Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  Gideon looked ahead to where Hart had stopped at the edge of the ridge. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what this is all about.”

  * * *

  Oswald P. Ackroyd had just about had enough. It was a tough enough life, overseeing a ranch with fifteen hundred head of cattle in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from the nearest collection of wooden houses that you might call a town. He had to work his fingers to the bone from dawn to past dark every single day—not even a rest on the Lord’s day, because there wasn’t a church he could get to and back on a Sunday. He had only his sister’s feckless son Albert to help out, because despite his best efforts he’d only been able to fill his sweet wife Caroline with daughters. Not that he could have loved those four girls more, because he couldn’t. But being the father of girls had its own troubles, especially with a young man in the house who was getting to that age when he was randy as a dog day and night. Also, the girls now wanted pretty things, dresses and combs and mirrors, so when he did eventually get to drive some beef over to Nixontown or Redcreek Gorge or, once a year, to the big markets at Randolph City, then he had to take them with him or come back laden with trinkets and white cloth … either way, several guineas lighter than he should have been.

  But all that he could cope with, because Oswald P. Ackroyd was a loving, generous, hardworking man who just wanted the best for his family, and if that meant taking the pioneer shilling and coming out here to one of the few patches of arable land so close to the Mason-Dixon Wall, then so be it. So long as he could take Caroline back to New York once a year or so to see her folks, and keep young Albert’s trousers tightly buckled, then everyone was relatively happy. Everyone got by.

  What really pissed him off were these Steamtown bastards who thought they could waltz on to his ranch and start calling the shots.

  There were four of them, and the ringleader was sitting on the porch—in Oswald’s favorite rocking chair, chewing tobacco. He spat a brown stream onto the stoop and didn’t apologize. Oswald gripped the barrel of his shotgun tighter with his sweating palm.

  “Now, then, pappy,” drawled the Steamtown punk, his hat pushed back over his black hair. “Suppose you just put that peashooter down before someone gets hurt.”

  “Suppose you just get the hell off my land,” said Oswald.

  The man tutted. “Nasty mouth you got there, pappy. And you with four such pretty daughters as well.”

  Oswald glanced over his shoulder at Caroline and the girls, huddled in the kitchen behind him. “You don’t even look at my girls, mister.” Goddamn Albert for being away getting supplies at Nixontown today. The one day he might have come in useful. Goddamn him.

  The man sat forward. His three boys were lounging around the porch, two with Winchester repeaters, the other making a show of polishing the barrels of a pair of Colts with his ragged shirtsleeve. “Look here, pappy. All we want is two … make that three hundred head of beef. We gotta eat in Steamtown, same as regular folks. Think of it as insurance.”

  “Insurance against what?”

  The man took out his own pistol from its holster and waved it in the general direction of the kitchen. “Insurance against you waking up one morning with your throat slit and your wife and daughters turning tricks in Madame Choo-Choo’s down in Steamtown. Three hundred head of beef. Got to be worth that for peace of mind, eh, pappy?”

  Oswald lifted the shotgun and clicked off the safety. “I’ll give you a piece of my mind, boy. Get the hell off my land. And stop calling me pappy.”

  The man spat again, unfazed. “Sorry to hear that, pappy. ’Cause now we’re gonna take all your beef, and your daughters, too. Boys.”

  * * *

  “Cattle ranch,” said Hart, shielding his eyes against the sun.

  “It’s on fire!” said Gideon. “Someone might be hurt. We need to get down there.”

  “Whoa, Smith,” said Hart. “Not our problem. We need to get to Steamtown.”

  Bent put a hand out and grasped Gideon’s shoulder. “He’s right, Gideon. We should stay focused on what we’re here to do. Representing the Crown and all that, eh?”

  A gunshot reported around the canyon. Gideon shrugged Bent off. “There are people in trouble, Aloysius. They need help.” He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and it whinnied and headed down the trail that wound from the ridge down to the verdant valley where the main building of the ranch spewed flames and black smoke into the sky.

  Hart sighed. “Is he always like this?”

  Bent nodded.

  “I guess that’s what makes him a hero, then,” said Hart. “Come on, Mr. Bent, we’d better go and keep Mr. Smith out of trouble.”

