By Jess Nevins
[rated PG for language]
Stan Lee Presents : The greatest heroes of the post World War II era...Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty...The Whizzer, Fastest Man Alive...Miss America, Strong and Beautiful Heroine...Sub-Mariner, Prince of Atlantis...and the Human Torch, the fiery android...they are The All-Winners Squad!
What Has Come Before: Miss America has been cast back in time to the Old West, where she, along with over three dozen of the Old West's best and most heroic gunfighters, are teaming up to stop a group of magic-using Indians from killing everyone in the West.
Maddy Joyce woke up abruptly, with Annie Oakley squatting by her sleeping bag, gently shaking her shoulder. Maddy, noticing the sky starting to lighten, stammered, "Whu--what time is it?"
Annie Oakley said, "Oh, 'bout five thirty or so. Early enough, anyhow - Matt and John want to put as much land between here and the Arc Dome as they can before nightfall."
Maddy Joyce groaned and emerged, reluctantly, from her bag. She mopped her brow and face and said, "Is it always this hot?"
Annie Oakley said, "Nah, it usually warms up some later on. Stick with us, Maddy, and we'll toughen you up some."
Maddy, very slightly irritated, thought about telling Annie Oakley about her own experiences sleeping rough during World War Two, and then decided against it. She ran her hands through her hair, stamped her feet twice, and then said, "Okay. I'm ready to go."
Arizona Annie said, "You can ride with me, Mad. Plenty of room on Geraldine for you."
They joined the others, who were saddling their horses. Miss America's arrival drew a number of curious looks from the others, and the increasing light in the sky allowed them to see her costume clearly, which caused them to stare harder. Feeling unusually shy, she stuck to Arizona Annie's side and said, "Uh...hi. I'm Madeleine Joyce."
The Sheriff said, "All you bunch of cowpunchers need to know is that she's riding with us, so I'll expect you to treat her like you would the rest of us. Blaze, toss her a Colt, would you?"
Blaze Carson smiled and stroked his mustache and said, "But of course." He kissed Maddy's hand and handed her an ivory-handled Colt revolver out of his own holster, saying, "Blaze Carson, Miss Joyce. I'm very pleased to meat you."
Miss America glanced at Arizona Annie, who shot her an amused grin, and said to Blaze, "Nice to meet you, Mr. Carson. Thank you for the offer of the fun, but I won't be needing that."
This drew some looks from the others. The Two-Gun Kid leaned over and whispered something in the Sheriff's ear, and the Sheriff nodded and said to the others, "She means what she says, boys. Now get your saddles on your mounts and get ready to ride."
The Sheriff rode his horse Lawman over to Miss America, who was by now sitting behind Arizona Annie, and said to Maddy, in a low voice, "You're one of those...I think Two-Gun called them 'super heroes'?"
She nodded slightly and said, "Yes. I can--"
The Sheriff shook his head quickly and said, "Later, Miss Joyce. For now we got to get ridin'."
Arizona Annie turned around in the saddle and said, "It just occurred to me - Maddy, we been assuming you want to ride with us. Would you rather be going elsewhere - back East, maybe? We could loan you a horse, if'n you wanted."
Miss America shook her head and said, "Thanks, Annie, but no. I don't know why I'm here, but I think there's a reason for it. And I think, if I ride with you, I'll find out what that reason is."
Arizona Annie nodded, saying, "The Lord does know best, and He will provide."
As the group rode along that day, Miss America didn't say much, content instead to listen to the scraps of conversation she could hear all around her. Arizona Annie was in the middle, roughly, of the group of riders, and so Miss America was able to overhear a number of, to her, strange and interesting discussions:
"...you hear about the Renegades, Colt?"
"Sure did, Red. Who's the sidewinder what set them up?"
"Some hombre, name of Maggi. He backshot one of them, then led the
rest into a box canyon and had his amigos gun down the rest of them."
"Sumbitch."
"Yeah. Red Hawkins and Tex Taylor done took care of Maggi and his
band, though. Cornered them in Mescalero territory and left them for the
'pache to handle..."
"...what are you doing these days, Blaze? I ain't seen you for
a time."
"Riverboats need guards, Whip. The money's decent, there's not a gambling
cheat or trick that I don't know about myself, and few of the folks want
to cause any trouble."
