“Ugly sons of bitches, aren’t they? If you can’t make it elegant, it isn’t an impressive engineering feat in my book. I have a fowling piece, and I recommend aiming for the engines. Avoid the turbines in the rear, however. Wouldn’t want a ricochet. Let’s move to just behind the top of this next rise. From there perhaps we can see what they’ve done to the steam cars. Or otherwise. I mean, for all we know it’s some newfangled mode of crop dusting, not sabotage at all.”
He waved airily at her and sped off, stopping a half mile or so away on the hill in question and exiting his vehicle, fowling piece in hand. Eliza was right behind him with her pistol, and the others followed within a few minutes.
“Whitcombe’s car looks like it took a bad hit. He may be inside, I couldn’t see him.” Cantlebury said to the other three as they all crouched behind the ridiculously meager cover of some scrub oak. “Miss Davis’s is obliterated, but she’s sitting off to one side of the wreckage so perhaps she’s not badly hurt. No sign of Parnell unless he’s still in his car. Does anyone have any better anti-aircraft weaponry handy? So far we’ve a fowling gun and a ladies’ pistol. Meaning no offense, Miss Hardison, I refer primarily to the floral mother-of-pearl inlay in the grip, which is lovely work by the way.”
“No offense taken, sir. And thank you.”
Miss Speck displayed a revolver of her own, a somewhat more impressive sidearm than Eliza’s. Madame Barsteau had no weapons.
“I have something,” Matthew offered. “It hasn’t been tested in action, I only came up with it the night of the storm, but it’s better than nothing.”
He quickly laid out his plan, considered Eliza’s vehement objection once she heard the particulars and pressed on anyway. The pirates circled over the wreckage, and Matthew was concerned they would soon shift their attention to the second cluster of cars. They were screened in their position over the hill, but not well enough to remain hidden for long.
“Right, so . . . Madame Barsteau, you’ll drive my car for me. Cantlebury, Eliza and Miss Speck, you three will follow to the halfway mark in Cantlebury’s vehicle, then stop there, get out and cover me with your firearms.”
The whole thing moved so quickly Eliza didn’t know what to think. She and Lavinia crammed into Cantlebury’s narrow steamer, with its single bench seat, and barreled down the hill after Matthew. Stopping halfway per his instructions, they separated and looked for some form of cover. Eliza chose a thinly leafed scrub tree, behind which she cowered, shaking and sick to her stomach. Madame Barsteau drove on, straight into the heart of the trouble. One of the airships clearly spotted the newcomer, coming about to meet the onslaught. The car looked tiny on the ground with the massive ship looming over it.
His solution wasn’t a conventional firearm. Instead he had fashioned a crude grappling hook from the tines of a rake and attached it to a launching device that strongly resembled a harpoon gun. A long cord—Matthew said he always carried it, just in case—trailed from the end. When the car was almost beneath the ship, Matthew emerged from the passenger window, sat on the sill and fired his makeshift grapnel over the wooden side of the vessel’s oversized wooden “basket.”
He’d told them he would only have one shot, and for a moment it looked as though his efforts would be in vain. Too high, you aimed too high, Eliza thought, her heart skipping a beat at the realization that Matthew would be directly in the crosshairs of any gunmen on the ship. The pirates could fire, or drop more explosives, and he would never have time to evade them. But she crossed her fingers as the hook sailed in an arc over the bow and down again to snag on the opposite side. Matthew must have told Madame Barsteau to make haste because the car spun dust up in its wake as she drove straight for the ground below the other ship.
It would have been spectacular if it hadn’t happened so slowly. The snared ship’s crew had no time to respond to the change in direction before they found themselves tugged along, soaring serenely through the sky and broadside into their companions in crime. If they’d been at full running power with momentum enough to resist the car’s pull, the trick never would have worked. But hovering rendered the ships uniquely vulnerable, and Matthew had used that weakness brilliantly.
