by D. J. Butler
“Maybe you ought to poke into that fearsome huge box the Liahona’s boys humped into the cargo bay of this truck for you, Mr. Poe,” he suggested. “Maybe there’s a spare cleavage in there that you could spirit gum onto your knobby little torso and use to put on your lipstick.”
There, that’d teach the ugly southerner that he had to keep an eye on Tam O’Shaughnessy, that the Irishman was not a man to be slighted or ignored. Poe would have to know now that he was being watched with an eagle eye.
But Poe just looked at Tam with a dry stare as he squeezed the nose into place. “Knobby is a such a pedestrian word for a body this ravaged by time and illness, Mr. O’Shaughnessy.” He coughed several times, hard, to make his point. At least this time he didn’t hack up big gobs of blood. “I had expected better from an Irishman. Really, where is that Gift of Gab so famously proprietary of the sons of Eire?”
“I never kissed the Blarney Stone,” Tam complained. “I’m a Dublin lad. Never even been to County Cork.” And wasn’t it more the pity? If he’d had the Gift, he might not be careening through the desert at night in the back of a stolen steam-truck, trading banter with a consumptive secessionist spy. He might be sitting in Parliament, or running a railroad. But Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy’s gifts had always lain in a different direction.
“What about knurled?” Poe suggested, going to work on a caterpillar-like set of false eyebrows. “Rugose? Scabrous?” He coughed hard but managed not to lose hold of the eyebrows or the spirit gum.
“Hush,” Roxie said. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. Tam wondered what reason she had to show affection to the decrepit codger.
“Cragged.” Tam grinned. “Bumpy.”
“Corrugated,” Poe added, “if it isn’t cheating to suggest two different words derived from the same root.”
Tam laughed out loud. “We’re all driving under the same roof now, Brother Edgar!” If it came down to killing Poe, he decided, he wanted to think in advance of some good fancy words to describe the act. Decapitation, he thought, that was a good one. He could say it to Poe just as he swung the blade in for the killing blow, though it’d be better if Poe were tied up. Then Tam could use the fancy word and they could both enjoy it for a minute before it had to be over. Incineration for fire and defenestration if he could find any windows to throw the spy out of. Tam eyed the silver chain around Poe’s neck, dangling something down under his shirt. What was a nice, fancy word for strangling?
“Where are we going?” Burton asked from the front bench.
“It’s called the Dream Mine,” Roxie told them.
“That sounds cheerful,” Poe judged.
“A man named Koyle had it dug,” Roxie said. “He told everyone he’d dreamed that if you dug a shaft where he said, you’d hit an old Nephite mine, all dug out and just full of precious metal sitting around waiting to be taken away.”
“What kind of mineral is nephite?” Burton asked. “Is it precious? Like bauxite? Selenite?”
“The Nephites were an ancient people,” Roxie informed him. “They lived around here a long time ago.”
“Hiya, heya, hiya, heya,” Tam chanted, then made his best Indian war-whoop, slapping his hand against his round O of a mouth. “I’ll admit I may be disadvantaged because I got my schooling in Ireland, but the sisters never told me about Indians digging for bauxite.”
“The ancient world is as unexplored and mysterious as is the modern,” Burton growled, and took his eyes off the jittering road to shoot Tam a gruff, schoolteacherly look. “Nobody can afford to pat himself on the back for his wisdom just yet. Least of all the Irish.”
“Go to hell.” Tam took a slug off his bottle.
“Old Bishop Koyle didn’t dream of bauxite, anyway,” Roxie continued. “It was gold.”
“Ah, well, then,” Tam said, and he felt himself brighten up. “That’s worth a little bit of a drive to see.”
“Did they find the Nephite mines and the gold?” Poe asked. The eyebrows were affixed, and now he was attaching a long fake scar running up one cheek.
“Not yet,” Roxie admitted. “But they’re still looking.” She frowned. “You’re putting on a lot of make-up.”
“Pratt has seen me before, remember.”
