The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (16 page)

“
Huntress
,” Gieo corrected for her,
“and my name is Gieo.”

“Yo?” Danny asked.

“Gieo,” Veronica corrected for him. “It has a
‘g’ on the front.”

The little baby crush, an egg really, not
even a peeping baby crush yet, that Gieo had formed for Veronica
broke free of its shell and became a full-blown squawking crush in
the moment Veronica got her name right without needing direction.
She didn’t know Veronica, but she knew she was trouble.

“My, my, then you must belong to the one and
only Red Bishop,” Veronica said. “How times must have changed if
she’s taking pets. Although with a cute thing such as yourself, she
could hardly be blamed.”

“Red Bishop?” Gieo asked. Immediately, she
felt stupid for the question and the inarticulate way in which she
phrased it. For some reason, her brain wasn’t working right around
the Madame, and her mouth was becoming a blundering accomplice in
making her look and feel foolish.

“She must not have told you much of herself,”
Veronica said. “That’s hardly surprising, the taciturn thing that
she is. You come by when we’re all set up, share a drink with me,
and I’ll tell you everything you’ll ever want to know about our
mutual friend.” Her slow, lingering cadence and choice of words and
phrasing, all spoke of a southern belle, but she didn’t have a hint
of an accent. The overall effect of her speech was disarming and
hypnotic without intimation that it might be artificial despite the
obviousness of the affectation.

“It was good to finally meet you,” Danny said
with a curt tip of his cap to Gieo. “Now, Madame VV, if you’re
ready to head out, I’ve got a few strong men with carts to see to
the move. Tombstone welcomes the Lazy Ravens with open arms.”

Veronica and her girls departed with a few
winks and smiles thrown in Gieo’s direction. Before the Ravens had
departed fully, Gieo caught a brief glance of Fiona, standing well
apart from the crowd, glaring intently in their direction. At
first, Gieo suspected the angry glance was meant for her, but as
she remained standing still, the glare moved, following someone
departing. Gieo tried to follow Fiona’s sightline and deduced
either Danny or Veronica had done or said something to infuriate
the gunfighter.

Chapter 11:
Money? Oh, right, THAT
stuff.

Gieo first
tried to catch Fiona in the crowd. For being taller than most, and
a strikingly beautiful redheaded former lingerie model, the
gunfighter was surprisingly sneaky. When Gieo finally pushed her
way over to where Fiona had stood, the gunfighter was nowhere to be
found. She thought about following the crowd over to the old
courthouse. She’d overheard a few people saying that’s where the
Lazy Ravens would be setting up shop, but she decided against it
until she actually thought through something to say to Veronica;
the last thing she wanted was a repeat of the embarrassment of that
afternoon. The mystery of Fiona being known by someone in Vegas and
the bizarrely ominous alias of Red Bishop were just things she’d
have to let go for the moment.

She made her way back to the saloon to see if
Fiona had gone home. Sadly, her room was empty and Mitch hadn’t
seen her come back. Gieo grabbed Ramen and her toolkit from the
roof and set up her shop in the saloon to begin fixing tech in
hopes of getting her hands on more raw materials to finish the
motorcycle. Without another influx of parts and trade goods, she
was likely to be out of everything by the end of the week. As it
stood, the Wagoneer had already been mostly stripped and the
rooftop filing system of salvage was beginning to look rather
empty.

The excitement of the Lazy Ravens’ arrival
spread through the town, along with the word of a formal
announcement from Zeke, who had officially begun calling himself
the mayor of Tombstone at some point in the last day or so; mayor
was a good enough title, but Gieo thought ‘feudal lord’ fit his
behavior better. Both public events did a number on Gieo’s business
and she ended up sitting for hours in the empty saloon, playing
go-fish with Ramen.

Later in the evening, after the excitement of
the day had worn off, a few stragglers came trickling into the
saloon with broken items. One of the men, a goat herder and cactus
harvester, had a tea kettle and electric toothbrush with him. Gieo
had combined the two items for a few of the townsfolk in her first
week in Tombstone. The kettle’s steam power was easy enough to
harness with a few paddles and widgets, charging the electric
toothbrush for a short time using a copper wire coil. The boiling
water was even enough to disinfect the bristles if the owner was so
inclined. It wasn’t as fun or inventive as the first couple of
times she did it, but she couldn’t really complain considering it
was the only work she’d seen all day.

“What do you have in barter?” Gieo asked
hopefully.

The man slapped his dirty palm against her
table with a metallic clink. When he pulled away his grimy paw,
there was a stack of five silver coins, all about the size of a
quarter, with some strange markings on them. Gieo picked up one of
the coins and gave it a glance over. They looked minted in a fairly
professional way, with an imprint of the wacky Las Vegas
skyline—Eiffel Tower, pyramid, Empire State Building, medieval
castle, etc.—on one side and the Lazy Raven crest on the other.

“What’s this?” Gieo asked.

“Money.”

“Oh, right, money.” Gieo had almost forgotten
what money looked like. Even before the Slark invasion, she’d never
really dealt in cash. Debit and credit cards were faster, easier,
and accepted everywhere; on the rare occasion she did have tangible
money, it was always paper. Coins were interesting in theory, but
nothing she’d ever bothered with.

“Will you take it?” the goat herder asked.
“They’ve done away with Slark heads as currency. The hunters are
selling their heads for these, and then they can buy fuel with
cash. A bunch of us got paid in them for helping the ladies set up
their new digs. Then they even bought some cactus from me. They’re
awful pretty, and it’s nice to have the jingle of money in my
pocket again.”

“Sure, if everyone’s doing it, I’ll do it
too,” Gieo said with an edge of sarcasm. “Out of morbid curiosity,
what is the going rate for a Slark head?”

