City of the Saints

by D. J. Butler

  But the clearing wasn’t empty; there was a little wooden hut in the center of it, a tiny shack with a hole shaped like a blazing sun carved into the door. Is that a shithouse? Tam wondered. Who wants to run all the way down from the house, a quarter of a mile away, holding up the flap of his long woolens with every step, when he has a case of the trots? A shithouse belonged right behind the house, not on the other side of the hill. These Mormons were idjits, all of them.

  Tam shot a glance over his shoulder—the dwarf lagged behind, probably slowed down even worse than Tam by the fake oak trees because he was such a runty little thing. His head wasn’t even visible above the trees’ claws; Tam only knew generally where he was by the rustling of grass and the shaking of branches.

  He had a few seconds’ lead time but not much more.

  Perfect.

  Tam opened the canister. He cracked the outhouse door and lifted the plank seat worn smooth by years of straining Deseret buttocks, exposing a dark and reeking pit. He threw his scarf onto the edge of the hole—that’d catch the dwarf’s attention and make him hesitate. Then he scattered brass beetles around the floor inside, over stones worn flat by use and the curling back half of a Sears Roebuck catalog, advertising hoop skirts and panacea tablets and wooden hobbyhorses and hunting rifles.

  Leaving the door open a touch, he gimped as quickly as he could around and behind the outhouse to hide.

  He looked at the canister while he listened for the dwarf’s approach. There were two buttons inside the lid. He’d figured which button activated the bloody things back at the Deseret Hotel, turned them into unstoppable chewers and devourers of matter, but in all the excitement since he’d forgotten which it was. He let his imagination run wild for a few seconds, thinking about the irritating dwarf being chewed down to bones and buttons by a swarm of clicking brass beetles.

  “Heh, heh,” he chuckled. You’ve got the little bastard now, me boy.

  But which button to press? He’d forgotten which was which and they weren’t labeled or marked in any way.

  He heard the soft thud and swish of little dwarf feet coming through the clearing.

  To hell with it. He’d press both buttons and St. Brigit would do the rest. Mother O’Shaughnessy hadn’t raised him to be a coward.

  He held the canister in one hand and kept his knife hand free, just in case, but the stiletto still tight against his forearm, to keep one unpleasant little surprise in store for an appropriate moment. If he had a bit more of a head start, he reflected, he might have loaded the Maxim Husher, and that would have given the midget an entertaining jolt. Oh, well.

  The door creaked open.

  “The hell?” the midget muttered.

  Tam jammed his thumb down over both the canister’s buttons.

  Click-clack-clatter, click-clack-clatter, he heard from the outhouse. He grinned, stood up, and limped two steps away from the outhouse.

  “Shit!” the dwarf yelled, there was a thump, and the outhouse rattled, like the dwarf was wrestling someone inside. It was as good as a stage show, it was, all that shaking and noise and Tam bursting at the seams with laughter all the while. Tam imagined the little corn-pone-nibbler fighting all the beetles at once in there, maybe swarming together like a cloud into the shape of a fighting man, or maybe the beetles swarmed together into the shape of a bigger beetle.

  It was like having a genie in a magic lamp.

  He rubbed the canister fondly, feeling very satisfied and wishing he could have a nice drink of whisky to celebrate. Maybe the beetles could bring him some, if he rubbed their little brass bellies and asked nicely.

  The outhouse stopped moving.

  Then he saw a glistening brass carpet, edging out from under the outhouse door and swarming in his direction. It was the beetles.

  And as they came, they devoured. He saw tiny brass bug-jaws tearing at grass and sticks on the ground and even little stones, shattering it all and ripping it to shreds.

  Tam took a long step back.

  Click-clack-clatter.

  Surely, the little creatures were heading his way because they’d done their job, and now they were coming home to their jar to go nicely back to sleep again, weren’t they? He’d jammed both buttons, and one was the eat button and one was the go to sleep button. They’d eaten, and now they were going to go to sleep.

  The swarm kept coming. Behind it, the ground was gnawed clean.

  Tam took another step back. “Easy, lads.”

