Golems of Bone, Steam, and Steel Chapter 8 repost as I could not find it on the blog!

Three days of surveying had changed the inside of the wagon to something less orderly and more like what her mother kept her portion like, Elisa thought. Sketches of the current terrain were pinned to the boards by thumbtacks, under them lay maps with elevation marks from the floor of the valley. While not the standard, it let them set up a few benchmark positions to later have resurveyed for the required claim maps. Black Coyote's brief departure to make arrangements with the tribes for supplies and the right to dig for fossils left Ivan and Elisa to their own for protection, but the May weather was still holding warm, a rarity some would say on this edge of the desert. 

Foot paths broke the taller buffalo grass down, crossing again and again along the hillsides, through the valley and across much of the area around. One gully already started to yield up some bones, when searched carefully, but these were obviously disturbed from their bed, not whole, and most of them had some damage from being washed along the miniature canyons of clay and dirt. Still, it was progress, of the good kind. A rare period of dry weather had followed the rains, giving them time to mark the bones found on the maps and to label them for future reference. This was something new to the field, coming from many misassembled and poorly documented sites in the last decades leading to errors in the records and miscegenation of the bones when some made displays and automata. This failed the sciences, even if the efforts produced functional designs. 

From those bones, they gained much excitement. Some were ungulate leg bones, a few from more recent periods, some older. One was clearly recognized by them both as fossil claws of one of the thunder lizards. A few hinted at predators and the great giant beasts of an age of ice thought to have occurred in the not too distant past. Each find, every possible dig site, especially the one near the edge of the hills, where a channel was carving into the foot of the hill, and the type of stones that the thunder lizards were found in other places. Those layers were well known to those of her profession, for the larger beasts posed less problems in adding power sources to. Yet it was the smaller automata that might gain her the most fame, if her new ideas proved out. 

When Black Coyote returned, several elders of the nearest tribe traveled with him, to both make and observe the adherence to the terms in their actions. Elisa spent a day with Coyote translating for the elders, who spoke little English, working out who would gain from which parts of the enterprise, that if a mammut or other great beast should be found she would provide one automata for travel during winter across the prairies to the tribe, from the proceeds of the sale of that version. And that the tribes hunters would aid them, but guarding the site and gathering in provisions. Some of the younger tribe members, she was told, wished to come and participate in the dig, to learn the skills as a trade.

Elisa found the tribal demands and contract fair and just, though Ivan chaffed at teaching the youngsters anything at first. "They take the jobs away from we who pioneered the field!" The thundering of the old man was loud, and obviously amusing to the elders, one of whom showed some English skills, in a comment that it sounded like he had when told he was getting to old to hunt alone and take all the meat. That jibe, with much soothing from Elisa to say that it was his legend and skills that attracted the young, more than the desperation for some kind of job experience or chance at coins. It did leave here with difficulty in arranging for some way to pay the ones who would help the dig. 

Unloading the various tools of the hunting part of her trade took time, time that she worried over wasting, for to mark the first dig site, the swamp the necromancer had found. Elisa was worried, this was the deepest pit needed, nearly forty feet if her concept of the terrain were correct, sixty feet was Ivan's estimate, and he felt that other layers above would provide more bones as they dug, ones that may be just as valuable. The spot was still a declivity, along one of the few terraces still showing in the terrain despite erosion over the millennium. Such would have remained a marsh all along, or so Ivan argued. Elisa felt it may indicate they were both wrong, and this was a buried sinkhole. 

The marking out of the test trench took two days, as all wanted the site to prove out, and argued over the layout. One tribal elder mentioned that it might be best to go with the winds, which came from the northwest much of the time. Ivan felt a simple “V” trench, east west, with a southeast to northwest arm would be best. Elisa had to take charge in the end, decreeing that two trenches be dug, separated by twelve paces at their closest. The southern line went from east northeast to west southwest, while the northern line would follow the elders. 

Ivan grumbled, but she had figured out his arguments source, he believed that smaller groups worked better when learning, so he desired to split the young folk up. Once she understood his reasoning, Elisa found herself agreeing, thirty young people were too many, but having the trenches meet would be just an invitation to disaster. Choosing the differing lines made strong sense, as it allowed two profiles to figure from before the next stage if they had found a good place, the total exposure dig. 

It was nearly June when the first shovel bit the loess that lay over the site, the grasses proved to be very difficult to remove, compared to what one thought, roots spread out from each cluster, intermingling where they met below the surface, and the shorter grass between the taller clumps proved to have matted roots as well. Making wheel barrows too time too, until the elders pointed out a travios could work until the barrows were finished. 

Things went well in the next few days, though all found the sudden daily thunderstorms to be frightening as the trenches reached below the man high mark. The sides proved very unstable so steps had to be taken towards shoring the sides, which meant more labor not aimed at digging. At first their students complained, until the day a storm sloughed the side over one student who had tried to use the water to speed things up. Two days later, his body was recovered, afterwards, all wished to increase the safety of the dig, so harvesting cottonwoods from the river banks of the Elkhorn became a duty each group donated labors for.

Then came the day they reached the tuff in the trenches, it was thick, nearly a yard of the stuff covering the site, and years of water getting in, turned it to a soft concrete, one that crumbled easily, but still was solid until worked. Now things slowed down, and rightly so. Halfway through the layer, the southern trench under Ivan’s guidance gave hollers of joy, as they reached bones, switching to smaller and subtler tools. 