"I'm still riding, but there's a ranch, out by Fort Peck, that I got
my eye on. They need a foreman, and, well..."
"Believe me, Whip, I know what you mean. Nothing to be ashamed of,
wanting to settle down..."
"...went to visit my father, back in New Jersey."
"He's still alive?"
"I thought the old bastard was long dead m'self, but I got a wire,
six months back, saying he's still hangin' on. So I took the train out
to see him. Same old coot."
"I know what you mean, Tex. I ain't seen my old man in years, and
don't want to. Old rannie beat me 'till my hide was raw. I done run away
when I was 16, and haven't looked back since..."
"...this reminds me of that last ride with General Jackson, right
after Chancellorsville."
"Was that when--"
"Ayuh. Some damn picket shot Stonewall. I knew the war was lost right
then. Nothing's gone right since then..."
"...quiet up in Reno this days, Ringo."
"Yup?"
"We had this strange fella a couple of months ago - Professor I. M.
Mortus - big black beard, funny hat, suit like a medicine wagon huckster
- you know him?"
"Nope."
"Wouldn't say what he was lookin' for. I finally had to run him off
- he was botherin' the showgirls some. I flashed my Colts and he turned
yeller. Easterners." ptui
"Yup."
"...ever happened to Kid Cassidy?"
"Reno don't like to talk about it, but...he went bad."
"How's that?"
"You knew he was from the South, right? Parents got killed during
the War?"
"Right."
"Well...he always bore a grudge against the Union for that, and so
when he heard about the Legion of the Lost, he joined up with them."
"Well, shit."
"Yeah. The Sheriff himself had to take care of him, back in '79. Reno
weren't none too happy about it himself, but what else could he do? Can't
have a bunch of Johnny Rebs runnin' about tryin' to take over the territory
and start the War all over again."
"'suppose not."
Arizona Annie didn't say much, though every now and then she'd look back to make sure Maddy was comfortable. Maddy, for her part, was lost in thought, most of the time; she still had her powers, including her heightened wisdom, and so she tried to think through her situation. She didn't know anything about time travel, and knew no way to gain it, and knew no one who could do it, or could invent something that would allow her to travel in time. And she'd never heard of anyone during this era who could do that. And she was already missing Bob.
What was worse, though, was that she was fairly sure she wasn't supposed to be here. She didn't know as much history as a lot of folks, but she knew that there hadn't been any super-women in the Old West. (Of course, she hadn't known about all these other costumed cowboys, either; she'd heard of the Two-Gun Kid and the Rawhide Kid, but she'd thought they were fictional characters) As far as she knew, there weren't any Marvels around at this time. So she was beginning to think maybe she was stuck here.
So what was she supposed to do? There was no history to change, as far as she knew; she didn't even know who was president now. Maybe she could travel to Paris, once this was all over?
Her thoughts were interrupted when Arizona Annie reined in her horse. Maddy leaned forward to ask what was wrong, but Annie held up one gloved hand. The other riders had pulled up short, and were silently milling around. The riders were at the base of a forested hill, the pines and oaks thick in front of them, and the sun just beginning to dip behind the tops of the trees. Despite the insufferable heat Maddy felt a chill work its way down her spine and her arms prickle over with goose bumps. Something was wrong.
The Sheriff and Matt Slade both dismounted, and, holding their Winchesters, silently gave directions to the others. The Rawhide Kid, Arrowhead, the Dakota Kid, the Apache Kid, and the Outlaw Kid drew their knives and guns and silently glided into the forest in front of the others, disappearing from view in a surprisingly short amount of time.
The other riders waited, hands on their guns and rifles, for the five to return. Five minutes later, as the sun's light began to dwindle to nothingness and as the shadows the riders stood within grew longer, they heard an owl hoot, twice.
Matt Slade said, in a low but still audible voice, "That's it - we're clear up the rest of the hill - but be careful."
The riders slipped into the forest and moved up the hill with alacrity, leaving Miss America to run to catch up with them. Seeing how quietly and quickly they moved, and how she was in danger of being left behind, she decided to use her powers to even things up, and she levitated a few inches over the ground and, obscured by the gathering gloom, flew forward up the hill, returning to the earth near the crest of the hill where the others were gathering. She crawled forward next to the Kid From Dodge City and listened to what Matt Slade and the Sheriff were saying to the others, and then peeked over the rock the two were crouched against.
