Golems chapter 30

Ivan Geranof did not like what Elisa was doing as a business. Too much was on the line here, designs of her mother's hand, the changes he himself made to aid in crafting the wagon, and the ones Elisa's hand added during the refitting of the steam wagon. But Callahan's leap at the idea even of a partnership, and constant attempts at wooing the old man's niece irritated more than just the beard his good hand scratched as he thought.
Els gave good instructions to the lawyer, but finding the shyster to be of the same handcart caravan the smith traveled in left a worry to gnaw at him day and night. Els seemed not to care, immersed in the installation of Eats Plum's cooking gear. Like her mother, she focused on a subject much like sunlight did through a magnifying glass. With too much heat and short reaching vision of her own needs.
Trust was something you had to earn with Geranof, where the last of his family was concerned. So Ivan stayed near, as did Black Coyote, who returned after two nights with tales of his own to tell.
Tales that brought the smile missing around the old man's eye back for the length of the telling. "Oh, you should have heard the fuss when they opened the bags, Ivan." A smile threatened to rip the young brave's face apart as he spoke. "The man they had grab the loot seems to have no sense of smell, but by the time they felt safe checking the bags, that is when the thunder got called down."
That phrase, here in the west, was not one with always good connotations. "How bad and how many dead?" Ivan felt a small touch of remorse for the dead, having his own sense of smell reduced to only the strongest of odors, or those held directly under his nose. "I assume Missing Nose got it."
A jerk of the head to look at Ivan drained thee mirth from the tale. "How'd you know Missing Nose was with them."
The sigh of losing yet another friend left the ruined man. "One such as I should not outlive our friends. I was jesting, but if anyone could pick the wrong side to be on, Nose was the one." A hand found his shoulder, squeezing gently.
"I forgot, you two always drank together after a mess involving both of you." Black Coyote still smiled though. "He took another old friend with him."
Ivan looked up, not sure if the smile was reflex or something to remove with his metal hand. "Who."
"Cal Wainwright. Drilled him, wounded at least three others, including German Ben." The youth's eyes danced a minute. "Ben won't be molesting young girls anymore. Even if he lives, the bullet tore apart his spine. He's a dead man from the gut down."
The pain at the corners of Ivan's mouth told him a grin had formed, one that he did not try to subdue for his comfort. "Long overdue, might have looked him up and done it myself had I known that weasel was in territory."
"Well, I rode into the mess before Missing Nose passed. He said to tell you three shafts, not two, and sixty feet in. I assume you partnered with him on a claim once?" Gold could fire many a man's inner desires to take over, and the touch of greed twinkling in the boy's eye needed to be dashed.
"Not metal, stones. Topaz, out Deseret way. I imagine them Mormons found that vein by now." A heavy sigh, for he had intended to hand the stones over to a cutter to make a wedding ring for his niece to use some day.
"Fat lot you know. Ol' Brigham ain't letting them dig for metal or jewels, save a bit of iron and copper as needed. Some say there is a chance of big metal in the mountains on either side of that valley of theirs. But those metals let the devil in, and are less precious than the gold of a harvest."
The answer told Ivan much of the boy's travels over the years. It sounded very much like a rote text or speech heard many times over. "Been out there?"
"Its where I met Plum, she was with Crazy Horse, taking care of his women folk, translating for them. I was passing through with Grierson after the Shasta War. Damned Californios knocked our boots out from under us there. Damned near lost half of Oregon to the Bruins until Grierson and those freedmen of his hit their flank from Deseret." Coyote rubbed a scar on his cheek. "Bayonet work towards the end, that forest is thicker than the fogs of the Bay."
Geranof leaned back, impressed. The boy never told him of that adventure, and as it was one that few mentioned, the cooperation of the Mormons with the States. Both for political and strategic reasons. The Republic of California possessed gold and wealth of all sorts, but the long battle after the passage of the Forty-Niners through the lands of the New Zion left the Mormons upset and with an axe to grind, especially for the seizing of lands near Lake Tahoe and the Washoe from the settlers Brigham set out that way to hold the pass. Ivan was certain it cost dearly for the passage, but the silence of exactly where the Buffalo Soldiers of Grierson's Tenth were garrisoned said volumes. The war between Deseret and Mexico being still recent, and a resounding loss for Napoleon the Third's troops, trained by the devils of Camerone, that damned Legion d'Entrangre.
Some said Grierson's men and their Apache allies trained Brig's Angels. Others said Union Blue was amid the brown uniforms of the desert dervishes. A very select few merely smiled and nodded at all the tales. Ivan knew things from work done on automata for the Tenth, and now Coyote told him the boy had rode with them.
Nose had also ridden with Grierson, Ivan knew. That was when they had met, out in the dry lands west of Salt Lake City, the place where the white salt turned to brown sands, the place called Dugway by the whites and Tule by the Utes. An arid place where the military of the United States had a base inside another nation.
Those days had been dark for Geranof, still sore over the cutoff communications by Valeria's family with Elisa, who had yet to enter college. None of his friends could know where he was or what he was working on, until Missing Nose entered the camp with dozens of Utes, not to take scalps, but to deliver the one thing the locals blockaded.
"He used to run beer and whiskey across his tribe's territory, supplying Grierson's men." Ivan looked up from his low seat at the field desk in the dig. Coyote was no longer a short man, the years had given the boy more inches than the old necromancer aide by at least a handful, if not more. Seated, it was like talking to the boy sitting on a giant's shoulders.
"Yeah, I helped Nose with that for a while. Ran into Wainwright out there as well. Evil man, heart as black as the people he hunted. Claimed the States had no right to free any slaves. Heard he turned to killing women for freeing slaves, or helping blacks get educated and start lives after the war."
"Still was, malchik. He fought to the end. Staged a raid just this winter on Fort Omaha, killing the teacher and freed slaves starting over in Nebraska, south of the Platte."
"Not the best he could do. Up in the Sacred Hills he found a train of them headed to California, seeking to get away from his gang. Found what was left, Thee said he would kill the man his ownself if he had the chance. Gut shot them all, men, women, even the children."
The silence that fell between them was long. Then Ivan spoke at last. "Think its best we not speak about these things around Elisa. She still has Eastern ways, deep down where they are hard to pull out, like a dandelion in the maize patch."
Coyote looked over the camp, noting the returning students. "What subject." Eyes met, with nods from both men. "Well, two off the list to kill at least. Wainwright worked for Fuller before, back at the time of the Massacre, and we all know Ben was one them that day, he boasted of it all over the territory."
Ivan nodded, the only reason German Ben lived this long was he could outrun the steam legs of the Mad Russian, as so many called Geranof. "Indeed. Any other word?"
"Just to expect both Roosevelt and the Ambassador next week. The Bull will be coming too, with some other chiefs." Black Coyote looked over the town, with eyes shining with pride, there was no grid like other places, the layout was more scattered, with crops now planted between the homes and shops in large plots, and several wooden lodges of the eastern kind amid the plank houses, sod homes, and tents. The Chiefs would approve of the more natural growth of the town, and the minimal impact on the local land, other than the dig and forge, pond and canals.
But the white man's ways could be used, as long as the old ways were respected and preserved. Or at least that was the current rulings of the Council of Chiefs. Some doubted if that would hold., as old timers and the societies pushed to go back to the nomadic life, even as they benefited from the better harvests and the herds grew again, after the breaking of the land by the rails that went west along the Arkansas and Platte Rivers. Only time would tell which way they would go in the end.