Timpanogos

by D. J. Butler

  “Are you well?”

  Tam answered by throwing up, a thin stream of sour bile that he spat into the corner of the lift. The space well and truly reeked now, blood and sweat and bile, not to mention the urine released by the Pinkerton who had died in the lift.

  “Well enough.” Tam straightened and wiped polluted spittle from his chin with the back of his hand. “Right fookin’ cheerful, in fact. Now I’ve made some room for them, I’m ready to eat me a Pinkerton or two.”

  He grinned at the Englishman and opened the lift door.

  They hobbled out into cold night, weapons first, and Tam sucked in the freezing air to catch his breath. It helped, though he still thought he might throw up again.

  They stood outside, next to a large, long brick-shaped building made of plascrete and fitted with few windows. Of those few, even fewer showed any light. Before them was a sward of wild meadow grass and flowers, silvery-gray in the light, that fell gently down to a long, narrow lake, a shimmering silver pan. Halfway down the meadow, a gaping hole that must be the ramp into the Bay below lay at the end of a gravel road that led past the lake and disappeared at its end, apparently dropping off a cliff. The lake was fed by a glacier, a ribbon of shining white that climbed up a boulder-strewn field to a jagged rocky ridge above.

  Tam followed the ridge around with his eyes. The complex stood in a big horseshoe-shaped bowl, and was lidded over with the most amazing field of stars Tam had ever seen. The sky looked more star than void between, and though the moon was down, he felt he could see perfectly. Keep your wits about you, me boy, he told himself, but he was still stunned by the sight.

  Even more amazing than the stars, though, was the sight directly above Tam. The brickish building was punctuated by a single tower, something like the steeple of a village church. It rose into the darkness, gray and forbidden, and at its height it bulked out into some sort of platform. All along its length ran metal rods. The rods emerged from the plascrete just above the ground and ran vertically up towards the top of the tower. They were the thickness of Tam’s wrist, but they disappeared from sight before he could see any end of them. Smaller horizontal rods linked them to each other at intervals (and what could those possibly be for, then? they looked like the world’s biggest seamstress was building a hoop skirt around the tower, and hadn’t yet got to the crinoline).

  Clustered around the platform, hanging in mid-air… flying… were four enormous objects. Air-ships, Tam thought. Each bore four external pods like an animal’s four feet, paws down, and a golden light glowed in a dim ring, cupped into each paw.

  “Hell and begorra.”

  “Utnapishtim’s beard,” Burton added.

  “They look like Viking ships. They look like big bloody-damn-hell Viking ships with feet out the sides that can fly.”

  Burton harrumphed. “I would have said Sumerian magur-boats, but in the essentials we’re agreed.”

  Tam chuckled. “You smug English fook, with your queen and country. We’ve done it, don’t you see?” He pointed with a gun. “That up there is the world’s one and only flying air-ship fleet!”

  Burton grinned, looking even more like a pirate. “Let’s go up to the tower and take a closer look, shall we?” He slapped Tam on the shoulder. Tam would have been embarrassed to admit how good the friendly smack felt.

  They held their breaths and hobbled back into the lift. Burton pressed the lever to TOWER.

  Hishhhhhh!

  Tam vomited again.

  “Ach!” he spat on the lift floor. “Anthony’s knuckles, I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

  “Injuries,” Burton promptly suggested. “Sleep deprivation, physical exertion. Have you drunk enough water? You might be dehydrated. Altitude sickness, of course. We must be at eight or nine thousand feet of elevation here, judging by the way my ears feel.”

  “Fookin’ hell, you make me sound like a little girl. Altitude sickness, really?”

  “Really,” Burton affirmed, furrowing his brow. “And, of course, you drank an entire bottle of whisky in short order. All things considered, it’s amazing you’ve made it as far as you have.”

  “A single bottle is nothing,” Tam bluffed. “I drank whisky from Mother O’Shaughnessy’s breast.” He leaned against the wall and breathed deeply, spitting sour strings out of his mouth. His own tongue tasted like he’d been cleaning a stable floor with it.

  Hishhhh—

  the lift stopped moving. The door still faced a solid sheet of plascrete.

  “Damn!” Burton cursed.

  “Lift broken?”

