Into the Impenetrable Fortress (Preview)

Chapter One

Heat of the Sun rode his pony hard across the Colorado Plateau, tall grass blades turning to reveal their shimmering backsides with the spring breezes. His blood flowed fast in his veins, heart pumping, legs squeezing the saddle he’d taken as a prize from a recent kill, along with the man’s scalp.

The whites, he thought, just the word sending a tremor of anger pulsing through his body, mind, and soul. They’re killing us, one by one, day by day. The Ghost of the Mountains is right; they bring an end to the Comanche, to all the Great Nations. Everyone speaks of his great power, of his war against his own people on our behalf, and who can doubt it? The great mother shakes with his advances against them, sudden and terrific and terrible. What other man has ever wielded such power? Less a man and more a living spirit is the Ghost of the Mountains; our protector, our guide.

Heat of the Sun kicked his pony’s haunches, standing up in the stirrups to lighten the beast’s burden. Pines and conifers blurred past, his fellow warriors keeping pace. The sky was pale blue above, clouds drifting silently to preside over the bison and the cougar and the bear, over all the creatures of the land and even the birds of the sky. None could rise above those weightless wonders, islands of the sun.

Will they overtake them as well, Heat of the Sun wondered, will they spew their bile into the very skies to darken them, turn those clouds to mud puddles, ugly and grim? What mad profit would they derive from that, what manner of trade will benefit them in sacrificing all?

They will gain nothing.

The four Comanche warriors flew over the tall grass, hooves hardly seeming to touch the ground.

But the Ghost of the Mountains will save us, Heat of the Sun reassured himself, for that is what it will take to drive the whites off our land and away from our people, our women. Truly they are all akin to the Ghost of the Mountains’ own forces, the Immortals; do any of these whites truly live and draw breath as an average man? Are they all spirits of the dark hunting grounds, doomed forever to toil in hungry despair?

Well, all that will be for the ones beyond to decide. We can only protect ourselves, our own people and lives and traditions. And to do that, every white must die; every last one. It is not for us to destroy them all, of course, but all that we see. For the love of my dearest Fawn’s Face, for the pride of my son, Strong Arms, I will not falter. I cannot falter.

Every white must die. For us to live, for us to share the land which the spirits have put into our care; every white must die.

A black dot rose up over a low foothill to the west, and Heat of the Sun’s body told him just what it was. He’d seen such things before, big even from a distance. They were becoming rarer, as the whites rode their steaming metal monsters across the plains, those great snakes that swallow them up and spew them out. But these clumsy things still occasionally popped up on the plateau, and for a man like Heat of the Sun, it was like a gift from his ancestors.

It could hardly be called a hunt at all, or a kill; not anymore than killing a snake in its hole could be called a worthy contest. But it would still be honorable, and it would still be a kill; probably three or four.

And coaches of this sort often contained white women, who seemed to prefer not to ride on horseback, especially on lost journeys.

The white woman, Heat of the Sun couldn’t help reflect, recalling their smells, their white skin, legs and breasts and haunches that could blind a man to the women of his own kind. The white women had faces of an entirely different sort, painted and pouting and soft, features rounder and suppler. Beyond the women of the Chinese, or the blacks, or the Mexicans to the south; the white woman had soft hair, yellow as wheat, red as the setting sun, eyes sparkling blue like the sky or the sea.

And their fear, Heat of the Sun thought, his body revitalized. Their fear makes them irresistible, so sad and helpless, crying, begging, often fighting or kicking, but never able to do much damage.

Heat of the Sun kicked his pony, and it seemed to share his thoughts, and his hunger for the pounce. He Laughs at Death rode close behind him, the other two warriors on each side. Heat of the Sun couldn’t help smiling.

This was a good day to die, all the more because he knew the death would not be his own.

But as they got closer, Winchester rifles in their hands, bows and quivers at the ready, Heat of the Sun had to caution himself.

Remember Wind from the North, he told himself, gunned down by a white in a carriage much like this one. They do not travel unprepared, and their eagerness for the kill is matched only by their insatiable appetite for blood; Indian, their black slaves, even the blood of one another.

But not mine, not on this day.

They rode up on the stagecoach, which rolled toward them without slowing down. There were two men manning the horses, one holding the reins and the other a large rifle. By the time Heat of the Sun could make it out, the white gunman was already shooting.

Bang! Bang!

Heat of the Sun was not struck, but he could not take the time to inspect his fellow warriors. The attack had been launched, a defense engaged. The battle was on.

