They hadn’t gone two steps when a thin, wiry shadow detached itself from behind the wheel housings of the embarkation tower.
“Mopsies.”
“Jake!” The last they’d seen of him, he’d been telling Mr. Malvern what the Lady was up to. Then they’d heard a sound and he’d dived behind a huge machine with arms as big as a building, evidently used for moving things on and off trains. “Where are Luis and Alvaro?”
“Hightailed it back to the village. Ent nothin’ they could do to help, and getting’ caught wouldn’t do us any good. Wot ’appened?”
Catching him up as they went, they ran deeper into the shadows until they were on the edge of the airfield near where the steambus would stop.
“D’you mean to tell me the Lady is goin’ off with that blackguard? To San Francisco? Is she mad?”
“She’s tryin’ to save Mr. Malvern’s life,” Maggie panted, “but that devil’s goin’ to hurt her somehow, I know it.”
“Simply lookin’ across the breakfast table at ’im would ’urt,” Lizzie observed.
“We ’ave to stop it,” Jake said, but this was so obvious that neither girl bothered to answer. “Hey. Where’s our Tigg?”
“On Lady Lucy, I think.” But Maggie did not know. “Liz? You see ’im?”
“He was supposed to go wiv the Lady. If ’e’s anywhere, ’e’s in the engine room.”
Jake stopped dead. “You silly gumpies. They’re goin’ to lift tomorrow, ent they? We can’t leave wivout knowin’ for sure where ’e is.”
In the distance, the steambus huffed and chuffed its way toward them. Lizzie planted her fists on her hips.
“He’s a fair sight better off than we are. The Lady’s sendin’ ’erself to the noose wiv that rascal, Mr. Malvern’s to be trapped on a pinnacle ’e’s like to roll off of before daybreak, we’re standing in the road miles from anywhere, and where’s Tigg? Prob’ly tucked up nice and safe in ’is bunk, wiv a good breakfast waitin’ for ’im come morning.”
The conveyance spewed steam everywhere as it pulled up next to them, and they clambered aboard. Jake grumbled and grumped, but really, Lizzie had the right of it. Someday soon they would all be together again, but if anyone had to leave with the Dunsmuirs on their lovely ship, Tigg would be the happiest to do so.
They, on the other hand, had to think of something, and quick.
They would have got to the village sooner if their steambus hadn’t had a ticket collector on it. They were forced to jump down two stops ahead of the end of the line, which meant they had to ride shank’s mare for more than a mile. It was another two miles out to the village, and then the sick-inducing spiral rock stair … by the time Maggie staggered onto the flat top of the mesa, she was gasping for breath and every muscle felt as though it was made of iron.
Lizzie and Jake hadn’t fared much better. They rested for a moment at the top of the stair, neither one inclined to rib the other about their powers of endurance. In fact, when Lizzie finally spoke, it wasn’t about the climb at all. “D’you think she’ll really go through wiv it?”
Jake chucked a rock into the whispering darkness. Several long moments later, they heard a distant clack. “I think she’ll fob ’im off wi’ what ’e wants to ’ear, and then choose ’er moment to scarper.”
“He’s going to lock ’er in a room. We ought to spring ’er like we sprung Doctor Craig out of Bedlam.”
“The lightning rifle,” Maggie said suddenly. “She didn’t take it to dinner. Said it weren’t proper. That’s why she wanted to come back ’ere.”
“He said no.” Lizzie chucked her own rock. “We gonna try to get it to ’er again? It worked last time.”
“That train’s going to be crawlin’ wiv black coats,” Jake said. “If ’e’s got ’er locked in a room, then under guard when she gets on the train, we won’t stand a snowball’s chance.”
“We could get on the train now. Tonight.” That was our Lizzie. Always thinking.
“What train?” That was our Jake, always finding the holes in a perfectly sound plan. Which was good, Maggie supposed, but it did tend to be demoralizing. “There must be a dozen trains in Stanford Fremont’s railyard alone. We got no way to know if they’re goin’ on one o’ his, or on a proper one, where you pay a fare and all.”
The problem seemed insurmountable.
“Maggie? Lizzie?” Alice’s voice floated out of the darkness between the square mud buildings. No matter that she looked like a miner or a stevedore half the time, Maggie liked her voice. It was like honey with toast crumbs in it, and just as sweet.
Alice!
“Alice will know what to do.” Maggie scrambled to her feet. Her legs felt wobbly, but at least they’d got moving again.
“Aye, best person to fox a villain is another villain.” Goodness. Jake actually sounded like he might be smiling.
