Cold Steel and Hot Lead [How the West Was Done 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (22 page)

“What sort of show is this for, Castillo?” asked the boy. “You going to cut her in half?”

“Shut up!” slurred Castillo, spraying sugar all over Temperance’s calves. Castillo looked about to cry, his face screwed up like a prune. “Now look what you made me do!”

Rudy made the whistle a person makes to indicate a cracked rattlebrain is nearby. Derrick’s arm shot out to quiet his partner, but Castillo leaped, perhaps to grab one of his knives that lay nearby on the tablecloth. What happened next occurred within the space of three seconds.

In lunging for the knife, Castillo must have triggered an arm that had been coiled tight by a spring. A carving table that was normally hidden from view suddenly swung free violently. The edge of the carving table bashed the unconscious Temperance in the kneecap, triggering an involuntary reflex that caused her sleeping leg to kick Castillo in the face.

Temperance kicked him so violently he was lifted out of his seat, his head bashed against the wall. Castillo’s fingers scrabbled for his throat, his eyes bugged out.

“Oy!” cried the little boy, on his knees now as Derrick and Rudy raced up the center aisle of the dining car. “That was some pumpkins! Lady, you had awesome aim! Pow! Right in the noggin!”

Derrick grabbed Temperance by the shoulders and shook her lightly. “I wouldn’t be too sure she did that on purpose.”

“But that was perfect timing,” the kid insisted.

Temperance’s eyelids fluttered. Derrick had an idea. “Rudy. Perform some of your animal magnetism on her.”

“All right. Let’s switch spots. You keep an eye on this twisted toad. Looks like he’s choking on that lollipop he was drooling all over.”

Rudy was right. Temperance’s kick must have lodged the candied stick so far down Castillo’s throat that Derrick could not have simply grabbed it and yanked, had he wanted to.

Castillo had been trying that for a while now, anyway. He had crammed his hand so far down his own gullet that he was probably now choking on his fingers, in addition to the lollipop. It was a thoroughly unpleasant sight, so Derrick turned his attention to Rudy’s handiwork.

Temperance, in her ethereal Amina costume, looked exquisitely peaceful as Rudy laid his hands on her abdomen. Her hands were still folded placidly on her breasts—she had not exerted herself overmuch when she kicked Castillo.

“I see you do the show,” said the urchin, “when that dead girl appeared in your cabinet. Is that the one what Castillo really rubbed out?”

“That’s the one,” Derrick said. “Castillo wanted to make it look as if Rudy here committed the act.”

The urchin rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “I never cottoned to Castillo much anyway.” That was apparent. He had barely cast a glance at the choking knife thrower. “He was always wearing women’s shoes, and it weren’t for no act, if you know what I mean. Bloody hell! How’re you doing that, you damned cove?”

Indeed, Temperance’s entire body was shimmering with an interior light. Derrick wanted to know how Rudy did that, as well. She glowed as though she had swallowed a candle. Even her feet seemed to be lit from within, the painted nails dark patches on the tips of her toes.

The effect didn’t extend to Rudy, however, so it wasn’t just a strange cast of light being thrown. His hands appeared nearly normal as he held them, barely touching her abdomen.

“Have you seen this effect before?” Derrick asked anxiously. “It may not bode well for her future existence on this plane.”

Rudy shook his head. “No. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the combination of the ether she ingested and the magnetic fluid present in all animate beings.”

“Which sounds good,” Derrick interpreted hopefully.

“I believe so.”

But Rudy didn’t sound so certain.

Then an even more appalling event occurred. Derrick had to rub his eyes, focus them elsewhere, and return his gaze to Temperance’s body to be sure it wasn’t an illusion—some leftover magic bequeathed to them by the passing of Castillo. For Castillo had stopped choking now and was definitely passed, Derrick could plainly see when he glanced at the Spaniard. When he looked back to Temperance, the fact that her entire form had levitated a foot above the buffet table was undeniable.

“Great balls of fire,” whispered the boy.

She rose as though her body had petrified, not one lock of hair drooping, her legs remaining in the exact same position as they had been when she lay on the table, bent at the knees.