  “Or we’re discovered. Let’s hope it’s the lift.” Burton jiggled the control lever out of the TOWER notch and back into it. Nothing happened.

  “We can’t stay here, we’ll be shot like rats.” Tam shot his eyes around the lift and spotted an indented square in the ceiling that looked like a trapdoor. “Emergency exit, right there,” he said.

  “I’ll go first,” Burton suggested. “Maybe there’s a ladder in the lift shaft. Or we can climb up the ropes.”

  “Like hell,” Tam snapped. “We’re both of us shot full of holes and I’m sick to boot, but you’ve had it worse than I have. Said so yourself. Give me a bloody-damn-hell hand, I’m going up.” He grinned. “For queen and country.”

  Burton made stirrups with his hands and hoisted Tam towards the ceiling. The mustached man grunted and ground his teeth but didn’t complain or even wince as Tam pushed open the trap door. He snaked his arms up through the open space and wedged his elbows into it, dragging his body up.

  He brushed aside loose cable and struggled to come to the top of the lift carriage. Taut cables locked into the carriage top near him shot straight up, but not into darkness as he had expected.

  Tam stopped. “Aw, shite,” he said. “Harris.”

  “Higley,” the Pinkerton corrected him. “Hello, McNamara. Top of the evening to you.”

  “O’Shaughnessy,” Tam sighed. “Listen, have you seen my friends? I seem to have lost them all in this great bloody complex of yours.”

  The rooftop of the lift carriage was level with the exit from the shaft. Four men stood in it, each holding a Henry rifle. Three of the men pointed their guns down at the lift. Higley held the muzzle of his weapon pressed directly against the lift cable.

  “Ah,” Higley chuckled, “you Irish are great liars. Come out slowly with your hands up, and tell your friend in the carriage he’s next. You try any funny business, any delay, any sign of a weapon, and I’ll squeeze the trigger and drop you both to the bottom of Timpanogos Mountain.”

  * * *

  Sam Clemens regained consciousness to the sound of gunfire. Some of it came from handguns, but there was bigger artillery in the mix, he could hear it.

  It took him a moment to remember where he was, and then another to realize why everything around him was dark.

  He tried to move, and discovered that his arms were free. He pushed, shifted planks away from his head, and found himself in a pile of rubble on the farmhouse floor. Yellow light from a kerosene lantern overhead illuminated a scene Sam had not expected to see.

  Jug-eared, square-headed John D. Lee held the Englishman Fearnley-Standish hostage. He edged sideways towards Sam, facing off against an irate-looking bald man holding a scattergun aimed straight at the center of Fearnley-Standish’s head, as if he thought he could punch through both men in a single shot, and beside him hunched a woman who looked the part of his wife and hefted a heavy iron skillet in one fist. Young Annie Webb was with them, Annie who had been such a sweet conversationalist at Bridger’s Saloon, but who now held her skirts and petticoats hiked up with both fists clenched and gritted teeth, as if, of all things, she planned to kick Lee. Poe’s dwarf stood at bay in the corner of the room with a knife up defensively in front of him, apparently protecting a huddle of children.

  “Anybody tries to stop me, I kill the Englishman.”

  Lee’s grip on Fearnley-Standish was not the conventional hostage-taking man
euver. He held the other man like one tired boxer clinches another, pinning Fearnley-Standish’s head to his own clavicle, and holding a Bowie knife to the side of the Englishman’s neck.

  Sam clambered out, coughing at the splintered dust his movements threw up. Lee stepped closer to him, and he saw what the other man was after.

  A pistol lay on the floor between them.

  Lee switched his knife to his other hand, pointing the tip now against Fearnley-Standish’s collarbone, and reached for the gun—

  Sam grabbed it—

  Lee snatched the other end, and pulled.

  Sam held tight and was hauled to his feet.

  “Don’t let go!” Annie shouted. Sam didn’t.

  Sam sneezed, blowing sawdust out of his hair and mustache. To his relief, he found he was holding the grip-end of the pistol, and Lee was holding the barrel.

  “Let go, or I’ll stab him!” Lee barked. He yanked again, but Sam held tight.

