Beware of the Whispering Grass

By Robert Kammen

This is a Sci-Fi Western set in Wyoming. It has a sprinkling of cowboys and Indians. A DNA sample of the San Pedros Mummy was intercepted by government agents and turns out to be a perfect match for the Roswell, New Mexico aliens. The action takes place in the Big Horn Mountains in which dwell the Nimeragar or Little People and the governments desire to have them exterminated. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Longhorn Publishing
• Release date: May 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224273928

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Farmstead, Monroe County, Pennsylvania

The dark green Lexus slowed abruptly under tree shadows falling across the narrow highway. Then Margo Armistead went for the brake as she took in cars parked along a gravel lane. Although she couldn’t see the mailbox, there was an old windmill and grove of Russian elm trees. Somewhat anxiously, Margo eased to the shoulder and checked for other traffic before getting out.

In her middle thirties, Margo Armistead’s easy stride carried her past other parked cars and up the long driveway. Yesterday’s telephone call had brought her out here, and for the somber occasion she’d decided to wear a black dress, even though she hadn’t known the man who had died. Her auburn hair was pinned up under a black velvet hat and she had brought along a small black handbag, since what she had came for was extremely valuable.

But until she laid eyes on the mummified remains, then and only then, would she believe that the Little Man of the Pedros had been found. The first owner, who had stumbled across the mummy in a cave someplace in Wyoming’s San Pedros Mountains, had died shortly thereafter, as had others who’d claimed ownership. Then about fifteen years ago the mummy had been stolen and it simply disappeared. Margo, a professor of anthropology at Eastern State College, was more than willing to accept any risk.

The red brick house looming over her, Margo went up the short flight of steps and through the open door. Ahead of her in the parlour room a few people were gathered by a casket, and as she started that way, someone touched her arm and asked, Are you Doctor Armistead?

Why...yes, she said to the elderly woman. Margo followed the woman into a small room containing a desk and packing cases stacked along the walls, while the man who’d entered with them closed the door.

Doctor, this is what caused all of the trouble.

I could have come at a more appropriate time?

The woman’s response was to pick up a manila envelope from the desk and removed a large colored photograph, which she handed to Margo. Sunlight stabbing in through an open window touched eagerly upon the photo Margo held up as if conveying some clandestine message. With growing excitement she studied the small mummified body encased in a bell jar.

Margo heard herself saying, Your husband wanted...

Accepting money for that thing will only bring the curse on me. I have a buyer for the farm...so money won’t be a problem. Back of the house, you’ll find a trunk in the root cellar. Amos will show you the way. Goodbye, Doctor Armistead.

CHAPTER ONE

This was the first time in years that Margo Armistead wanted the school year to end, for her work here at Eastern State had become of late one tedious day in the classroom after another. Somehow, even before the call had come about the Little Man mummy, for weeks, it seemed, she had carried with her the feeling that something out of the ordinary was going to happen.

Last night, after driving back from that farm site, Margo had called an old Wyoming friend to share the news. And to swear Roy Buckthorn, at least for now, not to spill the beans about the Little Man mummy in his magazine, Stargazer. Now, in the small laboratory adjoining her office in the Anthropology Building, Margo smiled through faraway eyes at the pleasant memory of some of the field trips she’d gone on with Roy Buckthorn and other advocates of the Sci-Fi and astronomy crowd out in Wyoming and other western locales. How different Roy is. Like he knows something us mere mortals don’t? Someday...well, he doesn’t know how I feel about him...but that might change too...

Margo was around five-nine, possessed of a willowy figure she kept that way by taking evening runs around campus bike trails. And she dated occasionally, most recently with Bill Handley a fellow faculty member whom she was realizing couldn’t cut the candle to a man like, say, Roy Buckthorn.

Seems you’re daydreaming again, Armi?

Turning her head, she stuck out her tongue at Professor Cyrus Hanford closing the door as he came into the laboratory, and with his attention going immediately to a metal table where a gunny sack covered a large roundish object. That it? he asked. He was fiftyish, a portly man clad in a rumpled grey suit.

