Karen Memory (21 page)

I got less and less patience for any of that talk, the older I get, lessen it comes from a miner or a picker or some such.

I was standing in the dark on the cobbles, knowing it was safer out of sight even though every scrap of my soul—if whores got souls—wanted to go stand under a streetlight where every robber or rapist for ten miles could mark me. The light would of felt good, but you see I knowed it wasn’t safe.

So I lurked in the dark, pinching my coat closed across my bosom with my left hand, and I waited for the Marshal to show.

Hoofbeats told me he was coming. I didn’t turn my head; if somebody
was
watching me, even here in the shadows, I didn’t want to look like I was looking. Or worried about anything. But I knowed Dusty’s hoofbeats from the other night, and I didn’t expect anyone else would be on her.

Nor were they. The Marshal pulled the chestnut up under the hissing streetlight, letting the light flicker and fall on every side. His spurs jingled, and I knowed from their pure tone they was silver. I may have smiled a little over men and their vanity.

He just sat there, slouched under his hat, the collar of his duster mostly hiding his face. He waited. I was sure he hadn’t spotted me, for I was in the shadows and waiting very still. Also, he was looking in the other direction.

I didn’t keep him waiting long. Just a half a moment, in which I reviewed what I needed to tell him and got it all ordered out in my head. Then I stepped out of the dark and strode toward him, letting my boot heels make noise.

The walking boots didn’t go with the skirts I was wearing, but sometimes being fashionable ain’t a priority. Even for me.

He turned at my first footfall. You know how sometimes you can see the tension go out of somebody? Like their shoulders fall and they sit up both more straight and less, simultaneous?

Well, the change in the Marshal as he caught sight of me was the opposite of that.

As I came up on Dusty, I noticed she had a red-and-blue Indian blanket under her saddle, and Marshal Reeves held out his hand and pulled his foot out of the stirrup. “Swing up,” he said. “Let’s not all talk in one place.”

Well, I wasn’t kitted for riding astride, but the thing about my working dresses is most of ’em’s slit to the hip bone. That makes it a pile easier to do all sorts of things in ’em, and it turns out one of those things is jumping up on a horse.

I swung up over the cantle and settled myself. It might of been cold, but the coat kept the gap in my skirts covered. At least, as long as we was moving slow. If Dusty was given cause to canter, it might come to be a different story.

“Bantle’s trying to get you lynched,” I told the Marshal, once the mare was under way. “You and Tomoatooah both.”

“Is that so?”

I was trying not to press up against the Marshal’s back, mindful of what he’d said about his Jennie. But he was warm, and my being there didn’t seem to faze him. Also, the pitch of the saddle made it well-nigh impossible to hold myself back.

“He’s spreading the rumor that the murders started just when you and Tomoatooah happened to arrive in town.”

“Well,” the Marshal allowed, between the slow clop of Dusty’s hooves, “that ain’t a misrepresentation.”

“Because you was chasing the killer here!”

The Marshal shrugged. “In an ideal world, more folks would see it that way.”

“He’d get you both killed soon as look at you. He’s mean enough to eat off the same plate with a snake,” I opined.

“And ugly as a burned boot,” the Marshal agreed. “This don’t change anything, though. I still have a writ of arrest to serve. It just means the clock’s ticking.”

“What do you mean?”

He rolled his shoulders. “The clock on how long Tomoatooah and me can stay in town. And stay in a boardinghouse. Instead of laying our heads on velvet couches somewhere out in the hills and hoping no bounty hunter don’t find us.”

“A velvet couch” was a cowboy’s term for his thin and usually smelly woolen bedroll. “Bounty hunter?!”

“Sure,” the Marshal said. “He’ll have a bounty on us next week, at the latest. He just needs enough time to convince enough people that the case against us is incontrovertible.” (I didn’t know the word then, but I looked it up when I got home that night.)

“So you’ve got to catch the murderer before Bantle finishes laying his trap.”

Marshal Reeves turned his head and smiled so I could see it. He laid one finger alongside his nose. I was nervous and sick, and the Marshal seemed pleased as a pup with two tails.“We’ve learned something useful, though,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The killer’s somebody Bantle has a percentage in protecting,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “Damn it. Priya said that Bantle’s mechanic, a Russian alias Bruce Scarlet, might fit the bill. She said all the girls were scared of him.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” the Marshal said. “I can ask Tomoatooah if he will tail this Scarlet and see where he drinks. Maybe we can find a way to have a word with him outside.”

