Teancum

Teancum

City of the Saints, Part
the Fourth

By D.J. Butler

Cover Art and Design by
Nathan Shumate

Copyright 2012 D.J. Butler

Read more about D.J. Butler
at
http://davidjohnbutler.com

I worked hard to produce this book.
 
Pirating this book means stealing from
me; please don’t do it.

City of the Saints
is
an adventure in four parts:

Part the First is
Liahona
.

Part the Second is
Deseret
.

Part the Third is
Timpanogos
.

Part the Fourth is
Teancum
.

If you like
City of the Saints
, you might also enjoy
Rock Band Fights Evil
, my action-horror pulp fiction serial.

Rock Band #1 is
Hellhound
on My Trail
.

Rock Band #2 is
Snake
Handlin’ Man
.

Rock Band #3 is
Crow
Jane
.

Rock Band #4 is
Devil
Sent the Rain
.

Rock Band #5 is
This
World Is Not My Home
.

Chapter Sixteen

“Be good for the Captain and Mrs. Rockwell,” Jed told John
Moses.
 
He sniffed a little, but he
told himself he wasn’t crying.
 
It
was just cold at night in the desert, that was all, and it made his nose drip a
little.

“Can’t you come with us?” the little boy asked.
 
He sobbed openly.

Jed shook his head.
 
Suck it up, Coltrane.
 
“I
got things I gotta do,” he said.
 
He wasn’t exactly sure who’s side he was on now, really, but he knew Poe
wanted him to help Brigham Young, and that seemed like the generally right
thing to do.
 
At least, all the pit
vipers and crazy people seemed to be on the other side, and that was a pretty
good weather vane.
 
“You got things
you gotta do, too.
 
You gotta get
home, so your poppa and your two mammas and Captain Jones can all stop worrying
about you.”

John Moses nodded slowly.
 
“And being brave is doing what you gotta do, even when
you’re scared.”

“Especially when you’re scared.”

“Don’t you let my silly brother talk you into any notion
that I’m leaving,” Abigail Rockwell told her battered, bear-like husband as she
wrapped her arms around his chest and squeezed him once.
 
She shot a look of pure venom at the Englishman
that made Jed flinch, even though it wasn’t aimed at him.
 
“And don’t you even try.”

Annie Webb flared at her nostrils in indignation, but
Fearnley-Standish answered before she could.

“Do dot worry, dear sister,” he said.
 
The poor bastard’s nose was smashed
nearly flat, and the injury had taken away his power to pronounce the letter
N
.
 
“I
have do such idtedtions.
 
Besides,
my brother-id-law has gived do iddicatiods of beigg susceptible to my limited
powers of persuasiod.”

Jed hugged the little boy and then let Abigail Rockwell pry
him away.
 
She climbed into a
buckboard with Mrs. Kimball at the reins, Mr. Kimball and his scattergun at her
side, and the body of Ambassador Armstrong arranged on the floor.

Captain Jones grabbed the dwarf’s hand and shook it
vigorously.
 

“Any time you need a berth, boyo,” the Welshman said
gruffly, “come find me.”

Jed nodded.
 
He
was numb.
 
“Get him back to John
Browning safe,” he mumbled.

“Aye, of course I will.
 
The
Liahona’s
skipper
joined the others on the buckboard.

Jed turned and followed Sam Clemens and Brigham Young across
the stubble-splashed field towards the nearer of the two Striders.
 
The knives at his belt and in his boot
were a comforting weight.
 
He had
been particularly happy to find one of the dead Danites armed with a Colt
Vibro-blade, and he now wore the weapon openly, like a sword.

He caught up to the other two men as they reached the
Strider.
 
It crouched low to board
its passengers while the other stood guard.

“I don’t understand how we were trapped, Mr. President,”
Clemens was saying.
 
“What good is
having a prophet along if he can’t warn us of ambushes?”

“A prophet isn’t a fortune-teller,” Young snorted.
 
“No man walks around knowing his future
all the time.”

“Oh?” Clemens gave Young a boost and helped him clamber up
onto the bent leg of the Strider.
 
“Then what’s a prophet for?
 
I mean, other than to warn people against wearing fornication pants?”

Young scrambled over the side and into the carriage of the
Strider.
 
