by D. J. Butler
“I don’t know what a Lamanite is,” Sam noted. “But it sounds bad. I’ll readily concede that you were mistreated, Mr. Young. That doesn’t make you unique, it makes you just like everyone else.
“For thousands of years on this continent,” Sam continued, “each Indian people oppressed the next, with tomahawk and obsidian club, human sacrifice and torture and cannibalism. Then the white man showed up with weapons even more vicious—the long rifle and the smallpox germ—and he joined the game. The Spaniards oppressed the Indians, the French oppressed the Spaniards, the Englishmen finally oppressed everyone else and won, game over, and to celebrate the victory they changed their name to Americans.
“Someday,” he wound up to his dramatic finish, conscious of Brigham Young’s cool eyes on him in the darkness and half expecting to have to jump back to avoid a burst of rage, “the next hand of rock-paper-scissors will come up and somebody else will oppress the Americans. Hell, maybe it will even be the Mormons, but that won’t mean that God is on your side, any more than He was on the side of the Iroquois when they sent the Lenape packing out of the Delaware Valley.”
“You misunderstand me, Mr. Clemens,” Young said quietly. “I am telling you that God was on our side when our enemies drove us out of Nauvoo. I am telling you that when all the world saw as us trodden upon and beaten down, we rode west into the wilderness cupped in the hand of the Almighty God.”
Sam nearly swallowed his cigar. “I must be misunderstanding you now, Mr. President,” he spluttered. “Are you suggesting that you were persecuted and robbed and murdered and chased into the wilderness, as you say—and that it was a good thing? That God elected you to defeat?”
“I am suggesting,” Brigham Young said, impressively calm, “that God moves in mysterious ways. Uprooting the Kingdom and moving it to the Rocky Mountains was hard, harder possibly than you can ever imagine, Mr. Clemens. Death and starvation and disease dogged our every step. But that move has made us strong, and it has given us the space we needed to flourish and grow and become independent. And if your President, or Mr. Jefferson Davis, or even the Queen of England, thinks to coerce us into any particular action with respect to this coming war, or any other thing for that matter… well, they will find that God has taught us to be prepared.”
“And has God prepared you for the actions of Mr. John D. Lee?” Sam asked. He felt impudent for his retort, but he was staggered by the things Brigham Young was saying, and couldn’t leave them without rejoinder.
“God moves in mysterious ways,” Young repeated. “We are all cogs in slots in His cosmic wonder-machine, just as you said. Rockwell and Eliza and Annie disobeyed me and they were right to do so, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t acting as parts of the machine. God is the mechanick, Mr. Clemens, not Brigham Young. I am nothing but a cog that is happy to be returning to his usual slot.”
* * *
“If it all goes cock-eyed,” Sam Clemens had said, “remember whose side you’re on.”
“I’m on your side, Sam,” Tam had shot back. He’d felt like the girl in the corner of the dance hall, looking shyly away from her beau. Get a hold of yourself.
“You’re in the employ of the United States Army Intelligence,” Sam had shot back, a little preachier than Tam liked. “That makes you on President Buchanan’s side. And remember this.” He’d leaned in close and looked around to be sure that no one was watching. “There’s still a war coming. If at any point it looks like Edgar Allan Poe is going to steal Pratt’s air-ships for Jefferson Davis and his cronies, you know what you have to do.”
And wasn’t Pratt the perfect name for a crazy old bugger living in the mountains, building air-ships and phlogiston guns and planning on burning down the whole bloody-damn-hell world?
“Kill Poe,” Tam had agreed. “Kill Pratt. Kill them all, if I have to.”
Sam Clemens had scowled and looked uncomfortable. Good old Sam Clemens, rugged Missouri hard-arse that he was, he was still a bit of an innocent, a bit of an old maiden auntie. “If you have to,” he had agreed reluctantly. “But I’d prefer that you steal the ships yourself first, or destroy them.”
Then he’d ridden off with His Mormon Majesty Brigham Young and the nasty dwarf and the Mexicans, without so much as a please, O’Shaughnessy or a thank you, friend Tamerlane, for coming to rescue me from the godawful Danites who wanted to shoot me dead. Tam understood that the man had to go show the people of the Great Salt Lake City that he was alive and an innocent man, but still, manners were manners.
