“Here take a look,” he said, handing the glasses over.
GOODYEAR stood out in bright yellow against a blue background and the darkening sky to the north of where they sat eating dinner in the clearing.
“How do you reckon we’re going to put those things out of commission?” Curtis asked watching the slow-moving craft struggling against the winds aloft.
“Helium doesn’t burn,” Bardwell answered watching the craft with only his naked eye, “I’m just not real sure,” he continued, “But I’m sure that we’ll come up with something when the time comes?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Back in Tulare, Karsyn Faye honored her promise to show the boys around town while the other two were away scouting the old prison.
The morning was spent in talking mostly about family and the few things that they could remember of their youth. Later in the morning, they decided to walk about town with the high point of the day being a trip to the mercantile where real ice cream was had.
“I’m so glad to see the two of you,” she said, as the three of them walked about. Clouds boiled in from the west with no threat of rain for the moment.
The boys smiled.
“Karsyn,” Ritchie asked. “What has gotten you so far from your home to settle you here in this place on the border?”
“Well,” she started. “I started off into this big world to see what I could see of it before I didn’t have the opportunity anymore. I made it this far south and decided that I’d better stop running and try to find a way to provide for myself before I ran out of money?”
“So are you happy here, cousin?” Castro asked, watching the young woman’s expression to see if she would tell the truth.
She paused then looked off to the west at the black clouds boiling there. “Jaxen, Silas,” she said. “I am both happy and unhappy at the same time. I have the work to keep me and…”
“You have a real nice place,” Ritchie said. “So things must be going, okay?”
“Oh,” she said, searching for the words. “The little house isn’t mine, I’m only watching over it until the owners return after trip up to Stockton.”
The boys looked at each other.
“Then where do you live, cousin?” Castro asked. “If I may ask…?”
“Up till now,” she said. “I have taken a room at the boardinghouse where your friends are staying.”
“Would you be willing to come back up north with us,” Ritchie asked. “If Jaxen and I were to secure a little place for you…?”
“The place would be yours to do with as you please,” Castro added. “My brother and I are rarely home anymore.”
“That’s awful nice of you two,” she said. “But why the concern all of the sudden, I mean it’s not like we’ve seen each other in twenty years and then the two of you want to move me back up north?”
“Cousin,” Castro said, in a monotone voice as they neared the little place where the young woman lived temporarily. “We’re afraid that your safety may be in jeopardy?”
“My safety,” she gasped. “What in the world are you talking about, Jaxen Castro? My safety?” she went on.
“Jaxen’s right, Karsyn,” Ritchie said. “In just talking with us you may have unleashed a terrible event. For this,” he said. “I am sorry. I should have kept my mouth shut and not have asked the questions that I did of you last night.”
“Do you really think that someone would try to hurt me?” she asked, reaching the painted fence and porch railing. The young woman keyed the door and stepped inside.
“You don’t see many strangers in these parts, right?” Castro asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“After what we do up there at Ironwood,” Ritchie said. “It won’t take long for folks to start putting things together?”
“You really think that anyone will?” she asked.
Castro nodded. “Anything is possible,” he said. “And things could get mighty ugly once the four of us ride out. Folks will remember the four cowboys that showed up one night and the fact that you were entertaining them.”
“Do you think that anyone here in town will care a thing about what those people are doing out there?” she asked, trying to get her head around what the boys were saying.
“They very well could,” Ritchie answered. “They might not?”
“But again, they might, cousin,” Castro said. “And if they do?”
***
Twenty miles to the east of town, Bardwell and Curtis tied their mounts to a few trees at the bottom of the arroyo. The lawmen walked the rest of the way to the crest for a quick look at the fortress they were supposed to overtake in the next day or so. Much like they had back at Broken Hill, the lawmen blended into the cover of the few trees and brush that topped the rise for a look at what the folks in the fortified prison city were up to.
“Those walls must be twenty feet high, Sir,” Curtis said, taking inventory of the property across the valley.
The boy was right. The abandoned prison walls were eighteen feet in height to be exact with a guard tower every hundred feet along the top wall. A rusting iron gate looked to be the only way in or out.
Bardwell nodded, placing the field glasses to his eyes for a closer look. Two more of the airships were tethered to their mooring stands. One remained high in the air. The other was tied down low to the ground. One additional stand pointed skyward with no Zeppelin attached.
“It looks like they were right,” Curtis added. “They do have three of these ships.”
Bardwell handed the optics to the young lawman. He rubbed his chin looking at the fortress half a rod in the distance. “So far what the boys have said, has been correct,” he said.
“I can’t believe that no one knows more about the place, Sir,” Curtis said. “We should know more about the place than we want to?”
“It sounds like Butterfield and his boys have just moved in recently,” Bardwell replied. “You heard the girl, said that she’d ridden out this way in the last year or so and it was overgrown and abandoned.”
“Surely, someone has seen the inside?” Curtis went on.
“Those that have, are either working for Butterfield,” Bardwell said. “Or they come up missing?”
