Karen Memory (38 page)

A useful fellow, that Tomoatooah. He was only saved from perfection by the fact that he told us these details through a mouthful of half-chewed vegetable bun.

“Where’s the sewing machine?” I asked. “The Singer. The one I used in the fire.”

“Still at the mayor’s house, as far as I know,” said Miss Francina.

Crispin said, “You aren’t plotting what I think you’re plotting, young lady.”

I pasted my most innocent expression on. “If Nemo’s here, his submersible must be in the harbor, right? Ready to pick him up? I can think of one way to end the threat of it sinking ships for good and all. And put paid to any chance of a cholera epidemic, also.”

He spent a long time looking at me, and I spent just as long looking back.

“Besides,” I said. “I bet after all Miss Lizzie’s done to hot-rod it, that Singer can bust down a jailhouse wall pretty well. Don’t you?”

Crispin frowned and stared harder. I smiled more. The standoff only ended because Miss Francina put her chicken bun down on her knee, sighed, and said, “You know if we don’t help her, she’s just going to try to do it by herself.”

Butter wouldn’t have melted in my smile, I swear.

*   *   *

So it was Marshal Reeves who tore strips of black fabric into masks, which we snipped eyeholes in with Miss Francina’s nail scissors—of
course
she had them in her reticule. We all tied them over our faces until we looked like a pack of cartoon banditos, and by then it was dark enough that we slunk out into the night. We split up, because that always works out so well for the heroes in the dime novels. Most of our party stayed in Chinatown but took off over the roofs under Merry’s guidance toward the building down by the waterfront where Bantle processed his new-imported indenturees. Apparently, he was staying there until he got his parlor fixed.

My heart bled, I tell you.

Aashini had stayed behind, though Priya had had to twist her arm something awful to make it happen. She had a letter written out by Miss Francina and addressed to Mr. Orange Jacobs, who had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Washington until 1875 and who was now the Territory’s Delegate to the Congress of the United States, even if he couldn’t vote there. In this letter was explained everything we’d learned about what Bantle and Nemo and Standish were up to.

So even if we all died, somebody would find out the truth and maybe be able to do something about it.

Merry Lee would have been the member of our company most specialized for second-story work, but as she was occupied, me and the Comache made do. He collected Adobe and Scout from the livery where they was stabled, and we made our way up the hill at a good trot. Not fast enough to draw attention but not slow, either.

The masks stayed inside our collars for now, tucked down like range bandannas.

We left the mares a street away, tied to a hitching rail, and crept around the back of the mayor’s house. Tomoatooah lifted me through the window on the back porch roof while the constables milled about more or less uselessly below, and it was Tomoatooah and me who creeped down the servants’ stair by stepping only on the edges of the risers, where the boards wouldn’t creak. Most of the activity around the place seemed to have halted with suppertime. Though there was guards at each of the doors, the constant in-and-out had stopped and we moved through the shadows of the stairwell unobserved.

I knowed the Singer was in one of the rooms at the back of the house, and it was easy enough to figure out which one because the doorway smelled like rancid smoke. I made a face, but Tomoatooah was right at my shoulder, and we’d been through too much together for me to let him down. Besides, I’d be letting the whole city—the whole nation, and President Hayes to boot!—down if I didn’t go through with it.

Tomoatooah patted me on the shoulder, and I pretended not to notice that his hand was still trembling some from the shock he’d taken. I hoped it would heal up, given time.

The door was already cracked. And the mayor’s staff did a good job keeping the hinges oiled. We eased it open and greased inside.

The room loomed with shadows. There was some light from the outside—up here on the hill, they had gas lamps along the streets and some of the houses had electric arcs to illuminate their patios. One across the wide back lawn actually had a garden party going on—in the middle of winter, no less, with tall perforated stoves for heaters, and those lights glaring off everything. At least it was a clearer night than the day had been. And I reckon it gave those rich folk the chance to show off their furs.

I hoped they all caught pneumonia.

And there, hulking in the center of the room, was Madame’s battered sewing machine.

