The Gate Jumper: Rustlers in the Desert (Steampunk).
Helen’s story begins with “Lending a Hand.” Click here to read!
4255 Words, appox. 17 minute read.
Helen ground a dirt clod to dust beneath her boot. Two months on her ranch just outside Salvation Springs and half a year’s profits gone. She bit her lip and forced down the little girl inside of her that wanted to cry.
Cattle rustlers.
Before moving out west, the term was completely unfamiliar. She was a city girl with an unusual interest in the way things worked–especially the human body. But one morning, she came out to the barn and found one less cow than before. She thought coyotes at first, but they were too small to nab anything but calves. And she certainly didn’t have any of those yet. A quick investigation ruled out an animal attack of any kind. She thought about going to the authorities, but she knew very well how the people of Salvation Springs looked at a newcomer who made a fuss. And she wasn’t sure it was stolen.
But when it happened again, she went to the Salvation Springs Sheriff and reported it. He told her he could do very little about cattle rustlers in that area.
“Better learn how to shoot.”
The words stirred like dust devils in her brain. No one in Salvation Springs knew that underneath her right glove hid a mechanical hand. She had modified it to pick up things, created a few attachments for making the ranch work easier. It was good for handling jobs that didn’t take much dexterity. But it had been her dominant hand before she lost it, and no matter how many times she tried to shoot with her left, she couldn’t get the hang of it.
A rattlesnake hiss nearby drew her attention to a small, young Saguaro cactus about fifty feet away. If she could hit a snake, she could hit a cattle rustler.
She drew her revolver with her left hand, took aim, and fired one off into the dust about a foot from where the snake hissed.
“Damn it!” She scolded herself. She tried two more times before the perfectly healthy snake took a hint and slithered away. I knew life out West would be hard, but why does it have to be this hard?
She walked to her workshop, stomping most of the way. The sandy soil made her little tirade very unsatisfying. Once inside the workshop, she removed the sweat-soaked handkerchief from around her neck and slammed the gun down on the table.
The workshop was part of the deal from Mr. Jones, but the man more slick than that rattlesnake had stripped the place of everything save for some scrap metal and an old autocarriage barely distinguishable from the scrap piled on it. It took Helen a good chunk of the money she had from selling her Practice to get the basic tools she needed. She had left all her good ones behind, thinking the cost too high to ship it with her. Another mistake on a long list.
The autocarriage factory Mr. Jones sold her was in similar shape. Even worse, everyone who worked there was on strike, thinking they could squeeze the new owner. Led by Mr. Benard, a dirty, alcoholic fellow that looked more like a desperado than a machinist. She tried to hire help, but no one dared go up against Mr. Benard. He had a reputation for being a quick draw.
So for now, Mr. Benard and his cronies put the squeeze on her, and she was certainly feeling it. It took all the attention she had just to keep her cattle fed, and now those were being squeezed too.
She removed her mechanical hand and set it next to her revolver, then paced around the small workshop. The roof was missing two dozen wood shingles, the door was loose on its hinges, and one wall was bent in from an accident involving her donkey. The gold rush era building was falling apart, and so was she. If she couldn’t hang on to her cattle, she had to get the autocarriage factory going again. But the only thing those stubborn machinists respected was gold. And with the pay they were asking for, they might as well have been cattle rustlers themselves.
She sat on the stool at her workbench and grabbed her mechanical hand to reattach it. No use standing around moping. She thought. She had work to do. The dozen cattle she had left needed their watering trough refilled.
Helen put her handkerchief back around her neck and clasped the ends with a metal clip. She grabbed two aluminum buckets from the workshop and went back out into the blazing sun, toward the well. She attached the bucket to a clip on the end of a rope and lowered it down.
“Sweating already,” she mumbled. When the rope started to slack at the top, she rotated the crank the other way. The bucket slowly rose, and when it reached the top, Helen extended her arm. The tightly wound pulleys on her false hand clicked into motion and opened her grip. With a bit of a tug, the hand closed around the bucket handle and she retrieved it. It was much lighter than usual. She looked inside; the bucket wasn’t even a quarter full.
