Jessie's War (Civil War Steam)

by Connors, Meggan

  “I’m an Indian and a woman. Prejudices run deep, especially now. I’ve known Hiram my whole life. He wouldn’t do that to me. You’re wrong. This can’t true.”

  “You’ve known me your whole life, too.”

  A single, mirthless laugh escaped her lips. “Yeah, but Hiram never walked out on me. When Gideon died, he was here, same as when Pop died. He even handled everything for me, right down to planning the funeral. He was here. He helped me through all of it, took care of me and gave me money when I needed it. Where were you?”

  His mouth tightened. He didn’t need reminding of how he’d hurt her when he left. “I never wanted it to be this way,” he offered. Then her words sunk in. “Wait. Gave you money? Do you have any idea how much you’re worth?”

  She waved a dismissive hand in his direction. “Pop was an inventor. He made some money on the patents, but ever since I can remember, the company was always…”

  He gaped at her in disbelief. She didn’t actually believe the drivel coming out of her mouth, did she?

  “Struggling,” she finished in a weak voice.

  Luke stood and looked out the window. “Goddammit. You have no idea. “

  “There’s been some mistake.” Her voice fell flat.

  He grunted. “There’s no mistake. You’re worth a fortune. Your company is worth a fortune. The government has paid out a million dollars in the last year, most of that after your Pop went missing. A quarter of that was just royalties. We’re talking millions of dollars over the last eight years of the war in blue silver revenues alone. Millions, Jessie. Tell me you don’t have that.”

  “Of course I don’t!” She motioned to the room around her, with its worn, tired furniture. “Where are the fine things? The servants and guards? You see any of that stuff, Bradshaw? Because I see a Paviotso girl living alone in a house her father built, on the outskirts of a dirty mining town. I see a sagging front porch and more attempted lynchings than you could even imagine. Do you think I’d stay in this godforsaken town if I could afford to go somewhere else? Why wouldn’t I go someplace where the air didn’t burn every time I took a breath? There is no money. If I had any money at all, I’d leave this town and never look back.”

  She pointed her index finger at him, and her voice shook. “If you had any idea what happened after Bear Creek, you wouldn’t say such things.”

  Anger burned bright in his chest. He’d wanted to think of her here, safe, while he fought a war for the both of them. But her talk of attempted lynchings—the first bit of real truth he’d heard from her—made him think she’d been fighting a war of her own.

  Only he’d had the power of the Union Army behind him. She’d been alone.

  “What’s happened to you, Jess?” He didn’t think she’d tell him, but he had to ask.

  She blanched, and shook her head fiercely. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing I can’t handle.” But her voice wavered.

  Against his better judgment, he leaned forward to stroke her cheek, and she surprised him by briefly allowing the touch before she turned away. He dropped his hand. “How does a girl on her own face a lynch mob?”

  She gave him a world-weary smile. “You forget who I am. If reminding them of my grandfather doesn’t work—and it usually does—I remind them of my father.”

  “I can see just about everyone being scared of the shaman. Your mother used to scare the devil out of me with a look.” The memory of those times before everything had gone to hell hurt, but it felt good, too. “Still, I’m not sure an eccentric inventor can scare off a lynch mob.”

  “No.” She leaned down and pulled a lever near her feet. “But this can.”

  Heavy metal blinds slammed shut over the glass and latched. The floors shifted under their feet and gears ground loudly. With a metallic clank, the entire house shuddered and re-settled into place.

  His hand moved to rest on the butt of his pistol as he braced his body against the movement in the floor. “What the hell is that?”

  “Protections. No one can get in. Or, for that matter, out. Pop’s study downstairs is reinforced with iron doors, and if, for some reason, someone does get through, a Gatling gun is mounted on the roof that I can control from either the attic or the safe room.” She gestured to the picture behind her. “Back there I’ve got an ignition switch for high powered gas lamps outside. Got some flash powder stashed out there too. Never had to use the gun, though I’m pretty sure it works. Usually the flash powder does the trick to sober up a mob.”

