Gieo watched with building anticipation and delight as each woman made some motion of greeting or some signature flirty gesture before taking their spot in a slowly curving arch around the impromptu Tombstone welcoming committee. Finally, with more than thirty of the women off the train, the Madame was introduced. Gieo’s jaw nearly hit the floor; the entertainers, enforcers, prostitutes, and even the boss were all women!
Madame Veronica Vegas, or VV as the pink embroidery on her parasol identified her, was young, remarkably young for her position. Gieo thought, without the pageantry, makeup, and outlandishly feathered costume, Veronica might actually have even been a little plain. She commanded attention through sheer presence though, and with the added theatrical spectacle of costumes and makeup, she held an undeniable allure. Her blond hair was a carefully planned puff of large spiral curls in a top-knot ponytail, her thin lips were perfectly pearled in pink gloss, and her hazel eyes sparkled with a feisty glimmer that came from far more than just the glitter-laden blue eye shadow she wore. When her multiple curtsies of welcome were concluded, which was a show in itself as the hem of her Can-Can skirt was lined in bright pink feathers, she thanked the dozen or so townies for the welcome, and then zeroed in entirely on Gieo.
“You have the look of someone important about you,” Veronica purred. “Are you our official attaché from the mayor to guide us to our future lodgings?”
“Oh, no, I’m…” Gieo stuttered and stammered, searching for an explanation for what she was doing there. She’d never had a problem coming up with a witty title or list of accomplishments for herself. In fact, she’d actually enjoyed meeting new people in Tombstone for the sole purpose of being able to use all the titles she would like associated with her that couldn’t be listed in a single introduction to just one person.
“I’m your attaché, Danny O’Brien,” Danny said, stepping forth from the crowd like the soothing surfer he was. From a distance, he might seem as rugged an unkempt as all hunters, but up close, Danny wasn’t just good-looking, but downright handsome. His mop of sandy blond hair jutted from around the edges of his baseball cap. His sky-blue eyes twinkled like the open ocean on a sunny day. And his close-cropped beard let show just enough of his strong jaw and proud chin to let anyone know he had a pretty enough face that it wouldn’t matter if he covered more than half of it with beard. Gieo was immediately jealous that he not only had the looks to command Veronica’s attention, but also the penis she probably preferred.
“Quite charmed, Mr. O’Brien.” Veronica took his hand, curtsied again, very deferentially, rising a step closer to him so he might catch a stronger whiff of her perfume and perhaps see a bit more cleavage. “But then who is this alluring creature?” Veronica pointed the handle of her parasol in Gieo’s direction.
“She’s actually a pet of one of our more prominent hunters,” Danny explained in somewhat polite terms that seemed to make him a little uncomfortable. “I don’t know her name.”
“A hunter’s pet, you say?” Veronica played all atwitter at the possibility. She walked to Gieo, cocked her hip to one side dramatically, and gave Gieo a thorough looking over. “She looks as fresh and lovely as a spring morning. How is she the possession of a rough and tumble hunter?”
“Huntress,” Gieo corrected for her, “and my name is Gieo.”
“Yo?” Danny asked.
“Gieo,” Veronica corrected for him. “It has a ‘g’ on the front.”
The little baby crush, an egg really, not even a peeping baby crush yet, that Gieo had formed for Veronica broke free of its shell and became a full-blown squawking crush in the moment Veronica got her name right without needing direction. She didn’t know Veronica, but she knew she was trouble.
“My, my, then you must belong to the one and only Red Bishop,” Veronica said. “How times must have changed if she’s taking pets. Although with a cute thing such as yourself, she could hardly be blamed.”
“Red Bishop?” Gieo asked. Immediately, she felt stupid for the question and the inarticulate way in which she phrased it. For some reason, her brain wasn’t working right around the Madame, and her mouth was becoming a blundering accomplice in making her look and feel foolish.
“She must not have told you much of herself,” Veronica said. “That’s hardly surprising, the taciturn thing that she is. You come by when we’re all set up, share a drink with me, and I’ll tell you everything you’ll ever want to know about our mutual friend.” Her slow, lingering cadence and choice of words and phrasing, all spoke of a southern belle, but she didn’t have a hint of an accent. The overall effect of her speech was disarming and hypnotic without intimation that it might be artificial despite the obviousness of the affectation.
“It was good to finally meet you,” Danny said with a curt tip of his cap to Gieo. “Now, Madame VV, if you’re ready to head out, I’ve got a few strong men with carts to see to the move. Tombstone welcomes the Lazy Ravens with open arms.”
Veronica and her girls departed with a few winks and smiles thrown in Gieo’s direction. Before the Ravens had departed fully, Gieo caught a brief glance of Fiona, standing well apart from the crowd, glaring intently in their direction. At first, Gieo suspected the angry glance was meant for her, but as she remained standing still, the glare moved, following someone departing. Gieo tried to follow Fiona’s sightline and deduced either Danny or Veronica had done or said something to infuriate the gunfighter.
