Epilogue

Above the Inland Sea 1900

 

Dalfon studied the view beyond the airship portal. Fat white clouds drifted over the dark waters of the Inland Sea like islands released from their earthly bonds. Gulls and pterosaurs swooped past, and the setting sun gilded them to the luster of 24-carat gold. Then the airship breezed into the icy, white mass of a cloudbank, and the view turned uniform and pale as a blizzard. Delicate patterns of frost limned the edges of the portal.

Inside the airship, heat generated by the humming alchemic engines whirled through overhead fans, producing the feeling of a tropical evening breeze wafting through the lounge. Glancing around at the well-heeled travelers, a man would never have suspected that they soared through driving February winds or that only hours earlier they’d raced to outdistance the dark winter storm that had seized Chicago.

No, here in the lounge an atmosphere of relaxed luxury reigned.

Heiresses, socialites, robber-barons and captains of industry gathered around the mahogany tables, sipping cocktails and chatting.

In the midst of the well-heeled crowd, Dalfon picked out Jim Miller, a ham-fisted son-of-a-bitch whose leptoceratops herds had grown at the same fast rate that other ranchers turned up dead. The five weathered men playing poker at the table next to Miller had stripped down to their waistcoats and shirtsleeves, and judging by the revolvers hanging from their hips, Dalfon guessed they numbered among Miller’s army of hired guns.

Two tables farther down, looking overdressed and uneasy, Miller’s scrawny wife sat among a group of laughing women. They’d all worn feather stoles up to the lounge. But unlike the others who merely draped their wraps over the backs of their silk chairs, Mrs. Miller made a show of summoning her maid. She berated the girl for her tired appearance and handed her iridescent stole over while remarking that the authentic ridingbird feathers were more valuable than the maid would ever be. The women surrounding Mrs. Miller appeared aghast but Mr. Miller beamed at his wife’s mean display.

Charles Dickens had penned a few condescending remarks about the coarse quality of certain newly rich folks, and Dalfon thought those sardonic sentiments applied pretty well to the Millers. Except where Mr. Dickens’s characters were tacky with furniture polish, the Millers struck Dalfon as rank with the stench of human degradation and murder.

Feeling his mood sinking, Dalfon turned his attention away from Miller and his party. He sipped his the gin gimlet and opened up the memoir he’d purchased just before Lucky had booked their flight to Fort Arvada.

At once his mood lifted.

The biography was the second in a series and followed the scandalous adventuress, H. Astor, on her journeys deep into India as the country threw off the rule of the East India Company and England. Only fifty pages in, and already Dalfon was riveted. The author’s disgust with her fellow countrymen, coupled with her growing friendships with native merchants, scholars and beggars, filled Dalfon with a thrilling anticipation for the bold acts of treason that now made H. Astor infamous. (And got her books banned in the new British capitol of Ontario, Canada.)

But beyond that the text itself was permeated with fragrance and poetry. Butter lamps and camphor incense perfumed the pages while thunder transformed into the eerie roars of tigers prowling the dark night. The fragment of one poem in particular held Dalfon’s attention.

The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, 
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I.

He’d never heard of the Persian poet, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, who’d penned the verses, but he wished he could know more of the man’s work. It made him think of lying in the moonlight with Lucky, and he smiled as he read the lines again.

Dalfon rushed further into the memoir while around him soft conversation drifted through the room, not quite drowning the melody plucked out by the latest player piano. At the end of a chapter Dalfon looked up just as the airship broke through the cloudbank. A spectacular sunset blazed between the towering peaks of a snowy mountain range, while below a vast dark sea crashed and rolled.

Dalfon frowned. How damn long could it take an engineer to give Lucky and a prospective buyer a tour of the bridge and engine rooms? Then, remembering the wide-eyed exuberance of the weedy engineer who’d designed this newest airship, Dalfon reckoned he still had a good half-hour to wait. The man had rhapsodized over the newly installed wireless telegraph and something he called the radio spectrum for nearly the whole hour he’d shared the carriage ride to the airfield with Dalfon and Lucky. Dalfon sighed and resigned himself to a little more time of solitude in the bustling lounge.

Black-suited waiters cruised the lounge, surveying the pampered, wealthy passengers and furnishing them with drinks, exotic fruits and other extravagances when called upon. Dalfon remembered his gin and applied himself to it.

