Teancum (10 page)

“
You’re
the traitor!”
Young bellowed.

Cannon shook his head slowly.
 
“I love the Kingdom,” he said, “and I would never betray
it.
 
That’s why
I
recruited John D. Lee and made him part of my plans
to save Deseret.”

“Lee!” Young gasped.

Sam felt like a fool.

“That’s why I had Lee’s men smash up the pneumatic bells in
the yard,” Cannon added.
 
“When he
told me you were alive, I knew you’d have to come here, and you’d want to get
word out that you were still alive.
 
But until those bells are repaired, no message will get in or out of the
Great Salt Lake City, unless it goes by hand.”

“Then I’ll get them out by hand!” Young shot back.
 
“Like a hundred Paul Reveres in the
desert, I’ll send out a single Elders Quorum and warn the entire Kingdom in an
hour!”
 
Sam wondered if he was
bluffing.

“And that’s why,” Cannon’s voice rose higher in pitch and
became more nasal.
 
He sounded
emotional, like he was coming to the climax of a real stem-winder of a
sermon.
 
His body, though, looked
relaxed and unthreatening, standing in his shirt-tails with his arms at his
sides.
 
“That’s why, I’m afraid,
you simply cannot be allowed to leave this room alive, Brother Brigham.”

“Ha!” Young roared.
 
He still looked like a lion, towering over the smaller man.
 
Cannon looked neater and more composed
than the President, somehow, despite his dishabille.
 
“You’re forgetting that I’m the one with the pistol and the
armed men at my back!”

“No,” Cannon said.
 
“I’m not.”

CLICK
.

It wasn’t one
click
that he heard, really, but a whole series of simultaneous
clicks
that all together were so loud they sounded like an
ax sinking into a tree trunk.
 
Sam
turned slowly.

John D. Lee, bruised and beaten about the face but holding
himself upright with cold fury in his eyes, stood inside the room.
 
He held a cocked pistol in one hand, and
his other arm hung limp at his side.
 
Five men stood with him, in the room, in the doorway and in the hallway
beyond, all with guns aimed at Brigham Young and his companions.

“Lee!” Young roared.

“Drop it, Brigham,” Lee drawled slowly, and for the first
time Sam could hear a little Virginia in his voice.
 
“Or Welker and Lindemuth get to see the great eternal round
before you do.”

Lee kept his gun on Young, but his men pointed their
firearms at the message clerk and the bodyguard.

“Don’t do it,” Sam said, but he wasn’t sure who he was
saying it to, or what he meant.

Young gritted his teeth.
 
“Wraaagh!”
 
He
tossed his pistol heavily to the ground.

Sam raised his hands, as did Brigham.

“Port,” Young said, and his voice was almost gentle.

The shaggy frontiersman stood gripping the table with white
knuckles, right beside his two large pistols.
 
An ink-blotched, crumpled message slip in front of him bore
the poignant message, scrawled in large, child-like capital letters,
I EM A
LYVE.
 
JON LEE IS A SUMBICH SNAYK
.

“It ain’t right, Brigham,” Rockwell grunted, and shook his
long-haired head.

“Porter, do as I say,” Brigham Young said.

“No bullet or blade,” Rockwell reminded him.

Lee swiveled one of his pistols and pointed it at Welker’s
head.

“Port!” Welker cried.

“Please,” said Brigham Young.

Rockwell gritted his teeth and slowly raised his hands.

“Get their guns,” Lee said.

Welker and Lindemuth scooped up all the pistols lying on the
table, and George Cannon bent to pick up the pistol Young had dropped onto the
floor.
 
Then the clerk and the
bodyguard stepped away from the table—

and turned, pointing their guns at Young, Rockwell and Sam.

“Dammit!” Rockwell roared.

“You see what I mean about the facts compelling me to
misanthropy,” Sam joked, but he felt sick to his stomach.
 

“I do indeed,” Cannon agreed.

