Authors: Elizabeth Bear
I followed Murphy as “he” cut through the crowd to the bar, bellied up, and in a raspy monotone told the bartender, “Kill me quick!” “He” laid a shiny silver trime on the counter; it was quickly superseded by a shot as black and tarry as the one in front of the Marshal we were pretending not to know.
“Anything for the lady?” the barman said, looking at me dubiously.
“No, thank you.” Under my breath to Murphy, I said, “You know they call it that for a reason.”
“He” nudged his shot of “kill me quick” with a thumbnail, then picked it up and downed it. The grimace that followed was as elegant as “his” voice when he rasped out, “Turpentine,” quietly enough that only the Marshal on “his” right and me on “his” left might hear “him.”
“Well,” I answered. “My guess was coal tar. Have you gone blind?”
“No, more’s the pity.” Murphy gestured to the piss-stained sawdust on the floor. “He” called for another shot of the coffin varnish and let this one sit, much to my relievedness.
After a bit, I edged in between Murphy and the Marshal and we engaged in a bit of business with money changing hands. I left with Marshal Reeves. The plan was for Murphy to come out after us and proceed on to Peter Bantle’s cribhouse. Marshal Reeves and me would stay with the horses, since I’d allowed as I could ride. We were Miss Francina’s way out. And the distraction, and the backup plan. We hoped we could hand Aashini off to Tomoatooah and Merry Lee, who should already be in place on a nearby rooftop. They would whisk her away, and the Marshal, Miss Francina, and I would be able to lose our pursuit in the rat’s nest of alleys down by the docks, or in the shantytowns that washed away whenever the summer storms got bad.
Merry still wasn’t in any shape for daring escapades, and I was passionately worried about her. She’d not been willing to tell us where her safe house was, though, and so she was in whether we wanted her to be or not.
I would just have to count on Tomoatooah to defend her. Given the fearsome reputation of the Comanche, I didn’t expect him to disappoint me. But I was still worried. For him, too, of course. For Marshal Reeves and me. But chiefly for Miss Francina—I mean Murphy. And for Merry Lee.
It was overcast, and that was our friend. But it was starting to rain—lightly, but enough to render roof tiles and cobblestones slick as ice. That might be our friend … but it was just as likely to be our enemy.
I hoped Aashini could climb and run. I hoped she was as tough and smart and stubborn as her sister.
I was worrying about that and a dozen other things when the Marshal and I made it back to the horses. He’d paid a pair of small Negro boys to watch them, and I waited in the shadows until he’d given them each a pinky-nail-sized flake of gold—for urchins, the very large wealth of a dollar. The urchins (children with homes to go to weren’t running wild in the streets at three in the morning) vanished into the same shadows I emerged from.
There were four horses, a gelding and three mares—Bass Reeves’ and Tomoatooah’s mounts and remounts. They looked mighty fine to my eye, all four of ’em, and it filled my mouth with sick water just catching wind of their warm, horsy scent. I wanted to go run and throw my arms around their necks, I’d missed horses so damned much. And I wanted to go punch each of ’em in the throat for what had happened to my da.
I knowed that was stupid, and my hands shook with not trusting myself not to take out on ’em what wasn’t their fault—and what wasn’t even the dumb animal fault of the colt that killed Da.
Da would always say you don’t blame an animal for being an animal. Not when we’re men and God gave us reason and made us custodians. And then he’d usually mutter something uncomplimentary about folk who didn’t use that God-given gift, and who still thought they had the right to boss around God’s other creatures.
Every time I started to get killing mad at that colt, I tried to remember him saying that. It helped, mostly. The colt lived past me, anyway.
But it occurs to me now that maybe I was being a bit two-faced when I said earlier that I didn’t understand coveting after revenge. I guess in honesty it’s more that Mama and Da raised me to think things through before I did ’em, mostly. And mostly, I do.
So I bit my lip and made myself look over the horses without flinching or making faces.
The gelding and one of the mares were big for my taste, but Bass Reeves is a big man. They both carried good muscle. The gray—the gelding—had a neck that made me sad he was gelded, and if he was a bit straight behind he had the muscle to make up for the lack of leverage. The sorrel shoved a soft nose at me as soon as she saw me, and nibbled around my pockets for a treat. I pretended like I’d forgotten to bring any, and looked at her shoulders, which were strong and sloped just right.
