Deeper Than A Thousand Shadows

Pete Eaglestaff rested his boot on the toe board of the wagon and wrapped the leather reins around his hand. His two horses whinnied and chuffed at the thinning air as they pulled the loaded buckboard higher into the Rocky Mountains. A bright morning sun broke through lumbering cumulus clouds and teased the needles on the spruce pines lining both sides of the trail up Sidewinder Mountain. Behind him in the flatbed laid shovels, stakes, twine, surveying equipment, and the like. Farther behind that, his boss and the benefactor of this massive endeavor, Robert Townley Watson, steered his Conestoga with his wife Jane by his side. Wheels rattled over exposed stone and across ruts worn into the trail by the recent runoff a month earlier.

Pete ran a hand through the short-cropped hairs on the back of his head. The Overlook project would cost him more than a few years of his personal life. Once word got out to the Chief of the Shoshoni of his intention to partner with the white man and help make him wealthy off this land, Pete was banned from his tribe and ordered to cut off his mane of inky black hair. His thoughts lingered on Delhia and their newborn son in the neighboring town. They’d struggle to make it on their own, and Pete risked life and limb to visit them. The other men of that town threatened to lynch Pete if he ever came back. With a base salary plus a guaranteed ten percent cut of the hotel’s first year’s profits, how could he refuse a small fortune for his family?

“Shouldn’t be much farther, should it Pete?” Robert’s voice held a timber too deep for his lack of height.

Pete eased back in his bench and snickered his horse team onward. “Clearing’s just around the next bend.”

He eavesdropped on the Watson family’s excitement.

Robert: “Here that everyone? We’re nearly there.”

His eldest son, Elias: “Is there a place to fish?” Lots of spunk for a boy of ten summers.

Then, his youngest boy, Roger: “I wanna trap a bear, Poppa!” Twice as much gumption in the seven-year-old.

Jane: “You trap a bear or any

animal for that matter, and you go directly to you Daddy for help.”

Elias again: “Are we gonna be rich, Poppa?”

Robert chuckled: “I sure hope so.”

Pete chuckled and snapped his reins, urging the two horses into a light trot around the bend into an open meadow. Swallowtails floated on a fleeting breeze among the Queen Anne’s lace and wildflowers. He guided his wagon to as level a spot as he could find on the mountaintop and set the brakes. He surveyed the bald. No sign of them yet, but they would come. He knew they would.

Robert eased his wagon to a stop beside the flatbed and set its front brake. “Looks the same as we left it last April, eh Pete?” He moseyed to the back of his wagon, fished a pair of wooden blocks out, and placed them behind his rear wheels.

The Rocky Mountain winds brought the scent of fragrant grasses and melted snow to Pete’s nose. “Weeds are a bit taller.”

“I’ll work on setting up the stakes,” Robert said, “if you don’t mind locating a place to make camp.” He glanced back down Sidewinder Trail. “The other wagons should be showing up before noontime.”

“Sounds about right.” Pete collected his canvas tent and loped through the waist-high weeds. “Gonna have to do something about this grass before we can stake anything.”

Robert dusted off his canvas pants and pulled scythes from the back of his wagon. “We’ll get the men on it when they arrive.” He used one of them as a walking staff as he strode toward Pete. “In the meantime, I’ll work on clearing off a spot to set camp for the night.”

As Robert went about his chore, toppling large swaths of overgrowth, Pete walked to the wagons to get the other scythe and join in on the fun. A smell blew into his face when he spun on a boot heel to join his boss. Pete recognized that odor. The musky scent of endless seasons on the open plains. A group of mounted men appeared on the hilltop confirming his suspicions. Five warriors silhouetted against the sun’s angle sat in a line on their horses, the winds ruffling the feathers tied in their ponytails.

Pete took long, quick strides back to Robert. “Boss!”

That finally got Robert’s attention. Pete pointed to the line of his former tribesmen on the hill. “We’ve got company.”

Robert lowered the crescent blade of his instrument into the cut grass and leaned on the handle. “Anyone you know?”

“My former tribe---I think.”

