The next morning, around five thirty, West, Gordon, Orrin and John, along with Bill Bowdeen and Wyatt Sumner climbed aboard a freight car filled with wood, pulled by a Mallet engine that also carried the weight of two tank cars of water. With the Mallet under the hand of a local engineer they headed back up the mountain.
By midmorning they had easily reached the abandoned engine, hopper and equine car. While Orrin and John hastily began a thorough inspection of the damage that time, severe temperature changes, and the derailing had done, Arte and Jim stood either side of the tracks searching the top of the ravine, eyeing the ground for tracks and waiting. Bowdeen watched the secret servicemen, getting the distinct impression that they were on guard. But while there were wolves, bears, and other predators in the mountains, none were likely to be out and about in the snow, let alone willing to attack so many men in broad daylight.
The Sheriff was willing to chalk it up to a strange sort of paranoia and soon turned his attention toward the work at hand. Once the boiler was declared sound, a line was run from the tank cars to the engine and a hand crank put into use to transfer the water. As the crank required two men at all times, they set up shifts. Those men that weren't operating the pump were moving the wood to the hopper car using two small sleds.
They paused in their work for a cold meal well after noon had come and gone, working against the short period of daylight in the mountains. Even before the boiler was full Orrin was building a raging fire in the firebox, helped along with several logs soaked in lard.
By full dark the back-breaking work had ended and West, Gordon, Bowdeen and Sumner were aboard the equine car of The Wanderer, basking in the warmth provided by the steam pipes and looking over the damage that the prisoners had done to the cells.
"A little?" Jim asked, looking at Bowdeen then back to the twisted remains of a cell door, likely the handiwork of the strong man in the group. "You call this "a little damage"?"
"At least they didn't use the dynamite, Jim." Arte said quietly, trying to lessen the blow.
"No because the dynamite might have blown up the locks and hinges, instead of just warping them into uselessness."
Five days, or five weeks, ago, depending on who you asked, Jim had been rushing to get the cells finished and get back to Halloway, intending for the work he had done to last at least six months, if not a year. West gazed at what amounted to nothing more than a gigantic waste of time, then walked away, disgusted. Arte followed his partner, the two leaning against the side of one of the horse stalls that occupied the center of the car.
"They can be fixed..." Arte said. "Once we get the car back to Saguache, we can-"
"I'm not worried about the cells, Arte." Jim responded quietly, then glanced briefly over his shoulder and said, "Those bars couldn't have been forced open like that by any human, even Larry the Large."
Artemus looked between Jim's face and the twisted mess of metal, "You think our friend the beast did this?"
Jim took a breath. "Maybe...or her offspring."
"In league with them?" Arte asked, his voice jumping up an octave.
"She was very specific about why she grabbed us, and who she thought had 'taken' her child."
"You're talking as if this is some teenager with a bad boy complex getting his jollies before succumbing to a life of chaste adulthood. We aren't talking about a gang of cowboys on a rampage, we're talking about a creature from who knows where, that looks like who knows what, and who knows why."
"Arte..."
"Further, we have no tracks to follow. We have no idea where these men would have gone, why they would have taken this creature with them."
"Arte."
"Or how.."
"Arte!"
At that moment the other two men in the car were staring silently at West and Gordon, their conversation dying in favor of the curious nonsense that the older partner was spouting. When Arte finally fell silent and looked to the younger man he followed the pointed finger to the pile of fur and leathery skin dumped in a corner of the stall they'd been leaning against.
"It's the suit..." Arte said, going around the wall and entering the rectangular space, picking up the heavy article. Yet even as he held it he realized it wasn't the suit the criminals had used to act out their deception in the mountains surrounding the mining town.
This was bigger, heavier and...fresh.
"The markings, the thickness of the fur, it's all the same James. Exactly the same just...bigger."
"They didn't kill it and skin it, did they?" Jim asked.
"Kill and skin?" Bowdeen finally butted in, moving to where he could see what Gordon held in his hand, and registering distaste.
"There'd be blood, and the car would smell like rotting meat. This looks like it's been tanned. And why would they leave it behind."
"What the hell is that?" Bowdeen demanded, pointing at the skins that had two legs, two arms, even a face, like that of an ape.
"You don't suppose it...it skinned itself?" Gordon asked, ignoring the lawman as he dragged the skins into the whole of the car. Without encouragement his partner bent helping him spread the skin out until they had a grotesque, man shaped fur rug on the floor. Almost seven feet in length.