“If he drinks.”

“Mechanics all drink.”

“Not Miss Lizzie.” I grinned, and the Marshal tipped his hat at me in surrender.

I was just about to rummage around for something else to twit the Marshal’s dignity with—just being near him, and his calm boredom at Bantle’s machinations, was taking the edge off all my worry—when we were both startled by a scream and the almost-immediate shrilling of constables’ whistles. I grabbed for the Marshal’s waist as he raised the reins and jingled his spurs at Dusty.

He sure didn’t need to stick her with ’em, because just the ring sent her forward like a scorched weasel. The horse went, and he went, and a split second later I went, too—and a damn fine thing I have a practiced seat, or I’d have been rolling in the cold cobbles clutching my tailbone and wondering what happened. Speaking of the tailbone in question, it weren’t none too fond of its new accommodations, being enmeshed in recollections of its recent encounter with Mr. Jonathan Smith’s boot toe. I was determined not to whimper in front of the Marshal—or behind him as the case might be. So I held on and tried to grip as good as I could with my thighs, having no stirrups.

Thank whoever looks out for whores and cowboys that Dusty’s canter was as smooth as they come. You get that in a real strong horse sometimes; they catch themselves, like, and let themselves down easy instead of just hitting the ground. Feels like they got springs in their step for literal like.

Well, Dusty was about the strongest horse I ever rode. I could feel all the muscles moving under me—not bulky, but no yielding in ’em at all. I worrited after her in the dark, on the could-be-slick stones, but I figured the best thing I could do to help was just to hang on, try not to throw her balance, and let her be about her business.

Best plan I ever had, letting Dusty take care of me. Pity I can’t talk that mare into doing my tax paperwork.

She cantered and I suffered for maybe two minutes and not more than four, though it seemed a hell of a lot longer. The whistles shrilled up sharp and then dropped off for a bit, started up again more hesitant like for a second wave and then shushed completely. I figured at that point every constable in the Frog Hollow neighborhood had gotten a chance to toot his pipe and they needed a little rest before they got up to it again.

By then, anyways, Dusty and the Marshal had found the locus of the activity, so to speak. And I recognized where we was—red lanterns outside and red velvet curtains drawn over the windows facing the street.

“Aw, horsefeathers,” I said. “This is Breakneck Hill. This is Miss Pearl’s establishment.”

I felt the big sigh, and he nodded.

I expected Marshal Reeves would pull his foot from the iron again, so I could get down, but he just reined up into the middle of the swirling herd of constables and counted on them to clear a path for him. It worked, too.

I was starting to covet that man’s authority for my very own. It wasn’t that different from being with Madame; people just plain tended to did what she said, because it was her saying it. I wanted that, I realized. I wanted that respect.

The Marshal reined Dusty around, peering through the torches and over the heads of the swarm of constables all milling about like red ants. “Where’s Waterson?” he bellowed.

“Right here, Marshal,” Waterson said, appearing at the top of a ladder. He levered his foot over to stand and came up to Dusty, right fearless. “You want to rein that horse back? This is a crime scene.”

“Where’s the girl?” Marshal Reeves asked.

“Girl?”

“You get another murdered girl?”

“Yes,” Sergeant Waterson said shortly. “She’s down there. Whipped to ribbons, too.”

The Marshal reined Dusty over, closer to the edge of the road than I thought she’d go, but she trusted him enough to step right up against it. I held my breath. There ain’t no railing. Every week, a drunk or two tumbles off the edge of the street and is crippled or he dies. In the papers and over at the coroner’s office, they call it
involuntary suicide
.

If I’d been holding my breath a minute before, now I squeaked. Because the Marshal hooked one knee over the saddletree and just slid right down Dusty’s side, hanging there upside down with his head next to the red mare’s knees. “Torch!” he yelled, and somebody brought over a lantern and held it out.

“You could dismount,” Sergeant Waterson said dryly. “Because that looks more than a little ridiculous.”

The Marshal flipped upright again, so smooth in the saddle he hardly even nudged me. “Son of a bitch ain’t got far. Begging your pardon.”