Bang! Bang, bang!

The shots crackled around him, Heat of the Sun’s pony huffing as they bore down upon their prey.

Heat of the Sun rode fast and took aim, squeezing the rifle trigger and sending the coach’s rifleman snapping back and falling off the coach. The driver kept the horses galloping forward, Heat of the Sun leading his warriors in a wide loop past and around to come up on them from the other side, and from behind.

Heat of the Sun hesitated to pepper the coach with gunfire. Valuable white women could be accidentally killed, and Heat of the Sun was peaked with interest to find out what bounty he and his fellow warriors had captured.

Gunfire burst out of the stagecoach, pistols sticking out of the glassless windows.

Bang, bang, bang!

He Laughs at Death was hit, dropping his rifle. Heat of the Sun couldn’t be sure if his friend yet lived, but there was no time. All warriors knew that each would have to rise and fall on his own merit. Dead or not, He Laughs at Death wasn’t laughing anymore.

Heat of the Sun led his remaining two warriors past the coach and in front to loop around and attack again.

Bang, bang! Bang!

One of the men in the coach was hit, Heat of the Sun noting the pistols falling from the man’s hands as they lay against the window, motionless.

But there was at least one other man in that coach, and Heat of the Sun was shocked to see the stagecoach door swing open, while the coach continued to speed forward. A white man looked like he was leaping out of the carriage, and Heat of the Sun’s attention was fixed on him to make quick work of him once he hit the ground.

But he never did.

Instead, the white man flipped upward, legs swinging up and onto the top of the carriage. The white man had been clinging to the upper lip of the stagecoach door space. Once face down on the top of the stagecoach, this perplexing white fellow sprang to his feet. He stood on top of the stagecoach as it raced on, his long legs splayed to keep him in good balance as he drew his pistols and started firing.

Bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!

He stood on the top of the coach, a pistol in each hand. He was tall and better built than many Comanche, never mind any white man that Heat of the Sun had ever seen. His blond hair was shorter than any Comanche’s black locks, and his eyes were hidden behind glass discs, the sun’s glare bouncing off them to blind Heat of the Sun at just the wrong time.

Bang!

The bullet tore into Heat of the Sun’s chest. Pain exploded in his chest, his arms and legs suddenly numb. His pony kept running, and Heat of the Sun felt the second shot shattering his left shoulder blade as he rode around the stagecoach. His eyesight became blurry, but Heat of the Sun tried to aim his Winchester and repay the man for his mortal gifts.

But strength had fled from him, and Heat of the Sun could only watch as the rifle sank away, out of his grip and into the grass behind him as the pony rode on. Heat of the Sun strained to take a breath, but he couldn’t seem to. Slumping forward, Heat of the Sun could only hope he would manage to hold his mount as he rode to the great hunting ground of his ancestors, sent there by the most remarkable white man he had ever seen, and, of course, the last.

*

Cord McAllister let the last Comanche ride away. He’d turned tail and abandoned his fellows, and that disgrace would haunt him, among his fellows and in his private moments. Cord knew how terrible such moments could be.

The coachman Bill Garrison pulled the horses to a halt, and he looked back and up at Cord on the stagecoach roof behind him. He looked shocked, but that was an expression Cord had long since become used to. This driver hadn’t been the first man to judge Cord by his looks, his profession, his odd inventions, underestimating his other talents.

That was the way he wanted it.

Cord holstered his Colt pistols and jumped off the coach. He turned to reach into the coach and pull out Ernest Gaines’ body. Ernest looked up at Cord, above and behind his head. He cracked a little smile, blood draining from his face.

“You get ’em?”

“We did,” Cord said, “most of ’em, anyway.” Ernest nodded and coughed, blood lurching out of from his lips to drop back down onto his chin.

“Cord, listen, you … you gotta bury me, buddy, please … don’t …” Ernest paused to cough, before forcing out, “Don’t leave me out here. The savages’ll take my … take my scalp, the cougars …”

“Take it easy, Ern.”

“Promise me, Cord!” Ernest winced again, pain seeming to be wracking his body.

“Sure thing, Ern,” Cord said, glancing around. “Right here okay?”

