Bounty Hunter

by Michelle E Lowe

  “I’m sorry if it upsets you, though, Mr. Landcross,” the boy apologized, losing his smile. “It was only meant to be a joke.”

  Pierce sighed deeply. The lad was just being playful. Pierce had messed around with people in the same manner once or twice himself. Strangely, two words came to mind:

  Tin Man.

  What the bloody hell did that mean? Had he called someone Tin Man before?

  Pierce shook it off. It was another one of his odd occurrences, which had been going on for the past four years. He suspected something had happened to cause these episodes. Usually, when these things occurred, they vanished from memory as quickly as they had appeared. Tin Man became another elusive recollection, passing by like a faceless passenger on the street, giving no signs of identification.

  “It’s all right, lad,” Pierce finally said. “I’ve been called worse. In the future, though, just call me Pierce, eh?”

  They reached Guaymas, unsure as to where the races were taking place. Pierce went to the square, the only place he could think to go for help. To his relief, he found Emma.

  “You made it,” she said. “Where is your wife?”

  “Taisia stayed behind. The, erm, sun is too much for her.”

  “Ooh,” she said without sounding too convincing in her concern. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  Behind her was her racing machine, the Wheel, loaded in the bed of a wagon cart. All the other racers were either loading up their machines, departing, or had already gone from the square.

  “The races are taking place in the desert fields outside of the city,” Emma explained. “We’re heading there now if you want to follow us.”

  As they spoke, Tarak went over to have a closer look at the Wheel. He leaned over the cart and reached out to touch the back wheel when Gabriela yelled at him in Spanish.

  “No tocas eso!”

  The boy quickly retracted his hand and took a step back. “Lo siento.”

  “Oi!” Pierce snapped angrily. “What are you yelling at him about?”

  He didn’t understand what she had said to the lad, but he hadn’t liked her tone.

  “It’s fine,” Emma told him. “I’ll handle this.”

  She spoke to Gabriela in Spanish. She sounded angry. They argued a bit before Gabriela threw her hands up and clambered up onto the driver’s seat of the wagon.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Emma said to Pierce. “Gabriela is very wound up about winning the race this year. The slightest thing sets her off. Is the boy with you?”

  “Aye,” he said, waving him over. “This is young Tarak. He’s the son of a very good friend of mine. He wanted to have a gander at the races.”

  “A gander,” she giggled. “I like that.” To Tarak, she said with hand outstretched, “Tarak, I’m Emma Rojas. Nice to meet you.”

  The boy grinned helplessly at her. It was apparent that he fancied her, which wasn’t hard to do.

  “Ho . . . hola,” Tarak stammered, shaking her hand.

  “Tenemos que irnos,” Gabriela called from the wagon.

  “Vale, ya voy,” Emma responded. To Pierce she said, “Ready?”

  Pierce and Tarak mounted up and followed the wagon out of the city. Soon, the buildings fell away to flat, sandy plains. The desert, however, was anything but plain. Thousands of people from all walks of life were everywhere, wandering about or sitting in the stands lining both sides of the racing track. Vendors were about, selling all sorts of wares. Brightly colored balloons were tethered everywhere on long threads, and even a Mariachi band played on a large stage near the starting line. The desert had come alive with colors, chatter, and music.

  The racing track was a long, straight turf. A quarter of a mile away stood two tall posts with a banner stretched between them that read “TERMINAR.” Another finish line was set a half mile down, and a third finish line a full mile away from that one. The stands were packed with spectators lining both sides of the track.

  There were people getting ready to race. They had pushed their contraptions to the checkered starting line. A man wearing a helmet and a very long cape climbed up onto a pedestal of sorts that stood around thirty feet high. He mounted himself on the springboard at the top and reached up over his head to pull down a bar already attached to the harness he wore.

  Next came a railroad handcart. The inventor drove it up alongside the egg-shaped machine with the glass upper half. Another group of people rolled along in a queer-looking machine that was little more than a pair of five-foot-tall wheels with two racers standing behind a crankshaft attached to a platform between the wheels. Then came the koi fish Pierce had seen on the road only days before.