That’s it and please refrain from calling me Armi.

He grinned around his pipe. Sometimes you run over people like an army tank when you’re on one of your runs.

Look, Cy, sure you want to get involved in this? Margo’s dark brown eyes had gone deadly serious. They were old friends, and the double reasons for his being here was that Handley’s specialty was genealogy and that he was tightlipped in matters such as this. I told you about the deaths connected to the Little Man mummy. The question is Cy, are they all coincidental—-

Removing the pipe from his mouth, he used it to wave away her concern as he said, The original owner, Goodman, lived in Wyoming, I do believe and he succumbed to some disease or other shortly after he came back from New York where Goodman had left the mummy in the care of a museum. So, let’s take a look.

With careful hands Margo lifted away the gunny sack as Hanford moved up to the table. Then he lifted up the bell jar from the round metal base and set it aside. In silent retrospect they studied the mummified remains of a man perhaps seventeen inches tall. The leathery skin was burnished, somewhat reddy, the arms folded low near the waist, the eyes of the Little Man of the Pedros glittering like dark amber; they were quite wide and bulged out, and were the most distinguishing feature of the wide face. 

The back of the skull is crushed in, he said to Margo, who had pulled an x-ray out of a manila folder.

She placed the x-ray on the table top. Back a spell Life magazine ran an article about our Little Man. Seems they had gone out to Wyoming and interviewed the original owner. They took this x-ray of the skull.

Humm, shows a normal growth pattern?

I can’t help thinking, that the person who stole our mummy, and now is son, are dead.

Yes, if memory serves, the Little Man also wound up in Florida someplace. Taken there by this thief who stole it from that New York museum, rather gruesome what happened after that.

Margo let the rest of what Professor Hanford was about to relate about the incident play through her mind, and with a great deal of uneasy reluctance. The thief had checked into a hotel, in Tampa, as she now recalled. He had tried to peddle the mummy to some museums, and then quite suddenly the thief was found dead in his hotel room.

The coroner’s autopsy report, Cy, stated that the man’s body was literally filled with embalming fluid.

Formaldehyde is not recommended as an after-dinner drink.

I was thinking? Margo reached out a tentative finger and brushed it along the brow of the Little Man mummy. The thief didn’t carry the mummy around in a bell jar. He must have dumped it into a sack to lug it around...sometimes cradling it like this...like a baby. In such close contact do you suppose...

That the Little Pedro man mummy, even in death, was able to infect the thief’s immune system with enough embalming fluid to cause his death sounds too bizarre.

Yes, something like that and shortly after the thief died, the mummy vanished...until now Cy. You don’t suppose the curse of the Little Man of the Pedros is now aimed at us.

Cyrus Hanford laughed softly as he relit his pipe. Death for our small guest came from that blow to the head. According to legend, the Little People believe that death has to come by other than natural means this for the corpse to reach their Valhalla. Tell you what, Margo, if I start to get a little stiff tonight, I’ll have my better half bring me another martini. What’s first, the carbon 14 or a DNA Test?

Ah, I couldn’t help thinking about a friend of mine out in Wyoming...and our conversations about the relatives of our Little Man of the Pedros. Both the Crow and Shoshone claim the Little People still exist out in the Wind River and Big Horn mountains.

But like Bigfoot, there is no concrete evidence. Well?

Harvard University did the carbon thing. Our boy lived around a thousand years ago. I’ve a hunch. DNA testing will reveal a relationship to the Native American Indian.

There is only one way to find out.

************

FEDERAL OFFICE BLDG WASHINGTON, D.C.

The muffled sound of a door closing told Mark Renfro that he was now alone amidst a large room occupied by computers and office furniture. In about an hour, as happened every night, security will come sweeping through the building. He came to work late, as usual, and is playing catchup with incoming reports via his IBM computer. His official title is that of research specialist—-more precisely, Renfro works for Alpha-2-Kilo, the agency in charge of all UFO activity, U.S.A.