“Our Alice ent no villain, even if she’s a villain’s daughter,” Maggie told him. “She saved our lives, out there on that blasted velogig in the middle of the desert.”
“I know, I were there, remember? An’ I might’ve had a bit to do with savin’ yer cantankerous hide.”
He was smiling. Maggie took heart.
In the little mud cube that was Alaia’s home, the boys were back and she was feeding them prodigious amounts of black beans and cheese and those little green chiles that she fried on a flat piece of iron. Maggie still could not fathom how they could eat the little beggars with apparent enjoyment while tears and sweat streamed down their faces.
Alaia had them seated and was dishing up grub in a matter of moments.
“I hope you plan to tell me what happened,” Alice said urgently, “or you’ll hear a scream that’ll reach clear over to Santa Fe. Claire gets all gussied up to go have a fancy dinner with the man she’s not engaged to, and she doesn’t come back. Mr. Malvern goes to steal the power cell and he doesn’t come back. What in tarnation is going on?”
So they told her, in fits and gulps between great mouthfuls of food. Raiding was hungry work, particularly when you failed miserably at it and came home empty-handed and hopeless.
Alice stopped eating right about the time Maggie said pinnacle cell. She put her bit of flatbread down, as if she’d lost her appetite. “They’re going to put him on a pinnacle?”
Maggie nodded. “That Ranger lieutenant said ’e’d be safe, but ’ow can he when all ’e ’as to do is roll over to be killed?”
“And people called my pa inhuman. At least he never used Spider Woman for such a thing.” She took a breath and looked away from her flatbread as if it made her ill. “Mr. Malvern’ll have to kick aside the previous prisoner. I hope he’s got a strong stomach.”
Maggie stopped chewing.
“What do you mean?” Lizzie demanded. “Don’t one person get a pinnacle to himself?”
“One live person does,” Alice said grimly. “They don’t bother to clear off the dead ones.”
It took a moment for the macabre picture to sink in.
“That Ranger man,” Lizzie said. “He promised Mr. Malvern would be let go soon’s the Lady were on the train an’ Lady Lucy were in the sky.”
“He may have promised that,” Alice conceded. “He may even have meant it. But that’s what they do with the really bad criminals. The lucky ones get a single shot. But the ones they really want to punish—murderers, kidnappers, extortioners, and the like—they put them in a pinnacle cell. They sit up there and you ain’t ever heard anything more pathetic than those men up under the broiling sun, callin’ for mercy.”
“What if you tried to help one?” Jake asked.
“You’d be shot, same as if you tried to spring someone out of lockup.”
“But if they can get ’em up there, they can get ’em down again,” Lizzie objected. “We’ll just steal whatever device they use and—”
“—and you’d be stuck up there with him,” Alice finished. “They use a balloon with a puncture in it. It has just enough lift to get ’em up there, but if they stay in it, it’ll outgas. The fall kills ’em. Some stay in the basket, of course. The optimistic ones, they climb out, hoping for mercy or help.” Sadness and hopelessness pulled at her mouth, turning its corners down.
And suddenly Maggie, who left the losing of tempers up to Lizzie as a general rule, lost hers with a vengeance.
“So you’re just gonna leave Mr. Malvern on his pinnacle to die?” she demanded, pushing away what was left of her food. “Yer just gonna give up and wait for the vultures to come and finish ’im off like they nearly did us?”
“Of course not. Sit down, you little fireball. We have to think of something that’s not gonna get us shot.”
“Think!” Maggie waved madly at the little mud house and beyond. “We got everything we need—we don’t need to think. We need to act, before everyone in our flock either dies or gets scattered so’s we can’t ever find ’em!”
“And what would you suggest, Little Miss Ingenuity?”
Maggie didn’t know what engine-ooity was, but she knew a solution when it was floating right outside. “You silly gumpus, we got the Stalwart Lass! And we got eighteen different kinds o’ nasty capsacious chile peppers right here and—” She flung an arm out and Jake ducked. “—in Jake’s brain we got the recipe for gaseous capsaicin.”
With his quick pickpocket’s fingers, Jake was already gathering up the raw chiles on the flat table stone. Lizzie pitched in to help him.
On the other side of the table, Alaia nodded with approval. “Spider Woman’s spirit moves with the power of the wind, and we must obey or lose that which we value most.”
Maggie saw the moment the penny dropped and Alice figured out exactly how to save Mr. Malvern’s life.
Her smile was so big, it was almost as if the sun had risen, right there in the room.