“Mr. Schist!” she protested.
“Steady now,” I told her, staring at the torches.
She grew quiet and we waited.
The torches got closer. They were carried by men in sooty factory weeds. Despite the cold air, lines of perspiration cut clean white paths through the grime on their faces. Their eyes were wide and bloodshot. They had drink or bloodlust in them. I wasn’t sure which.
“Evening, gentlemen,” I said, standing my ground.
They were taken aback for a moment. They shifted uncomfortably at the sight of a girl not even five feet tall. I could have kissed her—maybe some of these guys had daughters.
For her part, Phoebe held my arm tighter. The sight of so many filthy men seemed to alter her opinion of me.
“You come off that train just now?” one asked.
Another eyed my revolver. “What’s the piece for?”
“Varmints,” Phoebe said in a clear voice.
They glanced at her curiously. No one moved.
I kept the muzzle pointed at the dirt. “We’re alone in the woods, gentlemen. It felt prudent.” I turned to the first one who spoke. “Yes, our train was delayed by the fire.”
The men exchanged glances.
“River’s burning,” one said unnecessarily.
“That’s awful queer, ain’t it?” another asked.
A few crossed themselves.
“It’s the chemicals,” I said. “The river’s full of chemicals.”
“Water...it should not burn,” another worker said in a thick Slavic accent. He made the sign against the Evil Eye. Normally, I would’ve laughed at that. When the sky is burning-red, though, superstition doesn’t seem so foolish.
“Look, if you pour enough—” I stopped myself. It was useless to explain about volatile chemicals coating the surface of the water. “Never mind. What do you gentlemen want?”
They shifted uncomfortably. I realized they weren’t used to being called gentlemen.
“Any celestials on that train with you?” their leader asked. “Or micks? Or darkies?”
I frowned. “There were a lot of travelers. Maybe some were Irish or negro, but I didn’t see any Chinese.” I hesitated. “We didn’t ride the penny cars, though.”
“Course not,” one said, scowling. “Why would a dandy like you ride with the likes of us?”
I looked down at the patches Moira had sewn into my Chesterfield and tried not to laugh. I’d been called a lot of things in my life. Dandy wasn’t usually one of them.
“That was the Akronite which stopped,” I told them. “It’s just a regional carrier. What are you guys looking for?”
“We should tell Big MacCallard,” one of them said, ignoring my query.
“He came up the tracks from the other way. He prolly knows already.”
They trudged up the road without another word. One of them gamely tipped his hat at Phoebe.
“Who were they?” she asked when they were gone.
I released her arm and picked up my carpetbag. “Bad news.”
“Why were they asking about foreigners?”
“They don’t care about foreigners,” I explained. “They’re looking for scabs.”
Now I knew why the tracks east of us were shut down. And why the river was burning and mobs were prowling the hills.
Phoebe had only known me a little while, but she could read the alarm on my face. “What is it, Mr. Schist?”
“Union trouble.”
Chapter Three
Liuttsburg was a low, sprawling mess of dirty brick buildings and sagging wooden tenements. There was a pall about it, an eerie gray smoke that rolled off the burning river and settled in the muddy streets between the buildings. It was a factory town, not a proper city at all, so there were no gaslights. Instead it was illuminated by the red glow of the river-fire.
A surprising number of windows were lit, as if the Sandman couldn’t find his way through the smog and the whole damn burg was left sleepless as a result. A few of the shops we passed had kerosene lamps sputtering in the choking miasma. If a lantern would barely burn, I didn’t want to think about what that shit was doing to our lungs. If anyone was foolish enough to bring a canary here, I was betting it would die in one breath.
I felt a little winded, but when I glanced at Phoebe, she was fine. Could’ve been her age, I supposed, or maybe the clean country living. It was different in the city. I never could understand why anyone would smoke a pipe in New York. If you opened a window in Manhattan you’d get the same effect for free.
At the base of the hill was a cemetery, the graves marked by cheap wooden crosses. They leaned drunkenly in the cold earth, casting baleful shadows in the weird red ambience. We hurried through without comment.
It wasn’t that I was turning superstitious, like that Slav, but graveyards were eerie enough places on nights when a river wasn’t burning.
I asked the first sober person I saw where the hotel was and hastened there. It was called Liutt’s Loft, which underscored the fact this was a company town. Small surprise he called the hotel after himself, too. If a guy names not one but two towns after himself, you can’t expect him to stop there. There weren’t any street signs—he was a penny-pinching Magnate, after all—but if there had been, they’d probably all had names like Liutt’s Lane or Liutt’s Row. As it was now, they were all anonymous rivers of slush—unnamed, unpaved and undrained. They did a number on my shoes, not to mention Phoebe’s skirt, even with its elevator.
We stomped and scraped at the welcome mat, but it didn’t help much. The lobby was rough wood. There wasn’t a carpet in sight, so it didn’t seem to matter.