Ernest chuckled. “Good a place as any.” He cramped again in obvious agony, looking up at Cord with a furrowed brow, sheeted in sweat. “Good luck …” More coughing interrupted him before Ernest managed to say, “… Finding him, Cord. I … I know you’ll … you …”

Ernest’s lips went still, his eyes staring up lifeless before Cord gently closed them. The years of study came back to Cord in a tidal wave of emotional recollections, the laughter and the frustration, the failed experiments and tiny victories that kept them going. Ernest had been the one to help bury poor Sharon after she succumbed to consumption. Ernest had been the one to deliver the telegram about Cord’s father’s disappearance, and had sworn loyalty and allegiance until the great man was found, or the mystery of his fate resolved beyond a doubt. Ernest had been a good friend, a courageous man, a brilliant scientist, a trusted friend.

Cord sat there by the stagecoach, his friend’s head in his lap.

I’m so sorry, Ernest, he thought. You wouldn’t have come out here but for me, for my mission, my father … If we’d stayed in New York, or even London, you’d be drawing breath this moment, rakish at the saloon or diligent in the workshop. No doubt your little quips and observations would be coming, fast and free in either case.

But not so now, and never again. And that’s my fault, Ernest. I know you would disagree, but of course you cannot. “Don’t be a fool,” you’d say. “We both knew the risks; we both took on the task anyway. No regrets!”

I have regrets, my friend. I should have refused your offer and come ahead alone as I’d planned. I shouldn’t have let you convince me to bring you along.

But I won’t forget your sacrifice, and I’ll never forget your friendship. I’ll get to the bottom of what happened to my father, I promise you. And if I can, I’ll tell him how brave you were, how instrumental you were to his rescue. If not, perhaps you can tell him that I was brave, that I never stopped trying to find him and rescue him.

Chapter Two

After burying Ernest and the stagecoach’s rifleman, and setting the three dead Comanche on a big boulder, facing west as was their custom, Cord and his driver headed north toward Boulder. The South Platte River snaked alongside to the west, mountain love and firs and the jagged, rugged Rocky Mountains beyond. Even in the spring, the wind blew colder as they got closer to that amazing mountain range.

A bobcat shrieked from the top of a fallen white fir trunk, black-tipped tail flicking behind it. Head low, voice gravelly, it sounded like the creature might have intended it to be a warning, but not of a personal conflict. That pint-sized cougar wasn’t about to pounce, but it foretold dangerous things ahead, perils that even the mountains themselves could not offer. Cord didn’t need his scientific education, years of enlightenment studies and physical training, to know that there was no evil in nature, no menace.

Those were the province of mankind. Nature was pure, nature was perfect and in balance with itself. Cord glanced at the mountains rising up to the west as the little town of Boulder stood in the northern distance. The strength of those mountains, their purity, their majesty, handily eclipsed the cluster of buildings and streets that slowly got bigger as they approached. Those mountains had stood for millions of years before the little town pushed up out of the plateau just a few dozen years before. And they could come down and crush the town to dust in seconds if that was a geographical whim or happenstance. Cord couldn’t help marvel at all that unharnessed power, reducing mankind to a mere speck, all of his greatest efforts coming to so very little against the rugged expanse of the nation.

But Cord also knew that time was long coming to an end. Railroads were crisscrossing the nation, telegraph cables becoming even more common. People on coasts both east and west could communicate in mere moments and could deliver themselves in a fraction of the time of the stagecoach.

Cord couldn’t help looking at that little town and imagining the railroad tracks and telegraph lines lurching out like technological tentacles to strangle the natural beauty around it. Even those mighty mountains, so capable of man’s utter destruction in the region, were helpless to the human virus infecting it. Like a cancer, it was spreading from one place to another and would soon overtake the body of the nation.

And what was worse, Cord knew himself to be among the leading offenders of the technological revolution that was changing the face of the nation. His father called it progress, and Ernest had felt the same, Sharon as well.

So did I, Cord had to remind himself. I’ve allowed it to propel me throughout my life, the notion that I was pioneering a brave new world. But will this new world be so brave? Are we better off with the world we already have? Wouldn’t Ernest still be alive in that older world, my father still by my side? What progress have we attained but to the grave?

A ruffed grouse cried as it circled overhead, casting a shadow over Cord and the driver, Cord himself holding the shotgun.

The geography peaked Cord’s interest, stopping to unpack some equipment and do a few tests. The coach driver glared at him and shook his head, but Cord was used to such reactions. It must seem like I’m doing some kind of black magic, he often thought. And who knows? Maybe I am.

They rode past a few farms and ranches on the way into town, and the grim faces of the men and women working them told Cord that hard times had come to the area, despite the boon the entire country was enjoying in the years since the war.