  “I believe the threats customarily belong to the man with the trigger end of the weapon,” Sam quipped. He pulled at the gun too, but couldn’t wrest it from the Danite chieftain’s grip. They tugged back and forth like children struggling with a knotted rope over a mud puddle. The loaded gun between reminded Sam not to laugh at the thought.

  Beside Sam on the floor, Brigham Young struggled to free himself. Heavier timbers lay across him than had pinned Sam, and he was still stuck. “Heber!” he roared. “If you could stop trying to commit murder for just a minute, you might free me!”

  The farmer looked abashed. He rushed to Young’s side and started heaving at the largest of the beams. His wife, though, stayed right where she was.

  “I think one of us should stick to the plan of committing murder,” she grumbled, taking an experimental swipe at the air with her skillet. “Or at least battery.”

  Brigham grunted, a sound that might have been agreement.

  Sam and Lee struggled.

  Bang! Bang! The shooting outside continued.

  “I’ll give you five hundred dollars,” Sam offered. “Just let the Englishman go and leave the Kingdom tonight.” That would be an expenditure he’d be happy to account for to the green eyeshade boys in Washington.

  Lee eyed the efforts to free Young like a wild horse fighting the bridle. “I’ll give you all of Iron County!” he snapped back. “Just let go of the gun!” The Danite didn’t relinquish his hold on the English diplomat.

  Sam really wished he could bring himself to pull the trigger. Any other man in the room would have killed John D. Lee by now. But Sam couldn’t do it. His brother Henry had died in government service, in a riverboat accident, of course, but it was much too close to dying as a soldier in uniform for Sam ever to feel cavalier about taking another man’s life.

  “Somehow, I doubt Iron County is worth five hundred dollars,” he huffed. He was panting from the effort of wrestling now, and sweat from the back of his hands trickled onto the pistol grip, making it slick and harder to hold on to. He wrapped his second hand around his first, to tighten his hold.

  “Give yourself up, Brigham!” Lee shouted. “Give yourself up and I won’t have to kill this English fellow!”

  The farmer Heber grunted and shoved aside the pillar that had Young trapped, exposing at the same time Ambassador Armstrong, who lay very still. Brigham Young rose to his feet. He was dirty and battered, but he stood upright in a strong motion, like a bear rising to sniff the wind, or a lion announcing its presence on the savannah. He sucked air in through his nostrils and his chest swelled.

  “You don’t have to kill him now, John,” he rumbled, his voice low and threatening like a storm cloud. “Don’t pretend you’re a puppet. Be a man. Choose. Lay down your arms, and you might still be forgiven.”

  “Choose?” Sam couldn’t help himself. “What kind of cog chooses?”

  “Shut up, Clemens!” Young barked at him.

  “You’re right, Brigham,” Lee laughed. “I am choosing. Hell, I chose years ago, and now we’re just playing out the consequences. Surrender, or I’ll choose again, choose to stick this boy like a pig.”

  Sweat poured down Sam’s forehead and neck and chest now, too. Any moment, he thought, I’ll lose hold of this gun, and Lee will start shooting. He half wished the farmer’s wife would go ahead and brain the Danite with her pan.

  “He’s dead.” The farmer knelt by Ambassador Armstrong, checking the big black man’s pulse and breathing. “He didn’t make it.”

  Ire flashed in Young’s eyes. “I can’t save you from hell, John,” he snarled. “I can’t even save you from the Mexicans. But if you start running right now, I can promise you that I won’t be the one chasing you.”

  John D. Lee spat on the floor. “That for your promises, Brigham!” he shouted.

  Sam felt his hands start to slip off the pistol—

  Lee grinned triumphantly and jerked at the gun—

  Sam stumbled back—

  and Absalom Fearnley-Standish punched John D. Lee in the kidney.

  “Aaaagh!” Lee hollered, throwing his head back and tearing the revolver out of Sam’s grip. Now Sam saw that Fearnley-Standish was biting the Danite as well, his teeth sinking into Lee’s neck until blood flowed.

  Lee stabbed the Englishman. He missed his neck, stabbing down instead shallowly across Fearnley-Standish’s collarbone and into his chest.

  Fearnley-Standish lost his grip and staggered back.

  Lee raised the knife to stab again—

  and Mrs. Kimball smashed him with her skillet.

  Crack!