The next day the northern force Elisa instructed was able to celebrate even more, as they uncovered the tusk of a mammoth. With the exposure of that ivory treasure, the tribe dug with more care in both pits, now aware of the fortunes at stake for all.

“Look careful, dig more so!” Ivan now roamed both trenches, as Elisa set up a field desk to begin the first maps of the trenches, and record what was being found. She wished to have found a traveling daguerreotype expert to make the preserved images on the delicate silvered copper plates, but few of them traveled in these lands, as the glass plates to protect the images often suffered from the lack of roads, shattering or rubbing off the very images they were to protect inside their mounts. 

So sketches became the medium of choice for now, though tales of a mammoth find would bring some sightseers soon, once word reached the rails or towns. There would be no stopping the spread of the tale, already the villages of the Omaha and Winnebago tribes, the ones working with them, knew of the find. Soon their name sake town and those in Council Bluffs would hear as well. But until they arrived, all the diggers could do was stretch tarps and erect a shelter over the delicate stone bones of the elephant’s distant kindred, long since vanished from the western hemisphere. 

The dig continued, slowed, but now with a zeal they had only hints of before. The mammoth was small, young Elisa surmised. Perhaps small enough to still be near its mother and pod. Each night, she went over her notes, working diligently, and finding some of her helpers had taken schooling under the new policies of the day. Every step from this point forward would have to be careful, and the guard force doubled with out her askance. The elders knew of the dangers of thieves, and realized others would want the tusks alone, just for the ivory. 

The economics of the dig had just changed, and perhaps, so had the fate of the villages now entwined in Elisa’s project.

Golems of Steam Steel and Bone chapter 10 raw first draft

Flames moved down the far side of the Elkhorn valley, five to ten miles of smoke, soot and fleeing creatures lay between the walls, as well as the braided channels of the river, lined with trees, mostly the western cottonwoods. The few junipers and scrub oak that invaded with the first wagon trains, and spread out this far from the Great Western Highway of the Platte valley burst like flares along that wall as the fire took them. Dried out in the hot winds rushing towards the fire front, they lit faster than a match. The grass around them often only smoldered, the front past, as they burst into flames that tossed more sparks into the air, by way of leaves and needles, bark and gelled sap that burst like grenades and cannon shot.

Elisa stood by the wagon, the boiler moving to power the pumps she had once thought only to move water to a dig for washing and plaster casting, now to act as one of the fire engines the idea had come from. Five long hoses radiated out, three towards the crops, one in the tents, and one into the slowly rising pond made by the stone mason and miller's makeshift dam. So far the steam to power the pumps was off, but she understood that soon the valves must be opened to prevent the wind drying from making things too dry to save.

Buckets lay filled in lines from the new shore up to the tents and two wooden buildings raised for the new trading post and inevitable saloon that every western town had. Around the building many barrels had been placed, all filled with water as well. What preparations could be done, were done.

 Now only the fire and how well things worked would matter. The line of fire reached the valley floor, and slowed for a short hour, burning into marshland grasses kept moist by a thick layer of waterlogged soil and the recharge from the river, whose southern levee was missing from spring floods. Soon though, the fire began to win the battle as the winds made the river dry up, sucking the moisture from the ground's topmost layer, and then bursting through the cattails and other grasses in the manner of a stream overcoming waterfall. It moved in streams and waves, bowing out in one place, holding back in others, until it rushed and changed places. Firetails, the deadly tornadoes made of flames, spun in the burning areas, while behind the main fire, ashes smoldered and pockets of tougher grass or shrubs still flamed long after the grass fire moved on.

All eyes were on the river, praying to whatever power they worshiped that it would hold back the fire. Once there, the flames and sparks in the air took the cottonwoods slowly, their soft green wood burning slowly, resisting the fire more than most thought, but the leaves of each tree curled and dried in the heat, the flames shot upwards, crowing across the channels in minutes. Terrifying speed hit the flames as the winds now raised more. At the dig the brave young men who had stayed there lit fires around the dig, to be sucked with the wind racing to rise with the flames, and thus save the fossils and gear still there.

"Ivan! Start the pumps!" Elisa's cry came as she opened the valves to release the steam to the lines leading to the main pump at the river, and the pump that powered the waters into the narrower hoses of the split lines after the juncture. Water and air mixed as the pumps first primed then caught hold filling with water. The new island became covered in a smoke and mist mixture, the hoses watering crops, land, wagon, tents and buildings. Each person not in the hose lines moved to the buckets, the youngest taking blankets dipped in the water barrels to beat out flames that might still take hold.

Elisa monitored the gauges of the boiler, the pressure climbing as she stoked the fires with more coal, fires she had to ensure did not escape to finish what Nature tried to do with her fiery winds. The sloshing of bucket began, as did the beating of fabric on surfaces. Her breath came in short bursts, and the normally cooler and fresher air away form the vessel was no longer easier to catch your breath in. Smoke and embers, heat near that of the fires that protected the encampment seared the lungs with every breath. She lifted the cloth bandanna over her face to find it no longer even damp, as the worst of the heat raged over the island.

For a few minutes the world was nothing but orange, red, and black. A strange image, so like the coppery plates she had sent to have taken here. Then it was black, smoke and ash falling out from the great cloud raised by the fires. A cloud not flowing north, but east southeast, heralding a change of winds to come, but not in time to save the dig, Elisa feared. Still they had to keep working for a long while afterwards, a small corner of the saloon was charred, one section of corn was gone to ahses, but in all, other than small spots, and a few patches of grass being beaten out, the island idea proved its success.