“No, no no!” she said, dropping the bucket back down the well. “Please don’t tell me the well is dry.”
She returned the bucket, again with the same amount of water. The well had almost nothing left to offer.
Helen collapsed into the stone blocks on the sides of the well. This time, she did cry. I never should have left home. I’m doomed. Mother was right. Selene was right.
“You lost a hand and that didn’t stop you.” The words sprang to Helen’s mind, in her voice, but as if a kind, gentle father spoke them. “Are you going to let this stop you? Or are you going to do something about it?”
Helen stopped her crying and stood. “I’m going to do something about it,” she said aloud. She stomped back to the workshop and took a good look around. The autocarriage didn’t work–a broken gear between the steam engine and the drive shaft was one of the causes, and there were a few other parts that needed repair before it would be road-worthy.
But the steam engine did work. That was nothing to shake a stick at. There might be a chance. I just need some parts.
“Welcome to Lucky’s!” the old man behind the counter said as Helen walked into Lucky’s Junkyard. “How can I help a pretty young lady such as yourself?”
In spite of herself, Helen blushed. She was wearing mechanics overalls and a cap and had been mistaken for a man a few times on the way to the junkyard. Not that she got much attention from men when she wore a dress. That was her sister’s field of expertise. Another reason she left home. Next to Selene Kohl, she wasn’t a diamond in the rough, she was a rhinestone in the trash.
“Sir, I need a drill for digging a well.”
Lucky whistled. “Not many of those around here. Most everyone gets their water from the Bell’s.”
“I’m afraid the Bell Waterworks doesn’t service my ranch on the edge of town.”
Lucky nodded slowly and worked at his long gray mustache. “You know, I think I still have one from the gold rush days. Follow me.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Lucky walked at a slow pace with his cane towards his backlot, leading Helen this way and that, around junk piling up well above her head.
“Sir, how do you know where everything is?”
Lucky tapped the side of his head. “Not just a hat rack, you know.”
She chuckled. “I certainly did not mean to imply anything else.”
“Hard to make it out here as a rancher. How’s business?”
“Not well, sir.”
“And why’s that?”
Helen wasn’t sure if she should complain about her problems to this stranger. She hadn’t met many good people since moving. Everyone had an angle they were working on her, either to get her money or…sometimes trying to get something else. She learned quickly that some of the men around town had bad reputations, and an ignorant young woman, new in town, was their only chance for a score. Salvation Springs outlawed the whorehouses when it was founded.
But this Lucky fellow seemed different. He was a holdover from the gold rush days. Most of the men who survived the gold rush either moved on to the next rumor of gold, or stuck around and became barons of Salvation Springs. People like the Bells, the Havermanns, or the Brickles. Rumor had it they were all ruthless misers. The man runs a junkyard; certainly he’s not a baron or a miser.
“It isn’t cattle rustlers, is it?” Lucky asked.
Helen gasped. “How did you know?”
Lucky stopped walking and looked her straight in the eyes. “Let me tell you something, miss. Salvation Springs needs good hard working folk like you. What it doesn’t need is more cattle rustlers.”
“Of course, but the Sheriff said he can’t do anything about it.”
Lucky nodded slowly. “You know, you can shoot any animal that threatens your livestock. You get my drift?”
Helen swallowed a knot in her throat. “I know, but I…” she looked to her gloved mechanical hand. “I’m not a good shot.”
“Might want to start practicing if you’re going to survive out here, miss. Just a piece of advice from an old man who has lived through it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Here’s the augur you need,” Lucky said, turning and pointing to a giant, twenty-foot drill bit that sat on its side. “It’s old, but it’ll do.” He pulled out a piece of paper from his overalls and a small pencil. “Just write down directions to your ranch and I’ll have my grandson drop it off tonight.”
“How much do I owe you?”
Lucky chuckled. “I’m just happy to have it out my way. I’ve tripped over the damn thing one too many times. Would be nice to know it has a purpose besides trying to kill me.”