“And this?” Derrick inquired weakly. “This is an effect that you see often?”

“Never,” Rudy murmured. He intently kept his hands in the exact same position, but Temperance kept rising. Now she was nearly at their eye level, and the gossamer scarf around her neck didn’t even slither down toward the buffet table—it remained immobile, as though she were merely a photograph glued to a cardboard silhouette. Meanwhile, she continued glowing like a goddamned lighthouse.

“This is a talent you didn’t know you possess.”

The nipper gasped and jumped when Percy’s voice cleaved the still, almost holy air inside the dining car. Derrick leaped, too. He reflexively tried to grasp the bear wrestler by the shoulder to shake him but only got a handful of pudding.

“Percy!” Derrick said. “Why is this happening to Temperance? Will she be all right?”

Percy’s voice seemed to emanate from somewhere near the ceiling, as though he were an announcer speaking through a trumpet. “What Rudy said is correct. The ether has combined with her body’s natural magnetic fluids. She will be fine.” A frown now overcame Percy’s forehead. “Except that she will always become a little light-headed when forced to unclothe her feet.”

“Some pumpkins,” breathed the boy, eyes shining.

Alameda now flew down the central aisle. Derrick grabbed her and twirled her about, as if to shield her from the sight of Rudy levitating a trapeze girl. Then he recalled that Alameda had seen far stranger things. So they stood side by side watching the horizontal girl glowing eerily.

Alameda said, “We came straightaway when we didn’t hear from you. How is Rudy doing that?” She blinked. “No.
Why
is Rudy doing that?”

Temperance appeared to have reached the apex of her journey. Rudy had to stand on tiptoes if he wanted to keep an eye on his hands, full of animal magnetism. “What’s important is that Castillo is dead.” He thought. “Boy, do I have a lot of explaining to do when I have to tell how he died. Kid, what’s your name? Will you stick around town for a while?”

For Marshal Neil Tempest had followed Alameda up the aisle, his six-shooter at the ready. Oddly, he seemed more concerned with the obviously stone-dead Eliazar Castillo than he did with Temperance, who was apparently living so radiantly the dining car could contain her spirit no more and she aimed to fly away.

“I’ll stay in town,” the nipper said, “if he tells me how he did that illusion. I want to tell everyone how he levitated an entire woman with no strings attached. He is truly the best magician I’ve ever seen!”

“I would like to tell the whole world myself,” said Alameda with wonder.

“You didn’t know your beloved Rudy had the power to resurrect people!” intoned Percy importantly.

And that was how Rudy acquired the moniker Resurrection Rudy.

September 1870

Laramie City, Wyoming

“I am trembling so heavily,” said Alameda, closing her eyes to quiet her nerves.

Montreal Jed patted her gloved hand. “You just go right ahead and tremble, my dear. You have every right to. If I were in your shoes, I’d be shaking so heavily they couldn’t put me back together again.”

Alameda exhaled in a sudden rush of nerves and giggles. “Oh, Jeremiah, thank you. You do have a way of putting things into perspective.”

Captain Park beckoned. He looked particularly dashing today, the half-moon scar that outlined his cheekbone standing out vividly. Harley Park was Alameda’s boss no more, as she hadn’t worked at the Cactus Club in months. As Wyoming’s first female justice of the peace, she would have had all sorts of duties to do today—normally.

Today was different. Today, though the courthouse chamber was packed like a sardine tin with both men and women, everyone was hushed, reverent. Everyone stood around in anticipation of Alameda’s next move. She was by now accustomed to having people stare at her, but this was more momentous than she had ever imagined. There stood her father, beaming, proud—or had he fallen asleep? Both her sisters were here, attired in serious, dark suits and hats, their beautiful faces unreadable.

Also present were all of her croquet and lawn tennis friends. Temperance, Irene, and all of the women of Laramie’s chapter of the National Woman Suffrage Association, as well as some women who had come on the train all the way from Washington, were there. In fact, it could safely be said—and would be said by Henry Zuckerkorn, a very good journalist for the Laramie
Frontier Index
—that every woman within a five-hundred-mile radius was present, “If not in the courthouse, then standing at attention with pride in their breasts in nearby restaurants and watering places. Eyes moist with the suffering of decades, heads bowed with respect and not with yokes. Every tearful and girlish eye was upon the gallant Mrs. Alameda Spiro as she made her inevitable, fateful march down that corridor.”