The Sheriff said, "There ain't but one real trail up the Arc Dome, and it's over the top of this hill and on the other side of that little canyon."
Matt Slade said, "It's a wide path - two, three people can walk side by side on it for most of its length - but it cuts back every hundred feet or so. It's about 11,000 feet up, and most of the hill, 'cept for the path, is rock."
The Sheriff said, "Rawhide and Arrowhead said they didn't see any of these Cheemurzwa, and Black Eagle said that they don't really look any different than your average Comanche. So we should - probably - have a clear run up most of the path, and you should be able to shoot anyone you see who ain't us."
Matt Slade said, "'course, these here magic Indians might be able to make themselves look like us, or sound like us - that's what Black Eagle said. I don't know from magic, but I had to deal with some of them Navajo False Face jaspers, and they made themselves look like me enough to fool my own brother, so I think just about anything's possible, so if you get challenged, ask for the password, which is 'Hawthorne.' Got that?"
The Sheriff waited for the nods and grunted affirmatives, and then said, "The top of the Arc Dome is a big, low dome of exposed basalt, 'bout a hundred feet in diameter. There are a bunch of large boulders around the edge of the top, but most of it is exposed rock, worn smooth. 'Cept for the boulders, not much cover there at all. So once we get up there, it should be fairly simply. First men up, spread out if you can and give room for everyone else to get up there."
Matt Slade said, "Keep in mind, of course, that just 'cause we didn't see them don't mean they ain't there. They might be up there, hidden, which will mean that we'll have to be shootin' our way up the path, every step. So guns out, everyone."
Miss America, looking over the rock that Slade and the Sheriff were sheltering under, saw what the Sheriff and the others were talking about. The hill they were all on sloped down deeply into a dirt-floored canyon which ran along the base of the Arc Dome. The Dome itself was large; Maddy, whose war experience included time in the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas, couldn't call it a "mountain," but it was certainly a tall and broad hill. Most of the side of the hill was sheer rock, with only scrub brush and the occasional stunted tree giving the hill any color or life. With a start she realized that she'd been using her x-ray vision to look through the darkness - for the sun had now fully set - and examine the hill. She was startled at how quickly she'd resumed using her powers, which she'd lost a few months before. She felt a momentary flash of irritation with herself for taking her newly-regained powers for granted; feeling that rush of sheer power, and then breaking through Future Man's wall, and then breaking him...it had been like the old days again.
Something in Matt Slade's last few sentences caught her attention, and she quickly replayed them in her mind. She rapidly scanned the path up the hill, examined the air over the Dome, and then said, "The trail's clear, Mr. Slade."
She saw Matt Slade and the Sheriff look at her, and felt the attention of the others on her. The Sheriff said, "Not that I'm doubting you, mind, but...you sure about that, Miss Joyce?"
She smiled and said, "I never did get the chance to tell you what I can do, Sheriff, but, yes, I'm sure."
She heard him sucking air in through his teeth, and then said, in a quiet voice, "X-ray vision?"
Surprised, she said, "Well - yes, but how did you--"
He said, "That ain't important right now." In a somewhat louder voice, he said, "You heard her, boys. The trail's clear. So be quiet when you're going up, and they won't know what hit 'em."
Maddy said, "One more thing, Sheriff. There're some strange...energies, up at the top of the hill."
He said, "Come again?"
She said, "Well...I can see...things. And...you might not be able to see them, but I can. It's...weird, but...what I'm seeing, it's..."
She finally gave up trying to articulate it, feeling slightly foolish for having opened her mouth. "It's...just be careful up there. There's something odd going on up there. I think there might be something odd up there."
She heard Black Eagle say, "She is right, you know. There is something...wrong...up there. We are where we need to be when we need to be, but we must hurry to be sure."
Matt Slade said, "You heard the lady, buckaroos, and you know the drill."
Red Wolf's voice, quiet but somehow carrying to everyone present, said, "Mr. Slade, some of us will have no trouble climbing the rock; perhaps we should go up that as you ascend the trail."
The Sheriff said, "Who do you speak of, Elder?"
Red Wolf said, "Myself. Black Eagle. Arrowhead. And Miss America."
