Liahona

by D. J. Butler

  Absalom felt his throat constricting. “I… I…” he stammered.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty girlish Etonian head about it, you bloody toff,” Clemens’s Henry-armed companion sneered in an Irish brogue. “We know it wasn’t you.”

  “Harrovian,” Absalom murmured defensively.

  “Same fookin’ thing.” The Irishman spat on the ground.

  “What do you want?” Burton pressed Sam Clemens, his face hard.

  Clemens sighed and looked wistful. “Mostly,” he said, “I want to gloat. Will it ease your feelings if I dress my gloating up in homespun philosophy?”

  “It might,” Burton allowed.

  Clemens gnawed on his stub and reflected. “I could tell you that cheaters never prosper,” he said, “but if you know anything about the United States Congress, you’ll know that’s a crock of manure.”

  “What goes around, comes around,” Burton offered coolly.

  Clemens shook his head dismissively. “Too eastern, too much symmetry, too much yin-this-and-yang-the-other-thing. What if I just leave it at never go up against a riverboat man when his smokestack is on the line? It isn’t exactly pithy, but it’s got a certain sly innuendo about it, and it resonates.”

  “I suppose your Shoshone friends will hold us here while you get a head start,” Burton said grimly, and Absalom’s heart sank at the prospect of the mission’s failure. Well, he thought, at least he could still find his sister.

  “Of course,” Clemens admitted. “Also, I’m going to steal all your coal.”

  * * *

  Not long after the gray pre-dawn sky over the pit transitioned to a bright morning blue, the Shoshone raised the portcullis and let out the crew and passengers of the Liahona. Braves stood at the mouth of the tunnel to meet their former prisoners as they were disgorged, cheerfully returning weapons and making assurances that nothing on board the truck had been disturbed. Captain Jones stormed out first, yelling “John Moses! John Moses!” before he was halfway across the compound towards his idling vehicle.

  Poe let himself drift at the back of the crowd. He exercised all his considerable powers of inconspicuousness and stealth, but he knew it was wasted effort. Roxie had seen him without his beard, and surely she had recognized him as easily as he had recognized her. His only hope, and it was a slim one, was that she still believed him to be dead, and that her belief was strong enough to trump the evidence of her own eyes. She had tried to kill him in Baltimore, after all—trickster, liar, seductress, poisoner—and, at the Army’s instruction—at Robert’s instruction—he had let her believe she had succeeded. She almost had. He had died to the world, then, had ceased to be Edgar Allan Poe or Edgar or Ed to almost every human being he talked to, had assumed a series of false identities, many even nameless, in pursuit of the various missions the Army had given him.

  For many years at a stretch, the only human being who had known he was alive and known his real name, Poe’s only source of genuine human contact, much less kindness, had been his case officer, Robert Lee.

  No, he could hope she thought he was dead, but he knew better. He had seen the surprise register on her face when that thug Hickman had pierced his disguise, and he had noted how thoroughly she had avoided him thereafter. She was too good to ever give the appearance of avoiding him, but the fact remained that Hickman had shouted his name and she hadn’t met his eyes or stood close to him since. Perhaps she didn’t trust herself not to reveal her knowledge, or perhaps she was simply afraid that Poe might seek an opportunity to take his well-deserved revenge.

  Either way, she knew, and that put him and all his objectives at risk.

  For that matter, Hickman and Lee knew. Who were they and where did they get their information?

  As he let Roxie and other passengers flush out through the tunnel ahead of him, he pondered again the questions that had been running through his head for hours. What did Brigham Young want? What did Orson Pratt want? What did Roxie want? Did her presence on the Liahona indicate that Young knew of Poe’s mission and wanted it thwarted? Or did it mean that Roxie knew Poe was alive, and was after him again? Or was it mere coincidence? Was she still Young’s agent? Was she Pratt’s?

  And where was Coltrane? Obviously, the dwarf had failed in his errand, since Roxie was alive and well. Had she killed or disabled him somehow? But she had been at the show, and then on the Liahona’s deck. Was the young high-kicking woman a professional associate of Roxie’s—might she have defeated Poe’s dwarf?

