by D. J. Butler
“Not to mention the little boy,” Clemens added.
“Of course.” Absalom pretended that he understood. A good face could get you through a lot, he knew.
“The thing is,” the dwarf said, “it’s you and me, pal. Everybody else around here is famous, but you and me are unknowns. So you and me gotta go up to the house to scout it out, make sure there ain’t none of them Danites hanging around the place.”
“Oh of course,” Absalom smiled stoically. “Shall we take guns?”
“You’re going to knock on the door in the middle of the night and ask if you can sleep in the barn,” Clemens said in his condescending Yankee way. “Folks around here seem to expect that you’ll be armed, but it might be best not to show up on the doorstep with an actual full hand.”
“I got knives,” the midget grunted. “Besides, the whole point of us two going is won’t nobody know who we are, anyway.”
It all seemed safe enough. Safe as anything could be, in this land of crazed fanatical assassins and constant gunfighting. “Understood.” Absalom decided not to mention the little four-shot gun he had tucked into his waistband. He took some comfort from its presence, even if there was no chance of him using it, and didn’t want the others to take it away from him. “Of course, I did meet John Lee, in Chief Pocatello’s stockade.”
Sam Clemens tapped at his own temple with the butt of his cigar. “The encounter has not escaped me, Mr. Fearnley-Standish,” he said gruffly. “The logic is that Lee is unlikely himself to be at this particular farm. His minions are likely to able to recognize President Young, the Ambassador, Rockwell, and the rest of us—”
“But not me. Quite.” Absalom straightened his coat and adjusted his hat to a jauntier angle.
“This is a good friend of mine,” Brigham Young said. “A very good friend. He’s a good man, and he’ll take in strangers in need. Just make sure that there aren’t any Danites lurking around the place, and then one of you can come get the rest of us.”
“And if there are Danites,” Clemens added, “run like the devil. Discreetly as you can, of course.”
Absalom nodded. “Shall we go, Mr. Coltrane?”
“Thank you,” Young said, and then Absalom and the dwarf turned their horses up the side of an irrigation ditch dividing two fields and headed for the lights.
“So you are Mr. Poe’s associate,” Absalom said.
“I’m the barker,” Coltrane grunted. “Poe is the show.”
“Barker?” Absalom asked. “Is a…? Do you mean that you’re a madman?”
“I’m the guy that works the midway,” Coltrane explained without explaining. “I’m also the roustabout.”
“Understood,” Absalom lied, and then they trotted into the farmyard.
The yard was hard-packed dirt surrounded by a tidy house, a stable, a chicken coop, and a shed and corral that Absalom guessed, from its smell, must be home to a herd of goats. The buildings looked sturdy but simple, and the light from the window was the yellow light of oil or kerosene or wood-fire, not the blue of electricks. The farm might have been a hundred years old, except that Absalom knew that a hundred years earlier the valley had been occupied by Indians who lived in holes in the ground and ate pine nuts and lizards.
“Maybe it’s best if you knock,” Coltrane suggested.
“Yes, agreed.” Absalom handed his reins to the dwarf, dropped to the ground and approached the door. In the shadows of the yard he checked his small pistol and was reassured to feel it in place.
He rapped hard on the door and listened as feet crossed floorboards. The man who opened the door and filled its frame was solid in the shoulders and belly, like a boxer. His head was completely bald, and he had a curly beard under his jaw and chin. He looked like any yeoman farmer from Dorset or Kent.
“Good evening,” Absalom said.
The man stepped across the threshold and grabbed Absalom by the hand. His grip wasn’t an ordinary handshake, but something odd, with his thumb squeezing insistently down over Absalom’s first knuckle. “Brother Boaz,” the man said urgently, and he stared into Absalom’s eyes.
“Er, no,” Absalom smiled. “My name is Fearnley-Standish. My friend and I are traveling through the valley, and looking for a place to stay. We hoped we might share your fire tonight.”
“Invite your friend inside, Heber,” Absalom heard a voice from inside the farmhouse.
