“Of what, we don’t even know,” Garrett added.
“And if he’s that interested in Greek love, why would he be doing something to Liberty anyway? All right. Let’s formulate our question.”
Garrett suggested, “How about this? Paddy, in what way does Liberty need protection from Cole Waters?”
The planchette sped to spell out DEFILE.
The table was practically knocked over in the men’s zeal to race out the door. Garrett had to barrel back to blow out the candles and to buckle on his gun belt as he hopped down the front stairs, taking them two at a time.
Chapter Fourteen
Liberty’s automatic, natural reaction was to push Cole away.
But he remained glued to her torso like a slick of oil on a muddied lake. He gripped her skull in his scummy fingers, forcing his loathsome mouth onto hers. As though this were a desirable way to seduce a woman! What was so damned attractive about forcing oneself upon a woman? Liberty had her hands full with two beaus—she didn’t need some hairy associate of her father’s getting all hot for her.
He was gripping her so forcefully it was difficult to even wrench her face away from his. Now he even stuck a boot behind her slipper and tripped her up! She fell back onto the settee, and he tumbled on top of her. Since he was much heavier than either Levi or Garrett—their beloved faces flashed across her mind then, as though taunting her with what she was missing at the moment—she was now hopelessly pinned. She felt like a writhing spider under a big boot, all her flailing limbs sticking out from under his ample body.
He clamped his mouth over hers, this time trying to slide a disgusting tongue like a cooked oyster into her mouth. Liberty hated oysters, and she hated this man even more, so she bit the tip of his tongue. She made sure not to bite hard enough to wind up with a nauseating specimen in her mouth, but it did the trick.
He pulled back a foot or so in order to shriek, “You damned bitch!” and belt her with the back of his hand across the face.
This enraged Liberty so thoroughly, she renewed her thrashing. “Leave me alone, you damned filthy bastard!” She hoped her father, Lupe the maid, or the cook Josefina might come running.
Now Cole had his hands around her throat. “Is this what you want? Do you want me to tell your father that your two beaus are more interested in each other than in you? Their careers will be ruined. And no one’s going to want you at all after I’m done with you.”
He must have been pressing his thumbs against her larynx, for she couldn’t even croak out any cuss words. So she spat in his face, the gob sticking to his nose. He let his guard down for a split second, releasing the pressure on her throat. Liberty’s legs were tangled in her damnable skirts, but she managed to squeeze an arm in front of his chest.
She didn’t have much room to punch, but the belt she managed to connect to his face was enough to injure his pride, if nothing else. “You twisted degenerate!” she shrieked. Her knee that she wrenched up was muffled by many layers of fabric—she had never wished so ardently that she would be allowed to wear men’s pants!—so she bit him.
Ah, the relief when he rolled off her and onto the floor! She didn’t pause to admire her teeth marks in his face but leaped to her feet and grabbed the first, and heaviest, thing she saw—an unopened bottle of whiskey.
She didn’t pause, either, to warn him or give him a chance to get out. Gripping the bottle around the neck in both fists, she bashed him over the head as he writhed on the carpet with his hand to his face. It made a dull thud that was very satisfying. She drew the bottle over her head, ready to strike again. The front door burst open, and Levi and Garrett raced in at full chisel.
It would have been humorous, how frantic they looked, if there weren’t a body on the floor. Levi’s hair stuck out every which way, as though he were the one running from an assailant. Garrett even had to grab onto the doorjamb to stop himself from continuing down the hallway, he was tearing so fast. Liberty didn’t make the connection that their arrival had anything to do with the perverse Cole. They must have been going like sixty over here on some other matter—another matter that involved drawing their pistols and leveling them at the prone Cole.
“Agh!” Cole yelled as he writhed on the floor.
Levi advanced on the man, though it was clear that at the moment, Liberty had the upper hand. “Get up, you godforsaken louse!”
Garrett stood abreast of Liberty. “What did he do to you?”
“Tried to do is more like it,” she shot back. With his free hand, Garrett lowered the whiskey bottle she still brandished overhead. “Tried to kiss me, and maul me, and—ick!”