Now Rudy appeared from behind the wide beefiness of Captain Park, and he beckoned, too.

“All right, Allie,” said Montreal Jed from the corner of his mouth. “You’d best go behind that curtain now, or I’m going to piss in my pants.”

Alameda giggled, relieving the tension in the air. Jeremiah released her so she could walk solemnly to the black curtain, nodding soberly to Rudy then briefly taking Derrick’s hand.

Her heart swelled with an overabundance of love for him. It actually hurt her chest to view his beauty—delicious, dark, his intelligent eyes glimmering with compassion and devotion. She had never doubted for one moment her decision to wed Senator Derrick Spiro. It had been a very long time since Derrick had cut the ribbons of her corset in the kitchen of the Cactus Club. Alameda didn’t feel she was even slightly the same gal who had displayed her bare breasts so brazenly to the senator she had thought was married.

In the past year, Rudy had taught her trick riding, roping, and shooting. They had alpine skied all the way to Cheyenne and back. And Derrick had organized a men’s baseball team—they were all present now, though in their best Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. Percy’s prophecy that Bob Freund would die in a bizarre baseball accident had come true several months before. Tragically, a fly ball had conked him on the head in the seventh inning of a game against the Cheyenne team.

In Alameda’s position as justice of the peace, she even merited her own assistant, Jeremiah Franklin. That is, when he wasn’t busy assisting Senator Spiro or “Doctor” Rudolph Dunraven, or entertaining Liberty’s schoolchildren with his “little people” puppet theater.

Derrick orated in his beautifully rich voice now, so that Henry Zuckerkorn and all the big guns from Washington could hear. He displayed Alameda as though she were a magician’s assistant, about to be cut in half. “A year ago I proposed that every woman of the age of twenty-one years residing in this Territory may, at every election to be held, cast her vote.”

Normally this was where the crowd, particularly the suffragist women, burst into cheers. Today, however, the mood was sedate. Not even the usual roostered rowdies that were part and parcel of every Far West town were hollering slogans today. Even those gentlemen stood respectfully in orderly rows outside, holding their flasks and bottles quietly in their folded hands.

Derrick continued in his lovely, flowery way. “The Federal Constitution says
we, the people
. It does not say
we, the white male citizens
but we, the whole people who formed the Union. And we formed it for the whole people, women as well as men.”

Derrick gestured at her, and Rudy lifted the black curtain. This was her cue to enter the voting booth. She had been inside many of them in her time but had never been able to cast a vote herself, of course. She knew she was going to vote a straight party ticket—reelecting Marshal Neil Tempest, for example—so she sat and listened to Derrick speak, breathing in the glory of the moment.

“It is a sheer mockery to lecture women about their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the ballot. For any state to make sex a qualification to vote will always result in the disenfranchisement of one entire half of the people. The blessings of liberty will always be withheld from women.”

It always made Alameda shiver with delight and love to hear Derrick speechify. She suspected her sister Liberty—who, after all, had attended the National Women’s Rights Convention in New York in 1860—of being half in love with Derrick herself. Alameda knew she was being silly, that Liberty’s eyes only gleamed with the righteousness of women’s suffrage.

Then again, Alameda had noticed a sort of celebrity effect. Was it her imagination that Derrick’s skin shone even more luminously when he entered a crowd of adoring women? When she was in a poor mood, whether from the heat, hunger, or women’s disorders, it sometimes irritated her the way women fawned over him. Such a big gun, a high muckety-muck cutting a figure! The way women threw themselves at him was a caution!

Alameda had even traveled to Omaha with Derrick. He had given a speech there that was followed by a night of revelry that Alameda had never imagined in her wildest dreams—or nightmares. Those suffragists were practicing freedom for more than the vote, and as the wife of a politician, Alameda had to keep up with them. But it sure got her in a lather whenever she left Derrick’s side for a few moments to return and find one of these slatterns melting all over her husband’s waistcoat.