by D. J. Butler
“Dammit—” Jed reached for the gun and John Moses raised its muzzle, aiming straight for the dwarf’s forehead.
“No.”
“Fine.” Jed briefly considered reloading the machine-gun but that was a tedious, time-consuming task and the weapon was heavy, and the Irishman was getting away. He dropped the gun and shrugged out of the bag carrying ammunition. “Thanks for the loan,” he said, and he rushed into the oak on O’Shaughnessy’s trail.
Absalom stopped running in a grove of cottonwood trees.
Well, not a grove. Three trees standing together at the base of a long hill. He wasn’t sure where he was exactly but, approximately, he thought he might be somewhere north of the Hot Springs Hotel & Brewery and downhill of the highway leading back to the Great Salt Lake City.
The mountains were on his right hand.
“Absalom, Absalom!” he heard behind him.
He threw himself in among the trees for protection, held his gun high, in as manly and determined a fashion as he could, conscious that in his effort to look the hero, he might instead have made himself the fool. When he felt appropriately composed, he looked back.
Abigail raced towards him through the little gulley down which he’d come. Right behind her came Annie, also running. Each woman held her skirt high with one hand and pointed a pistol at the sky with the other.
They looked silly and that made him feel a little calmer. He was careful not to laugh as they caught up to him.
“Absalom, stop!” Abigail shouted.
“I am stopped.” His heart thundered in his chest as if it would never end. “I was looking for decent cover from which to continue the attack.” He laughed his best baritone laugh. “I hadn’t realized I’d come so far. Fog of war, uncertain terrain, all that.”
“Are you wounded?” Abigail asked.
“That was an impressive charge, Mr. Fearnley-Standish,” Annie added, catching up and stopping, but still clutching her skirt up over her ankles. Her shapely ankles, Absalom couldn’t help noticing, even through her almost knee-high boots. “Only Mr. Burton charged with you, I saw. The rest of us took cover.”
Absalom vaguely remembered Richard Burton running past him and into the building right in the teeth of the Danites and he realized that Annie must not have seen the events very clearly. He coughed with as much humility as he could muster. “Yes, well,” he said. No one else was running down the gully, the gunfire had stopped, and he had no idea what was happening at the hotel at that moment. “Of course, after the initial charge, I thought I should take cover, as well. No sense running to meet a pointless death, is there?”
“You Brits are either the bravest men I’ve ever seen or you’re stark raving lunatics in need of incarceration.”
Abigail snorted.
“Yes,” Absalom agreed, but then kicked himself for the insipidity of his answer. “Perhaps both.” That wasn’t quite right either, and he tried to make up for it by grinning his most piratical grin, but that just made him feel silly. He wanted to be a lunatic, stark raving mad from sheer courage, like the infernal Burton, so that Annie would like him. Sadly, he knew he wasn’t cut from the right stuff.
“Are you wounded?” Abigail asked again. She dropped her skirt and balled her free hand into a fist on her hip. Her voice sounded dangerously flat and Absalom wasn’t sure how to read that. Her question reminded him of the reason he’d come to Deseret in the first place.
“No,” he admitted. “But the Danites appear to have occupied your hotel and all the shooting has probably destroyed the building. Will you come home with me now?”
She slapped him in the face.
“You idiot!” she snapped at him. “I’ve come back here for my husband, not for the damned building. Orrin Porter Rockwell is my man and I mean to stay with him!”
“Don’t hit him!” Annie shouted. She looked surprisingly compassionate, so much so that Absalom half-hoped his sister would hit him again.
“No need to curse, ladies,” he mumbled.
Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh!
Absalom spun around, pistol pointing.
Behind him a big Strider crouched, lowering its carriage close to the ground. Absalom found himself staring down the barrels of large-bore guns and he raised his own pistol to shoot at the attackers, trying not to cringe too visibly. If he had to die, he didn’t mind that it was a heroic death, defending two women—
“Stop!”
Annie spun like a top, throwing her leg surprisingly high into the air and kicking Absalom’s borrowed pistol out of his hand.
