Timpanogos Read online

  Timpanogos

  City of the Saints, Part the Third

  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 Eleven

  “Shoulda got a knife,” Jed Coltrane grunted to himself as he sprinted.

  A throwing knife in particular would have been perfect, but anything with a blade would have been enough to kill Sam Clemens’s thug. Even a pistol would have done nicely, or a carbine with decent aim. But the aim on the machine-gun wasn’t good enough to hit the wiry Irishman. Not without hitting the boy, too.

  Not without getting a lot closer.

  When the hotel had collapsed, O’Shaughnessy had looked back, once. Jed had watched him assess the situation from his perch inside the stable door, then turn and shuffle quicker down the hill. Jed couldn’t see where the Irishman was headed, other than the weeds and scrub oak at the bottom of the long yard. For once, he wished he were a taller man, with a taller man’s vantage point on the situation.

  No amount of wishing would make him grow an inch, though.

  So he sprinted down the hill, trying his best not to be heard.

  He knew there was a perfectly good question that was dying to be asked, which went something like, Jed Coltrane, are you out of your damned mind? What are you doing risking your life for this kid, and he ain’t even yours?

  He didn’t ask the question, though. Once he started asking questions like that, it seemed to him that there wouldn’t be any point to any of it. If he couldn’t save an innocent little kid, what was the point of trying to stop wars anyway? Or win them, for that matter.

  So he just ran.

  Jed crested the slope of the yard enough to see the little two-roomed springhouse at the bottom of the hill just as the Irishman reached it. Two men in black coats stood before the building, holding rifles in front of their chests and looking nervous.

  O’Shaughnessy looked up the hill and pointed at the hotel.

  I’m spotted, Jed thought, but he kept running.

  The two men looked up, saw Jed and raised their rifles. The dwarf threw himself onto his belly, fumbling to raise the machine-gun into attack position—

  but the Irishman drew his weapon first, the silent gun of the Pinkertons—

  and shot both the springhouse guards in the backs of their heads, zip! zip!, as neat as you please. They fell, pink clouds drifting around their faces.

  Jed fired, aiming high.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  A cloud of black smoke from the gun swallowed Jed, filling his nostrils with the brimstone reek of hell and death.

  The bird-headed thug ducked, crouched, and picked up John Moses.

  Jed stopped firing. “Damn!” he cursed, and scrambled forward down the hill, half crawling, half tumbling, fighting not to lose his grip on Jonathan Browning’s gun.

  The Irishman raised his firearm again and shot at the springhouse door.

  Zip! Clang!

  A shattered padlock fell to the ground.

  O’Shaughnessy stepped around behind the corner of the springhouse, still holding John Moses in front of him like a shield. “Stay inside, Sam!” he shouted, and fired again at Jed.

  Bullets whipped through the tall yellow grass around the dwarf. So that’s the way of it, he thought. Well, if the Irishman was concerned about Sam Clemens, that gave Jed Coltrane a little lever to pull on.

  He pointed the machine-gun at the springhouse and squeezed the trigger until the drum was empty and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-click!

  Smoke enveloped him as he fired. Wood chips and sawdust sprang off the rough log exterior of the springhouse like it was the inside of a sawmill.

  “Die, Yankee!” Jed hollered. There, he thought smugly. That ought to flush the ugly Irishman out.

  “No!” O’Shaughnessy screamed, and charged forward—

  knocking the boy John Moses aside as he did so—

  Jed and O’Shaughnessy were ten yards apart, and Jed realized his miscalculation—

  the Irish thug pointed his gun at the dwarf and squeezed the trigger—

  click.

  Both men froze.

  Jed’s gun was empty, but O’Shaughnessy might not know it. He raised it to his chest, meaning to bluff—

  the Irishman dropped his pistol and slapped his hand down at his thigh—

  on an empty holster.

  “Fookin’ hell!” he shouted, and whirled around to face the boy John Moses.

  John Moses stood calmly, holding the silenced pistol in both hands, pointing it at the Irishman.

  “Good job, kid!” Jed shouted. “Give it up, you stupid Mick!”

  O’Shaughnessy bolted.

  He sprang across the stream, coat flapping out behind him like a peacock’s tail, and crashed into a thicket of scrub oak trees.

  “Shit,” Jed grumbled. He sprinted to the springhouse. “Give me the gun, John Moses.”

  John Moses shook his head and pointed the Maxim at Jed.

  “The hell? He might a got you killed, boy!”

  “I don’t want you to kill him,” John Moses said stubbornly. “He’s running away.”

  “Dammit—” Jed reached for the gun, and John Moses raised its muzzle, aiming straight for the dwarf’s forehead.

  “No.”

  “Fine.” Jed briefly considered reloading the machine-gun, but that was a tedious, time-consuming task, and the weapon was heavy, and the Irishman was getting away. He dropped the gun and shrugged out of the bag carrying ammunition. “Thanks for the loan,” he said, and he rushed into the oak on O’Shaughnessy’s trail.

  * * *

  Absalom stopped running in a grove of cottonwood trees.

