Read Online Teancum by D. J. Butler - Free Book Online

very nervous, and armed himself with the
vibro-blade.   He didn’t know much
of a charge the weapon’s electricks carried, but as long as the juice lasted,
he’d be able to cut through just about anything.
    To his right, where North Tabernacle Street crossed along
the edge of the glass bellows park, the Jim Smiley idled on the grass, in the shadow of a couple of big
cottonwoods.   Her lights were all
off, but Jed knew just where to look and could make out a wispy plume of steam
and smoke trickling out through the trees’ interlaced leaves.   It was like some kind of Indian trick
Clemens had pulled, making sure the truck’s vapors were sifted by leaves before
they went up into the open sky, and Jed admired him for it.   It might not be a bad life, being mate
aboard the Jim Smiley .
    Clocksprung horses moved into view.   Six… seven… eight of them, Jed counted,
and there were real live horses, too, and men mounted on them.   They passed the Jim Smiley , without seeming to notice the big steam-truck, and
trotted to the first of the glass bells.
    One of the men on horseback raised his arm, and the
clocksprung riders urged their mounts forward—
    crash!   crash!   crash!—
    shattering the bells.
    “Jebus,” Jed muttered.   He crept through the trees along the side of the Beehive House for a
better look.   Why were the soldiers
and Danites (if that’s who the other men were, but hell, every man he met
seemed to be one) smashing up the bellows?   They did it roughly, too, not like rousties sloughing the
show to move on to the next town, but like cops letting you know that you
hadn’t paid them enough, and you’d reach a little bit deeper into your kitty if
you wanted to play in their town.  
    Jed growled involuntarily and tightened his grip on the Colt
vibro-blade.
    Without meaning to, he realized he had come all the way to
the side of the Jim Smiley .   He hadn’t meant to—he’d intended
to creep back the other way, to watch what happened to Sam Clemens and the
other, make sure they weren’t walking into an ambush—but the action had
been irresistible.   He turned to
head back the other way—
    and across the park, the Tabernacle’s doors burst open.
    Three figures stumbled out, drawing with them huge puffing
clouds of smoke and the orange tongues of hungry fire.   From the top hat of the central
silhouette, the poofy skirt of the one on the right and the queer Striderman
getup of the third, Jed immediately recognized Absalom Fearnley-Standish and
his angels.   The Strider gunner (he
could tell her body from Ortiz’s a mile away) carried a bundle of bulky things
in her arms, like short poles.
    “What happened to the Strider, then?” he muttered to
himself.
    The horsemen in the garden stopped, saw Jed’s three allies,
and immediately opened fire.   Clutching his hat, Fearnley-Standish turned and dashed back into the
burning building, coattails flapping.   He and the two women hid inside the door, drew pistols, and began firing
out.   The horsemen took cover,
behind park benches, trees and the clocksprung horses themselves.
    Jed looked left, to where he knew Sam Clemens and the others
had gone.   Who knew what was
happening to them now?   Jed had
basically abandoned his post, and they might be prisoners or dead.
    On the other hand, maybe Welker was totally trustworthy and
they were just fine.   The fact that
he and Sam Clemens had had the same hunch didn’t mean the hunch was
correct.   Young had been confident
in Welker, and confident that he was about to get his message out and turn the
tables on the Danite insurrection.   And if someone didn’t step in to help Absalom Fearnley-Standish and the
two women pronto, they would be roasted alive or pumped full of lead.
    Jed climbed the ladder of the Jim Smiley , up over the huge India rubber skirt, across the
metal deck and onto the rubber matting on the floor of the wheelhouse.   He had watched Clemens operate the
machine, and it had