The Gilded Age, a Time Travel by Lisa Mason Read Free Book Online

you’ll find some o’ that out in Californ’, young gent.” The old cowboy is
unimpressed.
    “Just
a hair of the dog.” Daniel offers another ciggie, cajoling the coot. “That’s
fine Virginia weed machine-rolled to perfection. Come now, what’ve you got?”
    “Hunnert
twenny proof is a cinch, young gent.” The old cowboy cackles. From beneath the
topcoat, he produces a scummy bottle, a neat piece of glass with flat sides
that fit against the chest and do not extrude indiscreetly. The fifth is down
to four fingers, but that should last till they reach the Port of Oakland.
“This here’s puma piss.”
    “Puma
piss?”
    “Home-brewed
rotgut, tobacco juice, an’ a dose o’ white lightinin’. What some call rat
poison.”
    “Dear
sir, you cannot mean strychnine.”
    “Yessir,
I do, an’ a hunnert twenny proof is a cinch, but ye can’t prove it by me.” The
old cowboy consults with his invisible companion, cackling and nodding.
    Puma
piss! Daniel will have to remember that! “Let’s have a taste, then. Just a
drop, sir.” With sunlight gleaming off his teeth, he offers a third ciggie.
Damn bloody coot! But Daniel can purchase more machine-rolled cigarettes in San
Francisco. The American Tobacco Company is spread out all over the West. He can
get anything he wants in San Francisco. Or so they say.
    But
right now, right now , what he needs is a drink.
    “Ah,
hell.” The old cowboy hands over the bottle.
    “It’s
a cinch.” Daniel winks, knocks back a swallow.
    Vile
cannot approach the taste of stagnant well water infused with putrefaction, but
the sting of newly distilled grain alcohol mangles the inside of his mouth and
his tongue. The taste swiftly becomes irrelevant. He knows the stuff is liquid,
but the sensation in his throat is of scorching fire. Or fangs. Fangs of a ravening
beast.
    In
less than an instant, his heart begins to pound like lunatic desperate to
escape his chains. Pure vertigo seizes him, whirls him around. A black satin
curtain drops over his eyes. Oh, no! Has he suddenly gone blind? Sometimes homebrew
steals your sight along with your sanity. But no, the black satin curtain is
abruptly whisked away.
    And
he stares out at the golden-brown hills of California, curving like the bodies
of women. Golden-brown women lolling about like whores with their golden-brown
breasts and hips and swooping waists. The ill-starred Sioux, perhaps, or the
Apache. Or the fabled Celestials, the Chinese. Golden-brown women harried and
driven by the brute forces of rape and slavery and murder till they have fled,
disguised themselves, mysteriously reincarnated into the landscape itself. He
sees their awful transmogrification, their anger parched and mute save for the
testimony of the hills, the golden-brown hills in which a man could get lost
and die. He hears them screaming now—by God!—feels them reaching for him. They
mean to tear him limb from limb with their curved fingers of thorn. They mean
to drive him mad with their anguish.
    That
high rending sound? It’s only the train whistle.
    Daniel
shuts his eyes, and the black satin curtain falls again. But the blackness is
so dizzying, his lids pop open at once. Now the landscape changes as he speeds
toward his destination. The hills grow greener, studded with shrubs and sturdy
trees. Abundant palms that are the rage in fashionable houses back East grow
wild by the track bed. Flowering bushes shamelessly offer up pink and purple
thunderheads, and huge, twisted succulents are so vibrant and filled with a
peculiar presence that they seem like living creatures in some cunning
disguise, waiting in ambush for the unwary. Waiting to pounce like pumas do.
    Daniel
feels the hand of destiny spinning him round like a Zoetrope. Does he only go
through the motions of his life like a pathetic painted little figure? The tracks
clack below him. The lunatic again, he’s rattling his cage. A great fate awaits
him—he feels this in his heart—unlike anything he’s