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While traveling through the broad alkali deserts in between the Nevada and Utah territories, we had heard tales of a man who could not die. No one seemed to know his name, as apparently he went by a variety of aliases, only that he was a tall man with a dark complexion and blond hair. We first began to hear whispers near and around Salt Lake City, though the Mormons didn't seem to believe such a thing could be possible except through the grace of God - and from what we heard, the man was anything but blessed - it seemed that he was forever getting killed in horrific ways, intestines strung around his neck like a collar, shot through until the air rushed through him like he was made of muslin, run over by carts with wheel tracks and hoof prints all over him. These were only whisperings, however, and we mainly heard them from the other Gentiles in Salt Lake City, who must have been bored with the health and wealth of the city, which doesn't seem to suit anyone but Mormons quite so well, judging from the dirt - both literal and of the soul - found in so many other cities.
We heard of him from an old widow living outside Elko, who claimed that she had seen the man shot through with three bullets, blood splattered on the ground, and heard him laugh and pat the wounds with the flat of his hand. When he took his hand away, the wounds were gone, and he only shook his head and cursed the man who shot him in an enormous, booming voice before stalking off into the night. She called him the Deathless Man, and we dismissed it as the ramblings of a demented old woman and went on our way, though we kept hearing stories, from a serving girl at an inn, who said he had left her far more money than was on his actual bill - though she seemed reluctant to share the amount with us, a man who claimed that he had been drinking with the Deathless Man (though the Deathless Man could not seem to actually get drunk) until he mentioned how uppity the Indians in the area seemed to have gotten, and upon which the Deathless Man spat in his face and hit him a few times for good measure before, once again, walking off into the night. The stories got more and more wild as we came closer to Carson City - the Deathless Man proving to an old man that he could no die by drowning himself in a creek, then abruptly coughing up the water and drinking a cup of coffee. The Deathless Man confessing his love to a prostitute and slitting his own throat to prove it to her. But the stories faded quickly, after the last, most public, and most disastrous one, after which it was said that the Deathless Man had thrown himself down an empty mine. I heard no more of the deathless man until I began my disastrous foray into silver mining.
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A. F. Jones, as he introduced himself, was a big man, tall and broad in the shoulders. He was self-possessed, about nine-teen or twenty, with a pair of spectacles on his face that he polished constantly, as a kind of a nervous habit. He was especially well spoken for such a young man, and seemed to have no vices to speak of. For all his appearance was entirely wholesome, I sensed something of the coyote in him, a sneakiness that lay just under the surface. He owned stock in a Virginia mine called the "Wild Pigeon", but told us he hadn't seen a cent from it yet and he had headed over to take a look, see what was holding up his money. He said he had been told there was a vein down in his mine as pure as creek water, but that while the other investors in the mine had become rich nabobs, he had been scammed and left behind. He was out to make them pay for welshing on him. Jones, I surmised, was without a doubt a man with blood on his hands. But it was the time. The air was thick with silver fever, and if Jones was to be believed, he was owed around $100,000 in the year since the mine had begun turning a profit, none of which had come to him.
I liked him immediately, although we disagreed on politics in many respects - unsurprising, what with him being a Yankee born and bred, though he told me he had a sister who had married and moved to Tennesee. This was the most striking thing about Jones - he was difficult to like, but nearly impossible to hate.
We were speaking one day, and Tim Miller, who was a successful miner, as well as a complete simpleton, remembered a story that he had heard recently and shared it with us: there was a burial in Galena for a man who had floated into town going by the name of John Hanson. The grave was dug, and they were about to lower the coffin into the ground when a coughing came from the box and the body, formerly crushed by falling rocks, sat up, whole in the coffin.
"Excuse me," said the body, "But can't a man get a drink around here?"
By all accounts, one of the men burying him fainted dead away, while the others found him a drink in the form of whiskey from a hip flask.
"Much obliged," said the stranger, taking a swig. He got up out of the coffin, stretched, and wiped the dirt from his hands before walking away.
Upon hearing the story, I asked Miller if he had heard any other stories of the deathless man, or if this was the only one. Miller claimed he had heard it only a month ago, and that he had heard it straight from a miner come down from Galena, who had been there himself - but that he hadn't heard any more. Jones laughed heartily at the story, clearly finding it amusing, and asked if we also believed that if we were good boys Santa Claus would bring us a present for Christmas. I was ashamed to have been so drawn in by the stories that folks were telling, given that it is generally my job to tell those stories myself.
"Deathless," Jones said quietly, "Bullshit. I can die, it just takes some work."
After he announced this, several things happened very quickly. Something fell onto the roof, landing with a terrible cracking sound just above us, and we watched in horror, unable to move, as the beams began to give way. There was something on the roof. We heard it, loud and clear: the sound of footsteps on the roof. We called out, asked who was there, but there was no answer. A strange beeping was emanating from the roof.
We walked outside. There was nothing else to do, although Jones had started to look pale and wan. His remark from earlier had been forgotten in favor of a more pressing concern - the mysterious visitor on the roof. We were all ready when we walked out the door, with a hand on a gun or knife. It was dark out, that true inky black that one only finds out west in these empty lands. As such, we could barely see it when a figure jumped down from the roof to stand in front of us.
The figure looked like an extremely short man, which relieved me slightly, to know it wasn't some vicious animal but a man who could perhaps be talked out of whatever he was planning on doing to us.
I was shocked when Jones opened his mouth to speak.
"Tony!" he barked at the visitor, "What the hell are you doing here?"
The little man turned to face him and said something in a language I had never heard before, and clambered back up onto the roof. Jones explained to us, in hushed tones, that the man, Tony, was an Indian who had been in his employ some time ago, completely savage, barely speaking English, and that when he was drunk he had a tendency to climb up on the roofs of buildings - no, no one knew why. I was only half listening, focused on the strange object on the roof of the shack we had been passing time in. It was shining, glimmering metal, in a shape I didn't recognize, but which seemed threatening. I asked Jones if he knew where it came from, and he shook his head. He pointed up.
"Looks like it fell down from the sky." He winked at me as if to say, no one will ever believe this. Then, before I could open my mouth to say anything, Miller standing just as astonished beside me, Jones scaled the shack up to the roof, following his little friend.
"Hey," he called down to me, "Mark."
"It's Sam," I said.
"Whatever. I don't think mining's gonna work out so well for you. Try the newspapers."
Jones sat down next to the visitor in the metal contraption, and we watched in silent awe and horror as the thing lifted up from the roof and flew, nearly silently off into the night. Miller shook his head.
"You'll have to be the one to repair that shack," he said, "Looks like Jones isn't coming back."