the only strange insects in the area. There are butterflies he’d not seen before during his time here, and crickets - things that Cole had never seen in the badlands and that shouldn't be able to survive out there.
Zeke bent down, rubbing his chin. Cole turned to where he was kneeling and saw some orchids. “These couldn’t survive out here,” said Zeke. Only place I have ever seen orchids like these was when I was panning for gold in Peru.” Something buzzed past Cole’s ear - he turned just in time to see a hummingbird whiz into the brush.
“This place is even weirder than I thought,” said Zeke. Cole was forced to agree. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the wildlife that was oddly thriving out here in an environment that should by all rights have killed it.
“Maybe there’s something in that old factory that can tell us more about what’s going on.” Cole pointed to the silent hulk of the smelting plant. “That’s where Hollister was doing his experiments. Maybe this is his doing.”
Plant Entrance: Late Afternoon
As the two men neared the dilapidated entrance of the abandoned ore smelting plant, the sun dipped below the horizon, casting elongated shadows over the barren landscape. The wind moaned, carrying the scent of rust and decay. The plant loomed ahead, a skeletal giant shrouded in twilight.
They approached cautiously, each step echoing on the cracked, uneven ground. The silence hung, heavy and oppressive. Approaching the pitted old metal door, Cole reached for the rusted handle and a barely audible click echoed through the stillness.
Slowly, the door swung open, creaking loudly. Inside, the darkness seemed almost palpable, but the faint glimmer of something metallic caught their eyes—a series of hidden tripwires glinting in the dim light. They froze, realizing they had stepped into a carefully laid trap.
Navigating cautiously through the wires, they approached the production floor of the old plant. In the dim light, Cole noticed a faint, eerie glow emanating from just beyond the field of tripwires. Cautiously approaching, they saw the source: an old, industrial furnace that inexplicably had been re-ignited, casting a hellish, warm glow across the room.
As Zeke moved forward, there was a loud snap as one of the trip wires broke. “Oh, hell,” he said, as a series of mechanisms sprang to life within the abandoned plant. The ancient furnace, hot and lethal, roared into to life, its flames shooting out like vengeful spirits. The intense heat and light blinded and disoriented Zeke and Cole, adding to the panic.
“Get back to the door,” Cole yelled, no longer worrying about the trip wires and running for all he was worth as the ceiling threatened to collapse on top of them, and rusted metal beams and pieces of industrial machinery hurtled down from above. A deafening cacophony of clanging and crashing ensued and the furnace began to spew some sort of yellow gas into the room, making Cole’s eyes and lungs burn.
Hurtling out the door into the bright sun, Cole couldn’t see what had happened to Zeke for the huge cloud of dust and yellow vapors that raised from the old plant. Coughing loudly, Zeke emerged from the dust with a few choice swear words for whoever had boobytrapped the old smelter.
Cole and Zeke decided to restrict their investigation to the exterior of the facility for the time being. Even with the apparent structural failure inside, the outside still appeared to be intact. There were no other entrances that the two men could find, except for the one that had been uncovered in the initial search. Likewise, there weren't any windows large enough for them to squeeze through anywhere else on the premises.
They rounded the corner of the building and were met by a stench of rotten eggs or worse. It emanated from a spring that gurgled and boiled as though the water were heated. It looked like the mining company had made some attempts to control the spring. That didn't look too successful. The structures were old and in bad shape, just like the smelting plant. The spring was, in fact, old, as the area around it was more eroded than anything. The mining company had dug this hole and allowed this rotten spring to exist.
Zeke and Cole cautiously stepped closer to the vile-smelling water, wondering if there was some connection between it and the bizarre creatures and flora they had seen. The heat was intense and the stench was worse than ever before, so they didn’t approach the source of the stench. Cole had a theory, but didn’t know how to go about testing it. Zeke seemed just as hesitant as Cole to get closer, and for the same reasons.
When Cole and Zeke rounded the corner on the other side of the building they found something that had Cole wondering if the strange gas he had inhaled in the old plant was finally catching up with him. On the far side of the building and nearly opposite the stinky hot springs was a natural spring, this one pristine with the look of clean, inviting water. “Well, I'll be hornswoggled," said Zeke.
Looking around the spring, Cole noted that the shadows had grown long indeed. There had to be something wrong with this place. Something was out of sync with nature and he found it unbelievably disturbing. As compelling as this place was, he was not prepared to see what might come out at night. “Zeke,” he said, “I think it’s getting dark. And I don’t think we should be here when it does.”
As the sun began to set, they decided to depart Coyote Gulch. They quickly rode back toward the mouth of the canyon, thankfully exiting it before the shadows completely consumed the place. Behind them, they heard the eerie howls of coyotes beginning their nightly forays.
“We could probably go back there,” said Zeke as they rode along. “But we’d need some more men to clear out that junk if we want to get into that factory.”
“It doesn’t seem like a great time to ask,” said Cole, “But maybe there’s something out there that could help the town.”
“Or hurt it some more,” Zeke mused as the lamp lights of Dusthaven came into view. It didn’t take long for the word to spread throughout town that the pair had returned, and it spread like wildfire. People were still busy, trying to get the wounded town battened down for the coming night. When the two men rode into town, people began whispering among themselves about how they had been meddling in the canyon.