Their crops seemed meager, their flocks small and unhealthy, like their bodies. It struck Cord as odd, as the surroundings were rich in food and drink of all sorts, prey animals and predators and fruits, the soil rich and ripe for planting.

Another spectacle caught Cord’s attention, and he had the rider slow the stagecoach. A blackened pit sat dug into the flat, grassy plateau. It was no natural formation, a ridge ringing the symmetrical hole, ten feet deep and twenty feet wide.

Bomb, Cord thought, from the Indian Wars going on around here now? Or … something worse?

Cord made note of the misery and danger written across the landscape and the faces of those who inhabited it. As they rode into town, buildings becoming bigger and more plentiful, winding trails becoming straight, format streets lined with wooden sidewalks and whale oil lamps.

Boulder opened up around them, the wooden buildings lining the thoroughfares of various widths and lengths. The storefronts seemed to blur into one another: Dress shops for men and women, cobblers and sundries, saloons and restaurants and hotels. Miners peppered the crowd, identifiable by their dirty faces and soiled clothing, postures bent with toil and disappointment. Men and women of some means walked among them, a parade of top hats and waistcoats and hoop skirts and parasols. There was a fat man in a black coat and white collar, walking with a young woman in a nun’s habit, but Cord was instantly uncertain about them, suspicious that they weren’t just another pair of frontier swindlers.

God, Cord thought, isn’t that the greatest scam of all?

He spotted a sign reading Jail and knew he’d find the local sheriff, just the man he was looking for.

*

Elaine Dunne was glancing out the windows of her father’s office, dominated by an empty holding cell in the rear half of the building. She was happy enough to have brought the sheriff a nice lunch, and the roasted chicken and peppered potatoes were among his favorites, even if they’d gone a bit cold on the ride in from the house.

“It’s not that I’m ungrateful,” Boulder Sheriff Martin Dunne said, wiping his plate with the corner of a sourdough roll. “But it’s your Saturday, one of only two days off from the schoolhouse. You oughtn’t be here looking after your old codger of a father.”

Elaine chuckled. His graying red hair once matched her own; his beard becoming bushy and less well manicured than in younger years. But she could still see the man he’d been, strong and brave and dedicated to the laws and principles for which his badge stood. He was a good man, an honest public servant. It was easy for Elaine to convince herself he deserved a home-cooked meal on his Saturdays.

But she also knew there was more to it than that. And even if Elaine didn’t want to think about it, she knew her father would bring it up eventually.

“You should be out there,” he went on, “finding yourself a proper husband.”

“Father!”

“I’m sorry, Elaine, but you’re almost twenty-five years old. Now, I know that you’ve been … a very dedicated daughter, I can’t imagine a more faithful or dutiful girl, especially since your mother died. But you don’t have to worry about me, or be fearful that you’re abandoning me.”

“No, Father, of course not —”

“And don’t treat me like a fool either. I know how many men you turn away, just to be my nursemaid. But I’m a lawman, Elaine, I take care of others … they don’t take care of me.”

“Well now you’re just being proud, Father, and stubborn.”

“Two traits you seem to have inherited in spades!”

Elaine rolled her eyes and sighed, reaching over to set her hand on her father’s. “You know how it is, being the sheriff’s daughter. Half the young men in town are scoundrels, and they know I won’t abide that. Many of the others are scoundrels who imagine I might abide it, or will hide the fact until they’ve got you under their power. Well, I won’t be used as a tool against my own father.”

“Not all men are scoundrels, Elaine.”

Elaine sighed. “That’s true enough, Father; take yourself for instance.”

“Or take a husband! A man like Bailey Stone, for example —”

“Bailey —? That greedy blowhard? You can’t be serious, Father.”

“I don’t mean Bailey Stone per se, but … a man like him. He owns a lot of land, he could provide.”

“He could provide a lot of headaches,” Elaine said, turning to glance out the window. A stagecoach rolled up in front of the jail, two men at the helm. The one with the shotgun was particularly striking. His short, blond hair had been cut and styled, not left to grow long and wild. His eyeglasses gave him a scholarly look, an odd contrast to his obviously athletic physique. “All Bailey cares about is money.”

“The right woman could bring out a new man in him.”

“I’m not that woman. A man should come fully formed, not needing to be finished by his woman. I’d want a husband to love, not a child to raise.”

The sheriff shook his head and huffed out a wry chuckle. “Shows how little you know of men.”