Ivan came up to her, coughing severely, but happy. "We... have ... won."

She motioned to some tonics from her father's supplies that had survived the years, holding up one finger to indicate only one bottle to be out at a time. Leather gloved hands danced across the valves again, changing flows of steam to new pipes, ones to fill a pressure bottle to allow a rapid transit to the shore by a rowboat as Black Coyote started to gather men to go check on the brave ones at the dig site.

Ivan was still having a hard time breathing, so she worked the controls quickly, wishing there was a doctor in the area, but as yet one had not yet arrived seeking a place to set up a practice. Perhaps it was just the smoke, and would pass in a short time. Many others were coughing as well. But during the steam explosion that left him maimed, the scalding vapors reached his lungs, leaving them weak and susceptible to irritations and illnesses.

To lose him after just finding him was not acceptable to the young necromancer. Raising the dead was forbidden to be done on humans, and without the brain, no soul came back form the beyond to inhabit flesh, no matter the claims of some charlatans who defamed her profession. Without the soul, the knowledge, skills and love were gone. All one had was an image of the one raised. Which was why the profession tried to ban it. Not that Elisa would cross that line, she already knew it was useless, otherwise her parents would have been brought back when they died.

The boiler took a long time to bring down to a cooling idle, the fires had been too hot, to drive more steam and pump water faster. She heard the bottle driven propeller chopping across the still waters of the channel dug to make the island, then the cries of men trying to walk across the scalded terrain. She had given them her two pressured water sprayers, but as always, some had to try proving their courage against a foe that could care less about fear or courage, only if you burned brightly.

When she managed to settle the boiler, she walked over to her uncle, lowering her mask to speak clearer. "No work the next week for you, and into the wagon, Geranof. I spent too much money on your contract to lose you now." She laid a soft emphasis on the word lose, to get her uncle's attention
.
The lone eye met hers, with a grim look. "I caught steam is all, but yes, I will rest."

 His understanding came from the way he took her arm to stand up and enter the wagon. Sleep would do him good, and she would do all she could to ensure he recovered, from her father's notes and remaining medicines not sold to fund her raising and education back east. Some remained, as did the most important thing, if she could find an alchemist to team with, his notes on the chemicals for metal making his mother and he had perfected. Notes worth more than anything else, notes she had never shown anyone, but hidden away until coming back.

Those notes, she thought, could be the lure the hunters sought, seeking the secrets of her parents skill and fame from their creations, to steal for profit. Or she could use them as bait, pretending to not know they might be hidden in some concealed compartment of the wagon.

It was nightfall by the time the best news came, the dig, and the young men, had survived, with only a few burns, and one broken bone. The bone being an arm of one of the men. She only hoped the ground cooled quickly afterwards to allow more digging.

Golems of Steam Steel and Bone chapter 9 - raw first draft

The moon moved from half full to full, and waned away more than it gained, as the trenches were expanded, exposing the thick layer of ash below the mixture of clay, sand and loam soil they carefully stored as berms to prevent storm runoff from flooding the dig. The juvenile mammoth was slowly exposed in full, shovels used until a foot above the tusk found, then the hand trowels and brushes took over with hand picks used only with care to turn the rock back to dust. Every move was gentle, every hand worked around it at some time, but exposing the bones to air was left for the skilled touch of Geranof and Elisa. Even the guards came in to both see what they protected for the people and lay some aid into the pit.

Those ideas came from the elders, who also helped as they could, cooking meals, bring around water to keep the dust from choking those working under the mesh of canvas, hide and cloth tents and awnings covering the exposed ground. Half the villagers moved to the valley below to plant crops, hunt for the diggers, and be there when more fossils were found. And so they could say they saw the first of the metal beasts the necromancer would raise from the bones of her chosen subjects.

One of the young and two of the elders proved to be fair artists with charcoal and paper, enough so that under Ivan and Elisa's instructions, and if checked on the mapping of bones. When it came to reconstruction of how they may have come to lie as they did, the tribal folk were perhaps far better. Elisa even asked if the young woman wished to apprentice with her, to the youth and the elders' delight. Her art, guided by the experience with animals the hunters and elders had, led to some of the best art she had seen, so much that she broke out precious comte crayons and pastel chalks, and asked some one to send for a painter from town, to work with the girl.

But there were problems still. Like the morning they found the cougar in the pit, feasting upon a freshly killed mule deer, forcing them to let it eat its fill, before chasing it off with flapping blankets and other noise items, a bugle proving most effective. Another night they found the bison herd seeking a wallow, and spent the hours normally slept in with torches and using the steam from the wagon's boiler vented through hoses to keep the herd from the dig, which would have ruined it.

Then there were the three days of fear, when the sky lit up even under the sun with bands of dancing lights. Elisa's control over the dig was almost lost. A band of the tribes thought that this sign from the gods meant the dig had violated the trust of man with the land. Twice she and the guards stopped people from burying the pit. The camp was on edge and breaking into fractions, not aided by the near constant glow of Saint Elmo's Fire that graced the wagon and all metal items as the light storm grew above them. For those used to being around metals, this was not an unusual occurrence, but to the tribes, who still used flint, antler and bone by choice, the glows upon iron and other metals seemed to speak of evil spirits and dark events. This was the bane, even among the 'civilized' of a necromancer, that the excited charges upon metals would mark them out for others as making pacts with the Dark One. When the night the sky burned, and then was answered to the south with pockets of glow hours later days into the storm, for Elisa, things got better. Pockets of bright light on the horizon spread to consume the whole of he horizon with a line of blazing orange, red and yellow. A sign they all feared, that of wildfire. And most now accepted that the sky storm had been a warning to prepare, not a strike against the dig by the spirits of the sky.