  “Those are the first-round racers,” Emma explained as they parked the wagon. “Their machines are completely man-powered.”

  She jumped down from the cart and moved to the back while Gabriela climbed into the bed. Emma pulled down the tailgate and lowered a plank, propping it up vertically against the wagon.

  “Pierce, will you help me bring this down?”

  Pierce took hold of the back of the Wheel while Emma wrapped her hands around the machine just above his. They touched lightly, but enough to give Pierce’s skin a charge. Together, they slowly guided the contraption down the ramp while Gabriela held the front to keep it from rolling backwards too quickly. Touching Emma made Pierce lose track of time, and before he knew it, the racing machine’s wheels were safely on the ground.

  His lightheaded moment ended when Tarak exclaimed, “How fast can it go?”

  The lad was again studying the machine, this time without protest from Gabriela. Emma, whose eyes were pinned on Pierce, blinked many times before shaking her head.

  “Pardon, Tarak? Oh, um, pretty fast. I’d rather you see it for yourself.”

  “Somos numero nueve,” Gabriela said to Emma, pointing to a row of tally marks near the track where other the racing machines were parked.

  Emma nodded and turned to Pierce. “Can you help push the Wheel over?”

  Emma steered as Pierce pushed it from behind. As they got the racing wheel into its waiting area, the band stopped playing. A round Mexican man, dressed in a black suit and a stovepipe hat, stepped up onto the stage. He approached center stage with a mechanical speaking trumpet. Standing with this man were four other people, two on either side of him with their own speaking trumpets.

  “Who’s the pudgy gent?”

  “That’s Mayor Nicolás Belén,” Emma answered. “He’s about to announce the races.”

  Sure enough, Mayor Belén spoke into the speaking trumpet, the device carrying his voice far. Pierce heard him clearly, yet he couldn’t understand him. It wasn’t until a translator standing beside the mayor repeated what he’d said in French that Pierce caught on. Another spoke Japanese, another Chinese, and the last was in English.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen!” they said. “Welcome to the third annual Industrial Race!”

  The crowd cheered and once the announcements were made, Mayor Belén raised a pistol to the sky. He looked at his pocket watch, and as he did, the racers at the starting line got ready. The man on the springboard pulled on cords hanging over his shoulder, and what sprang from his back were wings that Pierce had first mistaken as the cape. They appeared to be bat wings held together by wood. The wings spanned twelve feet and were locked in place with joints in the middle of each wing. The drivers of the handcart and the egg got into their racing contraptions while two men climbed up the wheels to the hand cranks set in the center of them. The Asian couple mounted their koi fish.

  “Here we go,” Emma said excitedly, wrapping her arms around Pierce’s arm.

  He looked over at her and smelled her sweet perfume. The scent traveled through him like an energy wave, perforating his senses with desire and making them tingle. The gun blast made his attention snap forward.

  “They’re off!” Tarak yelled, jumping up and down while pointing.

  “Tarak,” Emma said, handing him a spyglass from her leather pouc
h, “take this.”

  The boy accepted it and Emma reclaimed her hold on Pierce’s arm.

  The second after the shot, the racers were off. The handcart started out strong, as did the egg, which pulled into the lead. The man with the bat wings ran over the springboard. He bounced once, leapt off his tall pedestal, and soared over the other racers until the air caught under the wings the wrong way, sending him straight up before making him crash to earth. The pair, cranking the wheels they stood between, had made it past the stage when a loud crack stopped them. The wheel on one side crumbled to pieces, sending the racers tumbling. Pierce gritted his teeth at the sight.

  That left the handcar, the egg, and the koi fish. The ones operating the handcar lost their vigor, starting off too fast and then falling behind. The egg’s steering locked up on the driver and he veered off track, crashing into the stands, leaving the koi fish to roll effortlessly over the finish line. The Asian man waved his bowler hat at the cheering crowd while the woman in the front paid no one any mind.

  “You and Tarak should stay here at the waiting post with us,” Emma said, letting go of Pierce’s arm to rummage through her pouch. “Take this other spyglass.”