Robert scratched his wide nose. “What do they want with us, ya reckon?”

Pete shook his head once. He had a notion, but wasn’t about to speak it aloud.

Jane said something to the boys as she climbed from the back of the covered wagon, but stifled a shriek and stopped cold once her feet touched the ground.

“Back into the wagon,” Robert called to her. The groan of the wagon’s rear end told the men she’d done as instructed. He leaned closer to Pete. “They mean to harm us?”

“Dunno, boss. Hard to say.” Pete knelt, plucked a weed from the ground, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

“Didn’t part on the greatest of terms with me.”

Robert patted his hips and grumbled under his breath. “You pack your pistol before we started?”

“Nope.” Pete nodded over his shoulder. “It and my rifle are both still in the flatbed.”

The warrior in the center of the line led the others single file down the hillside in Pete’s direction. As they rode out of the piercing daylight, Pete recognized them at once.

“It’s my old shaman and several of the Shoshoni’s best warriors.”

Robert’s gaze never left the loping line of horses. “No chief?”

“He died in a skirmish with the Army last autumn.”

“I thought President Roosevelt said he was putting an end to all the massacres,” Robert said.

“So did I.” Pete rolled his weed around between his teeth. This group weren’t carrying tomahawks. Only two even sported a bow. “This is a delegation, not a raiding party.”

“I pray you’re right.”

The shaman halted his horse several paces from Pete and Robert and held out his arm for the others to do likewise. Pete strode through the high weeds to meet the shaman.

The old man spoke in their native language, taikwappe. “This land does not belong to you, Eaglestaff. This you should know.”

Pete replied in turn. “Wise One, for us, this holds true, but the white men live by a different set of laws.”

“Unnatural laws!” The shaman used his hand to wipe the wind. “Clear out of this land, Eaglestaff. You know our legends. An ancient darkness lives here.”

Pete gave a shallow bow. “I know them well.”

The shaman continued. “Then you know this being must never be awakened.”

“We do not intend to awaken anything, Wise One.”

“Ignorance!” The shaman’s horse whinnied. “This land is fertile with the blood of a thousand people. A darkness is buried here. Deeper than a thousand shadows.” He pointed a finger to the ground at his feet. “If you touch this land, you will be cursed by its void until your houses are no more.”

Robert shifted his stance behind Pete. “What’s he saying?”

“He’s talking about a burial ground near here or something,” Pete said. “Too far off to concern us.”

“If you break this ground,” the shaman said, “we will return under different auspices.” With that said, he turned his mare up the slope and led his party over the mountain out of sight.

Pete spat into the taller grass and looked Robert in his eyes. “Warned us not to go near their burial grounds. Said he couldn’t guarantee our safety from other war parties or passing tribes.”

“We knew that risk when I bought this land.” Robert hobbled with the help of his handle to the edge of his uncut grass and swatted it down. “We’ll break ground later today.”

“All the same,” Pete looked back at the boys as they hopped out of the Conestoga, “might be best if they travel down to base camp until we have things more under control here.”

“Well met.” Robert rested his

scythe over his shoulder and loped off toward his wagon to confer with Jane on the matter.

***

A relentless summer sun beat down on Pete and his work crew. These recent few months of 1907 proved most productive. Robert had broken ground on the Overlook Hotel in April, and his crew neared completion of the basement level. Within days, the sawyers wouldtheir entire sawmill operation over the hill under roof and ready to cut planks. Stacks of granite stones continued to amass on the clearing, coming in by special wagons daily.

Pete fetched his hanky from a hippocket and blotted the sweat from his face. Robert finalized another order of granite, signed off on the bill of sale, and ambled to Pete’s side.

“Should have the stones in place before this winter,” Robert said.

Pete hummed an affirmation.

“Then we can start laying the main floor in the spring.”

“Reckon so,” Pete said. “I say we finish clearin’ out this hole in the ground, then start droppin’ stones in.”

The men worked throughout the day lowering the huge blocks of granite into the earth, stone by backbreaking stone. One of the crewmen from the sawmill sprinted over the mountaintop into the setting sun waving his handkerchief and screaming up a storm.

