It had taken Chandler a few weeks to deal with the hole in the ground. Once he was done, he could move on his way.

The first thing he did was load the mummy on the recovered horse. He made sure to wrap it in a blanket before placing it over the saddle. He didn’t want it to come apart on the ride back.

He rode back to Last Stop, found whomever was the law with the sheriff gone, and explained how he had found the mummy and horse. He didn’t tell the deputy about the monster. That would have been unbelievable.

He had then requested as much gunpowder and dynamite the miners could spare. The reasoning he gave them was caving in the hole to keep the water flowing to them and the neighboring town so they could do their business.

He wasn’t going to explain that he planned to shut the hole on the monster because he wasn’t sure if it was dead, and he wasn’t going down in its den to find out. It would be enough to just shut the hole and let it dig somewhere else when it healed up.

On the other hand, closing the hole would keep the river from turning and going back to the hole and drying the town and miner camp out.

The miners gave him a wagon full of explosives and showed him how to arm the various fuses and basic what not to do so he wouldn’t blow himself up. They asked him to return the wagon when he was done.

He gave them some extra money for the wagon. He didn’t plan to bring it back.

Chandler lit the fuse and pushed the wagon into the hole. Once the front wheels were over the edge, he pushed the bottom forward until gravity took over. He let the wagon fall out of sight. Then he ran to where he had left his horse and the draft horses that had pulled the wagon for him cropping some kind of tough grass.

He grabbed their reins and traces and led them away from the hole as fast as he could. He was not familiar with how much of an explosion he was going to cause. He hoped that a shallow cave-in would be the result.

The gunpowder and dynamite going off shook the area. Dust jumped up in the air as he fled. He kept his feet, pulling his horses to run with him. The ground next to the hole collapsed down. Water from the river rushed into the depression.

Chandler kept running until he was sure the collapsing tunnels wouldn’t reach him. He stopped and looked back. He nodded. It wasn’t perfect but it was the best he could do at the moment.

His bomb blast had created a lake with the river filling it up as it rushed down toward Last Stop. Maybe that would help the water beast somehow, but it wasn’t his concern unless he came back through this way and it was still trying to get more water for its domain.

The explosion might have killed it with the collapsing ground. He wasn’t going to dig down and make sure. That would take the rest of this life and maybe a few more besides. It was better to walk away now with a temporary win, and come back if he had to later.

Maybe if he saw one of his contemporaries, he could pass on the word to keep an eye on things in the area.

He patted his horses down and made sure his supplies were still intact. He had to take the draft horses back to the mining camp where they were needed to pull equipment into place.

He took one more look around. He wouldn’t say it was a job well done, but it was done. He hoped future generations enjoyed the lake if the beast was really dead. He could see it being a trap for the unwary if the thing still lived.

He mounted and rode south, pulling the draft horses behind him. He arrived in the mining camp after another few days camping out under the stars. He found the foreman and handed the horses back, with some extra dollars to cover any expenses.

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He decided to stop in town and get a drink before he headed back out. He still had to head back north like he planned and then west. This detour had cost him some time.

He walked into the saloon where he started this adventure. It was more crowded, more lively, and full of people who had some hope given back to them. He walked to the bar, looking around at the mob.

The bartender waved him down to the end. A glass with whiskey waited for him on the counter.

“What happened?,” asked the bartender.

“I don’t know what happened to the sheriff and the rest of the men he took up north,” said Chandler. “Didn’t see them. I don’t know what happened to the dead man I brought back and turned over to the deputy for burial.”

He had a good idea based on what he had seen, but he wasn’t going to tell anyone that.

You just didn’t say that a monster feeding on water might have dragged a posse of men to their doom when they went to interfere with its dam, and actually left one of the victims out because it forgot to drag the body away, or was reaching for the horse after the snack. The horse was just faster to run away than the man.

Maybe the horse left its rider to his doom.

If that happened, that was a smarter horse than most.

“The gossips are saying that you took a lot of dynamite back north,” said the

bartender.

“There was a big hole in the ground up there,” said Chandler. “Now, it’s a lake next to the river. If it stays like that, your problem should be solved.”

“What if it doesn’t stay like that?,” asked the bartender.

“Send for the Calvary and tell them to bring all the cannons they can,” said Chandler. “Can I have another shot? I have to be moving along.”

“The town needs a new sheriff,” said the bartender. He poured another splash of whiskey into the glass.

“I’m not ready to settle down anywhere yet, and I attract trouble,” said Chandler. “There’s a place up north I have to see before too much longer. I might sail out to see what I can see.”

“Good luck with that,” said the bartender. “You saved the town. People won’t forget.”

“They won’t even know,” said Chandler. He downed the drink in a gulp. “Hold me a spot for the next time I come through. Get better whiskey.”

Chandler turned and walked out of the saloon. He pulled his hat down and gathered the reins of his horse. He mounted and pointed his horse north again.

The horse expressed its opinion.

“I know,” said Chandler. He smiled. “But we’re not coming back this time.”

The horse flicked its ear in disbelief.

“Trust me,” said Chandler. “We’ve done all we can. The rest is up to the town to put everything together. Hopefully they will have something else when the silver runs out.”

The King let his horse set the pace. He wasn’t in a hurry. If the animal wanted to walk the whole way, he was good with that.

Eventually they would run into something else that needed his touch. It was fate.

He dwelled on old memories as he rode out of the town. He drifted by the mining camp without a thought. He reached the limit of the habitation and kept going.

He figured he would make camp when the horse refused to walk any more. He could roll up in a blanket and sleep without eating one night on the road. A hearty breakfast in the morning would fix any hunger and get him ready to get back on the road.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

The moon was high in the sky when the horse picked a place it didn’t want to leave. Chandler gave it some of the feed he had packed, and some water. Then he pulled the saddle off and used that for a pillow as he settled in on the ground.

He watched the sky, wondering what the future would bring. Would he keep walking the world when everything else had crumbled away to nothing around him? Would he find what he was looking for in that unknown time? Would he be the last one left out of his contemporaries?

He talked things over with himself as he waited for sleep to take him to the land of memory. Maybe he would see his descendants there. Some of his lives had produced offspring. He didn’t know where every one of them happened to be in the world. He thought he would know them when he saw them thanks to his special dispensation.

He smiled as he drifted away.

He had walked the world, life to life for thousands of years. He saw no end in sight for him. The best he could do was keep walking, try to fix any problem he could, defend humanity from things that shouldn’t be there.

Moving into dreams, he saw his lives stretch out behind him from the original King of a forgotten people who had been destroyed by a hand from another reality to who he was now. He didn’t see his next life, but felt it coming closer. He would be stepping into it soon. He could feel it.

That wasn’t his concern.

He already knew the curse of the King was to die fighting. It had pursued him all of his life so far. From slavery, to war, to banditry and revenge as the West was opened for settlers against the Indians, he had already put down a number of bad men who needed it. Going down in battle against a menace to the world was the most he could expect.

He knew the rest of his lives would be doing more of the same. Humanity hadn’t really changed all that much from when his kingdom had existed. It had just changed the tools it used to go about its business.

On the other hand, he hadn’t changed that much over the years either.