"Shed, Arte. Shedding a skin, like a snake." And nearly full grown, Jim thought, remembering the mantle of snow sitting on an invisible set of shoulders high above the ground.
Suddenly Arte's eyes were alight, and he snapped his fingers. "You know that suit always did baffle me. It was seamless, but I always assumed it was made from the hides of various animals because...well because nothing else like it existed. But suppose...suppose they found a skin, like this only smaller, somewhere in the woods and it was that discovery that hatched Peach's plan in the first place."
"And suppose Junior is still romping around in this same part of the woods after shedding his skin and notices what looks like another of his kind running around scaring miners. 'We are few, but many?'"
"Junior doesn't have a friend outside of Mom, so of course someone who looks like a twin would be an instant attraction. The offspring could think that Peach and his cohorts are friends."
"Eventually, with or without the suit." Jim added, scrubbing a hand over blessedly shaved cheeks before he said, "That's a fine theory, Arte but that doesn't help us track down Junior."
"What in hell is that thing?!"
Surprised Arte and Jim looked up to find Wyatt pointing a trembling finger at the skin on the floor, apparently only just then noticing the topic of conversation. In typical Bowdeen fashion, the Sheriff had resigned himself to waiting for an explanation and stood, leaned back against the side wall of the car, his hat pulled down over his eyes.
At Wyatt's outburst he gave the young man a look, then pursed his lips at West and Gordon, putting his hand out as if to say, 'Now you have to explain it, whether you like it or not."
They were, literally, saved by the bell. Orrin started clanging the copper bell that rested atop the boiler, breaking up the silence and signaling to anyone in the rail road pass that they were preparing to leave.
The Mallet answered the bell with a whistle of its own, and The Wanderer started to move. Backwards.
Arte blinked and looked at his partner. "Aren't we going the wrong way?"
"Orrin and I agreed we should try to get the varnish car while we're up here. Especially if the area around it is going to be susceptible to another avalanche."
"Orrin and...you...agreed."
"Well yeah, Arte, you were busy with the other men loading the wood. I figured you'd appreciate getting the car back and-"
"This little partnership you've got going with Orrin. Deciding to put in new containment cells, and planning all sorts of renovations...it's all well and good James, but don't you think it might be nice to include me in on a few things...every once in a while."
"Sure, Arte..."
"I'm not just here to cook and make smoke bombs, you know."
"I never said you were, Arte, I just-"
"If I could interrupt this little...spat." Bowdeen muttered before he pointed to the skin on the floor. "Have you boys jest forgotten to do yer laundry, or is this somethin' we should be concerned about showin' up naked in the town of Saguache?"
"Maybe we should all..." Jim stalled and looked to his partner, reluctant to start the long improbable story but knowing at this point they didn't have a choice.
"Sit...we should all sit." Arte said, nodding, before each man carefully found a place to sit on the floor.
By the time they reached the abandoned varnish car the two secret service agents had managed to answer most of the questions that Bowdeen and his deputy had. Some of the answers resulted in, "I don't know." But they did their best to convince Bowdeen that that was better than nothing.
"So how do you know when this...uh, Junior? Reaches full maturity?" Sumner asked, still leaned forward with keen interest, as he had been for most of the conversation.
"We don't really know.." Arte said with a feeling of de ja vu.
"So it might be visible, or it might not be visible. Is it female or male?"
"We don't-"
"The fur and the thickness of the skin would indicate that this is a mammal, yet it sheds its skin like a snake, do you-"
"Wyatt, you better start askin' easy questions cause if I have to hear "We don't know" one more time, I'm going to strangle someone and it won't be these two fellas..."
Sumner sat back finally and quietly said, "Never mind." Addressing the comment solely toward Arte who had been giving most of the answers. Before anything more could be said Orrin stepped into the car, pausing wide-eyed as he took in the damage to the cells, the giant skin on the floor and the powwow gathered around it.
"Is that-"
"It could be." Jim answered hastily standing, forestalling anymore questions with a pointed look. Orrin nodded after a moment and rubbed his hands together, warding off the chill that had hit him after he left the blast furnace that was the engine cab. "Varnish car is still boxed in by a lot of snow but it's melted enough, we can probably just pull her free. It's too dark out there to hook up without a couple of spotters."
Together the men rose and headed out taking with them lighted lanterns made precisely for rail work at night. On one side of each lantern was a green shield made of thick glass, and on the opposing side a red shield.
