Saint worked for many months to mine ghost rock and develop the new Lazarus weapons. The work was slow, painstaking, and more often than not met with frustration and failure. However he did manage to make a few weapons and seven months ago held a public demonstration of his Lazarus rifles. Dignitaries and military officers came all the way from the Confederate States of America to witness the demonstration. Saint had very little of the proper compound to spare, but the brief demonstration he put on was quite impressive. He was asked to accompany the Southern bigwigs down south to meet with the War Department and President Eric Michele himself. The invitation was very flowery, and there were many gifts and medals bestowed upon Saint. There was no actual apology from any of the CSA or even an acknowledgement of the years Saint had lived as a slave when he was a child. No mention of the generations of Saint families who had lived, toiled, suffered, and died on the plantations. The current administration of the CSA was all about the future, and making friends with learned men like Doctor Saint was part of their attempt to move a solid step out of the dark ages of slavery and into the enlightened era of the coming twentieth century. After all, as one of the dignitaries kept saying, our great-grandkids will be alive to see the New Millennia, and by then no one will ever remember anything as old-fashioned as racism and oppression.
“And Saint believed all that?”
Looks Away shrugged at Grey’s question. “Hard to say with him. I rather think he’s playing along until he finds out what they really want. He is not a deeply trusting soul, bless his heart. And although he is no one’s idea of an ‘agreeable’ or even affable soul, he is forward thinking. If letting go of the past moves science forward, then he will move with the tide.”
“So he went?” asked Grey.
“Indeed he did, and according to his last few telegrams, his demonstrations were quite a success. That’s when things started to go wrong, however. Instead of coming directly back here, Dr. Saint made several stops to gather special materials for his work. His last stop was supposed to be Salt Lake City, to collect canisters of smoke from the ghost rock factories. However that’s where I lost track of him. I don’t even know for sure that he reached Salt Lake. There’s been no word.”
“You think he was ambushed?”
“If he had any trace of ordinary manners or habits I could venture a guess, but he’s an odd duck. He’s gone off on his own several times before, often with no advance warning and little explanation once he returns.”
“Which means you don’t know whether to sit and wait or plant flowers on an empty grave.”
“Just so. I wish I’d accompanied him, if only to keep track of him. He could drive an angel to hard liquor. On the other hand, I haven’t been bored. He left me behind to continue the work in Paradise Falls and to try and locate new sources of ghost rock ore that was rich in chalcanthite.
“Some weeks ago,” Looks Away explained, “while he was out digging in the hills, the laboratory was raided. Most of the equipment was undisturbed, hidden behind very strong locks. But the thieves made off with many of Saint’s blueprints and nearly all of his canisters of compressed ghost rock gas. They also took a journal in which were recorded the locations of several of Dr. Saint’s remote testing sites. My employer had small caches of supplies scattered throughout this end of the country and did much of his research in spots where he mined for ghost rock, or where he felt he could field-test his devices without attracting attention. Some of them have pretty dramatic effects. I began systematically going from one to the other and found two sites undisturbed, two empty, and two others booby-trapped.”
“Someone’s trying to kill you?” asked Grey.
“Me or Saint. Hard to say. It’s even possible all of this was an elaborate plan to get me out of Paradise Falls.”
“Why?”
“That’s a different discussion. What concerns me is their methods. When they broke into Dr. Saint’s laboratory, they killed the two men we’d engaged as guards. Slit their throats.”
“Those men were friends of mine,” continued Looks Away gravely. “All I could do was try to catch whomever was responsible, and they led me on a merry chase I can assure you. It would make a ripping yarn filled with traps, double-crosses, and all manner of devious villainy.”
“So the explosion wasn’t a trap set by Saint?” said Grey, jerking a thumb toward the shattered rocks.
“I… don’t know for sure. My guess is that it was another trap set for me by my enemy, but it could just as easily have been something set by Doctor Saint. He’s generally a humanitarian — after a fashion — but he does not like having his research tampered with. So, yes, it could have been his booby-trap.”
“Nice. He could have blown you all the way back to London.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have expected me to come out here, would he? He does know about the theft of his journal. And it’s not like this cache was something anyone could stumble upon.”
Grey’s reply was a sour grunt. He found that he didn’t much like this Doctor Saint. And he was pretty sure calling the scientist a “humanitarian” was a bit of a stretch.
“Why was the posse after you? You get some other girl pregnant?”
“Hilarious, but no. Doctor Saint has rivals and some of them are quite vicious. Not at all above hiring a group of gunmen to end the life of one renegade Sioux. Especially one who has been hunting the men who committed the murders at the laboratory. I daresay I was making a nuisance of myself, buzzing around the edges of this and someone decided to swat me.” He slapped his palm flat on his thigh.
Grey listened with great interest, but he watched the Sioux’s face for any telltale signs of deceit or evasiveness. Nothing showed, however. That didn’t mean that the man was telling the truth, the whole truth, part of the truth, or a pack of lies. Grey had played poker and faro at too many tables not to know that some fellows could keep darn near everything off their face. Even so, he had a sense that what he was hearing was at least partly true.
Partly.
He wondered what this strange English Indian was leaving out. The Sioux returned to his narrative.
“I believe I’ve been getting close to proving who is responsible,” said Looks Away as he sipped the dregs of his second cup. “This was no ordinary theft, I’m sure of it. This was well organized and well financed. Someone important wanted that science and now they have it. I was following a lead and came here to Nevada. Someone swore they saw a blue explosion out here in the desert. Naturally I thought that my enemy’s people had raided this cache.”
“What exactly was out here?”
Looks Away spread his hands. “This was something Doctor Saint made before I came to work with him. It’s not much, just a small bunker built into a natural declivity in the sandstone. He enlarged it and built a small testing laboratory. A one-man station. It was all he needed to test the Lazarus weapons without prying eyes. Doctor Saint hid it very well, and even though I had no key, I know his methods. He always creates a hidden lever that is invisible to the naked eye. The man is as devious as he is brilliant…”