by D. J. Butler
He grunted, picked up the crate, and headed for the Jim Smiley. Be careful, O’Shaughnessy, he reminded himself. There’s still another one of those two-faced dirty bastards around here somewhere.
Burton led the way, but in his heart he knew that Roxie was directing his steps. It felt good, though, to wrestle with a woman who was his match. To feel at risk in the contest of the heart, that was what he wanted, what he needed.
He shut thoughts of Isabel, his fiancée, out of his mind.
A niggling worry about Fearnley-Standish tried to creep into their place, and he slammed that out as well.
The transition through the saloon doors was a plunge from a warm, smoky, amber bowl full of placid human goldfish into the cold, crackling, blue ocean floor, among sleeping leviathans who could, with a single bite, swallow you. As he crossed the crinkled gravel carpet, the spitting blue balls of the saloon’s Franklin Poles propelled him out of their own sphere and into the bone-white realm of a dusty, enchanted moon. A carpet of pale moonlight, like a silver dusting of snow, lay across the nearest mountains, visible over the stockade walls, and all thoughts of Burton’s fiancée and his nebbish associate vanished. This was a wilderness, he was a man, and he was about to have the experience of this mysterious, exciting woman.
He tightened his grip on her hand, which squeezed him back with a surprising strength, and headed for the near-side ladder, but Roxie pulled him to the right, underneath the ship-like prow of the vehicle and just beneath the exotic characters that Burton assumed must spell out its name; they looked vaguely like the Devanagari script, he thought distractedly, though not cursive. She pulled his body into hers. Her mouth was sharp, salty, and exhilarating, a foamy wave concealing deadly shoals beneath, and he was hard put to breathe between kisses.
“Dick,” she moaned.
“Roxie,” he breathed.
“Nefertiti,” she corrected. Her body blazed against his like a fire.
“Nefertiti,” he agreed, intoxicated.
“Cleopatra,” she continued. She smelled like an entire orchard of sweet pollen. He tightened from head to toe, poised for intimate combat.
“Cleopatra,” he said, “Bathsheba.” This, by the fires of Vizaresh and the House of Lies, this was what a woman was supposed to do to a man!
“The Queen of Sheba,” she added. He thought her mouth was on the verge of drawing his very soul up from his chest and consuming it.
“Balqis,” he agreed, then suddenly jerked to his full height, pulling away from her. “Vishnu’s beard!” he barked.
“Yes, Vishnu,” she murmured. “Don’t pull back!”
But Burton did withdraw his mouth from hers and his hand went to the gun at his belt, the well-worn and deadly accurate Colt 1851 Navy Revolver. Behind Roxie, on the other side of the Liahona, invisible to the saloon, someone lay on the ground. All he could see of the person were two heavy boots, toes up, poking around the corner of the vehicle.
“There’s someone there,” Burton muttered. The boots weren’t moving, despite all the noise the pair had been making, and he didn’t hear any snoring. “Or a body.”
“Yes,” Roxie breathed, but then she caught his tone, stopped, and looked where he was looking. “Oh,” she said simply.
“It could be Isabel,” Burton said, and edged forward for a look.
“Isabel?” Roxie asked. “Is that your fiancée, then?” There was no accusation in her voice, only amusement. Still, Burton gritted his teeth for his humiliating slip. “She has large feet.”
“I … I mean Absalom,” he corrected himself. “I mean my colleague, Absalom Fearnley-Standish.”
“Is Mr. Fearnley-Standish a drunk?”
“No.” Burton frowned, and turned the corner of the Liahona to finally look at the body lying on the ground. “And neither is this man. He’s dead. Been cut several times to the head, neck, and eyes.”
“Be careful, Dick,” Roxie whispered, hanging slightly back. “Too much of that kind of talk may cool my ardor.”
“I wouldn’t want that,” Burton murmured, and he meant it.
He considered what his obligations might be. The dead man was one of the Pinkertons who had accosted him in the saloon, demanding to know if he had seen some Irishman, McNamara. He owed the Pinkertons nothing. Ought he to inform some kind of law enforcement officer of the Fort? He didn’t know who that would be, but didn’t he owe at least that much to the general principles of law and order?
