Timpanogos

by D. J. Butler

  “Aye,” puffed Dan Jones. “Or better still, pick a farm that doesn’t belong to someone in your family, or anyone else close to you. The minute he sees you’re alive, any loyal man would be happy to hide John Moses and the Ambassador for you in his shed.”

  “To open the blind eyes,” Young recited gently, “to bring out the prisoners from the prison. I’m not leaving Heber Kimball and his family in there. Or Mr. Coltrane. Who sees human beings as mere cogs now, Mr. Clemens?”

  Sam was astounded. “That dwarf came out to your Kingdom planning to spy on you, steal from you and if necessary commit acts of sabotage!”

  Brigham Young looked at Sam. His eyes were in shadow, and Sam felt like he was looking into infinitely deep wells, rich with the knowledge of human folly. “Is he the only one that came to Deseret with such plans, Mr. Clemens?” Young asked.

  Sam hung his head. “No, sir,” he admitted. “But I believe I had good motive for my actions.”

  “Most men believe they do,” Young agreed.

  Sam chuckled wryly. “I think you’ve stolen my line, Mr. President.” He really wished he had a Cohiba to chomp on.

  “In any case, Coltrane is my ally now, and I won’t abandon him. Also, he came to the rescue of young John Moses Browning, more than once, and for that he deserves to be rescued himself.”

  “Amen,” Dan Jones added.

  “If joo are worried about your friend Heber, I suppose that rules out simply blowing the farm to esmithereens with my Estriders,” Ambassador Armstrong observed. “But I wish joo to understand that my bodyguards are estill at your disposition. As am I, of course.”

  Fearnley-Standish cleared his throat again. “I believe we’re all at your disposition now, Mr. President,” he said, “whatever our prior political positions may have been. I think one of the tactical difficulties with any plan we adopt at this juncture is that if I don’t return up that irrigation ditch shortly, with at least you by my side, and maybe even without Ambassador Armstrong, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Rockwell, the Danites hiding in the goat shed will tell Lee and he’ll kill all his prisoners.”

  Brigham Young smiled. “Oh, that’s no problem,” he said. “That’s no problem at all.”

  * * *

  Burton strode purposefully, shoulders back to keep him at his full height and pistol raised and ready. Fitzzing blue electricks globes lit the passage, embedded into the ceiling at intervals of twenty feet. It was enough light to see by, but he worried that shooting would be difficult, especially against moving targets that shot back. He kept his gaze nailed to the end of the passageway ahead; at least in this plascrete tunnel he didn’t need his peripheral vision for anything.

  His whole body hurt. He kept going.

  “You’re a brave man,” the Irish thug whined behind him. When he wasn’t actually singing, Burton decided, he didn’t like the Irishman’s voice. “And you’re a fast walker, aren’t you?”

  “Jamshid’s crook! I’ve been stabbed twice and shot with a scattergun today,” Burton reminded the other man. “What’s slowing you down?”

  “I’ve been shot twice and had my bloody-damn-hell ear bit off, is what I’ve done!”

  “Unless the missing ear is somehow slowing your pace,” Burton growled, “I think that still means I’ve had the worst of it.”

  “Do you hate me because I’m Irish?” Tam wheedled.

  “A man serves his own country and cause without hating the countries and causes of other men,” Burton snorted. “Even the Irish.”

  “Mother O’Shaughnessy taught me better than that,” Tam said, and his words slurred grossly. “She taught me that every man serves himself, and himself only.”

  The passage ended at a staircase, steps leading up to the left and down to the right. Burton stopped to let O’Shaughnessy catch up.

  “Milton puts that doctrine in Satan’s mouth.”

  “Brigit love you,” the Irishman grunted.

  “Is your pistol loaded?” Burton asked him.

  “It is.” O’Shaughnessy brandished his strange, silent gun. “Just finished, and the second is still full, all six chambers.”

  “I’m glad you can count,” Burton snarled softly, “because when I get to three, you and I are both going to step out onto the stairs, pistols first. You will turn and look down the stairs, and I will look up.”

  “Why’s that, then?”

