Jacob could only nod and leave, questions unanswered. Where is Shawn? And is Maria Cantrell with him? He felt like he was hitting his head against a brick wall.
* * *
“Drink this, Mr. Lute and you, too . . . what’s your name?” Nurse Rooksbee looked to the other twin.
“My name is Marcellus.”
“Yes, of course it is. Now drink up, gentlemen. This will relieve your pain. And don’t worry about Mommy. I’ll take care of her soon.”
“Her eyes have closed,” Marcellus said. “Oh please tell us she isn’t dead.”
“No, she‘s only sleeping. Once she gets back into ajar, she’ll be her old self again.”
Kilcoyn added, “Yes she will. As bright-eyed as ever.”
“What about my brother?” Marcellus asked. “He needs surgery on his eyes. Can you make him see again?”
“Mr. Perry is already making arrangements for a surgeon to come down from El Paso. I’m told he can perform miracles on injured eyes and hands.” Nurse Rooksbee had a fine body, voluptuous, marred only by her homely face. Her red hair was scraped back from her forehead and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her brown dress, the bosom laced tight across her breasts, was adorned with a pocket watch pinned to the front. She wore red spectacles with some kind of small magnifying glass attached to the bottom of each lens and leather gloves.
Reassured by the nurse’s words, Edmund took his medicine in one gulp. Marcellus, in pain but suspicious, hesitated.
She encouraged, “Down the hatch, Mr. Lute. It will make you feel better.”
* * *
“I’m surprised,” she said. “I thought that seventy grains of arsenic would kill them more quickly than it’s doing.”
The Lute twins writhed on the floor like little white slugs, dying hard and in much pain. They foamed at the mouth and made odd gibbering noises.
“How much longer?” Valentine Kilcoyn said, irritated. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Let’s see.” She tested both dying men’s chests with her tube stethoscope, listening to each for long moments “Not long now. Their hearts are faltering. There’s chocolate cake and ice cream today. Did you hear that?”
“I did”—Kilcoyn nodded—“but I’ll believe it when it’s on my plate. All the cooks seem to know is steamed pudding and custard.”
“I like that dessert,” Nurse Rooksbee said.
“So do I but not every day,” Kilcoyn said.
“No, not every day. Ice cream is a welcome change. I think one of them just died.” She tried the stethoscope again. “Yes, this one with the damaged eyes. His brother won’t be far behind.”
“Mr. Perry said we had to get rid of them. The good folks of Big Buck don’t need to see this kind of thing. Questions start getting asked.”
She made no answer to that. After a while, she said, “The other one is gone.”
“They took their own sweet time about it.”
“I still can’t believe so much pain is associated with arsenic. The two of them died in considerable distress.”
“A bullet would have been quicker,” Kilcoyn pointed out.
“Quicker, yes, but then we wouldn’t have had a chance to observe the effect of arsenic poisoning on the human body. I will make it known to the physicians of my acquaintance.” She applied the stethoscope to each body. “Yes, they’re gone. You can have the trolls pick them up in a while.”
“A while?” Kilcoyn said.
Nurse Clementina Rooksbee began to unlace her dress. “Yes. In a while.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“She’ll be a rock steady gun platform,” Garrett Mallard the mechanic said. “A city destroyer if ever I saw one.”
“What about recoil?” Caleb Perry asked. “We still don’t know if a full broadside will blow her across the sky.”
“The prototype will be tested within a week, once the gunners are fully trained. I expect a successful trial run.”
“Who’s taking her up?”
“This man right here, Mr. Buck Ross.”
“You’re the new foreman.” Perry didn’t offer his hand. “Can the trolls handle the cannon?”
Jacob O’Brien nodded. “Yes. A man who served as a cannoneer in the Mexican army is instructing them. They’ll be ready in a week.”
“Or less,” Perry insisted. “What do you think about the recoil question, Ross?”
Jacob didn’t hesitate, pretending he knew more than he did. “The gondola—”
“Please. The frigate,” Perry interrupted.