Across the room he could see that either not enough whiskey or too much had gone down Miller’s belly. The man glowered out at the sunset and slumped in his chair with the petulant expression of a bulldog grown too fat to lick its own balls. Miller kicked the chair of one of the men playing poker. The fellow, who’d had his back to Dalfon, turned.

Dalfon scowled. He hadn’t laid eyes on Tom Horn in eight years, and if it had been eighty it wouldn’t have been long enough. Back then Tom had been the one with a Pinkerton’s badge, and Dalfon had idolized him more than a little. He’d been the sort of imposing, hard man of the world that, at eighteen, Dalfon had longed to become. Quiet, sardonic and already famous all across Colorado, it was said there wasn’t a man he couldn’t track or a firearm he couldn’t handle with deadly accuracy.

To Dalfon’s displeasure Miller jabbed his thumb in Dalfon’s direction and leaned forward to mutter something to Tom. At once, Tom’s attention snapped to Dalfon.

Both of them reflexively dropped their right hands to their revolvers. Dalfon reckoned he could draw a hair faster then Tom, but he knew for a fact he didn’t have it in him to open fire in a room full of innocent folk. Tom on the other hand had already proven himself perfectly willing to gun down any number of unarmed, uninvolved bystanders. He’d slaughtered two of Dalfon’s associates whose only offense had been to witness him and his men murder the upstart ranchers, Nate Champion and Nick Ray.

Tom had lost his badge and his job over the incident, but to Dalfon’s mind he should have been strung up. It wasn’t as if the minor rebukes had kept Tom from going on to assassinate countless other innocent men and boys at the behest of wealthy ranchers like Miller.

Dalfon lifted his right hand from his gun belt and took another sip of his gin. Tom smiled and he too released the grip of his revolver. Then he stood and sauntered to Dalfon’s table. He didn’t ask to join Dalfon but simply pulled out the chair intended for Lucky and dropped his big frame down.

“Well, it’s been a coon’s age since I last laid eyes on you, Dalfon. But you know I never forgot your face. Last I heard you were throwing down for Pinkerton.”

Dalfon nodded.

Studying Tom, he took a little pleasure in recognizing that the years had not treated him kindly. Gin blossoms flowered beneath the deep tan of his weathered skin, and most of his thick black hair had retreated leaving an isolated oily tuft to sit over his forehead like an abandoned outpost. The whites of his eyes had turned as yellow as his teeth, and though he remained as tall and straight as ever, his muscles looked withered.

“You’ll forgive me for not recognizing you right away, Tom.” Dalfon forced one of his sharp, bright smiles. “You’ve gotten so damn old, I mistook you for my granddaddy at first. What are you now, a hundred?”

Tom’s eyes narrowed, and Dalfon could see him considering taking a swing. Dalfon stared right back at him, ready to take Tom down to the floor and beat the life out of him. But Tom just barked out a dry laugh. His gaze remained cold and assessing.

Dalfon realized that Tom hadn’t survived to forty by taking on younger, stronger men in fair fights. It wasn’t surprising that as he grew older he’d become less notable for his fast draw and brawling nature and more notorious for shooting men in the back from a safe distance.

“Sometimes I do feel like old man Methuselah, considering how many of you green boys I’ve outlived.” Tom gestured to one of the waiters and the young man blanched. He slunk to the table and all but shot away from them after Tom ordered pisco and fresh oysters for himself and Dalfon.

“Miller don’t mind footing your tab as well as mine. He can afford about anything you might want,” Tom told Dalfon.

“I had no idea that the man was so sweet on me,” Dalfon replied.

“You have a reputation.” Tom shrugged. He didn’t appear particularly impressed but he wouldn’t be. In all the years Dalfon had hunted other men, he’d never gone after a fellow who hadn’t taken a life.

“His dance card looks full enough already.” Dalfon inclined his head towards the four other men seated to Miller’s left. In fact, now that he considered it, the number of armed men Miller had brought with him for a flight aboard a secure, luxury airship struck Dalfon as so far outside normal that it seemed less indicative of a need to display his wealth to the other passengers and more of an act of paranoia.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say he’s looking as haunted as Macbeth after Banquo’s ghost dropped in on his banquet,” Dalfon commented.

Tom frowned and the lines in his face became deep as canyons.