Pete couldn’t make out the man’s words at first, but once the column of black smoke rose over the mountaintop, he no longer needed it. “Fire at the sawmill!”

Robert raced around their encampment repeating the phrase like a rallying cry. Men grabbed what buckets and canteens they possessed and ran toward the fire. Weeds smacked against Pete’s thighs as he galloped through the tall grass onto the trail they’d cut between the mill and camp.

Pete stalled on the crest of the mountain. Crewmen bounded into danger, flinging water and sprinting for the nearby stream to fill their buckets. Robert asked if anyone was left inside. One man remained entrapped. Pete rushed down the hill to join them. Robert tied his hanky around his nose and mouth and charged into the raging fire.

Pete took three paces inside the front door, then backed out of the intense heat. “Robert? It’s too dangerous.”

Moments later, his boss barreled over Pete and took them both to the ground in a smoldering heap.

Pete patted out the flames on Robert’s shirt. “Get this man some water!”

The trapped man appeared in the highest window frame, his flailing arms ablaze begging for help. Others tried throwing their water as high as it would reach, but their comrade eventually succumbed to his fate. His lifeless body fell draped over the windowsill. The boils and bubbling flesh. The odor of charred pork. They would haunt Pete’s dreams.

Four warriors on horseback circled the mill and fired another salvo of flaming arrows into the topmost levels of the mill before shouting and riding off into the forests. Several men whipped out their sidearms and opened fire, but the damage had been done.

***

Autumn came, and the foliage crisped from brilliant greens to hues of red and gold. They buried their man on a wooded patch of land overlooking both sides of the Sidewinder.

Pete stood beside Robert at the foot of their repaired mill. Bright planks of fresh wood stood as a stark reminder of all they’d lost.

“Didn’t think we’d get her back up and running this quickly,” Robert said.

“Thankfully, we spared the saw and most of the first floor.” Pete fetched a rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it with a match. “Got our sawyers out in the woods felling trees. Should put us back on schedule for lumber production.”

Robert patted Pete on his shoulder. “You’re more than earning your extra ten percent, friend.”

Pete bobbed his head in the direction of Jane and the boys. “How’re they settling in to being in a new place?"

Robert pulled his tobacco pipe from his hip pocket and set to cleaning out its bowl with his pocket knife. “Well---all things considered.” He dumped spent ashes from his pipe. “The boys miss their friends.”

“That’s to be expected.”

Robert raised his pipe to a pair of sawyers working a two-man through the girth of a pine tree. “How are the men?”

“Uneasy,” Pete said. “Exhausted. They’ve been working twelve-hour days since they arrived, boss."

“They’ll feel better once their pockets are stuffed with all the money they’re earning."

“Dunno, boss.”

Robert plucked his tobacco pouch from another pocket and stuffed a pinch into his pipe bowl. “S’pose an extra day off wouldn’t hurt no---”

The two sawyers dropped their saw and ran from the towering tree.

“Timber!” The man in a knit cap waved his arms frantically.

His partner darted on a tangent from him and didn’t stop until he reached the crown of the mountain. “David!”

Thunderous cracks echoed around the clearing as the massive column of pine rocked away from David, then changed course and came right at him. An ominous shadow stretched over David and past his racing form. One moment, he was there, running. The next, David was reduced to a cloud of gore and a puddle of bone and meat.

***

The second winter on Sidewinder Mountain rolled through in brutal waves of ice and snow. Provisions ran low to the point of nearly disappearing, and one man lost two fingers to frostbite on a deer hunt. This mild April morning warmed in stark contrast, melting away any remnant memories of their trials.

Pete finished rolling a cigarette and lit it. His crew tiptoed through the forest, testing trunks for cutting. Robert’s Conestoga lumbered up the trail pulling alongside the flatbed, then he called his horse team to a halt. His two boys sprang from the back like the seats of their pants were ablaze.

Robert called after them. “And stay away from those men. Let them do their work.” He shook his head and rubbed his thighs on his way to Pete’s side. “Them two have been itching to get out of our house all winter long.”