  She handed Pierce the spyglass, which caused Gabriela to become cross again. She said something to Emma, who, in turn, responded angrily.

  “Is this one Gabriela’s?” Pierce guessed.

  “Sí,” she answered. “But we’ve been to races before. Besides, I want to make sure you can see me clearly.” She looked toward the track. “Oh, good, the winds are strong enough for the sail race.”

  Like the egg, Pierce recognized some of the racing machines from the square, such as the turtle with wrought iron wheels. The driver of the turtle jumped into a hole set in the center of the large shell. The other machines included a round boat set on four wheels with large steel propellers mounted in the back on bended pipes that turned the propellers facing forward towards the sails. Then there was a steel squid with long tentacles twisting behind it. A mast stood erect atop the head, with a brass steering wheel positioned behind it. Once it rolled to the starting line, a woman dressed in a white tailcoat, trousers, and boots climbed onto the squid’s back and took her place behind the wheel. Her silver goggles glimmered against her red hair. Lastly, there was a two-person operated butterfly.

  All the Contributors had their sails hoisted. Every machine was crudely made, a patchwork of metals and plywood meshed together. A couple of racing machines, such as the squid and the boat, had been painted, but it did little to improve their look.

  When the gunshot blasted through the dry desert air, the canvases dropped. The butterfly dropped its colorful wings and was the first one in the lead. The driver of the turtle pulled on ropes, dropping the sails, and began steering the machine as it slowly traveled down the track, the turtle’s head bobbing up and down as it went. The woman in white pulled down her goggles and dropped canvas that had a squid image painted on it. When the sails plumped with winds and her squid started moving, it really went! The butterfly sails shifted in the winds and moved its wheels below very quickly. Pierce was rather surprised just how fast the contraptions could go.

  An operator of the boat used a crank to rotate the propellers, adding wind boost in its sails like a fan, which quickly pulled them past the butterfly and into the lead. It seemed the boat would cross the finish line first, but then it suddenly lost control when the crank broke off in the operator’s hand, slowing the land vessel dramatically. The young woman in white gained momentum and sailed her squid over the finish line with the butterfly coming in at second and the bulky turtle trailing behind it.

  Next was the coal-powered race. In this race, there was the miniature locomotive, a stagecoach with a chimneystack, and a heavy-looking steam engine attached to the rear boot. In front of the driver’s box of the stagecoach were a steering wheel and a pair of steel sculptures of running horses suspended inches from the ground by their concord stagecoach harnesses. Another man got into a brass-colored machine that was wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Pierce imagined a chair inside, as well as a steering wheel, though the space must’ve been tight. It had an engine and two stacks fastened in the back. Standing behind the gold racing machine was a man holding a shovel full of coal, waiting to toss it into the firebox. The last racing machine was a simple bicycle with two short stacks attached to either side of the back tire. The racer had a rucksack strapped in front of him with a firebox set between the handlebars.

  When the mayor fired off his third shot, the racers, or their assistants, shoveled coal into their fireboxes and black smoke billowed from the stacks. Everyone pulled levers on their machines, causing wheels to spin, kicking up sand and grit seconds before they caught traction.

  Pierce didn’t have high hopes that the little cone-shaped machine would get very far. But when the assistant tossed the coal into the firebox, smoke plumed out of the stacks and the racer took off like a bullet. On a single shovel of coal, it rode by everyone, even the cyclist who was furiously scooping coal from his rucksack into an opening atop the firebox. Fire poured from the opening, blackening the cyclist’s face with soot. His bicycle had gone so fast, he had his feet stretched out, for he could no longer keep them on the quickly spinning pedals. The damn cone kept on going to where only his dust trail was visible. The crowd near the finish line cheered loudly from their stands.

  “How did his coal burn for so long?”

  “He must’ve used anthracite coal,” Emma explained. “It’s a hard coal that burns slowly.”

  Was that legal? Pierce wondered.

  “I’m up,” Emma said, unwinding her arms from Pierce. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck, lass,” Pierce said, watching her push the racing machine with Gabriela toward the starting line.

