Karen Memory

Chapter Eighteen

And that’s how I came to be shivering beside Tomoatooah at three in the morning, and not for the first time, neither. At least this time we was on a rooftop. You know, for the sake of variety and him not getting lynched.

I’d hate to find myself in some kind of a rut when it came to skulking. Which was perfectly likely, with Tomoatooah and the Marshal and Merry around.

They hadn’t gotten hanged, or jailed, or what have you — though to hear the Marshal tell it that weren’t much more than a happy accident and not for lack of trying on Bantle’s part. They’d moved from the rooming house they’d been staying at and were camping up the mountain to cover their tracks. I imagined neither one of them was much enjoying the ride back and forth, but at least Rapid was still small enough that it weren’t too inconvenient. You’d be riding half a day, you tried that near New York City.

Or so I imagined, anyway. I was all of a sudden struck by the urge to see it for myself.

Maybe I didn’t care to stay in Rapid and environs after all. I wondered suddenly where all those dime novels came from, and who wrote ’em, and if any of those writers had ever spent a night crouched on a hoar-slick tile roof next to a wild red Indian. Maybe I was setting my sights too low, thinking about a livery stable. Because I realized then, too, that if there was a living in dime novels nobody who published or read ’em needed to know that K. L. Memery was a woman.

And maybe I could still talk Tomoatooah into selling me one of Scout’s fillies.

For the first time, I realized I might not have to work in horses to have horses, if you see my meaning.

It was not much more than a wild hair, honestly. A fancy to keep me from thinking about how cold my damned toes were. I’d borrowed money from Francina and bought myself some used boys’ togs. I could get used to lace-up boots, but I hadn’t borrowed enough for good ones and the socks were thin.

And we had been up there on that roof for the best part of two hours, waiting for the last lights to go out at Bantle’s house.

Effie and Marshal Reeves was off somewhere to our left, and the Marshal and Tomoatooah had some system of whistles they planned to use to communicate. So we was waiting for a signal, unless we felt confident enough to give it ourselves. Tomoatooah and me, we were meant to go in and smash the machine and look for evidence. The Marshal and Effie, they was supposed to stand watch.

It nearly worked out that way, too. At least at the beginning.

Bantle’s house was the best on the street, a big foursquare Italianate in shades of amber and piney green, with a wrap porch and dull red window sashes. You couldn’t see the colors by night, of course, but I knowed what the house looked like. He lived within sight of his cribs and the Sound, but far enough down Geoduck Street not to be bothered by the traffic.

Bantle’d apparently learned something about guarding rooftops from his men’s last run-in with Tomoatooah. Now they moved from place to place and met up at regular intervals. So this time, Tomoatooah hadn’t knocked any of ’em over. Instead, he’d timed their routes and led me past ’em until we was inside the perimeter — that’s the Marshal’s word — and then we hunkered down in the shadow of a chimney and stayed quiet and small.

Quiet and small was about my speed, anyway. I guess I was mad lucky I wasn’t hurt any worse than I’d have been if I was dumb enough to go out on a boat without a bonnet, but my lungs still felt congested and thick, and you know how a sunburn makes you nauseous? I had a little of that, too, and spent some time swallowing the sick water that wanted to fill up my mouth.

I might of chattered — it all made me nervous as a brown field mouse at a cat convocation — but Tomoatooah was like an Indian carved out of rock and I caught the silence from him. He waited better than anybody I’d ever met, including my da. And I would of said nobody waited better than my da, and there was damn few as could wait like him.

The last light got blowed out about five minutes after three by Ma’s radium watch. Tomoatooah glanced over at me — I caught the glitter of the whites of his eyes. It was hard dark, no moon, just some glow up from the street lamps — and it crossed my head kind of hysterical that this was a bad night for a Comanche raid. That’s why they called it a Comanche Moon, when it was full and bright. They could ride their horses by moon- or starlight better than most white men could during the day.

But maybe it was a good night for housebreaking. Tomoatooah tipped his head, an invitation I thought, and slipped away down the angle of the roof. Not toward Bantle’s house, but on the back side. Dark or not, we didn’t want to take the chance of being silhouetted.

I followed.