  * * *

  Oswald had managed to shoot one of the men, which had only made the others angrier. He shouted for Caroline to take the girls up to the bedroom and lock them in.

  “Bad move, asshole,” spat the ringleader, who took one of the oil lamps hanging from the porch and smashed it against the wooden wall of the house. Too late, Oswald realized he had consigned his family to a horrible death.

  “Can’t we ride the girls before we roast ’em?” whined one of the other men as he filled his pockets with the belongings of his dead compadre.

  “Shut it,” hissed the boss. He struck a match on his gun belt and held it cupped in his hand for a moment. “Say adios to the old homestead, pappy.” He touched the flame to the oil-damp wall and it caught with a roar, grabbing hold of the timbers and spreading down to the porch and up to the second story.

  “We’re gonna take all your goddamn cattle now,” said the man. “First we’re gonna kill you, though. And the worst thing is? You’re gonna die not knowing whether we got your wife and girls out of that house and rode them into the dust or whether we sat back and watched ’em burn. How about that, pappy?”

  Oswald felt the strength sap from him. He turned to force his way into the house, already filling with acrid, black smoke. He heard the distinct sound of a gun cocking behind him.

  “No you don’t, pappy.”

  “Get the hell off my land,” said Oswald weakly, and kicked open the door. Behind him a gun barked. It took him the blink of an eye to realize that it was more distant than he’d thought it would be. And that he was still standing.

  “Fuck.” That was from one of the punks.

  He turned to see the ringleader crumpled in a heap on the porch, the other two turning to face three men on horseback who were pounding along the dirt drive. The newcomers’ guns barked again and one of the other men fell. Oswald tossed his rifle to one side and shouldered his way to the kitchen, the smoke clawing at his eyes and throat. He closed his eyes and felt his way to the stairs, almost bumping into Caroline as she inched down.

  “The girls?” he said, his eyes streaming.

  “Here,” she said. “Oswald, what in the name of—?”

  “Out,” he croaked, leading them back through the kitchen, just as the timbers in the ceiling cracked and a beam fell across the path, the four girls screaming in unison. Oswald was suddenly disoriented in the black smoke, didn’t know if he was making for the door or back into the heart of his burning, ruined home. He put out a hand and brought it back sharply as he made contact with burning wood. He gripped on to Caroline with his other hand and managed to say, “Hold on to your mother, girls.”

  If they were going to die, at least they would all die together.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  The voice came from ahead of him, and he fumbled toward it. Whether it belonged to the Steamtown bastards or his mysterious saviors, he didn’t care. He reached out a hand and it was taken in a firm grip, which began to haul him swiftly through the smoke until his streaming eyes were flooded with sunlight, not smoke, and he fell, coughing, to the smoldering timbers of the porch, Caroline and the girls staggering out around him.

  “Better get you away from here,” said the voice again. British? Oswald felt himself lifted by strong hands and pulled forward, away from the smoke and heat, un
til he could gasp for fresh air and turn to see the conflagration that was reducing the home he had built with his bare hands to ash and embers.

  Caroline embraced him and he hugged his four girls in turn before turning to the three men who had saved them. One was American; he introduced himself as Jeb Hart, and the others as two gentlemen from London, Mr. Gideon Smith and Mr. Aloysius Bent. Even their near-death experience did not stop the girls giggling as the strapping young Gideon Smith kissed each of their hands in turn.

  “Who were they?” asked Smith.

  “Steamtown,” said Oswald. “After my cattle. I should have handed them over; I might still have a home.”

  “What will you do?” asked Smith.

  Oswald shrugged. “I still have the beef. Did you get them all? There were four. I shot one.”

  “We got two, certainly,” said the American, Hart. “I didn’t see the other go; maybe we did get three.”

  “Thank you,” said Oswald, shaking each of their hands. “Thank you.”

  Mr. Hart said, “There’s a garrison maybe three-quarters of a day’s ride north from here; if you go and tell them that Mr. Jeb Hart and Mr. Gideon Smith sent you, they can arrange for passage back to New York, if you wish.”

  “What about the cattle?” asked Oswald.

