Chapter Four – This Can’t Last
“I’ve been livin’ on borrowed time ever since that Reb cannon took me apart.”
~ Jake Lasater
The dull thump of an explosion woke Jake from the all-too-familiar nightmare. Bits and pieces of war memories visited him nightly, but he’d learned to live with it. The thump, originating from Skeeter’s workshop behind the house, was chased by a high-pitched whistle of steam that faded quickly.
Jake sighed in the darkness and rolled over, his muscles and bandaged shoulder screaming. He pulled the pillow over his head and swore into the mattress, pondering the likelihood that he might be able to get back to sleep. Long odds, he thought. Such detonations weren’t at all uncommon, but he decided to gamble a little and closed his eyes. As he prepared to go back to sleep—hopefully avoiding another nightmare—Cole’s frantic hollering and cursing from the workshop spurred his ass out of bed.
He stood up slowly, his brass heels thudding along the hard wood floor while the clockwork of his arm and legs whined faintly. Throwing a nightshirt over his naked body, he grabbed his ocular off the dresser and, with an easy motion, slipped the leather strap over his head. He twisted a gear on the side of the ocular, closing out the light.
Mid-morning sunlight washed over him as he pulled thick drapes back from the window. There, staring at him from the windowsill, stood a crow with bright yellow eyes. Jake stared at it, and it stared straight back at him. Seconds ticked by like distant hammer falls.
Jake got the message and winked his good eye at it. It nodded its head once and cawed—a quiet, grumbly sound like a farewell to an old friend. Then it leapt off the ledge, spread its wings, and beat a steady rhythm into a spotless blue sky.
In the distance, foothills traced a line half a mile behind the house. The Rocky Mountains stretched away to the south toward Pueblo, broken only by a blossom of black smoke rising from the wide-open double doors of Skeeter’s workshop behind the house. The view—of the mountains, not the workshop—was why Jake had chosen that particular bedroom, but his thoughts drifted to the crow and then beyond.
His memory flickered to the hills of Missouri, tossing up the grizzled, weather-beaten face of Bhuvana, whose name meant Earth. Jake’s parents had protested loudly whenever he stole away on warm summer nights to visit the old Cherokee shaman. But Jake didn’t care, didn’t listen. His older brother Benjamin had just left for the Virginia Military Institute. At ten years old he needed something to fill the vacuum of his brother’s absence. Jake found Bhuvana, and as a result, he learned about life, the Land, and Bhuvana’s People. Indian life appealed to the young boy far more than his father’s brewery business or his mother’s bent knees and Christian prayers.
Bhuvana had taught him about totems—the spirit guides of the People—and listening with a better ear than most whites were willing to lend. One of his first lessons had been about the crow. Crow was the keeper of the sacred laws, a harbinger of both change and power. Jake had learned early on that when he saw crows, there were usually powerful changes headed his way.
He pondered the yellow eyes of the crow and then considered the events of the previous evening. He saw Quinn’s ghost-white eyes looking back at him. He had to wonder where he was headed next. Did he stay home and wait for another attack from the Tong, or should he hop a zeppelin to San Fran and square off with a gang of Chinese assassins?
The thought of facing down the entire Tong, with or without Cole, didn’t appeal to his sense of easy living. That many killers might just be able to get the drop on him. He nodded to the shrinking black wings and stared down to see Cole running towards Skeeter’s workshop with a bucket of water. Another screech of escaping steam erupted from inside the workshop. Jake sighed, wondering what he’d been thinking when he took Skeeter in as his charge.
She was a feisty, headstrong sixteen-year-old prone to swearing, but she knew more than most tinkers four times her age. Skeeter had modified damn near everything in the house. They had hot water on tap, electricity ran the lights and stove, and the windows and closets were all steam driven.
Jake pulled a lever attached to the windowsill. The window slowly slid upward, the small, steam-driven piston hissing quietly. Skeeter had run copper pipes all over the house, and a huge, aether-heated boiler in her workshop provided the pressure. She’d attached valves, fittings, brackets, and pistons to anything that might need moving.
When the window thumped open, Jake leaned out into a warm, August morning. He stared at the open workshop doors for a bit, unable to understand the muffled voices coming from inside. A small puff of white smoke followed the black one rising into the sky. The voices went quiet, and Cole stepped out into the sunlight.
“Everything okay, Cole?” Jake asked, a mildly worried tone edging in as he rubbed the sleep out of his good eye. Cole’s bright blue eyes fixed on Jake, and his mulatto skin went a little pale. He quickly closed the doors behind him.
“Oh! Hey, Jake.” Cole tried to sound casual but failed miserably. His Free Territories accent came through loud and clear, a cross between the twang of Texas and smooth drawl of Colorado. There was also a hint of his time spent as a Buffalo Soldier riding both with and against the Apache, but there was no missing his nervousness. Cole’s glance darted back towards the closed doors then returned to Jake. This time he looked as innocent as a preacher on Sunday. “Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
Jake cocked his head to the left and let his gaze follow the two clouds of smoke rising into the sky. He watched them drift for a few seconds as they dissipated on a light breeze. He tapped the brass fingers of his left hand patiently on the windowsill.