The man called Heber trembled, his head quivering slightly, almost imperceptibly. He kept staring Absalom in the face, and Absalom wondered if he was walking into a house of sick people, or insane, but decided the fellow was probably just old.
“It would be a great kindness,” Absalom said cheerfully and smiled.
Heber sighed and stepped back inside, making room for Absalom to pass. Absalom walked inside the low house, enjoying the smoky warmth and the smell of a meaty stew that came from a large pot hanging over the fire.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Heber answered. He stared at the heavy boots on his feet.
Then Absalom saw John D. Lee. He stood behind the door, smiling a smile that might have been handsome on another face. Between his jug ears, and over the two cocked pistols he held pointed at Absalom, his smile looked vicious.
Three more men in black coats stood in the corners of the room, all pointing guns at Absalom. He swallowed uncomfortably.
“Come now, Brother Heber,” Lee kept his voice low and he grinned. “You should never apologize for hospitality. Besides,” Lee’s grin vanished into a stony glare, “I saw you try to warn the little limey off.”
“I say,” Absalom gulped.
“Isn’t it time you invited your friend into the house, too?” Lee suggested in a catlike purr. “It will be a lot easier that way.”
Absalom turned and looked out the open doorway. The dwarf Coltrane still sat on his horse in the yard. Absalom couldn’t see his face in the shadow, but if the midget was holding back, he must suspect something was wrong. Absalom didn’t want to invite Coltrane in. They weren’t friends, but they were allies, and Absalom didn’t want to be the kind of man that betrayed an ally into a trap, even when he was in a hard position, himself.
“Go on,” Lee said.
Absalom wanted to be Richard Burton. Damn the man, he was infuriating and Absalom hated him, but Captain Richard Burton was no coward. Besides, would Lee really shoot him? He must guess that Young and the others were outside, and gunshots would warn them off.
Lee raised his pistols and pointed them at Absalom’s head.
“Run!” Absalom shouted, and tackled John D. Lee.
He knocked the Danite chieftain back against the wall with a shoulder and then jabbed him several times in the jaw with his fists. Lee didn’t shoot, as Absalom had expected, and the man called Heber joined the fray, grabbing Lee and throwing him against the wall.
Then something heavy crashed into the back of Absalom’s skull. He saw stars and planets and then the wooden planks of the floor, filthy and stinking of sweet pine, rushed up to whack his head.
The room spun around him for a minute and he heard more sounds of scuffle.
“Goddamn midgets!”
A drop of blood hit the floor right in front of Absalom’s eye, then another, then a dwarf. Coltrane struggled, but ropes were thrown around him as the farmhouse door slammed shut. “Dirty yellow cowards!” he snapped, and then his captors banged his head against the planks. “Rotten sons of bitches were waiting in the corral and the coop, too,” he muttered to Absalom.
Absalom tried to say something reassuring and full of bravado to the dwarf, but the effort almost made him throw up and no words would come out.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Heber,” he heard John D. Lee say. “Think of your family.” Lee’s boots paced slowly across the planks to Absalom’s face, their heavy thuds reverberating like the relentless beats of a drum. They stopped with the toes pointing right into his eyes.
“Mmmrrrrroolpff,” Absalom protested.
He felt vaguely cheated—the Foreign Office had never prepared him for this—but also proud, for not surrendering.
“I told you,” he heard Lee say, “that if you invited your friend in, it would be easier.”
One of Lee’s boots swung away, slowly—
then kicked Absalom in the face, smashing him into darkness.
* * *
Burton scrambled stiffly out of the scrub oak and onto the gravel, pressing himself against the plascrete wall of the Dream Mine. The knife wounds in his leg and his arm agonized him, and he kept careful control over the fencing saber he carried in a scabbard on his belt, so it didn’t scrape the plascrete.
The building rose above him like a staircase in several tiers, with windows overlooking the valley. At Burton’s level were a wide veranda, a front door and windows as for an office building, but only if the office in question belonged to a bank or a police station—the windows were all covered with long iron bars. Oiled paper blinds behind the glass kept Burton from seeing any detail, but he heard the voices and footfalls of several men inside.