“Why the make-up?” Tam asked. “Are we going dancing, and no one’s told me? And here I left me best frock behind on the Jim Smiley.”
The wheelhouse of the steam-truck they’d stolen from the Danites had two long benches that could have fit four men each in a pinch. Richard Burton sat on the front bench, behind the steering-wheel, and drove, his sword across his lap and Roxie Snow beside him. The truck rattled and bounced along a rutted rocky road up and down low hills, a beam of light shot out by its electricks splitting the night in front of it. Burton held tight to the wheel, and the others held tight to the benches’ arms.
Edgar Allen Poe sat with Tam on the second bench and worked, mostly one-handed, at affixing a false nose to his face with spirit gum. Tam watched the others and tried to be sneaky about the sips of whisky he was taking from the bottle in his coat pocket. He’d borrowed the liquor from the galley of that great dead shrieking behemoth the Liahona, and if anyone minded, to hell with them.
He deserved a little drink for his efforts (what man doesn’t? but especially clever, dogged Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy), and besides, the alcohol helped dull the throbbing pain in his arm, leg and ear. He’d been having a rough time of it, these last few days.
“I’m impressed that you can do it without a mirror,” Roxie smiled.
“I’ve spent long hours carefully observing women to learn their secrets,” Poe said. “Though I have not yet mastered the legendary art of painting my lips using my cleavage instead of my hands.”
Tam laughed sharply. He sort of liked Poe. He’d miss the man, if he had to kill him. He patted the Hushers to be sure he still had them both, and checked the stiletto against his forearm. Whatever came, he was ready. He’d just have to be sure to take Poe by surprise—the man had taken back his scarabs of death and was carrying them in his coat, now. Tam didn’t want to get crosswise with those nasty little Creation-disassembling buggers.
“Maybe you ought to poke into that fearsome huge box the Liahona’s boys humped into the cargo bay of this truck for you, Mr. Poe,” he suggested. “Maybe there’s a spare cleavage in there that you could spirit gum onto your knobby little torso and use to put on your lipstick.”
There, that’d teach the ugly southerner that he had to keep an eye on Tam O’Shaughnessy, that the Irishman was not a man to be slighted or ignored. Poe would have to know now that he was being watched with an eagle eye.
But Poe just looked at Tam with a dry stare as he squeezed the nose into place. “Knobby is a such a pedestrian word for a body this ravaged by time and illness, Mr. O’Shaughnessy.” He coughed several times, hard, to make his point. At least this time he didn’t hack up big gobs of blood. “I had expected better from an Irishman. Really, where is that Gift of Gab so famously proprietary of the sons of Eire?”
“I never kissed the Blarney Stone,” Tam complained. “I’m a Dublin lad. Never even been to County Cork.” And wasn’t it more the pity? If he’d had the Gift, he might not be careening through the desert at night in the back of a stolen steam-truck, trading banter with a consumptive secessionist spy. He might be sitting in Parliament, or running a railroad. But Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy’s gifts had always lain in a different direction.
“What about knurled?” Poe suggested, going to work on a caterpillar-like set of false eyebrows. “Rugose? Scabrous?” He coughed hard, but managed not to lose hold of the eyebrows or the spirit gum.
“Hush,” Roxie said. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. T
am wondered what reason she had to show affection to the decrepit codger.
“Cragged,” Tam grinned. “Bumpy.”
“Corrugated,” Poe added, “if it isn’t cheating to suggest two different words derived from the same root.”
Tam laughed out loud. “We’re all driving under the same roof now, Brother Edgar!” If it came down to killing Poe, he decided, he wanted to think in advance of some good fancy words to describe the act. Decapitation, he thought, that was a good one. He could say it to Poe just as he swung the blade in for the killing blow, though it’d be better if Poe were tied up. Then Tam could use the fancy word and they could both enjoy it for a minute before it had to be over. Incineration for fire and defenestration if he could find any windows to throw the spy out of. Tam eyed the silver chain around Poe’s neck, dangling something down under his shirt. What was a nice, fancy word for strangling?
“Where are we going?” Burton asked from the front bench.
