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