I stumbled upon the raygun in 1879.
For reasons few would guess, I have been granted a history and a range of perspective that would dwarf that of common men of my day. Fate saw to it that I be plucked from my own time and place and relocated to an existence far stranger.
From what I recall of my origin, I was born Cylas Renford in 1853 in Indiana and that I was barely 12 years old when the war claimed the life of my father. Like many a young man, I too saw war as an adventure and a chance to avenge my father's death, but my mother would hear nothing of it. I became an apprentice in a lamp-maker's shop for the duration. When I came of age I still sought adventure and I abandoned the honest trade I'd learned to try and make my fortune out west.
After failing thoroughly as a miner, a farm hand, a bar-tender, and finally a newspaper man, I made a stab at being a painter.
Having elected to make my fortune in painting the still untamed wilderness of Canada, I drifted into New Westminster in summer of 1879, little suspecting the troubles to come.
I frequented a bar on Hatzic island, not far from a rooming house where I'd secured lodging shortly after arriving. The place was smokey and seedy, filled with prison guards from the Skookum House, Chinese laborers, and backwoods types afraid to get too near the town.
It was here that I befriended an Indian guide named Morninghawk. His ambition was to travel to Alaska and mine for gold, but he was held up here by lack of funds, among other things. Lack of funds was an issue for me as well, so I joined him in a cozy little cabin. That was just for sleeping, though, we spent more time at the bar.
One night at the bar he told me “My cousin wrote me. More Wendigo executions. Every madman thinks he's a monster.”
“Is that anything like the Sasquatch or something?” I asked.
“Something. A Wendigo is a cursed cannibal, an evil spirit. A Sasquatch is a hairy monster that walks like a man. Funny you should mention that, actually.”
“Oh?”
“There have been some of the hairy beasts seen lately, in the woods and in various spots around the border.”
“Well, I may get my chance to spot one, then. I mean to go a fair distance out in the woods and get some landscapes done.”
“You know, if it's crazy stories you want to hear, I got one from a fella at that office where the gold-miners congregate. He says there's supposed to be this race of secret people...”
Our talk was cut short when a brawl began and we were forced to leave.
On the walk back towards my boarding house, Morninghawk said “Watch out for bears.”
“What about Sasquatch?”
“Them too. I'm told there's trouble when they show up.”
In fact, the troubles started very distinctly when I was out in the woods on a Sunday afternoon, trying to paint a bend in a creek. Before I'd made good my start on it, a voice shouted out from the trees behind me.
Had I played deaf my life might have been very different.
If I'm not sure what sort of man I've become, I knew even less about it then. I was hardened by my stubborn pursuits of manly trades and adventures, but I never quite convinced myself that I was on track to the heroic distinction of a Seth Jones or a Natty Bumpo. I suppose I look masculine enough, but my features never became as strong as my fathers' and I've never been able to grow a beard or mustache.
I must have looked man enough just then, with my paints and highwater pants, because from behind me I heard “You, there! There's a band of outlaws loose and I need a deputy.”
Naturally I turned and replied with some confusion “What do I want with a gang of outlaws?”
He was an imposing figure of a man, carrying a long rifle, broad with muscle, his face half hidden in a wavy black beard that melded with the hair from his chest at the open top of his shirt. “You can get back to your painting once we have 'em. For now you're deputized.”
“Suppose I'm one of the gang?”
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He laughed just then, a loud thunderous laugh. “It's unlikely as you've blonde hair and I'm hunting none other than The Black Donnellys.”
Reluctantly, I took the pistol he offered and tried to keep up with him as he rushed through the trees.
I learned through quick breathless conversation that he was an Inspector Enfield and that he'd trailed George and Steven Donnelly from Ontario and that they had amassed a gang of armed men who were engaged in smuggling and murder for hire, among other things.
As if on cue, we broke into a clearing leading onto a sharp ravine and crossing a log that spanned the top were the two Irish rogues Enfield had descried, along with at least a half-dozen Mongolian riffle men!
“Lookout!” Enfield cried and grabbed me down among some ferns and undergrowth, his rifle spitting death instantaneously. Bullets from the outlaws shattered the bark on the trees near us.