“No Banquos in our parts, but there was a rancher who had an accident near Miller’s place a few months back.” A smile twitched across Tom’s lips, giving away the part he no doubt played in the man’s murder. Then his scowl returned. “Turns out the widow is one of them damn wind mages and has about a thousand blood relatives up north in Sovereign Tribes Lands. Miller thinks they’re on the warpath for him.”

Dalfon almost laughed because if anything would serve bastards like Jim Miller and Tom Horn right it would be the Sovereign Tribes turning the might of their mages against them. The last bastard who’d merited such wrath had been Captain Edward S. Godfrey, who had given the command to open fire and sparked the massacre at Wounded Knee. (Ironically, Godfrey’s attempt to end the Ghost Dance had woken immense power in the Black Hills and united hundreds of bands into the independent nation that now controlled much of the northwest.)

Dalfon shook his head. “Miller’s done a hell of a lot more than have one rancher killed if he’s managed to provoke the Sovereign Tribes.”

“What Mr. Miller’s done in the whole of his life isn’t my business and I don’t figure it’s yours either,” Tom replied, and Dalfon felt certain that Miller wasn’t the only one up to his neck in shit. Likely Tom stood just as deep.

“The man’s paying good money,” Tom went on. “And there’s bound to be one hell of a ride ahead for any man tough enough to sign on with him. So are you in or not?”

For an instant Dalfon felt that old drive for action and adventure rise in his blood. Maybe if Tom had made the offer to him when he’d been a fifteen-year-old runaway, he’d have accepted just to feel excited and alive. But now he’d seen more than his share of action and learned that the measure of a man’s character could be taken not only by the battles he won but also by those he refused to fight.

As Dalfon formulated his response, seemingly every person in the lounge went quiet, turning rapt attention upon the doorway. Both Tom and Dalfon looked as well. And Dalfon’s heart swelled with a strange mix of joy and pride.

There stood the now-famous heir of the immense Moreau fortune, Luc Song-Garcia. Dalfon’s own Lucky.

With his shaggy dark hair fashionably shorn and slicked back, the fine angles of his face stood out clearly. All the world could see the expressive quality of his dark eyes and appreciate his handsome, full mouth. When he smiled, his whole face lit up, and he appeared somehow both young and worldly at once.

The increase in his income hadn’t done his wardrobe any harm either. Gone were the loose sack overalls and the shapeless shirt that had hidden the hard lines and dexterity of his body. Now a black jacket cut from supple pterodactyl leather and a vest embroidered with gold silk emphasized his corded shoulders and long waist. Fine gold threads glinted from the dark cloth of his fitted trousers, and his boots gleamed like obsidian.

Gazing at him, Dalfon was reminded of a description he’d read of a deity carved into a Hindu temple: grace and power playing through lithe limbs and a seductive smile. Dalfon guessed he wasn’t alone in the thought, when he heard one of the nearby women whisper, “He looks like an Indian prince.”

For his part, Lucky appeared oblivious to the stir he caused. His attention remained on the statuesque Black woman standing beside him. She too drew stares and inspired whispered speculation. Most people knew of the deadly amazons of the African kingdom of Dahomey. They’d become renowned after crushing Napoleon III’s attempt to drag his sunken French empire up onto West African shores. However, very few Americans had actually laid eyes upon one of the famed warrior women—at least not and lived to tell about it. But the cerulean-striped uniform just visible beneath the woman’s long leopard-skin coat combined with the beaded emerald crocodile emblazoned across the woman’s tall white cap were legendary.

At sixty-six, Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh was drawn and white-haired but still looked like she could run a man through with the sword that hung from her bejeweled belt. Though in truth, she’d come at the behest of her young king, to negotiate the import of custom-made Moreau airship engines. She and Lucky smiled at each other, exchanged a few words and then both laughed. Three younger Dahomey guardswomen, all with revolvers holstered at their hips, appeared amused as well.

Dalfon turned his attention back to Tom, who scowled at Lucky and Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh, making a show of appearing unimpressed. “Some people get it easy from the time they’re born till the day they die,” Tom muttered.

Dalfon almost laughed at the idea that either Lucky or Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh had numbered among the pampered few who navigated life without knowing a single hardship.

