Blazin' a Trail
by Jenean McBrearty

"How long you been with Pinkerton, Mr. Lewman?" Sheriff Cal Hershier looked all seven feet of the man up and down. Cal's office was dark, but it was getting near noon and the New Mexico Territory sun was cooking every building in town.

"Long enough to appreciate decent pay and the need to hunt down varmints like Tres Manos Sangrios who elude the law. No offense." Milos Lewman took off the coat of his blue serge suit, and the hat that covered his long, bushy white hair; between that and his whiskers and fine moustache, his pale bluish face was almost hidden. There was no hiding his wide blue eyes.

Cal slid his legs off the desk and deliberately let his boots hit the floor with a thud. "None taken," he said and handed Lewman back his ID card. "Not every lawman is a dedicated as me. If this polecat's hangin' 'round these parts figurin' to do mischief, we'll get him."

"Hope so, Sheriff." Lewman handed him a rolled-up wanted poster. "This might help."

Cal flattened out the poster and scratched his head. "Son-of-a-gun. Robs trains, you say?" It was hard to believe there'd been no reports of such an odd-looking fella. His nose was three inches long and his eyes were little more than the size of peas. "This guy some sort of Chinaman?"

Lewman sat down to make eye contact. "He's from somewhere strange, I can tell you that."

"Norway? I heard tell them Norway folks what been in Canada for a while takes after 'im."

"Unh-unh." Lewman pointed towards the ceiling.

"Ohh. Mountain country. That can do it too."

"Yep, mountains of Annanara 3. I've tracked him for a millennium." Lewman said.

"Sounds like quite a spell."

"It is, Sheriff. Stayed one planet ahead of me, though. Pinkerton folks don't hold it against me. Americans are great for givin' second chances. I've tracked him through Quebec, Chicago . . . ."

"That explains why you're both pale. Desert sun'll do you good. What's under his coat? Looks like a real third hand." The poster showed a seated man in a pin-striped suit. One hand held a brown derby, one a cane, and a third held his coat closed.

"Yep. Each one of those hands is as quick with a pistola as Clay Allison," Lewman said.

"And you think Bloody Three Hands is up on Apache Mesa?"

"I'm sure of it, Sheriff."

Cal got his saddlebags and stuffed them full of hard tack and cornbread. "Fill up your canteen, Lewman." He grabbed his hat and coat. "Let's ride."

Lewman rode a Clydesdale from Indiana. Bein' tall, he needed an eighteen-hander. Cal saddled up his favorite buckskin mare, and they headed south. "It's a long ride," he told Lewman, as the Western sky turned pink and the shadows grew long. "We'll have to camp for the night and rest the horses before we chase after ol' Three Hands."

"As long as we make it within a mile of the mesa," Lewman said.

They tied their horses to a cactus and Cal started gathering kindling. "We'll need a fire," he said.

"Not necessarily," Lewman said, and took a glowing tube from his saddlebag.

"That a mining lantern?" Cal said.

"You might say that. It gives off heat as well as light – " As he spoke the tube slipped from his hand and before he could stoop to scoop it up, a fifteen-hundred-pound-horse hoof squashed it flat. The men stared at it, and then at each other.

"I don't trust contraptions or horses," Cal said.

"You know how to start a fire?" Lewman said.

"I take it you don't." While Cal gathered whatever he could find that would burn, Lewman spread their bed rolls, opened two cans of beans, and got out the spoons. "Any chance Three Hands will hit us at night?"

"No," Lewman said. "He's all but blind at night. Tiny eyes don't let in much light."

By full sunset, Cal had a healthy tumbleweed fire going. "You a real city boy, ain't ya?" he said when Lewman handed him a paper napkin.

"It shows bad. Thanks for not givin' me a hard time, Sheriff."

Cal took a swig of warm water from his canteen. "Livin' out here, under that sky, makes a man realize things are what they are. Bumps in the road compared to it. Huge ain't it? Look at all them stars."

"I do, Sheriff, every night."

