Authors: Elizabeth Bear
Once I’d gotten myself around a good forkful—the rest weren’t going to waste, not with the Comanche’s dedicated trenchermanship at hand—and poured myself some of that fresh coffee, I starched up my nerve and said, “Marshal … I had an idea.”
At this point, Signor determined that he’d get no satisfaction from me and went to bother the Marshal. I winced, thinking of sharp claws and of white fur on black trousers and of how some range men ain’t tolerant of pets. But as I was trying to figure out what order to put the coffeepot down and get my feet under me in, so I could retrieve Signor and eject him from the dining room—not that that ever lasted—the Marshal lifted his arms, leaned back, and made room for the cat in his lap.
I watched in wonderment as all stone and a half of Signor thumped into the Marshal’s lap and tea-cozied up, purring even louder.
Reaching carefully around the cat, who was now rubbing his face against the Marshal’s waistcoat buttons, the Marshal put his cup out. I switched the stream of coffee from my cup to his.
“He don’t usually cotton to strangers,” I said, nodding to Signor.
The Marshal fed him a bit of bacon. “I like critters,” he said. “Can’t be a good horseman if your horse don’t take to you.”
I stared, blushing. That was it, I realized. Though one was black and the other Irish, this man reminded me of my da. It took me several good seconds before I could manage, “Well, you’ve got a cat for life, now. Or at least as long as the bacon holds out.”
The Marshal smiled, sipped his coffee somehow without dragging his mustache through it, and said, “I’m all ears.”
“You’re all mustache,” Tomoatooah corrected, and they shared a tired grin.
“Let’s hear the lady’s plan,” the Marshal said. When I set the coffeepot down, he poured for Tomoatooah and we all drank silently together for a few moments as I collected myself.
“It requires an awful lot of you,” I started hesitantly.
His mustache did that thing I was starting to learn was a silent laugh—a kind of quiver, as if his upper lip was writhing behind it. “Miss,” he said, “I believe I told you how I came twelve hundred miles—as the crow flies; I’m pretty sure I covered half again that—by rail and pony and mule and my own two feet—”
“And mine,” Tomoatooah added between bites. He talked with his mouth full. I’d better make sure Miss Bethel didn’t see that.
Fortunately, she was still abed with her gripe. I only say “fortunately” because she was already feeling better from the night before, you understand.
“Anyway,” Reeves added, pushing his polished plate back. There was still one smear of butter and molasses on it: he picked up a corner of flapjack off Tomoatooah’s plate and scrubbed it away, then disposed of the evidence. “I’ve already given an awful lot of me to this case. I can only hope that Judge Parker will still pay my expenses when I get back, and they’ll probably only do that if I get my man. Now, I ain’t no Texas Ranger—”
Tomoatooah worked his jaw as if he meant to spit, then recollected the dining room rug and took a swig of coffee instead. I was getting to like this rough man. Comanche had a reputation as the fiercest of Indian braves; I knowed even the other Plains tribes was afraid of them, though I thought they was all supposed to be on reservations since that Quanah surrendered a few years back. And this one might of been a hardened killer—but so was the U.S. Marshal sitting across from him, and I was finding myself more and more enamored of both their senses of humor.
“Tell me your plan,” Marshal Reeves finished.
I hid my scorching cheeks behind my hands, thereby losing any chance of pretending it was just the cold in the room growing as the fire died down. “I read in a dime novel that you was a master of disguise,” I said. “Now I know them books ain’t worth the dry yellow paper they’re printed on. But…”
The Marshal’s mustache was doing its little burlesque shimmy on his lip again. “Master of disguise? You know not to believe what you read—”
Tomoatooah leaned across the table and jabbed him in the shoulder with the handle of a butter knife. “She’s got your number, gunslinger.”
I had to finish on a rush, because otherwise I just wasn’t going to get the words out. Quickly I told him about Priya’s sister. I finished, “So. If you was to go to Bantle’s crib,” I said. “And say you was to say you’d heard he had a girl called Aashini that gave a real good ride. And wanted to have a go…”
“But according to what you just said, your friend Priya said she didn’t know if she was at Bantle’s, last she knew.”
“You don’t know Peter Bantle the way I do. Priya meant something to him. Nothing good. But she got away, and so he’s gonna get his hands on her sister to punish her. Same as he’ll do whatever he can to punish Madame, and me. And Effie too, I don’t wonder. I’d wager Aashini Swati’s in Bantle’s crib now, because he knows it’d make Priya suffer.”