Pete smirked. “Boys will be boys.”

Elias and Roger trotted off in search of adventure in the opposite direction from the lumberjacks. Robert shooed a wasp from his face and admired their progress. The basement and main floors were finished. The men had most of the second level finished and moved their scaffolding higher.

“At this rate,” Robert said, “we should have the whole thing under roof before winter.”

Pete blew a line of smoke into the fresh air. “Any more word from the utilities people? Or furnishings?”

Robert chuckled. “That’s what I love about you, Pete. Always keep me after it.” He lit his pipe and nursed a healthy plume of fragrant smoke to life. “Utilities are slated to come up here this time next year. Should see the furnishings arrive next autumn."

Pete hummed through his cigarette.

“Any more trouble from the tribe?”

Pete tapped the ash from the end of his smoke. “Nothing major, no.” He pointed out the neighboring ridgeline. “See ‘em riding single file over there on occasion."

“Think they’ll attack again?”

Pete tapped the holster at his right hip. “With everyone packin’ these days, it don’t seem likely. Ain’t too pleased with our endeavor, I can tell you that.”

The boys’ strides hissed through the grass beside them. Elias beat his little brother to the finish and spoke between gasps.

“Pop… can we… get smoke?”

Robert cupped his pipe in a hand and held it at his hip. “If I let you or your brother puff this thing and go home smelling like my pipe, I’d never hear the end of it.”

Roger trotted in next to Elias. “Not that, Poppa. We found a hornets’ nest in the tree over there. Can we build a fire to smoke ‘em out, so we can climb up and get it?”

Pete scratched his cheek. “A wonder you haven’t been stung already.”

Robert scoffed. “You two? And fire? Don’t think so, boys."

Elias clung to his father’s leg. “Please? We’ll take a bucket of water with us.”

Roger grabbed hold of his other leg. “Yeah. Please?”

“Look, boys, I’ve got work to do. Why don’t you go play near the creek?”

The boys released Robert’s legs amid groans and grumbles.

Pete dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and stomped it flat. “I can help them get it.”

Elias’s and Roger’s faces lit up.

“The crew doesn’t need me for anything for a few hours, anyhow.”

Robert eyed the hotel, then his foreman. “You sure? They can be a handful.”

“No problem, boss.” Pete grabbed a water pail. “You boys gather up some dry kindling so we can build us a good camp fire under that nest. I’ll fetch the water and load into the flatbed for the trip.”

It didn’t take long for them to get a healthy fire going beneath the nest. On occasion, they had to coax the smoke back in the direction of the hornets. Elias and Roger circled the tree trunk, watching the bugs vacate their home.

Elias stopped on the opposite side of the nest. “What now?”

“We wait,” Pete said.

Roger filed in alongside his brother. “For how long?”

Pete studied the angry hornets. “An hour or so. They should all clear outa there by then.”

For that time, the boys occupied themselves by finding various things to set in the flames to see what happened. Around the third time they returned from the forest’s edges with pinecones, Pete found a fallen branch long enough and jabbed at the nest with it.

Elias dropped his cones in the grass. “Is it time?”

Pete hummed an affirmative as he continued to work at the resin holding the nest in place. “No signs of any hornets, so I figure it’s safe” He nodded to the pail. “Grab that water and put out the fire, will ya?"

Coals hissed and sent up a broad cloud of smoke.

“Watch yourselves.” Pete gave the branch Lone final jab. The nest dropped onto the soaked coals and tumbled into the grass. “Easy.” He held the anxious boys at bay. “Lemmie check it first." He hooked the hole in the nest on the end of his branch and lifted it. After a good shake with no stragglers emerging, Pete set the nest on the ground. “She’s all yours. I’ll load the bucket back in our wagon, then we’ll head back to the work site.”

The boys argued the entire way to the wagon over who would hold it for the ride back, and in the end, Elias won out via brute force. Pete sat in the driver’s seat with Elias riding shotgun and Roger between them.

Pete checked their fire one final time. Thin, white tendrils slithered into the sunlight. “Sure you put that thing out?”