I expected to be scared shaking, hardly able to make myself move. But maybe I was getting a taste for all this adventuring. Or maybe my system was just in a state of saturation, having absorbed all the adventure it could hold, and so this one was just rolling off me like it was happening to somebody else. I put my rubber-soled boots down careful, and the roof slates held, and when I got to where Tomoatooah had tied a hand line I used it to lower myself over the gutter without breaking it off. It hurt my hands — there was still gauze under the too-big gloves I was wearing — but a little bit of getting hurt just didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

It might of been scary, if I’d bothered to think about it. But my mind was on other things. Like where to put each foot in the dark and how much less awful this was than my house burning down around my ears and whether I’d ever see Priya again. It crossed my mind to wonder if I fell, if I’d see Connie first in Heaven or if it’d be Mama and Da. Did they come in order of how recently they’d died or how close they was related?

I’d heard some people say Negroes didn’t go to Heaven, but some people said Negroes didn’t have souls, and you’ll pardon me if I got no truck with that. Any Heaven didn’t want Connie I didn’t want no part of my own self, and it wouldn’t have any good biscuits, anyway.

I was so caught up in thinking about what might happen when I got to Heaven that I forgot to die on the way down at all. Tomoatooah was waiting for me at the bottom. Silently, he pointed with two fingers along the alley. I followed, stepping in his footsteps as best I could. Something brushed my leg, furry and fast — a rat or an alley cat. I didn’t squeak.

Bantle’s house was at street level, not below it. New built, and it showed. A lot of the land down here by the docks was fill.

We got into the shadows by the kitchen door and Tomoatooah touched me on the shoulder, a light touch moving me back into a niche behind the kitchen porch. He went up the cast-iron drainpipe like a tree octopus, leaning back and grabbing on with his feet and hands. A squirrel would have more difficulty and make a hell of a lot more noise.

I waited, counting Mississippis, and made it to forty-one before the back door came open. Bless city houses and brass hinges and capitalist pork-barrel bastards who can afford staff to keep them oiled. The leather hinges on Da’s kitchen door would of let the door drag and in the wet of Rapid most metal hinges quickly learned to squeak and stick, but this door opened in silent as a jaw gaping.

And weren’t that an unsettling image?

I came up the porch steps, keeping to the outside so the wood wouldn’t squeak, and stepped into the dark kitchen beside Tomoatooah.

There was a fire banked in the big new fireplace, but it didn’t shed much light beyond a kind of faint cherry glow that vanished once it met the bigger dark outside the hearth. My eyes was so used to the nighttime I could sort of see anyway. At the very least, I could catch the whites of Tomoatooah’s eyes, the faint rose glow on his beads. It was enough to follow him.

The kitchen was deserted. Something niggled at me so I decided to risk a word, spoke low. Murmurs don’t carry so far as whispers.“You don’t mind a girl on an expedition like this?”

He looked over and I swear he winked at me over the palisade of one cheekbone. “Numu women ride to hunt and raid,” he said. His shrug continued, And they know when to keep quiet.

Since I’d met him, I’d found out in my reading that “Comanche” was a Ute word, meaning “enemies.” All the things I’d seen him do, on horseback and off, and that moment was the thing gave me an inkling why.

His hand gesture said, Follow, and I did. Conversation over.

Bantle liked rugs, the thicker the better. I followed Tomoatooah across them, both of us slinking like cats. He moved like he weighed half an ounce and was made of baling wire and bison jerky. I did my best to copy him. The India rubber soles of my boots felt squishy underfoot. I guessed I could get used to that for walking on, though they’d be terrible for riding. And probably wear out fast.

Still, they was quiet. Especially as I took care not to let ’em squeak. With luck, the servants’ rooms were in the attic or at the back of the second floor, and we weren’t making much noise at all.

We didn’t see a soul as we picked down the corridor. Priya’d said the machine was in the parlor, and parlors were at the front of the house. My guess was as good as Tomoatooah’s whether that meant right side or left, but the right side (as seen from the outside) had a bay front and piano windows — little windows up high — and I was guessing if you were going to show off your big pretty mind control machine and you didn’t play piano, that might be where you’d want to put it.

I touched his elbow and pointed left. He didn’t give any sign of acknowledgment, but he crossed the hall and flattened himself against the wall on that side. The door from the back of the house and the servants’ stair to the atrium was closed, and he opened it softer than anything. No sound.

