City of the Saints

by D. J. Butler

  Lee raised his pistols and pointed them at Absalom’s head.

  “Run!” Absalom shouted, and tackled John D. Lee.

  He knocked the Danite chieftain back against the wall with a shoulder and then jabbed him several times in the jaw with his fists. Lee didn’t shoot, as Absalom had expected, and the man called Heber joined the fray, grabbing Lee and throwing him against the wall.

  Then something heavy crashed into the back of Absalom’s skull. He saw stars and planets and then the wooden planks of the floor, filthy and stinking of sweet pine, rushed up to whack his head.

  The room spun around him for a minute and he heard more sounds of scuffle.

  “Goddamn midgets!”

  A drop of blood hit the floor right in front of Absalom’s eye, then another, then a dwarf. Coltrane struggled but ropes were thrown around him as the farmhouse door slammed shut. “Dirty yellow cowards!” he snapped, and then his captors banged his head against the planks. “Rotten sons of bitches were waiting in the corral and the coop, too,” he muttered to Absalom.

  Absalom tried to say something reassuring and full of bravado to the dwarf but the effort almost made him throw up and no words would come out.

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Heber,” he heard John D. Lee say. “Think of your family.” Lee’s boots paced slowly across the planks to Absalom’s face, their heavy thuds reverberating like the relentless beats of a drum. They stopped with the toes pointing right into his eyes.

  “Mmmrrrrroolpff,” Absalom protested. He felt vaguely cheated—the Foreign Office had never prepared him for this—but also proud, for not surrendering.

  “I told you,” he heard Lee say, “that if you invited your friend in, it would be easier.”

  One of Lee’s boots swung away, slowly—

  then kicked Absalom in the face, smashing him into darkness.

  Burton scrambled stiffly out of the scrub oak and onto the gravel, pressing himself against the plascrete wall of the Dream Mine. The knife wounds in his leg and his arm agonized him and he kept careful control over the fencing saber he carried in a scabbard on his belt, so it didn’t scrape the plascrete.

  The building rose above him like a staircase in several tiers, with windows overlooking the valley. At Burton’s level were a wide veranda, a front door and windows as for an office building, but only if the office in question belonged to a bank or a police station—the windows were all covered with long iron bars. Oiled paper blinds behind the glass kept Burton from seeing any detail but he heard the voices and footfalls of several men inside.

  Below Burton was the lowest tier, which had a large bay door. According to Roxie, it opened and closed to permit vehicles entry. Now Roxie and Poe emerged from the trees on the other side of the veranda. Poe coughed, as gently as a man dying of consumption could, and spat into the bushes, carefully not emptying his lungs into the white cloth he held. There was something mysterious about that cloth—Poe had warned Burton not to look directly at it during the fray. Roxie came behind Poe, carrying the canister of scarabs. Burton hadn’t seen them in action but Poe seemed to think they were deadly.

  Burton had encouraged Roxie to join him on his side of the fracas; after all, he was armed, and an experienced fighter, and Edgar Allan Poe seemed to be more of a spy than a warrior. Burton drew his Colt 1851 Navy revolver and checked the cylinder to be sure each chamber was loaded and capped. Oh, well. The woman was in love with another man. It was her choice, even if the man in question was doomed.

  And besides, he told himself, Burton was in love with another woman. Or at least, he was committed to her. He was committed to going home and marrying Isabel and settling down. He was committed, and he was starting to think that he even almost wanted to. His bandaged arm and leg both twinged at the thought of more action.

  All he had to do now was survive the Kingdom of Deseret.

  He cocked the pistol as Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy came lurching up the steps onto the veranda. The man held a crumpled sheet of paper in one hand and a whisky bottle in the other. Burton would have sworn he’d seen that bottle full when he’d taken the wheel of the steam-truck and left the Hot Springs Hotel & Brewery, but it was empty now.

  The Irishman was tipsy and he was singing. Burton thought he recognized the tune as an old war-ballad. “If the song should come, we’ll follow the drum, and cross that river once more …”

  Burton could still hear the men inside talking, and he thought he could make out one of the voices say, “Did you hear something?” He grinned, preparing himself for the moment of decision.