  Could the dwarf have taken control of the bugs somehow, countermanded Tam’s attack order? Tam shook his head, that notion made no bloody-damn-hell sense at all.

  Click-clack-clatter.

  Or did it? An ether device, a timer, a code of some kind only the bugs knew or could hear, a secret communication by vibration, Brigit’s belly button, even telepathy? In a world in which flesh-eating metal bugs could be poured out of a can like so many oats, what wasn’t possible? Tam’s heart pounded like a railroad piston.

  The swarm was almost on him.

  Tam threw the canister away to his left, into the trees, and lurched away several steps to his right.

  The metal bug swarm followed the canister.

  Tam stopped and watched, realizing that he was sweating and shaking from nerves. Where the canister had landed he saw grass fall over as if it were mowing itself, and then a tree snapped and toppled to the ground, and then another.

  He watched for thirty seconds or maybe a minute, until there was a circle of scoured earth around the canister and the beetles had crawled inside. No more click-clack and his heart was starting to slow down, but Tam didn’t dare go pick the canister up.

  Not yet. He’d let it lie a while.

  Still, if the little bugs had done so much damage to the local flora, he had to imagine they’d made short work of the cracker midget. Tam chuckled, shook his head to clear out the adrenalin, and walked around to the front of the outhouse and its open door.

  The seat was down again. There was no sign at all of the Sears Roebuck catalog, with its skirts and guns and toys and snake oil. Shame, that, Tam reflected, too late. The Sears Roebuck catalog made nice reading in idle moments, he should have kept it. No sign of the scarf or the dwarf, either, though.

  “Bad luck, that,” Tam chortled. “Shitty way to die.” He laughed out loud, cackling like the vulture he resembled. “On the other hand, it seems I’ve lost my good scarf.”

  Click.

  Tam froze.

  “You lost more’n that, Irish.”

  Tam looked up. Above the outhouse door, on the inside, was a little shelf. The dwarf was perched up in the ceiling, wedged there with one hand on the little shelf and both feet against the far wall.

  “Monkey!” Tam gasped.

  “Proud of it,” grunted the little man.

  In his free hand, he held a long pistol, cocked and pointed at Tam O’Shaughnessy’s birdlike head.

  “Fookin’ hell,” Tam commented.

  “Guess you forgot I could climb.”

  “You had another pistol?”

  “Believe it or not, I found one in the crapper.”

  Tam slammed the door shut and threw himself to one side.

  Bang! Bang!

  Splintered holes erupted in the desiccated wood of the outhouse but the bullets missed Tam and he sprint-hobbled for the canister again.

  The bloody-damn-hell metal beetles might eat him alive, but they might not, and the midget certainly would.

  Thump!

  Tam heard the door kicked open behind him and he knew the dwarf was only seconds from blasting him to oblivion. He staggered through grass, cutting across towards the artificial clearing where the bugs had click-clack-clattered everything right down to the ground like hyperactive sheep, or termites.

  Bang!

  Tam felt the bullet burn through his coat, narrowly missing his ribs.

  He saw the canister and jumped, throwing himself headlong and grabbing for it like he was a drowning man it was a rope. He clenche
d his teeth and squinted at the thought that he might be throwing himself to his own death but he didn’t see any of the little buggers on the ground—

  —he hit, oomph, grabbed the canister—

  —and rolled to his feet.

  “Brigit!” he howled, pain lancing through his twisted ankle.

  Miraculously, all the bugs stayed inside. They were quiet and still and Tam jammed down both buttons again.

  Click-clack-clatter, click-clack-clatter, he heard in the canister as he raised it over his head.

  The midget froze, gun pointed at Tam.

  “They’re activated, you little ape, do you hear me? They’re turned on!”

  The dwarf spat slowly on the ground. “I can hear ’em,” he admitted.

  “Shoot me and I throw the little buggers! Then we both die! Is that what you want?”

  The midget seemed to be considering. “I want you to leave the boy alone,” he said.

  “I don’t give a fook about the boy!” Tam felt hysterical.

  “Then what the hell do you want?”