The varnish car had been shifted off the rails just enough to require the use of a frog. Orrin set the heavy metal piece in place along side the track then went back to the engine. As Orrin backed the train toward the varnish car, the wheels easily crushing the last few inches of snow over the rails, Jim and Arte watched from one side of the track, and Bowdeen and Sumner from the other side, guiding Orrin with lantern signals until the train was close enough to the varnish car to attach the safety chain.
Once attached the chain was used to pull the car back onto the track, before Orrin was able to engage the coupler. As the giant metal mechanism locked, Arte felt a sigh go through him that he hadn't expected, and shined his light over the length of the car. Despite how irked he felt at Jim making the decision without consulting him, his partner had been right. It felt good to have the varnish car, essentially their home, back, safely connected to the train.
A second later the feeling was gone, replaced by a note of panic. Arte clutched at Jim's sleeve and dug his fingers in without realizing.
"Arte!?" Jim winced, yanking his arm free, a second later concerned that his partner was having an attack. When Arte didn't answer with words, but instead pointed silently at the roof the varnish car, Jim followed the finger, lifting his lantern until the light reflected off a pair of eyes, the way it would a mountain cat.
Only what crouched above them in no way resembled a cat. No, there was no doubt in Jim's mind that he was looking into the curious face of Junior.
A second later he and Arte blacked out. Jim faintly felt his body impacting the ground before the world disappeared and he was thrust into total darkness.
Before the darkness lifted he could smell the fire, the dank wetness of the cave. He could feel the distant throb of pain in his ankle and could hear the roaring of the snow through the hole in the ceiling. He forced his eyes open, squinting against the light, trying to sit up but fighting the fatigue of days spent laying in the same position. He was desperate to move, to do something that would allow him to recapture control.
When he was finally able to rise he scanned the room. Counted bodies. They had multiplied. Two of the prisoners were there in the cave now, unconscious, laid out flat on their backs. Painfully Jim crawled to where Arte lay, shaking the man until he woke with an irritated hiss.
The minute their surroundings registered, Arte developed the same haunted look on his face that Jim had. When Arte felt his cheeks and found that he still had the bedamned beard that he had been trying so hard to be rid of, he groaned.
"Arte?"
"It's never gonna end, James." Arte whined, his hands exploring along his rib cage next. Pain, spongy bruises, shifting bones. He was exhausted, his mind worn out completely as if he'd been doing six digit long division in his head for hours.
"It's gonna end." Jim said, trying to sound reassuring. "She brought us back for a reason."
Suddenly angry, Arte grit his teeth. "To torture us. To reel us in and throw us back out like bait fish. This is some sort of sick game, James, I'm finished playing it."
"THIS IS NOT A GAME!" The voice spoke, once more loud, barreling past the defenses in their minds like they were butter. "YOU WILL FIND OFFSPRING. YOU WILL RETURN WHAT WAS TAKEN."
"If you'd left us there we might have managed it!" Arte shouted, outraged and just as quickly exhausted, his ribs playing hell with his breathing ability.
"Arte, calm down."
"I COULD NOT LEAVE YOU THERE."
"Why?! Because you weren't satisfied with making us look like lunatics, or with robbing us of five weeks of our lives? It wasn't bad enough that you did your utmost to kill me..."
"Arte, listen to me. You need to slow down and breathe."
"Slow down!?" Arte's voice reached its highest pitch then broke, the volume bleeding out like air from a punctured hot air balloon. The look of bewildered betrayal that Gordon gave him made West want to slap the man. But he was more concerned about the fit Arte was working himself into, and clamped his hand all the tighter around Arte's arm.
"We never left."
"We ne- what?"
"We never...left...the cave."
Arte was breathing hard but it was slowing, understanding was starting to register as his eyes danced back and forth. "Never left the..."
Jim shook his head slowly then got down low enough to help Arte sit up, easing his breathing a little more. "Look over there, Arte."
One wall of the cave was finally visible, no longer shrouded in the fog like darkness. Instead they could see a scene playing over the grain of the stone. Like the images created by the zoopraxiscopes and kinetoscope, only longer, sharper, with sound, and of all things color. Like a play, but on a flat surface. And the perspective seemed to be human. As the picture bounced around they could see their own bodies, lying insensate on the ground. Then the source of the picture, the 'see-er' looked up and they could see the concerned faces of Sheriff Bowdeen, Wyatt Sumner and Orrin.
"John.." Arte breathed. "That's coming from John."
"And that one from Orrin." Jim said, pointing to another a moving picture.