“Missing?” Curtis asked.
“Yeah,” Bardwell continued. “Folks up in Sacramento have been watching Butterfield for some time now. They’ve put more than a few like us down here in trying to get a look inside, just to see what these boys have in there.”
“And…?”
Bardwell spit on the dirt near his feet. “And they go missing, never to be heard from again. No word, no trace. It’s like they never lived Son.”
“Now what about that girl back in town, Sir?” Curtis asked, “You let on like you think she might find it difficult to go on after us being down this way?”
“I do believe there could be trouble for her,” Bardwell said. “I reckon that there are folks in town loyal to Butterfield and his kind. Once we put the torch to his operation, it won’t take much for folks to put the pieces together. It’ll be just like one of them puzzles the children play with.”
“I don’t think so, Sir,” Curtis said. “There isn’t anything to tie us and the girl together.”
Bardwell smiled. “I think you’re wrong about that, Son,” he said. “Just the simple act of us talking to her has put a price on her head.”
“Yeah,” Curtis said. “That really fucked things up when we stopped in at the saloon didn’t it?”
“It’s my fault mostly,” the lawman said. “The girl was pretty, friendly, and talkative. She seemed familiar to me in some way and I just couldn’t place it. Silas was looking at the girl in much the same fashion and I reckoned that maybe it was her beauty that had drawn the both of us in?”
“When it was really the fact that she looked so much like Silas Ritchie,” Curtis said. “That neither of you could place her?”
“Exactly,” Bardwell went on. “If I
could have predicted the outcome, I would have settled up right then and got us all the hell out of there.”
Curtis laughed. “I bet you didn’t see that one coming?”
“Fuck no,” Bardwell said. “But if I would have, I’d be feeling a lot better about the mission ahead of us.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Curtis asked. “What about the girl? I’d hate to see anyone get hurt just because we rode through town.”
“I don’t know if I can answer that,” Bardwell said.
“She must be doing okay, Sir,” Curtis added. “That little place that she’s got wouldn’t go cheap that’s for sure.”
“But she works in the saloon,” Bardwell replied. “That young woman can’t be making enough to keep a place like that?”
“Maybe she owns the saloon?” Curtis said aloud. “Maybe she just works there to help that old fellow out? Maybe she’s a schoolmarm during the day?”
“I don’t think so, Son,” Bardwell said. “She didn’t come off like she had money. You might be right about the day job, but again, I don’t think so?”
“Okay, then,” Curtis said. “Back to my original question, what do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know, Son,” Bardwell said, mulling over the situation that had risen over the past fifteen hours.
The airship had moved off up to the north and west. Both lawmen suspected they were traveling in the direction of the mission at Palo Alto that Ritchie and Castro had spoken of earlier in the week.
There was little to be seen from the hilltop where they sat and even less activity in the valley below. Black clouds overhead continued to creep closer now threatening rain in the not so distant future.
“I reckon that we should mount up and start for home,” Bardwell said. “Before it starts to rain on us?”
Curtis nodded his agreement and they started down the hill for the horses tied in the brush.
The day proved to be a long one. Periods of intermittent rain greeted them on the ride back into Tulare where they were sure the others sat around the little table drinking coffee and dry. It wasn’t the first time that Bardwell and Curtis had ridden in the rain and it wouldn’t be the last. It was just part of the job living out here on the trail hunting down outlaws.
To the west, the sky darkened and lightning chased across the tormented horizon. Great bolts of white-hot light flashed and streaked to the ground at times.
“This weather looks to be raising hell over that way,” Curtis said, pointing to the west at the cloud to ground lightning.
“Nothing over that way anyway, Son,” Bardwell said, as they continued to ride in the direction of the worst of the weather.
Nothing stirred along the grassy plain east of town now that the storm had arrived. It was nice to see a little precipitation falling here in the desert.
“This rain is going to slow us down,” Curtis said, meaning the planned operation to take out Butterfield and his airship operation.
Bardwell spit, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “We can hole up in town for a few days till the storm blows over if we have to. There’s no rush to get the job done as far as I know.”
Curtis nodded his head agreeing. He squinted his eyes in the heavy rain coming down. The young lawman pointed just to the south of west.
Bardwell nodded that he’d seen what the boy was pointing at. Ahead a mile or so up the road was the southern outpost town of Tulare with its warm yellow lights flickering from the many windows of folks shut in from the weather.
“I ain’t never seen it rain like this, Mister,” the stable boy said, in helping with the horses. Water ran in little rivulets crossing the dirt road as the lawmen had ridden in.
“You might be right, Son,” Bardwell said, shaking off the rain and rubbing the lad’s head. “I don’t remember seeing this much at one time since I was closer to your age.”
The boy smiled. “I took real good care of the other horses, Mister,” he said. “Moved them all inside before the weather got bad, maybe two hours ago?”
“You did well,” Bardwell said, placing two pieces of copper in the boy’s hand. “Now these are for you Son, for seeing to our animals like you have.”