That wasn’t strictly true, of course. Elaine’s dreams were haunted by memories of the night the Morrison brothers dragged her into the corn fields the night of Washington’s Birthday festivities, stinking of wine and body odor and rotting teeth, giggling and rasping to each other.

Elaine shook her head to try to wipe the memory away, at least for the time being. Nothing terrible happened, she was glad to remind herself, Father found us and had at them with all his fatherly fury. Only his badge kept him from killing them on the spot, but he’d done the right thing and delivered them for trial. His position as sheriff, beloved by those he served, and the brothers’ lack of money or power, proved a lethal combination.

Elaine felt that she knew all she needed to know about men, and was more than content living with her father, taking care of him, and of course teaching the children on schooldays.

Elaine’s attention was distracted by the man in the spectacles, handing the driver the shotgun and climbing down off the stagecoach and striding toward the sheriff’s office front door. His shoulders were broad and pushed back, posture straight, his arms long and muscled; a narrow waist led her eyes do his long, powerful legs, moving him with certainty toward the front door and pulling it open, the bell on the door jingling and sending a chill up Elaine’s spine.

Chapter Three

Cord was struck by the redheaded beauty standing up from the little table with the sheriff, identifiable by his badge. Cord took him as too old to be her husband, though that didn’t make it out of the question by any means.

The sheriff wiped his hands on a napkin and tossed it back among the food scraps and soiled plates. “Sheriff Martin Dunne,” he said, shaking Cord’s hand and leaving a thin film of grease on his palm. “My daughter, Elaine.”

Cord took off his hat and gave her a little nod before introducing himself. “Cord McAllister,” he said. Cord took note of the turn in the sheriff’s expression. And the young woman Elaine seemed to notice Cord’s reaction.

“McAllister, you say?”

“That’s right,” Cord said. “I’m here looking for my father, actually; Keller McAllister.”

“Keller McAllister,” the sheriff repeated.

Cord said, “Yes, he … he came here last year, I believe. I’ve tried to wire —”

“And I got your wires,” Sheriff Dunne said. “I was hoping you’d come around personally so I could arrest you myself.”

“Arrest me? For what?”

“Being an accomplice,” the sheriff said, “that’s what.”

“An accomplice to what?”

“Murder,” Sheriff Dunne said, his voice low, brows pushed down over his cloudy green eyes. “Among other charges.”

Cord looked at the young woman, Elaine, and she turned, eyes finding the floor. He returned his attention to the sheriff. “I really haven’t any idea what you’re talking about. Is my father here or not? And no more riddles.”

“I wouldn’t get too comfortable giving orders, Mr. McAllister, unless you’re talkin’ about yer last meal.”

“Father,” Elaine said, introducing herself into the conversation as she turned to Cord. “Your father was here, and he went to work for a certain man who lives outside of town. Together, they’ve threatened Boulder, and he may yet destroy all of Colorado.”

Cord tried to reason it all out, but there was not nearly enough information and too many unanswered questions. “He? Who?”

“European fella,” Sheriff Dunne said. “Name of St. Laurent, Augustine St. Laurent. He’s created a kind of … a citadel out in the Front Range.”

“A … a citadel?”

“He’s been out there for three years,” Elaine said, “bringing in Chinese laborers, some strange army of Muslims.”

“How do you know all this?”

“St. Laurent had some celestials planting land mines out in the range around this fort of his; he escaped and made it back here.”

“You’ve got an eye witness to all this?”

“We do,” Sheriff Dunne said. “And he says he’s seen a man matching your father’s description, so we know he’s in there. Or at least that he was at the time; this was just after he arrived, about a year and a half ago.”

“What makes you think my father would work for such a man?”

“He arrived here specifically for a meeting,” Elaine said, “there was no secret about it.”

“And of course, that’s when St. Laurent started making real progress, once his partner showed up.”

The questions just kept outmatching the answers. “Progress … with what?”

“Bombs,” the sheriff said. “They seem to come out of nowhere, with no warning.”

“But it can only be from him,” Elaine added, “there isn’t anybody else who would do such a thing.”

“And why would he? What has this Frenchman got against you folks here in Boulder?”

Elaine shook her head as her father paced the office. “We don’t know. He showed up here as if from out of nowhere. We never see him. He sent an underling for your father.” She looked around and leaned forward to add, “Quite a large Nubian, as I understand.”

Things began to fall into place. “Well, if my father is working with this man, it must be under duress. My father’s a pacifist. We stayed out of the war even though we were approached by both sides. We don’t travel in wholesale death like that.”