“Dumped every bit of water in the pail on it.” Elias turned his empty nest in his hands. Roger fought for a turn holding it, but lost once again to his bigger and stronger brother.

“Hold tight.” Pete slapped his reins and mushed the horses into a light gallop over the low-cut field.

“Ow!” Elias swatted at something, or more likely someone.

Pete set out to squash the situation. “Roger?”

“I didn’t do anything.” Roger poked his thumb toward Elias. “He’s the one going crazy.”

The horses picked up their pace. Light winds whipped past Pete’s face. “Elias? What’s going on?”

“Hornets!” Elias swatted at the growing swarm. “Came outa nowhere.”

“Turn it loose, son.”

Elias was in survival mode. He fought for his life.

Roger reached over and slapped the nest from his hands, and then joined in the frantic swatting.

Pete glanced over to find nothing there. “What hornets?”

Roger shrieked and swung his hands at anything close. “They’re everywhere!”

Then Elias, “Get ‘em off!”

Pete tried to slow the team down, but whatever it was, it spooked the horses as well. “Get rid of it.”

Elias reached for the nest at his feet at the same time the wagon rumbled over a rocky section of the meadow. The jolt launched the boy from the bench over the side. The rear end of the wagon listed toward Pete. Bones cracked. A watery yelp. Pete grabbed Roger in his arms and rolled out of the bench onto the hard ground.

“Elias!” Pete set Roger down and scrambled to the boy’s motionless side.

He set his fingers under Elias’s nostrils. Nothing. He rolled him from his side onto his back. Color faded from the child’s features. His sternum was sunken in, crushed. Behind him, Roger screamed for his father and raced toward the hotel. Soon, Robert thundered over the field shouting his eldest son’s name. This time, though, his boy wouldn’t respond.

***

The summer of 1908 was wetter than its predecessor. Several strong storms delayed construction and damaged sections of the roof work on the Overlook with their hail stones. This day was bright and clear. A day Elias would have loved. Robert wiped back his sorrow and lumbered over the hilltop to the graveyard.

Birds whistled from unseen perches in the boughs. The sawyers left this section of the forest alone. All around it, mangy patches of stumps jutted from broken earth, but this one remained sacred. The graveyard had but two makeshift headstones fashioned from wood. One in a clearing of ground for the crewman who died in the fire, its boards darkened by snow and rain. The other stood watch over a mound of freshly turned earth near a tall oak, its planks still fresh and blond.

The forest blurred in a new wave of tears. One step, then another. Robert’s feet weighed a ton, his legs refusing to churn. He collapsed to the ground beside Elias’s grave and wept.

“My boy.” He grabbed handfuls of the soil. “My baby boy.” Robert rubbed the dirt on his face and neck, doing anything he could to get close to his child. He lay sprawled across the grave and hugged the ground as he let his grief have its time.

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but the whispers awakened Robert from his slumber. Faint wisps of conversation coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. He sat up and brushed the dead leaf from his cheek. “Hello?”

Come to us… Come with us, Robert.

He scanned the wood but found nothing stirring.

Robert. We can bring him back.

“Bring who back?” He stood and staggered on numbed legs toward the gurgling stream. “Who’s speaking?” When no reply

came, he said, “Answer me!”

Childlike voices giggled. Robert traced them to their source---a shallow cave on the other side of the stream. He searched its shadows for pairs of eyes or any other signs of life but found none.

“If this is some sort of trick…”

Come play with us, Robert.

He hobbled to the stream as sensation surged back into his legs and feet in jolts of stinging needles. He pulled his pocket watch from his coveralls. Its hands stopped on 2:17 p.m. and refused to budge. He slid it into its pocket and hopped from stone to stone across the stream.

That’s it. Play with us.

“Who’s in there?”

Let’s play a game.

Stabbing pain gripped Robert’s head in its vice. Visions flooded his mind. Violent images. He chased Jane and little Roger across the field in the twilight. Forks of bright lightning illuminated the bloody axe in his hand. He caught up to them near the tree where the boys found the nest. Jane shielded their surviving son and begged Robert to stop, but he couldn’t. Forces beyond this world made him their puppet. Robert hoisted the axe high and commenced to hacking his family to pieces.

