Part 23 (2/2)

”All right,” Calder said, heading for the door. ”I reckon I'll take care of the horses.”

”What happened next, Pollux?”

”I placed the barrel of my pistol against the wolf's head and blew his brains out, and he rolled over dead on the spot. But it was too late for Castor. His throat had been ripped out and his chest mauled right bad. It looked like the wolf was trying to break right through his ribs to his heart.”

Pollux hung his head nearly to his knees and wept.

”I buried Castor out back,” he said. ”But something came and dug him up and carried his body away.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. ”Did the wolf you shot turn back into a man?”

”Nope,” Pollux said. ”I dragged the carca.s.s down by the river and burned it up. But the odd thing was, I found this in the ashes when it was all done.”

He reached into his pocket and produced what looked like a marble-brown and swirled-red gla.s.s.

”Feel it,” he said. He placed it in my palm.

It was as heavy as lead, and I gasped as pain like fire shot up my arm and into my chest. I dropped it on the floor, where it didn't bounce and stayed put as if glued.

”Strange, ain't it?”

”It is wicked strange,” I said. ”Pollux, do you know where the whiskey trader goes when he leaves the train?”

”Yeah. He and Malleus both hole up-”

Then there was an odd sound outside, as if a locomotive trailing a thousand cars was bearing down on us. Calder burst in the door and told us to get to the root cellar.

”What's wrong?” I asked.

”Cyclone.”

”Cellar's around back,” Pollux said. ”It ain't deep, but it will do.”

On the way around back, Calder stopped long enough at the thatched stable to untie the horses and slap them on the flank to get them moving toward the creek. They were still saddled, as all he'd had time for was to loosen the cinch straps.

Calder grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the cellar door.

Then I looked to the southwest and gasped.

A cyclone was snaking across the field, not three hundred yards from where we stood. It was dark and sinewy and was chewing up dirt and gra.s.s, and it was murmuring a dead language.

Calder shoved me down into the cellar and stood there by the open door, calling for Pollux Adams. But instead of running for cover, Pollux stood his ground.

”Where's the hideout?” I shouted.

He turned and said something, but I couldn't hear him.

”What?”

Now he was walking toward the cyclone, his shotgun at the ready.

”Ciudad Perdida!”

Then he planted his feet and shouldered the gun. But before he could fire, the cyclone picked him up and tossed him in the air like a rag doll. There was a bright tongue of flame from both barrels of the gun, and I could see the glittering dimes spread against the darkening sky.

Calder pulled me down into the cellar and pressed me to the ground while the storm raged above us. Then we heard a terrible creaking and snapping of wood. The entire cabin was lifted away and torn apart, so much lumber being sucked into the whirling sky above us.

30.

Calder handed me my hat, which he found on the ground near where the cabin had stood just minutes before. The sky had turned a normal color for evening, a pale blue, and Venus shone brightly in the west, the storm having pa.s.sed.

”Are you all right?” Calder asked.

”Relatively speaking,” I said. ”Odd the storm didn't take the hat.”

”Everything about what just happened was odd.”

”Poor Pollux!”

”At least he went out fighting-although you're going to need something more than a scattergun to go up against a cyclone.”

”It wasn't an ordinary kind of storm,” I said. ”Malleus was behind it, I could feel him in the wind. If he can summon forces like that . . .”

”Want to turn back?”

”No,” I said. ”Do you know this place, Ciudad Perdida?”

It meant ”Lost City.”

”I've heard of it,” Calder said. ”Some call it 'Buried City.'”

”What is it?”

”Ruins,” he said, brus.h.i.+ng the mud from his own hat and trying to restore some shape. He had jammed it beneath him in the cellar. ”Maybe twenty miles west along the creek. They're very old.”

”Spanish, then?” I asked. ”The conquistadors?”

”Older than that,” Calder said. ”The Spanish found it three hundred years ago, and it was already very old then. It stretches for miles along the creek, an entire city carved out beneath the rocky bluffs along the creek. Maybe one of the Lost Tribes of Israel built it.”

”Or some kind of Indian civilization we don't know about yet.”

Calder looked sour.

”All Indians know how to do is kill,” he said. ”If there were Indians here before the Comanche, then they were killers, too. It's their way.”

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