  Hart shrugged and looked at the sun. “We’d best be on our way.”

  Oswald watched them go, then put his arms around his wife and daughters and watched the last of their home fall in on itself, consumed by the fire. Damn Steamtown. Damn them all to a hundred hells.

  Night was falling when he became aware of another rider. The fire had abated and they managed to rescue a few items—singed blankets, a cook pot, some odds and ends—from the smoldering wreckage. They’d taken a piece of still-burning timber and made a campfire from it to boil water and cook what little food they could scavenge. From the light of the fire he saw the shape of the rider trotting up. Was it someone from Steamtown, sent to find their lost bastards? He didn’t even have his guns. Caroline and the girls huddled behind him as the man brought his horse to a halt.

  The man wore leathers and skins, his trousers cut with rough tassels like the Indians wore them, a rough white shirt beneath a leather jerkin lined with haphazardly stitched animal furs. The man stopped alongside the campfire and touched his fingers to his forehead.

  “Greetings.”

  Oswald looked him over. “Greetings yourself. What do you want? We’re not rightly tolerant of strangers at the moment, so you might find our hospitality lacking.”

  The man leaned forward on his saddle pommel and regarded the house. Then he asked, “You have somewhere to go?”

  Oswald shook his head. The man ruminated for a moment, then said, “There’s a little community I know, could probably benefit from you and your beef.”

  Oswald glanced at Caroline, who gave him the briefest of nods. He said to the stranger, “Tell me more. And what’s your name?”

  The man slid off his horse. “Don’t really have one, sir. Now, let me tell you about this place. There’s a creek and some fine grazing land…”

  12

  TWO GENTLEMEN OF LONDON

  Louis Cockayne’s luck had just run out.

  Thaddeus Pinch laid down a royal flush with as much of a flourish as his steam-powered limb could summon, and his metal jaw pulled up in a grotesque parody of a grin; the action caused the suppurating sores where the device was bolted to his skull to open like miniature wet smiles, weeping blood and viscous fluid down his jawline. Louis felt like throwing up, for more reasons than one. Pinch was a freak, sure enough, a disgusting tinker-toy of a half-man. But he was also a disgusting tinker-toy of a half-man of his word. And he had pledged that when Louis Cockayne lost at cards, then it was time to die.

  Inkerman guffawed and applauded like a loon when Cockayne laid down his hand. Jesus, the cretin practically had a hard-on at the thought of what Pinch was going to do to Cockayne. Louis was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be a bullet in the head there and then, though. Pinch still needed to find out how to fly the brass dragon.

  Which was good, because it meant Pinch would probably keep Cockayne alive a little while longer.

  But it was also bad, because it probably meant there was going to be pain in Louis Cockayne’s immediate future. Lots and lots of pain.

  Thaddeus Pinch sat back in his chair, his flinty eyes on Cockayne. He took a dribbling slurp of whisky through his straw, then said, “Well, well, well. The famed Cockayne luck seems to have deserted him.”

  “Deserted him!” chuckled Inkerman, nudging the five or six other cronies in Pinch’s inner circle who were gathered around their boss in the oil-lit saloon. “Deserted him!”

  “Fuck off,” muttered Cockayne. His repertoire of snappy comebacks seemed to have deserted him as well. He was beginning to rue the day he’d ever clapped eyes on that goddamn brass dragon. Or maybe … maybe he should have just left well enough alone. Perhaps he could have picked up a nice fat reward for his work in defeating John Reed. Perhaps he could have been a free man, right now, with fewer enemies after his blood.

  You’re just too goddamn greedy, Louis, he thought. Sometimes you just oughta cut your losses, play on the side of the angels for a while.

  “I’ll fuck you off,” growled Inkerman back. “Boss, let me kill him.”

  There was an exhalation of steam as Pinch raised his metal arm. “No, not yet. First he’s got to talk. Inkerman, take him over to the smithy. Make him comfortable. I got some business to attend to. Send someone to find Billy-Joe and have him come over here.”