“A prophet carries the
word of the Lord, Mr. Clemens,” he barked, “but it’s the Lord who decides what
that word will be, not the prophet.”

“Seems like the other fellers are the ones as have the
prophet,” Jed muttered.
 
He hadn’t
meant it to be audible, but he was cranky and his words came out kind of
loud.
 
When Clemens and Young both
owled their heads around to look at him, he explained.
 
“They found us awful easy, is all I’m
saying.”

Brigham Young coughed.
 
“Yes, well, that’s my fault.”

“Explain, o swami,” Clemens urged him.

“Heber Kimball is my closest friend and has been for years,”
Young offered.
 
“Anyone in the
Kingdom would know that, and certainly Lee.
 
Aside from one of my own houses, with one of my own wives,
there was no more obvious place for me to go for help.
 
In hindsight.”

Sam Clemens started to laugh.
 
“Prophetic hindsight!” he guffawed, and climbed into the
carriage himself.
 
“I might have to
get myself a signboard and go into the prophet business with you.
 
Or against you.
 
Set up shop across the street.”

Jed hopped easily up the outside of the Strider.
 
“Shut up, Clemens,” he growled.

Sam Clemens jutted out his jaw.
 
“I didn’t realize I had a midget in my chain of command.”

“That’s me, Jed Coltrane, circus freak,” the dwarf
conceded.
 
“Jest ’cause you’re
taller don’t mean you’re right.”

Clemens shut his trap and chewed on Jed’s words.

“Just because you’re short doesn’t mean you can be a boor,”
Brigham Young bristled.

“Jest ’cause I’m helping you don’t make you my prophet,” Jed
shot back.

All three of them fell silent then, until Sam Clemens again
began to laugh.

“So that’s settled,” he chuckled.
 
“Everyone is his own man.”

“I ain’t!” Orrin Porter Rockwell snapped, hurling himself
into the carriage just as the legs extended and the carriage rose into the
air.
 
“I’m Brigham’s man, come hell
or high water or even undeserved kicks in the teeth.”

“What about the kicks you actually earn?” Clemens asked.

Pffffffft-ankkkh!

“I don’t know whether the Strider will hold four
passengers,” Young said warily, looking over the side of the carriage at the
harvested field falling away beneath them.

“What’s the word of the Lord on the subject?” Clemens
needled him again, but his voice was gentler this time.

“You ain’t got four,” Jed grunted.
 
“You got three and a half.”

“Don’t joo worry,” the Striderman at the controls called
back over his shoulder.
 
Ramirez,
Jed thought the fellow’s name was.
 
And the gunner’s name was Polk, which was a queer name for a black man
from Mexico, but that’s life.
 
“She’ll hold.”

The other Strider bent low to pick up its passengers.
 
That was the pilot Ortiz and the gunner
Jackson, and they’d carry Absalom Fearnley-Standish and the Mormon girl Annie,
who wouldn’t stop making eyes at him.

“Where to, Mr. President?” Clemens asked, jolly again.

“As close in to the Great Salt Lake City as we can get,”
Young rumbled.
 
“I don’t think
we’ll be able to take the Striders all the way, they’re too conspicuous.”

“Don’t you want publicity?” Clemens asked.

“Not the kind that comes from getting shot,” Jed guessed
sourly.

“The
Jim Smiley
is
parked in a lot on the east side of the city,” Clemens suggested.
 
“That’s my steam-truck.
 
She’s distinctive, but a lot less
distinctive than the Striders.
 
Lee
and his boys might not know her.”

“They know her,” Young said grimly.
 
“But it can’t hurt us to have the
option.
 
Let’s go get your
steam-truck, Mr. Clemens.”

The other Strider rose to its height.
 
Absalom Fearnley-Standish sat in it
like a Turkish pasha, between two women.
 
He waved, and the Striderman pilots exchanged arm gestures, and then
Ramirez turned his machine and began
pffft-ankkkkh
ing across the fields.

“It also can’t hurt us to have a supply of decent cigars,”
Clemens added.

*
  
*
  
*

The Pinkertons had taken the jar of scarabs.
 
They’d missed the hypocephalus, folded
up as it was like a handkerchief, and also the whistle, which looked
innocuous.
 
And they couldn’t take
away his baritsu training.

Passing the top of a stairwell leading down, Poe made his
move.