Now some of the improvements she had made came to the fore, the wagon carried pumps she had designed to improve the moving of water through hoses, and the water mill one of the whites who had stopped to set up along the side valley, lifted out water with some quick changes. High above the hill, knowing the time of long dry spells would come during the dig season, Elisa's persuasions on the elders achieved a new idea in the west, one just coming to fore amid the rising buildings of the east, that of the water tower to catch rain and hold it for later use, While only one storm's worth of water was in it, every bit they had could be used.

Now the winds began to rise, from the calm summer night to the same fitful fronts that preceded a thunderstorm. But the air flowed south, seeking the fire, not fleeing as before the lightning and rains. It was obvious they had time come the dawn when the braves crossing the Elkhorn to check the closeness of the fire returned with word that it appeared to be coming from the distant railroad along the Platte's north bank. This gave them time, as the fires were fifty to sixty miles away. Until the elders told of wildfires in the past that raced that distance in a single day.

It was the miller who had the idea to save the encampment and fields. He approached the elders and Ivan with the idea. Being a man of the west who had returned east only to learn the miller's arts, he knew to make the idea be one the native folk might embrace through linking to the actions of an animal.

"Do beaver lodges ever catch fire? I can make a quick dam on the stream, if you let me, and with some work, create an island for the village to be upon, saving the crops, as well as keeping us all safe." When the elders started at the idea, he pushed one. "Like the beavers' dams, I will make it low, but of stone, so it will create at most a small pond, leaving the crops on the island, we can drain it afterwards, and rebuild it if needed. It will only make a six foot rise behind it, less than many of the beaver dams I have seen in some streams."

This started a short argument, that ended with the arrival of a wagon train from the south, fleeing the fire. These folks had sought safety by racing away from the fires, which one claimed to have seen starting up.

"The devil's glow lit up the wires of that damned Morse, until Satan tossed out the sparks, at the height of the lightstorm, when lightning leapt from the wires down to the rails, the switches, anything of metal. It was scary. I saw three men killed near an engine, as the lighting kept striking it, over and over. Still was happening when I fled, by then the sparks and strikes to metal out away from the grades had lit the fires." He stopped to take a drink of the water the caravan sought after racing across land for two days, splashing face and neck as well as throat with it. "Half of Fremont's station was gone, met a rider heading to Omaha from further east, he said Columbus Crossing for the Loup River was totally destroyed, some fool having run a line of the Morse wire through town."

Two wagons of the train were of stonemasons, and when they were told of the dam, they mentioned a place the noted that looked like it held limestone nearby, not the best material, but quick to quarry. A heated conference later, and the masons were digging stones with the fossil hunters carving a channel to east and west of the low rise in the valley the new encampment and most of the fields lay upon. Work began fast, and without the care shown at the dig. By sundown, the first blocks of stone were laying down on either side of the stream, to mark the footings of the dam. They laid slabs and blocks through the night, as the glow on the sky came closer, and smoke began to shroud the stars in thin veils, tough at times only the bright wanderers of the astrologers' charts still shown through.

The loss of some crops was worrying to the Elder's, but Elisa promised to pay for replacements, as Ivan pointed out the fire would destroy all the crops otherwise. The third day, as another light storm erupted, behind the orange haze the sky wore, faint curtains with only hints of color shown, as most metal items took on some glow, shocking those who touched or even passed too close to them. The fire topped the far ridge, the winds now roared around them, but the dame was mostly done.

Elisa prayed to Bog that the Elkhorn was wide enough to hold the flames back, but the cottonwoods that lined that river were fickle things. They marked where water was, even as sometimes their root drank all their was in the channel, or dried into tinder for the flames of the wild lands. They had done all they could, even lowering the protections of the dig, and covering it with a thick layer of dirt.

"Golems of Steam, Steel, and Bone" Chapter 6 - raw first draft

"Do you know who was behind the attack?" It was the question that drove her through her schooling, the hostility of her mother's family and back here to the plains and badlands where the event had occurred.

The next draw on his pipe was a slow one, the glow lighting Geranof's face so that it seemed almost of hell itself with its scars and damages. When he spoke he held the pipe this time, not speaking around the stem. He wanted her to hear him clearly. "Not for certain, but I have a list. One of the men who was in the attack was following you in town. The armless one. Lost that arm to a boiler plate he says. I saw a certain young girl run him over with a wagon, cutting the arm off with the wheel." He chuckled at her gasp. "Relax, debeitsa, feel no sorrow at wounding him, he knows who the money came from."

Elisa thought about it long and hard. "There were three in town that watched me, other than you."

"Three? I noted only armless and the hat man, who else?" The beat of time marked by the pipe's glow sped up in irritation as Ivan Geranof realized he had missed something, and that could spell more danger.

"A young man, native, black tattoo or mark on his right arm." Elisa went on, describing the man's clothing, walk, which she suddenly recalled was the bowlegged stroll of a person who spent much time on a horse, and where he had stood, how he had stood, the actions she remembered seeing, and which ones she inferred during the steps she had not been able to use reflections in the windows to keep track of him.