Except for an occasional sip of cooling coffee he works his computer, seeking, analyzing, either discarding data or logging it in for future reference, which means that tomorrow morning his supervisors will be going over what he has found. Once again there is an upward glance at a wall clock. Now a sigh of exasperation as he picks up the phone and punches in a number, to have a woman respond to his call.

Dammit, if it’s you Renfro, go stuff your sorry excuse...

Gee, babe, I overslept again.

Grinning impishly as the line goes dead, and knowing his current girlfriend has bought his story, he works on. Forty minutes later he lifts his hands away from the computer keyboard in a move of dismissal. But to make sure something of importance isn’t lurking in his in-mail box, he begins checking out rather hurriedly the remaining reports in his computer. To his chagrin there is one from Armistead at Eastern State College, who always has some interesting DNA angles.

Okay...no DNA connection of mummified remains of Little Man of the Pedros to known Native American Indian species or tribal groups. Further there is no connection to any other earth species. He grins skeptically, caught up in the report, while probing his memory bank. Could be you’re wrong, Doctor Armistead?

Now, his interest aroused, he runs DNA data from Armistead’s report through the computer data bank available only to those with top-secret clearance. Settling back in his padded chair, he waits impatiently, then when the computer starts feeding him data, Mark Renfro’s eyes began registering complete baffling astonishment.

This can’t be right???

Apprehensively he begins rechecking what he has just found by doubling back to the computer bank. The response is the same, his hands shaking a little in complete disbelief as he gropes for the phone, unable to tear his eyes away from the screen.

Extrater... uh, Gordy, the jackpot... we... we’ve just hit...

Quite blubbering, Mark, simmer down, barks Gordon Taylor into the phone. Now I don’t want to hear about any more swamp gas incident!

Yeah, yeah, read you, man. I got this DNA report from Armistead...uh, at Eastern State College. The DNA tissue she removed from the Pedros man, you know, this mummified pygmy they found at some Wyoming mountain...dammit, Gordy, it’s a perfect match for our Roswell...uh, dead aliens. Uh, you still there Gordy?

‘Don’t leave the office!!!"

CHAPTER TWO

The downtown sector and Symphony Hall some blocks away now, Margo Armistead drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the musical notes of Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole coming softly over the tape player. The first time in years since I’ve been there...or it could be I’ve come to enjoy country-western music too much but I did enjoy tonight’s opera as a matter of fact. But, damn, just don’t feel like getting together with Bill at that Italian restaurant.

Spurred by a strange restlessness, Margo had left just when the symphony orchestra had started into a second series of songs. The source of her unease, she knew only too well, was her recent involvement with the Little Man of the Pedros. Ahead of her the light changed to red and Margo eased to a stop behind other vehicles, knowing that if she turned left she’d keep the date with Bill, and somewhat irritably she removed the CD-tape. The traffic began moving, with Margo checking the rearview mirror before switching lanes and turning right onto Liberty Street, wanting to be alone to sort out her thoughts. 

I’ve got to call Buckthorn. For some reason, ever since the Little Man mummy came into my life, Buckthorn’s been rattling around in my brain. More than this, Margo knew that Roy Buckthorn had somehow been associated with the Little People. But after all she rationalized Roy lives out close to those mountains, goes hunting up there a lot. No, there’s more to this...and...and Cyrus Hanford, I didn’t really want to involve him in this. The smart thing to do would be to get the Little Man back to its rightful owner, get on to other things.

As she passed a small shopping center off to her right, the radio, which she had turned down low, stopped playing music to have an announcer say, Once again we interrupt regular programming to bring you this special report. Allentown police report that the car accident which claimed the life of an Eastern State College professor was caused by a faulty steering system. The accident as we have reported before happened about 7:35 this evening. Professor Cyrus Hanford was alone in his vehicle and...

A stunned Margo Armistead managed to swing her car in toward the curbing and brake to a stop. She listened disbelievingly to the rest of the news report, groping for something that was eluding her train of thought, and then it came—-Cyrus hasn’t driven a car for years! Milly, his wife handled that chore. Sure, he had a driver’s license, but...but why?