Skeeter’s up to something again, Jake thought. And this time Cole’s in on it. Eyeing Cole he said, “Oh … no reason in particular, I s’pose.” He added a suspicious smile, wondering what they might be keeping from him. He’d just have to wait and see how this one played out. “Is there any coffee?” There was little point in forcing things before he got a cup of coffee down his neck.
Cole pulled off his hat and ran a hand through long, dark hair, looking a bit embarrassed. “Naw … I didn’t make any yet. Been … preoccupied.”
Jake nodded his head, certain now that something was up. They both knew damn well Cole needed coffee in the morning almost as much as Jake did. “You sure everything’s okay?” he asked again, smiling like he’d just beaten a full house with a straight flush.
“Sure, Jake. Couldn’t be better.” Cole looked around the yard and scratched the back of his head. To Jake it looked like Cole was searching for gopher holes in a cobblestone street. Cole looked up and said, “Go on down and make us some. I’ll be in shortly.”
“All right,” Jake agreed as slow as honey. He’d have more energy to press the matter once the coffee kicked in.
One of the advantages of being a natural-born card player is that patience came to Jake like swimming does to a fish. Jake closed the window, pulled the covers over the bed, and walked to the door, his heels thudding across the floor of Horace Tabor’s house.
Jake was sort of on retainer for Tabor—long story—and the house came with the deal. Horace had given him a few houses to choose from, of course, but Jake liked the location. Ten miles southwest of Denver, it was both close and far enough away from what had rapidly turned into a bustling city—by Rocky Mountain standards anyway.
Wearing only a long nightshirt, morning sunlight reflected off his clockwork legs and the exposed hand of his clockwork left arm. The polished brass glinted like flame around the room. The hacks and scratches from Quinn’s attack were already gone thanks to the magic imbued into his artificial limbs. He briefly considered getting dressed but was still groggy enough to be more interested in a cup of coffee than propriety. Besides, no one came out to visit them, and it was unlikely Marshal Sisty would show up over the Quinn affair. That was an open and shut case of self-defense. He decided to go downstairs as he was.
Tousling his hair to get rid of a bad case of bed-head, he opened the door and thudded down the stairs, running his hand over the controls for the steam-powered lift as he went down. Another of Skeeter’s creations, the lift could carry three full-grown men between floors, but Jake wasn’t lazy enough to use the damned thing unless he had to move something heavy … or if he was drunk.
Once in the kitchen, he grabbed the tin coffee pot off the counter, poured what was left of last night’s brew down the sink, and set it under the spigot of what he considered one of Skeeter’s greatest inventions. She called it the steamolator.
The contraption had a small copper line running into one side from Skeeter’s boiler. It was a simple device, from what little Jake understood of the thing. It had a cylinder with a hand crank, a brass hopper with a swinging lid, and a spigot. To him it looked like an assortment of junk bolted and welded together, but it was a stairway to heaven. He twisted a lever, swung the cover open, and grabbed the copper mesh bowl from inside. The dark, gritty contents went out the window, and the bowl went back inside.
Jake didn’t really care how the thing worked. All he knew was that it did what he needed it to. Two handfuls of dark beans went into the hopper. Closing the cover, he cranked the handle for about a minute, then turned a knob on the side. A fierce hiss of steam put a smile on his face. Coffee dripped and then poured out of the spigot, causing Jake to inhale deeply.
When the pot was full, he turned off the steam and waited for the last few drops. Grabbing the pot and two cups, he turned on his heel and made his way out to the wide, covered front porch. He plopped down into one of the rocking chairs, set an empty cup on the deck, and filled his own.
The pot went beside the cup on the porch, and he leaned back, rocking slowly as he contemplated the fight with Quinn. He really didn’t want to go to San Francisco and face down the Tong. But he also didn’t want to spend the rest of his life waiting for a blade to show up between his shoulder blades. He’d played the waiting game a few times before, having concluded in the aftermath of each occurrence that it’s a pain in the ass—in one case, quite literally.
The front door opened with a bang. A painter’s easel and a large blank canvas frame passed by with a pair of sturdy legs pumping underneath.
“Hey, Sam,” Jake offered. “Off to do some more painting?”
“Hmmm?” a man’s voice replied as he stepped off the porch. He turned and faced Jake. Sam Morse was a short, thin man with unkempt gray hair and a scraggly beard that stuck out in every direction. A battered, paint-stained grimwig—what some folks called a newsboy cap—covered his head, and he wore a tan wool suit with a white paisley vest underneath. His weathered boots, looking as if they’d walked thousands of miles, were sturdy but well broken in. Sam had shown up at the house two days prior with a letter from Horace Tabor himself, asking that Jake put Sam up in one of the rooms and give him the run of the place … even help him if he could.
“Oh, yes,” Sam said. “I thought I might do my best to capture those cottonwoods down by the creek south of here. What did you call it?”