Roxie looked past Burton’s elbow at the dead man. “Yes, Dick, I believe he’s dead. Now I’m going up the ladder, and if you want an opportunity to show me how lively you are, you’d better move quickly.” Then she was gone, and Burton heard her shoes crunch on the gravel and then click on the ladder of the Liahona.
It surprised him, but this was as dangerous a country as he’d ever been in. It made him wonder if perhaps he ought to be carrying his sword around, as well as his pistol, rather than leaving it in its case with the rest of his luggage. He had brought the sword thinking he might at some point have an opportunity for a little exercise, but perhaps he actually needed it as a weapon in this lawless place.
Burton turned and admired Roxie’s form, lithely flitting up the iron rungs of the ladder.
Perhaps it took such a country to make such a woman.
He would inform someone on the Liahona of the body, he resolved as he gripped the bottom rungs of the ladder to throw himself up after her. It was hard to see that he had any more obligation than that.
Moments after Annie excused herself and disappeared, the Irishman slammed down into her chair. He had his porkpie pulled low over his face and the collar of his coat (not his coat at all, actually—Sam’s long moleskin overcoat, and Sam didn’t recall offering to lend it to him) turned up, giving him the ridiculous appearance of skulking in a room full of people. He was pale and sweating, and Sam found that he resented his associate for not being a beautiful, interesting girl.
“You don’t look well, O’Shaughnessy,” he observed mildly.
“Damn fookin’ straight,” the Irishman agreed. “I’m not well. I’m bleeding is what I am.”
“The Pinkertons catch up with you?”
“One of ’em, and not to his own gain.” The Irishman huddled deeper into his collar. “Was it you that turned me in, Sam Clemens?”
Sam snorted, unwilling to answer such a stupid question. “You’re welcome to borrow my coat, by the way. But shouldn’t you be hiding?”
“Yeah,” O’Shaughnessy agreed, “I should. The other one’s in the loo, so I’ve only got a minute. And I had to tell you something, something right bloody damn urgent!” His pointed nose, green eyes, and reddish blonde hair made his apparent anxiety comical. He looked like an irate fairy, Sam thought.
“I’m listening,” Sam said.
“Sabotage!” the Irishman hissed. “Filthy underhanded tricks, and it was the English that done it!”
Sam took a punch in the stomach from cold fear, but he wasn’t about to share his feelings with Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy. “What is it you think the English did to sabotage us?” he asked mildly. “Did they steal your coat?”
“You ought to be thanking me, Sam Clemens, and not taking the bloody mick,” O’Shaughnessy pouted. “Those bastards punched holes in the precious bloody boiler pipes of your precious fancy truck, and then they went and stole the tools and patches. And who was it, if it wasn’t me, that went and snuck onto that big hump of the Liahona and stole the tools and patches back?”
That was an interesting development. “Good job, O’Shaughnessy,” Clemens complimented the man grudgingly. “When Washington asks, I’ll tell them you’re earning your paycheck. Now unless you happen to know that that Pinkerton is a world champion at Endurance Micturition, you’d better take a powder.”
He watched O’Shaughnessy slink back out the front door of the saloon. The man had some nerve, demanding that Sam thank him after Sam had saved his bacon by hiding him from the Pinkertons. Well, that might not be
such a bad thing; nerve, after all, was one of the principal things Sam needed the Irishman for.
He considered his situation. The Englishmen were riding on the Liahona, which meant they were going to the Great Salt Lake City. They had poked holes in the Jim Smiley, which meant that they wanted to be sure they got there before Sam. That made them rivals, competitors of some sort. Likely an English mission to old Brigham Young, and Sam thought he could predict what they wanted. There’s a war coming, Mr. Young, they’d say, and England wants you in it on her side, with your airships and with your phlogiston guns, too, if those are real and not the product of Rocky Mountain moonshine, thank you, very much.