  “I thought your father didn’t believe in weapons.”

  She crossed her arms and looked out at the shuttered window. “He only built the one,” she said. “But then, nobody tried to lynch him.”

  Luke stiffened at the memories the mere mention of that single weapon brought. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth, and he forced himself to relax. He hadn’t been this wound up in an interrogation in a long time. Maybe ever. He reminded himself that she was just another subject.

  Sure. And he was President Lincoln. “How’d you get your hands on a Gatling gun?”

  “Built it.”

  “You built it.”

  “Don’t sound so shocked. I am my father’s daughter. Only I’m a little more practical when it comes to my own survival. I made that, too.” She motioned to the shotgun hanging on a post by the door.

  Luke stood up, took the weapon and examined it. Releasing the catch, the barrel and cylinder swung down on the pivot, a central ratchet lifting up all six shells from their chambers. He snapped the action shut and worked the lever on the fore-end of the short barrel, watching the cylinder turn and listening to the precise clicks of the timing. He’d never seen a weapon like this—a revolving shotgun.

  He whistled. “This is good work, Jess. As good as anything thought up by Remington-Corona. How’d you do it?”

  “Same way I do everything. I read a book and figured it out. Turns out, I’m good with gears.” She pulled the lever again. The shutters slammed open, gears clanked, and the house groaned as it resumed its normal shape.

  Luke quickly put the gun back. “That’s… that’s disconcerting.”

  She grinned. When she smiled, she was so pretty.

  Luke’s chest tightened. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Where’d you get the money to build these things, Jess? Metal costs money, especially during a war. It’s strictly rationed. Weapons are expensive. Where’d you get all this stuff?”

  “Pop built the shutters and outer doors for protection years ago. I just attached the gears to make them automatic. I scavenged them from other projects of my father’s. As for the guns, well, a revolving chamber isn’t so different from gears, and you’d be surprised what people just leave lying around. Abandoned mineshafts hold a wealth of materials if you’re not picky and are either brave enough or foolish enough to go in.” She stood up and went to stand in her doorway. “Am I under investigation? Tell me the truth.”

  She deserved that much. He met her gaze levelly. “Yes.”

  Her hands curled into fists, and the glare she gave him could have wilted flowers. “So you used my culture and our connection to worm your way into my house. Used it so you could investigate me without a warrant. Used me like you’ve always used my family.” Her chest heaved and she was quiet for a long time.

  When she next spoke, her voice shook. “I let you in, and all the while you’re investigating me. You didn’t even grant me the rights you’d grant a rebel. At least they’d know they were dealing with an enemy. But me? Some half-breed woman? Who gives a hoot about my rights? Do I even have any?”

  “Oh, Jessie, it’s not like that.”

  “Sure it is. I’m going out for awhile.” She leaned past him to grab her coat from the hook behind him.

  Regret and anger roared beneath the surface of his skin. “Don’t do this, Jess. There’s two feet of snow on the ground.”

  “I’ve survived worse.” She punctuated each of her words with a stab of her ind
ex finger in the air. “I want you gone by the time I get home. You aren’t welcome here.”

  “Jessie—”

  She cut him off with a slam of the door.

  Chapter Three

  Jessie’s chest burned from the cold, acrid air. She’d been a fool to venture out in such weather. Between the smoke, the sulfur from the smelters, and the cold, it was a wonder she could breathe at all. She’d been an idiot to leave at all, especially without weapons.

  This was the kind of thing Luke Bradshaw reduced her to.

  His sudden reappearance made her forget all logic and common sense, and turned her whole world upside down. He turned her into a quivering, emotional mess—the kind of woman who walked out of her own house in the middle of a goddamned snowstorm.

  She hadn’t survived for as long as she had because she was another weak-willed woman, but she hadn’t been thinking when she’d walked out. Her only thought had been to get away from Luke and find Hiram. Get some answers for herself. After years of silence, Luke had come back into her life to tell her the one man she’d been able to trust over the years was cheating her, and had been since before her birth.