More grenades flew from the pirates’ decks, exploding in puffs of dirt and grass in Matthew and Madame Barsteau’s wake. It was too late; the heroes had already loosed their line and were heading back up the hill when the ships’ sails and balloons billowed into one another, bringing their basket hulls together in a collision that looked gentle from the ground but must have been anything but for those on board.
And then the flame, and the explosion, a flash of fiery helium that almost scorched the onlookers, even at a quarter mile away. Eliza ducked behind her tree, acting on instinct though some part of her knew it was wholly inadequate protection. Another instinct compelled her to confirm, through the brush, that the car was still moving, that Matthew was still on his way back to her.
They were all recovering from that shock when Parnell came dashing across the plain toward them, with Whitcombe in hot pursuit.
“Bastard!” the big man shouted as the leggier Parnell gained distance from him. “Don’t let him get away!”
Fool that he was, Parnell seemed to judge Cantlebury the weakest link in the chain of people blocking his path and aimed straight for him. It was a simple enough matter for Cantlebury to stick his fowling piece out at the critical moment and trip Parnell. The lanky cowboy flew face-first into an especially prickly scrub oak, his hat soaring in the opposite direction.
Cantlebury nodded in the tree’s direction as Whitcombe wheezed up to the hilltop. “Got him.”
“Thank you.” Whitcombe pounced on Parnell while he was still trying to disentangle himself from the branches and began digging in the other man’s pockets. “Where is it, you sly son of a bitch?”
“I don’t . . . know what you’re . . . talking about . . .” Parnell gasped. He was bleeding in several places, from the tree and apparently from the earlier blast, and from the way he was clutching his side Eliza thought he might have a broken rib or some other injury.
“The telegraphic device. Where the bloody hell did you hide it? I know you didn’t drop it, I was watching for that. You must have . . . a-hah!”
He yanked a small metal box from Parnell’s trouser pocket, ignoring the man’s yelp of pain.
Eliza had seen an almost identical device before. On many occasions, actually, as it rested in a carefully lit alcove in the gallery of specimen machines at Hardison Hall. A miniature radiotelegraphic transmitter. Dexter and Charlotte’s had a dent in it the shape of a bullet, and though they’d never given the full story, Eliza gathered the metal had stopped the bullet from injuring Charlotte. The inner working was mangled, but Parnell’s tiny machine was clearly the same sort of thing.
“Who were you contacting?” she demanded, striding forward to join Whitcombe by the stunted, shrub-sized oak from which Parnell still struggled to free himself.
“I’ll never tell!” he screamed, as though he were being tortured.
“No need for melodrama, Mr. Parnell,” she scolded.
“He was tapping out a message to the pirates on one of those ships. And from what I could see, they laughed at him and threw him to the wolves. Which is what you deserve, you smarmy, conniving bastard!” Whitcombe finished his speech with a well-aimed prod to Parnell’s side and seemed satisfied with the whimper he got in return. “Jesus. Did we just kill them all, Pence?”
Matthew and Madame Barsteau had returned in uneasy triumph. Matthew looked pale, and Eliza wanted nothing more than to rush to him with open arms and thank him for his heroism. She couldn’t, not with everyone there, but she vowed to find the opportunity before the day was through. Her heart was still pounding, but her mind soared clear and calm above everything else. He had saved them, with a bent rake and some thin rope. All because he’d seen a girl in a gun turret and ha
d a brilliant idea, then implemented it without a thought for his own safety. And even if he hadn’t done those things, she would still be madly in love with him. Those things had just brought it to her attention.
Matthew clapped Whitcombe on the shoulder. “I appreciate your saying ‘we,’ but at the moment I feel entirely to blame. And I think . . . I beg everyone’s pardon.”
Then Eliza’s hero and true love walked his pale, trembling self over to the next pathetic little bush where he bent over and was overtly, unheroically sick. When he was done he fell back, sitting abruptly with his head down, hands wrapped around his knees. Eliza’s heart broke. She scanned the group, completely at a loss as to how to proceed.