Bang!
The shot went wide.
“Egad!” Absalom complained. He was about to ask What did you do that for? when the gunner snapped open the smoked visor of her helmet and revealed herself as Master Sergeant Jackson. “Thank you,” he added, trying to recover his dignity. “Sometimes my reflexes are entirely too quick.”
“Joo’ve got killer espirit, Meester Top Hat,” Jackson called out over the chugging of her big machine. “But joo’ve got to get a little more control de tu mismo.”
Absalom was no Spanish speaker and the gunner’s words baffled him slightly. Had she just advised him to control his detumescence? That didn’t seem right. Anyway, she was smiling, so he smiled back.
“I’ve found control to be an overrated quality, myself,” Annie responded. She stared fiercely at the Mexican Striderwoman and something about her stance made Absalom think she might jump up on the vehicle and kick Jackson.
He found the prospect surprisingly interesting.
“Joo’ll find that it’s more important, when joo have a bigger gun,” Jackson shot back. She patted the barrel of the big weapon in front of her. “Wouldn’t joo say, Top Hat?”
“Er …”
Abigail snorted again. “Get in,” she told Absalom, hitching up her skirt and clambering up the Baba Yaga legs of the Strider. She climbed like a bear, Absalom thought, with muscle and purpose but no poise. Annie followed, more gracefully.
Absalom recovered his pistol and brought up the rear, trying not to embarrass himself in front of all the ladies. The driver, at least, he noted with some relief as he hoisted himself up into the carriage and dropped onto the rumble seat, was a man. His visor was up and he grinned at Absalom under an oiled mustache.
“Where are we going?” Absalom asked. He wasn’t sure he cared very much. He had found Abigail and was still trying to persuade her to leave Deseret with him, and he wasn’t in much of a hurry to accomplish anything else. Also, he found that he enjoyed being surrounded by women who were quarreling over him. “Back into the battle?”
“The battle is changing,” Master Sergeant Jackson said. “Joo’ll see. Ándale!” she barked at the pilot.
Both Mexicans snapped their visors into place and the Strider rose to its full height.
Pffffffft-ankkkh!
Bullets buzzed through the wood and struck things inside the springhouse.
Thud! Thud! Snap!
“Ugh,” someone grunted. Clatter, foomph, splash.
The bullets were hitting people too, Sam realized. Someone had taken a slug and slipped into the creek.
“I ain’t hit,” Orrin Porter Rockwell barked in the darkness.
“Nor I,” echoed Ambassador Armstrong of the many names.
“Argh!” snapped a strangled, irascible voice.
“I expect that means President Young has taken the bullet,” Sam concluded. “Mr. President, are you still with us?”
“I’m alive,” Brigham Young chomped out the words.
“Good thing, too,” Sam said. “I’ve seen the widow’s walk of the Beehive House and I’m not sure it could take the weight of all your widows.”
There was a moment of silence—Sam couldn’t tell if it was shocked or awkward silence—and then Armstrong started to laugh, a dark rich sound reminiscent of smoked meat or chocolate or both. After a few seconds, Rockwell joined in with a surprisingly high-pitched snicker.
“Don’t worry,
” Young answered, teeth in his voice. “Truman Angell built that house to my own specifications and I made sure he had that piece particularly reinforced.”
There was a moment of silence and then Young chuckled.
Armstrong and Rockwell burst back into howls of laughter. Sam wished he had a Partagás. He had a craving for the taste and besides, telling a joke without a Partagás in his hand felt like doing a magic trick without a top hat and wand.
“I don’t suppose they’d worry too much, though,” he continued. “They’d just figure your cog had been repurposed to a higher level of the Great Machine.” The laughter trailed off, a little uncertain.
“You’re making a joke, Clemens,” President Young snorted in the darkness, “but of course you’re exactly right.”
“Good to hear,” Sam couldn’t resist one last crack. “I can’t abide any other outcome than being exactly right.”
“Are joo badly injured, Meester President?” the Ambassador asked.