Jim noticed a third, then a fourth picture and both men realized in the same moment that they were looking at the world through the eyes of the criminals lying unconscious on the floor. These pictures were both showing a beast, the same beast, hunched in the corner of an open pit. Every few moments one of the pictures would jump, and the see-er would grin cruelly at his partner, before they went back to the torment that so amused them.
"There can't be...two offspring..."
"No, Arte I think this is the past. I think these are memories."
Arte pointed back at the moving pictures showing Orrin, John and the others carrying their bodies into the varnish car. "That is no memory, Jim."
"YOU HAVE POWERFUL MINDS." The voice said, softer than before. "THIS IS ONE FUTURE. A HAPPY FUTURE."
"But not real." Arte called into the darkness.
The voice finally responded, dejected, distracted. "NO."
"Then why put us through that, Jim? Why...keep them in it?" Arte asked, gesturing toward Orrin and John's unconscious forms.
"TO SEE YOUR NATURE. TO LEARN."
Arte was caught between understanding and the bile of outrage still churning deep in his chest. His partner was focused on the images, the moving pictures projected from the minds of the two criminals.
"Arte, if she keeps going through their memories she may find her offspring on her own."
Artemus winced, moving on the harsh cave floor until he could no longer see the pictures, laying down on his uninjured side. "Good." He said, bitterly. "Wake me when it's over."
Jim frowned, but let his partner be, watching the images, and coming to the conclusion that they were from over a month and half ago. "Can you..." He called into the darkness, not certain how to phrase the question he was wanting to ask. "Can you make the memories go faster? Or skip ahead?"
"NO."
"Why?"
"IT WOULD CAUSE HARM."
Arte grunted in response but said nothing, and Jim sat for what seemed like hours, spell-bound by the images until they suddenly flickered away, and darkness flooded the wall.
"THEIR MINDS MUST REST." The beast explained without prompting.
"What about Orrin and John?" Jim asked. "You saw that we knew nothing of your offspring before, John and Orrin are the same."
"THAT MAY BE."
"Will you allow them rest?"
"THEY ARE RESTING." The voice assured him and Jim realized that he hadn't even noticed the other moving pictures fading. It might have happened hours ago.
Jim thought for a moment, then said. "What about you? When do you rest?"
"WHEN MY OFFSPRING RETURNS." The voice said.
"This is your choice?"
Another pause then, "YES."
Jim looked to his leg, wincing at the pain that was once again radiating through it. As if the healing had never happened. Precisely as if their minds had been projected into an imagined future, and all the things that they expected, that they needed, to be convinced that they were in Saguache five weeks into the future, had been provided.
Jim massaged the abused muscles above the heavy splint, "You have many abilities that are alien to us."
"YES."
"Why not simply heal us and let us go?"
"YOU COULD NOT BE TRUSTED.
"But you trust us now?"
The voice hesitated. "YES."
"Then why not-"
"YOU WILL RECOVER."
It was true, Jim thought, the break would heal on its own. But he distinctly remembered wounding the beast. Remembered seeing blood drop through the swirling snow then stop on its own. The beast had the ability to heal itself, and clearly, to have some affect on the healing of others.
"Why did you revive me?" Arte called.
Jim jumped a little at the sound of his partner's voice. It seemed that his sudden participation in the conversation had surprised the beast as well. She was silent longer than the norm.
"THAT DAMAGE WAS UNINTENDED."
Arte sat up again, slowly, speaking angrily as he did. "Surely it must have occurred to you that tossing a man off a cliff might kill him."
"DEATH WAS UNKNOWN TO I."
"That isn't possible. All living things die. What goes up, must come down. An object in motion stays in motion. These are facts-"
Jim tried to interrupt as Arte's voice started to rise in pitch but Arte put up a hand and repeated, "Facts, Jim."
"IN THIS REALM. YES."
The calm feminine voice cut off Arte's next argument. "This...realm?"
"You're in another realm? Another reality?"
"NO."
"But you came from another reality? Another dimension?" Arte asked.
"YES. TO FIND OFFSPRING."
"You're offspring came here first?" Jim asked, narrowing his eyes as Arte took in a deep breath.
"YES. MANY OF YOUR...MONTHS AGO."
"But why-" Jim's question was cut off by a sudden wave of pressure in his head that nearly blacked him out. He swayed, falling back against the cave floor.
"YOU WILL REST."
Out of the corner of his eye Jim could see Arte laying down too. Whatever the beast had done had wiped most of the questions out of Jim's mind, instead suggesting that all he wanted was sleep.
He fought it for only a short while before his body demanded the same, and he closed his eyes.