There was a little nook to our right — the house’s left — and a short cross hallway off to the left that gave access to a cupboard under the grand stairs. Past those, the hall opened out — and upward — to a foyer. After the kitchen, the little light that floated in from the street made it seem bright.

The room I thought was probably the parlor was off to our left — the house’s right — behind a set of pocket doors. Glass ones, and as we crept past the stairs I glanced through.

Something gleamed in the dimness — brass and glass and God knows what — with a faint blue spark shimmering on and off inside what might of been a big vacuum tube. I wished I was Miss Lizzie, all of a sudden, or Priya, so I might know what I was looking at.

Found it, I mouthed. Tomoatooah stepped forward, and I put a hand out to redirect him.

There ain’t no such thing as a quiet pocket door.

We fell back toward that cross hallway with the closet under the stairs. There was a door there that probably led to the dining room or library, by my guess. I hoped the hinges was as well oiled as those out the back.

They was, too. Tomoatooah turned the handle, and we was just about to step into the hall when a familiar — and totally unexpected — voice hissed from the crack of that understair cupboard door, “Karen?”

It’s a miracle I only squeaked and didn’t scream. Honestly, I think if it had been anybody other than Priya I would of shrieked like a pig’s bladder blown full of air. But something deep inside me responded to her voice the way horses responded to Da: with a settling kind of attention.

Some of the knots of tension all up and down my back slid away, and a few new ones came to join the remainder. Was she locked in that closet? Why the hell would Bantle hold her prisoner here in his house and not in one of the cribs? And what had he done to her?

The fear didn’t last, though. Because she slipped out from behind the door, one hundred and eleven pounds of whipcord and attitude in men’s tweed trousers, and Merry Lee with her cropped hair and her black bowler hat was right behind her.

“If I’d knowed you were coming, I’d have brought a picnic,” I murmured.

Priya looked befuddled — there was just enough light coming through to make out her expression — but Merry Lee grinned and laid her finger alongside her nose like Saint Nicholas.

Suddenly I wanted to take Priya by the shoulders and shake her. She’d been fine, all this time, and she’d left me hanging and waiting and worrying, and she hadn’t even sent a note to see if I was hurt bad. But then she grabbed me by the shoulders and hugged me sharp and tight, and I realized maybe she had come looking, and who was there who would of been able to tell her where I was, or what had happened to me?

So of course she’d gone to Merry Lee, and she’d talked Merry Lee into coming here, to smash Bantle’s machine.

I knowed that was what they was here for because Priya had an eight-pound sledge slung on a strap over her shoulder. I noticed it because cold metal bonked my nose before she realized that we was wasting time and started to set me back from her.

“I knew we forgot something,” I said. I have her one more squeeze before I let her let go of me, and we stood there for a second grinning at each other like fools until Tomoatooah cleared his throat real significant like.

“Right,” Merry said. “How are you getting out again?”

We had thought of that. Tomoatooah held up a long red stick of dynamite. He said, “Fuse.”

Merry’s eyes got big. She stuck out a finger and touched it, gave it a little fingertip push. “That’s better than sledgehammers.”

Anybody who believes in stoic Indians or inscrutable Orientals never saw those two grinning at each other like a couple of rattlesnakes over a nest of baby bunnies. They was having so much fun I hesitated to interrupt, but Priya grabbed my hand and tugged at it. “Let’s do this.”

We crept through the door into a butler’s pantry with a long breakfront along one side. It was full of crystal and silver plate and God knows what, sparkling in the faint light from outside. We paused at the mouth of it, realizing that the dining room — it was a dining room — beyond was lined with grand windows. But the house alongside was dark as well, and I figured what with more light outside than in, there weren’t much chance of anyone seeing us.

Now we just had to blow up the machine without killing ourselves — or, by preference, any of Bantle’s house servants, who — after all — just worked there. According to the Marshal, one stick of dynamite wasn’t going to cause much collateral damage and it wouldn’t — shouldn’t — take the house down.

Priya gave my hand another squeeze and dropped it. “I know where Bantle’s study is,” she murmured. “You keep on. I’ll get out the back.”