“Perhaps he’s being held captive,” Elaine said, “and he’s being forced to help. I have to admit, the idea never occurred to me … to my shame.” Her face once more turned downward, though Cord had too much to think about to be worried about her humility.

Cord shook his head, able to instantly reject the notion. “Of course, there are times a man has to do whatever he can to stay alive, but my father would rather be killed than turn his skills to such things.”

The sheriff asked, “Then how do you explain it?”

“I can’t,” Cord said with a shrug. “But I’m going to find out.”

Elaine tilted her head, long red curls pouring down past her shoulder. “How?”

“Take me to this witness, the Chinaman.”

*

Elaine Dunne didn’t often meddle with her father’s business. He insisted on keeping her a safe distance from the dangerous men he often encountered and had trained her to fight and shoot as an extra measure of self-defense. A sheriff’s daughter was vulnerable the way the daughters of other women in town just weren’t. Kidnapped, she could be used against him for any number of corrupt purposes; likewise, married to the wrong man.

But in this case she went with her father and this new stranger to the laundry where Chin Ho had become one of Boulder’s promising businessmen. But his friendly demeanor got cold fast, fear visibly overtaking him, when the subject of his escape from St. Lauren’s bondage came up.

He began looking around, posture curling forward as if trying to duck out of sight. He shook his head and spat out a stream of Chinese sounds that Elaine could only guess were profanities. But her father’s authority and Cord McAllister’s forceful questions slowly began to draw information from the short, slim Chinese man, the English language clumsy and barely recognizable on his tongue.

“Big, so big,” Chin Ho said, slowly shaking his head, gesturing with his hands to describe something very large; Augustine St. Lauren’s Rocky Mountain citadel. “So big.”

“But my father was in there,” Cord said, gesturing to make himself clear. “Blond sideburns, yes?”

Chin Ho nodded, and Cord ran his fingers through his own blond hair. “All right, well, how do we get in?” Chin Ho just looked at Cord as if he was from another planet. Cord used his fingers to mime a human walking motion. “How do we get in?”

“Oh, no,” Chin said, shaking his head with much greater passion. “No get in. Boom boom in ground.” Chin did the human walking motion, then with his other hand opened up his fist under the figure, his mouth spitting out the sound of an explosion.

“Mines,” Sheriff Dunne said. “Chin Ho says the range is littered with them, on all sides. You’d need a map to make your way around them.”

“There’ll be guards too,” Elaine said. “At least on the lookout, probably at various points outside the citadel too.”

Cord said, “Makes sense.” Elaine was impressed that he was giving her ideas so much credence. Most men in her experience would have excused her from the proceedings entirely. “Suppose we can get around the mines, there must be a way in.”

Chin Ho said, “Road up the side of mountain, very high up, bang bang and fall!”

Cord nodded and paced around, Elaine’s eyes on him. She had long been able to imagine the mountaintop fortress, isolated and impregnable. And the horrors that went on within its confines, she could only imagine. The damage that resulted was crisp in her memory and was still written in the charred craters left by St. Lauren’s bombs.

“There’s something else,” Elaine said, attracting the three men’s attention. “The Comanche, local to the area.”

“Yeah,” Cord said, “I’ve come across one or two of your locals.”

“St. Laurent has them in a real state,” Sheriff Dunne said. “Not that they were all that friendly to begin with.”

“But someone we knew escaped a raid,” Elaine explained, “said they were talking about the Ghost of the Mountain telling them to offer protection in his war against the whites.”

“Ghost,” Cord repeated. “You mean … spirit?”

“Ghost,” Elaine repeated. “If you ever see this man St. Laurent, you’ll know why.”

“White hair, he’s got,” Sheriff Dunne said, “but he’s not an older man, least not that much older.”

“And white skin,” Elaine said, “much more than any average white person.”

“With blue eyes,” Cord said, “almost gray?” Both the sheriff and his daughter nodded. “Albino,” Cord deduced.

“No,” Sheriff Dunne said, “I think I heard he was from Norway.”

“It’s a lack of … never mind. If this albino Norwegian or whatever he is has my father in that mountain, I’m getting him out, and that’s all there is to it.”

Sheriff Dunne asked, “Aren’t you listening? You’ll never get past the injuns, and if you do there are mines, guards, only one way in and out. It’s impossible; it’s a suicide mission.”

But Cord said, “Not for me, it isn’t.”