  * * *

  Pinch waved for another bottle of whisky, his brow creased with annoyance. He liked Louis Cockayne, he really did. He didn’t want to have to kill him. But he couldn’t be seen to be going soft. He touched the sores at his jaw. As if. Thaddeus Pinch lived with unimaginable pain every day. No man could accuse him of being soft. But it was worth the pain. Would be, at any rate. Because one day Thaddeus Pinch would be perfect. His flesh was weak, but his spirit was oh so very willing. He would transcend the weakness of the flesh. Thaddeus Pinch would embrace the future, and the future was machines. He would cut away all that was soft and undesirable, all that weak flesh that made him just like other men. Thaddeus Pinch would be superior. Flesh began to decay and die from the moment you were born. That wasn’t for Thaddeus Pinch, to end his days stooped over and gray, waiting for some punk to come and blow his head off and take over Steamtown. No, that wasn’t for Thaddeus Pinch.

  Thaddeus Pinch was going to live forever.

  Unlike Louis Cockayne. Pinch chided himself for his weakness. So he liked Cockayne. So the hell what? Cockayne had crossed him. So he had to die. Pinch would give him one last chance to talk … suitably loosened up, of course. But if he didn’t, then who cared? Some of the finest minds in America were here in Steamtown. That bastard dragon would fly eventually; the law of averages said so. Pinch would get every goddamn man of science he had on the thing, and it would fly. He was Thaddeus Pinch, and he always got what he wanted.

  And Louis Cockayne’s head would be on a spike at the gates of Steamtown as a warning to anybody else who thought to take Thaddeus Pinch for a fool.

  The door to the saloon swung open and the boy, Billy-Joe, stumbled in, wringing his hat in his hands, three saddlebags slung over his shoulders. Pinch regarded him levelly for a moment then said, “Don’t worry, son, I’m not going to bawl you out. I already heard what happened. Was it really him?”

  Billy-Joe nodded vigorously. “I swear to God, Mr. Pinch, sir. It was him. The Nameless.”

  Pinch ruminated for a while. “And he said those kids were under his protection?”

  “The whole area, Mr. Pinch, sir. Said we was to leave the place well alone. And there was something else … the Nameless had this girl over the back of his horse. She looked dead. Had a giant key sticking out of her back.”

  “A key?” Pinch said absently. The Nameless. This could get bad.

/>   “That’s what it looked like, sir, I swear.”

  Pinch stood with effort and clanked over to the grimy window. He wasn’t soft, but he also wasn’t stupid. Nobody in Steamtown would expect him to go up against the Nameless. That would be just the same as signing your own death warrant. Some things couldn’t be explained, and some things just weren’t fucked with. That was how it was.

  He turned to Billy-Joe. “Anyway … was the tip-off good? Did you find the Indian trading party?”

  Billy-Joe smiled, relieved to have good news. “Sure was, Mr. Pinch. Exactly where you said they’d be. I brought all the horses back.” He shucked the saddlebags onto the floor and bent to open them. “Leather, some carvings, but some gold nuggets as well.”

  Pinch nodded. “Good work. Our informant earned his money this time.” He paused. “This Spaniard … she said she was the daughter of the Governor of Uvalde?”

  Billy-Joe nodded.

  “All right,” said Pinch. “Find Inkerman in the smithy. Tell him I want five men to go with you to Uvalde. Rough the place up a bit, just send ’em a little warning. Don’t bother bringing anyone back, and don’t kill anyone if you don’t have to. But let’s let Uvalde know we’re not to be trifled with.”

  “Now, Mr. Pinch, sir?”

  “No time like the present, son.” Pinch smiled. “There’ll be a bottle of whisky and the whore of your choice waiting for you when you get back.”

  * * *

  They heard Steamtown before they saw it. Jeb Hart led them through a wide gap in the Mason-Dixon Wall—battered through, he said, by Thaddeus Pinch’s Steamcrawlers to allow the men of San Antonio unfettered access to the prairies beyond.

  “I thought the Wall was supposed to keep them out,” said Bent.

  Jeb poked his thumb over his shoulder. “You seen how far back the garrison is. There ain’t another one along the Wall for twice as far in that direction. Like Humbert said, it’s a symbol rather than anything useful, especially so far from the British-controlled territories.”