“When there’s bitterness inside you, not even a mouthful of sugar will taste sweet,” Dalfon replied, not that he expected Tom to recognize the proverb. It had been one of many that Dalfon’s mother had repeated, though only recently had he actually realized the wisdom in it. Men like Tom were bitter every inch of their beings. No amount of good fortune or kindness would ever be enough for them.

Dalfon looked away from the man to see their waiter approaching the table with the glasses of golden pisco and dishes of oysters that Tom had ordered.

“You might as well take them over to the table there.” Dalfon gestured to the poker players slumped in their seats near Miller. Tom scowled at Dalfon, and the waiter stood, looking uncertain.

“I got company on the way. So you’ll just have to scoot on back to Miller and tell him I don’t care what bait he puts on his hook I’m not biting,” Dalfon told Tom.

Tom didn’t budge. They both knew Tom had divulged a little too much to him for this all to end amiably. But Dalfon wasn’t willing to fight here and now. He suspected that even Tom didn’t relish the prospect of attempting to silence this many witnesses.

“Look,” Dalfon said, “if you and Miller can’t take no for an answer, then I’ll be more than happy to settle this at forty paces after this airship sets down.”

For a moment Tom just sat there, and Dalfon could almost feel resentment and hate rising off the man like steam wafting up from a boiling pot. Tom’s right hand twitched and Dalfon’s fingers curled around the grip of his gun. The waiter tottered back, and somehow managed not to spill either drinks or dishes.

Tom held up both his hands and pulled a grimace of a smile, then he stood.

“We’ll finish this on the ground. Only decent to give you time to write your final will.” Tom strode back to Miller and rejoined the other men playing cards. Oddly, the waiter offered Dalfon an almost conspiratorial little wink while Tom’s back was turned and quickly followed the man to serve the table.

Dalfon scowled at the twilight gloom and the growing black silhouettes of the mountains outside the portal. At best he had an hour to figure a way out of this mess. Chances that Tom would fight fair, or even alone, were slimmer than an onionskin. Not that Dalfon wanted to engage in some idiot duel. Winning would only make him an outlaw and losing… Well, a corpse wouldn’t have much of a future traveling the world and making love to Lucky.

“Mind if I join you?” Lucky’s voice pulled Dalfon back from his grim contemplation of the twilight.

“Of course!” Dalfon almost cringed at his own far-too-hearty response.

Lucky sank down into the seat Tom had vacated seconds before and cocked his head, considering Dalfon.

“Your friend didn’t run off on my account, did he?” Lucky asked.

“Tom Horn is no friend of mine. And across the room isn’t nearly far enough away.”

Lucky’s expression shifted from concerned to surprised, and then settled into a look Dalfon didn’t think he’d seen before—almost a guilty excitement.

“Tom Horn.” Lucky stole a sidelong glance to where Tom sat slugging back his pisco. Dalfon could hardly stand to look at the man.

“Is Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh going to join us?” Dalfon asked, to get his mind off the heap of trouble Tom Horn would doubtless cause. He was going to have to explain it all to Lucky but he felt too riled up to keep his voice low and restrain himself from hurling something at that son-of-a-bitch Miller. Of all the flights why did the bastard have to be on this one? When had riding the rail become too common for him and his gang?

“No, she wanted to talk more with the security chief up on the bridge,” Lucky replied. For no reason that Dalfon could understand, he flicked another quick glance over to Miller’s party, and a sly little smile lit his face.

Dalfon considered Lucky for a moment then leaned a little nearer to him.

“Is there a reason you’re looking so smug and sneaky?”

Lucky nodded.

“Do you recall any of that conversation in the carriage concerning the radio spectrum?” Lucky asked.

“Only that the newest airships have been fitted with wireless telegraphs, or something of that nature,” Dalfon replied.

“Well, we decided to test the range of ours out, for Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh’s benefit. And we were able to pick up signals all the way from the Lakota Island station to Fort Arvada…”

“And?” Dalfon prompted.

“It turns out lawmen are tearing through every train leaving Chicago, trying to lay hands on a Mr. Miller and a fellow traveling with him called Tom Horn.” Lucky lowered his voice. “They’re wanted for desecrating sacred ground and five counts of murder. They even shot a fourteen-year-old boy in the back.”

Dalfon was not surprised. Though he did feel a little more resolved to do all he could to put Tom in a grave. He supposed he ought to describe his own encounter with the man to Lucky since they were already on the subject. But Lucky got that sly look again and went on.