Chapter 11: Money? Oh, right, THAT stuff.
Gieo first tried to catch Fiona in the crowd. For being taller than most, and a strikingly beautiful redheaded former lingerie model, the gunfighter was surprisingly sneaky. When Gieo finally pushed her way over to where Fiona had stood, the gunfighter was nowhere to be found. She thought about following the crowd over to the old courthouse. She’d overheard a few people saying that’s where the Lazy Ravens would be setting up shop, but she decided against it until she actually thought through something to say to Veronica; the last thing she wanted was a repeat of the embarrassment of that afternoon. The mystery of Fiona being known by someone in Vegas and the bizarrely ominous alias of Red Bishop were just things she’d have to let go for the moment.
She made her way back to the saloon to see if Fiona had gone home. Sadly, her room was empty and Mitch hadn’t seen her come back. Gieo grabbed Ramen and her toolkit from the roof and set up her shop in the saloon to begin fixing tech in hopes of getting her hands on more raw materials to finish the motorcycle. Without another influx of parts and trade goods, she was likely to be out of everything by the end of the week. As it stood, the Wagoneer had already been mostly stripped and the rooftop filing system of salvage was beginning to look rather empty.
The excitement of the Lazy Ravens’ arrival spread through the town, along with the word of a formal announcement from Zeke, who had officially begun calling himself the mayor of Tombstone at some point in the last day or so; mayor was a good enough title, but Gieo thought ‘feudal lord’ fit his behavior better. Both public events did a number on Gieo’s business and she ended up sitting for hours in the empty saloon, playing go-fish with Ramen.
Later in the evening, after the excitement of the day had worn off, a few stragglers came trickling into the saloon with broken items. One of the men, a goat herder and cactus harvester, had a tea kettle and electric toothbrush with him. Gieo had combined the two items for a few of the townsfolk in her first week in Tombstone. The kettle’s steam power was easy enough to harness with a few paddles and widgets, charging the electric toothbrush for a short time using a copper wire coil. The boiling water was even enough to disinfect the bristles if the owner was so inclined. It wasn’t as fun or inventive as the first couple of times she did it, but she couldn’t really complain considering it was the only work she’d seen all day.
“What do you have in barter?” Gieo asked hopefully.
The man slapped his dirty palm against her table with a metallic clink. When he pulled away his grimy paw, there was a stack of five silver
coins, all about the size of a quarter, with some strange markings on them. Gieo picked up one of the coins and gave it a glance over. They looked minted in a fairly professional way, with an imprint of the wacky Las Vegas skyline—Eiffel Tower, pyramid, Empire State Building, medieval castle, etc.—on one side and the Lazy Raven crest on the other.
“What’s this?” Gieo asked.
“Money.”
“Oh, right, money.” Gieo had almost forgotten what money looked like. Even before the Slark invasion, she’d never really dealt in cash. Debit and credit cards were faster, easier, and accepted everywhere; on the rare occasion she did have tangible money, it was always paper. Coins were interesting in theory, but nothing she’d ever bothered with.
“Will you take it?” the goat herder asked. “They’ve done away with Slark heads as currency. The hunters are selling their heads for these, and then they can buy fuel with cash. A bunch of us got paid in them for helping the ladies set up their new digs. Then they even bought some cactus from me. They’re awful pretty, and it’s nice to have the jingle of money in my pocket again.”
“Sure, if everyone’s doing it, I’ll do it too,” Gieo said with an edge of sarcasm. “Out of morbid curiosity, what is the going rate for a Slark head?”
“Ten crows—that’s what the ladies were calling the coins.”
“And how much does fuel cost?”
“Six crows a gallon.” The goat herder smiled at being so helpful and liberal with his information. When he smiled, Gieo could see he desperately needed the electric toothbrush.
“Wait, so if the old ration was six heads for fifteen gallons, the rate should only be four crows a gallon,” Gieo said.
This comment shot a hole right through what the goatherd had been told. His smile dropped, and he shook his head. “No, it’s six crows a gallon, ten per head,” he said. “The math works out, or Zeke wouldn’t have set it up this way.”
Gieo smirked knowingly. Yes, she was sure Zeke had worked it out in his favor; with a little fractional math, it was easy to determine the new rate was a third more than the old system. He’d raised the prices and it would likely be at least a week before the mathematically challenged hunters would notice the difference. But, even when they did finally figure it out, what could they do? Increased profit and tangible assets might appeal to Zeke, but that still couldn’t account for everything he’d been doing lately.
“Yep, Zeke certainly set people up for something,” Gieo said. “Your payment is fair. Let’s take a look at that toothbrush.”