“Can I smoke?” Sam asked.
 
He didn’t know what to do, but he wanted to buy time, for
himself and, if the poor bastard wasn’t already dead somewhere or in Danite
hands, for Jedediah Coltrane.
 

“Be my guest.”

Sam struck a lucifer on the snaps of his jeans and lit a
Cohiba from his pocket.
 
He
imagined the action as a clever signal to the dwarf that he was in trouble and
needed help, needed something like the electrified
Jim Smiley
to come to his rescue.
 
Of course, if the dwarf was watching through the windows and
couldn’t figure out that all the guns pointed at his head meant that Sam needed
help, then he was an idiot and was going to be useless in any case.

He sucked a puff of smoke but it didn’t really calm
him.
 
“Now what?”

“Now, Mr. Clemens,” George Cannon said, “I make you and your
government an offer.”

Sam was caught off guard.
 
“Me?” was all he managed to spit out.

Cannon nodded.
 
“There’s a war coming.
 
Don’t you want the Kingdom of Deseret on your side?”

Sam chewed his cigar and tried to think.
 
“Why the change of heart, Mr.
Cannon?
 
Only yesterday, I was
being framed for a murder so that you could go to war against my government.
 
What happened between then and now?”

“
You won
is what
happened, Mr. Clemens.
 
You’re here
with Brigham Young, and the southerners and the Englishmen are not.
 
Your craft, the
Jim Smiley
, is an impressive and ultra-modern piece of
engineering, and it has conquered my heart.
 
And Captain Everett’s Virginians, though they remain in the field,
have done a surprisingly poor job against the men from Massachusetts, and the
Mexicans.”

“You don’t care whose side you’re on,” Sam realized.

“Correction,” Cannon said.
 
“I don’t care whose side I’m on, as long as Deseret is with
me and it’s the
winning
side.”

“You’re going to hell!” Rockwell spat on the floor.

“Why, George?” Young asked.

“For Deseret, of course,” Cannon explained.
 
His eyes and mouth were earnest, even
pious in their expression.
 
“Deseret needs the war, and it needs to be on the winning side.”

“You’re insane,” Sam judged.
 
“Nobody needs war, except undertakers.”

“You’re wrong,” Cannon insisted.
 
“
We
need the
war.
 
We need a winning ally who
will need us, share with us, take us in and love us, and then after the war,
trade and mingle with us.
 
We need
to be part of the world, in and of it and not sequestered away in some
godforsaken corner like dervishes.
 
The United States drove us out once, but if it is the cost of winning
this inevitable war, they will take us in their red, white and blue arms
again.
 
It will be a gain for the
United States, and it will be a gain for the Kingdom.”

“Fool,” Young cursed him.

“The modern world is inevitable, Brigham,” Cannon told
him.
 
“It’s already here, and
knocking at our door.
 
We can’t run
and we can’t hide, and if we fight it we’ll be destroyed.
 
We must embrace the world, and it must
embrace us.”

Sam hesitated.
 
Wasn’t Cannon offering him exactly what he’d come here for?
 
With Pratt’s air-ships and the
phlogiston guns, whatever war there was would be short.
 
Lives would be saved, the Union would
be saved.
 
“President Buchanan’s
offer to the Kingdom of Deseret is the gift of a transcontinental railroad,” he
said, “and sundry supporting materials.”

“Perfect,” Cannon said.
 
“I accept.”

The stocky Liverpudlian raised his pistol and pointed it at
Brigham Young’s head.

“No bullet or blade!” shouted Orrin Porter Rockwell, and
leaped.

Chapter Nineteen

The Englishman looked like he’d charged without a second’s
thought, but somehow he’d chosen the right direction.
 
As he sprinted, firing, he moved behind the plascrete shed
in the center of the mooring platform.
 
Several of the men inside the shed saw him, and began throwing
themselves against windows to take aim at Burton, but Harrison’s view of him
was cut off by the little building—

which meant that he turned the ray gun against Tam.