Below Burton was the lowest tier, which had a large bay door. According to Roxie, it opened and closed to permit vehicles entry. Now Roxie and Poe emerged from the trees on the other side of the veranda. Poe coughed, as gently as a man dying of consumption could, and spat into the bushes, carefully not emptying his lungs into the white cloth he held. There was something mysterious about that cloth—Poe had warned Burton not to look directly at it during the fray. Roxie came behind Poe, carrying the canister of scarabs. Burton hadn’t seen them in action, but Poe seemed to think they were deadly.
Burton had encouraged Roxie to join him on his side of the fracas; after all, he was armed, and an experienced fighter, and Edgar Allan Poe seemed to be more of a spy than a warrior. Burton drew his Colt 1851 Navy revolver and checked the cylinder to be sure each chamber was loaded and capped. Oh, well. The woman was in love with another man. It was her choice, even if the man in question was doomed.
And besides, he told himself, Burton was in love with another woman. Or at least, he was committed to her. He was committed to going home and marrying Isabel and settling down. He was committed, and he was starting to think that he even almost wanted to. His bandaged arm and leg both twinged at the thought of more action.
All he had to do now was survive the Kingdom of Deseret.
He cocked the pistol as Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy came lurching up the steps onto the veranda. The man held a crumpled sheet of paper in one hand and a whisky bottle in the other. Burton would have sworn he’d seen that bottle full when he’d taken the wheel of the steam-truck and left the Hot Springs Hotel & Brewery, but it was empty now.
The Irishman was tipsy, and he was singing. Burton thought he recognized the tune as an old war-ballad. “If the song should come, we’ll follow the drum, and cross that river once more…”
Burton could still hear the men inside talking, and he thought he could make out one of the voices say, “did you hear something?” He grinned, preparing himself for the moment of decision.
As he stumbled onto the top of the stairs, O’Shaughnessy dropped the bottle.
Crash! It shattered instantly on the plascrete.
The talking inside stopped, and O’Shaughnessy dragged himself to the front door. “That tomorrow’s Irishmen may wear the sash my father wore!” he finished with flourish, rapped hard on the door, then took two steps back.
He flattened the paper, smoothing it out against his own chest, and grinned.
The door opened and two men stepped out. Two was the perfect number, with two men the plan would go without a hitch, even if they were tall, strong-looking gents, with serious, square jaws like Burton’s. One held a rifle in his hands, a Henry, and the other a double-barreled scattergun.
“What do you think, lads?” the Irishman asked in a sliding, imprecise voice, stabbing one finger into the calotype on his chest. “Doesn’t look like me at all, I reckon. Besides, what kind of idjit detectives are you, if you haven’t figured out yet that my name isn’t bloody-damn-hell McNamara?”
Henry and Scattergun both raised their weapons and stepped forward.
Burton slid out from hiding, a little behind Henry, and pointed the Colt at his man. He watched Poe do the same, ridiculously holding up his wadded-up handkerchief. What was the man going to do, suffocate the Pinkerton?
Roxie followed in his wake, holding the canister with both hands.
“It’s that Mick Samuelson was looking for,” Henry said.
“Philadelphia warrant, isn’t it?” asked Scattergun. “I think there’s a reward.”
Poe and Burton nodded at each other.
“Good evening,” they said together.
The plan was that one man would turn to Burton and one to Poe, and both would be neatly captured.
Instead, both Pinkertons wheeled and pointed their guns at Burton. It was the curse of his deep voice; they hadn’t even heard Poe.
Burton squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
Henry fell back bleeding, losing his grip on his rifle as it went off—
bang!—
harmlessly, the bullet winging away into the night.
Burton saw Roxie leap into action, tossing the brass scarabs all through the office door and slamming it shut. Poe grabbed for Scattergun’s shoulder, and Burton swiveled to aim at the man with his 1851 Navy, but they were both late—
Boom! the scattergun went off.
Poe jerked the man back, dragging him to the ground in some sort of combat maneuver that might be kung fu or karate.
Burton sank to the ground, a searing pain in his side.
Boom! Bang!