“That damned bitch bit me!” Cole was sitting up now but gazed in surprise at his bloody hand so probably didn’t see Levi’s pistol three feet from his head.
“Get up, you lowdown bushwhacker!” Levi bellowed. Pride rose in Liberty’s chest at the authority he put into his voice.
Liberty stepped forward and kicked the college alumnus in the thigh. Not as hard as she would’ve wished. But this was a society where Judge Lynch prevailed, after all. “He told me he was going to the city council to insinuate that you two were sodomites if I didn’t allow him to maul me.”
“Oh, well!” Rolling his eyes, it was Garrett’s turn to kick the glass salesman with his worn but sturdy Wellington boots. “What were you thinking, man?”
Levi must have had a more level head, for he shoved the pistol barrel right upside the wound in Cole’s face, using the leverage to assist the man to stand. “All right, here’s what’s happening. You’re going out that door, never to return. If I don’t hear that you bought a ticket on the next train east, I’m having you arrested for assault.”
Cole stared at him, dazed, for a split second, so Levi rattled the pistol against his face. “Go, man!” He pointed at the door. “Go! And I don’t want to hear a single word about the city council. There’s a train at eight in the morning. I suggest you use it!”
“Good God!” Cole blathered, but he headed toward the front door. “She was the one who acted all sluttish toward me! She was like an animal, like a hawk with talons, scratching me, biting me! Like an animal, I tell you!”
Garrett kicked Cole again in the bum, causing him to stagger forward and clutch at the door. “Let’s give this vermin a parole!” he suggested hotly.
Levi followed Cole onto the front stoop, the barrel jammed between his shoulder blades. “You’re not welcome in this town any longer, Waters.”
Waters still protested. “But it was she who assaulted me! I had no control—she was all over me!”
Apparently tiring of his lies, Levi shoved him violently with the pistol. Liberty really wanted to belt the louse again, but it was satisfying enough the way he stumbled over the step and fell to his knees. When he got up, his trousers were ripped, and blood trickled down his face where she’d bit him, so that would have to suffice.
But he wasn’t done yet.
Lupe and Josefina stood in the foyer now, too, and Zeke Vipham hotfooted it up Garfield Street as though he’d just heard about the melee. Cole Waters waved his arms wildly and proclaimed, “You can’t run me out of town like a common criminal! It is you who are the common criminals, with your groping and your—Agh!”
It was impossible to believe, but at that precise moment a glorious bald eagle soared down the road. It was clearly at least seven feet from wingtip to wingtip, and it floated carefree right down the middle of the road. A more stately and majestic bird could not have been imagined, even if it had not been gliding around in the dark, after sunset. Its white-crested head was fluffed out in apparent anger, though, its yellow eyes flashing with intent, and it glided lower and lower as it neared the house.
The eagle made a beeline for the ranting Cole Waters. There was a collective gasp once everyone realized the bird’s intention. It sailed low enough to tangle its claws in Waters’s hair as though Waters were a mere field mouse, talons just as vicious and destructive as he himself had just describe
d Liberty’s. Slowly flapping its enormous, billowing wings, the eagle made as if to take off with Waters.
“Agh!” cried Waters, and he whipped his arms around to beat off the bird. Reeling and stumbling, he started down the center of the street toward downtown. He navigated like a roostered man making Virginia fences, zigzagging wildly. He nearly plunged headfirst into the bed of the Fowlers’ cart, and many neighbors came out front to get a better view of the strange sight. The eagle kept its steely grip on Waters’s hair. With its dark brown wings flapping against the blackened night sky, it looked like only a white bobbing head as it dragged the hapless assailant downtown.
Liberty was the first to laugh. Perhaps it was all the pent-up emotion of the assault she’d just endured, but suddenly she was engulfed in an enormous round of laughter. It overtook her so thoroughly she had to clutch the porch railing to prevent falling down.
Levi and Garrett joined her, holstering their weapons and gripping each other’s shoulders. Lupe and Josefina even laughed, Josefina waving a ladle with hilarity. In the midst of this, Simon Hudson came onto the front porch, and his mussed hair made Liberty renew her laughter.