Maybe it was the darkness, but the armature looked better than I had anticipated by a considerable.

The straps were hanging loose and the hasps were open, like they hadn’t moved a thing since they pried me out of it. It still smelled like a fire in a cathouse, too. But I stepped inside and with Tomoatooah’s help got it strapped on tight—and actually fitted properly this time. We’d decided we would fire up the steam engine first, and then once it came up to pressure we’d crank up the diesel, what with the diesel being louder.

Of course, that’s when we discovered that the reservoirs was dry. Fortunately, there was a kerosene stove in that same room and a pump handle in the kitchen just one hall over. We filled the thing up with kero and water and we primed it and lit it. And then settled in to try to wait real quiet while the water began to heat.

The good news was it didn’t make much noise while it was just coming up to a boil, and to pressure. Tomoatooah took advantage of the twenty minutes or so while I was trapped inside the thing in a rising state of anxiety to sit down in the corner with his rifle across his knees, fold his arms over the rifle, and take a nap. I just tried to stand still and concentrate on my breathing.

Finally the pressure gauge edged up into the green. I turned the valve, and the hiss of released steam and the thump of pistons wakened Tomoatooah. Shaky or not, he was on his feet in an instant.

A good thing, too, because
that
noise had carried far enough to alert the constables. Their boots was thudding down the hallway toward us while he turned the crank to spark the diesel engine. Their voices echoed through the empty house. We wouldn’t make it to either door without stomping over the lot of ’em.

Just as well that had never been our intention.

I took three running steps toward the full-length windows and crashed through a pair of them, then out onto the porch. Boards splintered under the weight of the armature, so I kept moving, running, bursting through the rail. Tomoatooah was hot on my heels, and we thudded across the frozen ground toward the nearest hedge and a line of safe deep shadows before the first bullets started to cut the air.

Either a sergeant arrived or a cooler head prevailed, because there were only a few gunshots before the constables seemed to realize they were shooting toward a garden party full of rich folk and quit. First time the bourgeoisie ever did much for me.

By then Tomoatooah and me was among the trees, and by the time the constables actually got themselves organized to chase us I was flat out running and he was back up on Scout, leading Adobe—and we was long, long gone.

*   *   *

We expected a pursuit. But it didn’t materialize immediately, and then we took to side alleys and thought maybe we’d eluded ’em for a bit. Not for long, though, because it turns out sprinting through the streets of Rapid in a sewing machine with one busted, stiff, grinding knee joint and a Red Indian for an outrider does draw something of a crowd. Fortunately, we was moving so fast that we stayed ahead of the interest, and inside of twenty minutes we had made it back to Chinatown.

Just in time to catch up to the gun battle outside the jailhouse. And—not too much later—for the gun battle to catch up to us.

I don’t know whether one of our folk started proceedings prematurely or if Bantle and Standish and their boys looked out the window at the wrong minute and caught the Marshal and Crispin and Miss Francina and Merry and Priya slipping up on them. There wasn’t exactly time to get a straight story out of anybody.

Tomoatooah and me came running up—well, he came running; I came thudding—and we heard the sound of gunfire from three blocks off, just where the plain brick facades started to give way to ornate wrought iron painted in brilliant reds and blues and greens and oranges, marking the boundary of Chinatown. We slowed down, then, under the big banner with the bright gold characters I’d have to ask Priya to read to me, someday.

If we both happened to live through this.

People was sheltering in doorways, huddled behind the corners of buildings, and scrunched down at the bottoms of the walkway wells. Trying to stay out of the line of fire. I could just make out the gray-painted clapboard of the jailhouse up ahead and the bright licks of muzzle flash from inside it.

I figured the odds were good that they hadn’t seen us yet through the dark, and in the noise of that firefight they sure hadn’t heard us. It looked like at least some of our friends had taken shelter in a side street opposite, and I couldn’t tell if they were returning fire. Or even who was over there: from this side, all we could tell was where the people inside the jailhouse were concentrating their fire.

