Liahona (15 page)

“Why look, it’s the Englishman,” Bill Hickman squeaked, and
then walked past Absalom with no further salutation.

“We’ve already seen this one,” Lee added to the Shoshone
Chief, and then he, too walked on, leaving Absalom floundering alone.
 

Chief Pocatello shrugged and followed the two white
men.
 
The three of them paced
around the pit, examining the
Liahona’s
passengers and crew.
 
Absalom
trailed them at a short distance, feeling ineffectual but unable to think of
anything to say that would get their attention and respect.
 
Some of the crew seemed to recognize
the two white men and glared at them, but Hickman and Lee reserved their
interest for certain of the passengers.
 
They whispered to each other about Burton, and Hickman even bent to toss
a small dirt clod at the man, like you might test a wild animal, but Ruffian
Dick lay still, breathing deeply and giving no signs of anything but restful
slumber.
 

They smirked at Burton’s lady friend Roxie too, and
separately at Absalom’s Angel, who sat with the older woman; the former spit on
their boots and the latter looked away, bored.
 
Hickman and Lee continued on, then stopped for a long time
staring at the Egyptian antiquities showman Archibald.
 
He sat quietly on the dirt and looked
back, gently.
 
Absalom positioned
himself by the two ladies and tried desperately to think of something to say to
confront their captors.

“That ain’t a natural beard, is it?” Hickman asked,
squinted.
 
He pulled up one of the
torches and held it over the other man.
 

“No,” Archibald agreed, “it isn’t.
 
I’m a showman.
 
My show is a serious one, and requires the gravitas of a beard.
 
Lamentably, I myself do not grow a good
one, so this beard is… borrowed.”
 
He smiled.

“Didn’t you have a helper of some kind, back at the Fort?”
Lee inquired.
 
“A short man, a
dwarf?”

“I did,” the exhibitor agreed.
 
“Tell me if you find him—he’s disappeared, along with
some of my tools.”

“Lots of folks are vamoosing all of the sudden around
here.
 
Maybe,” Hickman suggested, eyes
glinting cruelly as he planted the torch, stepped closer and pulled a long
knife from his belt, “the little bugger’s hiding in that haystack on your
chin.”
 
He lashed out quickly, like
a snake, and grabbed the carnival man by his neck.
 
Lee stepped back a pace and put his hands on the butt of the
pistols on his belt, as if warning bystanders not to intervene.
 
Doctor Archibald made no move to resist
or flee, but lay limply in the other man’s grip while his false beard was
shaved down to gum and stubble.

“There, now,” Hickman said as he finished the rough shave
and re-sheathed the knife.
 
“You
look presentable, much more like your picture.
 
I guess Brother Brigham’ll be happy to see you now.”

Like his picture?
 
What was Hickman talking about?
 
And why did he think the traveling presenter of Egyptian antiquities
would be interested in an audience with Brigham Young?
 
Absalom trembled, feeling out of his
depth.
 
He turned to the ladies,
meaning to offer them a reassuring glance, and was surprised to see, for just a
split second before she reasserted control, an expression of shock and surprise
on Roxie’s face.

“Yes, but did you find my dwarf?” the showman quipped.

Hickman didn’t take the joke well.
 
“No, Mr. Poe, I didn’t,” he squeaked, and pulled a battered revolver
from a holster low on his hip, cocking it ominously with one thumb.
 
“Maybe I didn’t search you closely
enough.”

Absalom didn’t want to intervene.
 
In his heart, he knew that he was not a brave man, and he
desperately wanted Doctor Archibald, or
Poe
,
if that was his name, to fight his own battles.
 
He apparently had a history with Lee and Hickman.

But watching these frontier bullies threaten and intimidate
a harmless old man reminded him too much of Abigail, of her being abducted by
the notorious Rockwell—Rockwell, whom Absalom had met the night before
and to whom he had done nothing, though the man richly deserved any thrashing
that any person at all might be able to give him—and something in him
pushed him to act.

Also, he couldn’t let his Angel watch him stand by any
longer.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he intruded, forcing his legs by an
effort of will to carry him forward.
 
“We were never able to finish our conversation last night, and I was
unable to ask you a question I had meant to pose.”
 
He almost stumbled to a stop, conscious of eyes on him.
 
“I’m coming to the Kingdom of Deseret
on official business, on business, in fact, of Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” he hoped that a little
title-waving might help defuse the situation, “but I have personal affairs to
see to as well.”

“Yes?” Lee prompted him slowly.