“Need a room,” I said when we reached the counter.
The clerk eyed the girl at my side.
I put a nickel on the table for the bribe and a greenback for the room. “And privacy.”
The filthy-minded little weasel winked at me and wrote something in his ledger. He didn’t ask for a name or signature.
“Your restaurant still open? Send up some coffee when you get the chance. Black.”
“You’ll be needing to stay awake tonight, eh?”
I needed to be alert, not awake, but I didn’t correct him. Staying awake wouldn’t be a problem, not with the creepy red sky and the hills crawling with unionists.
The room was sparsely furnished. I unchained Phoebe and pushed the only chair up under the door handle. The curtains were a thin film that did nothing to keep out the reeking smoke or dismal red glow.
Phoebe stood in the middle of the chamber with her arms at her side as if she were afraid to touch anything.
If this flophouse bothered her, she would’ve had a ball working for Stanislaus.
“If the railway isn’t clear tomorrow, we could maybe take a steamcoach, get around the burning river and head west. Provided the roads are clear.”
“Won’t that be expensive?”
“Of course it’ll be expensive.”
She turned to look at me. “You should’ve left me in New York.”
My patience asphyxiated in the gloom. “I should have, I really should have. You know where you’d be? You’d be spread-eagle on a filthy mattress, getting sodomized by sweaty sailors for a nickel. I, meanwhile, would be at home getting a foot rub from my wife.”
I expected her to flinch, but she didn’t.
“Your wife must be very dutiful.”
I could tell from her face that the chit knew I was lying a
bout the foot rub. Moira never gave foot rubs. She hadn’t mentioned that when we were courting, which seemed like false advertising. On the other hand, I hadn’t warned her I was a coldhearted prick.
Marriage, like life, was full of disappointment.
“You’re used to earthy language,” I observed.
“I’ve heard worse.”
“From those people you complained about?”
“The wolves you mean?”
I put my face in my hands and said nothing. The temptation to cut my losses was strong. The mother hired me to keep her girl out of Stanny’s clutches, which I’d done. Sure, she paid me to bring the girl home—but she didn’t pay me enough to risk a lynching by unionists or a cremation by the river or any of the other dozen or so unwholesome destinies waiting here in Liuttsburg.
“Can you give me some privacy?” She walked over to the pitcher and poured some water.
Despite my language, I was still gentleman enough for that. I got up, spun the chair around and admired the door while she cleaned herself. The planks were warped and splintering, in dire need of paint.
“So about General Sherman...”
“No,” I grunted sourly.
“But—”
“I’m not refighting the war tonight.”
I could hear her scrubbing and cursing behind me. The fumes off the river coated us in a noxious black film that reminded me of boot polish.
Moira was going to be ecstatic when she did my laundry. It wouldn’t surprise me if she gave up and just burned them instead. It would probably be a pretty fire, given all the chemicals in them. I made a mental note to warn her they might be volatile. I could just imagine the blue flames reflecting in Moira’s angry eyes.
The bellhop knocked, dispelling the image. I accepted a pot and a mug, tipped him a penny and sat back down, all the while keeping my back to the girl as she splashed water on herself. I didn’t know why she bothered—another five minutes outside and the soot would be back.
I started to pour the coffee when the room started to rumble. Warped planks shook and the cheap ceramic pitcher rattled audibly. My coffee splashed onto that sensitive stretch between thumb and forefinger.
“Hell and damnation.”
“What’s that?”
I turned and blushed.
My young captive had stopped washing and jumped onto the bed to look out the window. In her haste to see the source of the rumbling, she’d neglected to cover herself. Her shoulders were pale and thin and white, a painful reminder of how young she was.
“Phoebe.”
“What?”
“Phoebe!” I put a hand over my eyes significantly.
“Oh, dear me.” She pulled the blanket off the bed and covered herself.
Once she was decent, I stepped to the window and felt my blood run cold.
For one jarring moment, it was as though a great steel ship was steaming through the center of town. Once my senses adjusted to the bizarre scene, I realized what it was.
“It’s a dry ironclad.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened.
My mouth was dry. I took another sip of coffee, scalding my tongue, but I hardly noticed.
“One of the ol’ Dukes, by the look of it...maybe a ’61.” The 1861 models were what had plowed into us at Gettysburg, so I knew ’em well. Though it might’ve been a ’63. They’d come in at the end of the war and had a similar design.
“Is it an invasion?” Her voice shook. “Is Johnny Reb taking Pennsylvania?”
The ironclad’s steel carapace was naked. There were no Confederate flags or unit insignia. The fact it was solo was also telling. There were no battalions of defensive soldiers or stalking arcipedes. Dry ironclads were potent, but they needed protection. This particular ironclad, however, appeared to have been constructed with infantry in mind. They’d altered the damn thing, confusing the profile.
