Chapter 36 - The Governor’s Citadel
By twilight, the capital did not look like an American city; it looked like a fortress under siege.
At every intersection along the southern perimeter, barricades of overturned freight wagons, sandbags, and sharpened timber blocked the streets. Mercenaries in dark gray dusters stood guard around iron braziers, repeating shotguns resting across their chests, checking every carriage and wagon that entered the commercial district.
High on the granite plateau overlooking the valley, the Capitol Building glowed in the freezing mist. Its towering marble dome was illuminated by the sulfurous yellow glare of dozens of calcium searchlights mounted upon the roof parapets. Below the grand portico, carriages of the territorial elite—wealthy mine owners, syndicate lawyers, and corrupt magistrates—were arriving in a continuous, glittering procession.
Inside the warmth of the grand ballroom, violins played Strauss waltzes. Crystal chandeliers cast warm, golden light over silk dresses, diamond necklaces, and military dress uniforms.
Behind the facade of elegance, however, the air was suffocating with fear.
In the executive study on the third floor, Governor Sterling stood before the massive walk-in hearth, watching a servant shovel birch logs onto the roaring blaze. Sterling was a small, immaculate man with slicked silver hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and eyes as cold and calculating as a banker’s vault.
Across his massive mahogany desk lay the treaty of transfer: forty pages of parchment transferring all territorial mineral rights, public rail lines, and unpatented lands to the Northern Syndicate for the sum of four million dollars in bearer bonds.
Beside the desk stood General Vane. His uniform was torn, caked in frozen mud, his left arm bound tightly against his ribs where a bullet had ripped through the muscle.
"You let Vance bring a federal judge into the pass?" Sterling asked, not looking at him, his voice dangerously soft.
"It wasn't just the judge," Vane hissed, leaning heavily on the desk, his breath rattling. "Caleb Vance is alive. He was on the cowcatcher. He shot my horse out from under me at sixty yards."
Sterling froze. The silver pocket watch in his waistcoat clicked softly in the silence. Slowly, the Governor turned around, his pale eyes narrowing to slits.
"Caleb Vance is dead," Sterling said coldly. "We blew the trestle under his coach with twenty sticks of dynamite. No man survives a three-hundred-foot fall into a frozen gorge."
"Tell that to my shoulder!" Vane snarled. "He's alive, Sterling! And he has Boone with him, and the girl! If they reach Judge Vance's court before the morning telegraph wires are spliced, the President will sign the martial authorization! The regulars will be marching from Fort Meade within the week!"
Sterling stared at Vane for a long, terrible moment. Then, with terrifying calm, he walked to the corner of the study and pulled a gold-tasseled bell cord.
Two men stepped into the study from the private antechamber. They did not wear uniforms. They were broad, brutal men dressed in heavy tweed suits, their faces scarred from bare-knuckle ring fights, each carrying a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun tucked under their coats.
"General Vane has suffered a traumatic shock in the mountains," Sterling said, adjusting his cufflink. "Escort him down to the subterranean vault. Lock him in the iron cell until the reception is over."
"Sterling!" Vane roared, reaching for his sidearm with his good hand. "You traitorous son of a—"
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Before the revolver cleared leather, the lead thug stepped in, driving the butt of his shotgun into Vane’s shattered shoulder. Vane shrieked in agony, dropping to his knees on the Persian rug. The second man cracked a heavy sap across the back of the General’s neck, knocking him instantly limp.
"Drag him out," Sterling ordered coldly. "And tell the guards at the aqueduct grates to double the dynamite charges. If anyone enters those tunnels tonight, I want them buried under two hundred tons of granite."