Chapter Four

Cord’s mind was already putting together the next sequence of events. It was an encumbrance to have to explain it all, but he reminded himself that his turn of mind was unique and tuned to certain facts most people had never come upon and could hardly understand.

Cord said, “We’ll need silk, and lots of it.” He asked Chin Ho, “Silk? You get silk, yes?”

Sheriff Dunne said, “There’s a dressmaker or two in town can help with that.”

“Good,” Cord said. “We’re looking for white and light blue, those colors only. We’ll use them as an overlay if we have to.”

Elaine asked, “Why those colors only?”

“Camouflage,” Cord answered.

Sheriff Dunne said, “You’re not making much sense, young man.”

“Actually, I’m making perfect sense. What I suggest is that we construct a hot air balloon, camouflaged against the sky so it can’t be seen, then we drift over these angry Comanche, these landmines and the other defenses, and drop right down onto the citadel itself.”

“Drop down?” the sheriff repeated. “A hot air balloon.”

“I’ve heard of such things, Father.”

“It sounds like fantasy to me, flying around in a balloon!”

“We’ll be in a basket, actually,” Cord said. “A heat source will keep the balloon up, and I can direct it by use of a rudder system. Then we’ll drop some chloro bombs, knock out their defenses, then cut the snake off at the head and find my father, figure out just what’s been going on in there.”

Sheriff Dunne and his lovely daughter exchanged a worried glance, Elaine brushing away a lock of her long, red hair.

Elaine asked Cord, “Then what?”

“We make sure there’s nothing left of the place and then fly out, same way we came in.”

“What about the guards?” Sheriff Dunne asked. “They’ll shoot the balloon down as it approaches.”

Cord shook his head. “I can fly this thing up to a thousand feet up. They won’t see us until we’re right on top of them, and even then it’ll be too late.”

Elaine asked, “What are these bombs you’re talking about? How do you know you won’t accidentally kill your father in all this destruction?”

“There won’t be any destruction there at all,” Cord said. “We’ll make rudimentary bombs filled with chloroform, it’s an anesthetic, used all the time during the war. You’ve got a doctor in town?” Elaine and her sheriff father nodded. “He’ll have some. How much is hard to say. We’ll drop ’em in glass vials, I’d say, keep the acid from eating through the casing.”

Elaine looked at her father and at Chin Ho, whose face was bent into a mask of apprehension and doubt; brows arched, eyes wide.

“Hot air,” Sheriff Dunne said, scratching his chin through his graying red beard and shaking his head. “And how do you keep the air heated?”

“Therein lies the rub. I’ve got a variety of tools and implements in the coach, enough to build a burner … but no fuel.”

Sheriff Dunne asked, “Then why even go on about it? Look, young fella, I’m sure you’ve no part in your father’s doings. You’ve no reason to —”

“Crude oil,” Cord said. “It’s all over the place, just under the surface, some of it.”

“Oil?” Elaine said, “Sir, we mine for minerals here, gold and silver and even copper. But … oil?”

Cord shook his head. “You’ve got traces of reservoir rock all over the plateau. I checked the PH of the soil coming in, and my magnetometer was the scale.”

Elaine repeated, “Magno-what?”

“Magnetometer,” Cord said, “measures the magnetic flux of the Earth. I’ll explain it all in time. First thing is to put a work crew together, get out there and start digging. If I’m right, there could be pockets not too far beneath the surface.”

Sheriff Dunne asked Cord, “Where’d you wanna do this digging? South of here?”

“That’s right,” Cord said. “Why?”

“It’s government controlled,” Sheriff Dunne said. “When they declared Colorado a territory in sixty-one, that land was set aside for … certain interests who wanted the minerals.”

Cord gave it some thought. “The minerals would have been in the mountains, not on the plateau.”

“They got a good chunk of the ranges too.” Sheriff Dunne nodded.

“They don’t seem to have done much mining, in any case.”

The sheriff nodded. “War Between the States pushed all that aside. Since then, the land’s been under the purview of the town mayor. He claims the new state government’s got it all locked up, but we tend to think he’s taking it for his own somehow. You know how politicians are, always slicing up a bigger piece of the pie for themselves.”

Cord did indeed know this about politicians, and a lot more he didn’t care to get into.

“You think this mayor might be in league with your Swedish warlord up on the mountain?”

Sheriff Dunne seemed to give it some thought. “Could be, I suppose. Never thought about it.”

“Well, Sheriff,” Cord said, “I suggest you start thinking a little more.”