Miss Speck reached out to Eliza, touching her arm. “Go to him. We all know, Miss Hardison. Nobody cares right now. Just go.”
She went, and he leaned into her when she knelt next to him and put one arm around his shoulders.
“Some of them jumped off,” he whispered through silent tears. “I saw them fall. They didn’t want to burn. My God, I’ve never even seen a dead body before except at a funeral, Eliza. Much less killed . . . how many men? How many?”
“Shhh.” She couldn’t say how many because she didn’t know, and she didn’t want to. She couldn’t tell him it would be all right or that he was justified, because she didn’t know that either.
“Eliza, when you said you shouldn’t have come, that the rally wasn’t the place for you . . . I understand now. I understand how you felt.”
“Matthew—”
“I thought I might go home covered in glory and start my business as a champion for the Dominions, but how can I? How can any of us think we’ve won after this?”
“Matthew, listen to me.” She pressed his chin with her fingers, turning his head so he had to look her way. “You are a hero. You are the finest man I know. Not because of what you did to those men in the airships, but because you care about what you did. They didn’t care. They were throwing grenades even at the end. You’re ill to think of it, because you’re so very good you can’t stomach a world where you have to do such a thing to save your friends. But you did save us, my love. You charged in and did what you had to do, and saved us all.”
He gazed at her for a long moment, his face drawn as her words sank in. Then he nodded once, slowly, as if it pained him. “I’m no hero. But I can live with the part where I saved you. And the others.”
“I’m absurdly in awe of you right now,” she confessed. “Your facility for using your engineering knowledge in practical applications with whatever materials you find at hand is . . . quite thrilling.”
“Temptress.” He wiped his mouth with the back of one shaky hand. “I’d kiss the dickens out of you right now, but you wouldn’t thank me for it.”
“My Matthew, always so considerate.”
“I wish I were your Matthew.”
“Don’t. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—”
“I know.”
Gathering himself, he rose to his feet and rejoined the group. Eliza stayed on her knees, trying to think through all that had just transpired, all she had just said, the thoughts that ran through her mind when she was in danger. No, when Matthew was in danger. Lavinia Speck had said that the rest of them knew, and didn’t care, about Eliza’s closer-than-appropriate relationship with Matthew. Eliza had cared. She had been holding back, until she heard that kind voice granting her permission to do what she had so badly wanted to do.
But wasn’t part of her goal in leaving New York, her safe society home, to find out what life was like when the only permission she needed was her own? Why was she still waiting on those outside voices, that external approval? Was even the threat of death not enough to jolt her from her old limitations?
Matthew and his two friends were deep in conference over Parnell, who had been freed from the scrub now and was kneeling in the center of the group with head bowed. Somebody had bound his hands. Their voices murmured over the soft prairie wind, a strange counterpoint to the scene of devastation in the valley below. Fires dotted the grassy plain, flitting like the playful children of the great blaze that still burned where the two airships had gone to ground. The land was still too damp from recent rain for a wildfire, or they would have all been in greater danger than the airships could have ever posed. If Eliza hadn’t seen the sinkhole so recently, she might have called this a hellscape. She didn’t like having that framework for comparison.
Closer to the hill, the steam cars of the three race leaders provided a focal point for some of the child fires. Miss Davis’s car was still burning hot, and the lady herself appeared to be reeling as she attempted to climb the hill.
“Miss Davis!” cried Eliza, leaping to her feet and down the slope as fast as her feet could take her.
“Sweet Mother of God!” one of the men yelled. “We forgot about Cecily!”
“I thought she was dead,” Madame Barsteau replied.
A rustle behind Eliza suggested the others were in pursuit, and they soon caught her up. Together, they swarmed the dizzy Miss Davis and helped her ascend. She fainted at the top of the crest, and Whitcombe was just in time to catch her before she hit the dirt.
An ominous bruise bloomed on one of the lady’s temples, and even with limited medical knowledge, Eliza had seen at a glance that her eyes looked wrong somehow. As none of them were quite sure what to do, and they didn’t want to linger where other pirates might soon descend in search of their missing cohorts, they finally agreed they should all press on to Colorado Springs.