Higley, that was the man’s name.
 
What a stupid bloody-damn-hell clodhopper of a name.

Zottt!

Tam threw himself flat.
 
The plascrete hurt like a giant’s fist punching him in the
stomach, chest and chin simultaneously, but the phlogiston gun’s killer beam
missed, turning the air over Tam’s head to fire and incinerating the hairs on
the back of his neck.

Tam fired back with the Smith & Wesson.
 
His shots were a little wild, but he
didn’t care.
 
He had to give Higley
something to think about, force him to dodge just a little or take cover, or
Pratt’s weapon would make this a very short fight.

He fired, and then he rolled sideways, tumbling
shoulders-over-elbows and trying to keep the Pinkerton in his sight and his
pistol pointed more or less in the other man’s direction.
 

Zottt!

The heat of the killer beam made Tam’s face sweat, and then
sparks exploded above and behind him.
 
Higley stopped shooting and staggered back.

Tam was puzzled but relieved, and kept moving.
 
He looked for Burton, and saw the man
dragging one of the Pinkertons bodily out the window of the shed, punching him
in the jaw with the butt of his pistol.
 

Sparks rained down around Tam, and he wondered why.
 
He saw Higley do a little uncertain
jig, moving to once side and then the other, and then the Pinkerton turned and
broke into a run to his left.

He’s hit the lightning rod, Tam thought.

Then: he’s hit the bloody-damn-hell lightning rod!

Tam scrambled up and into action, galloping right on two
legs and a hand and bringing the Model 1 into play, squeezing off shots at
Higley as he ran straight at the man.
 
The imminence of death slowed his perception of time like honey had been
poured over the entire scene, and in Tam’s imagination the electric prickle on
the nape of neck became the sharp poking of a thousand needles.

Higley raised the ray gun—

Tam squeezed the trigger again and his heart sank as he
heard the loud
click
—

CRASH!!!

The lightning rod smashed into the plascrete floor of the
mooring platform like a fallen tree wreathed in St. Elmo’s fire.
 
Tam felt something that was part fire,
part knives and part gigantic vibrating tickle in the soles of his feet, and
then he was thrown sideways, the rush of electricity throwing him onwards in
the direction in which he was already moving, towards the edge of the
platform—

Higley flew headlong in the same direction, losing his grip
on his weapon—

Tam hit the edge of the platform, grabbed at it,
missed—

and then caught himself with one hand on a metal bar that
ran around the outside of the tower, horizontally just beneath the lip of the
mooring platform.

The Smith & Wesson left his other hand on impact and
disappeared into the darkness below, along with Tam’s porkpie hat.
 
Fire raged through the wound in his
arm, and bile bubbled up through his lips.

“Fookin’ Brigit and fookin’ Anthony and every other fookin’
saint help me now!” Tam squealed, hating himself for the little girl sound that
came out of his throat.
 
He spat
against the plascrete tower wall and coughed for breath, expecting a ray gun
beam to slice him to pieces at any second.

No beam.

He grabbed with his other hand for the bar and steadied
himself a little.
 

Tam’s head spun.
 
He hurt, he felt sick, he was exhausted, and he wanted a drink.

You were bloody-damn-hell right, Burton, he thought.
 
All of the above.

He snaked up a hand and grabbed the plascrete.
 
It was his uninjured arm, so he managed
to drag his chin up to the level of the mooring platform for a better look.
 
At least the bar wasn’t electrocuting
him, he realized with relief.
 
Why
was that?
 
Maybe the electricity
all came out of the metal when the pole fell, he guessed.
 
Hell if he knew.

All four air-ships were gone now.
 
The Franklin Poles had gone dead, and Tam realized that he
could still see because the sky was beginning to gray over with the coming of
morning.
 
The shed in the center of
the platform was quiet, and he saw that the lightning rod, when it had hit the
plascrete, had smashed into the wall of the shed, too.
 