“Yes. The frigate is suspended by ropes and chains and it will swing when the cannons fire, but nothing too severe. The canopy will hold it in place and the steam driven propeller will act as a counterforce.” His voice oozing sincerity as if he knew what the hell he was talking about, Jacob added, “Even under adverse weather conditions, I estimate my gun crews will fire two broadsides a minute.”
“Very impressive, Mr. Ross,” Perry said, his hard eyes searching Jacob’s face. “Let’s hope, for your sake, that you’re right.”
“I can vouch for foreman Ross,” Mallard said. “His gun crews are working well together.”
“We’ll see.” Perry looked from the gantry to where the full-sized frigate was taking shape, workmen swarming all over her. “A lovely thing, is she not, Mr. Ross?”
“Indeed she is,” Jacob said, telling the truth. The half-completed flying machine had all the lethal beauty of a modern ship of the line, a weapon of wood and iron driven by the steam engines that were powering the world.
“The future of modern warfare is right here at Abaddon. We have the terror weapon that will give the strong the power to bend the backs of the weak to lives of unending labor,” Perry said. “What say you, mechanic Mallard?”
“Throughout history those who beat their swords into plowshares plowed for those that didn’t,” Mallard said. “In these modern times, those who don’t have steam-powered aerial, yes, and land weapons, will also go under the yoke.”
That last statement changed Jacob O’Brien’s thinking. It was no longer merely a case of freeing Manuel Cantrell. He had to stop these men from inflicting great evil on an unsuspecting world. A fleet of aerial steam frigates could level the great cities of Europe and the United States, and bring madmen to power.
Jacob considered drawing his gun and shooting Perry, the mechanic, and the other men on the gantry, but he quickly dismissed the idea. Others would soon take their place. The only way to safeguard the future of mankind was to destroy Abaddon and let it take its secrets to the grave.
“How will you do it, Mr. Ross?”
“Huh?” Jacob realized that Perry had asked the question and turned toward him.
“Address the recoil business,” the man said, slight irritation in his voice. “How will you conduct the test?”
“Fly the frigate—”
“Prototype,” Perry interrupted again.
“Into the desert and cut loose.” Jacob smiled. “Give the jackrabbits a broadside.”
“I have a better idea. Mr. Mallard, you will instruct Egbert Killick to pilot the prototype along Big Buck’s Main Street and give the buildings the port broadside. He will then turn and cut loose with the starboard battery. We will see how the airship performs under daylight battle conditions.”
“But . . . but we’ll kill a lot of people,” Mallard objected.
“A high butcher’s bill is the price we pay for progress, Mr. Mallard. Do you have any objections?”
The mechanic pushed his goggles higher on his forehead. “No. I have none.”
“And you, Mr. Ross? Since you will be in command of the cannon?”
Jacob couldn’t tip his hand. “Sounds like a good test to me, but we’ll only be a few feet above the ground.”
“Height doesn’t matter. The ship will perform the same at three feet or three thousand.” Perry waved a careless hand. “I’ve grown bored with this miserable little town and its idiot mayor. It’s high time it was
blown off the face of the earth.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
At the order of her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria’s government, the miserable, sweating figure of Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Adam Ready stood on the platform of the Big Buck railroad station and watched his train disappear into the desert, leaving him lost and alone at the edge of the world.
The British Legation in Washington had earlier informed Mr. Caleb Perry of his arrival and though Ready didn’t expect a brass band, he thought that the Abaddon Cannon Foundry’s senior executives would be on hand to meet him.
His valise at his feet in a stinging dust storm, Ready heard boots and the ringing of spurs and beheld a tall man stride toward him, a murderous revolver at his hip. His canvas pants, faded blue shirt, and battered, broad-brimmed hat were much the worse for wear. He had the look of a dangerous thug and the inspector was grateful for the reassuring weight of the .455 British Bulldog revolver in the pocket of his tweed coat.
To Ready’s surprise, the big man’s smile was good-humored and open and his voice was musical with the intonations of a gentleman. “Detective Inspector Ready, I presume,” the man said, sticking out his hand.
