Logan's Run by William F. Nolan

Author:William F. Nolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

When Crazy Horse Mountain was dedicated, the great mass of granite became the site of a monumental project which was to consume half a century. An Indian warrior, 563 feet high and 641 feet long, would ride the land, carved from six million tons of Dakota stone. A mountain would become a man, towering above black-forest wilderness, dwarfing the giant heads of Rushmore.

The sculptor was Korczak Ziolkowski, and under his direction 150,000 tons of rock would be ripped away each year to form his dream. After a decade, more than a million tons of living granite lay in rubble at the foot of the looming mountain—and the feather of the great War Chief of the Ogallala Sioux began to emerge. Obsessed by his vision, Ziolkowski ranged the continents, prying money from the pockets of the rich, the vain, the titled—which he spent on blasting powder, dynamite, cordite, tools, winches and rope.

The work went on. Gradually the mountain sheared away. Nations threw their combined resources behind it, fired by the dramatic image of a great fighting chieftain on a wild-maned stallion. Thousands of laborers and artists toiled on the flanks of the plunging horse. Diamond drillbits and jackhammers tore at the granite heart of the mountain.

And, with infinite slowness, the mammoth figure took its place against the Dakota sky: Tashunca-uitco. Crazy Horse. The ruthless Indian genius who directed the annihilation of Custer’s Seventh on the Little Big Horn.

The world marveled.

—

On an April afternoon, three years before the project’s completion, a thick-waisted laborer named Balder “Big Ed” Thag was clearing brush on the east flank of Crazy Horse. He was attracted to a cleft in the rocks by a strange, ululating sound; a wind was issuing from the interior of the mountain.

Thag stepped to the wide opening and peered within. The wind slammed him with such force that he had to brace his legs to keep from being pushed off the slope.

Unfortunately for Thag, it was exactly 4:27 o’clock. The banshee wind whistle abruptly stopped. There was a moment of absolute stillness. Then the wind resumed, but this time it was not blowing outward. The wind sucked in with irresistible force. It was Thag’s misfortune that he was braced in the wrong direction. He lost his footing and toppled into the hole and fell as a stone falls down a well.

The mountain was breathing, but Thag was not.

Many years passed before the Crazy Horse Caverns were discovered again.

Etched by moving water through eons of time from the limestone basement of the mountain chain, they proved to be the most extensive network of cave formations in the world. Beside them, Carlsbad was a worm crawl.

—

In Custer, South Dakota, the car told Logan and Jess, “You are entering restricted territory. I am not permitted to proceed farther.”

At dawn they left the maze and began to trek overland.

—

In a deep ravine flanking Crazy Horse Mountain was a white metal post. On it a stamped sign.

ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT

DEATH!

KEEP OUT!

U.S. GOVERNMENT

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