  Well, not a grove. Three trees standing together at the base of a long hill. He wasn’t sure where he was exactly, but, approximately, he thought he might be somewhere north of the Hot Springs Hotel & Brewery and downhill of the highway back to the Great Salt Lake City.

  The mountains were on his right hand.

  “Absalom, Absalom!” he heard behind him.

  He threw himself in among the trees for protection, held his gun high, in as manly and determined a fashion as he could, conscious that in his effort to look the hero, he might instead have made himself the fool. When he felt appropriately composed, he looked back.

  Abigail raced towards him through the little gulley down which he’d come. Right behind him came Annie, also running. Each woman held her skirt high with one hand and pointed a pistol at the sky with the other.

  They looked silly, and that made him feel a little calmer. He was careful not to laugh as they caught up to him.

  “Absalom, stop!” Abigail shouted.

  “I am stopped.” His heart thundered in his chest like it would never end. “I was looking for decent cover from which to continue the attack.” He laughed his best baritone laugh. “I hadn’t realized I’d come so far. Fog of war, uncertain
terrain, all that.”

  “Are you wounded?” Abigail asked.

  “That was an impressive charge, Mr. Fearnley-Standish,” Annie added, catching up and stopping, but still clutching her skirt up over her ankles. Her shapely ankles, Absalom couldn’t help noticing, even through her almost knee-high boots. “Only Mr. Burton charged with you, I saw. The rest of us took cover.”

  Absalom vaguely remembered Richard Burton running past him and into the building right in the teeth of the Danites, and realized that Annie must not have seen the events very clearly. He coughed with as much humility as he could muster. “Yes, well,” he said. No one else was running down the gully, the gunfire had stopped, and he had no idea what was happening at the hotel at that moment. “Of course, after the initial charge, I thought I should take cover, as well. No sense running to meet a pointless death, is there?”

  “You Brits are either the bravest men I’ve ever seen, or you’re stark raving lunatics in need of incarceration.”

  Abigail snorted.

  “Yes,” Absalom agreed, but then kicked himself for the insipidity of his answer. “Perhaps both.” That wasn’t quite right either, and he tried to make up for it by grinning his most piratical grin, but that just made him feel silly. He wanted to be a lunatic, stark raving mad from sheer courage, like the infernal Burton, so that Annie would like him. Sadly, he knew he wasn’t cut from the right stuff.

  “Are you wounded?” Abigail asked again. She dropped her skirt and balled her free hand into a fist on her hip. Her voice sounded dangerously flat, and Absalom wasn’t sure how to read that. Her question reminded him of the reason he’d come to Deseret in the first place.

  “No,” he admitted. “But the Danites appear to have occupied your hotel, and all the shooting has probably destroyed the building. Will you come home with me now?”

  She slapped him in the face.

  “You idiot!” she snapped at him. “I’ve come back here for my husband, not for the damned building. Orrin Porter Rockwell is my man, and I mean to stay with him!”

  “Don’t hit him!” Annie shouted. She looked surprisingly compassionate, so much so that Absalom half-hoped his sister would hit him again.

  “No need to curse, ladies,” he mumbled.

  Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh! Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  Absalom spun around, pistol pointing.

  Behind him, a big Strider crouched, lowering its carriage close to the ground. Absalom found himself staring down the barrels of large-bore guns, and he raised his own pistol to shoot at the attackers, trying not to cringe too visibly. If he had to die, he didn’t mind that it was a heroic death, defending two women—

  “Stop!”

  Annie spun like a top, throwing her leg surprisingly high into the air and kicking Absalom’s borrowed pistol out of his hand.

  Bang!

  The shot went wide.

  “Egad!” Absalom complained. He was about to ask what did you do that for? when the gunner snapped open the smoked visor of her helmet and revealed herself as Master Sergeant Jackson. “Thank you,” he added, trying to recover his dignity. “Sometimes my reflexes are entirely too quick.”

  “Joo’ve got killer espirit, Meester Top Hat,” Jackson called out over the chugging of her big machine. “But joo’ve got to get a little more control de tu mismo.”

  Absalom was no Spanish speaker, and the gunner’s words baffled him slightly. Had she just advised him to control his detumescence? That didn’t seem right. Anyway, she was smiling, so he smiled back.

  “I’ve found control to be an overrated quality, myself,” Annie responded. She stared fiercely at the Mexican Striderwoman, and something about her stance made Absalom think she might jump up on the vehicle and kick Jackson.

  He found the prospect surprisingly interesting.

  “Joo’ll find that it’s more important, when joo have a bigger gun,” Jackson shot back. She patted the barrel of the big weapon in front of her. “Wouldn’t joo say, Top Hat?”

  “Er…”

  Abigail snorted again. “Get in,” she told Absalom, hitching up her skirt and clambering up the Baba Yaga legs of the Strider. She climbed like a bear, Absalom thought, with muscle and purpose but no poise. Annie followed, more gracefully.