“My sister,” Absalom said, then cleared his throat.
 
“I’ve come looking for my sister.
 
Her name is Abigail Fearnley-Standish,
though it’s possible…” he trailed off, mustering his strength so as to be able
to speak the unspeakable, “it’s possible that she goes by the name of
Rockwell
now.”

Hickman paused and squinted in Absalom’s directed, pistol
cocked and pointed at the sky, the lapels of Archibald’s coat clenched in his
free hand.
 
“Funny,” he grumbled,
“I thought our conversation last night went on plenty long, and I didn’t hear
nothing about no sister then.”

Lee looked surprised and amused.
 
“I don’t think I know your sister,” he said.
 
“Are you suggesting that she might be
married to
Orrin Porter Rockwell
?”
 
He and Hickman shared a look that was
both knowing and surprised.

Absalom felt very conspicuous now, very vulnerable and very
alone.
 
He also felt the gaze of
his Angel upon him like a mantle of lead.
 
Unsure if he could speak without bursting into tears or fainting, he
nodded and thrust forth his jaw in that same stoic, ape-like expression he’d
seen on Dick Burton’s face every day now for months.

“Well, ain’t that peculiar?” Hickman drawled, tossing
Archibald to the dirt and turning his attention to Absalom.
 
“’Cause as I recollect it, last night
we asked you if you’d seen our friend Orrin Porter Rockwell, and you allowed as
you hadn’t.”

I hadn’t
, Absalom
wanted to say, even though it would have been a lie, but he couldn’t force the
words out.
 
He managed to shake his
head, and thought he kept his hands from trembling too terribly much.
 

“Not only that,” Lee remembered, his baritone becoming a
menacing growl, “you suggested that you didn’t even know who Porter Rockwell
was
.”

“I don’t know him,” Absalom gulped out, and he put up his
hands, palms forward, in a non-threatening gesture.
 
“Please be calm, I don’t know Mr. Rockwell.”

“I’m inclined to think that you’re lying to us,” Hickman
said, and he leveled his pistol at Absalom’s forehead.
 
“And if you don’t come clean now, I’m
inclined to shoot you.”

Chapter Five

Jed Coltrane spent the night lying on the rooftop of the
Liahona’s
wheelhouse with the boy John Moses.
 
After the Shoshone had disarmed and
unloaded the steam-truck’s passengers and crew, they’d turned the boiler down
and idled all the electricks, and in the blue-firefly-dotted darkness that
followed Jed had slipped down briefly to collect a few items to make the night
a little more bearable: a pea coat from the wheelhouse, a couple of wool
blankets from one of the cabins, a large tin of chocolate cookies and a bottle
of milk from the galley, and a flask of brandy from his own room.
 
He’d stuffed the big-eyed boy into the
pea coat and then wrapped each of them inside a wool blanket, and they’d
munched cookies together in silence in Jed’s little stick joint on the
wheelhouse roof.

He’d taken one other thing from the wheelhouse, which was a
long telescoping spyglass, of steel-bound brass construction and providing an
impressive degree of magnification when fully telescoped.
 
Jed had let John Moses look through the
spyglass briefly, but then the boy had fallen asleep in his puddle of wool and
Jed had spent a couple of hours alone, examining the Shoshone camp carefully
and trying to figure out his next move.

Not far behind the
Liahona
, a couple of clocksprung horses had galloped up to the gate of the
encampment and been admitted.
 
Jed
had seen plenty of clocksprung animals in Eli Whitney’s South; clocksprung men
planted and harvested cotton, clocksprung mules pulled every domestic load
imaginable, and soldiers and cavaliers rode around the roads of the country,
roads so bad for the most part that only the ruggedest trucks could have
survived them, on the backs of clocksprung horses.
 
These two mechanical animals
clop-clop-hissed
through the welcoming Shoshone braves and he thought
about stealing them, but they too quickly disappeared with their riders, two
white men in long coats, in the direction of the central bluff.
 
Jed snapped his spyglass shut in
frustration.

So much for that idea, Coltrane, he thought.
 
Only a real mark would work at how to
sneak deeper into the camp in order to steal his means out.
 
What are you, Coltrane, new?
 
The dwarf sat back and returned to
considering his other options.
 

If the steam-truck were smaller—
much
smaller—he might be able to operate it
himself, and try to break out of the compound that way.
 
He might be able to steal a horse, he
thought, but he didn’t know how to get the gate open.
 