“They took the artillery off.” I pointed at the modifications.
It was a ’61 all right, but retrofitted. The fort-busting cannon was gone. In its place were two Gatlings. They’d replaced the fence-smasher with a cowcatcher. I shuddered to think what the cowcatcher would do to human legs if the rolling castle ever plowed into a crowd.
The exhaust chimneys went past our window, plunging us into darkness.
“Why is there an ironclad here?”
“Union trouble.”
“What does that mean, though, Mr. Schist? Are anarchists here?”
I was glad for the darkness. She couldn’t see the panic in my face. “We need to get outta this burg.”
My mind was racing. When I’d worked for the Pinkertons, there had been talk of buying British war surplus. Her Majesty had a lot of rundown technica left over from her imperialist ventures. Some limey minister cooked up a way to dump old machinery and make cash in the process—sell it to the highest bidder. Detective agencies like Mr. Pinkerton’s were an obvious customer. The idea revolted me, to say the least. They’d never paid me enough to climb into a damned machine which had, just a decade earlier, been used to murder Yankees. One more reason I left the bastards.
“Someone went through with it,” I whispered. “They bought that limey garbage.”
“What?”
I blinked. The coal smoke was dissipating. The dull red glow returned. Phoebe’s large dark eyes were on me.
“I’ve got a tiny bit of your mother’s advance left. We’ll see if we can hire a coach.” I had other money besides, but that was a source best untapped. My last case had a good payoff, though by no means a good ending—the client had died. In fact, there had been multiple clients and they had all managed to die. Go figure. As I said, the money was good, though. I’d bought a rowhouse for Moira and squared away some of my debts to boot. The rowhouse was just in time—her nesting instinct was kicking in. We were comfy now, but I wasn’t in the black. I’d decided to work for myself so I could turn down work that made me feel dirty. But that meant I was responsible for my own expenses when the case went south.
Ma Mosey couldn’t afford this kind of detour. I could try to get a judgment against her, but what good would that do? How much more money could I get out of a dirt-farming hick?
“The steamcoach depot was closed,” Phoebe reminded me. “We’ll have to wait till morning, like you planned.”
“That was before a fucking trench-breaker made me spill coffee on myself.” I showed her my back again. “Get dressed.”
The Duke brought back unpleasant memories. I swallowed them down like bile and focused on the task at hand.
“That didn’t take long,” the leering clerk said when we came down the stairs.
I suppressed the urge to clock him. “Are there any coaches around here?”
“There are, but they don’t open till morning. If you’re done with the room, we have other customers...”
“I paid for the night,” I reminded him coldly. “Where do you think I could find the coach’s proprietor? Or the driver? Do you know them?”
“I do,” he said significantly, bleeding another dime out of me. “Ask for Foster. He’s probably in the saloon right now.”
I glanced at Phoebe. Foster might as well have been on the moon. Sure, I used some rough talk with the girl, but I drew the line at bringing her into a saloon. Ma Mosey would have killed me for sure. Nothing is so tarnished as a lady who’s been to a saloon. They were pretty harmless places, but in society’s eyes, they were bad as brothels.
We c
ould hardly stay here all night though, not with a war brewing in the street.
“Where’s the saloon?”
“Mr. Liutt won’t allow any in his town. It’s up the road, in Juniper Junction.”
“The train station town.” I wanted to kick something. “What is he, a goddamn teetotaler?”
The clerk blanched beneath his scraggly beard and looked around in alarm. “Check your tone, sir.”
I cleared my throat and noticed that several people in the lobby were staring. “How virtuous of him.”
They looked away again.
“Mr. Liutt is a proponent of temperance,” the little weasel said.
If there’s anything worse than a company town, it’s a company town run by a sanctimonious robber baron. This Liutt bastard preached about drink while his workers hunched in rotted-out tenements, choking on factory smoke. Magnates love to play Moses, bringing laws from on-high until it’s time to be charitable of course. Then they start citing Herbert Spencer instead.
We stepped outside and started up the street. Phoebe stared at the red sky in wonder. I stared at the dirt and tried not to curse.
“You’re taking me to a saloon?”
I ran down my options. It was hard to concentrate. My socks were squishing audibly. I was wearing city shoes not suited to this god-awful backcountry shit-burg. Had I packed enough socks? Uncomfortable memories of trench foot came to mind.
It was a long trudge along the spur. I kept my eye on the road for torches and the .22 cocked under my coat. It was quiet. The mobs were gone and the whores must’ve found someone with a quarter to spare, because they were all inside their lean-tos, even the legless one. The platform at Juniper had a few poor travelers trying to sleep in the cold, but otherwise the town was desolate.
I stopped and chained Phoebe to a rain gutter on the corner of the saloon. It was sturdy lead, so I figured it would hold her long enough for me to conduct my business.
Vacant Graves Page 4