She was gone, back through that door to the hall before any of us could so much as snatch at her shirt cuff. She moved soft as a cat, and I was just about to lunge after her when Tomoatooah caught my right elbow and Merry Lee caught my left.

“You’ll get her caught!” Merry whispered.

I shook myself in frustration, but she was right. I didn’t hear Priya climbing the servants’ stair, but I knew she must be. And I imagined her sneaking past Bantle’s bedroom and God knows what all else … maybe that Bruce Scarlet son of a bitch slept here.

The idea of him with his hands on Priya made me cold. What the hell could be so important in Bantle’s study? Papers? Plans? Did it matter?

Yes. If Priya thought it was worth risking her life … it mattered a lot. I decided to trust her, even if the deciding hurt, and I wanted nothing so bad as to argue myself out of it. But the Marshal had let me come in here, and I imagined the look on his face then weren’t too different from the one I was wearing now.

“We go on,” Tomoatooah said. “We blow up the front of the house, she sneaks out the back.”

I looked at him with respect.

He winked again, and this time I saw it clear. “Not my first raid.”

Evidently.

We snuck into the front parlor through an open doorway big enough to carry two coffins through side by side. I guessed you had to get the piano into the parlor somehow. It was guarded by a heavy velvet drape, and once we brushed past that we was suddenly in more light than I’d expected.

Bantle’s infernal machine cast its own glow, you see.

We’d caught that green spark through the pocket doors, and I’d expected … I don’t know, some sort of hissing arc or a bottle of lightning.

It weren’t nothing like that. Just a peaceful shining, green and orange in different places, like a chemical flame. Except without any sparking or flashing. It gilded the whole outline of the apparatus, and a complicated gadget it was. I expected … moving parts, I suppose, but the only one I saw was a cloth belt with a single twist in it. That ran between two rollers and a couple of tension rods, for all the world like the belt on a sewing machine except it was made of cloth — raw silk, I’d guess, if I was sewing it — instead of India rubber. The only sound was a whispery whirring from the thing running.

All around it was a forest of tall, narrow glass bell jars, each with some kind of component inside ’em. Little things, the size of my pinky nail, and I couldn’t see much in the slow except they seemed to be intricately soldered with white and yellow and copper metal wires.

Some of those vacuum jars glowed with the green, and some glowed with the orange.

Merry leaned toward the thing, but not too close. “Static,” she said, and suddenly I understood what that silk belt was doing. Well, maybe not what it was doing doing. But at least what it was doing, if you understand the difference. “Is that a Möbius band?”

“Don’t touch it,” I said. I remembered a machine I’d seen on a mountebank’s wagon stage when I was a girl, a kind of metal sphere on a stick with one of those cloth ribbons stretching down beside it. He’d been able to lay his hand on it and shoot tiny tamed lightning from his fingertips.

His hair had stood on end. Just as Merry Lee’s was starting to do, under the brim of her bowler hat. Mine was long and braided back, and so was most of Tomoatooah’s.

Above us, a floorboard creaked. I jumped; Merry glanced over her shoulder; Tomoatooah looked up incuriously. He had dropped to his hands and knees and was inspecting the lower parts of the apparatus. Looking, no doubt, for a place to slide his dynamite.

So to speak.

Or, well, literally and not so to speak at all. Old habits die hard. I’m … mostly sorry.

Yeah, I’m trying to avoid telling you what happened next.

I was watching Tomoatooah and I probably should of been watching his back. So I was wrong about that, but it turns out I was right about the pocket door. When it rattled back, sharp and sudden, it made a noise like the whole front of the house falling off.

A newfangled electric light flared in that foyer, arc white, and when I blinked the glare from my eyes it was to see Peter Bantle strut into the room, flanked by Horaz Standish on one side and a short broad fellow with colorless hair, wearing overalls and a grayish complexion. I made a bet with myself that was that Bruce Scarlet, and I mostly ain’t the betting type. There was three thugs behind ’em. One of those was my old friend Bill.

I didn’t like one bit of the look he was giving me.

Bantle had that damned glove on, the harsh light sparking off its metal fittings. He had it balled up into a fist and was tapping it lightly against the palm of the leather range glove he wore on the opposite hand. Standish weren’t carrying no weapon, but the man I thought was Scarlet had a big old wrench, and Bill had an ax handle. I couldn’t see what the other two was carrying.“Oh, dear,” Bantle said. “It seems somebody miscalculated.”