“Indeed,” Ready said, shaking hands. “And you are?”
“Name’s Buck Ross. I’m one of the foremen at Abaddon. Mr. Perry is tied up with urgent business matters right now and he sent me to fetch you. Let me take your valise.”
“My business here is of the greatest moment and equally urgent,” Ready said. “I’m here because of a most singular request by Her Majesty Queen Victoria.”
Jacob grinned. “How is the old lady?”
Ready’s reply was frosty. “Her Royal Majesty is well.”
“Glad to hear it. Now if you’ll please come with me.” Jacob led the way from the station and onto open ground. The Abaddon foundry came into view.
Ready was amazed. “I didn’t expect it to be so huge. It looks like a manmade mountain.”
“They make a lot of cannons,” Jacob pointed out.
“And now airships.” Ready was not an imposing figure, but a thin, smallish man with the face of an intelligent mole. His narrow eyes were black and shrewd and his motions were quick and precise, a habit that made him look like a perpetually irritated schoolmaster.
“Yes. Now Abaddon is building air frigates as well as cannon,” Jacob agreed.
Blowing sand pummeling him, Ready halted in his tracks and glared at Jacob. “How many steam frigates did the Germans order?”
Jacob was surprised. “You know about the German frigates?”
“I know about many things, Mr. Ross. How many?”
“Twenty, I think.”
“Then Her Majesty’s government will order twenty-one. How many guns will they bear?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Then Great Britain will demand twenty-five.”
Jacob said, “Inspector, why did your government send a detective and not a diplomat? It seems like a job for a politician.”
Ready tapped the side of his long nose. “See this? It’s what Scotland Yard calls a sniffer. And I am here to sniff out chicanery. Perhaps the Germans have ordered twenty-five steam frigates each with thirty, not twenty-four guns, and wish to keep it secret. Ha! I’m used to such continental hocus-pocus, but I’ll uncover the truth or my name is not Adam Ready.”
“A British bobby has the authority to order a fleet of steam frigates?” Jacob asked, smiling.
“No, Mr. Ross, just one. One more than the German, French, and Russian air fleets combined.”
“Inspector Ready, Caleb Perry is going to love you.”
* * *
His face impassive, Detective Inspector Adam Ready stood amid a sparking inferno of molten metal, roaring blast furnaces, and hissing steam where skeletal workers toiled in stygian gloom.
Jacob O’Brien expected a horrified comment from the little man and was therefore surprised when Ready brushed blown sand from his bowler hat and shouted above the din, “Factories are the same the world over, aren’t they, Mr. Ross? Fire and noise and that byproduct of our industrial age, the underpaid and overworked poor.”
Jacob nodded, then yelled, “This way. I’ll show you to your quarters.”
Caleb Perry kept a suite of rooms for visiting dignitaries, most of them purchasers of cannon who arrived with bulging pockets. A visiting Scotland Yard detective—who was possibly a spy—hardly moved the dial of Perry’s esteem meter and Ready’s accommodations reflected his lowly status. His rooms lay at the end of a hallway with a concrete floor and were sparsely furnished, unusual at a time when Victorian tastes ran to the crowded and ornate.
Ready didn’t seem to notice as he tossed his valise on the iron bedstead. “When do I meet Mr. Perry?”
“I don’t know,” Jacob said. “Probably soon.”
“How many frigates are under construction?” Ready had eyes that probed like scalpels.
“Just one. But the bay is to be expanded so that five can be built at a time.”
“I’d like to see the craft for myself. And I mean instanter.”
Jacob shook his head. “Sorry, Inspector, but only Perry can authorize that.”
“He thinks I’m a spy?”
“I’d say he suspects you might be a spy.”
Ready’s amused smile surprised Jacob, like finding a diamond in a mud hole. “Maybe he’s right.”
“I wouldn’t put that out. Perry has ways of dealing with spies, all of them unpleasant.”