  Tam considered, for a split second, the possibility of telling the dwarf. Maybe they could reach a deal. They could both agree not to talk to the Pinkertons, to lie low, and soon enough he and Sam Clemens would have finished this rotten mission and be out of the Kingdom. Tam could go off to California or Novy Moskva or somewhere else where the Pinkertons would never find him.

  Hell, he might even be willing to go back to Ireland. Potato blight or not, he’d learned there were worse places to be.

  Tam shook his head. No, he could never trust the midget. The man was crooked, he might turn Tam in for the reward money or worse. He might turn him in just because Tam was a Union man, and the dwarf was with the South. Or maybe he hated the Irish. The Southerners were notorious for that sort of ill-will and the little fellow had that horrible loping sound to his voice that marked him as a Mississippi monkey, or Louisiana, or something … Tam wasn’t very good at telling those accents apart.

  He had to bluff or threaten or fight.

  Tam drew back the arm with the canister in it, like he was going to throw.

  The dwarf cocked his pistol.

  “Stop!”

  The voice rang through the confusion of Tam’s thoughts and over his thudding heartbeat like a bell. It came from somewhere over in the tall grass. Tam tried to split his eyes, send one poking around to look for the source of the voice while the other stayed fixed on his opponent. He could see the dwarf doing the same.

  The voice belonged to the boy, John Moses.

  He stepped out of the grass and into the clearing. “Stop fighting,” he said. “It isn’t nice.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Tam sneered.

  “Yeah,” John Moses said.

  Then Tam noticed that the little boy held the strange rapid-shot gun. It looked gigantic in his childish hands. He struggled but he managed to lift it and hold the barrel more or less level. Level enough to mow Tam flat, judging by what he’d seen it do to the front of the hotel.

  “I said stop fighting,” John Moses repeated himself in his wee piping whistle of a voice. “And I mean it, you fooks.”

  “Shite,” Tam said.

  “You’re all under arrest,” called one of the cavalrymen in a loud, trumpet-like voice. The men were out of their ordinary uniforms and wearing the strange gray outfits but the speaker had two chevrons on the sleeves of his jacket. Poe inferred that the chevrons marked him as a corporal.

  “By what authority?” Poe demanded.

  “On what charges?” Roxie chimed in.

  “Who in blazes are you?” asked Captain Jones.

  “Authority be damned,” the Corporal drawled, “charges go to hell and I, you shiftless truck-gypsy, am the government. Haven’t you heard?”

  “We’re armed,” Poe called out. He very deliberately didn’t raise his pistol—he didn’t want to provoke an actual shooting match, outnumbered eight to one as he and his allies, if they really were allies, were—but it felt heavy and conspicuous in his hand. “You may not find us so easy to govern, Corporal.”

  The Corporal rode his horse-machine down the slope, and half his men followed his example. The rest stayed up on the slope, looking down on the Liahona, guns ready. The dozen cavalrymen stopped below the steam-truck’s ladder and the Corporal looked up at the passengers and crew.

  “Everyone is armed in this godforsaken country. But truthfully, sir,” he said, “I care neither for you nor about you, so long as you stay where you are and do not interfere with the execution of my appointed tasks. I am looking for a Mr. William Hickman, who may go by the name Bill. He has been described to me in such terms that, homely though I find you to be, you are not nearly ugly enough to be the man I seek.”

  “I’m not Bill Hickman,” Poe agreed. He was grateful for his smoked glasses, which let him survey the scene a little more than was obvious. The men who had ridden down to the hotel could be surprised and taken, he thought. The men still on the bluff, on the other hand, had a commanding vantage point. There would be no sneaking up on them, unless someone managed to creep around the Liahona itself.

  He wondered where his allies were.

  Hissssss!

  An engine started with a loud squealing sound, somewhere inside or just on the other side of the hotel. Poe would never have heard it, except the house had been reduced to a tiny, shattered shadow of its former self.

  “We came here looking for Hickman ourselves,” Roxie added.