Matt Slade looked at Miss America and said, "'sat right?"
Miss America tore her mystified stare away from Red Wolf - how did he know? - and stammered, "Ye-yes."
The Sheriff said, "You know best, Elder. Whyn't you four go up same time as me and Matt. Caleb, you and Gunhawk got second. Two-Gun, you and Blaze got third. Rest of you, choose up as you will. And 'member - the point of this here party is to stop these Cheemurzwa. Whatever they're doin' to the weather, and whatever else they got in mind, they gotta be stopped. I hope gunplay won't be required, but if it is, I aim to be quicker than they are. And if me and Matt take a bullet, or get a tomahawk shave, well, you got your job to do, and I 'spect you to do it, no less than if you were in an army at war. There's a time for countin' yer dead and patchin' up yer wounded - and that's after the enemy's dead. Don't forget that."
He turned to Slade. "What say, hoss - you ready to replay Custer's Last Stand?"
Slade punched him lightly on the arm. "I never 'spected to live this long anyhow, John. Let's ride."
The Sheriff and Matt Slade, their hands on the triggers of their Winchester rifles, crept forward over the top of the ridge, followed by Caleb Hammer and the Gunhawk, and then the Two-Gun Kid and Blaze Carson. Red Wolf and Black Eagle and Arrowhead slid over the top of the ridge, and the others stood and prepared to run to the path, and within seconds Miss America, standing and looking at the base of the Dome, saw the Sheriff and Matt Slade silently running up the path, and the three Indians seeming to glide up the side of the Dome. Maddy Joyce took a deep breath and jumped, flying 60 feet across the narrow gorge and landing on the rock face of the hill, next to Black Eagle. Maddy thought it odd that Black Eagle didn't find Maddy's sudden appearance odd, but then she saw that Black Eagle, too, was flying. Maddy began flying upwards in jumps, always watching to make sure that the Sheriff and Matt Slade were ahead of her.
A half hour later she was crouched near the top of the Dome, watching as the Sheriff looked back down the trail. The moon was obscured by heavy cloud cover, as was the top of the Dome, and visibility was very low, and so the Sheriff couldn't see much, but he could see a bit - his night vision had always been good - and he could hear more, and he was waiting until most of the others had caught up with him. When he thought they were ready, he leapt over the edge of the top of the Dome, followed immediately by Matt Slade, Red Wolf, Arrowhead, Black Eagle, and Miss America.
What they saw, on the top of the Arc Dome, was a number of Indians standing in a broad circle, all facing two figures in the middle of the circle. The Indians - Maddy quickly counted 22 of them - were tall and thin, with bald heads and bulbous, protruding foreheads; the Sheriff found it curious that although they had on the hide pants and war paint typical of the Comanche, they were not wearing the customary shirts or headbands of a Comanche warband. The Indians stood, heads tilted to the sky and arms upraised, and Maddy could feel the heat pouring from them, and her x-ray vision revealed an odd outpouring of heat and other, indefinable, energies streaming from them into the sky.
In the center of the ring of Indians stood a tall figure: a Chinese man looking to be in his forties, wearing a coolie's uniform but with the mustache and cap tassels of one of the Mandarin class. Crouched next to him was...something. It was vaguely human, Maddy thought, but the problem was that it was so hairy, she really couldn't tell what it was. And it seemed like its head was bowed, and its arms were over its head, and for a second it looked like a very hairy, pale, misshapen and lumpy ball.
Maddy felt the Chinese's gaze flash toward her, and she locked stares with him, and then a tickle of curiosity blossomed into full-fledged certainty, and before the Sheriff could say anything - despite his earlier words he was holding his fire, and he had a strangely hesitant expression on his face - she blurted out, "Yellow Claw! What are you doing here?"
The riders on the top of the Dome - although the first up were following the Sheriff's lead and doing nothing, they were spreading out into firing positions, behind boulders and crouched on the ground, and nearly all of them were on top of the Dome - briefly glanced at her, and Caleb Hammer said, "You know the Chinaman?"
The Yellow Claw looked at Maddy and with a raised eyebrow and a faintly bemused expression said, "That is how I was known in Qingdao, yes - but tell me, woman, how do you come to know that name?"