Tomoatooah came up off the floor like a splintercat heading face-first for a redwood tree. He didn’t make a sound, and he didn’t do nothing to indicate he was about to lunge. He just went for Bantle with the directness I would of liked to have been able to muster, if I hadn’t been losing a fight with panic. I was like a horse in a burning barn, the opposite of how calm and prepared I’d felt on the roof. I got stuck, unable to hear myself thinking over the pounding of my heart, which made it hard to decide what to do.

Tomoatooah, though — he acted. Practice, I guess, and Merry Lee was right on his heels. Tomoatooah barreled into Bantle and Bantle went down in a heap. Merry Lee had picked up a fireplace poker, and she went forward swinging. Sparks flew when Scarlet parried her forehand. My first thought was a spike of worry about the dynamite, but I couldn’t see where it had gone. I hoped Tomoatooah had tucked it somewhere safe.

Tomoatooah kicked Bantle where it would keep him down and drove a fist into my old friend Bill’s breadbasket. Merry was still fencing with Scarlet and keeping Horaz at bay with a pistol in her off hand. I hadn’t even realized she was heeled.

Right about then, it started to sink in that maybe I should be doing something to help besides standing on the nice knotted rug staring like a strangled calf.

I should of borrowed Effie’s gun.

There was a chair beside the fire, though — a mahogany Chippendale with a brocade seat cushion. Thought grieved my heart a little; I remembered the unkind fate of the striped silk settee and seized it up, rushing forward and swinging high. Bill was doubled over, having by now been relieved of his hatchet handle. How it was that that man stayed employed I’ll never know, but Tomoatooah was swinging the handle ferociously at the next bruiser.

But the third one was coming up beside the Comanche, and he had a crowbar cocked over one shoulder. I saw him coming. And he didn’t seem to see me.

I whirled that chair around and smashed it at him as hard as I could. It was well built and the wood was sound: it cracked at the joints and the caning broke under the cushion but didn’t shatter or come apart. So I swung it again, and again connected.

This time I was left holding the back. And staring over into the stunned face of Tomoatooah, who was swaying slowly back and forth, staggering, hands out for balance in a way that might of seemed right comical if I’d seen a vaudevillian doing it on the opera stage.

I looked at the chair and I looked at the Indian, and I couldn’t quite connect one to the other, though I’d apparently done it twice already. And then, that sick twist of understanding back in my gut like an in-law you can’t get rid of and can’t stand, I looked down at Peter Bantle.

Bantle was still curled up on the floor holding himself with his ungloved hand. But he was looking right at me over his fucking electric glove. And he was laughing silently, like a dog, while Tomoatooah fought him.

All the hesitation must of gotten burned up, because I slung that chair back up and whaled it at Bantle like I was swinging for a goose’s stretched neck with an ax.

And Tomoatooah stepped right into the swing.

This time he went down — in a heap, and not even on top of Bantle where he might of done some good, but right beside him. Bantle grabbed his throat with the glove, and Tomoatooah arched up like a bronc trying to scrape a saddle off.

I screamed and scrambled back. Merry was still fighting, but now there was three on her, and I could see she was starting to get tired. It hadn’t been that long ago Crispin and Miss Lizzie had cut the bullets out of her, no matter what she wanted to think—

Somebody big and soft bellied with hands like iron straps grabbed my arms from behind. I kicked for his crotch and got thigh. I caught a glimpse when he picked me up and shook me. My old friend Bill. Then Bantle was on his feet, staggering slightly but walking toward me, the glove outstretched.

Those other thugs had gotten their hands on Merry. She kept twisting, fighting silent like a coyote, but she was too outnumbered and outsized for it to do much good. I yanked at Bill, trying to go to her assistance, but he gave my upper arms a squeeze and I quit, gasping in pain.

Bantle sighed theatrically as he inspected me. “You’re that same damned whore that confounded me the other time, aren’t you? I do admit, I hoped you and some of your sisters might get a bit burned up in that fire, but you crawled out pretty well unscathed. Pity, but that can be fixed.”