  Sam heard Lee’s elbow break under the hammer of the heavy iron at the same moment he tumbled back onto the rubble from which he’d emerged.

  “I ain’t gonna leave nothing for the Mexicans to take!” she shouted. She raised the skillet again—

  Lee staggered sideways in the direction of the door, fumbling with the pistol to bring it up into position and cock it—

  Annie Webb launched herself past the enraged farmeress, spinning like a thrown saucer, boots-first in attack—

  bang!

  smoke poured from Lee’s pistol and Annie fell back, hitting the floor hard in a tangle of arms and legs with the Englishman.

  Lee stepped forward, raising his pistol to fire at Brigham Young—

  and the dwarf snatched it out of his hand, sailing through the air in a leap worthy of any circus acrobat.

  Heber Kimball grabbed his scattergun and swung it around to shoot at Lee, but Lee didn’t wait for the shot. He ducked out the farmhouse door and was gone.

  Boom!

  Heber’s scattergun kicked a hole in his own door, knocking it back open again, and then Mrs. Kimball threw her frying pan out the door on the Danite’s heels.

  “And good riddance!” she shouted.

  Outside, the shooting sounds grew fainter and more sporadic, as if maybe the firefight was ending and drifting away from the Kimball farm.

  “The day is ours,” Brigham Young pronounced. He sounded very grave when he said it, and also very tired, and then he turned to the farmer. “Heber, I’m going to have to leave Ambassador Armstrong with you, along with one or two other people.”

  “Of course,” Heber said at once. “And the meeting tomorrow morning? The Twelve are supposed to be there, and the Seventy, to replace you.”

  Young’s face darkened. “I’ll get into the Lion House tonight,” he glowered, “and send out messages. I’ll hold that meeting tomorrow morning, all right, but it will be the trial of John Lee and Bill Hickman.”

  “But what about Port?” Mrs. Kimball pointed out.

  “Rockwell!” Sam snapped. He ached and his lungs wheezed, but he sent himself to shifting timbers. Other men joined in, and it was he and the dwarf Coltrane together who slid aside a wide plank to reveal the mountain man. He lay dirty and still under criss-crossing beams, with a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth.

  “You alright, Rockwell?” Sam asked. He was a little reluctant to touch what was in al
l likelihood a dead body, but the dwarf wasn’t so finicky. He slapped Orrin Porter Rockwell twice, once across each cheek. Young’s bodyguard didn’t stir, until suddenly his lips cracked open and he spoke.

  “No… bullet or blade… shall harm thee,” Rockwell intoned slowly, without opening his eyes. “And not no fallin’ ceilings, neither.”

  * * *

  “And what happens,” Poe asked, “if we succeed?” He coughed, feeling his lungs tear and bleed from the force of it.

  The steam-truck rattled up the long tunnel towards the top of Timpanogos Mountain. Timber supports flashed by in the truck’s forward lights like the ribs of a gigantic whale through whose innards Poe now traveled. He wondered whether he was being swallowed or regurgitated by the thing.

  “We restore Brigham,” Roxie said. “He will have to administer justice, of course. Some men will have to hang, or be exiled, but for all his gruffness, Brigham Young is a soft touch. Most of Lee’s rebels will just go back to their wives and children. I don’t know what he’ll do about someone like Brother Orson.”

  She looked away, out the window.

  “I mean us,” Poe said. “You can be evasive if you like, but I know that you know that I mean us. I want to talk about our future, together.”

  “You’re dying, Edgar.” She turned back to face him. In the blue glow of light emanating from the dials and meters of the steam-trucks control panel, Poe saw tears gently sliding down her cheeks.

  Poe slammed his fist in frustration against the steam-truck’s wheel. “Does that mean I am incapable of love?” he demanded.

  He bit back further words that welled up in his throat, about her unfairness and about the injustice of the universe. What kind of tyrannical God would make him suffer his torturous love for this woman for so many years, and then take it away, just at the moment he was about to touch it?

  “Of course not,” she said softly. “But it means that you have no future at all.”

  “Is that the glorious secret doctrine of the Mormons, then?” he pressed. “You dragged your wagons across the plains from Nauvoo, scattering your dead along the way like seeds to the wind, for the mighty and seductive call death is the end, o man, gnash your futile teeth and despair?”