Cal heard a familiar longing in his admission, the same longing he'd felt bedded down with Colonel Slough's 1st Colorado artillery unit the night before the Battle of Glorieta Pass, his heart pounding as though the battle was already underway. He might have remembered the night differently had it not been his seventeenth birthday – March 27, 1862 – when memories of his 16th made him think of dancing with Prudence Miller, she wearing a new cotton dress from St. Louis, he proudly wearing his Union blue uniform. How manly he'd felt. A year later he was telling God he was just a boy and begging to be spared. A year after that he was grieving over Prudence's death from typhoid fever. How he'd longed for home. Yet, when he got there, it'd changed so much he no longer belonged. Best be content with the here and now.

"This is a big place," Cal said. "Plenty of room for a man to breathe."

"It won't stay that way, Sheriff," Lewman said. "You can't imagine what America's gonna be like a hundred years from now."

"You're right. But I'll be dead by 1985," Cal said.

"But . . . if you could know . . . ." Lewman pointed to the moon that hovered above the mesa. "If you could go to that moon, one of those stars in the sky, would you?"

"A guy came through here about a month ago, on his way to San Francisco to get a boat to China. All excited, he was, 'bout sailin' cross the sea. Lots of people come through the desert. Red men, yellow men, folks with three hands, and tall bluish folks – interesting folks. They all tell me where they been and where they're goin', but I can't imagine anything more beautiful than a desert night sky." He fell asleep looking up into a dark blue blanket, the aroma of sage and cactus flower in his nostrils, and the sound of horses munching scrub grass.

An explosion jolted him awake and the horses bolted. For a second, he was back with Slough's cannon – he scrambled to his feet, drew his gun and saw Lewman holding another glowing contraption, signaling to three silver flying disks that darted around the sky, bombarding the mesa with red and blue light beams that threw chunks of earth a hundred feet. Before he could form his lips to say, "What the hell  . . .", the mesa was leveled and pillars of smoke covered the moon like cotton.

"Son-of-a-gun, that's some dynamite!" Cal said. The disks aligned themselves abreast, flashed white lights, and disappeared into a clear and silent sky. "Man, oh man," Cal said. "Sure hope Three Hands wasn't expectin' a jury trial."

Lewman sat down on his blanket, folding the tube over and over itself. "Had to take 'ol Bloody out where he was most vulnerable. A dark and deserted place. Safe for drone action."

"That what you call them flying cannons?" Cal holstered his gun. "Hunh."

"We'll have to walk to Bradley tomorrow unless you know how to get them horses back," Lewman said. He was stoking the embers with the can opener. Cal put another tumbleweed on them and the flames flared.

"We? Seems to me you'll be headin' out sooner than tomorrow. You're work's done here,"

"Not all done, Sheriff. I have to make sure you get back home safe. People are gonna ask you what happened to Apache Mesa. Map makers, mostly. We can tell 'em we saw one helluva storm."

"That the reason you brung me along? To report the lightning storm?"

"Yep. And the earthquake that swallowed what was left of the mesa. I had to have a reliable witness to the change in terrain. Somebody that'll make things seem normal." Lewman laid back, his head propped up on his saddle. "I'm not supposed to disrupt the past. Just do what I gotta do and blast off into the sunset."

"What about Pinkerton? Want me to tell 'em you're on your way to Norway?"

"I don't work for Pinkerton, Sheriff."

"Kinda figured that. Wanted to be sure. Those beans I et fit for humans?"

"Make you strong and give you a keen eye." Lewman had turned over intending to go to sleep, but there was something else he had to tell Cal. "It's been good workin' with you, Sheriff. You're one fine lawman. And I've been around many in my time."

He wanted to tell Cal more. About noisy, crowded Sidrath, and the woman he left behind in a high-rise apartment made of glass and metalite stone; about a sleek, savvy, beautiful woman who'd never believe his story about an Earthman named Cal, a friendly man who knew how to make fire with sticks. A temperate, sober man who was content to admire the beauty of the night sky with naked, reverent eyes. A long time ago.

The End

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