“Thanks, Mister,” the boy said. “They must be mighty important to you fellows?”
Bardwell laughed. “They are, Son,” he said. “And that’s why I’m glad to have such a good man as you looking after them.”
The boy couldn’t have been more than ten calendars in age. He brightened at the comment.
“I’ll see you on the morrow, Son,” Bardwell said, removing his saddle guns and worn leather bags.
Curtis waited near the door looking out at the rain coming down. “This might be a bad sign, Sir?” he said, as they started for the boarding house and dry clothes.
***
After a quick change of clothes, Bardwell inspected the green box in the closet. He waited in the hall outside of the room where his partner had slept the previous night.
Curtis pulled back the door. “Everything looks okay in here, Sir,” he said, starting for the carpeted stairs.
“I found mine the same,” Bardwell said.
Outside, the rain had let up a touch. A new wave of black clouds boiled in from the coast threatening more. The lawmen walked back to the little house with the painted picket fence and porch railing, the little place with a warm fire up in the stove and a pot of coffee on. There they would share what they had found off to the east.
Curtis knocked as he made the green painted door first. Bardwell stood off but under the porch to escape the steady sprinkle coming down. Droplets of water dripped from the brim of his hat.
Castro pulled back the door. He smiled. “How was your day, Gentlemen?” he asked. “Were you able to confirm our intelligence?”
“Wet,” Curtis answered, removing his hat and canvas coat.
“It was just as you boys said it would be,” Bardwell added, pulling off his hat and coat.
“I hope the two of you have worked up an appetite?” Karsyn asked from the kitchen.
Bardwell nodded moving closer to the stove to warm himself after a long afternoon in the saddle. “I reckon that we have,” he said, standing to the side to allow the young woman a place to work.
Karsyn proceeded to remove a large roasting pan from the iron stove with a pair of padded mitts. “Would one of you boys be a dear and set this on the table for me?”
Ritchie was the closest and stepped forward to carry the meal as far as the table. Karsyn followed with a pan of freshly baked bread. Castro was already in the icebox and fetching a crock of butter and jar of milk.
The young woman took the hands of her cousins, Bardwell, and Curtis did the same as she led them in prayer around the round table with all bowing their heads.
Warm and dry, the mood about the little house was cheery. Plates were passed and filled as the four lawmen and the young woman began to eat.
“Sir,” Ritchie asked. “Was the information provided to us correct?”
Bardwell nodded. “It was,” he said laying his fork aside. “What Karsyn here has offered proved correct also. The place was overgrown from the outside, but I’m sure that they’ve tended to the facilities inside of the walls.”
“And they’re using three of the flying ships,” Curtis added. “We watched as one of them departed for greener pasture.”
“In which direction did they travel?” Castro asked, getting in on the conversation now.
“To the north and west,” Curtis said. “Do either of you know what Goodyear would mean?”
“No, why?” Castro said looking across the table at his brother.
“All three of those ships have great letters of the elders painted to the side, Goodyear?” Curtis answered.
“I have no idea,” Ritchie said, shaking his head.
“But they did leave to the north?” Castro asked looking first to Curtis, then Bardwell, and finally his brother.
“Yes,” Curt
is said.
The brothers exchanged glances and smiled.
“What the hell are the two of you thinking?” Curtis asked.
“After we’re finished here,” Castro said. “We’ll be off for the mission at Palo Alto to destroy the remaining machine.”
“And I’m guessing that the two of us are riding north with them?” Curtis asked, looking to Bardwell, his superior.
Bardwell nodded his agreement. “We have our orders,” he said, finishing with his supper. The lawman got up to help with the cleanup.
“You boys have a seat in the parlor,” Karsyn said. “I know that you’ve got a lot to talk over. I’ll be finished shortly and will join you.”
Bardwell nodded turning for the front room. The other lawmen joined as they each took a seat on the upholstered furniture.
Karsyn had been right. There was a lot to talk over. Ritchie rolled out the map that the authorities had provided. The map the four lawmen had looked over once before.
“So would the two of you agree that the map is true to the fortifications that you found today?” Ritchie asked, stepping back for Bardwell and Curtis to have a look.
Both looked the map over again after seeing the fortified complex with their own eyes.
“I reckon that it looks about right,” Curtis said first. “There are three great towers where they tie those airships. One is over in this corner,” he said pointing his finger. “And the other two are back along this wall.”
The brothers looked to Bardwell who only nodded his agreement with what the boy had said.
“How about the gate,” Castro asked. “And did you notice anyone watching over the entrance or along the wall?”
“It’s made of iron,” Bardwell said. “I’d reckon seven paces wide and three high, but there’s a smaller entrance built within the larger where folks come and go.” He paused, thinking about what it was that he saw before the rains came. “There’s a guardhouse at each side and again every fifty paces along the top wall.”
“Will your long range guns, be of any value?” Curtis asked.
“Yes and no,” Castro said. “With the airships, no, we’ll have to get inside to destroy those. But the gentlemen guarding the place, Silas here will send them on to the other side.”
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