  She fingered the letter in her pocket. While she hadn’t exactly lied to Luke when he asked if she’d heard from Hiram, she hadn’t told him the truth, either. Hiram had contacted her, and recently, too. Given the tone of Hiram’s letter, she’d figured something must be wrong, though he hadn’t said as much when he wrote.

  Dearest Jessie—

  I need to talk to you about your father’s papers. 154729.10.

  --Hiram.

  Jessie knew what those numbers meant and precisely where she would find him, if she chose to look. For two days, she had ignored his letter. Though she loved Hiram and always enjoyed his company, she hadn’t wanted to discuss her father’s papers, and in the months since her father’s death, Hiram hadn’t wanted to discuss anything but secret laboratories, unknown papers, and inventions.

  Lately, he’d begun asking Jessie if she thought she had the ability to build her father’s inventions, if he had the plans. There had been a desperation in his letters that made her nervous.

  Especially now. Given what Luke had told her, something was going on, and she needed to find out what it was. It wasn’t just about the money. She needed to find out if Hiram had been betraying her, cheating her as Luke claimed.

  The thought gnawed at her—what else had Hiram lied about?

  The pulsing ache in her head matched the pounding of the ore processors as the metal giants continued with their work. The crushers worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Virginia City’s own peculiar symphony. To locate the city, a person only had to follow the riotous sounds of ore crushers, crawlers, and bar fights.

  Jessie reached the top of the hill overlooking what had once been a hundred mile view before the smelters came. Now, dark clouds of soot and sulfuric ash hovered over hills covered in gray snow. The landscape was dotted with crawlers, their tracks groaning as they lumbered over the snow and ice and rock with loads of unprocessed ore. That they could be heard over the hammering of the ore processers was a testament to how loud they were.

  Even separated by the ridgeline and built in such a way as to minimize the impact of all that sound, the crushers were audible at Jessie’s house, and not just when the wind was right.

  The land moaned and metal shrieked as the enormous crawlers shambled over it with their precious cargo. The crawlers chewed up the earth and pulverized everything in their wakes, turning sagebrush and juniper trees into nothing but splinters and slush in the winter and dust in the summer. Their tracks destroyed the land much like the smelters burned the sky and the ore crushers obliterated the quiet, a cacophony of sound she had long learned to ignore like she ignored everything else.

  The broken earth.

  Her own broken heart.

  A steam-powered horseless carriage belched black smoke as it bore down on her as she crossed the street. The driver didn’t even bother to slow as the carriage jumped and shuddered down the muddy, rut-lined main boulevard. More than likely, it belonged to one of the mine owners—only the sublimely rich would be so foolish as to drive one of those things in this town. The man behind the wheel caught her eye as the carriage passed, glaring at her from behind his ridiculous driving goggles.

  He would slow for a horse, or even a dog, but not an Indian woman. Not even this Indian woman, and most of them owed their enormous fortunes to her father’s inventions. Granted, they thought the long war was probably his fault as well, so maybe the disdain was warranted.

  Jessie pushed the thought aside as she stepped up onto the covered wooden walkway, pretending the hoots and vulgar propositions didn’t bother her. As she entered The Globe, she dodged a couple of drunken miners, their fingers grazing the hem of her dress as she danced around them, their dirty fingers leaving sooty tracks on the leather.

  She said nothing. Silence was safer in a town like this.

  Months had passed since she’d last been inside The Globe—but then, she had little desire to spend her time with the locals. She came into town for supplies, and had a passable relationship with several local merchants, but she didn’t come to socialize, and certainly not in a place like this. A dirty, run-down hotel and saloon in a rough and tumble mining boomtown, The Globe catered to the down trodden and the destitute, thieves and prostitutes, the bankrupt and the morally corrupt.