  Gears whined, and a steam-truck suddenly spun into view around the ruined hulk of the Hot Springs Hotel & Brewery. It was a medium-sized cargo vehicle and it turned away as it emerged, rolling down the yard. Men in black coats with rifles, wet and bedraggled and not very cheerful, hung off the back.

  “That might be him,” Poe suggested. He was perfectly happy for the Virginian to capture or even kill Hickman. He wanted to rescue Brigham Young—he wanted to help Roxie—and that meant getting out from under the heel of these soldiers.

  Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  The sound was slightly muffled. He wondered what it could be. Maybe some part of the water tank was still grinding away at its usual task or finally breaking down.

  “This way, gentlemen,” the Corporal ordered his complement of a dozen and they trotted down the slope. The others remained behind, holding their high ground advantage.

  Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  “What’s that sound, Captain?” Poe asked. “Please reassure me that the Liahona is not on the verge of exploding.”

  “No, boyo, she’s solid,” the Welshman ground his teeth. “But I’m pretty close to exploding myself, if I can’t get off her back and find out what happened to the child.”

  He grabbed the top of the ladder.

  Bang!

  A single bullet ricocheted off the Liahona’s deck in a trail of sparks. Poe looked up to the cavalrymen on the bluff. One of them held a smoking carbine and smiled down calmly at the people stranded on the steam-truck. It was a Sharps Model 1853, Poe thought idly. A big gun, and one that would leave a big hole in a man.

  Brrrrrr-rap-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap!

  A racket that sounded a little like thunder, a little like a belching giant and a lot like Jedediah Coltrane’s machine-gun erupted behind the hotel. Poe jerked his head around to find the source of the sound and saw a Mexican Strider lurch into view. It had crept up slowly out of the trees and been hiding behind the hotel. Its guns now tore up the dry earth and grass around the cavalrymen in a surprise flank attack. The twelve Virginians broke formation, scattering out of the yard.

  Bang! Bang!

  The cavalrymen at the top of the hill fired and broke into a ragged charge down the bluff, rushing to the aid of their Corporal and comrades.

  Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  Over Poe’s right shoulder, catching him completely by surprise, appeared the second Strider. It rose straight up, standing out of what must have been a carefully maintained crouch, in which it had crept up alongside the Liahona, stayi
ng out of view of the Third Virginia as well as of Poe.

  Brrrrrr-rap-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap!

  The second Strider fired its guns at the flank of the cavalry coming down the bluff, catching them by surprise as well. Two horses went down, holed by the big Mexican guns, throwing their riders into the trees. Return fire was sporadic and half-hearted and the small arms bullets mostly pinged! harmlessly off the armored carriage of the Strider. Sitting behind the pilot and gunner in the second Strider Poe saw Absalom Fearnley-Standish, his sister, and young Annie Web.

  “Hurrah!” Fearnley-Standing shouted, as if he were cheering on target-shooters or a fox hunt. He looked for all the world like he was enjoying a lovely summer picnic, though he did fire sporadic shots at the horsemen.

  His sister Abigail leaned over the side of the Strider’s carriage and poured hot lead out of a long-barreled pistol upon the scattering men of the Third Virginia.

  Both halves of the cavalry unit were in disarray, falling back under fire from the Mexican guns. Poe turned back to Captain Jones to suggest that now would be a good time to continue the search for young John Moses Browning and discovered that the Captain was gone.

  He was already down the ladder and racing to the bottom of the yard.

  Poe followed, his lungs straining as he ran, and Roxie came with him. Behind them, he heard bangs! erupt as the crewmen of the Liahona opened fire on the already beleaguered Virginians.

  He kept his eye fixed on the foot of the field, trying to ignore the very real possibility that a stray bullet might cut him down at any second. He saw the steam-truck stop by a springhouse straddling a creek at the bottom of the hill and its riders pile off. He saw them throw the door open, rush inside in numbers and drag out four prisoners with sacks over his head and hands behind their backs.

  Poe’s lungs gave out and he nearly fell over in a paroxysm of violent coughing. His running pace faltered and stopped.

  Then Bill Hickman saw him and Jones and Roxie and the Striders.