After she stopped, the pipe slowly was finished, the glowing ribbons reduced to ash as Geranof closed his eyes, trying to recreate the street in his mind. A ferocious frown was now framing the stem of the pipe in his mouth. He had missed something, which was against his personal goals to save his niece. Outside, the calm air was filled with the sounds of insects of the night, the crickets, mosquitoes and other night flyers. At times the flutter of a bat's wings came close to the skylight. Elisa began to worry he had drifted off to sleep, until he carefully began emptying the pipe of the ash and other residues.

"Aach. I know the one. Yes." A rustle of materials came for a few minutes, followed by another flaring match in the confines. "So, the malchik came looking for you. I had no clue you would be in Decatur, of all places. Yet he never goes anywhere since that day without a purpose. Was he watching you, or the others?"

This thought was not one she had considered. Now, as Ivan waited with a full stomach and pipe as she tried to bring out more from what she had seen. "His eyes.. moved, many times yet they kept finding me in the reflections, like he knew I watched him as well. And I caught him once directly, just before you came. He winked and.... the arm, the mark was like a coyote who howls.... " Elisa's voice trailed off. The native guide of the caravan had his son along, a son who also survived the attacks. "Black Coyote." It was not challenged by Ivan, who moved suddenly to the door, tossing it open with his good hand, stabbing the darkness outside with his sinister steel arm.

Yet, even as Ivan struck, hands grabbed his metal forearm, yanking him outside into the darkness. On the right forearm, the mark just discussed stood out. Elisa reached for the pistol she normally had kept hidden in her bustle. It was a short barreled thing, but that barrel had been rifled to spin the slug for balance and accuracy. Even if it was Black Coyote, she had no idea which side he was on. Or if he had some other reason to be here.

One thing she had made certain worked on the wagon before heading west, and after leaving every town, was the trap door in the floor to escape. This time, remembering her classical literature and history lessons, it was to be a sally port, for launching a sneak attack. Any one with the young Coyote would be watching the doors, not the bottom of the wagon. The trick, she found, was in making it to that egress without advertising motion inside. When the slide-outs were open, the balance of the bed was not what it was when they were closed. In recovering the pistol, she had already found that out.

Slowly moving to the center seemed to work, until she reached the point of setting feet to floor. That alone took her a precious minute, while the silence outside spoke of the dangers she dared to risk. A local would have waited, writing off the slave as dead. For her, Ivan was a man, and deserved to be rescued. It was that difference that she hoped would lead Coyote or any with him to make wrong assumptions. The minute moving from bed to floor was excruciating to her legs, taking the weight at a weird angle and holding it with no re-positioning. The trapdoor moved as it should, and she lowered herself to the floor, thankful for the time spend helping Ivan curry and feed his horse. The beast never stirred a bit, as her feet touched the grass gently.

Luck had them parking near an area bison grazed upon recently, so the shortened grass stems made less noise. Remembering her previous experiences, she moved only when the wind touched her, stopping with it. Two sets of legs were outlined by moonlight ahead of the wagon, but a third set was moving well back, she could hear the footsteps.

"Reckon she fled or was taken?" A bass voice in the darkness, neither her uncle or the Coyote.

"I conjure that freak with the metal arm done kilt her already. Rightly do." Tenor voice. Both the men who had spoken were the men at the front of her moving home. The one circling was silent still, behind the wagon, the shadow made it hard to see. The moon was nearly to the western horizon, setting hours before dawn. She had to act and act soon, but still had no idea where her uncle and Coyote hid. Or lay dead, the morbid side of her brain warned.

The wind was rising in fitful gusts, and she noted dim flashes below the moon, flashes inside towering thunderheads that marked a change in weather again. As the waxing moon shrouded itself in those clouds, their exhalations tossing the grass and shrubs more, as they become more frequent and the flashes approached. By the time she had worked to the forward wheels, crouching in silence, the storms had come close enough to begin bothering the horses and men.

"Hell with this, get in there and take her. She resists, kill her." The circling man moved to the horses after giving the order, a flash of lightning showing the broad brimmed hat, whose band had something scattering the light from it. At night, there colors never showed enough to be verified, even under a full moon, one trusted to color sightings only as one must, or if some light source illuminated the object or person in question for more than a few seconds. But certain things, such as darkness or lightness of color, could be told. The man with the hat's hair was white or pale blonde. It was not the same man as in Decatur.

The order made her decision for her, using both hands, she took careful aim, gently squeezed the trigger as she had been taught by a former soldier before leaving Ohio. The bass voice hollered, as tenor dropped to the ground trying to breath with his neck blown apart. Too high, she thought, and aimed for the gut of the deep voiced man, again moving with steady gentle pressure to fire. Another body fell, crying softly for help, as footsteps and fighting broke out at the back of the wagon.

She took that to be Ivan or Coyote, so she decided to rattle the leader a bit, firing two more bullets in his direction, unable to take aim as the clouds swallowed the moon at last. Wisely, and as she had been warned to do, she moved after firing. Forward being  the direction few would expect, especially from a woman. That she missed did not matter, the screams of the fourth man made up the leader's mind. Spurring his horse into motion, headed south, where the Elkhorn and the Platte River Railway lay. Two loud booms shook the night, as a shotgun discharged over her. Looking up, there was Black Coyote, with Ivan coming around the wagon cleaning his horrid gauntleted left  hand.