Angrily, helplessly, she turned the radio off and laid her head upon her hands gripping the steering wheel, sobbing inwardly. In a few moments she managed to regain her composure. Could there be any connection between the accident and the Little Man project? She had discussed with Cyrus Hanford that filing that DNA report with the National Data Bank could open a can of worms. The government and especially the military, with their damnable need for secrecy in anything involving paranormal matters.

Our stuff at the college...I shouldn’t have gotten Cyrus involved. Wait a minute, got to get over to the college...find a safe place to hide the Little Man mummy and my findings just in case. I’ll call Milly from there...damn, easy now, let the traffic clear.

**********

The campus seemed darker than usual under a cloudy night sky and only served to increase Margo’s worries as she switched off the headlights.

Ahead in the next block lay the two-story brick building housing the anthropology department. An inner caution had made Margo park here instead of at her regular parking slot close to where she worked, and as she held in her Lexus while making a visual sweep of the few vehicles parked along the street. Finally she slipped out of her car and kept under trees lining the sidewalk until the west wall of the Anthropology Building loomed up against the dark sky. She unlocked one of the west doors and slipped inside to go quietly up the back staircase.

Caution held her at the top of the landing, her ears reaching out for any sound, but the building seemed eerily quiet. She went down the corridor to a central staircase which brought her up to the third floor and the narrow corridor running past the door to her office. Quickly Margo unlocked the door and slipped inside, but she left the lights out, for some strange reason more unsettled now than before, or she reasoned, this could be caused by her close approximately to the Little Man mummy. Thoughts of the mummy carried Margo into the adjoining lab room. Pale light beaming in through the windows guided her to a metal cabinet. As she found the key that would unlock the cabinet door, she suddenly noticed one of the metal handles was standing at an angle wich meant the door was unlocked. Pulling the door open, she reached in a questing hand and swept it along a lower shelf.

Gone, dammit, the mummy is gone! How? I know I locked the door. Yes, my computer!

Spinning around, Margo hurried into her office and switched on the desk lamp as she sat down. She pulled the computer keyboard closer and quickly punched in the letters LMP to open the program involving her research on the Pedros man. Only to have the screen flash back that no webpage like this existed in her computer system. Desperately Margo tried connecting to other programs stored in her computer bank, to find to her rising panic that many of them were also missing.

Then she slammed a fist down, exclaiming, Wait, my backup tapes? She jumped up and went over to some wall shelves to the usual place, to discover, as fear began overriding all of her other emotions, that the tapes were missing.

My desk lamp... She swung around and reached to turn out the lamp, pressed her left hand against her temple in a pondering gesture. One thing Margo Armistead knew now with absolute certainty that Hanford’s death and what happened here was connected to the report she’d sent to Washington. That DNA report...it means that somehow the Little People are linked to aliens. It has to be it. Which means our report was intercepted by the boys from Alpha2. How stupid of me to send it. Wait a minute get your thinking cap on. The extra copy Margo had made of her backup tape reposed in the glove compartment of her Lexus.

Suddenly, Roy Buckthorn’s name interrupted Margo’s train of thought, and she reached for the phone. Roy got to call him. She picked up the phone, started to punch in his number in Jackson, Wyoming, and just as quickly jarred the phone down again. Oh my God not from here if they killed Cyrus I must be next on their list. Get to a phone booth. Wait, what about Cyrus’s office...do you suppose...

Out in the hallway, Margo removed her high heeled shoes and from here padded silently back to the center staircase. Cyrus Hanford’s office was on the first floor and at the end of a side corridor. The building was old and the stairs creaked ever so slightly as Margo went down to the second floor, and suddenly, a whisper of sound came from below followed by a brief spear of light draping against the first floor landing. Margo’s worst fears were realized at the sound of a man’s low-pitched voice.

Sorry about the light. Look, outside, it’s starting to rain. You know, that picture of the Armistead woman in her office; a sharp looker.

By now she should be a dead sharp looker. C’mon, we’ve got what we came for.