Fiona stalked the streets for hours, hopping mad about Veronica’s arrival, angrier still that Danny didn’t recognize her, and most importantly, about Gieo being there to flirt her up the second she stepped off the train. Fiona had a nearly overwhelming urge to shoot quite a few people. The desire, which might have had a plentiful outlet in the cultists, found nowhere to turn. The Lazy Ravens took to the street almost immediately upon arrival, and ushered the cultists away. Yahweh had instilled so much fear of non-cultist women in his followers that they fled at the mere blurry sight of the brightly adorned prostitutes, enforcers, and dancers. Then, the Ravens had done something even stranger. They turned their attention to the people who had gathered to see them sweep back the chanting methanol drinkers, and began buying goods off of them with silver coins. The townspeople, none of which were hunters, were grateful for not only the removal of the cultists, but also the reintroduction of money, and so practically heaped goods upon the Ravens.
Fiona had even been handed a single silver piece by a girl who was too young to know who she was—likely sixteen or seventeen from the complete lack of any lines on her face. The girl smiled to her, winked, gave a flirty bat of her eyelashes, and said she’d be happy to do a little dance for Fiona if she found four more of the coins. Fiona fingered the coin during the rest of her aimless walk amidst the dusty streets of Tombstone until long after sundown.
She found herself outside the Lazy Ravens’ new home in the brick courthouse with the white pillars out front. It was only about a block or two from the saloon, but, then again, most everything in Tombstone was only about a block or two from most everything else. The ladies were cooling themselves on the steps in the fading warmth of dusk. When Fiona turned off the street to walk up toward the courthouse, a couple of the ladies broke away from the pack to intercept her.
“Sorry, sweetie,” one of the women said. “We’re not open for business yet.” When she got close enough to see that Fiona was a woman and not just a very skinny man, she changed her tune. “Listen, we’re not taking applications from the local talent either, so you may as well...”
The other woman quickly elbowed the first in the side, cutting off anything else she might say. “Veronica has been expecting you,” she said quickly. “Sorry about the misunderstanding, Red Bishop; Stephanie is new.” Fiona didn’t recognize either of them, but that didn’t really mean anything. She wasn’t good with names or faces, and just because one of them knew who she was didn’t necessarily mean she’d ever met either of them.
Fiona passed by the two without comment and into the old courthouse. Once inside, she was again greeted by one of the Ravens, but this time the escort, a lovely Hispanic woman in a revealing flamenco dress, took her by the arm and guided her expertly through the maze of the courthouse corridors to one of the judge’s chambers on the second floor. The modifications on the courthouse hadn’t taken much time at all. What had once been a house of justice and law spent some time as a munitions depot during the Slark skirmishes that finally halted their eastward expansion, and then as all-purpose storage once Zeke took over. To look at what the Ravens had done to it, Fiona would have imagined it was always intended to be a brothel.
Veronica answered the door before Fiona could even knock, pulling her in by two handfuls of the front of her shirt. Fiona found herself shoved back up against the closed door once Veronica had her inside the office turned bedroom. Veronica’s lips rushed up to meet Fiona’s. Veronica tasted of strawberry candy and slippery gloss. Fiona returned the kiss in the heady, aggressive embrace, nearly forgetting herself in the moment. The complete memory of who she was kissing rushed back to her. Veronica had things to answer for and they weren’t going to get answered while making out.
Fiona pushed Veronica away, although not far enough to break her hold on Fiona’s shirt. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” Fiona growled.
“You had a lot of nerve when you left me in Vegas,” Veronica growled back. “I’d say this makes us even.”
Fiona tried to extricate herself from Veronica’s grasp, but Veronica redoubled her efforts and ended up pushing both her hands up under Fiona’s shirt to grasp her athletically modest breasts. “You’re skin and bones. Life in Tombstone must not be agreeing with you,” Veronica said. “I remember when you had glorious breasts and I couldn’t feel your every rib.” She teased Fiona’s nipples until they were solid little diamonds between her fingers. Fiona let her head fall back against the door, nearly knocking her hat off in the process. Veronica knew how to touch her, knew how to make her forget things, and absolutely spoke the truth when she said Fiona had been healthier in Vegas. “Can’t your pet cook?”
The mention of Gieo brought Fiona back to reality, and she finally managed to push Veronica away. “Leave her out of this,” Fiona hissed.
Veronica stalked away, more amused than hurt. “She’s an adorable little thing,” she said. “As long as she has a talented tongue, I wouldn’t care either if all she knew how to do was lick and suck. What I’m more surprised about is your taking of a pet. Wasn’t that one of your primary problems with our organization?”
“There’s a big difference between what she and I have and the Ravens’ slave trade.”
“Of course there is. We only dealt in men.”
“Dealt?”
Veronica flopped onto her overly cushioned bed, sinking into the marshmallow-esque comforter on her stomach, glancing over to Fiona with her lower l
ip jutting out in a pout. “We discontinued that division when the council ratified a constitution outlawing slavery,” she said. “Your little slave rebellion and the money it cost us had a lot to do with the decision, actually. Oh, but don’t worry, someone figured out we could make twice as much with indentured servant contracts, so now you’re something of a folk hero in Vegas.”
The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head Page 12