  It wasn’t until he caught himself staring at Emma’s arse that he nearly slapped himself across the face.

  “Stop it,” he ordered himself in a stern whisper.

  Emma and Gabriela positioned the Wheel behind the now smeared starting line next to a cannon-like machine made of royal blue glass, exposing its inner workings, located at the rear. Its wheels resembled those of a train. The other racing machine was another small locomotive, only slightly larger than the last and manned by two people. A woman sat in a wooden tank, supported by wheels that were actually large gears wrapped inside continuous tracks. Its engine was attached to the boot near to where the stacks stuck out. Then came Ame-No-Mi-Kumari. Pierce had been waiting for the airship. She’d been on the other side of the track behind the stands, waiting for her turn. With hot air balloons filled and the ship unanchored, the airship floated hundreds of feet off the ground. It took dozens of men holding her by ropes to guide the lightweight vessel to the starting point. Once the handlers got her into position, they let the ropes go for the crew onboard to bring up. As they did so, a whirring sound came from the propulsions.

  Pierce imagined someone was inside the hull, turning the iron wheel on the engine, starting it up to create the energy needed to send currents through the cathodes and into the ionization chambers to become positively charged ionization atoms for the acceleration grids. Or so Captain Xiong had explained, anyway.

  Although Ame-No-Mi-Kumari was elevated much higher than she had been at the square, Pierce still wasn’t convinced she could do much else.

  Everyone, including Emma, strapped on their helmets and put on their goggles. Emma took a seat inside the Wheel as Gabriela turned the engine crank in the back. Others started up their racing machines, some needing to pull on cords to get theirs humming. Fireboxes quickly grew hot enough to burn the oil inside the engines. The acrid odor permeated everything.

  “Do you think Emma will win?” Tarak asked anxiously.

  “Hope so, lad,” he answered truthfully, watching through the spyglass.

  As the racers sat idle, their machines growling and ready to charge down the track, Mayor Nicolás Belén raised his pistol up and shouted into the speak
ing trumpet, as did the translators. “Ready! Set! Go!”

  With the final gun blast, the racers were off—all except for Emma, whose engine had stopped dead.

  “Bugger,” Pierce grunted, lowering his spyglass.

  He could hear her and Gabriela screaming at each other in Spanish through the thick dust cloud left behind by the other racers. Pierce chewed his bottom lip as he nervously watched.

  To no one’s surprise, Ame-No-Mi-Kumari lumbered along through the sky. The sight of it would have been tranquil, if it wasn’t in a bloody race. The crew hung on to whatever they could as if bracing for a storm. Pierce snorted at them. Then the buzzing grew increasingly louder inside the propulsions and a burst of fire ripped out from them, causing the ship to surge forward. The aircraft quickly closed the gap between itself and the other racers below. Pierce stood utterly gobsmacked.

  Gabriela furiously turned the crank until it finally coughed back to life. The moment the engine roared, Emma pressed her foot down on the pedal. The back wheels spun furiously until it gained traction. And just like that, the Wheel was off!

  It seemed she’d already lost until she flicked the throw switch, setting off her boosters. Fire burst from her stack, burning through the black smoke and heaving the contraption forward. The speed with which Emma went, covered ground so quickly that she narrowly missed the locomotive, which had slowed dramatically in front of her when the engine blew and burst into flames. She zipped by the glass cannon and flew past the tank. Emma closed in on the airship above. Ame-No-Mi-Kumari had gotten far in the lead and had nearly crossed the finish line when Emma rode right under her and took the win! The flags went down, and Gabriela jumped up and down, yelling happily.

  Emma turned the Wheel around and rode steadily back to the waiting post where she got out.

  “I won!” she yelled, running by Gabriela, who spread her arms out to embrace her.

  Instead, Emma threw herself on Pierce.

  “I can’t believe I won!”

  Her excitement galvanized him, and he hugged her back, allowing the thrill of the victorious moment to consume him, as well. The sensation felt so great that he didn’t resist when Emma kissed him.