“Took you long enough to get here, Simon!” Zeke accused. “It was the most amazing sight! An eagle appeared out of nowhere and attacked your friend Cole Waters—”
“Who?” asked Simon, apparently still sleeping. “When?”
“Hey,” gasped Levi. “It took you long enough to get here, Zeke. Weren’t you right behind us?”
Zeke protested, “I just ran because you were running.” Now he laughed, too. “I had no idea why!”
Liberty became aware that an Indian stood in the street. Immobile, he grasped a buffalo robe around his form, and his long silvery locks cascaded in curls over his shoulders. He seemed to appear from nowhere, and she was instantly drawn to him.
Ignoring the amusement on the porch, she stepped into the street. The Indian didn’t even blink as she neared him. Initially she thought he must be very old to have such silvery hair, but as she got closer, she realized he was young. Younger than her, perhaps, and not an Indian at all but a white man masquerading as one. His round angelic face was set with two black buttons for eyes, and his cherubic lips smiled slightly as she approached.
“Did you see the eagle just now?”
He nodded with confidence. “I was the eagle.”
Did he not understand her? “No, I said did you see the eagle just now? It attacked that man we were trying to run out of town. Almost as if it read our minds.”
“Caleb!” Zeke shouted from the porch and came bounding over. “So good to see you again, brother! Did you see the eagle just now that was—” Zeke abruptly went silent as a look of recognition swept his face. “No…” He seemed to doubt whatever thought crept into his mind. “That can’t be.”
“It can be,” said Caleb simply.
For this must be the longed-for Caleb Poindexter, the great seer who had assisted Neil Tempest in shackling a murderer. Her sister had intimated that he had some powers of turning into an animal—a bison, if Liberty recalled correctly—but she had shrugged that off for obvious reasons. So she turned to Zeke.
“Zeke, just now, did you see Caleb walking up the street? He seemed to appear out of nowhere.”
Zeke sputtered, “I saw nothing. I saw the eagle practically carrying Waters off, then nothing, then suddenly Caleb was just…here.”
Caleb shrugged. His eyes were so light blue they were nearly gray, giving him the wild look of an untamed aborigine. “I don’t need you to believe that I was the eagle. I’ve come here to tell Garrett where to find Brave Buffalo’s tribe.”
Zeke insisted, “But I was there the day you turned into a bison, too! Tell her, Caleb. Tell her what you’re capable of.”
Caleb told Liberty calmly, “I have the ability to use animals’ bodies to achieve different ends. Tonight I thought it might be fun to borrow an eagle, since that potato-head saw fit to accuse you of having talons. Show him what real talons feel like.”
“But…” said Liberty. “How did you know what that potato-head said to me? We were inside the house.”
“He has visions!” Zeke cried. “Isn’t that right, Caleb? I tell you, Liberty. He’s a werewolf with the power of acting on other people’s minds.” He slapped the seer with the back of his hand, right across a pictograph of someone slaying a bison that was painted on his robe.
Garrett was standing next to them now. “How does that work, Caleb? For I’ve been having some awfully strange visions lately, too—some that I would have preferred were left unseen—mostly while I sleep.”
Caleb furrowed his porcelain, unlined brow. “Yes, I could tell that you have some powers, Garrett. Some visions come to me in dreams, but some—like the one I had earlier today—occur while I’m wide awake. I suddenly saw this fellow with a giant moustache attacking someone who seemed related to Ivy Hudson, only it wasn’t Ivy. So I knew it must be the new sister in town I’d heard of.”
Liberty protested, “But you came here to tell Garrett where Brave Buffalo’s tribe is.”
Caleb said, “Yes, and to see if I could help change the outcome of this Waters fellow’s antics.” He smiled with satisfaction. “Sometimes it’s fun to see if I can have an effect on the world around me, on the outcome of certain events. Are they predestined to happen, if I see them in my visions? That’s what you’ve got to ask yourself, Garrett. If you see, for example, someone dying. Can you have any effect on that outcome? I think it’s not written in stone. It’s more like a blackboard that one can erase and change with the power of will.”
“Well, thank God for that,” said Levi, sticking out his paw to shake Caleb’s hand. “Who knows what might’ve happened if you didn’t show up to assist.”