  “We killed the Pinkertons at the bottom of the mountain,” Burton reminded him. “I expect that if we are to see more of them, it’s likely that they will be coming down at us from above.”

  “What’s that mean, you reckon you’re the better shot?”

  “I know I’m the better shot,” Burton hissed. “I would have taken out the lock with one bullet, not an entire cylinder.”

  “Ah, that’s just a question of style,” the Irishman grunted.

  “One,” Burton riposted. “Two.”

  On three they stepped onto the stairs. Nothing. Burton began briskly marching up, O’Shaughnessy trailing behind.

  “Are we going to walk to the top of the bloody mountain, then?”

  “We’ll take the first lift we find,” Burton promised. He felt like he was talking to a child. Was this what being a father was like? he wondered. Maybe he didn’t want to get married after all.

  “There might have been a lift if we’d gone down, too,” the Irishman wheezed.

  “There might have,” Burton agreed. “But if there’s no lift at all, we need to be going up. Besides,” he took a deep breath himself, “you clearly need the exercise.”

  “I’m not a weakling,” O’Shaughnessy protested, “I’m just a bit drunk.”

  “Keep your pistols aimed down the stairs, then,” Burton urged him. “But you told me before you weren’t drunk. Just Irish, you said.”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret, Dick,” the Irishman said. “It’s the same fookin’ thing.”

  They climbed past several more passages, all leading off to the left. Burton could see that each ended in a dark doorway, and he guessed they were further maintenance access tunnels and didn’t waste his time exploring them. He was feeling winded and lightheaded himself when he stepped onto a longer stretch of flat corridor, wider and taller and better lit by two miniature, man-height Franklin Poles against the right wall.

  Between them was a glass door beyond which lay a dark shaft. The glass was bound and surrounded by brass and a brass control panel to one side framed a lever in a vertical slot with three positions: UP, NO CALL and DOWN. Burton thumbed the lever from NO CALL into the UP position with a loud click! and checked the percussion caps on his 1851 Navy while he waited for the tipsy Irish thug to catch up to him.

  Hishhhhhhhhh…

  The lift descended into view from above. It was small, fit to hold maybe four men, with three walls paneled in wood and brass and a brass accordion gate replacing the fourth wall and meeting the lift door. It all gleamed of shine and polish and only Burton’s close watch and sharp eyes caught the furled edge of a coat on one side of the lift, betraying at least one passenger.

  “Back!” he hissed to the Irishman.

  O’Shaughnessy’s eyes were stupid with drink, but something propelled him against the wall, back first, and he filled both his hands with silenced pistols.

  Burton raised his pistol.

  The lift stopped—

  bang! Bang! Bang!—

  and Burton started firing.

  The Colt 1851 Navy punched three holes through the glass and shining wood in a tight pattern that should have placed all three bullets into the neck of the man hiding there. He collapsed forward into the middle of the lift, but Burton paid him no attention. He was already shifting his aim to the second man, who spun into view holding a Sharps carbine and raising it to his shoulder.

  Bang!

  The Sharps fired first, and Burton felt the bullet bite into his hip. He staggered back, losing his grip on the Colt as he pulled the trigger.

  Bang!

  Burton’s
shot missed and the bullet tore away up the tunnel uselessly. The pistol clattered to the floor. Burton fought to regain his footing and bring the rapier up into a guard position, pointless as that would be against a rifle, but his wounds were too much and he flailed backwards until he collided with the wall.

  The man with the Sharps stalked forward out of the lift. He was clean-shaven, with a cleft chin and the determined look of a professional in his eye. He kept the muzzle of the Sharps pointed squarely at the center of Burton’s chest.

  “Drop the sword,” Sharps growled.

  Zing! Zing! Zing! Zing! Zing! Zing!

  Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy’s first shot hit the Pinkerton in the side of the head, but he kept firing. Every bullet hit, and the gunman crumpled to the floor under a tsunami of instant, nearly silent death.

  “I reckon you’d have got him with one shot,” O’Shaughnessy said with a lopsided grin. “I promise I’ll try harder next time.”

  Burton stooped to recover the Colt, hopping on one leg like a crane and wincing with pain. “I’ve reconsidered my view,” he said, trying to speak gently, but knowing that it came out surly. “Shoot as many bullets as you want.”