He simply stepped sharply to his right, planting one foot in
front of the fleshy-jowled Pinkerton holding him on that side, and leaned with
his body into the man’s elbow.
 
Jowls missed his footing, then missed the floor, crashing hard onto the
second step and bouncing down the stairs, wobbling face first.

Before he hit, Poe was already turning to the burly guard
holding his left arm.
 
Burly
grabbed for Poe’s coat—

Poe raised his tied hands, as if the knotted rope binding
them were a weapon with which he could parry—

and Burly grabbed the rope.

Poe fell back, pulling Burly, who was much larger than Poe
himself, forward with the power of his own lunge.
 
He curved his back to hit the floor rolling and tipped Burly
up and over his head with a direction-prompting kick into the man’s crotch.

“Ooomph!” Burly gasped, and let go of the ropes.

Poe badly wanted to grab the whistle around his neck and
blow it, but he resisted.
 
That was
his ace in the hole, and he was afraid he’d get the notes wrong—it was so
blasted hard when you couldn’t actually
hear
them yourself—or it would take him too much time to get them
just right.
 
And once the
Pinkertons realized what he was trying to do, surely they’d take the whistle
away.

No, the whistle had to wait.

He blocked a charging hatchet-faced man with a heel in the
man’s midriff, kicking off immediately and using the impetus to roll to his feet.

Beyond the crowd of stampeding Pinkertons, Poe saw Orson
Pratt again draw his strange weapon.
 

Two fingers to two beady eyes knocked another Pinkerton to
the ground, and a quick chop to the throat took down a fourth.

Zottt!

The blue light of the electricks in the hall was pierced and
empurpled with a sudden red wave erupting out of Orson Pratt’s weapon.
 
A beam as thick as Poe’s calf burst
from the gun and lanced into the plascrete wall beyond Poe.
 
The plascrete bubbled instantly under
the touch of the ray, exploding into blisters, melting and running down to the
floor.
 
A thick stench, like the
foulest stink of a tar pit, assailed Poe’s sinuses.

The beam snapped off.

Poe seized another Pinkerton by shoving one finger up each
of the man’s dilated nostrils, pulling his body forward over Poe’s knee and
slamming him head-first into the melted segment of wall as Poe deflected
another man’s punch with the elbow of his other arm.

The reek of scorched flesh cut sharply into the tarry smell
and Nostrils shrieked in pain.

Poe turned to run.

“Stop, or I kill her!”

Poe burst into a paroxysm of coughing and stumbled.

Hands grabbed him and he batted them away, but his will
evaporated and he didn’t have the strength.
 
Big-knuckled men with bruised faces and wounded pride in
their eyes dragged him back and held him before the Madman Pratt.

Pratt held his gun to the back of Roxie’s head.
 
The thing didn’t have a trigger that
Poe could see, but it bore some sort of bolt or lever on the side, and Pratt
kept one thumb carefully on top of it.

“Aaaaaagh!” Nostrils continued to howl.
 
Out of the corner of his eye, Poe saw
that the man’s head appeared to be stuck to the melted plascrete of the wall.

“The phlogiston gun.”
 
Poe felt crushed.

“Bit of a misnomer, of course,” Pratt huffed.
 
“It doesn’t shoot out phlogiston, not
like you’d think with that name.
 
Phlogiston is already in everything that exists.
 
It’s in you, in me, in the plascrete,
in the air.
 
It’s the stuff that
burns out when something is incinerated, and what is left behind is the calx.”

“I’ve heard this,” Poe muttered.
 
He could get away himself, but the price would be Roxie’s
life.
 
Hers was a death he had
fantasized for ten long and lonely years, and now he found it too high a price
to pay.
 
“Ether rays.”

“
Ether
rays?
 
Ha!
 
Ether comes in
waves
, son!
 
All my weapons do
is fire a ray, a simple beam of refracted
light
, that causes the phlogiston in any targeted object
to ignite and rapidly consume itself,” Pratt continued.
 
He sounded like he was lecturing, and
liking it.
 
“
Phlogiston
gun
is as ridiculous a name as
Calx
gun
would be.
 
Light beam gun
or
ray gun
would be less
preposterous.”

“Aaaaaaagh!” Nostrils kicked against the floor and
shuddered.
 
The other Pinkertons
looked away from him uneasily.