He wondered if Burton and the
Pinkertons inside were dead.

Higley wasn’t dead, though.
 
He stirred, brushing at his face like he dreamed of being
caught in a swarm of flies.
 
The
Pinkerton groaned.

Pratt’s ray gun lay on the plascrete, halfway between Tam
and Higley.
 
Its gaping muzzle,
grossly oversized by comparison with any normal firearm, stared at Tam like a
viper.
 
It looked ready to bite
(but wasn’t any gun a biting beastie, and the trick was to be on the tail side,
and not get the fangs?).

“Hell and begorra,” Tam spat bile out of his mouth and tried
to dig his good elbow into the plascrete.
 
It took several tries because, with the vertigo that twisted his vision
all around every time he tried to focus on anything, he kept slipping and
missing his mark.
 
The fact that
his toes dangled over an abyss that, as he could see out of the corner of his
eye, might as well be bottomless, didn’t help.
 
As he finally got the elbow firmly planted and hoisted
himself with a sharp cry of pain up onto it, he heard a louder groan from
Higley.

The Pinkerton propped himself up on one forearm and shook
his head.

Anthony’s teeth!
 
Tam clawed at the plascrete with his nails like a dog, trying to drag
himself forward faster.
 
The hiss
of his breath through his teeth was too loud, like a hurricane in his own ears,
and he imagined Higley could hear it, too.
 

He flopped chest-down on the floor and sucked in cold air,
pain lancing through his bad arm.
 
The air smelled ozone-fried and full of death, like meat charred to
cinders by an electricks cooker.
 

“Dammit!” Higley cursed, and Tam heard a scraping sound.

He didn’t waste time looking up, just threw himself in the
direction of the ray gun.
 
He
lunged, fingers out, paddling across cold plascrete like he was swimming, and
raised his head.
 
He and Higley
locked eyes—

and grabbed the gun at the same time.

Better than no loaf at all, Tam thought.
 
Only Higley had the bloody-damn-hell
tail end of the snake.

Tam threw himself back, praying to Brigit that he wasn’t hurling
himself off the platform to his death.
 
He wrapped both hands around the barrel of the ray gun and pushed it up
with all his wasted, pain-wracked strength, trying to get the viper mouth away
from his throat, above his head.

Zottt!

Tam felt his hair burst into flame, but his head wasn’t
incinerated.
 
He smelled plascrete
melting, a horrible tarry bubbling stink, and then his shoulders hit the
mooring platform floor and it was solid.

And Higley came crashing down on top of him.

Zottt!

The ray gun fired again, over Tam’s head, and he smelled the
burning stink more intensely, and then Higley let go of the gun—

it rattled away across the plascrete and stopped, spinning,
right at the new, melted, edge of the platform—

and Higley’s big heavy Pinkerton body slammed into Tam, the
first point of contact being the bigger man’s knee crunching into Tam’s crotch.

“Aaagh!” Tam screamed.

Higley headbutted Tam, maybe on purpose or maybe not, but it
hurt like hell.
 
Then the Pinkerton
reached over Tam’s shoulder, trying to crawl past him for the gun.

Tam grabbed Higley’s head.
 
He wrapped his fingers in the other man’s hair and yanked
back as hard as he could.

“Damn Irish!” Higley bellowed, and punched Tam in the jaw.

Tam lost his vision.
 
He knew he wasn’t unconscious, because he could still feel Higley’s hair
clutched in his fist, and the Pinkerton’s knee as he pummeled Tam again in the
balls, but he saw a bright flash of light and then blackness.

Tam snapped his hand forward—

“Let go!” Higley snarled, and punched Tam again, this time
in the throat—

Tam lost his wind and vomited at the same moment, and had
the horrible feeling of his lungs filling up with his own bile—

and as the stiletto leaped into his hand, he shoved it
forward, hard, at the spot where his best guess told him Higley’s neck would
be.
 