Helen crossed her arms. “Certainly you’re after something. No one around here gives things away for free.”
“No one is me, ma’am. Except, you know, me!” Lucky winked.
What angle is he playing? She wondered. Maybe his grandson was going to make a pass at her. Or maybe he was going to come do cattle rustling of his own once he knew where her ranch was.
But she needed water. She needed the augur. No one else in town had one. She took the pencil and wrote down directions to her ranch.
Still wary of Lucky’s generosity, Helen lined up the augur to the tender-end of the autocarriage, then hammered the pin into the angle bracket. She spent half the day getting the autocarriage unburied, then used her donkey to drag it over to a place on the ranch where a few, small cottonwood trees grew. She cannibalized several more parts off the autocarriage to make the crane for the augur, and what was left was a strange, broken abomination. She calculated she had two more days of water between the little bit from the well drying up and her emergency reserve. But that might not last long keeping the steam engine fed.
Finally, she had everything ready to go. She shoveled coal into the furnace of the steam engine, then ignited it. She waited in eager anticipation for the water to boil, then she just had to flip the lever to open the valve, and the augur should turn.
A whistle indicated the steam engine was ready to go. She grabbed the lever.
“Here goes,” she breathed out, then pulled hard.
The lever didn’t budge.
She grabbed onto it with both hands, false and real, braced her feet and pulled hard. Still nothing. Pressure was slowly building in the engine. She ran to the pressure release valve, but it was rusted shut.
“No no no!” she mumbled. Her mind flashed back to the airship where she lost her hand. She knew what would happen if the pressure built too high. She couldn’t open the water reservoir to release it–the steam would burn her face to a crisp. She didn’t have enough water on hand to put the fire out. And if she ran away and let it blow–all her hard work was for nothing.
And she would still have no water.
She cursed herself and her stupidity. So many things she should have checked before firing it up. If she had both her hands, certainly she could make the lever flip. But pulling with the mechanical hand tugged at her arm and elbow, and she could only pull so much before the socket would fail and come off.
“What do I do?” she cried out.
“Time to stop thinking of your hand as your greatest enemy,” the voice in her head returned. “There’s power in that hand.”
An idea sprang to mind.
She wrapped her mechanical hand around the lever, then grabbed a screwdriver from her overalls. The hand worked off of tension, and she wound it up every morning. Once when she was modifying it, the tension released and sent a small gear clean through the side of her house, narrowly missing her shoulder. She needed access to that power.
“Here goes,” she said, then purposefully jammed the screwdriver into one of the gears and wrenched it. The tension suddenly released and pulled her arm down to the ground. She yelped as her face hit the floorboards of the autocarriage.
“Ow,” she mumbled. That hurt. She would probably be feeling it in her chin every time she ate anything for a week.
Chuff. Chuff. Chuff. The sound, slow at first, began to pick up, faster and faster, followed by a whirring sound. She quickly released her mechanical hand from the socket, then rose and worked at the controls with her good hand. The augur moved up and down with one, and with another, it started to spin. It worked. The strength in her mechanical hand had pulled the lever, and steam now powered the drill.
She had to leave her mechanical hand where it was for now, but she could make do. “Hopefully this one works.” She slowly pulled one of the levers, and the drill lowered to soil height. She pulled another lever, and it started digging down into the soil. Giddy with excitement, she jumped up and down a few times.
“Yes!” she squealed. She had done it. She operated the drill up and down methodically for the next few hours, digging down then bringing it back up to shake off the cuttings before digging again.
The sun was about to set on her second day of drilling. She had only been drilling for half the day before, so she made a lot of progress since then. But she wasn’t there yet. She knew there was a chance her first dig would be dry, but she had no idea how long it would take to get down far enough for even a shot at it. She had stopped for an hour at one point to change out the steel cable and increase the depth on the augur. She also added some colorful ribbons to the steel braided rope so she could see how far down she was. The red ribbon at the top indicated the depth of the other well, and on the last push, that ribbon was nearly below ground.