“I’m bleeding,” Young said. “I’ve bled before. Let’s get out of this place.”
“Well, the gun’s outta my reach,” Rockwell explained, “seeing as it’s up on a rafter and my hands are tied behind my back. Anybody else got the free use of their hands?”
They all muttered that they didn’t.
“All right, then. The knife’s in a barrel of beans, but it ain’t very far down. All we gotta do is get the lid off it and dig down into the beans a little ways. I reckon we can do that even with our hands tied behind our backs.”
“Which barrel is it?” Sam asked. “How do we find it?”
Rockwell hesitated slightly. “It’s the one marked red beans,” he said.
Armstrong started laughing again.
“Our hands being tied may not be the most daunting obstacle we face,” Sam observed.
“Yeah, well, shoot me for an idiot, I guess,” Rockwell grumbled. “I figured someday I’d be holed up in here with Injuns shooting at me, or a mountain lion. Never guessed I’d be blind and tied up, too.”
CRASH!
Burton was racing through the upper story of the hotel, close on Hickman’s heels and chasing the Danite leader through some sort of bedroom, when the Liahona plowed into the building. The force of it, and the surprise, knocked him to the floor and for several tense moments he thought he would die with Bill Hickman in a tangle of ruined house-carpentry and cheap furnishings.
When the shuddering was finished and the ruptured hot water tank had flooded the ground floor he was still on the upper storey, only one of the walls of the room had been ripped away, the bed had been torn right out of the room, and the cheap wallpaper was beginning to curl from the steam.
And Hickman was already scrambling to his feet.
Burton fired the Volcanic rifle at his man as the Danite slipped out the door.
Bang!
A miss, and though the bullet punched through the wall it still missed Hickman on the other side.
Burton pumped the rifle to fire again.
Click.
He tossed the Volcanic aside. He spared only a second’s thought for the Liahona—it had passed by the room he was in, and was too far away for it or any of its passengers or crew to be of any help to Richard Burton.
Burton stood and drew the 1851 Navy from its holster. He left the knife in his leg. He’d pull it out when the shooting was over but he didn’t want to do it yet, for fear that sudden blood loss would knock him unconscious.
He was already feeling a bit woozy.
Gun first, Burton staggered out of the room on Hickman’s trail.
He saw Hickman squeezing out through one of the two windows in the next room just as he entered. One wall was torn away here too, and the air was wet and hot with steam.
Burton squeezed the trigger without hesitating, almost without aiming.
Click.
The gun misfired.
“Where’s Brigham Young?” he shouted, pulling the trigger again.
Click.
“Rostam’s mace!” he swore. The powder had gotten wet in the steam. He shoved the gun back into its holster and lurched across the room as fast as he could.
Hickman slipped out of sight, sliding down. Burton drew the saber, throwing himself towards the window.
Crash!
The bedroom’s other window shattered and a man in a short coat and beaver hat piled through, knees and elbows first. He had one arm up in front of his face to protect it and a knife in each hand.
Burton aimed for the man’s shoulder, hoping to incapacitate him and head off any fight. He was painfully aware that, outside the window, Hickman was scrambling down a short-shingled roof and headed for some surface that might be the top of a steam-truck.
He swung, expecting the man to land and lunge—
—his attacker dropped and rolled instead—
—and Burton missed.
The force of his swing carried him past the tumbling Danite and his wounded leg made him stumble and slide off-balance. Together, they put him out of position—which meant that the Danite’s knife narrowly missed biting into Burton’s belly and instead just cut through his coat.
Slicing open my official correspondence, Burton thought.
In return he kicked the Danite, to keep him rolling and move him further away so Burton could regain his balance. Teetering as he was, though, and kicking with a knife stuck in his thigh, Burton’s kick was girlishly weak and ineffective.
The Danite’s hat fell off but he sprang to his feet and charged Burton. He slashed with both knives, arms snapping back and forth in front of him like a willow tree whipping about in a high wind.