  He watched the young woman now, careful not to drift too close to her. The English diplomat, Fearnley-Standish, was chattering to her frantically, spewing out a torrent of words. She tolerated his walking beside her, and when he reached out to hold her hand, she squeezed his fingers once, briefly, before letting them go. Her face was the iron visage of a nymph and she looked very much in command of the conversation, and strong, and Poe could imagine her possessing undisclosed and dangerous skills. She might very well have done Coltrane in.

  Poe could carry out his mission without the dwarf, assuming Hunley’s devices were all still intact, and in particular the ones he had to consign to the Madman. He patted the whistle around his neck to be sure he still had that, at least. He couldn’t be so conspicuous as to rush out to the Liahona first, but he did need to assure himself that he still had his other tools.

  And he had to get to the Great Salt Lake City as fast as possible.

  Damn Samuel Clemens.

  When Poe reached the Liahona, he could see its Captain and crew on board, on the deck and through the few portholes, searching furiously for their missing midshipman. “John Moses!” Poe heard the Welshman shout, over and over but to no avail.

  A crowd of the truck’s passengers mobbed beside one of its enormous tracks, facing off against the old Shoshone chief. Pocatello stood to face their irate stares with his arms crossed over his chest in casual unconcern. The mob carried weapons, and if Pocatello had been a lone man, he might have had to fear for his life, but half a dozen braves stood about him, all armed to the teeth, and of course the rocky bluff above the compound was a glowering hedgehog of snipers. Roxie was not in sight—likely she had slipped aboard the Liahona, to avoid Poe’s presence yet again, and now her young companion followed her.

  “Did you leave us enough coal to get to the Great Salt Lake City?” cried out a long-faced Swede, despair in his voice.

  Pocatello shrugged. “I gave Sam Clemens a free run at the truck’s coal room. I don’t know how much he took, but he seemed anxious to be sure he got there ahead of you, so my guess is that he didn’t leave you nearly enough.”

  “Have you no shame, sir?” demanded one of the spinsters to whom Poe had paid special attention during the previous night’s show.

  “No, ma’am,” Pocatello acknowledged, “I do not. I have a people to lead and feed and protect, and this was purely a business transaction in my people’s interest. Don’t worry, ma’am, your Captain Jones is a resourceful man, and I expect you’ll make it down into the Valley soon enough. In the meantime, if you’re hungry, we have food we can share… for a reasonable price.” He grinned.

  Poe thought he saw where this conversation was going, and wanted to cut it short. He had seen the Jim Smiley and he doubted that it was large enough to carry away all the Liahona’s coal, even if it had stuffed its every compartment full to overflowing. With another quick glance around to be sure he saw neither Roxie nor the young woman he suspected of being her assistant, he raised his voice to pose a question to the Shoshone chief. “I see that you’re a commercially sophisticated man, Chief,” he said. “Is there anything else you might condescend to let us have for a price? Anything necessary for the operation of a steam-truck, say?”

  The Chief batted his eyes innocently and Poe knew he had guessed correctly. “I suppose I might,” he conceded. “Did you have anything specific in mind?”

  “Coal, for instance?”

  Chief Pocatello’s grin broadened. “Why yes,” he said, �
��I believe I do have some coal I might be able to sell to you. And I’m no expert, but I guess it’s probably just the right kind for the Liahona’s boiler.”

  * * *

  “Hell and begorra,” Tam exclaimed under his breath, inaudible over the rumble of the steam-truck’s operation and the faint rattle of the strapped-down dishes in their various shelves and cupboards, “there’s a kid aboard.”

  He stared at the child, a round-faced little boy overwhelmed by a man’s large pea coat, spilling out of the pots and pans cabinet beneath the galley counter. The boy stared back, with big eyes (and didn’t every one of Mother O’Shaughnessy’s children have big eyes, didn’t all kids have big eyes? don’t get all sentimental, me boy).

  “I only wanted a fresh bottle,” Tam muttered, “and Brigit help me if there isn’t a three-year-old kid where the whisky’s supposed to be.”

  “Five,” said the boy, and then his eyes flickered to the space behind Tam.