“Ten crows—that’s what the ladies were
calling the coins.”

“And how much does fuel cost?”

“Six crows a gallon.” The goat herder smiled
at being so helpful and liberal with his information. When he
smiled, Gieo could see he desperately needed the electric
toothbrush.

“Wait, so if the old ration was six heads for
fifteen gallons, the rate should only be four crows a gallon,” Gieo
said.

This comment shot a hole right through what
the goatherd had been told. His smile dropped, and he shook his
head. “No, it’s six crows a gallon, ten per head,” he said. “The
math works out, or Zeke wouldn’t have set it up this way.”

Gieo smirked knowingly. Yes, she was sure
Zeke had worked it out in his favor; with a little fractional math,
it was easy to determine the new rate was a third more than the old
system. He’d raised the prices and it would likely be at least a
week before the mathematically challenged hunters would notice the
difference. But, even when they did finally figure it out, what
could they do? Increased profit and tangible assets might appeal to
Zeke, but that still couldn’t account for everything he’d been
doing lately.

“Yep, Zeke certainly set people up for
something,” Gieo said. “Your payment is fair. Let’s take a look at
that toothbrush.”

Fiona stalked the streets for hours, hopping
mad about Veronica’s arrival, angrier still that Danny didn’t
recognize her, and most importantly, about Gieo being there to
flirt her up the second she stepped off the train. Fiona had a
nearly overwhelming urge to shoot quite a few people. The desire,
which might have had a plentiful outlet in the cultists, found
nowhere to turn. The Lazy Ravens took to the street almost
immediately upon arrival, and ushered the cultists away. Yahweh had
instilled so much fear of non-cultist women in his followers that
they fled at the mere blurry sight of the brightly adorned
prostitutes, enforcers, and dancers. Then, the Ravens had done
something even stranger. They turned their attention to the people
who had gathered to see them sweep back the chanting methanol
drinkers, and began buying goods off of them with silver coins. The
townspeople, none of which were hunters, were grateful for not only
the removal of the cultists, but also the reintroduction of money,
and so practically heaped goods upon the Ravens.

Fiona had even been handed a single silver
piece by a girl who was too young to know who she was—likely
sixteen or seventeen from the complete lack of any lines on her
face. The girl smiled to her, winked, gave a flirty bat of her
eyelashes, and said she’d be happy to do a little dance for Fiona
if she found four more of the coins. Fiona fingered the coin during
the rest of her aimless walk amidst the dusty streets of Tombstone
until long after sundown.

She found herself outside the Lazy Ravens’
new home in the brick courthouse with the white pillars out front.
It was only about a block or two from the saloon, but, then again,
most everything in Tombstone was only about a block or two from
most everything else. The ladies were cooling themselves on the
steps in the fading warmth of dusk. When Fiona turned off the
street to walk up toward the courthouse, a couple of the ladies
broke away from the pack to intercept her.

“Sorry, sweetie,” one of the women said.
“We’re not open for business yet.” When she got close enough to see
that Fiona was a woman and not just a very skinny man, she changed
her tune. “Listen, we’re not taking applications from the local
talent either, so you may as well...”

The other woman quickly elbowed the first in
the side, cutting off anything else she might say. “Veronica has
been expecting you,” she said quickly. “Sorry about the
misunderstanding, Red Bishop; Stephanie is new.” Fiona didn’t
recognize either of them, but that didn’t really mean anything. She
wasn’t good with names or faces, and just because one of them knew
who she was didn’t necessarily mean she’d ever met either of
them.

Fiona passed by the two without comment and
into the old courthouse. Once inside, she was again greeted by one
of the Ravens, but this time the escort, a lovely Hispanic woman in
a revealing flamenco dress, took her by the arm and guided her
expertly through the maze of the courthouse corridors to one of the
judge’s chambers on the second floor. The modifications on the
courthouse hadn’t taken much time at all. What had once been a
house of justice and law spent some time as a munitions depot
during the Slark skirmishes that finally halted their eastward
expansion, and then as all-purpose storage once Zeke took over. To
look at what the Ravens had done to it, Fiona would have imagined
it was always intended to be a brothel.

Veronica answered the door before Fiona could
even knock, pulling her in by two handfuls of the front of her
shirt. Fiona found herself shoved back up against the closed door
once Veronica had her inside the office turned bedroom. Veronica’s
lips rushed up to meet Fiona’s. Veronica tasted of strawberry candy
and slippery gloss. Fiona returned the kiss in the heady,
aggressive embrace, nearly forgetting herself in the moment. The
complete memory of who she was kissing rushed back to her. Veronica
had things to answer for and they weren’t going to get answered
while making out.

Fiona pushed Veronica away, although not far
enough to break her hold on Fiona’s shirt. “You’ve got a lot of
nerve coming here,” Fiona growled.

“You had a lot of nerve when you left me in
Vegas,” Veronica growled back. “I’d say this makes us even.”

Fiona tried to extricate herself from
Veronica’s grasp, but Veronica redoubled her efforts and ended up
pushing both her hands up under Fiona’s shirt to grasp her
athletically modest breasts. “You’re skin and bones. Life in
Tombstone must not be agreeing with you,” Veronica said. “I
remember when you had glorious breasts and I couldn’t feel your
every rib.” She teased Fiona’s nipples until they were solid little
diamonds between her fingers. Fiona let her head fall back against
the door, nearly knocking her hat off in the process. Veronica knew
how to touch her, knew how to make her forget things, and
absolutely spoke the truth when she said Fiona had been healthier
in Vegas. “Can’t your pet cook?”