It was a little while before I recognized the look on Marshal Reeves’ face, though it silenced me. It was respect, and I hadn’t seen that from a man who weren’t Crispin since I don’t know when. “That’s not half-bad,” he said, having chewed it over for a bit. “And it might of worked, too. Except Bantle knows I’m here, now, and he knows I’m looking for … well, not him, maybe. Unless he’s out of town often, on a lot of long trips…?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I wish I could say so. Hell, I wish he was gone so often we’d never heard of him.”
“It was too much to hope for, really. And I’d still be glad to help you, on account of your friend’s sister might be able to tell us a thing or two about Bantle and his friends. But anyway, the meat of it is, he knows I’m here. And while I know a few tricks—making myself look smaller in the saddle and the like—I can’t change out my nose for another.” He tapped it with a forefinger. “More’s the pity.”
“Damn.” I looked at Tomoatooah. “Maybe you—”
“Only thing lower than a nigger is a savage,” he said, shaking his head, the long muslin tails of his scarf rustling over his beadwork. “It wouldn’t work. Even crib whores aren’t for sale to Indians.”
“Goddamn.”
“Karen, darling. Language, dear.”
A horrible shock seethed through the pit of my belly, cold and sharp. I turned in my chair to see Miss Francina pushing the hall door Signor had cracked the rest of the way open, frowning down at me.
“How much of that did you hear?” I asked her.
“Enough to know what a bad plan it is,” she said. She pursed her lips and shook her head. Signor purred at her from Marshal Reeves’ lap, arching his neck to see over the table.
“But Priya—” I started.
Miss Francina held up one kid-gloved hand. “Yes, Priya. I’m not insensible, sweet child.” She flipped a glorious waterfall of golden ringlets behind one white shoulder, baring the delicate line of her collarbone and the creamy swell of her little bosom. I didn’t know how she managed that effect, but I knowed some small-chested girls who might kill to find out.
She tapped her fingers on her lips. Then she sighed and said, “Well, there’s nothing else for it. I’ll do it.” And as we all three gaped at her, she smiled with one half of her mouth and said, “I can pass for a man, sugar. I’ve known enough of ’em. Besides, it’s for Priya.”
* * *
We determined to strike while the iron was hot. Having helped Merry Lee pack up her few things—and let her into the plan, because we could think of nobody in all Rapid City more qualified to lead a daring rooftop escape if we should need one—we resolved to do the thing that very night.
We also agreed not to tell Priya just yet. It would be cruel to get her hopes up while there was still so much that could go wrong. We couldn’t bring Aashini back to Madam Damnable’s, either. She hadn’t expressly forbidden it, but she had not beaten around any bushes in making it plain that she didn’t wish to work her way any further into Bantle’s bad graces.
Merry Lee said she had a place and Bantle had never found it. And that he never would find it, she figured, since Chinatown residents didn’t have much to say to Peter Bantle. “He had his girls led through the streets in collars once a week,” she said. “To show off the wares. It’s the only sunshine most of ’em get.”
There was not much any of us could say to that stone look in her wide-set black eyes. So we all sat dumb, and after a while she took pity and said that she’d feel safer all around if rather than telling Miss Francina where her safe house was, she just waited for Miss Francina and Aashini to make their escape and then guide them to it.
“Well, I’ll wait with you,” the Marshal said, which kicked off a brief argument that wasn’t settled until he agreed to let Tomoatooah and me come with him, too. He looked dubiously at me at first, but I reminded him that I could handle a gun, and he finally tipped his head and shrugged in that way he had. “Well, ain’t you a regular little Annie Oakley.”
Once that was settled—and I make it sound easier than it was, but there ain’t no point in regurgitating fifteen minutes of circular arguing—Miss Francina raked a hand through her curls, snagging her fingers on a jeweled comb. “All right then,” she said. “We won’t meet here.”
“There’s a bar down by the docks,” the Marshal said. “It’s called the Lion’s Den. You know it?”
Miss Francina smiled. “I know it,” she said. “I’ll see you there at three A.M.”
But then Marshal Reeves looked at me, kissed air, and said, “Miss Memery, can you ride?”
I purely don’t mind saying my heart fell through to my boots. No, well. Actually, I do mind saying it. But that’s what happened, all the same.
I just concentrated on keeping all my doubt and confusion and sadness off my face while I figured out what I was going to say.