Looking over the bodies, the men noted that her pistol was tracking still the retreating hoofbeats. Ivan and Coyote's eyes met.

"See, she is everything a western man wants, pretty and shoots straight. I remember she cooks nicely too." Coyote's comments made Elisa stand and face them in rage.

"Hell of a temper though, son. Best steer clear of her until she controls it." Ivan laughed, as he reached down to drag the bodies away.

"Golems of Steam, Steel, and Bone" Chapter 4

Morning brought Elisa the realization that her dresses could go back into storage unless needed. Few of the women in town wore anything but pants and shirts of homespun, unless their profession required it. Even the serving girl wore the western style pants of prized California denims, from the Straus mills. Looking over the fabric in glances, and the way it went together, even though made for a man's body, she could see there was some use for such for her. If she could find a tailor willing to modify them for her.

The day's beginning also gave Elisa the awareness of just how much had changed in the years she had been east. The natives wore buckskin versions of white man clothing, though quite a few still kept to their traditional forms of dress. Others walked in eastern, western garb and a few Chinese laborers were present in their cultural clothing, a rarity off the main rail lines.

Decatur was not Omaha, or Council Bluffs, but the rumors of fossil beasts in the hills to the west brought many folk here. Many were necromancers, two were even from her own class, come west to find the specimen to make their name and fortune with, others were those who supplied the labor for the digs and its supporting trades, the tool makers, the dry-goods folks, the canvas and tent makers and many more. A few were the hanger-on type one found near every major project, the parasites who fed on others, criminals, gamblers and gunmen looking to steal what they could. And there were the sightseers, the eastern folk come west to see the Nations of Savages, the wonders of Nature, and the strange things found in the rocks.

Elisa watched those wandering aimlessly, their fancy clothes marking them as 'greenhorns' to those of the west, and wondered if others saw her the same way. The folks in the towns until now had somehow known or sensed she had been west before, and survived trials of her own that the land gave out with no mercy at all. But did all folks seemed to possess the ability to detect a person who had seen the elephant, as the saying went along the trails.

Walking along, again she felt like there was a presence pushing upon her back, the feeling be a cold sensation, like a knife along the spine. Not wanting to give either the satisfaction to some fool judging her by clothing, or reveal she felt the stare if it was some other with ill or good intentions. Window shopping had a wonderful benefit, though, if one could turn one's face to a spot, yet glance with eyes to the reflections on the surface, not what lay beyond. She took her time, working past the three seamstress shops showing dresses and other womanly needs in their window bays. The first two stops were to see who was in the reflections, and note what they did. The last was the telling mark. Three people had traveled along with her, a man with many scars with a left arm missing from the elbow down, the young lad of the tribes with a black mark of some kind on his right arm, and the man in the flat topped black felt hat.

All three had been in the reflections of all three store windows, all three she caught looking at her during her observations. While the man in the hat did not seem familiar, the young native and the deformed man seemed to echo something within the vaults of memory for her. That black mark, it danced on the edge of her thoughts as she moved over to a window that no matter how thick the glass seemed, she could feel the silent call of the cakes and pastries in the window case. The scent of baking bread drifted in the air, the yeasty smell promising rich delights. A rumbling stomach reminded her of a missed breakfast from luxuriating under thick comforters on the soft mattress of the bed. Sinful thoughts of gluttonous consumption were trimmed thankfully by her limited remaining coins. But oh, how they called to her. And another, one she had not noticed until he moved.

He also had a damaged left arm, one covered in a metal gauntlet, and walked with a limp that spoke of other prostheses as well. A sinister black eye patch and beaver pelt cap finished out the look, though she knew somehow, he normally wore one of the raccoon skin caps so popular decades before, and with some still. No sign of him noticing her, as he joined her at the window, obviously broke and hungry.

"Ivan... Ivan Geranof." It slipped past her lips, the name she should not give in to knowing.

He never moved to look at her. Just a whisper of acknowledgement. "Missy Lissy best to follow me in, and argue who gets the jelly roll log..."

Tears fought with a smile on her face as he jerkily moved to the door, working the handle with his good right hand, the iron glove being only to protect the ruined remains of an arm cooked in steam when a pipe had burst during an experiment. An experiment not of Elisa's, but of her mother's studies.

One family member had returned. Though Ivan was of her father's friends, he had taken to her mother's work early. Uncle Ivan, as they had caller him, raised the children of his friends as they were his own. And lost the arm, a leg and the other foot to an accident many years before, before Elisa's memories began, saving Valeria vonFrachen from a boiler explosion.

She followed him inside, hearing him already wheedling for a slice of the jellyroll, a confection he professed when caring for them he hated, and this flavor had been Erich's favorite.

"Please, Missus Baxter, just a slice of the jelly roll for Ivan. I will do extra work for it today..." The whining and nasal tone left his accent from the motherland more noteworthy. And made him sound like some bum begging for a drink, not the necromancer's aide he was trained to be, not just from work with Valeria, but certified from The Institute of Petrograd. Few could be as skilled in iron, and that metal over his left arm was just as useful, letting him handle items far hotter than others, as well as shape them with it.

By just the expression of contempt on the bakery lady's face, Elisa gained some knowledge of how far Uncle Ivan had fallen. "Out, you are overpaid for what little work you do now! No more shall you get until you earn it." The expression only thawed a bit as she noticed Elisa. "See, you block honest customers from coming in. May I help you miss?"