I tried to remember to breathe, because forgetting was making me dizzy. And was likely to set off another coughing fit, the way my chest was hurting.

“There weren’t no pleasure in that,” Bantle said, jerking his head at Tomoatooah. I didn’t follow his eyes. I was too afraid I would see Tomoatooah dead on the floor. I’d rather look at Bantle, and I didn’t want to look at Bantle at all.

“This, though,” he said, “you ought to be charging me for.”

He snapped his fingers, making a heavy blue spark hang in the air. Then he reached out for me with the glove. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t of been more scared if he was holding out an angry rattlesnake—

“Wait, Peter.”

I jerked my eyes away from the glove as if somebody had cut a rope. Horaz Standish had his hand on Bantle’s shoulder. He wasn’t holding him back, just … cautioning him, like.

And for a second, Bantle seemed to be listening. He turned toward Horatio.

“There just ain’t time tonight, Peter,” Horaz said. “Not to do a proper job of it. Not with the meeting and all.”

Bantle’s eyes caught the light all slick and gleaming — like they was extra-wet, somehow. “You gotta be fucking kidding.”

“Put her away,” Standish said. “Play with her when we get back. Let her think about it for a while.”

I tried to catch Horaz’s eye, to see if he was trying to do me a favor. But he kept his gaze on Bantle. His expression was all calm and reasonable. Bantle’s hand started to sag.

Then Scarlet stepped up to Merry and without giving no warning at all slugged her in the belly as hard as he could. All his shoulder behind it, and hip. Merry made a sound like a squashed kitten and would of doubled up, except for the side of beef holding on to her arms. Her feet came off the floor, and the side of beef took a half step back.

She wheezed and puked all over the floor. She missed Scarlet, more’s the pity. He’d stepped to the side like a pro.

“Cunt,” he said conversationally. “What were you going to do to my Mesmeric Engine?”

He lifted her head up by the hair — her bowler hat had gone flying. With his other hand he fingered his belt, and I felt a chill. Even if Horatio talked Bantle off me, who was going to step in for Merry? I imagined one of my frail sisters tripping over Merry when she went to take the trash out, and I nearly puked, too.

“Fuck, Scarlet,” Bantle said. “Mind the fucking carpet.”

He turned around and slapped me hard across the face.

Bill must of got a lot of practice, because he let go of my arms and stepped back in the instant before Bantle connected. I ducked — I tried to duck — but it didn’t work. There was a savage light, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the rug, looking up at everyone from right beside the engine.

“Parshiviy!” Scarlet said. “Careful of the tubes!”

My ears rang. I smelled piss. A molar rocked in its socket and I tasted blood. Bantle stalked toward me. I wanted to scramble away, but I couldn’t make my arms or legs twitch. There was a thin soft sound in the room.

I thought, Priya. Run.

Bantle stood over me, wrinkling his nose. “Well, that should lower your prices,” he said. He crouched and grabbed my throat, squeezed. Not enough to make the world swim — just enough to make it go black at the edges. That thin, soft whine cut off. A moment later, I realized I had been making it.

He shocked me again. Not as much as last time, I thought. It hurt, and I smelled something burning, but I didn’t fly across the room. I don’t know how long he kept it up for.

Not long. Because when he let go — my head bounced on the rug — and my vision swam clear, I was looking right at the infernal machine. And from down here, I could see the long fuse on the dynamite Tomoatooah must of shoved up underneath it fizzing along, steady and slow.

I gurgled and tried to point. My hand didn’t move, though my heel kicked feebly against the carpet. A second later, I thought better of it. Because Bantle was going to kill us all anyway. So why not let the dynamite do the job for him? It’d be faster, and it’d take him, too.

“What was that about the rug?” Scarlet scoffed from a long way away.

“My rug,” Bantle answered. He sniffed. “You smell burning?”

“Yeah,” Bill answered. “That little whore you just cooked.”

“No,” Bantle replied. He stood, and I cheered silently. There was no way he was going to spot the dynamite from up there.

Just to be sure, though, I made myself look away from the fuse. I could move my eyes, if not my head. I strained ’em after Bantle.