He considered flight, tunneling, disguise, and everything
else he could think of, watching the Shoshone sentinels drift occasionally
through the witch-lit camp, and had finally reached the point of surrendering
to the inevitable and settling in to wait, when the Shoshone opened their gate
and a second truck rolled in.

“Good hell,” he muttered to himself.
 
It was the
Jim Smiley
.

He trained the pilfered spyglass on the smaller truck and
wished he had a better way to listen.
 
Even without being able to hear the words that passed between them,
though, there was no mistaking the friendliness of the greeting that Sam
Clemens and his skinny, porkpie hat-wearing Irishman got from the old Shoshone
and his braves who ambled up to receive them.
 
With the telescope, too, Jed could clearly see the nut
change hands—Clemens carefully counted out a series of gold coins and
passed them over to the Shoshone, who whooped in gleeful appreciation.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.
 
“What’s going on here?”
Clemens and the Indians walked together, chatting and grinning and slapping
each other on the back, on towards the bluff in the center of the
encampment.
 
As Jed watched through
his spyglass, they disappeared into the tunnel mouth into which all the
Liahona’s
crew and passengers had been taken.

Leaving the
Jim Smiley
unattended, thin twists of steam and coal smoke jetting from its pipes.

Jed looked again at the compound’s gate.
 
It was an electricks work, so Jed would
be afraid to touch it with his hands, but he knew enough about the subject to
believe that rubber protected you from electricks, and the
Jim Smiley
was a steel capsule surrounded by walls of
rubber—big India-rubber tires and an inflated black rubber belt most of
the way around.
 
That ought to be
enough, he thought.
 
He could sneak
aboard the
Jim Smiley
, bring her
out of her idle and simply charge out the gate.
 
How hard could it be?
 
And by the time anyone wised up to him, he’d be halfway back to Fort
Bridger.
 
There he’d...

He faltered.
 
He’d what, exactly?

Would he tell the locals that he was a secret agent for a
covert leadership faction of the southern States, men who were illegally
organizing a shadow government in preparation for an expected civil war, and
ask for volunteers to come help rescue his fellow secret agent from wild
Indians?
 
Jeez, if he had cash, he
might be able to hire some muscle, but he didn’t even have that, and even if he
went door to door in the
Liahona
and
burgled all its rooms, he doubted, from the look of the passengers, that they’d
have enough wealth all together to hire a single one-eyed gunman and a spavined
nag.

He could jump into the
Jim Smiley
and ride jock down the mysterious tunnel, but that
seemed like suicide for a lot of reasons.

He gnawed his knuckles and schemed.
 
He knew that Poe was carrying something
that Brigham Young wanted, though Jed wasn’t sure what it was.
 
Not that it mattered; he couldn’t pack
all of Poe’s Egyptian knicks-knacks off the
Liahona
and onto the
Jim Smiley
—it was too bulky for him to do it alone, and
even if he had help, he couldn’t manage it without being seen.
 

If he could get a message to Young, though, then the man
might send Deseret troops, or some of his feared Danite assassins, out to
rescue Poe and retrieve whatever it was he and Poe were negotiating about.
 
But Jed had never before been west of
the Mississippi, and he wasn’t sure of the way to the Great Salt Lake City.

But Clemens knew the route.
 
That was where he was headed.

And Jed could stow away.

He checked his shoulder holster and big jacket pocket; the
gun and the scarab cylinder were secure.
 
He could hide in the
Jim Smiley’s
lockers and kill the two Federal men before they got to Deseret, just to be
sure.
 
The boy, of course, he’d
leave here.

He looked down at John Moses, asleep with a cherubic smile
on his face.

He shivered.
 
The night was getting cold.
 
The boy was wrapped in a pea coat and a blanket, but he still might feel
the chill.
 
Plus, when he woke up
alone, he might be afraid.
 
And if
the Indians found him, who knew what they’d do?

Jed shook himself.
 
“What the hell are you thinking, Coltrane?” he demanded out loud.
 
The boy was warm and sleeping like a
log, and if he woke up, there were cookies and milk to finish.
 
Sooner or later, someone would find
him, and he’d be taken care of.
 
If
he got too nervous, he could always let himself down.

He scooted to the lip of the rooftop, then paused.
 
Aw, hell, he thought.
 
The boy might talk.
 
He might talk to the Shoshone, tell
them he’d been up here, and they might figure out he’d killed their
braves.
 
They might even figure out
he’d stowed away on the
Jim Smiley
, and
come after him.
 