I took a crack with the Smith & Wesson he'd handed me and did little better than splintering the log-bridge.
Enfield fired again like a man possessed, and managed to knock one of the gang from the bridge to fall to his doom.
Time seemed to lose it's meaning as they held us under a heavy assault, the few shots we returned meaning little more than defense.
At last they seemed to be on to move, towards a thick wall of trees.
Enfield rolled over behind a bullet-battered tree trunk and said “We can still get them. I'll head under cover up the hill straight after them, you get up to the other side of that log in case they decide to sneak back that way. Hurry!”
I started off in the direction he'd pointed, trying to keep behind trees and anything else that might stop a flying bullet. Every now and then I heard a shot ring out, but I seemed to be leaving the action behind.
A series of moss-covered boulders formed a sort of giant stairway leading up to the top of the ravine from the level of the clearing. I thought I'd get a clear path to where I was headed when I ran headlong up against a tightly interwoven wall of ancient trees.
Far off gunfire still rang out, a reminder that I must hurry.
I searched along the top of the stone stepping, looking for some means to reach get through the trees, but nothing presented itself to my frantic scrutiny. I returned to the sheer edge of the ravine where the rock dropped away sharply above a fern-covered cliff and treetops lost in the mist below.
It seemed that some of the roots and broken off logs hanging over the edge might allow me to climb higher. Without delay I started over a mass of crushed branches to an old and mighty tree had fallen recently. I clung to whatever purchase I could reach, trying not to look down.
A groaning sound came from the debris as I shifted my weight and, before I could ask myself what it meant, the doubtful platform snapped and dropped me downward.
For a moment I fell through empty space.
The wall of the ravine caught me and soon I tumbled through moss, shrubs, and ferns. Further down I began to roll, narrowly missing rocks and trees.
Beside a tricking stream, I finally came to a stop, lying face up so I could see just how far I'd fallen. The log-bridge was now a tiny toothpick across a ribbon of visible sky.
When I went to move I felt a sharp pain in my back. I rolled over, expecting to see a rock. What I found surprised me.
The object, half pounded into the sandy mud beside the water, was a kind of gun. I hesitated at first to call it this as it did not appear to have any kind of carriage for bullets. It had a metal handle, a trigger and trigger guard, and the elongated part on the front was obviously a barrel. It also had two bulbous spheres along the barrel, one of which has a lightning-bolt type design emblazoned on it. There was also some kind of priming knob on the back with what looked like a crystal cap on it.
“Could this belong to the gang of Mongolians or those two Irishmen?” I asked myself.
I picked up the weapon and brushed it off. It didn't appear to have any external mechanism or anything else that the sand might clog.
I balanced it in my hand and compared it with the Smith & Wesson that Enfield had given me.
A series of loud crashes sounded behind me and a roar to shake my soul!
I spun in time to see an enormous grizzly lumbering towards me.
On reflex I squeezed the trigger, but it was that of the new gun, not of the revolver.
Instead of a bullet, rays of brilliant colored light blasted out from the muzzle like concentrated sunlight. A weird rhythmic hum sound came along with it. The time I had to remark on this was a mere fraction of a second, for after that I had the shock of my life to see the huge hairy beast's body blown to pieces as if hit by a cannonball!
Hardly appreciating that I'd just caused this spectacle, I dropped the gun and tripped over my own feet, landing awkwardly in the freezing water.
Large chunks of the bear's body lay scattered and burning where the threat had once been.
When I returned to my senses, I retrieved both the guns and stuck them in my belt. Surely the new weapon would help even the odds against those outlaws, if I ever managed to catch up with them.
I ran back upstream, hoping against hope to make it back to the higher ground in time to be of some assistance to the detective.
“I may never make it as a painter,” I said to myself breathlessly, “perhaps I may have a use as a crime-fighter yet.”
As I pounded my way up out of the ravine, I heard a sound from above that made me look straight above me.
My next shock came when I saw a large object glide over the tops of the trees. Too large to be a bird of any kind, it was clearly some kind of metal craft, a craft that could fly!