“Get out of my head!” Robert rose to his feet aided by the trunk of a young ash.

The voices giggled and vanished on a breeze.

***

Robert acted differently after he lost his son. Pete did everything to console the man, but a grieving father had to come to peace in his own time. Summer waned into autumn on Sidewinder and brought with it the usual rhythms of nature. Squirrels scurried around the site, gathering their hauls for the coming cold months. Buck and doe frolicked in the forests opposite where his crews continued to cut down timber. But they all seemed cautious to Pete. Guarded. And for whatever reason, Robert’s presence set them and Pete’s men on edge.

“You really don’t need to be here,” Pete said. “I can handle the men for as long as you and Jane need.”

Robert stared into the blades of grass ahead of them, silent.

“I’m here if you want to talk. I couldn’t imagine---"

“No!” Robert spat as he spoke. “You couldn’t.” He turned his wild glare on Pete. “There are things I’m going through that you will never comprehend.”

Pete stared into rising moonlight. “Take some time off. Get yourself in a better place.”

“My place is perfectly---”

Men shouted from the hilltop: “Raid party! Get your guns!”

Yips and battle cries drowned out their words. Shoshoni on horseback charged them from behind and swung hatchets into their heads. Other warriors appeared on their rides and fired fiery arrows into the back side and rooftop of the Overlook Hotel. Other crewmen raised alarm to the fires and manned a bucket brigade lining up to the stream.

Pete whipped out his pistol and reached to nudge Robert to brandish his sidearm, but his boss had disappeared. Pete ran to the front corner of the hotel and fired shots into the warrior silhouettes galloping across the ridge. Not so much to kill his kinsman, but more so to frighten them away.

The Shoshoni charged off the hilltop, galloping hard down the plain. Three of the warriors fell off of their rides to gunshots from the sawyers. The survivors buried their hatchets into the chests of several men in the bucket brigade.

Pete trained his bead on the chest of a kinsman he recognized. His name escaped Pete, but he’d seen him before. Pete’s finger trembled over his trigger. The warrior slowed his horse and sat tall, proud. Pete lowered his shaking firearm to his side. The warrior leveled his sour stare on him for a moment, then rode off to join his brothers in their retreat into the distant woods.

“Robert?” Pete trudged off through the bucket line. “Anyone see Robert?”

One of the men passed a bucket to the next person in line. “Ran off for the graveyard last I saw.”

Pete cursed and hurried over the hill into the forest and its stream. An unnatural shadow enveloped the forest. Stark silence. Not even a chirp from a cricket. “Robert?”

Pale moonlight washed over the crewman’s tombstone. Pete traced the moonbeams to the other marker and jumped when he found Elias standing over his own grave. “Jesus.”

The boy wore the same shirt and trousers his mother buried him in. His skin was pallid and splotched with jaundiced patches. Dozens of sting marks contorted the boy’s face and neck into a deformed and corrupted version of his former self. Elias looked on Pete, then turned his clouded eyes to the cave.

“Robert?” Pete took the cue and headed for the stream, but ran into his boss before he’d made it three paces.

“Going somewhere, Pete?” Robert emerged from the darkened side of a pine tree. The irises of his eyes glowed like blue rings of starlight.

Pete backpedaled to Elias’s grave. “I---was coming to find you. Make sure you were---”

“All right?” Robert raised his right hand. An axe glinted in the moonlight. “Never better.” He glanced to his dead son. “You on the other hand…”

“Boss, wait.”

Robert’s axe came down faster than Pete could aim his pistol. Searing heat radiated from the gaping wound and the axe head buried in his left shoulder. Pete dropped to his knees as Robert jerked the blade free and swung it down into his left eye. Pete sloughed onto the grave, life leaving him in a hurry. Robert stood over his body with those wild glowing eyes. As he drew a long inhalation, wisps of blue ether snaked from Pete’s nose and mouth and converged inside Robert. Then, the darkness descended.