Read Online How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online
Authors: Harry Turtledove
Ads: Link
funny fellow, boss, when you take it in your mind to be.”
Roosevelt went back into the ranch house for his Winchester. The ranch lay about ten miles north of Helena, in a little valley whose surrounding hills protected it from the worst of the winter blizzards. He was more worried about bears than bandits or hostile Indians, but you never could tell. He took a box of .45 caliber cartridges along with the rifle.
Snow brought the buggy out of the barn almost as quickly as he’d promised. “Here you go,” he said, climbing down from the driver’s bench so Roosevelt could get aboard. “To Helena Handbasket,” he said, and chuckled again. “You struck the mother lode when you came up with that one, sure as hell.”
“Glad you like it.” Roosevelt liked it, too. He stowed the rifle where he could grab it in a hurry if he had to, flicked the reins, and got the horses going toward Helena.
He reached the territorial capital a couple of hours later. Farms much like his own covered most of the flat land, with stretches of forest between them. Here and there, on the higher ground, were shafts and timbers from mines hopeful prospectors had begun. Most of them were years abandoned. Most of the prospectors, like Philander Snow, were making their living in some different line of work these days.
Helena sat in a valley of its own. Some of the log cabins of the earliest settlers, those who’d come just after the end of the War of Secession, still stood down near the bottom of the valley, by the tributary of the Prickly Pear that had made people pause hereabouts in the first place. Newer, finer homes climbed the hills to either side.
Down on Broadway, as Roosevelt drove the wagon toward the newspaper office, he felt himself returned to a cosmopolitan city, even if not to a sophisticated one. Here riding beside him was a bearded prospector leading a pack mule. The fellow still hoped to strike it rich, as did some of his comrades. Every once in a while, those hopes came true. Mines near Helena, and newer ones by Wickes to the south and Marysville to the west, had made millionaires—but only a handful.
A Chinaman in a conical straw hat walked by, carrying two crates hanging from a pole over his right shoulder. Roosevelt approved of Chinese industriousness, but wouldn’t have minded seeing all the Celestials gone from the West.
They don’t fit in
, he thought:
too different from Americans
.
Solomon Katz ran a drugstore near the office of the
Helena Gazette;
Sam Houlihan ran the hardware store next door, and Otto Burmeister the bakery next to that. Among Helena’s ten or twelve thousand people, there were members of every nation ever to set foot on the North American continent.
And, trotting up the street on their ponies, a couple of the original inhabitants of the continent came toward Roosevelt. One of the Sioux wore the buckskin tunic and trousers traditional to his people, the other blue denim trousers and a calico shirt. Idly, Roosevelt wondered what Helena—a medium-sized town at best, but a larger assemblage of people than their tribe had ever managed—seemed like to them.
He shrugged. In the larger scheme of things, their opinion counted for very little. As if to take their minds off the defeat the United States had suffered at the hands of the Confederacy, and also spurred by the Sioux uprisings in Minnesota, the USA had thrown swarms of soldiers across the prairie, subduing the aborigines by numbers and firepower even if not with any great military skill. These days, the Indians could only stand and watch as the lands that had been theirs served the purposes of a stronger race.
Roosevelt looked for the Indians to head into one of the saloons sprouting like mushrooms along Broadway. Instead, they tied up their horses in front of Houlihan’s establishment and went in there. Roosevelt’s head bobbed up and down in approval: Indians who needed hammers or saw blades or a keg of nails were Indians on the way to
Roosevelt went back into the ranch house for his Winchester. The ranch lay about ten miles north of Helena, in a little valley whose surrounding hills protected it from the worst of the winter blizzards. He was more worried about bears than bandits or hostile Indians, but you never could tell. He took a box of .45 caliber cartridges along with the rifle.
Snow brought the buggy out of the barn almost as quickly as he’d promised. “Here you go,” he said, climbing down from the driver’s bench so Roosevelt could get aboard. “To Helena Handbasket,” he said, and chuckled again. “You struck the mother lode when you came up with that one, sure as hell.”
“Glad you like it.” Roosevelt liked it, too. He stowed the rifle where he could grab it in a hurry if he had to, flicked the reins, and got the horses going toward Helena.
He reached the territorial capital a couple of hours later. Farms much like his own covered most of the flat land, with stretches of forest between them. Here and there, on the higher ground, were shafts and timbers from mines hopeful prospectors had begun. Most of them were years abandoned. Most of the prospectors, like Philander Snow, were making their living in some different line of work these days.
Helena sat in a valley of its own. Some of the log cabins of the earliest settlers, those who’d come just after the end of the War of Secession, still stood down near the bottom of the valley, by the tributary of the Prickly Pear that had made people pause hereabouts in the first place. Newer, finer homes climbed the hills to either side.
Down on Broadway, as Roosevelt drove the wagon toward the newspaper office, he felt himself returned to a cosmopolitan city, even if not to a sophisticated one. Here riding beside him was a bearded prospector leading a pack mule. The fellow still hoped to strike it rich, as did some of his comrades. Every once in a while, those hopes came true. Mines near Helena, and newer ones by Wickes to the south and Marysville to the west, had made millionaires—but only a handful.
A Chinaman in a conical straw hat walked by, carrying two crates hanging from a pole over his right shoulder. Roosevelt approved of Chinese industriousness, but wouldn’t have minded seeing all the Celestials gone from the West.
They don’t fit in
, he thought:
too different from Americans
.
Solomon Katz ran a drugstore near the office of the
Helena Gazette;
Sam Houlihan ran the hardware store next door, and Otto Burmeister the bakery next to that. Among Helena’s ten or twelve thousand people, there were members of every nation ever to set foot on the North American continent.
And, trotting up the street on their ponies, a couple of the original inhabitants of the continent came toward Roosevelt. One of the Sioux wore the buckskin tunic and trousers traditional to his people, the other blue denim trousers and a calico shirt. Idly, Roosevelt wondered what Helena—a medium-sized town at best, but a larger assemblage of people than their tribe had ever managed—seemed like to them.
He shrugged. In the larger scheme of things, their opinion counted for very little. As if to take their minds off the defeat the United States had suffered at the hands of the Confederacy, and also spurred by the Sioux uprisings in Minnesota, the USA had thrown swarms of soldiers across the prairie, subduing the aborigines by numbers and firepower even if not with any great military skill. These days, the Indians could only stand and watch as the lands that had been theirs served the purposes of a stronger race.
Roosevelt looked for the Indians to head into one of the saloons sprouting like mushrooms along Broadway. Instead, they tied up their horses in front of Houlihan’s establishment and went in there. Roosevelt’s head bobbed up and down in approval: Indians who needed hammers or saw blades or a keg of nails were Indians on the way to
Similar Books