  As he stumbled onto the top of the stairs, O’Shaughnessy dropped the bottle.

  Crash! It shattered instantly on the plascrete.

  The talking inside stopped and O’Shaughnessy dragged himself to the front door. “That tomorrow’s Irishmen may wear the sash my father wore!” he finished with flourish, rapped hard on the door, then took two steps back.

  He flattened the paper, smoothing it out against his own chest, and grinned.

  The door opened and two men stepped out. Two was the perfect number, with two men the plan would go without a hitch, even if they were tall, strong-looking gents, with serious, square jaws like Burton’s. One held a rifle in his hands, a Henry, and the other a double-barreled scattergun.

  “What do you think, lads?” the Irishman asked in a sliding, imprecise voice, stabbing one finger into the calotype on his chest. “Doesn’t look like me at all, I reckon. Besides, what kind of idjit detectives are you, if you haven’t figured out yet that my name isn’t bloody-damn-hell McNamara?”

  Henry and Scattergun both raised their weapons and stepped forward.

  Burton slid out from hiding, a little behind Henry, and pointed the Colt at his man. He watched Poe do the same, ridiculously holding up his wadded-up handkerchief. What was the man going to do, suffocate the Pinkerton?

  Roxie followed in his wake, holding the canister with both hands.

  “It’s that Mick Samuelson was looking for,” Henry said.

  “Philadelphia warrant, isn’t it?” asked Scattergun. “I think there’s a reward.”

  Poe and Burton nodded at each other.

  “Good evening,” they said together.

  The plan was that one man would turn to Burton and one to Poe, and both would be neatly captured.

  Instead, both Pinkertons wheeled and pointed their guns at Burton. It was the curse of his deep voice; they hadn’t even heard Poe.

  Burton squeezed the trigger.

  Bang!

  Henry fell back bleeding, losing his grip on his rifle as it went off—

  —Bang!—

  —harmlessly, the bullet winging away into the night.

  Burton saw Roxie leap into action, tossing the brass scarabs all through the office door and slamming it shut. Poe grabbed for Scattergun’s shoulder and Burton swiveled to aim at the man with his 1851 Navy, but they were both late—

  —Boom! the scattergun went off.

  Poe jerked the man back, dragging him to the ground in some sort of combat maneuver that might be kung fu or karate.

  Burton sank to the ground, a searing pain in his side.

  Boom! Bang!

  Burton and Scattergun both fired pointlessly into the night sky.

  Then the screaming started inside the offices of the Dream Mine.

  Absalom opened his eyes to the upside-down sight of the Danites taking away several big knives from the dwarf. There was a long straight one, like a short sword, that he thought was an Arkansas Toothpick. There was a Bowie knife, with the notch out of its tip so that the point hung below the hilt, and another knife in Coltrane’s boot. Then the black-coated men walked to the other corner of the room and conferred. Absalom thought he saw half a dozen of them now, though his vision still swam and he knew he might be miscounting.

  The midget saw Absalom’s eyes open. To Absalom’s surprise, Coltrane popped free another knife, out of the back of his belt apparently, and held it out to Absalom. It
was a small, sharp, one-edged affair, with a wooden hilt and no cross-piece. It might have been a kitchen knife for paring potatoes.

  Absalom shook his head, which was hard, since he was basically resting on his head, upside down on the wooden floor. He had a gun and he didn’t really know how to fight with a knife.

  Coltrane mouthed some words silently that Absalom couldn’t make out and Absalom gave in. He took the knife and slipped it into his pocket.

  Just as he finished, Lee and his men came back.

  “Good to see you awake, milord,” Lee cracked.

  “I’m not a lord,” Absalom objected. “My family has a little land and less money, and technically my uncle is a Baronet.”

  “Isn’t that what the French call you all, though?” Lee smirked. “Milords?”

  “I thought they called us rosbifs,” Absalom said. “They protest but obviously they envy us our robust diet. We sometimes call them frogs, also a reference to diet. Mostly we call them prisoners.”