Without hesitating Margo slipped away from the center staircase and at the end of the corridor she hurried down to the first floor and pushed through the door she’d gained entrance to the building and toward the haven of her car. She U-d around with the lights out and drove that way until reaching one of the main streets running past the campus. She held there for a moment, to reach over and open the glove compartment. Yes, it was still there, the computer tape about the Little Man mummy.

On a main thoroughfare, she drove to a small shopping mall she often frequented, and which was closed for the night, and found a convenient drive-up phone booth. She placed a collect call to Wyoming, listened almost in panic as the phone rang on and on, and then he was there, Roy Buckthorn.

Howdy, this is Buckthorn...

Roy, please, I need your help!

Margo...Armistead?

Look, Roy, please, just listen... Trying to control her voice and emotions, Margo laid out what had transpired so far this summer evening. So here I am, scared to death...I, I...

You can’t go home. You told me about going to the opera and...

I did, Roy, but I left early, almost before it started...I...

Did anyone else know you were going besides this boyfriend you mentioned? Like, Margo, do you keep a log of your comings and goings at home?

"Yeah, I had it marked on a calendar by the fridge. Look, Roy, I have a Chevy van we use for field trips; it’s gassed and ready to go.

At his place, you mean? What you don’t want to do is to drive your car there. They must have known you were at the opera. Your leaving early disrupted their plans for you. There is a possibility, that is, if the opera isn’t over.

Margo checked the dashboard clock. At least not for another hour Roy, why?

Drive back there and leave your car in one of the parking lots.

No! They’ll...

Don’t ask me why, but I know about these things, he said with harsh urgency over the phone. Leave your car there, Margo. You must be dolled up, high heels and all. Do you have any old clothes in the trunk of your car?

Yes, ah, some boots and clothes I use on field trips and that old hat you said makes me look like a granny...okay?

Good, find a place to put them on now. Next you drive over and leave your car in that parking lot. And here’s what you do from there!

************

Are you sure that’s her Lexus?

Yeah, the license plate checks out.

It wasn’t there before?

So we missed it. This is a big parking area. Get it done.

Opening the back door of the van, a man clad in a black jump suit got out and eased in between a Chevy Impala and Margo Armistead’s Lexus. He jimmied the door open and then released the hood lever. As he went around and opened the hood, the driver of the van kept looking ahead and through the rearview mirror for any approaching vehicles. The rain had picked up, and he doubted that any police cruisers or security vehicles would be on the prowl for carjackers. There was a brief moment of concern when a vehicle did appear, but it was the transit bus which had rolled into the parking area about ten minutes ago.

In less than four minutes a bomb had been wired into place inside the motor well, and now the van pulled away and found an exit lane. The men who had planted the bomb were Alpha2 field agents. As for the bomb, in order for it to explode the right turn signal would have to be activated. 

Both men were unaware that one of the passengers who’d boarded the bus outside Symphony Hall was the owner of the Lexus.

Margo Armistead held on the quiet residential street watching the taxi until it turned a corner and was gone. The most harrowing moments had been in the Symphony Hall parking lot, but somehow she had managed to park her Lexus, and then to her surprise a transit bus had showed up. Even now the fear of what could have happened gripped her body. 

Around her most of the houses had their lights out, while straight down this suburban street, perhaps another three blocks, she would find the garage in which the van was kept. Moving on, Margo was grateful for the heavy rainfall, but even so, she was a frightened woman filled with the realization that her sedate life as a college professor was shattered forevermore.

Been lucky so far...I hope it continues that Don Murdock and his family are still away. Lucky too, according to Roy Buckthorn, that the van is registered in Murdock’s name. So all I have to do is to get in and head out of Allenton...and hope my luck holds...

Margo had the presence of mind to put the computer in her purse, and now she remembered not mentioning the tape to Buckthorn. Thoughts of this went away when she recognized dimly the Murdock’s yellow frame house just as a dog started barking, then another, and through her mounting tension she managed to unlock a side garage door and then she was in the van.

It was a late model Chevy Custom van that started easily, and she let it warm up before recessing the garage door opener. Some of the clothes she wore on field trip foodstuffs and other items were stowed in the van. She put on the parking and dashboard lights and saw to her relief that both the main and reserve