Liberty draped herself over Levi’s shoulder. “Oh, you fellows were doing just fine. How manly of you to sweep in there acting all martial.”
Garrett said, “Hell. I’d say you were doing just fine before we got there, Liberty.” He smiled at Simon Hudson, who had finally woken up enough to join them. “She bashed him over the head with a bottle.”
Simon asked, “How did you know to come, anyway? How did you know what was going on?”
Levi and Garrett exchanged uncomfortable glances. It was Garrett who finally admitted, “The talking board told us.”
Liberty knew that her father’s face would light up when he recalled his talking board. “That old board!” he cried, as if the board were a son of a gun, another old college friend. “So you’ve been using it? And it helped you out? I tried telling you, Liberty. That board once helped me find my favorite brand of ale. I could not find a single bottle of that stuff in Hyde Park.”
Liberty asked, “So what did the board tell you? Go and find Liberty?”
Levi said, “Not in so many words. Once we figured out that fellow’s name was Cole Waters and the board had made a manual error—”
Garrett butted in. “Thanks to Zeke rattling the planchette around, all worked up over his mother.”
“And then Paddy spelled out DEFILE, and we raced right on over here. Caleb, is that an example of altering the future?”
“I’d say so. If you had ignored Paddy, who knows if those events might have remained unaltered? Now, who is this Paddy? I’m interested because I had a message from a Paddy, and I don’t know any fellow named that.”
Zeke clutched the front of Caleb’s robe. “What is the message? Does it involve a Mrs. Grace Vipham of Downer’s Grove and a greengrocer named Ernest?”
Levi closed his eyes patiently. “Zeke.”
Zeke cried, “You said I could ask questions if your questions were answered!”
Levi told Caleb, “Paddy is Garrett’s spirit guide.”
Simon grinned gleefully. “Spirit guide? This is fun!”
Caleb answered, “Paddy apparently wants you to find something he left behind in the mountains. If you find it, he can move on in the spirit realm.”
Liberty touched h
er father’s arm. “Father. I would like you to meet Levi Colter. He’s the new Indian agent at Fort Sanders. And this is Private Garrett O’Rourke from the fort.”
Simon shook their hands and said, “Why don’t you all come in for a cocktail? Caleb, maybe you can give me some more information on my gout.”
Liberty said, “They can join us for dinner, since our only dinner guest was just run out of town.”
“A bully idea!” Simon cried. He headed for the house, clearly eager for the cocktail. “Lupe! Set several more places at the table. I don’t know why I trusted that Cole Waters fellow. Even back in college, he had dubious interests. He was always going on about a machine that can print out documents for you. All you have to do is strike the letters and each letter will print. He claimed it was much faster than handwriting. What did he call it?” He chuckled. “The Writing Ball, I think.”
“Ridiculous,” Liberty agreed. She dared to take Levi’s arm as they ascended the porch steps. “Thank you for listening to Paddy and showing up to save me.”
Levi put on a modest face. “You were doing a good job of saving yourself. But it certainly didn’t hurt that we listened to Paddy.”
“I wonder what it is he wants you to find.”
Levi shrugged. “Maybe his dead wife’s jewelry.”
After dinner, Caleb drew Liberty’s men a detailed map as to where they might find whatever Paddy had left in the mountains and where he believed Brave Buffalo’s tribe was currently located.
And it seemed there was nothing left to do but to allow Levi and Garrett to go search for Shady and Moses.
Chapter Fifteen
“That’s right,” said Levi. “Hold her bud in your mouth. Slather your tongue all over her flower,” he said, using the terms of the erotic manuscript.
Liberty was splayed back on one of their beds, wearing only a white camisole, her naked pussy revealed for the first time in all its glory. Levi noted that already the shell pink of her clitoris had turned a darker rose when Garrett had lapped away at it. It expanded and elongated in response to his stroking, protruding from the labia enticingly. Levi had no doubt Garrett could bring her to climax using only his strong tongue, but now it was Garrett’s able-bodied ass that excited him.
Disorder in the House [How the West Was Done 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 13