THE WEREBEASt
of the
WILD WEST
Tuesday, June the Twenty-Second
The Transcontinental Railroad is taking us across the vast American landscape past a quaint little town called Omaha, Nebraska. It is very strange to me to see such wide open spaces, for we have been on the train for days without end.
Percy has recovered from his fever, and to bide his time seems insistent on following me around with three over-sized volumes about Werewolves, including a pictorial on the Beast of Gevaudan. He persisted in attempting to show me lithographs of exhibits we might see if we ever found ourselves in France together(???), but fortunately Mrs. Bamfield noticed my distress and provided me a socially acceptable pretense to abandon Mr. Longville.
Wednesday, June the Twenty-Third
Well, now we ' re at it again. The train engine was thrown quite off the tracks and onto its side. Some small passenger or other has been stolen away and a railroad detective was crushed in the wreckage. It is one adventure after another on these J. W. Wells tours! Percy has been up to his eyeballs in werewolf lore and is convinced he heard howling( the wind) and saw some claw marks( a misapplied wrench, no doubt.) His imagination has run away.
We were stalled only a short mile from a wild western town, and our party was commanded to ingloriously drag our own luggage there. What is the point of paying for automaton service if it ' s just going to sink to the bottom of the sea and leave you to do all the work for yourself? Somehow the first mate survived the entire ordeal, so at least we don ' t have to lug about our weaponry. How the robot managed to save that trunk would probably be worth discovering and retelling someday.
We came to the barren little town, and it was mainly one lonely street with a pub, a blacksmith, some stables, and a hotel— though I call it a hotel only to be polite. It may well have been a brothel when foreign travelers were not about.
I saw no one at all worthy of exciting my interest, only people of the sort I had been sadly convinced would be living in America. However, Percy quickly became entangled with a ruffian when he bumped into the man, for his nose had been stuck in his book. The man was outraged, throwing Percy ' s books into the street. He accused Percy of owing him