In time to see Tomoatooah pull his arms under him and get his hands flat on the floor. Nobody else had noticed — nobody else was looking at him. And I felt a horrible surge of hope that was like to bust my chest. I swear it hurt worse than the burns on my face — or the burns on my hands.

They’d all stepped over Tomoatooah. And now nobody was between him and the door.

I willed him to get up, knock over anybody who went for him, grab Merry Lee, and get out. That left me in the soup — dynamite soup — but so be it. There was less than an inch of slow match left.

I made myself look away from Tomoatooah, too. All the interesting things going on, and I didn’t dare look at any of them in case someone should notice. You wouldn’t expect that kind of irritation to get inside a girl’s shoe when she’s making her final peace, but apparently there’s no cease in the world to petty frustrations.

My eye was drawn to Scarlet, anyway. He’d done hurting Merry for the time being, and he was stepping over me — fastidiously, so as not to soil his shoes — in his rush to get to his infernal engine and make sure we hadn’t hurt it none. Don’t crouch down, I prayed. Start looking at the other end.

But damned if he wasn’t headed more or less for that stick of dynamite.

I tried to think of a distraction. I wondered if I could make a noise or heave a limb around to get him to come over and stomp on me some, and buy that fuse a precious few more seconds to burn. And I tried like hell not to look at Tomoatooah, nor the dynamite.

So because I was trying not to stare, I didn’t see a damned thing when Priya stepped out of the shadows like an avenging angel and clubbed the big fool holding Merry over the head with something heavy enough that it didn’t make a hollow melon thump but more of a wet thud. I did see him go down, though — you don’t miss a noise like that — and I did see Priya straight-arm heave the heavy thing straight at Bill’s head.

It didn’t hit him, for a pity. He caught it — he’d turned because of the thud, too, I suppose. It was a cast-iron boot scraper — maybe she’d picked it up by the door? — and I have no idea how on earth a skinny thing like Priya managed to throw it hard enough that catching it knocked him two steps backward, though sadly not clean over.

Tomoatooah must of been biding his time, because he came up off the floor like he had springs for sinews, and I didn’t even see what he did to old Bill except when it was over he was standing over the body with Priya’s sledgehammer in his hands, the head dripping nasty. I must of lost track of Horaz, too — or maybe he skedaddled — because all of a sudden the only bad guys upright in the room were Scarlet and Bantle, and they was glancing one at the other like they didn’t understand how the odds had changed so quickly.

Then Tomoatooah and Merry and Priya was side by side, black haired and wild like furies. Tomoatooah had that sledge, and Merry had picked up that iron poker she’d been waving around earlier — and in her other hand she had Tomoatooah’s Colt.

Being a practical sort, she gave the fire iron to Priya and kept the shooter herself.

I managed to get my elbows under me as they came forward. Bantle checked the odds and ran like a bat out of Hell for the door into the dining room. Damn, I thought. It’s only one stick. He’ll be out of range.

“Get out,” I croaked.

I don’t know if they heard me. Because Merry aimed that Colt right at Scarlet’s midsection and she told him, “You take a step, I drill you.”

He stopped.“Drop the wrench.”

It thudded to the carpet. I hadn’t even seen he was still carrying it.

“Priya,” Merry said. “You get Karen.”

Priya was the obvious choice. Merry was still hunched over from that pounding, and Tomoatooah was listing a bit to one side. But I couldn’t let them slow down enough to bring me. Not with the match—

Tomoatooah gave Priya a little shove with the side of his hand when she hesitated, obviously torn between going to me and looking out for Standish or Bantle coming up behind them. He turned to watch the hall.

Well, Tomoatooah knew about the dynamite, and he sure had a damn sight more experience with nitroglycerine than I did. If he weren’t worried, I weren’t worried.

“Hurry,” he barked when Priya wavered another half second.

Okay, maybe I was a little worried after all.

But I’d delay her longer by putting up a fight than by helping. And honestly, I didn’t want to die by being blown to bits with Bantle’s infernal machine. So I did what I could, and she got me up, though I was the next thing to deadweight.

Reader, I fainted on the way out the door — Tomoatooah and Priya half-carrying and half-dragging me; Merry walking backward with that Colt level in her hand. I woke up three hundred feet down the street when the sky started raining glass behind us, as the Marshal reined Dusty in from a dead run just ahead.