Miss America said, "You were on our side in the war - how can you be...oh. You're not...oh. Stupid, stupid, stupid." She hit her forehead to emphasize the last word.
The Yellow Claw said, "Do you have intelligent things to say to me, or are you here merely to waste my time?"
Seeing her open and close her mouth twice, and still not say anything, he said, "I know not what trickery you planned, woman, you and your companions, but this is singularly foolish. I have fought in no war that you would know of, and I would most certainly not fight beside, or for, or with, you."
Miss America shook her head and said, "Mistaken identity. Never mind." She then muttered, so the Sheriff could hear, "Sorry about that, Sheriff."
The Sheriff shrugged and then pointed his rifle at the Claw's face, and then lowered it and muttered, "Damn it. Just can't do it." He said to the Yellow Claw, "I can't shoot a man down in cold blood, sir, but I'm not sure about the rest of my friends. Why don't you just step away from there and go home? You can see we've got you outgunned, and there ain't no way we're going to let you keep doing...this." He gestured with his Winchester, taking in the Keewazi. "Why not just walk away?"
The Yellow Claw smiled mildly, and Miss America could sense his amusement was genuine. "You cannot shoot a man in cold blood? You would never have advanced far in my army." He glanced down at the hairy thing crouched near his feet and whispered a sibilant sentence in Mandarin, and the thing unfolded and leapt at the Sheriff.
Maddy's perceptions sped up, as they usually did during combat, and she had time to take in several things. That the hairy thing was actually a short, very, very hairy man. That the hairy man was naked and filthy with dirt. That the black hair on the man's head seemed to naturally divide into two points on the sides of his head, giving him the appearance of having two large, pricked-up ears. That the man had three large, blood-streaked, bone-colored claws, each curved and almost a yard long, protruding from each hand. And that the man was much faster than she'd expected, and was leaping right for the Sheriff, claws-first. Maddy had time to take in the stench of the man's body, the spittle frothed around his mouth, his slowed-down (to her perception) snarl and mindless, ferocious glare, before the Sheriff's bullets, and then the shots of the others, took the man in the head and chest and blew him off his feet.
Maddy noted Black Eagle, a yellowish powder trailing from her hand, was surreptitiously beginning to circle around the ring of Indians.
The Sheriff swore and said, "Damn fella moved on me so quick I had to kill him."
Then the hairy clawed man sprang to his feet, the flow of blood from his numerous wounds dwindling and the wounds closing themselves up as Maddy looked, and he leapt at the Sheriff again. Somehow the man managed to leap and dodge the numerous shots aimed at him - he was faster than he looked - but Arrowhead and the Red Warrior got in the way before he reached the Sheriff, and they bracketed him, their knives out and held, point-down, in traditional Navajo and Dakota style. The three began dueling, leaving several long, crimson wounds on each other.
The Yellow Claw made an annoyed sound and snapped his fingers, and the ground under Maddy and the others shook, nearly knocking them off their feet. As the others recovered and raised their guns at the Yellow Claw, a long, red and silver ship lowered itself from the clouds over the top of the Dome and lowered itself until it was only twenty feet over the men and women on the top of the Dome. The ship seemed to consist of a central, roughly square section with long cylinders on each side; the ship had small wings near its rear, and from the wings and the back of the craft were long, curving strips of metal, almost like horns. At various points on the ship Maddy could make out long, convex windows.
A few seconds later, as the cowboys were raising their guns upwards, to shoot at it - Maddy noticed that the bald Indians had still not moved at all - doors slid open on the underside of the ship and a mass of strangely-shaped figures dropped from it and landed on the top of the Dome. The figures were all humanoid, but they seemed to combine reptilian and human features equally; their colors ran across the rainbow, and some had scaly skin, while others were furry and still others smooth. Some had tentacles in places of hands, while others' eyes lacked pupils. Many of them had no legs, but their bottom halves were long and scaled, and resembled the bodies and tails of enormous snakes. One thing all of the strange figures had in common were the long, thin, rifle-shaped weapons they held in their hands, and which they immediately began firing at the 37, the impacts of their shots spewing hot shards of rock in every direction. The riders, however, had scattered for cover as soon as the doors to the ship had opened, and noticing that the creatures' fire bounced off the Yellow Claw and the ring of Cheemurzwa, the riders took cover behind them and began returning fire. Then the hairy, clawed man swept Arrowhead and the Red Warrior aside and leapt again at the Sheriff.