Whatever he hit, it had the
satisfying resistance of human flesh.

“Glagh!”

Hot blood spilled over Tam’s face and chest and arms, and
Higley lurched sideways, screaming and coughing.
 
Tam coughed, too, spitting out bile and blood and gasping to
get whatever slivers of tainted air he could into his lungs.
 
He couldn’t see, he vomited again, he
took an elbow in the face, and he didn’t let go.

He slashed again, and stabbed.
 
Sometimes he hit flesh and sometimes he hit plascrete, but
he kept stabbing and coughing and spitting and sucking air until the hunk of
flesh he grappled had stopped moving, and finally his stiletto blade hit the
plascrete one last time and its blade snapped off, sticking into the palm of
his hand like a giant splinter.

Tam coughed, spewing out blood and bile and what felt like
half his lung.
 
“Fookin’ hell!” he
shouted, and then he wiped blood from his face with his sleeve, which was
almost as bloody.
 

Vision began to return, under a dark gray sheet and streaked
with blue sparks almost as heavy as the overhead field of electricks had
been.
 
For good measure, Tam
smashed Higley’s mangled face against the plascrete, shattering the dead man’s
nose, and then he rolled away from the body and vomited some more.

He was surprised he had anything left to throw up, but then
he was surprised even to be alive, at this point.

“Seamus fookin’ McNamara!” he gasped.
 
“Idjits!”

Tam lurched to his feet, found his sense of vertigo hadn’t
recovered, and fell to the hard plascrete again.
 

He yanked the broken blade from his hand, wincing as more
blood gushed out, wiped blood off his forehead and out of his eyes and looked
around again.
 
The sky grew ever
lighter.
 
Off in the distance in
mid-air he saw flashes, and he dimly thought that some sort of battle was being
waged in the clouds.

“I hope Poe is sticking it to that bastard Pratt,” he spat,
and looked around for the ray gun.
 
He found it, teetering on the edge of the abyss.

He crawled this time, staying low and moving slowly, and
made it all the way to the gun without collapsing.
 
Below, the creeping light of morning showed a blue lake and
the gray, bowl-shaped arms of the mountain around, with a silver skunk’s tail
of snow connecting the two.
 
It was
a long way down, and as Tam grabbed the ray gun he pulled away from the drop,
sinking back to the floor and breathing heavy.

Bang!

He heard a gunshot elsewhere on the mooring platform, and
Tam rolled over to look.
 
He saw
Richard Burton, standing but looking more like a mutilated corpse than a man,
with blood and bandages all over his body, and a half-reloaded Smith &
Wesson Model 1 in his hands.

A big-shouldered Pinkerton leaned against the shed with his
back to Tam.
 
He held a long Henry
rifle in his hands, and he pointed it at Burton.

Tam thought about standing, but didn’t dare risk it.
 
Biting back a groan with his
bloody-coppery-tasting teeth, he tightened his grip on Orson Pratt’s ray gun,
as much as he could with his battered and sliced hands, and started dragging
himself on one elbow and two knees in the direction of the little shed.

*
  
*
  
*

Crash!

The message machine room filled with shards of flying glass
and splinters of wood, and Sam staggered back, raising an arm to protect his
face.
 
Something long and
spear-like punched George Cannon in the chest and hurled him across the room
towards the door, scattering his minions out of the way likes Swiss skiers
before an avalanche barreling down the slopes of Mont Blanc.

Rockwell hit the ground where Cannon had been, looking like
a dog whose bone had been yanked from his jaws and thrown across the yard.
 
He stumbled, knees wobbling, and tried
to recover his balance.

Bang!

Cannon’s bullet disappeared in the confusion.
 
The turncoat Welker raised his pistols,
and a knife appeared in his throat.
 
He staggered sideways and rotated, cocking and firing his pistols
alternately as he turned and sank to the floor, a deadly Fourth of July cracker
with blood spilling down his shirt.