Elaine was quick to say, “I beg your pardon! That’s my father you’re talking to, the sheriff of Boulder.”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Cord turned back to Sheriff Dunne and offered a conciliatory nod. “My apologies.”

“Not at all,” Sheriff Dunne said, “I feel quite foolish, truth be told.”

Cord said, “Let’s just put all that aside for now; go have a little chat with this mayor of yours.”

*

Elaine would not let her father dismiss her from the meeting with Mayor Bailey Stone. She claimed it wouldn’t be safe for her to be alone at the house with such new and treacherous goings on, and it was easy enough to manipulate her father into insisting that she come along. But she had other reasons to want to be included, and they were dominant in her mind as they took Cord’s stagecoach to the mayor’s house on the outskirts of Boulder.

Elaine knew that something tremendous was happening around her. The attacks from above had cloaked the town in a shared, huddled terror. Nobody knew when the next explosion would rip through a church, a shop, a hotel, killing dozens of people or even more. But there was a shift in things, and the man Cord McAllister would be the one to bring it. It was a shift Elaine felt she had to be a part of, a turn of events so great they required all able hands to help guide toward safe passage and away from outright and total disaster.

And Elaine knew her own hands were in many ways more capable than most. Her father’s training and her own God-given talents put lethal power into the pistols she held and aimed; the speed and flexibility of her arms and legs gave her an advantage in hand-to-hand combat. After that night in the sugar beat fields, it became quite necessary. Now, with the fate of Boulder and perhaps all of Colorado at stake, those same skills could prove decisive.

And I won’t be shunted again, Elaine thought. I’m not just some single woman looking for a husband, waiting around to be married and swept off somewhere. I’m a person, same as anyone else. I have thoughts and notions of my own, skills and abilities they’ll need to survive. I’m just as vital as any of them, perhaps even more so. Someday women will be taken for equals on their face, but that day’s a long way off, and I’ll never live long enough to see it. But for me, for right now, I’m Elaine Dunne, and I’m going to prove to these people once and for all just what that means!

And of all the men she wanted to prove herself to, one in particular was unavoidable.

Who is this man, Elaine wondered, this Cord McAllister? He’s knowledgeable, intelligent, well educated. But he’s no dandy. that’s for sure. Can he be as capable as he seems? Or … could he yet be working with his father and his father working for St. Laurent? If the man were as pure as his son here proclaims, surely he wouldn’t still be offering up his secrets. Could all this be a way to draw us into a trap of some kind, the better to overtake the town?

But … why? Why is St. Laurent terrorizing us anyway? And what about Cord’s suspicions of Mayor Stone? Could they be well founded, or just a ruse?

But Elaine knew herself to be suspicious of men, and not without reason. Am I just trying to protect myself again, this time from a worthy man the like of which I’m not going to see again?

As they rode up to the big mansion on a hill overlooking Boulder, Elaine pushed the thoughts out of her mind.

No time for romance now, she silently scolded herself. Have to deal with the mayor and find some way to end St. Laurent’s reign of terror over us. If this man means to betray us, I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready for anything.

But a cold tremble racing up her spine told Elaine she wasn’t convinced—that she was charging headlong into a misadventure that was sure to take her life and probably her father’s as well.

---

“Into the Impenetrable Fortress” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

There is a reason Cord McAllister, a budding aeronautical genius decided to return to Boulder, Colorado. His father, also a scientist, is missing and he needs to find him. However, Boulder has been under siege by a local warlord, who has created an impregnable mountain-top citadel. How will he use his ingenuity to find a way to infiltrate the mountain fortress and rescue his father along the way?

Cord must join forces with the local sheriff and his headstrong yet enticing daughter to stop the warlord and destroy the deadly technology he has stolen, presumably from Cord’s own father. If their mission fails, there is a weapon of war which could bring destruction to more than just Boulder, Colorado. The future of the entire nation, even the human race, is at stake. Will they successfully face all obstacles that separate them from the ultimate goal, bringing back peace?

Angry Comanche and embittered miners are just a few of the dangers that lie ahead in their journey. Hot air balloons, knock-out bombs, the cutting edge of the day’s technology is used to mount a rescue for the ages, a harrowing and dramatic adventure that explodes across the page. Will the rescue team save the entire nation from obliteration at the hands of a madman? A must read for fans of adventurous historical fiction with a touch of romance!

“Into the Impenetrable Fortress” is a historical western adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

Get your copy from Amazon!