But all her emergency water was spent. The last bucket in the old well brought up only enough for a single swig of water. If this didn’t work, she would have to go to town and beg someone to bring her water.
Maybe the Bell Waterworks will just take me in as an indentured servant.
The augur slowly rose and she shook off the tailings. One more.
She lowered the drill back down, waiting until the steel rope indicated slacking, then pulled the crank to spin it. She let it spin longer than before, putting everything she had left of her precious steam into this last push for water.
She stopped the turning and pulled the lever to bring the augur back up. She watched the cable slide over the wheels of the wench. The other ribbons she tied on came up, one by one. The whine of the winch sounded in her ears in between the loud chuffing of the steam engine. Crumbs of dirt slid off the cable in a small pile as the wheel squeezed them off. When the top of the augur finally appeared, she held her breath.
Water dripped off the rusty metal on the bottom.
“Water!” she screamed, her voice breaking from the dryness in her throat. She let out a sigh of relief. She had done it. She had a new well. She ran to get the crank system from the old well and rigged it just enough to send a bucket down. When she brought it back up, the bucket was full. It was a bit dirty, but it would have to do. She drank, then worked around the grit in her mouth and spat it out.
“Very unladylike, Helen!” she said in her mother’s voice, then laughed. She was probably a bit delirious from the heat. But she didn’t care. She looked over at her mechanical hand, still attached to the lever from yesterday.
“There’s power in that hand,” she said, repeating the words that encouraged her before. She worked to remove it now. It would need repairs…but repairs were an opportunity for upgrades. “I wonder what else I could do with this.”
Once again, an idea sprang to mind.
Nearly one month later, under the light of a full moon, Helen hid behind a barrel next to her barn, and waited. The new well had done wonders for her cattle and her horses, and even her sorry little cabbage patch was spouting up nicely. Her factory workers wanted another “negotiating meeting” tomorrow, which she dreaded, but she had another problem to deal with first.
After giving her cattle rustler problem a nice, long think, she put two and two together. Both cattle were taken on a cloudless night with a full moon. Yesterday had been cloudy, so she risked sleep. But tonight was clear, and she was ready.
And in the distance, the sound of two horses galloping became louder and louder. She pulled out her spyglass and peeked through. Two men, by the shape of them, riding in. The cattle rustlers. Her stomach twisted and turned in knots.
I’ll scare them off with warning shots. She was about to do just that, but she noticed pistol butts glittering at their hips. What if they shoot back? Can I hit them from this distance? Can they hit me?
She didn’t know if she made the right decision, but indecision made it for her. The men were coming close, and they reined in their horses to a stop and dismounted.
“Two tonight,” one of them said to the other.
“Two? You sure, boss?”
“Helen’s just a foolish little girl, she can’t do nothin’ about it.”
Helen’s good hand balled into a fist. She stepped out of her hiding place.
“You best better get back on your horses and never come here again!” she shouted. “Or I will shoot you dead!”
The two silhouettes turned to her, then they looked at each other. One of them started laughing.
“What are you gonna do about it, little lady?”
In the moonlight, she saw their hands at their hips, ready to draw.
“You think you fast enough to draw on both of us, little lady?”
Helen hovered her mechanical hand close to her pistol butt. “This is your last warning.”
Even with their cold eyes shadowed by their cowboy hats, she knew they were starting her down. But she didn’t focus on their eyes. She watched their hands, so close to their pistols. Then she saw hands move.
She slapped her elbow on her side, and her mechanical one snapped into action. The tensioning belts she installed responded to the unique motion, and as quick as a rattlesnake bite, her hand drew her pistol and fired. A puff of dust exploded from the chest of one of the cattle rustlers, and he dropped dead, his hand still on the butt of his pistol.
She adjusted her arm toward the other man and slapped her elbow again, her mechanical hand pulled the hammer then immediately fired another shot. At the same time, that rustler fired back at her, and she felt pain in her shoulder. But she struck the second rustler in the neck, and he dropped like the first.
