Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables by Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett Page A
Authors: Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett
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soldier’s stomach into his throat.
He let himself down to the ground while the scrambling sounds faded below. Limping along with but one boot, he returned to the crossroads and took the road to the nearest town.
T he place was called Stone Crossing, and even at a distance he could hear the sound of rail workers at their toil, laying the iron road across the vast grassland to the west. The town was busy with railroad men, farmers, cattlemen, and merchants offering every sort of goods and services to the caravans of settlers passing through as they escaped the strife of the war to make their way into the empty territories beyond, hunting a fortune or simply a new start. The soldier took a room in a boardinghouse run by a careful, plain-faced woman named Sarah—the widow of a railroad man who’d been blown to smithereens by a misplaced dynamite charge—and set to spending his fortune in merry pursuits that lightened his mood only temporarily.
He was accounted by most as a generous and pleasant enough companion, if one wasn’t bothered by his silence, his scars, and his ever-present expression of sorrow. Such was his discretion in all things from his person to his rare speech that his acquaintances took to confiding their own troubles to him. Even the widow Sarah spoke more easily to her taciturn boarder than to anyone else in the house. Thus it came to his ears in the rising heat of a blistering summer that the town of Stone Crossing was in dire straits.
Over dinner one Sunday evening at the boardinghouse, anotherguest—one of the railroad men passing through—complained, “I thought the land problem was going to be the worst of it here, but if this heat doesn’t break soon, we’ll have to halt work. The workers are dropping like flies and we’ve near run out of water as it is.”
“And you won’t find any for miles,” Sarah replied. “The creeks have all shriveled up or gone underground. My own well’s nearly dried out and I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to take your baths at the barbershop from now on, or there’ll be no water to cook with or clean the pans. I’ve already stopped mopping the floors as it is. I swear our situation wasn’t much better when Morton was still around, but at least you could usually get him to arguing with Halprin and stand a chance of getting something for your trouble when one or the other won out. I’ve almost developed a soft spot for Conscience Morton now that he’s gone—a less well-named man there never was.”
The soldier pricked up his ears. “Who’re those fellas—Morton and Halprin?” he asked.
“Well, they used to own pretty much the whole town between the two of them and most of the property beyond until Morton up and disappeared a few months ago,” Sarah replied. “Utterly mad for inventing things, the pair of them, and small-minded with it. Such a rivalry you never saw—as if making a better spinning wheel were the be-all and end-all. If I had to guess, I’d say Halprin finally found some way to drive Morton off—or kill him and hide the body. The Lord knows they tried to get rid of one another often enough, though I’d have lief it were Halprin who vanished—he’s a vile man who kills sheep for his own amusement with his terrible inventions. And greedy beyond imagining, though he’s very rich from selling his murderous inventions to anyone as will pay—Union or Confederate. He and Morton fought for a whole year about where the rail right-of-way was going to pass, and the town was a mess because of it. Halprin only half won that argument.”
“And now the railroad may have to make a jog around Morton’s property,” the railroad man added, “since he ran off without leaving a clear deed to the land to anyone. We’ve tried to applyeminent domain on the abandoned property, but Halprin is fighting us in court—ironically to ‘protect Morton from being taken advantage of while he’s missing.’ I suspect he’s just doing it to gain
He let himself down to the ground while the scrambling sounds faded below. Limping along with but one boot, he returned to the crossroads and took the road to the nearest town.
T he place was called Stone Crossing, and even at a distance he could hear the sound of rail workers at their toil, laying the iron road across the vast grassland to the west. The town was busy with railroad men, farmers, cattlemen, and merchants offering every sort of goods and services to the caravans of settlers passing through as they escaped the strife of the war to make their way into the empty territories beyond, hunting a fortune or simply a new start. The soldier took a room in a boardinghouse run by a careful, plain-faced woman named Sarah—the widow of a railroad man who’d been blown to smithereens by a misplaced dynamite charge—and set to spending his fortune in merry pursuits that lightened his mood only temporarily.
He was accounted by most as a generous and pleasant enough companion, if one wasn’t bothered by his silence, his scars, and his ever-present expression of sorrow. Such was his discretion in all things from his person to his rare speech that his acquaintances took to confiding their own troubles to him. Even the widow Sarah spoke more easily to her taciturn boarder than to anyone else in the house. Thus it came to his ears in the rising heat of a blistering summer that the town of Stone Crossing was in dire straits.
Over dinner one Sunday evening at the boardinghouse, anotherguest—one of the railroad men passing through—complained, “I thought the land problem was going to be the worst of it here, but if this heat doesn’t break soon, we’ll have to halt work. The workers are dropping like flies and we’ve near run out of water as it is.”
“And you won’t find any for miles,” Sarah replied. “The creeks have all shriveled up or gone underground. My own well’s nearly dried out and I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to take your baths at the barbershop from now on, or there’ll be no water to cook with or clean the pans. I’ve already stopped mopping the floors as it is. I swear our situation wasn’t much better when Morton was still around, but at least you could usually get him to arguing with Halprin and stand a chance of getting something for your trouble when one or the other won out. I’ve almost developed a soft spot for Conscience Morton now that he’s gone—a less well-named man there never was.”
The soldier pricked up his ears. “Who’re those fellas—Morton and Halprin?” he asked.
“Well, they used to own pretty much the whole town between the two of them and most of the property beyond until Morton up and disappeared a few months ago,” Sarah replied. “Utterly mad for inventing things, the pair of them, and small-minded with it. Such a rivalry you never saw—as if making a better spinning wheel were the be-all and end-all. If I had to guess, I’d say Halprin finally found some way to drive Morton off—or kill him and hide the body. The Lord knows they tried to get rid of one another often enough, though I’d have lief it were Halprin who vanished—he’s a vile man who kills sheep for his own amusement with his terrible inventions. And greedy beyond imagining, though he’s very rich from selling his murderous inventions to anyone as will pay—Union or Confederate. He and Morton fought for a whole year about where the rail right-of-way was going to pass, and the town was a mess because of it. Halprin only half won that argument.”
“And now the railroad may have to make a jog around Morton’s property,” the railroad man added, “since he ran off without leaving a clear deed to the land to anyone. We’ve tried to applyeminent domain on the abandoned property, but Halprin is fighting us in court—ironically to ‘protect Morton from being taken advantage of while he’s missing.’ I suspect he’s just doing it to gain
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