  “I’d give you a shot of my whisky,” the Irishman offered, “only I drank it all.”

  Pain seared Burton’s hip and thigh, but he forced himself to walk with as much dignity as he could muster into the lift. “Think nothing of it,” he brushed away the offer, knowing he wouldn’t be quite so cavalier if there were actually a bottle to hand. “I’ve had worse.”

  “I can see that you have,” O’Shaughnessy agreed, nodding pointedly at the scars on Burton’s face. “Only I doubt you had to walk out of that jungle on your face afterwards, did you?”

  Burton checked his hip in the lift. It bled, but not profusely, and the bullet had entered, missed the bone, and exited again. He’d live. They dragged the bodies out into the hall and then wiped blood off their shoes on the dead men’s clothing.

  “Try not to step in the blood,” he urged O’Shaughnessy.

  “Do you reckon me that big an idjit, then? I’ll not be painting a bright red trail behind us wherever we go. Mother O’Shaughnessy might have raised a numbskull or two, but she didn’t name them Tamerlane.”

  Both men climbed gingerly into the lift together. Burton shut the brass accordion door and heard a click outside as the external lever popped back to its NO CALL setting. Inside, a brass panel set into the wooden wall contained another lever running past five markers: GATE, TUNNEL, BAY, LAKE, and TOWER. The lever was currently set at TUNNEL.

  “It can’t have been just bad luck that these two men stumbled upon us,” Burton ruminated, examining the panel.

  “No, I reckon they’re expecting trouble,” the Irishman agreed. “Maybe they’ve seen what happened at the mine entrance, or they called down and got no answer. Then you called the lift with that switch outside, and they jumped on to see what they’d find.”

  Burton nodded. “I suggest we go to the Bay, one level up from where we are now.”

  “Bit of a gamble, isn’t that?” the Irishman asked.

  “Anything we do is a gamble,” Burton agreed. “I’m gambling that there aren’t other Pinkertons waiting for us at the Bay level, either because there aren’t others waiting anywhere, full stop, or because they’re waiting at a higher position.”

  “I’ll wager on the same horse,” O’Shaughnessy deferred to him. “If we actually had a horse, mind you, I’d gladly force the beast up the tunnel with me on its back, because I don’t mind admitting I’m a wee bit nervous. But I can’t do any more of these stairs.”

  “No more stairs,” Burton agreed, and began reloading the 1851 Navy.

  When they had both reloaded, he shoved the lever to BAY.

  Hishhhhhhhhhh!

  The lift slid smoothly upward, and the lever in the panel climbed to show their progress.

  * * *

  Jed Coltrane’s hands were free. He’d cut his own bonds before he’d handed the one knife the Danites had missed in searching him to the Englishman, and he’d kept his eyes shut and his head down since then.

  Now he opened his eyelids a crack and examined the room.

  Danites in long coats stood at every window, peeping out past the animal skin curtains that covered them, and one more waited behind the door. Jed counted six of them, including the leader with the jug handle ears, Lee, who paced up and down the center of the floor rubbing his hands together like he was warming up to pray. A single kerosene lantern burned, shedding its oily stink and its wavering yellow light from the hook by which it hung from the center beam of the ceiling.

  Jed lay piled in the corner by the chimney with the farmer and the rest of his family. They all had their hands tied and a few of them had bruised faces or bloody lips, but they wore patient, serious expressions on their faces. Maybe they were sure help was coming. Or maybe they were just ready to die.

  Jed wasn’t ready to die, not by a long shot. He wasn’t sure what it was he thought he had to live for, exactly, but whatever it was life brought him, he hadn’t had enough of it yet. He looked for a way out, and it wasn’t hard to find. The Danite at the nearest window watched the yard outside and not the prisoners, obviously relying on the fact that they were tied up and had been beaten. Either of the ends of the cabin’s long plank table or the rough wooden bench running along the wall would give Jed plenty of platform from which to launch himself into the air and through the window. The Danite would never see it coming, and then Jed would be out in the night and running for freedom.