“Not yet!” Tam felt himself almost squeak with indignation. “Then what’s the fookin’ point of all this shenaniganning around? I thought we were supposed to be going after the Madman Pratt! I wouldn’t have minded a detour for stacks and stacks of gold, especially with one of ours in disguise and ready for a good bit of thieving, or maybe even bauxite, but I can’t say as I see the point of a detour for an empty hole in the ground.”
“It isn’t a detour,” Roxie said. “It’s a shortcut.”
“Mind you,” Tam added without a break, “I don’t rightly know what bauxite is worth, but in big enough piles anything is worth money. Even shite, don’t you know?”
“Buildings ahead,” Burton rumbled, “and there’s a light in one window. Better explain yourself.”
“Slow down,” Roxie told him, and she hit a switch to kill the electricks. The bluish beams of light shooting out the front of the steam-truck died instantly and Burton yanked on the brake lever to slow the big truck to a crawl. Tree branches scraped up ominously against the sides of the wheelhouse but the Englishman kept the truck on the road and moving forward, crunching the trees at the road’s edges to splinters as it ground over them.
“Jesus and Brigit,” Tam cursed, “give the poor bastard a warning next time.” He took a drink that he intended to limit to a sip, but that turned into several good swallows. Ah, well. Tam might not have the Gift of Gab but he was enough of a true son of Eire to be able to hold his whisky.
“The poor bastard doesn’t need a warning,” Burton growled. “The poor bastard is a man.”
“What are you saying, English?” Tam demanded. “I don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re the same as that milksop Etonian shite you ride around with, don’t you make the mistake of believing I’m afraid of you, you—”
“The mine is operated!” Roxie shouted, cutting them both off. Burton turned his attention back to the road, now a ghostly-silver trail barely discernible in the darkness, and Tam satisfied himself with staring holes in the back of Burton’s head. Throttle, that was another word for strangle, though it wasn’t fancy enough to be emotionally satisfying to Tam. Suffocation, that was it, but somehow that sounded too sterile.
“The mine is operated,” Roxie resumed, “but it’s a front. One of the tunnels is a back door, it goes right through Timpanogos Mountain and up to Emerald Lake, where Pratt has his facility. It lets him drive supplies up to the top of the mountain even in winter, and it also lets him drive things up unseen.”
“Like what? Like gold?” Tam asked.
“Like rubies and canopic jars,” Poe said quietly, “or anything else.”
“Who guards the mine?” Burton asked. “Who are you worried about? More of these Danites?”
Roxie shook her head, a motion Tam could only see in the darkness as the glittering of moon and starlight in her earrings. “Brother Pratt has always expressed concerns to Brigham about the Danites, and about the need to protect his facility, in case some Danite faction tried to seize power. He’s contracted security to a private firm.”
“Melqart’s fire, it seems the Madman Pratt had more foresight than all the rest of the Salt Lake hierarchy,” Burton commented. “So what private firm’s bullets will I have the honor of dodging, then?”
“Brother Pratt insisted he had to have the best,” Roxie continued.
Tam felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tried to drive it out with more whisky but it persisted.
“His facility is also the Kingdom’s central office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.”
“Aw, fook,” Tam cursed.
Burton chuckled. “Something wrong, O’Shaughnessy?” he asked. “Would you like to borrow one of Poe’s false noses?”
“Brigit and Anth
ony fook me right to hell, I’ve had enough trouble with the Pinkertons to last me a lifetime.” Tam felt tired and irritated.
Poe turned to look at him. He looked like a complete stranger, all scarred and hairy, but then he broke the magic of the transformation with a wet, guttural cough. “Of course you have,” Poe said. “That gives me an idea.”
Absalom Fearnley-Standish quite enjoyed the night ride.
He had little success sticking with Abigail; he wanted to convince her to leave her brute husband and this desert wasteland and come away with him back East and home to England, but she had no interest in the message. Every time he opened his mouth, she spurred her horse away from him, sticking closer to the shaggy Rockwell and showing her brother only her horse’s rump.
Absalom was impressed. Before this evening, he would have sworn he was by far the better rider. Life in the Kingdom of Deseret, life as Rockwell’s wife, had certainly changed her. He almost didn’t recognize his sister anymore, in this rugged, fierce, pistol-slinging woman of the frontier. He was shocked to see how much a person could change in such a short period of time.