“It’s called the Dream Mine,” Roxie told them.
“That sounds cheerful,” Poe judged.
“A man named Koyle had it dug,” Roxie said. “He told everyone he’d dreamed that if you dug a shaft where he said, you’d hit an old Nephite mine, all dug out and just full of precious metal sitting around waiting to be taken away.”
“What kind of mineral is nephite?” Burton asked. “Is it precious? Like bauxite? Selenite?”
“The Nephites were an ancient people,” Roxie informed him. “They lived around here a long time ago.”
“Hiya, heya, hiya, heya,” Tam chanted, then made his best Indian war-whoop, slapping his hand against his round O of a mouth. “I’ll admit I may be disadvantaged because I got my schooling in Ireland, but the sisters never told me about Indians digging for bauxite.”
“The ancient world is as unexplored and mysterious as is the modern,” Burton growled, and took his eyes off the jittering road to shoot Tam a gruff, schoolteacherly look. “Nobody can afford to pat himself on the back for his wisdom just yet. Least of all the Irish.”
“Go to hell.” Tam took a slug off his bottle.
“Old Bishop Koyle didn’t dream of bauxite, anyway,” Roxie continued. “It was gold.”
“Ah, well, then,” Tam said, and he felt himself brighten up. “That’s worth a little bit of a drive to see.”
“Did they find the Nephite mines and the gold?” Poe asked. The eyebrows were affixed, and now he was attaching a long fake scar running up one cheek.
“Not yet,” Roxie admitted. “But they’re still looking.” She frowned. “You’re putting on a lot of make-up.”
“Pratt has seen me before, remember.”
“Not yet!” Tam felt himself almost squeak with indignation. “Then what’s the fookin’ point of all this shenaniganning around? I thought we were supposed to be going after the Madman Pratt! I wouldn’t have minded a detour for stacks and stacks of gold, especially with one of ours in disguise and ready for a good bit of thieving, or maybe even bauxite, but I can’t say as I see the point of a detour for an empty hole in the ground.”
“It isn’t a detour,” Roxie said. “It’s a short cut.”
“Mind you,” Tam added without a break, “I don’t rightly know what bauxite is worth, but in big enough piles anything is worth money. Even shite, don’t you know?”
“Buildings ahead,” Burton rumbled, “and there’s a light in one window. Better explain yourself.”
“Slow down,” Roxie told him, and she hit a switch to kill the electricks. The bluish beams of light shooting out the front of the steam-truck died instantly, and Burton yanked on the brake lever to slow the big truck to a crawl. Tree branches scraped up ominously against the sides of the wheelhouse, but the Englishman kept the truck on the road and moving forward, crunching the trees at the road’s edges to splinters as it ground over them.
“Jesus and Brigit,” Tam cursed, “give the poor bastard a warning next time.” He took a drink that he intended to limit to a sip, but that turned into several good swallows. Ah, well. Tam might not have the Gift of Gab, but he was enough of a true son of Eire to be able to hold his whisky.
“The poor bastard doesn’t need a warning,” Burton growled. “The poor bastard is a man.”
“What are you saying, English?” Tam demanded. “I don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re the same as that milksop Etonian shite you ride around with, don’t you make the mistake of believing I’m afraid of you, you—”
“The mine is operated!” Roxie shouted, cutting them both off. Burton turned his attention back to the road, now a ghostly-silver trail barely discernible in the darkness, and Tam satisfied himself with staring holes in the back of Burton’s head. Throttle, that was another word for strangle, though it wasn’t fancy enough to be emotionally satisfying to Tam. Suffocation, that was it, but somehow that sounded too sterile.
“The mine is operated,” Roxie resumed, “but it’s a front. One of the tunnels is a back door, it goes right through Timpanogos Mountain and up to Emerald Lake, where Pratt has his facility. It lets him drive supplies up to the top of the mountain even in winter, and it also lets him drive things up unseen.”
“Like what? Like gold?” Tam asked.
“Like rubies and canopic jars,” Poe said quietly, “or anything else.”
“Who guards the mine?” Burton asked. “Who are you worried about? More of these Danites?”