  Absalom recovered his pistol and brought up the rear, trying not to embarrass himself in front of all the ladies. The driver at least, he noted with some relief as he hoisted himself up into the carriage and dropped onto the rumble seat, was a man. His visor was up and he grinned at Absalom under an oiled mustache.

  “Where are we going?” Absalom asked. He wasn’t sure he cared very much. He had found Abigail, and was still trying to persuade her to leave Deseret with him, and he wasn’t in much of a hurry to accomplish anything else. Also, he found that he enjoyed being surrounded by women who were quarreling over him. “Back into the battle?”

  “The battle is changing,” Master Sergeant Jackson said. “Joo’ll see. Ándale!” she barked at the pilot.

  Both Mexicans snapped their visors into place and the Strider rose to its full height.

  Pffffffft-ankkkh!

  * * *

  Bullets buzzed through the wood and struck things inside the springhouse.

  Thud! Thud! Snap!

  “Ugh,” someone grunted. Clatter, foomph, splash.

  The bullets were hitting people, too, Sam realized. Someone had taken a slug and slipped into the creek.

  “I ain’t hit,” Orrin Porter Rockwell barked in the darkness.

  “Nor I,” echoed Ambassador Armstrong of the many names.

  “Argh!” snapped a strangled, irascible voice.

  “I expect that means President Young has taken the bullet,” Sam concluded. “Mr. President, are you still with us?”

  “I’m alive,” Brigham Young chomped out the words.

  “Good thing, too,” Sam said. “I’ve seen the widow’s walk of the Beehive House, and I’m not sure it could take the weight of all your widows.”

  There was a moment of silence—Sam couldn’t tell if it was shocked or awkward silence—and then Armstrong started to laugh, a dark rich sound reminiscent of smoked meat or chocolate or both. After a few seconds, Rockwell joined in with a surprisingly high-pitched snicker.

  “Don’t worry,” Young answered, teeth in his voice. “Truman Angell built that house to my own specifications, and I made sure he had that piece particularly reinforced.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Young chuckled.

  Armstrong and Rockwell burst back into howls of laughter. Sam wished he had a Cohiba. He had a craving for the taste and besides, telling a joke without a Cohiba in his hand felt like doing a magic trick without a top hat and wand.

  “I don’t suppose they’d worry too much, though,” he continued. “They’d just figure your cog had been repurposed to a higher level of the Great Machine.” The laughter trailed off, a little uncertain.

  “You’re making a joke, Clemens,” President Young snorted in the darkness, “but of course you’re exactly right.”

  “Good to hear,” Sam couldn’t resist one last crack. “I can’t abide any other outcome than being exactly right.”

  “Are joo badly injured, Meester President?” the Ambassador asked.

  “I’m bleeding,” Young said. “I’ve bled before. Let’s get out of this place.”

  “Well, the gun’s outta my reach,” Rockwell explained, “seeing as it’s up on a rafter and my hands are tied behind my back. Anybody else got the free use of their hands?”

  They all muttered that they didn’t.

  “All right, then. The knife’s in a barrel of beans, but it ain’t very far down. All we gotta do is get the lid off it and dig down into the beans a little ways. I reckon we can do that even with our hands tied behind our backs.”

  “Which barrel is it?” Sam asked. “How do we find it?”

  Rockwell hesitated slightly. “It’s the one marked red beans,” he said.

  Amstrong star
ted laughing again.

  “Our hands being tied may not be the most daunting obstacle we face,” Sam observed.

  “Yeah, well, shoot me for an idiot, I guess,” Rockwell grumbled. “I figured someday I’d be holed up in here with Injuns shooting at me, or a mountain lion. Never guessed I’d be blind and tied up, too.”

  * * *

  CRASH!

  Burton was racing through the upper storey of the hotel, close on Hickman’s heels and chasing the Danite leader through some sort of bedroom, when the Liahona plowed into the building. The force of it, and the surprise, knocked him to the floor, and for several tense moments he thought he would die with Bill Hickman in a tangle of ruined house-carpentry and cheap furnishings.

  When the shuddering was finished and the ruptured hot water tank had flooded the ground floor, he was still on the upper storey, only one of the walls of the room had been ripped away, the bed was been torn right out of the room and the cheap wallpaper was beginning to curl from the steam.

  And Hickman was already scrambling to his feet.

  Burton fired the Volcanic rifle at his man as the Danite slipped out the door.

  Bang!

  A miss, and though the bullet punched through the wall it still missed Hickman on the other side.

  Burton pumped the rifle to fire again.

  Click.

  He tossed the Volcanic aside. He spared only a second’s thought for the Liahona—it had passed by the room he was in, and was too far away for it or any of its passengers or crew to be of any help to Richard Burton.

  Burton stood and drew the 1851 Navy from its holster. He left the knife in his leg. He’d pull it out when the shooting was over, but he didn’t want to do it yet, for fear that sudden blood loss would knock him unconscious.

  He was already feeling a bit woozy.

  Gun first, Burton staggered out of the room on Hickman’s trail.

  He saw Hickman squeezing out through one of the two windows in the next room just as he entered. One wall was torn away here, too, and the air was wet and hot with steam.