“Hah! My job at Scotland Yard is to investigate murders. I was pulled off the Jack the Ripper case and sent here. What do I know about airship construction and steam engines? I’m to keep an eye on the purchases of the major European powers, that’s all. Have you heard of Jack the Ripper?”
Jacob shook his head. “No.”
“He kills and guts prostitutes, and is still at large. I suspect he’s a clergyman of some sort who’s down on those kind. When I return to London, I’ll find him. Be assured of that.”
“Well, good luck. I’ll leave you now.”
But before Jacob could go, Ready reached into the pocket of his coat and produced his revolver. “This is a British Bulldog. Have you heard of it?”
Jacob nodded. “I’ve seen it in use once or twice. Are you good with it?”
“No, I’m not. I have no use for firearms, but I was ordered to take this weapon with me, this being the Wild West and all.”
“Get close, aim for the belly, and keep shooting until the other man falls,” Jacob advised. “That’s how it’s done.”
“I’ll do no such thing. It’s most unsporting. A gentleman doesn’t shoot another gentleman in the belly.”
“Inspector, the rannies you’ll meet around here are not gentlemen. You can bet old Queen Vic’s corsets on that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
In the latter two decades of the nineteenth century as law and order spread across the West and the telegraph shortened distances between settlements, professional gunman found themselves forced out of business and those who still lived by the shootist’s code became drifters. As they had been since the end of the War Between the States, Texas saloons were clearinghouses of information where men with careful eyes and fast hands listened and learned.
One such man was Frank Tansey, a fast gun out of Decatur, Texas, who’d been many things. In between, he had practiced his true calling as a hired gunman and bounty hunter. He killed his first man at seventeen and his father, a former Confederate brigadier general, had mortgaged the family farm to hire the best lawyer in Texas to defend his son. Acquitted, young Frank had briefly served in the Texas Rangers before trailing a cattle herd to Kansas where he became a gambler and draw fighter in the wide-open cow towns. He met rustler and all-round bad man Dave Rudabaugh, followed him to the New Mexico Territory, fell in with Billy the Kid and that hard crowd, and fought in the Lincoln County War. Sporting a thigh wound, Tansey drifted to Las Vegas and served as a peace officer there and in White O
aks and then wandered into northern Arizona and signed on with the Hash Knife outfit as a hired gun and was a major shootist in the Graham-Tewksbury feud. He drifted again and gambled, tended bar, tried his hand at gold prospecting and served for a year as a deputy U.S. marshal. By the time he rode back to Texas, he had killed thirteen men and earned a reputation as one of the deadliest gunmen on the frontier. He was nursing a beer in an El Paso saloon when he heard that down on the Pecos a man named Caleb Perry was offering a five-thousand-dollar reward for the head of the outlaw Shawn O’Brien.
The man doing the talking was a slightly built whiskey drummer by the name of Ike Crispin who said he’d heard about the reward when he was peddling his wares in the town of Big Buck.
Tansey took the man aside. “Is that the O’Brien brother they call the Town Tamer?”
“You mean there’s more of them?” Crispin asked.
“Yeah. There are four brothers and the worst of them is Jake O’Brien. Was he in town?”
“I don’t recollect hearing the name, so I don’t think so.”
Tansey wanted more information. “This Perry feller, he in Big Buck?”
“He sure is and by all accounts he wants that O’Brien ranny dead, dead, dead.”
Tansey nodded. “Then I reckon I’ll oblige him.”
* * *
Shawn O’Brien and Maria Cantrell were lovers, but they were not in love. They found solace in each other’s arms and at that time and place it was all they needed.
Shawn was content to live in the ruined cabin and had even improved the roof with scrap lumber and fallen tree branches. He had not yet formulated a plan to free Manuel, but he’d killed Caleb Perry a hundred times . . . at least in his imagination.
At first light, Shawn heard Maria whimper in her sleep and her legs moved as though she was running from something. He shook her gently and she opened her beautiful eyes, still haunted by the fear of her dream.
He sat up on one elbow. “You were dreaming. You’re all right now.”
“I saw a man, Shawn. A man on a pale horse and he—”
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