He wasn’t upset, though. He couldn’t be, with Annie constantly at his side.
“That can’t be true!” She almost collapsed from giggling at his description of the Horse Guards’ Trooping the Colour, and the uniforms of the Yeomen Warders in the Tower of London. “England, the way you describe it, is so romantic! Why, I don’t think there’s that much uniform and pageantry in all of North America, but there certainly isn’t in the Kingdom!”
“No, quite,” Absalom agreed, feeling that he’d scored a point with her somehow. “Your Danites just wear black coats for the most part. With different beards, they could be Amish wagoneers from Pennsylvania or fur traders from the Pale of Settlement.”
Annie laughed hysterically. “Different … beards!”
Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh!
Absalom realized that he and Annie had drifted back through the knot of the Liahona’s truck-men. The Strider bringing up the rear seemed to be clanking closer. “Egad,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the Strider, “I hope there isn’t trouble.”
“No, my dear,” Annie said, “she’s just jealous.”
“What?”
“Hush!” “Hush!” “Hush!” The word to be silent reached them, passed down the line. Absalom duly fell quiet, puzzled.
They stood in a cluster of tall trees, swaying in the night breezes. Ahead of them in the dark was a knot of long, low buildings and dim lights that might comprise a farm.
Pffffffft-ankkkh!
The Strider stopped. Absalom craned his neck back around and looked up at Sergeant Jackson, who was riding gunner on the vehicle. The big machine’s guns seemed to be aimed at a spot unnervingly close to Absalom but he shook his head, reassuring himself that it must be a trick of the light.
“Mr. Fearnley-Standish,” he heard a voice at his elbow. Turning, he confronted a small crowd of men, including the Yankee Sam Clemens, the surly dwarf, his mountain man brother-in-law, and President Brigham Young himself. It was Young who had spoken to him.
“Yes, sir.” Absalom smiled pleasantly.
“Mr. Fearnley-Standish, your unique services are required,” Sam Clemens said. His words sounded deferential, but the man’s tone always seemed slightly mocking, and it put Absalom off.
“I’m here, gentlemen,” he said. “For Queen and country.”
“You have an advantage over the rest of us,” Clemens offered, which Absalom found intriguing, but unclear.
“We can’t be sure how much John Lee knows by now or how much he might have guessed,” Brigham Young added, as if this explained something. “And we need a safe place to leave the Ambassador, at least. This is not his adventure.”
“Not to mention the little boy,” Clemens added.
“Of course.” Absalom pretended that he understood. A good face could get you through a lot, he knew.
“The thing is,” the dwarf said, “it’s you and me, pal. Everybody else around here is famous but you and me are unknowns. So you and me gotta go up to the house to scout it out, make sure there ain’t none of them Danites hanging around the place.”
“Oh, of course.” Absalom smiled stoically. “Shall we take guns?”
“You’re going to knock on the door in the middle of the night and ask if you can sleep in the barn,” Clemens said in his condescending Yankee way. “Folks around here seem to expect that you’ll be armed but it might be best not to show up on the doorstep with an actual full hand.”
“I got knives,” the midget grunted. “Besides, the whole point of us two going is won’t nobody know who we are, anyway.”
It all seemed safe enough. Safe as anything could be, in this land of crazed fanatical assassins and constant gun fighting. “Understood.” Absalom decided not to mention the little four-shot gun he had tucked into his waistband. He took some comfort from its presence, even if there was no chance of him using it, and didn’t want the others to take it away from him. “Of course, I did meet John Lee, in Chief Pocatello’s stockade.”
Sam Clemens tapped at his own temple with the butt of his cigar. “The encounter has not escaped me, Mr. Fearnley-Standish,” he said gruffly. “The logic is that Lee is unlikely himself to be at this particular farm. His minions are likely to able to recognize President Young, the Ambassador, Rockwell, and the rest of us—”
“But not me. Quite.” Absalom straightened his coat and adjusted his hat to a jauntier angle.
“This is a good friend of mine,” Brigham Young said. “A very good friend. He’s a good man, and he’ll take in strangers in need. Just make sure that there aren’t any Danites lurking around the place, and then one of you can come get the rest of us.”