Burton longed for an épée, or a spear, or anything else with a point. A sharpened stick would have done nicely. The saber he had taken from the Danite was a chopping weapon only, a clumsy piece of work useful only to horsemen and hatcheteers. With a pointed weapon, he could keep the knife-wielder at bay. With this saber, he could only hack and slash, try not to expose himself too much and hope for a major hit on his opponent.
“Like I’m chopping down trees!” he grunted, not really realizing he was speaking out loud until he had done so. To emphasize his point, he swung for the knife fighter’s throat, then quickly stepped aside as the other man lunged into the space vacated by the sword, slicing and stabbing in short, furious blows.
Thud! From outside. That would be Hickman, Burton thought, landing on the steam-truck. The Danite would get away if he didn’t do something, and pretty quick.
He backed away in a circle from a flurry of blows. He felt the steam before he actually saw the missing wall out of the corner of his eye and turned sharply to avoid falling into hot water.
This was like a samurai sword; like the long, one-edged katana of the bushido warrior. Kendo, he knew the art of fighting with such swords was called. Gliding steps, long arcs of attack and powerful incapacitating blows.
Impressive to watch and effective against a similarly armed fighter.
Useless against a quick man with knives.
Burton backed away again under a rain of razor-sharp knife blades. The cuff of his coat sleeve lost two buttons to a slashing attack that he only barely avoided and his boot knocked aside the Danite’s beaver hat.
Under the window a steam engine hissed into life, coughing vapor up into the curtains. Burton was out of time.
With his hurt leg his kicked up the hat, hurling it into his attacker’s face.
The Danite kept coming, slash, slash—
—Burton sacrificed his left arm.
He thrust his arm in among the cutting blades. He felt the steel of one knife tear into the flesh of his upper arm. His heavy coat dulled the attack somewhat but not enough to prevent the searing pain entirely.
Burton grunted with pain—
—but he closed his hand around the wrist of the Danite’s other arm, preventing that knife from stabbing him in the chest—
—and punched his foe in the nose with the heavy basket hilt of hi
s stolen saber.
Hard.
The man stumbled back. Burton let him go and grinned a farewell as he tumbled through where a wall had once been, over the edge and into the steam and hot water below. He screamed as he fell, then hit the ground below with both a splash and a thud.
Burton had no time to waste on monitoring the man’s fate, nor on removing the knives from his arm and leg. He threw himself through the window and bounced down the porch roof, just in time to flop onto the rooftop of the steam-truck’s cargo compartment a split second before it pulled away.
“Rudabeh’s blessed withers, but that smarts,” he ground out through clenched teeth as the steam-truck turned and started bouncing down the field behind the hotel.
He saw the Third Virginia Cavalry, or at least a couple of dozen of them, arrayed beside the beached Liahona behind him and on the bluff above the steam-truck. They were talking to Poe and they didn’t look friendly.
Burton tightened his grip on the cavalry saber.
Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy ran like the devil himself was after him. Only it wasn’t the devil, was it? Because the devil was clearly the thieving little boy who had taken his gun just when he needed it most, not the ugly monkey whose own machine of death had apparently run empty or misfired or jammed at the crucial instant … the devil had better luck than that, didn’t he?
Weeds whipped at his legs, but they were nothing. The branches of the bloody-damn-hell trees that poked at his eyes and scratched his cheeks, now those were things to worry about. What the hell did you call these things? Mother O’Shaughnessy never prepared him for trees like these. They had leaves like oak trees but they were midgets.
Tiny hell-spawned midgets like the circus freak on his tail.
Tam slapped at the last hedge of branches and broke through. His foot struck something invisible in the grass—
—pain scorched his ankle—
—he stumbled forward, tripped, caught himself on his good leg, kept hobbling.
If he couldn’t run, he had to fight. He still had the stiletto on his wrist and the canister of weird brass beetles inside his coat … whatever they might do to flesh. Of course, they certainly made a mess of some of the Deseret Hotel’s upholstery, me boy, he said to himself, so you can likely guess what they’d do to a bit of tender meat. They’d scared the shite out of the midget when Tam had pretended he was going to loose them on the child, anyway.