The tone never changed, even when Elisa produced a handful of coins. "How much for the jellyroll please?"

"Two bits." Not a bit of grace or lilt of a salesperson in the voice. To the woman behind the counter, all were beneath her, save those with more money than sense. Ivan was grumbling and leaving, complaining that raspberry was his favorite. And that of his nephew, whose birthday it was. The door behind them opened, again as Ivan left, but another set of footsteps came up behind her.

"Very well, do you wrap it for travel?" Elisa tried to add a bit of disdain to her voice, implying she was better than the bakery woman.

"That would be five cents more for the cheesecloth." Not a bit of give in the position. This woman was one of the elite of Decatur, apparently. One of those for whom class, money and power were all that mattered, and only she was the judge of who made the cut.

"Very well. I take it your employee..." Elisa made it no further.

"Contracted servant. He ran afoul our laws here, and is paying his price by serving the town. He must do so many hours each week for me, as I bought his services." A hint of the south was in her words. Many plantation owners and slave holders had fled to the western preserves made by the man who had defeated their land and ways. Places where indentured servitude and slavery were still allowed, under strict rules.

Elisa smiled. "But he seems to be failing you. Shame the whip is outlawed now, is it not?"

A genuine smile met hers. "Indeed. I would sell him off to any who wish such a waste of space, but word of his failures has, shall we say, traveled well."

From her basket came something she had hoped to leave in the bank vault before leaving. But this would be a much better use of the heirloom. Opening the small black display box, the gleam of diamonds sealed a deal without words, as papers, the box, some coins and the pastry were exchanged.

Later that day, Ivan Geranof stoked the boiler of the steam wagon, readying it to head west. There were tears and a smile on his face now. But a wariness in his eyes, after a conversation under the cloaks of the steam and rumbles of the kettle heating to its optimum range. Neither uncle or niece rejoiced to learn what the other said under the veils of the machinery.

"Golems of Steam, Steel, and Bone" Chapter 3 - Raw first drafts...

The once blonde hair took on a slightly brown shade now, thanks to the skills taught her by the limner's wife. The scars on her face, neck, forearms and hands transformed by other elixirs, added to her father's notebooks, as was the mixtures for the hair dye. Elisa still did not recognize  the woman looking back at her, especially when she donned her spectacles. She only hoped she did not shock Ambassador Lincoln with the changes. Three days journey on the Missouri Trace, following close to the line of tall bluffs that composed the eastern wall of that river's valley was tedious. And not much real distance could be made, as the spring rains left the trace a silt and clay nightmare for the wagon.

Elisa wondered if the new wheels she had seen being made by her family's creations back in Akron would catch on, she had six of the new-fangled wheels made from the sap of the rubber trees of the far Indies. No wheelwright had offered to let her change them onto the wagon, and the few she had approached refused to let her do so in their shops or even yards. So the solid rubber wheels, called tyres by a fellow student who had helped develop them, still sat in their spot on the top rack.

The few times she had used a wagon or carriage with those tyres, the ride had been smoother, but that was on the eastern roads, well graded, rocked or cobble-stoned ways where mud and slickness only came while the road was wet, not for days after the rains as the traces, no more than ruts in the grass between farmsteads, proved. Every twist and turn the Loess Hills Trail took to follow the feet of the bluffs was an gambling opportunity as to if the wagon would stay on the road or slide on steel rimmed wooden wheels that spun without traction.

The necromancer worried deeply about the speed she was making, but could do nothing about it at the moment.

One thing she did wish to do was to take a side trip across the river at City of the Sioux. Rumors reached the east that in the hills of southeastern Lakota there was a rich layer of grey rock or soil that held a wealth of fossil beasts for one such as her to resurrect into service of the land, not to mention sell the bones to museums in the east after the castings needed were made. After all, the supplies to make the beasts were not cheap, but once a metal replica was made, casts and copies could proliferate and make one money, but the bones were useless after the original cast and first few modified for empowerment skeletons dropped from the molds.

The weight of her pig iron, coke and other supplies, the ceramics and tools, plus her own belongings and food supplies, the coal hopper for the wagon boiler all added up. More and more she wished she had taken the steamboats north to the mouth of the White River. Every slide threatened with final certainty her end, the wagon tipping more and more with each near disaster. She needed to stop and redistribute the cargo, getting more of the heavy items down from the top rack. But to stop in this mess would be to accept more delays.

She had passed the first night, the one with the rain, at Calhoun, The second on the trail, seeking a crossing of a stream, the third night at that crossing, the town of Pisagh,  where folks told her of a short cut. A short cut she avoided, heading back down stream on the north bank, seeking the town of Little Sioux, a mixed town of folks from both sides of the river, but near the bluffs for protection from the spring floods of the Missouri. It was passing the rounded base of the Forested Loess, a stretch the locals preserved the thick growth of trees upon, that she traveled when the wagon tried to dive into a small finger lake that mimicked the line of the hill as she was able to again turn north from the southerly course of the valley she had made the crossing in.

Again the feeling of hands covered hers, guiding them around the controls, it a manner as smooth as her father’s had moved in similar situations. The last minute recovery let her limp into town, tears on her face. Back in Missouri Valley, the limner’s wife had spoken once of things Elisa did not believe in.