Seeing this, Maddy was finally jolted from her paralysis and jumped forward. She backhanded the hairy, clawed man; irritated with herself for waiting to act for so long, she put more into the blow than she'd anticipated and knocked him several hundred feet in the air, far away from the Arc Dome. She turned to jump at the Yellow Claw, the projectiles of the Claw's allies bouncing off her (but shredding her clothing), when the Yellow Claw caught her eye. He seemed to squint and concentrate, and his face suddenly swelled and his eyes gleamed, and the sounds of the battle around her faded and she felt her consciousness began to drain away.
Then suddenly that stopped, and she blinked and was back in her body, and she was looking at the Yellow Claw, who blinked repeatedly and looked confused. He glanced to his left, and Maddy followed his gaze, and they both saw that Black Eagle, bullets and projectiles bouncing off her body, had completed her circuit around the top of the Dome, leaving a solid circle of colored...sand?...on the ground. Over the roar of gunfire the Yellow Claw and Miss America heard Black Eagle say, "Within this circle only Father Sun's power works, Evil One." Maddy suddenly realized that the heat, the awful heat, that had been pouring forth from the bald Indians had stopped, and that they were blinking and obviously confused and looking at the Yellow Claw.
The Claw's brow furrowed, and he scowled, and before anyone thought to shoot him he touched something on his wrist and whispered into it. Maddy couldn't hear what he said - the gunfire between the riders and the strange creatures, and the screams of the dying, were too loud - but she saw the ship turn in the air, and what were obviously its guns turn towards the Dome, and without thinking she leapt up and flew into the ship. It fired on her as she flew toward it, but its beams reflected harmlessly off her, and then she hit the ship and propelled herself through it, emerging in a shower of twisted metal from the other side, the impact of her body having driven the ship several hundred feet away from the Dome. And then, as the ship began rotate towards her, she flew into it again, diving fists-first through it, and as she exited the ship from a massive hole in its top, tossing aside the stuff of the ship, she turned in mid-air to look at it, and she saw it start to shudder and then slowly drift to the ground around a mile behind the Arc Dome. It plowed into the ground and promptly, and with a great display of light and sound, exploded.
Maddy began flying back towards the Dome, looking for the Claw, when the air in front of her coalesced into the face of the Vision. Although she hadn't seen him since his seeming death in 1944, she recognized him instantly, and she said, "Vision? What--" Not seeming to hear her, he said, in his usually haunting and echoey voice, "Your work here is done, Madeleine." And then his face swelled and she saw and knew nothing more."
Author's Notes:
Basically, this story was born from my desire to write a Western. Of course, I couldn't just write any Western, and I didn't want to use only the same old characters that everyone uses. So I went the full monty and used every Marvel character (that I could find out about, I mean). Yes, these were all real characters - the only one I made up was Black Eagle. Red Wolf of course was made up in the pages of Avengers. The rest were all real characters - in the pages of various Timely and Atlas comics. Whatever personality wrinkles I gave them are almost all my own creation, of course; I've read the adventures of maybe a third of these folks, but they are all pretty much the same, characterization-wise, so I decided to try to make them my own.
For those who are continuity-conscious, the following is a complete list of all those cowboys who rode with Miss America:
Annie Oakley, Arizona Annie, Arizona Kid, Apache Kid, Arrowhead, Black Eagle, Black Rider, Blaze Carson, Caleb Hammer, Crimson Avenger, Dakota Kid, Gunfighter, Gunhawk, Gunsmoke Kid, Kid Colt, Kid From Dodge City, Kid From Texas, Masked Raider, Matt Slade, Outlaw Kid, Phantom Rider III, Prairie Kid, Rawhide Kid, Red Larabee, Red Hawkins, Red Warrior, Red Wolf, Reno Jones, Rex Hart, Ringo Kid, The Sheriff, Texas Kid, Tex Morgan, Tex Taylor, Two-Gun Kid, Western Kid, and Whip Wilson
The Cheemurzwa are, of course, a real Marvel creation, tied in with Wyatt Wingfoot (who is Keewazi) and the Miracle Man.
Next issue: A Year Of No Consequence