“What’d you see?” Waterson asked.

“There’s a butt still smoldering there.” Reeves pointed. “Right by the mark where he ran his rope to lower her.” He turned in the saddle, left and right. “And we know he likes to watch the fun, now don’t we.… Hang
on,
Miss Memery!”

I grabbed for his gun belt quick as I’d grab for a bolting colt, and I got it, too. My fingers hooked leather, spurs rang, and the next thing I knowed Dusty was stretched out running like she was after hounds. I have a vague recollection of her clearing a couple of constables and of me striking against Bass Reeves’ back when she landed, but it ain’t more than the memory of a story somebody else had told you.

I just put my head down and tried to hang on while the Marshal laid his rein ends against Dusty’s shoulder—just once—and she somehow accelerated. “You saw him?” I yelled over Reeves’ shoulder.

“I saw something!” he yelled back. “Man on foot, shadow of that building over there. Could just be a damned rubberneck, but if so, why’s he lurking back there? And why’d he take to his heels as soon as I laid eyes on him?”

Dusty cornered like a cutting horse and barreled up the next street—it was River Styx Road. No, I don’t know who names these damn things. We also got us a Sarcophagus Street. Anyway, as she ran it, I saw a flicker of movement up one of the ladder escapes on the building sides.

“There!”

The Marshal reined Dusty so sparks flew. “Damn,” he said, “Can’t shoot at him. There’s people behind those windows.”

He didn’t bother dismounting, just jumped up on her saddle, tossed me the reins, and threw himself up at the first landing on the escape. It was a jump out across that drop-off to the sidewalk thirty feet below us that would of curled my hair if Mr. Marcel hadn’t handled that already.

“Follow on the ground!” He yelled something else, but it was lost in his boot nails ringing on the wrought iron.

I grabbed the reins and did the best I could. Dusty’s stirrups was too long, and no time to fix them, so I kicked my calves into the straps to keep the irons from banging her belly. She didn’t think much of the change of rider, but she was too much a professional to do more than flick an ear at me and smack my thigh with her tail. She moved for me, though, and no argument, and that was the bit that mattered.

Craning my head, I could make out the silhouette of a man vanishing over the roof edge, slightly darker against the moonlit clouds. He was only there for an instant—the same instant I realized that the Marshal had left me a long arm in the saddle holster. The Winchester with the chip out of its stock. Damn it, I’d had a shot.

But I didn’t know who I’d have been shooting at or if he’d committed any crime worse than running from a Marshal. Hell, I’ve run from an officer of the courts once or twice myself.

I felt a horrible chill at the thought that the Marshal didn’t have a weapon. I almost yelled up to where I could still hear his boot heels climbing the iron, but then I’d be letting the maybe killer know Reeves’d left his gun. I was just about to expire from apoplexy when I remembered the gun belt I’d grabbed.

So he was heeled, and all I was doing chasing myself in circles down here was letting our suspect build up a lead.

I reined Dusty forward again. She went, asking for more rein than I was comfortable giving. But she took the corner easily, and in time to see somebody hurtle past overhead, jumping between buildings.

“This way!” I yelled, in case the Marshal could hear me, and gave chase.

I kept Dusty as tight to the building walls as I could without putting her in the sidewalk ditches. No bullets yet, but that didn’t mean old what’s-his-face up there didn’t have a gun. Just that he hadn’t decided to use it yet.

Dusty and me followed on, trying to track him. We saw him jump one more time, and we followed—but two or three blocks later and I had to admit we’d lost him somewhere. I was about to turn Dusty around to go look for the Marshal when I heard a rising whistle and suddenly I was just a passenger on the big red mare. She whirled and snorted, then trotted along as businesslike as you please, back the way she came.

We met the Marshal standing at the roadside, looking crestfallen as a cat trying to seem unconcerned at a mousehole.

“No luck, either,” I told him. “Where the hell did he go?”

The Marshal shook his head. “I had him. I was right on him. And I slipped on a damned roof tile.” He turned his head and spat. “That’ll teach me to chase people across rooftops without Sky.”

I offered him Dusty’s reins. She weren’t listening to anything I had to say through them, anyhow. “I wish the damn constables had gotten that search dirigible they’re always trying to pry money out of the mayor for,” I groused. “We’d have seen him try to give us the slip then.”