“And if there are Danites,” Clemens added, “run like the devil. Discreetly as you can, of course.”
Absalom nodded. “Shall we go, Mr. Coltrane?”
“Thank you,” Young said. Then Absalom and the dwarf turned their horses up the side of an irrigation ditch dividing two fields and headed for the lights.
“So you are Mr. Poe’s associate,” Absalom said.
“I’m the barker,” Coltrane grunted. “Poe is the show.”
“Barker?” Absalom asked. “Is a…? Do you mean that you’re a madman?”
“I’m the guy that works the midway,” Coltrane explained without explaining. “I’m also the roustabout.”
“Understood,” Absalom lied, and then they trotted into the farmyard.
The yard was hard-packed dirt surrounded by a tidy house, a stable, a chicken coop, and a shed and corral that Absalom guessed, from its smell, must be home to a herd of goats. The buildings looked sturdy but simple and the light from the window was the yellow light of oil or kerosene or wood-fire, not the blue of electricks. The farm might have been a hundred years old, except that Absalom knew that a hundred years earlier the valley had been occupied by Indians who lived in holes in the ground and ate pine nuts and lizards.
“Maybe it’s best if you knock,” Coltrane suggested.
“Yes, agreed.” Absalom handed his reins to the dwarf, dropped to the ground and approached the door. In the shadows of the yard he checked his small pistol and was reassured to feel it in place.
He rapped hard on the door and listened as feet crossed floorboards. The man who opened the door and filled its frame was solid in the shoulders and belly, like a boxer. His head was completely bald and he had a curly beard under his jaw and chin. He looked like any yeoman farmer from Dorset or Kent.
“Good evening,” Absalom said.
The man stepped across the threshold and grabbed Absalom by the hand. His grip wasn’t an ordinary handshake but something odd, with his thumb squeezing insistently down over Absalom’s first knuckle. “Brother Boaz,” the man said urgently, and he stared into Absalom’s eyes.
“Er, no,” Absalom smiled. “My name is Fearnley-Standish. My friend and I are traveling through the valley and looking for
a place to stay. We hoped we might share your fire tonight.”
“Invite your friend inside, Heber,” Absalom heard a voice from inside the farmhouse.
The man called Heber trembled, his head quivering slightly, almost imperceptibly. He kept staring Absalom in the face and Absalom wondered if he was walking into a house of sick people, or insane, but decided the fellow was probably just old.
“It would be a great kindness,” Absalom said cheerfully. He smiled.
Heber sighed and stepped back inside, making room for Absalom to pass. Absalom walked inside the low house, enjoying the smoky warmth and the smell of a meaty stew that came from a large pot hanging over the fire.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Heber answered. He stared at the heavy boots on his feet.
Then Absalom saw John D. Lee. He stood behind the door, smiling a smile that might have been handsome on another face. Between his jug ears and over the two cocked pistols he held pointed at Absalom his smile looked vicious.
Three more men in black coats stood in the corners of the room, all pointing guns at Absalom. He swallowed uncomfortably.
“Come now, Brother Heber.” Lee kept his voice low and he grinned. “You should never apologize for hospitality. Besides,” Lee’s grin vanished into a stony glare, “I saw you try to warn the little limey off.”
“I say,” Absalom gulped.
“Isn’t it time you invited your friend into the house, too?” Lee suggested in a catlike purr. “It will be a lot easier that way.”
Absalom turned and looked out the open doorway. The dwarf Coltrane still sat on his horse in the yard. Absalom couldn’t see his face in the shadow, but if the midget was holding back, he must suspect something was wrong. Absalom didn’t want to invite Coltrane in. They weren’t friends but they were allies, and Absalom didn’t want to be the kind of man who betrayed an ally into a trap, even when he was in a hard position himself.
“Go on,” Lee said.
Absalom wanted to be Richard Burton. Damn the man, he was infuriating and Absalom hated him, but Captain Richard Burton was no coward. Besides, would Lee really shoot him? He must guess that Young and the others were outside and gunshots would warn them off.
