Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (41 page)

Young women wearing festive dirndls moved through the crowds with platters of food and beer, making sure everyone was served and that no mug remained empty for long. Stovepipe spotted all three of the Freiburg girls hard at work on this happy duty, yet, despite the plunging necklines of their low-cut dirndls, he was still unable to tell Greta from Gerdie.

He smiled.
Perhaps, though, upon closer inspection…

The Piper’s ironclad stood at the center of town. The towering conveyance was nearly silent, its engine fire stoked low so that only the slightest huff sounded occasionally from its boiler. Rusty water puddled up in the muddy sand around the machine’s immense wheels, fueled by a steady
drip, drip, drip
from the hot ironworks above. Its dark, hulking image might have appeared grim, if not for the long shimmering blue-and-white ribbons that dangled from its smokestacks and trailed from its external tubing and handrails.

Beside the Steampiper stood two empty lumber wagons from the woodcutters’ camp and a third dray piled high with empty cooperage, the last vestiges of the barrels’ contents drooling down
their smooth wooden sides. The Piper’s request for a great excess of wood and water in exchange for his services had clearly been met. Stovepipe wondered if Crossley’s third demand had been similarly settled.

He let out a weary sigh. His had been a long and eventful day marked by many miles on the trail. He had nothing to celebrate. All he wanted was a buffalo hump steak, a pint of Kentucky whiskey, and, afterward, to bed down in a brothel.

However, he would settle for a bratwurst, a quart of beer, and to drift asleep dreaming of the Freiburg girls bathing upriver.

S
omeone was pounding on the door of his room.

He awoke in darkness at an undetermined hour, an autumnal chill nipping at him through the hotel bed’s thin woolen shoddy. The night was curiously quiet, unlike when Stovepipe had slipped off to bed amid the boisterous sounds of the rollicking street party. He sat up, rubbing his eyes.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

“Herr Stovepiper!” cried a voice as he approached the sound. “Mama says you must help us!”

It was the twins. Greta and Gerdie stood in the doorway, dangling lanterns, each girl still in her festive dirndl, although they were now wrapped in shawls against the chill. They also wore expressions of great alarm.

“Zee Piper has taken away all zee children!” said one of them.

“He led them off behind his loco-motiff, just like zee rats!” cried the other.

“Berta was with them!” added the first.

Stovepipe gathered his weapons and gear by the light of their lanterns as the girls related the strange events that had unfolded while he was asleep.

Once all of the town’s men and most of its women were hopelessly drunk, the Piper had demanded a final fee of three hundred United States gold double eagles, an amount that not even all the
citizens of New Hamelin working together could possibly assemble. When Kauffmann explained this sad fact to him, the Piper had accepted the news quietly, making no protest. Then, in an unexpectedly charitable offer that caught everyone off guard, he announced that he would perform a special concert on his pipe organ for all of the town’s children. The Freiburg girls could not describe the music he had played, saying only that it was neither familiar nor melodic, and that it involved a series of uncomfortably long sustained notes. The children, however, were instantly mesmerized and had gathered around the Steampiper with expressions of rapturous delight. Crossley then set the machine in motion and led them up and down the street two times, the little ones dancing happily as they followed along in its wake.

However, on his third pass Crossley abruptly steered the procession outside town and made a northeast course across the open prairie. More than two hours passed, and none of the children had returned. With almost all the townsfolk either drunk or asleep, the girls had come to seek Stovepipe’s help.

Hurriedly he cranked the little generator that powered his spurs, charging them up for the trail. He had listened to the girls’ odd story with a sense of growing dread, for it had come clear to him why the Piper was conversing with Comanche warriors.

He’s going to sell the children to Crooked Scar….

Not wanting to increase Greta’s and Gerdie’s already considerable panic, Stovepipe said nothing about his suspicions but instead instructed them to follow him.

Frau Freiburg waited for them in the street outside the hotel. Clad in a gray leather coat and wearing a green felt hunter’s cap, she sat atop a powerful roan, clutching the reins in one hand and her long-barreled shotgun in the other. A bandolier loaded with cartridges crisscrossed her chest. There was no sign of her pipe tonight, her hands apparently too preoccupied with preparations for riding and shooting.

Fastened to the hitching rail was Thursday, ready to ride, complete with the special saddle extension and its diving gear.
Stovepipe briefly considered abandoning this heavy and perhaps superfluous equipment, but thought better of it when he recalled how useful the periscope had proven at Crossley’s cave.

“Can you drive a wagon?” he asked the twins.

They both nodded.

He pointed to one of the woodcutters’ lumber drays that stood nearby, its team still hitched to the traces. “Turn that wagon around and follow us as best you can. But first get some wool shoddies from the hotel, at least a dozen or two, and put them in the back.”

One of the twins dashed inside to get the blankets. The other started for the wagon but stopped and turned back to ask a question. “Herr Stovepiper, why is zee wagon needed?”

Unfastening Thursday from the hitching post, he swung himself up into the saddle. A tap on his hat brim caused his goggles to descend over his eyes.

“To pick up the stragglers!” he shouted in answer.

Then he put the sparking spurs to his horse’s flanks and set off after the Steampiper at a frantic gallop, with Frau Freiburg’s roan thundering behind.