  Dull light from smoke-stained lanterns filtered into the corners and created the shadows in which rats—human and otherwise—lurked. A thin layer of soot covered everything within, from the bar, which had once been some light wood but was now a smoky black, to the stools, the floor, not to mention the miners passed out on the floor. Filthy. Bullet holes dotted the walls, and, like everyone else, she pretended not to notice them.

  Tarrying too long would get her killed. She would be neither the first nor the last woman to die in this place.

  Jessie would never understand why Hiram insisted they meet in this place, but he always did when he was in town.

  The wood creaked ominously as she went up the back stairs, a passage typically reserved for ladies of a certain reputation and the hotel staff. Avoiding the low spots in the floor, she knocked on the door of Room Ten.

  Hiram opened the door. “Jessie.”

  Everything about Hiram was quiet and unassuming—his voice, his mannerisms, his clothing. Bespectacled, rail thin and pale, with a chronic cough and thinning, indiscernibly colored hair, he was the image of a college professor.

  “Hiram.”

  “You came.” He stepped aside and gestured for her to follow him into his room. “I was beginning to worry you hadn’t gotten my letter.”

  “We need to talk.”

  He peered down the hallway in each direction, his movements skittish. “I agree. Come in.”

  “I think we should go downstairs.”

  Something crashed below them, and Hiram jumped. He looked at the door to the stairway. “You want to talk, you come in. It’s not safe out there. Come in, child.”

  The day before, she might not have thought anything of Hiram’s anxiety. But today, everything had changed.

  “All right.” She stepped past him and into the room, a sparsely furnished single, with a small bed, dirty brown coverlet, and a view of the roof of the building next door and the street below.

  Jessie folded her arms and leaned against a wall. “What’s going on here, Hiram?”

  He shut the door behind her, cleared his throat, and shifted his weight. “I’m having difficulty with some of the investors.”

  So he wasn’t even going to try to pretend a problem didn’t exist. At least she had that.

  “What exactly does that mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing to worry about, but some people have been following me.”

  “Who?”

  Hiram shook his head and loosened his black string tie to unbutton the top button of his shirt. It had been white once, but, li
ke everything else out for too long in Virginia City, it had turned a dirty gray, the color darkening to almost charcoal around his neck and under his arms. “Just people.” He motioned to the bed. “Have a seat.”

  She shook her head and smoothed the folds of her buckskin dress. “Tell me about the money.”

  His eyes shifted from her face to an area over her left ear, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. Not much of a movement, but enough to tell her he was lying. “There isn’t any money.” He cleared his throat again.

  “I had a visitor who told me otherwise.”

  “They’re liars. Confederate spies. They’re trying to disgrace me, to blame me for a crime I didn’t commit.”

  “What about the royalties on the blue silver?” Jessie kept her tone level and reasonable. “Those haven’t totaled a quarter of a million dollars in the last year? What did you do with the money?”

  “I need to pay the employees and the scientists. You know how these things work.” Sweat dotted his brow. He couldn’t have looked guiltier if he had the word stamped upon his forehead.

  “No, I don’t, because you never shared the books with me. Tell me the truth. Don’t I deserve that?”

  Hiram paced, his footfalls heavy on the creaking wood floor. Despite the warmth of the room, he shivered. He ran his through his lank hair. “I really need your father’s notes. I have to give them something.”

  “Give whom something?”

  Hiram paced like a caged lion, and one wrong word would have him running for the hills. A part of her was surprised he hadn’t already.

  “Before I say anything, I need you to understand, I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”

  “Tell me, Hiram.” She kept her voice low and soft, struggling for calm despite the desire to scream bubbling just below the surface of her skin.

  Hiram took her by the shoulders and turned her so she faced him squarely. “Please, Jessie, I never wanted to bring you into this.”

  Jessie remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

  He said in a rush, “As you know, your father hadn’t finished his latest invention when he... when he... you know. But I had to keep the company running. So I sold the invention on spec. I thought I could hire some scientists and finish it with the plans I had. But I couldn’t produce it. Now they want it but I have nothing to give them.”