I thought the gray was probably a pretty light-colored horse, in his own right, but judging by the streaks he was starting to show from the raindrops, Marshal Reeves had blacked him up a bit with soot so he wouldn’t show so much in the darkness.
The other two mares were Indian ponies, and some people use that to mean scrub horses, but those people is just plumb ignorant. Mustangs was what the Pony Express used, and nobody—not the fanciest eastern racehorse farmer or the canniest western cutting-horse rancher—knows more about breeding than the horse tribes do. When Indians don’t have good horses, it’s because their good horses was killed by the army or taken away when the Indians was moved on. Their ponies are smart and strong and though they’re little, nothing makes a better cutting horse. My da used to itch to get his hands on Indian ponies.
He would of traded his eyeteeth and his last pan of biscuits for these. One was a sturdy-looking paint, a black tobiano with one brown eye and one china blue. She had the smartest ears I’d ever seen, perked up and touched almost tip to tip, and a dished face that made her look like a Barb. She might be, partways. There’s Barb blood in those Indian ponies, because they come from the Conquistadores’ horses and those come from when the Moors conquered Spain. She also had a big chest, for a mare, and clean, straight forelegs. All four of her hooves was dark. I don’t hold with the idea that a white-footed horse is necessarily worse than one with dark hooves, though I know some do. But I could see that her hoof edges was clean, though she’d never known shoes.
The other was a dun—the kind of dun the Indians get, with the stripe down her spine and the stripes on the lower part of the legs, like maybe her grandaddy was a zebra. It wasn’t the prettiest color I’d ever seen—dull in the gaslight and like somebody had rubbed red earth all through a gray horse’s hide—but she grinned at me like a mule when I came up to her. It might of been a mean expression, except her ears stayed up. I’ve knowed a few horses learned to smile back at people. They always seem to be the damned smart ones.
My Molly was a grinner.
I finally “found” the carrots and parsnips in my pockets and broke bits off for everyone. Until I felt the whiffle of whiskers across my palms, the nibble of soft lips, I didn’t realize how much I needed it. Something tightened up in my chest. But something bigger eased—a band cracked open. Like the iron straps that coop a barrel together, it split, and everything I’d been holding in came boiling up, trying to get out and splash all over. Like that beer flood over in London you’ve heard of, near on forty years before I was born, where all the people drowned in cellars when the brewery’s vats exploded.
It would of been about that much of a mess, too. I could feel my lip quivering, my eyes starting to burn. I was going to collapse in the mud in a second and be no use to Priya or Miss Francina or Aashini or Marshal Reeves or anyone. And it was all down to that warm snuffle on my palm, such as I hadn’t felt since I had to sell off my father’s stock. And give up Molly. I still can’t help but feel like I betrayed her, though I found her the best home I could and it was better for her than starving with me would of been.
That stock money didn’t go near as far as I expected, in a place like Rapid City. And weren’t many willing to hire a girl of fifteen to break horses for ’em or even as a stable hand.
And that’s how I wound up seamstressing for Madame Damnable.
“Miss?” Marshal Reeves said behind me. His hand on my shoulder was warm and solid, and somehow I used its weight to pull myself together instead of crumpling completely. It were a near thing, though. “Miss Memery? Second thoughts?”
I couldn’t bear to have him think me a coward. I jerked my head up as if I could toss the tears back into my eyes, sniffed hard—hoping it sounded like disdain—and said, “No sir.”
I wanted to tell him that my da had horses. That I grew up in the saddle. But if I’d been going to tell him that the time to mention it would of been when I’d told him I could ride.
I hadn’t said a word about how I hadn’t touched a pony in more than a year. It wouldn’t do anything for his confidence in me to bring it up now.
“What’s her name?” I asked, of the piebald mare.
“That’s Scout,” he said. “The dun is Adobe. The sorrel’s Dusty, and this here gelding is Pongo. You’ll be on Scout.”
I nodded. I was glad she seemed friendly, and I could see from the condition of her lips and the easy bit she was wearing that she reined well—and that Tomoatooah had a gentle hand. “I’m looking forward to it,” I said, and it was half a lie and half the bitterest truth I ever mouthed. I scratched behind her ever-so-pointy ears and gave her another bite of parsnip. “Good horse.”