E
ven in the cold starlit darkness, the Piper’s route was simple to follow. Crossley’s machine forged its own trail, creating a corduroy passage wherever it traveled, as distinct as any road built by the Caesars. Stovepipe and Frau Freiburg rode to the left and right of it to avoid tripping their nimble steeds, but Greta and Gerdie drove the empty lumber dray, drawn by its oversized plow horse, right up the center. The wagon rattled fiercely, but its bench seat was amply cushioned by a huge pile of hotel bedding.

By watching the position of the stars, Stovepipe made a mental map, charting their position. The route seemed to be leading very near the cave where Crossley had entombed the rats. Grimly, Stovepipe recalled seeing the Piper direct the Comanche raiders in much the same direction.

It was not long before they found the first straggler, a small blond
boy dressed in leather overalls, shivering and sobbing alone on prairie. The child was so tired and distraught, blubbering incoherently in a bilingual muddle, that questioning him was impossible. The twins wrapped the boy in a blanket and tucked him securely between them before slapping the reins and setting off again.

Soon there were more. Children clearly too small and too weak for a protracted march. Girls whose feet had become too blistered and sore to proceed, the pain snapping them from the Piper’s musical trance. Boys who lost a shoe and stumbled behind. Numerous youths who injured their feet or legs on the uneven trail.

Leaving the retrieval of the abandoned children to Greta and Gerdie, Stovepipe and Frau Freiburg kept riding. Half an hour later, within easy reach of the hills close to Crossley’s cave, they arrived at an open plain where unmistakable tracks revealed that the Steampiper had been turned in a wide circle and driven repeatedly around it. Within the great ring carved by its iron treads was a confusing mass of small footprints.

“The Piper was herding them here,” Stovepipe shouted.

“
Varum?
” asked Frau Freiburg.

He shrugged. “I can’t figure out why. Let’s ride the circle and find where they left it.”

This strategy proved difficult to follow. Although they each rode slowly around the circumference of the ring that the Steampiper’s wheels had pressed into the prairie, they found no point of mass departure. Bafflingly, they found more small footprints leading
into
the ring, as if the mesmerized children had been joined by others who entered at random points from beyond the circle. Complicating matters was the odd detail that the Steampiper itself appeared to have come and gone from the circle several times, creating a variety of additional false exit (or where they
entrance
?) points.

“Zey all are loaded aboard zee loco-motiff,
yah
?” suggested Frau Freiburg.

Stovepipe shrugged. “I don’t think so. Crossley could have done
that
as soon as he got them outside town.”

The big German woman frowned. “Zee Piper makes them walk back to front?”

He smiled. “Backwards?
There’s
an idea. Let’s trace some of those tracks that look like they go
into
the circle…and see where they come
from
!”

They rode out in a wider circuit, straining in the darkness of the starry night to follow the separate trails of small, individual footprints across the rough surface of the prairie. Eventually, however, Stovepipe spotted hoofprints that paralleled one particularly large and obvious set of girl’s prints, which he worried might belong to Berta Freiburg. He dismounted and took a closer look, running his hand in the sandy grooves of the horse’s tracks.

This pony was unshod….

He knew that could mean only one thing:
Comanches!

Remaining on foot, he led Thursday by her reins as he carefully followed the footsteps and Indian pony’s hoofprints until they merged and the girl’s tracks disappeared. The hoofprints then changed character, becoming less deep and farther apart, as the animal had picked up speed. The horse’s tracks were joined by other unshod pony tracks, which then merged with a set of impressions left by the Steampiper’s wheels.

Stovepipe squinted and could barely make out the image of Frau Freiburg in the distance, off pursuing another lead. He unslung the Henry rifle, jacked the lever once, and fired it straight up into the air. The weapon’s loud report instantly drew her attention and the thick, cottonlike cloud of smoke from its muzzle was as good a signal as any fluttering flag. She rode quickly toward him, reaching his side as he ascended back into his saddle.

“Crossley’s been working with the Comanches, selling these children to Crooked Scar,” he said. “I think he’s taking them near a cave where he led the rats.
Follow me!
”

Stovepipe tapped the rifle’s still-smoking muzzle against Thursday’s side. The animal bolted forward, nearly throwing him from the saddle, and set off at full gallop. He glanced back and saw Frau Freiburg on her roan, keeping pace by using the barrel of her shotgun like a quirt.

Roughly half a mile from the rats’ cave, the tracks of the Steampiper led through a narrow pass and down into what appeared to be a box canyon. Stovepipe diverted from the corduroy trail and rode to the east of the pass, until he found a spot where the steep outer wall of the canyon sloped less dramatically, at an easily scalable angle. Here he dismounted and, leaving Frau Freiburg with their horses, scrambled up the rough, rocky surface until he could peer down into the canyon. He heard the distant sound of strange music and saw the ambient glow of flickering lights. Retrieving Fooks’s telescope from his coat pocket, he brought it up to his eye.

The children were there.

Crossley had corralled them in a large wood-railed holding pen where they all sat in silence, apparently still mesmerized by a peculiar warbling note from the pipe organ aboard the Piper’s ironclad. The huge machine was parked at the edge of the corral, backed up near the gate, with its organ pipes as close as possible to the captives. A long row of Indian ponies was tethered just outside the corral. Several dozen Comanche braves were gathered around a huge bonfire that lit up the whole scene. In the distance, at a break in the canyon walls, was some nameless tributary of the Pecos. Its water flowed briskly past the camp, splashing against a ragged, sandy shoreline.