“You are haunted girl, a spirit travels with you, one that will gain power as it goes west. I know you necromancers deny the spirits of the flesh and bones your recreate, but some day you will find the truth, that they exist, and you will have to deal with that." Tea was being poured as she spoke. "You can deny all you wish, but there is some spirit attached to that wagon of yours, and it has some connection to you."

All she had been able to do then, for fear of losing all and confessing the events that sent her back east, was to look away ashamed of the tears it brought.

"Won't say more, and I will ask the other spirits I summon to speak to their living folk to be silent or blur the matter. But you will someday have to speak with this ghost. And a medium is the best to provide that mouth, less chance of devils changing their words." The woman was set in her ways, as were so many still in this day. Spirits walked among us still or spoke from beyond the grave to guide folks. To Elisa, save those moments she felt the hands, it could not be true. Otherwise by now some necromancer would have crossed the line and made a human automata to host the one it was based from's spirit, reuniting loved ones.

As this faded back into memory, the wagon slowed, righted itself and at least for a while behaved itself, sliding less at the lower speed, yet covering more ground as it did not lose momentum so often. Near the turn to Onawa, the hands left hers, but Elisa took to heart the strange guidance.

He knew it had worked at last, that something had settled her down. The ghost waited, wishing he could speak to her, and relay the feelings, the wisdom he so wanted to share. But that was denied for the moment. Regret at the rejection of the medium still hurt, but Elisa's moment had yet to come for acceptance and grief long repressed.

The steamboat that ran the bend of the Missouri here traveled east to west, going along the most recent channel the river cut that spring. Decatur was another town of the old days, before the treaty, that he tribes accepted staying on their side. Mostly for the trade possibilities the connections. Her wagon was chained to the deck for the transit, and its load reworked by herself and the local smith, one who laughed at the others, but aided her with a mobile "jack" to lift the wagon up to change the wheels for the tyres. The spare of that device cost her a small fortune, but of sugary candies, some cookbooks and a set of plates meant for trade in her inventory anyway.

The rocking of the ship as it bucked the tide was not as nice as downstream. Too many snags marred the uneven bottom, and the calls of the pole-men seeking the channel at the bow was not as comforting as the calls along the Father of Waters to the east had been. A journey of three miles took the light of an entire day to make, but seeing the whirlpools, eddies and other dangers, Elisa was content with the crew's diligence and the captain's caution.

That, and some fool river gambler had thought women with money would be easy prey for their deft fingers. He had tried to make his play too late though, after she had caught him dealing off the bottom. So she iced her own deal back at him, enraging him when he had missed the straight on a game of draw. His anger cost him his next deal, when the other gentlemen at the table at last noticed the cards on the top of the deck only came out every other card. The fool was still being bobbed in the muddied waters as the vessel made dock for the night.

It was the unloading that caused her nightmares. A narrow parallel dock and the bend of the river made the conventional front unload impossible. The river was running high and fast, fed by upstream storms most thought, though one trapper heading back up to the Montana territory said it was not that alone. "Snow lay deep on all the ranges this year," was his information, warning her that all the rivers still were getting snow-melt coming down them and to watch crossing fords for surges. "Been warm then cold, days at a time in alternation, girl. That lets the water come out of the snow in bursts as can travel downstream to the Father of Waters before slowing."

At last a crane got the wagon removed to the dock, straining mightily under a load it's makers never considered coming into this port. With a sigh of relief, she allowed it to be towed by horse up to the local livery for the night, checking into the small hotel. She felt something bothering her as she signed in, using the VonFranchen surname, as she had since going to Ohio. And it was not the hands or concern of her friendly spirit, but something wary, with a hint of menace.

Cowboy bondage romance novels - A poem from a tweet I saw.

Rounding up the words in her corral
she crafts braids them like her lariat
into a beast rarely seen back east
creating for fun cowboy bondage romance novels.

Running before the crazy chuck wagon driver',
seeking more meat and beans to mix in
along with the grit from riding drag
to give it a truly authentic taste .

Then into the sunset she rides off
seeking the next wild bronco to ride
leaving behind her brand seared in hides
still smoking from this fanciful passing through.

Not seeing the big debate she started
among the cowgirls still working the roundup
of whether to let the boys free
or leave them victims to her bulldogging.

(19May2012 - Dyfedd Rex)

And a tip of the hat to @ActuallyAisha for the promt on this on!

Biting Bullets - a poem of westerns' inspiration

They dig deep into the ground
stirring up the dust as the drill
new burrows into the earth
seeking to find a new tomb
back in earth if not my flesh.
Not that I ain't deservin' 'em

Got in this mess by fool's gold
soft galena that in town I used
to trick some greenhorn idiot
out of most of his fancy kit
for a taste of the west's riches,
metals, cattle, goods for the takin'.

Never knew until I was pinned
under his relentless fire here
outside the salted claim I planned
to sell him for what little he had
that he was no pilgrim new born
but some wildcat in slicker's kit

Teethed on the lead in Kaintucky
among many feuding kith and kin
this seeming dandy was no skypilot
yet he had come to read me from
that good book and piss on my grave
for the sins I had done unto him and others.

Bit my own bullets over the years
and never thought would come to this
to die over a simple jumped claim
that other dead men had defended
when I came to this bit of desert
to steal what I did not deserve.

Pain tears through me as at last
he finds his mark and stops teasing
to lure me out, but decides with mercy
I had not shown him when skinning
to put me down like the dog I was
Fires of the pain, first taste of Hell' Flames.