  Lee guffawed and slapped his knee. “You’re funny, milord. I’m going to call you milord, anyway. I like it.”

  “As you please.”

  “What’s the contingency plan if you two don’t come out of this place?”

  Absalom wondered if there were some tactic he could adopt, some ruse he could pursue to confound the Danite thug. He screwed up his brows but none came to him, and Lee began to look impatient.

  “I said—”

  “There is none,” Absalom said. “Sorry, bump to the head, I’m a little groggy. How long have I been out? There is no contingency plan. If the farmhouse was clear, we were to come out and tell our comrades.”

  “Brigham Young and Sam Clemens.”

  “Yes. And if your men were here, we were to feign innocence and ignorance and sneak out at the first opportunity.”

  “Shit,” observed one of Lee’s men.

  “How long was I unconscious?” Absalom asked.

  “Not long,” whined one of the black-coated men.

  “Shut up!” Lee snapped to his subordinate. He turned back to Absalom, his face in a growl. “Here’s what you’re going to do … milord. The dwarf stays here. Any misbehavior, the dwarf is the first one to get it, understood? The dwarf and the good people who own this farm.” Lee gestured into a corner and Absalom saw the man named Heber, who had tried to warn him, gagged and tied hand and foot.

  “Understood,” Absalom agreed. He tried to seem calm, like Burton would. Well, maybe not exactly like Burton. Burton would be roaring and charging up and down the floorboards like a bull with a saber, killing men. But Burton wouldn’t be afraid, at least, and in that, Absalom tried to emulate him.

  “Wells here’ll go with you,” Lee continued. Wells stepped forward. He was a tall man, dressed in black from head to foot, with thin dark hair sweeping back from a high forehead. He carried a long rifle. “You’ll go back to your friends and you’ll tell them all’s clear and they’re to come in, got it?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Meanwhile, the rest of us will arrange a little welcoming party.” Lee twisted his face into an ugly leer. “Any tricks, Wells shoots you and then the dwarf and the farmer get closely acquainted with the handiwork of Mr. Jim Bowie.” He brandished the fighting knife he’d taken from Jed Coltrane.

  “Understood.” The wheels of Absalom’s brain spun wildly, trying to generate a plan that didn’t involve leading his sister and Annie into the farmhouse, or getting himself shot.

  The Danites cut Absalom loose and marched him out the door, Wells on his heels. He avoided making eye contact with either the midget or the farmer, for fear he’d give away either his hopeful reflection on rescue schemes or his gut-wrenching fear.

  Exiting the farmhouse, the temperature dropped. After weeks on the road, it still impressed him how cold the desert got at night. The sudden cooling of sweat on his forehead made Absalom realize how hot and stuffy the inside of the house had been.

  “This way,” he said politely, and marched out along the irrigation ditch.

  Wells walked behind him, which put Coltrane’s knife and the pocket it was tucked into conveniently out of the Danite’s line of sight.

  Absalom slipped the knife into his hand.

  He kept spinning the wheels. They kept failing to catch on anything clever or insightful.

  Absalom stopped walking. “Those are my companions over there,” he told Wells. He could see the Striders, silhouettes jutting out around a stand of trees where three fields met. “Will you wait here for me?” He doffed his hat politely with his left hand.

  Be brave, he told himself. Be a fighter, like Burton.

  Wells spat on the ground. “I reckon not. I reckon I’ll follow you on up closer, so I can hear what you and your companions say to each other. And make sure you talk good and loud, hear?”

  Be fearless. Be a bull with a saber.

  “Of course.”

  Be the warrior Annie wants.

  Absalom stabbed with Coltrane’s knife, aiming for the Danite’s jugular.

  ***

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Lie back, Captain,” Roxie instructed him, “and think of England.”

  Burton struggled to sit up in the office chair. “Who’s bringing up the steam-truck? Tell me it isn’t O’Shaughnessy.”

  Roxie plucked another pellet from Burton’s side and tossed it to the plascrete floor, where it hit with a gentle plink. “You object to giving the wheel of a steam-truck to a man who’s been drinking?”