“As it happened, the chief steward was on the bridge when we picked up the transmission, and he recognized the description of Miller and Tom Horn as well as four other felons in Miller’s pay. Then the boson shows us a note that a maid slipped to him when they passed in the hall. It just said ‘Miller is here’. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of it till that instant.”

Dalfon thought again of the worn-looking maid and felt a surge of admiration for her audacity. Surrounded by cold-blooded killers and still she’d done what she could to stymie them. Fist and pistols weren’t the only weapons that could kill a man, sometimes it only took a girl who kept her wits.

Though considering the situation, he and the ship’s crew would need firepower to take Miller and his boys before they could flee back to the fortifications of Miller’s ranch.

“Of course, right off, Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh offered to bring her women down here and blow the criminals’ brains out. The ship’s engineer almost fainted and started talking a mile a minute about cabin pressure and ricocheting bullets.” Lucky shook his head, his expression wry. “Then the wireless telegraph operator informs us that she’s contacted the airstrip in Fort Arvada and that they’ll have the sheriff and his deputies waiting for our arrival.”

Dalfon nodded. That was good, better than he could have hoped for.

“Having the sheriff at the airstrip will make things easier,” he said softly. “But it’s going to be tricky to keep all of these other passengers out of the crossfire if Tom or any of the others decide they aren’t going to be taken alive.” Dalfon felt certain no one would think anything of it if Lucky stayed back, safe, aboard the airship. But he wasn’t certain Lucky would accept the proposition. Dalfon glanced across the room at the men and women gathered around them. There had to be some way to protect them.

“I reckoned it would be best if nobody fired off a shot at all.” Lucky smiled. “So I had the ship doctor spike their drinks.”

“Their drinks.” Dalfon’s thoughts had been so occupied anticipating the inevitability of a gunfight—and trying to work a safe way through the gunsmoke and searing lead whistling through the air—that it took him a moment to grasp the full implication of Lucky’s words and put that together with the wink he’d received from the jumpy waiter.

He stole a glance over to Miller’s party. Three of the poker players were already dozing in their chairs. Tom and the man across from him both studied their cards with half-lidded eyes and seemed to nod off as Dalfon watched, laying their heads down on the tabletop.

Miller still sat slumped, staring out at the night, but now Dalfon recognized the slack, glazed quality of his expression as that of a man deep in a stupor. Then with the timing that would have done a seasoned comic proud, Mrs. Miller began to snore.

The women near her lifted their chins, sniffed and moved to another table.

Dalfon laughed and Lucky grinned at him.

“You think it’s safe for me to fetch Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh and the ship’s officers to tie these scoundrels up and lock them in the brig?” Lucky asked.

“I think so.” Dalfon stood along with Lucky. “I’d be delighted to lend a hand, in fact.”

In less than a quarter of an hour they’d disarmed, roped and incarcerated Tom Horn, the Millers and their four gunmen. The greatest hardship was lugging Tom’s deadweight into a cold cell in the brig. The man weighed nearly two hundred pounds. But when they were done, Dalfon felt exuberant with relief and also more taken with his lover than he would have thought imaginable.

“The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone,” Dalfon quoted once they were alone in their adjoining rooms. “It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

“I suppose someone fancy said that.” Lucky kicked off his glossy shoes and sat down on the big bed.

“Patrick Henry,” Dalfon supplied. He sat beside Lucky. He wished he had words—his own words—to express just how vastly Lucky had enriched his life. How caring about Lucky had awakened ideals in him he’d thought long lost to a lifetime of rapacious self-interest. He could have so easily become a man like Tom Horn, or worse, because Dalfon knew how to sweet-talk and hide lies beneath the dazzle of a silver-tongue. His capacity for brutality and treachery could have made him a true monster.

One may smile and smile and be a villain, wasn’t that how Shakespeare had put it?

Instead he was beginning to see ways of winning his fights without ever raising his fists. And he was learning that the most powerful words were often disarmingly simple—honesty laid bare. The idea frightened him some, but what was courage other than confronting fear?

“You know what I say?” Dalfon asked.

“What?”

“I love you.” There it was, simple as salt and awaiting an answer.

Lucky flushed and put his arms around Dalfon. He said nothing but his kiss was beyond eloquence, while outside the night sky lit up with countless stars.