England would be on the side of the South, with all her cotton exports that fed England’s many mills. Not that Sam hated the South, not at all. He was from Hannibal, Missouri, and if you drew the Mason-Dixon line straight out west all the way to his native state, you’d find Hannibal on the same side of it as Georgia, if only by a hair. Sam loved the South, but he loved the Union more. The United States of America, that was old Ben Franklin’s dream, that’s what makes us great, he thought.
And Sam hated war. War killed young men, young men like Henry. If the English got the Kingdom of Deseret into the game on the side of the secessionists, then the so-called Confederate States would be emboldened. They might think they could actually win. That would make war more likely. The Confederate States would stop being a dream that fools like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis talked about in salon society and would start being something that killed young men.
Maybe a lot of young men.
Sam had to get to Salt Lake City first.
He lit a cigar and pondered.
Repairing the Jim Smiley was one thing; Sam could do that in a few hours, if it was only a matter of patching some holes. Sam had seen the Liahona arrive at Fort Bridger earlier in the day, and she had come in fast, growling up the road west like some giant wild animal, chewing up the hard earth and throwing out a cloud behind her that settled for miles. That thing probably went fifteen miles an hour on a straightaway and if he didn’t do something to slow it up she would drop the Englishmen off on Brigham’s doorstep while Sam was still cranking away with a wrench in Fort Bridger.
One of the Shoshone apparently won the hopscotch game they’d all been playing and erupted into a yelp of victory. The yelper collected winnings from his friends, barking and hooting all the while, and then broke into some kind of spinning, ecstatic dance. All in all, the Shoshone reminded Sam of the drunk white boys he had seen every weekend growing up in Hannibal, Missouri.
The bouncers must have viewed the matter differently. They moved in steadily, beady eyes squinting in faces like smoked hams. “You’re gonna have to keep it down,” one of them directed the Shoshone.
Other patrons of the saloon were staring. The dancer didn’t slow down or quiet his voice, if anything he became more frenetic.
Sam took a puff on his cigar.
Both bouncers raised their fists to show that they were wrapped in brass knuckledusters, studded with low, ugly little spikes. “I said quit yer caterwauling,” the bouncer repeated himself. “You wanna get noisy, get noisy in the yard.”
The dancer’s friends gave the big white men hard stares of rejection and did nothing else. The dancer kept right on whirling.
Sam sensed impending violence and wondered idly if he ought to start wearing a gun. He scooted his chair back a step so as to be able to stand up quickly without getting tangled in the table.
“I said,” the bouncer grimaced as he waded into the Shoshone youth, “shut up!”
He swung his brass-encased fist at one of the Shoshone’s heads—
—and another brave stepped in, turning aside the blow with his long rifle, as if it were a quarterstaff—
—the dancer himself leaped forward, drawing a long, ugly knife, quick as lightning, and pointing it at the bouncer’s face—
—other rifles snapped to the ready, held by Shoshone or by other customers of the saloon—
and the bouncers’ pistols—
—two scatterguns came up over the bar—
—silence fell over the Saloon.
Everyone took a slow breath.
Electricks crackled in the background.
“I told you, you got to keep it down,” persisted the talking bouncer. Give the man credit for taking his job seriously, Sam thought. And for guts.
One of the Shoshone, who held his rifle pointed squarely at the bouncer’s chest, shrugged, his face impassive. “We’re done taking orders from white men,” he said.
More silence. Sweat.
These boys would do very nicely.
Sam blew a dragon puff of blue-gray smoke out into the already-thick air and clomped noisily to his feet, stamping the thick rubber soles hard to get everyone’s attention.
“This impasse is uncomfortable for everyone,” he began. He turned at the waist as he spoke, smiled at the whole saloon. “But I think I may have a solution.”
There was a brief pause.
“I’m listening, mister,” the bouncer said.
Sam counted the Shoshone braves and pulled a twenty-dollar gold double eagle from his pocket for each of them, seven in total. No employer more generous with expense money than the taxpayers. He held his hand forward as he approached, showing the gold to the Indians, and damn who else might see. He’d be gone in the morning, anyway, and if anyone was fool enough to attack him aboard the Jim Smiley, he’d fry them in their boots.