  Tam hadn’t survived his life of dedicated misbehavior by being slow or even by mere good luck. He saw the flick of the boy’s eyes and heard a very faint creaking sound, without consciously formulating any idea of what it might mean, he spun about and threw himself backward, at the same time whipping from its holster the strange gun he’d stolen from the dead Pinkerton and pointing it at whatever might be behind his back—

  and found himself staring down the barrel of an identical pistol, aimed by a grimacing, hairy-knuckled, downright monkeylike bastard of a dwarf (and wasn’t every midget half a monkey, really?) who hung by the strength of one arm out of the china cupboard.

  Tam saw realization dawn in the dwarf’s eyes at the same moment that he himself understood what had happened to the second Pinkerton.

  “Jebus!” barked the dwarf.

  “I hope you wiped your tiny little arse before you climbed in there,” Tam sneered. “Sam’s particular about liking all of his food without monkey shite in it.”

  They both jumped—

  both fired—

  zing! zing!—

  both missed.

  They both kept moving. Tam whirled clockwise on his good leg in the small galley and the bloody-damn-hell monkeydwarf sprang from one cupboard to another and then onto the covered (and therefore not unbearably hot) steam heater that served as cooker of all meals served aboard the Jim Smiley, both of them firing all the while. The damned little monkey moved like a butterfly, flitting back and forth like he knew just where each bullet was going to go, and Tam could barely see him move, much less hit him. Like some surreal dream, the guns only zinged! demurely, but crockery burst in fountains of ceramic splinters and bullets whined off the iron walls of the galley, chewing through the wooden cabinets and cupboards like termites pumped full of coffee.

  The air filled with dust.

  “Brigit!” the Irishman choked as a bullet hit him in his left arm. That was the second bullet he’d taken in forty-eight hours. His booted feet slipped, scrabbled for a grip among the rubble on the galley floor, and then brought him down with a heavy thud!

  The midget slammed his shoulder blades against a corner of the galley, his little feet on a varnished sideboard, and raised his silenced gun to take aim at Tam again—

  “I’ll kill the boy!” Tam roared, and the dwarf stopped. Tam lay on his back, bleeding and battered, and he pointed his pistol at the little boy. It was a bluff and a gamble, and the dwarf might call it, but Tam had no other choice. If the dwarf and the boy were together, and the dwarf cared about the boy, Tam just might survive.

  The midget hesitated.

  “I’ll fookin’ do it!” Tam insisted, cursing and shaking the pistol for emphasis. “I killed the Pinkerton, you know I did, and I’ll by damn kill the boy, too!”

  The dwarf raised his gun, but slowly, hesitating.

  The little boy burst into tears.

  Saint Anthony help me, this is it, Tam thought desperately. “Drop the bloody gun, monkey!” he shouted, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

  The dwarf gritted his teeth, looked at the sobbing child, and tossed his pistol to the floor. Tam felt a wave of relief flow through his whole body.

  He stood up slowly, keeping his pistol carefully trained on the boy as he shook dust and china chips out of his clothing. He kept his eyes on the dwarf, still perched on the countertop, as he crouched to pick up the second Pinkerton gun, tucking it into his belt.

  “Praise Judas Iscariot and all the bloody saints,” he sighed, “you’re a reasonable little gargoyle. I thought for a moment there that I’d robbed my last bank.”

  Squinting down the barrel of his gun at the weeping boy, he pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  “See that?” he laughed. “Empty. I’se just about shitting my trousers that you were going to shoot me again.”

  The dwarf jumped.

  He flew straight at Tam, knobby, hairy fists extended over his head like clubs, like the flailing orangutanish mitts of a charging ape.

  “Shite!” Tam ducked and the dwarf crashed into his shoulders, bowling him down and hurling both of them out into the Jim Smiley’s short hall. Ape fists pulled Tam’s porkpie hat down over his face to blind him and an ape thumb gouged into the tender bloody bullet wound in his arm.

  Tam screamed in pain and pulled the trigger of his pistol twice before he remembered that the gun was now empty. He felt little feet pad past him, but he could pay them no attention for the little fists, little fingers and little teeth that assailed him.

  The gun was empty, but it wasn’t useless. He clubbed the dwarf, rolled, and got his knees between the two of them. Just as he felt little teeth sink into his ear, he kicked his legs—

  hurling the dwarf against the iron wall—

  and ripping off his own ear.