Worse, they could
figure it out while the
Jim Smiley
was still sitting in the compound, and then it would be game over, Jed
Coltrane, you miserable little dwarf.

He’d have to kill the boy.

No time to have qualms about it; Jed forced himself to grab
the Pinkerton’s gun and jerk it from its holster.
 
He pointed it at John Moses’s head.
 
He felt freezing cold sweat running his
own face, and he blinked stinging salt out of his eyes.

John Moses snored, softly.

What if he needed someone to show him the way to the Great
Salt Lake City?

What if things went wrong on the
Jim Smiley
and he had to kill the two Federals early?
 
He’d need someone like the little
midshipman, to show him which turns to take.
 

Damn you, Coltrane, you’re fooling yourself.

But in his heart, he knew he wanted to be fooled.
 

Jed re-holstered the gun and shook John Moses gently.
 
“Come on, you little shit, nap’s
over.
 
We got to get moving before
the sun comes up.”

*
  
*
  
*

The antiquities exhibitor began to cough.
 
Hard, loud, wet coughs racked his
chest, and his entire body jerked in obvious spastic pain.
 
He doubled over, elbows digging into
his knees, hacking and coughing and making retching sounds as he spat into the
dirt.

“Damn, old man,” Hickman drawled through his nose, “you
don’t sound good.”
 
He turned his
head to look at the showman whose false beard he’d shaved off—

a Shoshone warrior shouted an objection, jumping forward—

but there was Absalom’s Angel, spinning improbably in the
air like a beskirted top, the heel of her boot slamming into the brave’s
breastbone, impelling him backwards and to the earth—

and Burton was standing at Absalom’s side, revolver cocked
and pointed at Hickman’s jaw.
 
Lee
and Hickman both started, taken by surprise, and then froze.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence during which
Absalom focused on willing his bladder not to betray him.

“He stole my gun,” one of the Shoshone grumbled sullenly.

“Well then, I reckon this is a standoff,” Hickman suggested.

“I disagree,” Burton answered in a deep deadpan.
 
Absently, Absalom noticed that the
gypsy had stopped coughing.
 
He now
stood upright and was holding a cloth to his mouth.

“I might could shoot your boy here,” the Deseret man pointed
out.

“You do me a favor if you shoot him,” Burton snarled.
 
“And then I shoot you, so I’ve done my
duty to the Queen and am doubly happy.
 
Not only that, but I go to the Geographical Society and regale my
colleagues with tales of my adventure killing genuine Western outlaws.
 
I take your bullet-punched skull along
as an exhibit, and then I put you on my mantel.
 
I win three times over.
 
From my point of view, the best thing you could possibly do
right now would be to shoot Abby here.”

“Abigail!” Absalom cried out indignantly, and then realized
what he’d said.
 
“I mean
Absalom
!
 
My
name is Absalom Fearnley-Standish, blast you all!”
 
He was torn between feeling gratitude for Burton’s
intervention and fear that Burton might mean exactly what he said.

“My friend might could shoot
you
, though,” Hickman continued, nodding in Lee’s
direction.
 
Lee kept his hands
clearly off his pistol grips, but they were close enough, Absalom thought
nervously, that he could grab them and shoot quickly.
 
He wondered if he were about to see a real display of
Western quick-draw gunfighting.
 
He
might enjoy that, he thought idiotically, if it didn’t result in his own death.

Lee, though, wasn’t focusing on the confrontation in front
of him.
 
Instead, he seemed frozen
in place, his hands hovering in place, his gaze fixed on Doctor Archibald, who
still held his handkerchief before his mouth with one hand, and with the other
seemed to be making circular gestures in front of the cloth.
 
Burton, in any case, paid not the
slightest attention to Lee.

The explorer shrugged. “I’ll take the risk.”

Hickman squinted, his face twitching slightly.
 
“You got my back, ain’t you, John?” he
called out.

To Absalom’s surprise, Lee didn’t answer.
 
He swayed slightly on his feet, and
Absalom wondered if he’d been drinking.
 
He still stood staring at the man called Poe and his white handkerchief.

“Lee?”
 
Hickman
risked a split-second glance in his friend’s direction.

Lee fell forward headlong, crashing full-length into the
dirt.
 

“Lee!” Hickman shouted, and the slight trembling of his
pistol hand made Absalom feel very nervous.

“Your friend’s unwell,” Burton observed with a sneer.

Absalom was beginning to take heart, and felt enough bravado
to pile on.
 
“Perhaps he’s been
drinking,” he suggested.