Burton and Scattergun both fired pointlessly into the night sky.
Then the screaming started inside the offices of the Dream Mine.
* * *
Absalom opened his eyes to the upside-down sight of the Danites taking away several big knives from the dwarf. There was a long straight one, like a short sword, that he thought was an Arkansas Toothpick. There was a Bowie knife, with the notch out of its tip so that the point hung below the hilt, and another knife in Coltrane’s boot. Then the black-coated men walked to the other corner of the room and conferred. Absalom thought he saw half a dozen of them now, though his vision still swam and he knew he might be miscounting.
The midget saw Absalom’s eyes open. To Absalom’s surprise, Coltrane popped free another knife, out of the back of his belt apparently, and held it out to Absalom. It was a small, sharp, one-edged affair, with a wooden hilt and no cross-piece. It might have been a kitchen knife for paring potatoes.
Absalom shook his head, which was hard, since he was basically resting on his head, upside down on the wooden floor. He had a gun, and he didn’t really know how to fight with a knife.
Coltrane mouthed some words silently that Absalom couldn’t make out, and Absalom gave in. He took the knife and slipped it into his pocket.
Just as he finished, Lee and his men came back.
“Good to see you awake, milord,” Lee cracked.
“I’m not a lord,” Absalom objected. “My family has a little land, and less money, and technically my uncle is a Baronet.”
“Isn’t that what the French call you all, though?” Lee smirked. “Milords?”
“I thought they called us rosbifs,” Absalom said. “They protest, but obviously they envy us our robust diet. We sometimes call them frogs. Mostly we call them prisoners.”
Lee guffawed and slapped his knee. “You’re funny, milord. I’m going to call you milord, anyway. I like it.”
“As you please.”
“What’s the contingency plan if you two don’t come out of this place?”
Absalom wondered if there were some tactic he could adopt, some ruse he could pursue to confound the Danite thug. He screwed up his brows but none came to him, and Lee began to look impatient.
“I said—”
“There is none,” Absalom said. “Sor
ry, bump to the head, I’m a little groggy. How long have I been out? There is no contingency plan. If the farmhouse was clear, we were to come out and tell our comrades.”
“Brigham Young and Sam Clemens.”
“Yes. And if your men were here, we were to feign innocence and ignorance and sneak out at the first opportunity.”
“Shit,” observed one of Lee’s men.
“How long was I unconscious?” Absalom asked.
“Not long,” whined one of the black-coated men.
“Shut up!” Lee snapped to his subordinate. He turned back to Absalom, his face in a growl. “Here’s what you’re going to do… milord. The dwarf stays here. Any misbehavior, the dwarf is the first one to get it, understood? The dwarf and the good people who own this farm.” Lee gestured into a corner and Absalom saw the man named Heber, who had tried to warn him, gagged and tied hand and foot.
“Understood,” Absalom agreed. He tried to seem calm, like Burton would. Well, maybe not exactly like Burton. Burton would be roaring and charging up and down the floorboards like a bull with a saber, killing men. But Burton wouldn’t be afraid, at least, and in that, Absalom tried to emulate him.
“Wells here’ll go with you,” Lee continued. Wells stepped forward. He was a tall man, dressed in black from head to foot, with thin dark hair sweeping back from a high forehead. He carried a long rifle. “You’ll go back to your friends, and you’ll tell them all’s clear and they’re to come in, got it?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Meanwhile, the rest of us will arrange a little welcoming party.” Lee twisted his face into an ugly leer. “Any tricks, Wells shoots you, and then the dwarf and the farmer get closely acquainted with the handiwork of Mr. Jim Bowie.” He brandished the fighting knife he’d taken from Jed Coltrane.
“Understood.” The wheels of Absalom’s brain spun wildly, trying to generate a plan that didn’t involve leading his sister and Annie into the farmhouse, or getting himself shot.
The Danites cut Absalom loose and marched him out the door, Wells on his heels. He avoided making eye contact with either the midget or the farmer, for fear he’d give away either his hopeful reflection on rescue schemes or his gut-wrenching fear.