  He was an acrobat, after all.

  Hell, maybe he ought to escape, to warn Brigham Young and Sam Clemens and the other. Jed had no reason to be confident that the young Englishman had somehow pulled it off. For all he knew, John Moses might be merrily on his way into the trap at that very moment.

  But if he jumped out the window, he’d be leaving prisoners behind. They had no one else to help them… that wasn’t right.

  Dammit, Coltrane, what’s happened to you?

  He clenched his jaw to keep from gnashing his teeth and giving away the fact that he was awake. Don’t go soft now, Jed Coltrane, he browbeat himself. Those are real guns those men are carrying, and they’ll happily blow you full of holes to make a point, much less to snatch the keys to this Kingdom they want so badly. They’re willing to burn down the whole damn show, they won’t bat an eye at having to snuff out a rousty like you.

  You can come back for the farmer and his family, or tell Brigham Young and he can send his people back. It’s his problem, anyway, not yours. Just because you went all soft on a little kid once doesn’t mean you have to go soft on everybody.

  Count to three, then go.

  One. The Danites kept their watch strictly. The man at the nearest window was fixed on the back pasture, and wouldn’t even see Jed until he was flying past.

  Two. “Ain’t they a bit late getting back?” a big-shouldered, red-haired Danite asked his chieftain.

  “Patience, Brother Robison,” John Lee answered. “We’ll give them a few more minutes.”

  Three.

  Jed stayed put.

  Dammit! he cursed himself.

  “Hoo-whee!” the man standing beside the doorway called out, and opened the door wide, letting in a rush of cold night air. Every Danite in the room turned into the breeze, pulling his pistol or readying his rifle to shoot.

  Jed had another clear shot at the window, and still he did nothing.

  He looked at the farmer Heber Kimball. As if the old man were echoing Jed’s own thoughts, he shook his head sadly.

  Brigham Young came into the room first, hands raised in surrender. The Mexican Ambassador followed, and Orrin Porter Rockwell, and then Sam Clemens and finally the Englishman Fearnley-Standish, all holding their hands up and bowing their heads in meek submission.

  “Shit.” The curse escaped Jed in a whisper, but it escaped him. No one seemed to notice except the farmer Kimball, who turned and shot Jed
a curious look. Jed winked back at him and dropped his eyelids back to slits.

  “You’ve got us, John,” Young said gruffly. “You’ve surprised me here like you surprised me in the Beehive House. Now let me surprise you.”

  “With what?” Lee asked. “A burst of pointless temper, followed by an even more pointless offer of forgiveness? Save your breath, whatever it’s worth to you. Jesus may be able to forgive me, Brigham. All you can do is promise not to bring me to trial. And even if I believed you, your promise is meaningless now, because as of tomorrow morning, you won’t be President of the Kingdom anymore.”

  Absalom Fearnley-Standish edged over to the knot of prisoners beside the fireplace and sat down. The Danites paid him no mind.

  “What if you fail?” Young asked.

  Lee laughed, harsh. “If I do, you won’t be there to see it. You’ll never see another sunrise, Brigham. I’m going to take you outside now, purely out of courtesy to Sister Kimball, and kill you in the goat pen. Of course, I don’t know how long Sister Kimball will appreciate my courtesy, that’s entirely up to Heber. Once you’re dead, he’ll have to choose to be with me or against me, like the Savior said. Naturally, there will be consequences, whichever choice he makes.”

  “We have to move,” Fearnley-Standish hissed in a soft whisper. Jed barely heard the words, they were so soft, and Heber Kimball shook his head to clear it from the distraction of the Englishman’s voice.

  “You’re not the Savior.” Brigham Young’s voice was gentle.

  “Neither are you.” John D. Lee’s voice was hard and flat. It was the sort of voice you’d use to accuse another rousty of gaffing a card game.

  “We can’t… be by… the chimney.” The Englishman was still whispering out of the corner of his mouth, shooting out his words in staccato bursts like the bullets out of John Browning’s machine-gun. The Danites, transfixed by the confrontation in the center of the room, didn’t hear him, and Jed and the Kimballs ignored him. His eyes began to twitch frantically.