Roxie shook her head, a motion Tam could only see in the darkness as the glittering of moon- and starlight in her earrings. “Brother Pratt has always expressed concerns to Brigham about the Danites, and about the need to protect his facility, in case some Danite faction tried to seize power. He’s contracted security to a private firm.”
“Melqart’s fire, it seems the Madman Pratt had more foresight than all the rest of the Salt Lake hierarchy,” Burton commented. “So what private firm’s bullets will I have the honor of dodging, then?”
“Brother Pratt insisted he had to have the best,” Roxie continued.
Tam felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He tried to drive it out with more whisky, but it persisted.
“His facility is also the Kingdom’s central office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.”
“Aw, fook,” Tam cursed.
Burton chuckled. “Something wrong, O’Shaughnessy?” he asked. “Would you like to borrow one of Poe’s false noses?”
“Brigit and Anthony fook me right to hell, I’ve had enough trouble with the Pinkertons to last me a lifetime.” Tam felt tired and irritated.
Poe turned to look at him. He looked like a complete stranger, all scarred and hairy, but then he broke the magic of the transformation with a wet, guttural cough. “Of course you have,” Poe said. “That gives me an idea.”
* * *
Absalom Fearnley-Standish quite enjoyed the night ride.
He had little success sticking with Abigail; he wanted to convince her to leave her brute husband and this desert wasteland and come away with him back east and home to England, but she had no interest in the message. Every time he opened his mouth, she spurred her horse away from him, sticking closer to the shaggy Rockwell and showing her brother only her horse’s rump.
Absalom was impressed. Before this evening, he would have sworn he was by far the better rider. Life in the Kingdom of Deseret, life as Rockwell’s wife, had certainly changed her. He almost didn’t recognize his sister anymore, in this rugged, fierce, pistol-slinging woman of the frontier. He was shocked to see how much a person could change in such a short period of time.
He wasn’t upset, though. He couldn’t be, with Annie constantly at his side.
“That can’t be true!” she almost collapsed from giggling at his description of the Horse Guards’ Trooping the Colour, and the uniforms of the Yeomen Warders in the Tower of London. “England, the way you describe it, is so romantic! Why, I don’t think there’s that much uniform and pageantry in all of North America, but there certainly isn’t in the Kingdo
m!”
“No, quite,” Absalom agreed, feeling that he’d scored a point with her somehow. “Your Danites just wear black coats for the most part. With different beards, they could be Amish wagoneers from Pennsylvania, or fur traders from the Pale of Settlement.”
Annie laughed hysterically. “Different… beards!”
Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh!
Absalom realized that he and Annie had drifted back through the knot of the Liahona’s truck-men. The Strider bringing up the rear seemed to be clanking closer. “Egad,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the Strider, “I hope there isn’t trouble.”
“No, my dear,” Annie said, “she’s just jealous.”
“What?”
“Hush!” “Hush!” “Hush!” The word to be silent reached them, passed down the line. Absalom duly fell quiet, puzzled.
They stood in a cluster of tall trees, swaying in the night breezes. Ahead of them in the dark was a knot of long, low buildings and dim lights that might comprise a farm.
Pffffffft-ankkkh!
The Strider stopped. Absalom craned his neck back around and looked up at Sergeant Jackson, who was riding gunner on the vehicle. The big machine’s guns seemed to be aimed at a spot unnervingly close to Absalom, but he shook his head, reassuring himself that it must be an trick of the light.
“Mr. Fearnley-Standish,” he heard a voice at his elbow. Turning, he confronted a small crowd of men, including the Yankee Sam Clemens, the surly dwarf, his mountain man brother-in-law and President Brigham Young himself. It was Young who had spoken to him.
“Yes, sir.” Absalom smiled pleasantly.
“Mr. Fearnley-Standish, your unique services are required,” Sam Clemens said. His words sounded deferential, but the man’s tone always seemed slightly mocking, and it put Absalom off.
“I’m here, gentlemen,” he said. “For Queen and country.”
“You have an advantage over the rest of us,” Clemens offered, which Absalom found intriguing, but unclear.
“We can’t be sure how much John Lee knows by now, or how much he might have guessed,” Brigham Young added, as if this explained something. “And we need a safe place to leave the Ambassador, at least. This is not his adventure.”