  Burton snarled against the pain and spat on the floor to clear his head. “I object to giving it to him.”

  “Not to worry, then,” she told him, wrapping a bandage around his chest. “Poe’s driving.”

  “Ekwensu’s slippery shell!” Burton cursed. “Let’s hope the wretch lives long enough to get back here.”

  “Captain Burton.” Roxie looked at him reproachfully. “Don’t be a sore loser.” She wrapped some sort of cloth around him as a bandage. It had the sting of alcohol.

  Burton growled and grumbled wordlessly, but nodded. “It’s my nature, Mrs. Snow … Mrs. Young … I was never cut out for the soft conversation of the civilized.”

  “You can still call me Roxie,” she said, and tied the bandage off.

  He shrugged back into his coat and limped with her across the veranda. At the top of the stairs, they gathered up O’Shaughnessy, who was droning on and on about the pipes that were calling him. Burton didn’t dislike the Irish, not any more than he disliked any other race of men, and he decided that, on balance, he almost liked O’Shaughnessy’s singing voice. He helped the other man up and they staggered together down the stairs, to stand in front of the bay doors that now gaped open.

  Blue lights jostling up the road showed that Poe had survived the hike down to the steam-truck and was on his way back.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said to Roxie, pointing to the row of squiggles over the top of the bay door. “What language is that? It’s everywhere in this Kingdom but I haven’t heard a language spoken other than English and Spanish.”

  She chuckled slyly. “Why, Dick,” she said, “I’m surprised to see you so easily stumped. That’s perfectly good English. It says Koyle Mining Corporation.”

  Burton squinted at the letters. “It’s a cipher, then,” he guessed. “You’ve taken as a nation to writing in code. It’s like the tangled streets of a medieval city, a deliberate device to keep outsiders out.”

  “On the contrary,” she told him, “it’s a system to make writing the English language simpler.”

  “Simpler!” he snorted. “Some of us find the Latin characters simple enough.”

  “Yes?” she asked innocently. “How do you write the sound fffff?”

  “Eff,” he retorted, then caught himself. “Or pee-aitch.”

  “Or?”

  He thought, feeling that he was being baited. “Double-eff.”

  “And what sound does gee-aitch make?” she pressed him.
r />   “Dammit, woman,” he rumbled, “what’s your point?”

  “The point,” she explained, gesturing at the row of characters that allegedly identified the owners of the mine, “is that those characters are the Deseret Alphabet. They are used to write English, in a manner that is simple, logical, and consistent.”

  “Once you know the damned code,” Burton growled.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “once you know the alphabet.”

  “I did not know you Mormons went in for Websterism,” Burton complained.

  The steam-truck rumbled up out of the trees and clattered to a puffing halt in front of the big door.

  “Oh, we are reformers, alright,” she told him. “But that is the least of our surprises.”

  “You people,” O’Shaughnessy belched, “are so fookin’ boring!” He staggered to the side of the steam-truck and started trying to climb up one of its big India rubber tyres.

  Burton examined the letters. “Your kay resembles the Egyptian hieroglyph of a woman’s breasts,” he said. “What is that lightning-bolt-and-cross pictogram that follows it?”

  “Sound it out, Dick,” she suggested. “That’s the oi in Koyle.”

  Burton shook his head. “Was this scheme dreamed up by your Madman Pratt, too?” he asked. He dragged the Irishman over to the ladder and shouldered him up it by main strength. His injured arm, leg, and side all hurt, though none of it, he reminded himself, hurt half so much as having a spear thrust through his head.

  Roxie climbed the ladder nimbly. “Actually, it was his brother Parley. With some others.”

  Burton followed. “And Parley Pratt is at present doing what? Rendering the contents of the Library of Congress into this efficient alphabet of his?”

  Roxie sat on the front bench inside the wheelhouse. Burton kicked O’Shaughnessy into a crumpled pile on the second bench and dropped beside him.

  “Parley’s dead,” she said quietly. “He was killed two years ago.”

  Poe started coughing. He didn’t look well and Burton did him the courtesy of pretending not to notice.