She looked to her shoulder–the bullet had just grazed her. She gasped, then leaned over and retched. She had removed bullets from men before–but never put bullets in them.
When she stopped throwing up, she collected herself and walked over to the two desperados. She gasped when she recognized them.
“Why those no good, dirty rotten–” she bit off the curse and the residual bile rising in her throat. Something inside her turned to steel. “This is the last time anyone pushes me around!”
The following day, Helen watched and waited as six of her factory workers rode up to her ranch. The way they were hootin’ and hollarin’ it sounded like half of them were already drunk. She narrowed her eyes, anger boiling up in her like a steam engine.
They all rode up to where she stood, in front of the doors to her barn. Mr. Benard prodded his horse out in front of his cronies, and removed his black cowboy hat, pressing it to his chest.
“Miss Kohl,” he said, then put his hat back on. “I trust you’ve had time to consider our proposal.”
“I have.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say that offer is no longer on the table.” The other workers laughed and patted each other on the back. “I’m afraid you’ve kept us waiting too long. It’s double wages now, or nothing at all. What do you say?”
She waited for the laughter to die down before responding. “Counter-offer.”
“What’s that?” Benard said, cupping a hand to his ear. “Speak up, girl!” The men laughed again.
She didn’t wait this time. “Counter-offer!” she shouted. “You will work at reduced wages until you produce something we can sell. After the first sale, we talk about your wages going back to normal, what Mr. Jones was paying you.”
Mr. Benard’s cronies looked to him, their lips smirking, eyes glittering. A few of them spat chewing tobacco in different directions across her land.
“Not sure I understand yer accent, Miss,” Mr. Benard said. “Because it sounded like yer was sayin’ we would get paid less than before. Now my hearin’ ain’t what it used to, but perhaps you would like to reeeee-viiiise what you said?”
The way he emphasized the word like she was stupid brought the steam boiling inside her to a full whistle. But she had leverage now. She just had to keep it together. “How about this for a reeeee-vision, Mr. Benard? You agree to work at half wages until we make money, or you’ll all be hanged.”
“Hangin’?” Mr. Benard barked out the word. “Now why the helt would we be goin’ to hang?”
“That’s the penalty for stealing cattle, Mr. Benard.” Helen took her gloved mechanical hand and shoved aside one of the barn doors. The morning light filtered in on two bodies.
Mr. Benard suddenly looked sober. “Th-th-thems Buford and Hames!”
“I thought they was just drunk off their asses when they didn’t show this mornin’!” another one of the men said.
“Yes, I caught them trying to steal my cattle last night. Imagine my surprise when I realized my own employees were stealing from me, Mr. Benard.”
“You-you-you gonna hang for this, Ms. Kohl!”
“No, I don’t think so. After all, it’s my land you’re riding on Mr. Benard. So, I suggest you accept my offer for continued employment.”
Mr. Benard’s hand crept towards his pistol.
“You think you can draw faster than me, Mr. Benard?” Helen warned in a voice colder than the bottom of her new well. “That’s what Buford and Hames thought too.”
Benard’s hand shook, and eased away from his holster. “W-what are yer gonna do?”
“I’m going to give you one more chance to accept my generous offer, and we both go back to making money. And, more importantly, you get to live.”
“Y-y-yes ma’am. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll be there working. No more talk of hangin’, yes?”
Helen turned up her chin and smiled. “Good doing business with you. Now get off my land. And if you ever dare come back–you’ll be fertilizer for my cabbage patch.”
Mr. Benard turned toward the thriving cabbage, and his face drained of color. He dug his spurs in and turned, his cronies fleeing with him like dogs with their tails tucked between their legs.
When they were a ways off, Helen ducked behind the barn to catch her breath. She had kept her nerves together by a thread.
“I did it!” she said, over and over again until she gathered herself. She removed the glove from her mechanical hand, worked it into a fist, and raised it into the air. “Watch out, Salvation Springs! There’s a new factory owner in town!”
Thanks for reading. Interesting in more Western Steampunk adventures? Click here to read about a showdown with desperados and dynamite!