“If I gotta,” I answered at last, and the Marshal was kind enough to leave it at that.
We knocked off work a little after two, it being early in the week, and Miss Francina and I both separately pled tiredness and headed upstairs. I changed myself into plain clothes and no stays and no crinolines. Remembering what Marshal Reeves had called me, I’d taken a few minutes to tack up the hem of my sturdiest navy broadcloth day dress almost to the tops of my boots—just like Annie Oakley wore. I envied Priya her trousers and might almost have borrowed a pair, but they’d never stretch over my hips and anyways, she’d want to know what I planned on using them for.
I slipped the Marshal’s Morgan dollar back into my boot top, though. For luck.
When I sneaked back down and met Miss Francina out by the dustbins, I could hardly credit my eyes. I mean, standing there gave me a shiver, like that poor dead girl’s half-flayed corpse was still cooling on the stones. But the real shiver was because of the tallish, slender man with his blond hair slicked back in a plait and dropped down the back of his collar. He looked so familiar … and yet so strange. He had narrow, aristocratic features—the sort you’d expect from a Bostonian, maybe. Or an Englishman. The eyes were deep set and drowsy, gray under a pronounced curve of bone. The nose was long and elegant.
He wore workman’s togs, though—dungarees and a check shirt with a dingy red bandanna for a cravat—and hard boots laced to the mid-calf. And when he talked, he talked like me, or any of the girls who ain’t yet learnt all Miss Bethel has to teach ’em.
It was like meeting a good friend’s hitherto-unexpected kin. It gave me a good hard unsettle, that I don’t mind reporting.
“Do I pass?” Miss Francina asked me. And then she smiled, and it was her again, just dressed up in men’s kit.
“I’d not have recognized you on the street,” I admitted. Then I said, “Your teeth and your skin are too good to be visiting Bantle’s girls.”
“Some like rough trade that can afford better,” Miss Francina said sourly. “And some like a girl who’d like to fight back, but can’t afford to.”
“Gah,” I said, though of course I knowed it. “How are we going to find you, once you’re in?”
She dug in her big coat pocket. “I borrowed this from Lizzie.” When she held out her hand, there was something like a miniature wireless telegraph set in it, except it had some dials set in the front and two antennas. I tapped on a dial with my fingertip; the needle stayed pointed right at Miss Francina. The other needle seemed to be pointing at the first dial.
“Slip that in your reticule,” she said.
“What is it?”
She flipped her coat open and showed me a brooch pinned to the lining. “It tracks this,” she said. “The left needle points toward the brooch. The right needle swings toward the left needle depending on how close the brooch is. And the brooch has a switch in it so if you click it the right way, it’ll make a light light up on the dingus. Merry Lee will be waiting for your signal. So when I have Aashini, I’ll click the switch. You wave Merry in to take the girl. I’ll get her up to the roof.”
I felt my forehead crinkle right up like a ruched skirt when you draw the strings. “That’s genius.”
“That’s Lizzie,” she replied.
* * *
I don’t mind saying I were on pins and tenterhooks and broken glass the whole way down to the Lion’s Den. It ain’t a nice saloon, by any means, and when I walked in on Miss Francina—I mean, Alias Zach Murphy’s arm, a lot of heads turned to see the lady. Nobody commented on my tacked-up dress, though, even though there weren’t a lot of other sets of skirts in there.
Merry Lee was nowhere in sight, which was probably wise. Some of these men might get the wrong idea about a Chinese girl walking in here, and that would end badly for everyone. But Bass Reeves was elbowed up to the bar. He had a shot of whiskey on the plank before him, black enough that I wondered if it was wood alcohol darkened up with some coal tar. I might of warned the Marshal, except he didn’t seem to have any intention of drinking that stuff.
A real western saloon ain’t the kind of dusty tavern with swinging doors they write about in the dime novels. I mean, sure, there’s some barrelhouses ain’t got more than a plank laid over sawhorses to serve on, but the balance of ’em have got carved mahogany back bars—ours ain’t even the nicest I’ve seen—mirrors, Oriental carpeting. Glass windows, some of ’em have.
Except for this place, apparently. There was nothing on the bare splintered floor but sawdust and eyeballs. The bartender’s stock was on a couple of plank shelves against the back wall, none of it looking too appetizing. Sawhorses would of been a step up: the plank bar balanced on empty barrels, and the clientele apparently used ’em as spittoons.