  “Aaagh!” he screamed. He slapped the hat from his face and clapped one hand over his bleeding ear. “You fookin’ animal!” he roared at the midget, who was bouncing to his feet again, like the little bastard was cast out of India rubber, and then Tam saw the gun lying on the floor of the hallway between them.

  The loaded Pinkerton pistol.

  “Shite!”

  The dwarf jumped for the gun, but Tam kicked faster, hitting the pistol and sending it skittering away down the hall and out of reach of both men. Missing the pistol, the dwarf landed instead on Tam’s leg, and he brought his elbow down like a hammer on the Irishman’s knee. The pain almost blinded him.

  “Bloody mite!” Tam shouted, and dug the fingers of his good arm into the dwarf’s hair. The dwarf resisted, but by throwing his own body weight to the side and heaving with all his might, Tam managed to twist his assailant aside, pin him against the wall with one hand and scramble again in the direction of the lost weapon.

  But the little boy had picked it up and was pointing it at the Irishman.

  Tam paused, lying on his belly, looking up past the bulbous muzzle of the pistol at the five-year-old holding it. “Nice lad, good lad,” he panted. “Give your uncle Tam his gun back now.”

  The dwarf struggled, clawing at Tam’s wounded arm—

  Tam gritted his teeth against the pain—

  “John Moses!” the dwarf shouted, and Tam closed his fist down over the dwarf’s mouth, silencing him—

  the little boy raised the pistol doubtfully—

  “Easy, son,” said a man’s voice. Through the pain and adrenalin it took Tam a moment to recognize Sam Clemens, but there he was, standing behind the boy with his queer rubber-soled shoes and his crotchful of rivets, talking to him nice and gentle like he was the kid’s own dad. “Easy, son. Let me have the pistol and I’ll make them both stop fighting. How does that sound to you? Isn’t that what you want?”

  Tam squinted up and through the sweat and blood in his eyes he saw that Sam was unarmed and smiling. The boy hesitated only a moment, and then handed the Pinkerton’s pistol over to Sam Clemens.

  “Thanks, son,” Sam said to the boy. “You did the right thing.” Then he pointed the gun at the
two men struggling on the floor.

  “I’m no expert in these things,” he said, flapping his bushy eyebrows at them, “but I believe I know which end bites. The next one of you to strike the other, move towards me or do anything other than just lie still, I’ll shoot him.”

  Tam collapsed, exhausted, and felt the dwarf do the same. Good old Sam Clemens, he thought. Good old Missouri Sam.

  * * *

  “I regret the barbarism,” Sam Clemens said, nearly shouting to be heard over the rumble of the Jim Smiley and the wind that ruffled his hair and tried to rip all his words away. He’d like to have lit a Cohiba to celebrate his impending victory, or at least his manifest lead over the gargantuan Liahona, but that would have required him to shut the wheelhouse windows, and he liked the breeze too much. “Which is not quite the same thing as an apology, because I’d do the same thing again if I had to.”

  The dwarf grunted an acknowledgement that made no concessions. He was tied into the second of the wheelhouse’s chairs, bound hand and foot but left with his mouth free. If Sam had been smoking, he’d have given the little man his own cigar. Or at least, Sam thought, considering how low his store of good Cohibas was dwindling, a few puffs off Sam’s. The boy John Moses sat in the third chair, free and munching on a flat square of ship’s biscuit. Crumbs from the biscuit fell and spotted the black rubber matting that covered the floor of the wheelhouse, matching the rubber that encased the wheel itself, and the soles of Sam’s shoes, and the head of each control.

  “You gonna kill me, Clemens?” the midget growled.

  Sam considered the question as he drove, goggle-protected eyes drinking in the glorious mountains, pine woods and tall grasses surrounding the trail ahead. Off to one side, a great swath of trees had been burnt into spent matchsticks, utterly consumed along with the grasses around them, leaving nothing but a long, straight streak of blackened earth and stone. Sam wondered if that might be the result of a phlogiston gun being fired from the air, and then shook off the thought. Speculation was pointless; he had a mission. Besides, the burning was almost certainly the result of some perfectly natural cause, like a lightning strike.