“Deer Creek,” Jake offered. “I made some coffee. You want some?”
Sam shook his head. “No, thank you very kindly, Mr. Lasater. I’m looking forward to exploiting today’s opportunity to the utmost in this magnificent morning sunshine.”
“Fair enough,” Jake replied, glancing at the morning sky. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“And what might your query be, sir?” the little painter asked, adjusting his grip on the canvas.
“What made you decide to take up painting? Seems out of character for a man with your … background.”
“I felt compelled to discover what I had … inflicted … upon the natural beauty of this great land of ours.”
“Come again?” Jake took a sip from his coffee, a puzzled look crimping his face.
“Well, as you are no doubt aware, Morse code made possible an exploitation of the West in ways I couldn’t possibly have foreseen.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, I reckon it did. Folks can talk from New York all the way to San Fran. Businesses are growing as a result of that little wonder. Made a hell of a difference in the war too, till them talkies came along and replaced it.”
“Well, I had only a vague notion—at a mostly unconscious level, mind you—of what would happen to the Americas, even the world, when I presented Morse code to Congress, and I didn’t pick that first message at random.”
“‘What hath God wrought?’” Jake quoted.
“Precisely,” Sam replied, nodding his head. “This land was still mostly untouched, untainted, if you will excuse the rather presumptuous value-judgment. At least in part because of my code, this land is rapidly being changed into something else, something … worse based upon my relatively meager observations.”
“I see what you mean,” Jake said, nodding.
“Well, I intend to record as much of it as I am able—for posterity, of course—before it has been consumed by greed and what many consider progress.”
“I think I understand.” Jake grinned knowingly. He wasn’t fond of big cities, and even Denver was getting more metropolitan than he could swallow. “Well, good luck.” He raised his coffee cup in salute to the small inventor-turned-painter. “I think you’ve got a great eye,” he added, referring to the two paintings he’d seen Sam arrive with.
Sam smiled. “You honor me, sir. I appreciate your kindness.” He nodded, and without another word walked around the edge of the house, marching off toward Deer Creek.
Jake sipped at his coffee, looked up again at a clear blue sky dotted with puffy clouds, thinking that all was right with the world. Then he remembered Quinn … and the crow.
“Better enjoy this while I still can,” he said aloud to himself, sighing as the chair creaked pleasantly beneath him.
“Enjoy what?” Cole asked as he stepped around the corner of the house.
“A perfect morning full of nothing but peace and quiet,” Jake sighed, still gazing into the sky. He eyed Cole, adding, “Except for the odd explosion or two.” His eyebrow went up to punctuate the statement.
Cole laughed a bit nervously. “Is that coffee I smell?” he asked. Cole’s dark brown hair flowed out from under his hat, and his mulatto skin looked almost golden in the morning light. He wore a light blue button-down shirt, jeans, and his weathered tan boots.
“Sure seems that way,” Jake replied, taking another sip as he contemplated the explosion. Damn, he thought, I’m just too tired to pry this one out of him. Jake closed his eyes and let the morning soak in.
Cole stepped up onto the porch, grabbed the empty cup, and poured himself some coffee. Setting the pot back down, he stood up straight, stretched his back, and stared out across the grassy plains that rolled away from the house in all directions. The view was broken only by an occasional patch of sage or yucca. He watched Morse stroll toward Deer Creek for a bit and then turned his gaze northeast. A trail led away from the house, making a curving line through the prairie and winding its way toward Denver.
Cole’s eyes froze and narrowed, gazing intently at something in the distance. He held his gaze there for a short while, sipping from his coffee slowly. “You expecting anyone?” he asked, sitting down into the rocking chair next to Jake.
“Nope,” Jake replied slowly as he opened his eyes. Cole nodded in the direction of the trail. Something floated in the distance, well above the prairie, a small white dot heading straight for them. “You got that hide-away?” Jake asked calmly.
Cole patted his right forearm, saying, “You know I sleep with this thing.”
“Palm it,” Jake said, his eye narrowing at the approaching object. Cole switched the coffee cup to his left and extended his right arm with a jerk-twist of his hand. With a spring-click, a small over-and-under pistol popped into his waiting fingers. He laid his hand on his thigh, hiding it out of sight.
“Think it’s trouble?” Cole asked, taking another sip of coffee.
“Normally I’d say no, but after last night.…” Jake let his voice trail off before adding, “And you know how I hate surprises. Mornings like this just beg for ’em.” He turned his good eye to Cole and leered slightly. “I did see a crow on my windowsill when I got up.” Jake gave his partner a knowing look.
“Uh-oh,” Cole replied suspiciously. He’d spent enough time around Jake to know that crows usually meant trouble. “So does that mean you want to head to San Fran and hit ’em head on? Or are you planning to lay low here and stay business as usual?”
“Cole, that is the only question really worth asking this fine morning, explosions not excepted.” Jake took another sip of coffee, a thoughtful look on his face. “I’ll let you know if I figure something out.”