Tomoatooah reined Scout back, which seemed like a good idea to me. I wouldn’t ride down a street toward shooters inside a building if I had any choice at all, either. He sidestepped her into Passage Street, Adobe following, and I went with ’em. We stopped by the side door of a block of apartments, with five or six trash bins lined up beside it. The horses, I will say, was damned calm about that hissing contraption I was piloting, too. They seemed more nervous about the drop down to sidewalk level.

I looked down at my arms, shielded under the steel plates at the front, and sighed. This one was going to be up to me.

I was grateful for all the time Miss Lizzie had put into tinkering with the thing, also. If I made it off this waterfront alive, I was going to pay for an inventor’s license and set her up in business as a Mad Scientist.

But right now, Priya and close to half of everybody else I had ever cared about was down there somewhere being shot at, and unless I was much mistaken, it was my plan to bust out Madame that had gotten them into that position. I looked at Tomoatooah. He scowled back and unlimbered his Colt.

I said, “At least the constables ain’t gotten here yet.”

“I’ll go around back,” he offered. He hooked a thumb over that black rag mask and pulled it up to cover his eyes. When it was settled to his liking, he unhooked Adobe’s reins from his saddle biscuit and dropped them on the curb. The horse snorted and dropped her head, like she didn’t think much of this turn of events but was willing to play along.

“Well, I guess that makes me the distraction,” I said, and picked up a metal trash bin lid in each one of the Singer’s dented hands.

*   *   *

It would have been nice if I could have used those sunken sidewalks to stay out of the line of fire, but there was one more drawback of them not connecting to one another underneath the roads. As it was, well, the darkness was my best advantage, and I was going to use it. And going to use every other thing I had at my disposal to get the attention of the defenders inside the jailhouse away from my friends.

Surely they couldn’t be pinned down. If nothing else, that side street that was drawing all the fire opened out on the waterfront at the back.

Would have been nice to have had a firearm, anyhow.

“So much for a nice quiet jailbreak,” I muttered. Hefting my bin lids, I pumped up the pressure in the Singer again, and started to run.

For the first time since I can’t remember when, luck was with me. At least for the next thirty seconds or so, as I bolted the length of that street in the dark, inside the shuddering armature of that sewing machine.

I blessed Lizzie and Priya every step of the way. These things ain’t built for running—or climbing walls, or punching out of burning houses, for that matter—but their tinkering had turned it into the next best thing to a one-woman ironclad. The gyroscopes meant all I had to do was keep the feet rising and falling, which given the dark and the uncertain footing was a blessing and a half. And in that dark, I was three-fifths of the way down the block to the Chinatown jail before anybody inside it realized where that clanking and thudding was coming from and that they should be concerned about it. Bullets commenced to rattle and spark off the stones around me, and one or two ricocheted off my galvanized trash bin lids.

I thumped past the side street where the shooters inside the jailhouse had been aiming before I arrived, and though I didn’t turn my head to try and peer through the dark at who was there, I heard Priya’s voice raised in a wild shout as I cantered past. Sparks snapped from under my feet, and some of ’em was from bullets and some was from the grippers on the Singer’s treads. That sticky knee still grated with every step, but I pushed it through the motion and it got easier. Whatever was bent in there must be wearing off or grinding loose. I heard somebody running behind me, and more gunfire back there, and the barrage from the jail let up. A few shots still whizzed past me, but they was unaimed, and from the flash it looked like somebody was just firing out the window corner and hoping to get lucky.

A bullet spanged off the cage beside my face and something hot shocked my cheek and ear. I thought it was just sparks, and between the crop weal and the burns from the glove I couldn’t care much more than that if it were a bullet crease. A big gun spoke to my left, and the flash at the window corner stopped. I looked over to see the Marshal running, his Winchester at his shoulder. He’d shot right through the clapboard siding and got his man.

The wall of the Chinatown jail loomed up like a clapboard cliff. And to nobody’s surprise more than mine, I jumped across the sidewalk trench like it wasn’t even there and busted right through the jailhouse siding in a blizzard of spruce-scented splinters.