SIXTEEN
“CALL THAT DRIVING? What’d we just run over, a damn boulder? My old aunt Tillie steers better’n you!”
Matthew should have insisted on gagging Parnell when they trussed him up.
“Shut up,” he told his unwilling passenger for what must have been the twentieth time since leaving the site of the pirates’ attack.
“None of y’all will live to see the end of this thing. My boss will spring me from whatever pissant sheriff you’re taking me to, and you idiots will all be dead. I’ll be drinking his best liquor and laughing about it when you’re in the cold ground, son.”
But Matthew heard a note of something else in Parnell’s sneering tone, and rather than stop and throw the accused into the increasingly rocky countryside to fend for himself, he decided to take a different tack.
“Is that what Orm told you and Jones? That you would be laughing at the end, rewarded for your service, after we were all taken care of?” He put all the amused skepticism he could muster into the question.
“Beyond our wildest dreams,” the man assured him. Then he repeated it, suggesting less than complete assurance. “Beyond our wildest dreams, that’s what he said.”
Matthew snorted. “So you finally admit it’s Orm.”
“Aw, goddammit, you little piece of—he’s the Lord of Gold, that’s all. And he’ll send you all west.”
“Excellent. I’ve always wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. But tell me this, does your Lord of Gold like his money?”
He could almost hear Parnell’s brain working, even from all the way back there on the floor space behind his seat. It was a silence that spoke volumes.
“’Course he does,” the villain answered at last.
“Does he take extreme measures to guard his property and his involvement in the illegal opium trade? Have you ever seen him shrink from any measure, even murder, to keep himself and his wealth secure?”
“That’s just what any rich man does.”
Matthew tsked, shaking his head. “Those pirates were Orm’s men, and they left you on the ground. Laughed at you. He’d given you equipment to signal them. Do you think they’d ignore that signal if he hadn’t ordered them to? They were never going to rescue you. You were set up. Your Lord of Gold abandoned you. Was it because you hadn’t managed to round enough of us up into a cluster,
and so many escaped the ambush? Or was that his plan all along, perhaps, regardless of how the attack went . . . yes, that makes more sense. Why even risk leaving you alive? If Madame Barsteau and I hadn’t done away with the pirates, I strongly suspect they had a grenade in reserve with your name on it. And with you out of the way, who would have ever known that it was anything other than a tragic attack by prairie pirates, one of so many that happen in the Western Dominions?”
“You figured it out.”
“Your employer suffers from hubris. He’s left his marks all over this business, for anyone who knew what they were looking at. Almost as though he signed it, certain he would never be caught or face reprisals.”
“No one can touch him,” Parnell said. Matthew would have expected bravado, but instead Parnell’s obvious awe of Orm seemed to verge on fear. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Orm? Middling height, unprepossessing looks, seems to like wearing gaudy trinkets? Likes to hear himself talk?”
“Joke now if you want. It doesn’t change the fact that if you keep going toward those mountains, you’ll be dead before you ever see the Pacific Ocean. All y’all will be dead.”
“But why? Why the elaborate schemes, the expense, why go to all this trouble?”
“I ain’t saying no more.”
Matthew sighed. “Well, at least I’ve accomplished that.”
• • •
MISS DAVIS HADN’T spoken for almost an hour, and Eliza was growing concerned. Well, more concerned, as she’d been worried about Cecily since spotting her on that field. Her stumbling gait and eerie, uneven pupils. She’d vomited before getting in the steam car, at least, and so far had not done so again.
Madame Barsteau’s trim rally steamer was a single-seater, with no room for a passenger. Miss Speck’s car was also too small for a second rider. Eliza didn’t mind taking on Miss Davis for the drive, but feared the woman would need medical care she was helpless to provide. As Madame Barsteau had helped her colleague into Eliza’s vehicle, she’d warned Eliza to make sure Miss Davis remained awake and talking as much as possible.
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