Custer stooped over and took the piece of paper, putting it back in his pocket. “Guard.” He called out.
When the sergeant at arms appeared. Custer pointed at Kensler. “Gag the prisoner.”
Kensler blinked, not quite understanding, and by the time he did it was too late. The sergeant at arms wrapped a leather lariat around his head. holding a piece of rag jammed into his mouth. Kensler’s protests were muffled as he was hustled out of the prison and to the nearby scaffold.
Captain Custer waited just long enough to see Kensler fall through the trap and hear the prisoner’s neck snap before he hustled over to Regimental headquarters to show his brother the map. George had aspirations. High aspirations. He’d confided to Tom that he saw a future for himself in politics. If Grant, that damn fool, could be president, George didn’t see why he couldn’t. Especially if he had a great victory over the Indians and the financial backing one needed to run such a campaign. Gold in the Black Hills could solve both those problems.
Crazy Horse sat cross-legged on top of a rock on top of the crow’s nest. He could see for many miles to the north, east and west. It was beautiful country, the heart of the Lakota hunting land, and crawling across the center of it, like a black poisonous snake, was a long column of blue coats.
He reached into a pouch and retrieved the telescope he had taken from a surveyor he’d slain several years earlier. He extended the metal tube and put it to his right eye. He scanned along the column until he reached the front. The blond hair caught Crazy Horse’s eye. Long and flowing in the breeze.
Crazy Horse had heard of this leader of the white soldiers. Some called him Son of the Morning Star. Others dubbed him Creeping Panther for his attack on Black Kettle’s village on the Washita. Some even said the white man had a mixed-race daughter, named Yellow Swallow, with Me-o-tzi, daughter of the Cheyenne chief Little Rock.
Crazy Horse didn’t care what anyone called the man. He was leading surveyors into the Black Hills, the heart of Lakota land. He watched the column as it moved north until the last rider was out of sight.
They would be back. That was as sure as the sun rising the next morning. And when they came back, the Son of the Morning Star would rise no more.
Bouyer read the Rocky Mountain News article for the third time. It validated what was already being talked about in all the saloons and on the streets of Denver. There was gold in the Black Hills. Gold for the taking.
He was standing on the comer of Laramie Square in downtown Denver. He could literally feel the excitement around him. Dry goods stores were packed with people buying mining equipment and provisions, and there wasn’t a spare mule to be bought within twenty miles-this despite the fact it was late fall and snow covered the Rocky Mountains just west of the city. Bouyer knew some fools would head north now and most would perish in the winter. The smarter ones would wait for the spring. Then, just as the mountain streams would swell with run-off, the trails leading north would be packed with prospectors.
There wasn’t a mention of the treaty in the article. The one the government had signed with the Indians ceding the Black Hills to them in perpetuity.
Bouyer went back to the part that interested him the most. The fact that the Seventh Cavalry, under the command of George Armstrong Custer, had been the ones who made the discovery while on a survey mission. Bouyer didn’t believe that for a moment-why survey land that had been given to the Indians? He knew there was more going on than was being reported.
He’d left the Dakota Territory this past summer, even though he’d heard rumors that the Seventh would be marching. He’d had no vision or heard any inner voice indicating s was the year. Plus, most of the leaders on the list that he’d given to Crazy Horse were on reservations, content to eat government beef for the time being.
That would change now, Bouyer knew.
He folded the paper and stuck it under his arm. As he walked out of the Square he felt a cold breeze as his back and a tingle in the base of his skull. Bouyer halted, putting out one hand on a wood pole to steady himself. He closed his eyes.
In his mind’s eye he saw a place. Large slabs of slanting reddish rock towered over a mining town set near the foothills. A voice whispered to him: at the base of one of those slabs of rock.
That was it. Bouyer opened his eyes. He knew the place. The Flatirons-so named because they resembled the device used to press pants-outside the town of Boulder, northwest of Denver.
Bouyer headed for the stable.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The steady roar of jet engines throbbed in Dane’s ears. The backseat of the F-14 wasn’t the most spacious place, but Dane had managed to open the laptop Ahana had given him and he had it in front of him as he studied the information she had compiled. He had been inside the gate while much had happened and had not had a chance to be fully brought up to speed.
First he checked Ahana’ s displays from both the Flip and Super-Kamiokande in Japan, showing the current muonic field patterns for the planet. The activity around the Devil’s Sea and Baikal was obvious. Otherwise, the planet seemed calm. But for the radiation out of Chernobyl and the growing ozone hole, they might be celebrating a victory over the Shadow-a very big but.
Ahana had summarized the information quite well-some of the material Dane already knew. Other of it was new, but put together in a way that he was beginning to get a better grasp on the war against the Shadow.
Ahana had gone back to something Foreman had told Dane-which the Russians had been one of the leaders in investigating the gates, initially calling them Vile Vortices. They had also been the first to propose the concept of the interior of the planet holding a giant crystalline object. The Russian scientists who proposed this claimed that a matrix of cosmic energy was built into the planet at the time of its formation and that it punched through to the surface at the Vile Vortices. When it was first published, the theory was met with scorn and ridicule, and over the years, the scientists who had proposed it became the laughing stock of their fields.
If they had lived another forty years they would have seen their theory come to life.
Ahana had laid out her adjustment to their theory based on what she had gathered from the recent attempt by the Shadow to tap the core. She had recorded her summary to complement what came up on the screen. Dane smiled as he put on a headset and hit the play button on the computer. Ahana’s words gave evidence to a more artistic side to the usually serious scientist:
“Mr. Dane. Please bear with me as I try to explain things. We learned much while you were inside the gate, some of which you might be aware of, much of which is still conjecture, but what I am telling you are my best guesses as to what has happened and is happening.
“1 must start at the beginning, of course. The birth of our planet, that is. In the very beginning, Earth was only a gathering of fragments of solid rock revolving around the sun. Over the course of approximately two billion years, these fragments coalesced into a planet, a very rudimentary one. Then asteroids and meteors bombarded this rudimentary planet for millions of years. The energy from these impacts melted the entire planet to the extent that it is still cooling off as I say this and will be far into the future. The densest material sank to the center, while lighter materials, the basis from which life could develop. Such as oxygen compounds, water, and silicates, rose. By the time the first humans walked the planet, the interior of the planet settled into four basic layers: the inner core, outer core, mantle and crust.”