“I have business to conduct with these fine Shoshone gentlemen,” he explained, stretching the truth just a little. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to get their attention, and now seems like a fine time.”
The bouncer blinked and looked back at the Indians. The Shoshone stared at Clemens with hard eyes, and for a moment Sam thought they were just going to shoot him and take his money. Oh well, he thought, if I’m dead I won’t care so much when war breaks out.
Plus, I’ll finally know the truth about Henry.
“Yes,” one of the Shoshone finally agreed. He was a young man, tall and straight and strong-faced. “Let’s talk business.” He lowered his own rifle first, and then his comrades, the bouncers, the bartenders, and the various armed saloon patrons followed, in rough synchronization.
“Thank you, very much,” Sam said to the Shoshone, taking another comforting draw on his cigar. “Though I will confess to a little disappointment. For a moment there, I thought I was about to get my glimpse of the much-storied afterlife, and I’d finally know what all the fuss was about.”
“You have my undivided attention, I assure you,” Absalom gulped. He’d known as an abstract fact that dangerous frontier types were one of the risks when he’d come after Abigail, but the Foreign Office hadn’t trained him for this.
“Listen close,” the one-eyed, bear-hatted, grizzled man barked. “I will say this one time—”
He cut himself off abruptly, cocked an ear in the direction of the common room, and then whirled on his heel, jerking Absalom in his wake. Absalom stumbled after the little bear of a man, pulled by his shirt front, past the dented brass doors marked Bucks and Does, past an automatic boot-polishing machine that squatted sullenly against the wall, hissing softly as it waited for toes to work on, and then out through the rear door of the saloon, ducking as it rebounded from his captor’s kick and nearly caught Absalom in its trap-like jaws.
“I should warn you,” Absalom squeaked, “that I’ve done my fair share of bare-knuckle boxing.”
Bear Hat dragged him around the back of the saloon, into the darkest quarter of the yard, out of sight of the idling steam-trucks, out of sight of the dormitories, lit only by an indifferent moon and distant, dimly twinkling stars. He tossed Absalom against the saloon wall—the plascrete hurt as Absalom crashed into it and his vision spun. The wild man spat in the gravel.
“Like I give a shit,” he said.
Absalom felt like begging, but wouldn’t let himself. He had
to keep his dignity. “I’m a representative of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria,” he pointed out.
The wild man laughed and brought the knife up, its glinting blade flashing dangerously close to Absalom’s eyes. “I ain’t afraid to borrow trouble,” he grunted. “I’m a representative of His Rocky Mountain Majesty Orrin Porter Rockwell, the notorious Danite! How does that sit with your liver?”
Rockwell! “Your, er, master is a dangerous man …”
Absalom’s mind cranked away, gears spinning. How could he get this fellow to take him to Rockwell?
The bear-hatted man turned up his eyepatch, revealing that he had two perfectly good eyes.
“By representative, what I really mean to say is that I am Porter Rockwell.”
“Rockwell!” Absalom gasped. Abigail … “But you’re … you’re just the man …”
“I didn’t kill Boggs,” Rockwell grunted sourly.
Boggs? “No, what I mean to say is—”
“Nor none of them others, neither.”
“No? Well, I—”
“Leastways, not all of ’em. Now, look here, Absalom—”
Absalom gasped. “You know my name!”
“You must think I’m stupider’n a fence post. I married your sister, dumbass. Just ’cause I ain’t never seen you before don’t mean I don’t know your name!”
Absalom tried to take this information in stride. “So … you know why I’m here, then?” The little four-shot derringer tucked into his waistband, the pistol that Ruffian Dick had mocked as a lady’s gun, had never seemed so inadequate as it did in this moment.
“Everybody knows why you’re here, you numbskull!” Rockwell barked, and then, as if startled by the loudness of his own voice, he peered both directions into the darkness. When he spoke again, it was in a hoarse whisper. “That’s the problem! You’re here with that other Englishman, the Nile explorer, ’cause you want to talk Brother Brigham into lending you airships to bomb the hell outta the Yankees, yeah?”
Absalom breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah,” he agreed, the word foreign in his mouth. “Well, more or less.”