His teeth flashed in the dark. “You’ll have to give her back when you’re done with her.”
“How’re you going to catch me?” I asked, grinning back. I kicked my shortened skirt up and swung into the rig before I could think about it too much more. Scout stepped right once, then steadied. She
was
little—I was looking over her ears, not between them—but she didn’t so much as duck under my weight.
“You’ll do,” he answered, forking his own rig—the one the sorrel wore. “Come on. I got our stakeout all selected. There’s some cover, and it’s even out of the wind.”
I followed on the clopping of the hooves leading me toward the pier. Adobe’s rein was looped on Scout’s saddle biscuit, and he trouped along with his nose on her shoulder like they did this daily. That seemed likely, actually.
My da wouldn’t of approved of that name—Adobe. He’d say you couldn’t yell it well enough, and every horse, dog, and child should have a name you could holler clearly through a hurricane. But it suited the horse and she wasn’t
my
horse, so I weren’t in any hurry to rename her.
Marshal Reeves pulled up, and I saw he hadn’t oversold his hidy-hole. But he hadn’t much undersold it, either. It was a nook, was all. A bit of alley with a bend at the back and no gas lamps. And nothing to stop the sky dripping on us, neither, though he was right in that it was more or less out of the wind.
We hunched under our hats, angling our heads so the rain didn’t drip off the brims down our backs. We stayed mounted, and I imagined we was both anonymous and shapeless in our oilcloth capes. He smoked under his hat, cursing occasionally when the rain put his cigarette out. The horses didn’t waste their energy shaking or stamping. They just stood, ears only a tetch droopier than their heads, and occasionally heaved great horsy sighs profound enough to make Marshal Reeves’ spurs jingle.
We waited.
And waited—long enough for the butterflies in my stomach to start tying knots to pass the time, long enough that I started at every sound, expecting shouts or gunshots. Much, much longer than I had hoped or expected—or so I guessed. I had a little watch on a chain that had been my mother’s. I didn’t dare pull it out and check the time for fear of it being ruined by the rain—and it was too damned dark to see it anyway. I was trying to keep from checking Miss Lizzie’s tracker, too, other than glances under the cape to see if its light had come on, since I didn’t know how that would respond to being doused, either.
Even less cheerfully than the horses did, that was my supposition.
I did look at it once, shielding the whole thing with my oilcloth, but I had to edge over close to the gas lamp to see it at all, and while I kept the gadget dry, I got rain all down my back in the process. As near as I could figure through the dark and the rain stinging my eyes, Miss Francina was off in the direction of the cribs and some distance away. Right there where she was supposed to be, in other words.
I gave up on the gadget. Might as well save its juice for if she got kidnapped and we had to chase her down and save her.
Despite my being on edge and my checking over my shoulder approximately every thirteen seconds, I still would of screamed and fallen off Scout’s saddle when Tomoatooah appeared if it hadn’t been for Scout giving him away in advance. But by her pricked ears and turned head I knowed somebody was approaching, and by her pleased expression I knowed it was someone as she knowed and liked. The Marshal, of course, wasn’t taken by surprise at all.
I already had Adobe’s reins unlooped from my biscuit and extended when Tomoatooah came up on us. He weren’t running, though, and he didn’t reach for ’em, so I dropped ’em back over the horn and waited to see what happened next.
We both knowed something was wrong. The Marshal didn’t bother asking, just turned his head and looked down at Tomoatooah from the height of his saddle.
Whatever the question was, it must of been contained in their prolonged association. Because Tomoatooah nodded. He started to say something in what might of been Comanche, then glanced at me, pitched his voice lower, and replied, “There were men with rifles on the rooftops. Who would post sentries over a cribhouse?”
“Somebody who had more in there than starved, beat whores,” Marshal Reeves said. Then he glanced at me. “Begging your pardon, Miss Memery.”
“Wait,” I said. We were all talking—not in whispers, because whispers carry. But in low conversational tones. “There
were
men with rifles?”
Despite the dark, I made out Tomoatooah’s modest shrug, and wondered if he’d ever be getting around to naming some young cousin Kills on Rooftop. The chill that gripped my spine had nothing to do with the drip of rain.