Mender Cotton’s Daughter

Thomas Gregory

Chapter One

“Mender!” the blond rider shouted. He was just tall enough that he had to duck beneath the cog and hammer sign marking the mender’s trade above the door. Inside, the little room was lined with tools, meticulously organized by type and size and stained canvas dust cloths shrouded larger pieces of machinery keeping the wind blow grit outside from getting into their gears. “Mender!” he shouted again.

“I’m crippled, boy, not deaf,” the old man replied, his wheeled chair gliding from behind the curtain that divided one room from the next. Twin tufts of grey hair stuck out from either side of his otherwise bald pate. “Now, what can Mender Cotton do for you?”

The rider stepped fully into the room now, his broken gait awkward, but not pained. “I need brass work done.” He pulled his right pant leg up to show the metal and dark wood of the replacement limb beneath. “I need quick work. Can you do it?”

Cotton fished a pair of glasses from the pocket of his thick workman’s apron, cleaning them on an empty pant leg in the place where his limb should have been. “Quick work is usually careless work.”

The rider drew two silver coins from his coat pocket and placed them on the mender’s work bench.

“Feh. Put that away and let me look first. No sense figuring price till I know it’s a thing that can be fixed.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose and leaned in close, squinting at the leg’s clockwork pieces as if he were mapping the workings of the thing in his head before coming to the stamped C.S.A. Mark. “You boys should’ve stuck to buying originals from the Schwarzwald factories instead of trying to build copies after you got a good look at them. Rare to see one of these in working order.”

“Field menders taught me to take care of it,” the rider replied.

“Taught that to everybody. Not many that listened, your side or ours. Girl, bring a chair and some light.”

He hadn’t heard the woman come in, not that it was hard to sneak about the place, divided up by curtains as it was. She dressed not unlike the mender himself in workman’s apron and multi-pocketed pants filled with small tools. Her black hair was pulled out of the way in a tight braid and there was a certain olive skinned resemblance between her and the grey haired Cotton. A leather strap ran across her shoulder to a small box at her side covered with tiny black keys. On one end of the box was a small bellows, like a concertina. A brass ratchet handle protruded from the other.

“What’s your name?” the mender asked as the girl busied herself with an electric lantern. It buzzed as she played with the knob at its base and came to life a moment later bathing the room in an orange glow from the tiny bulb inside.

“Donnegan,” replied the rider. The girl left through the rear curtain, returning a moment later with a wooden stool.

“Sit. Leg up here.” Cotton knocked on the lower shelf of the work bench. Donnegan sat, the clockwork appendage remaining stiffly extended. He laced his fingers behind his knee and, grimacing as he pulled, brought the artificial limb up to the shelf so Cotton could examine it more closely. The mender made a sucking sound on his teeth as he looked over the intricacies of the gear driven prosthetic, bringing the light closer, readjusting the wick again, and squinting through his glasses.

“Flex,” Cotton ordered. Donnegan tensed the muscles in his calf and the clockwork leg suddenly sprang to life. As he shifted, the leg and foot moved, subtly, mimicking the natural movement of their flesh and blood counterparts with an uneven series of syncopated ratchets and ticks. Donnegan tightened and the foot turned first one way, then the other. Suddenly a grinding sound came from inside the mechanical limb, capped with a twisting groan of metal against metal as the foot went silent and dead. Cotton held up his hand and Donnegan relaxed as the Mender gently turned his artificial foot back into the correct, forward facing position.

“There’s a room in back,” the mender said, finally. “Three days, I’ll get it ticking right again. Give me four and I can make it better than new.”

“Three will have to do,” Donnegan answered, “It’s all the time I’ve got.” The old man frowned.

“Help him off with it, girl.”

The woman reached for the leather straps that kept the mechanical appendage secured to what remained of his leg before Donnegan’s hand closed over hers.

“I can do it myself, thank you.” She blinked at him before withdrawing her hand.

“Miranda doesn’t speak,” Cotton said, from the work bench where he was already selecting his tools, “not without the box.” The girl tapped the bellows device at her side. Her fingers moved over the keys in quick, practised succession before cranking the ratchet handle.

“I’ll bring a cane, then,” came a thin, airy voice from the box, “and a replacement.” The haunting sound of the machine left him with a sudden chill as it gave breathy, musical life to those disembodied words. She left again once the box was finished and Donnegan returned to the job of removing the prosthetic.

“One thing,” the mender stipulated, “that stays here.” Cotton pointed to the wood handled revolver with the tiny bronze wren resting at Donnegan’s hip. “Unusual name, Donnegan. Used to be a Wren Donnegan, fought with Hauser’s Bastard Sons during the war.” Donnegan reached, slowly, for the revolver, releasing the thin strip of leather that held the hammer in place while it was holstered. “This was back when they spent most of their time raiding border towns between north and south you understand. Put more than a few of them to the torch.”

“Can’t say he’s any kin to me,” Donnegan answered, drawing the pistol but leaving it pointed towards the floor. The two men looked at one another in silence for a moment before Donnegan turned the gun around, handing it to Cotton butt first.

“Well that’s good. That’s very good.” Cotton took the revolver and turned back to the work bench. From beneath his apron he drew a set of keys, tied with a cord around his neck. “A fair lot of Hauser’s men took to the wild life after the war. Robbing. Raiding. All manner of behaviour. You wouldn’t be a man who’d walk that kind of road, would you?”

“No, sir.”

“Then we can do business.”

Miranda chose that moment to return as Cotton locked the gun in one of the workbench drawers. She began fitting Donnegan for the simple wooden prosthetic she’d brought back. This time he let her deft fingers wrap the leather straps around his thigh, tighten and buckle them.

“Saloon’s down the way, you can get fed there, livery too where you can leave your horse.” Cotton said over his shoulder, already at work on Donnegan’s leg.

“He’s a mule,” Donnegan replied.

Miranda pressed the crank on the bellows box.

“Be careful, it’s like your first time being on one.” She made to help him up but he waved her hand away, lurching to his feet. Immediately he reeled, losing his balance and nearly crashing to the floor before Miranda caught him. Steadying him with a sigh and a little glare, she handed him the cane she’d brought on returning with the wooden leg.

The near fall put Donnegan at the door and face to face with the new body who entered the room. The boy barely came up to Donnegan’s chin and the taller man was forced to tilt his head to look him in the eyes as close as they stood.

“Mender, Job says the phonograph’s gone out again, wants to know if you’d have a look.”

“I’ll see to it, Caleb.”

Donnegan hadn’t noticed that Miranda’s small hand had remained on his back, steadying him until she removed it to push the box’s crank handle. Now he felt a sudden, warm absence.

“Thank you, miss. Sir.” The boy nodded up at him before retreating, backwards through the door. Miranda, in turn, left Donnegan’s side to retrieve a stiff leather sided tool bag from beneath the workbench.

“I’ll be at the saloon, then.”

“Mind the Engineers while you’re there,” Cotton instructed, already deep into his work. “If they turn up in search of trouble come straight back.” Miranda, or the box, made no reply but squeezed silently through the gap left between Donnegan and the door.

“Engineers?” Donnegan asked, watching her go.

“Hmm? Yes.”

“I’m sorry, can’t say I follow.”

Cotton sighed, put down his tools, and removed his glasses.

“Then you’ve been ranging too long. Church of the Holy Engine’s been building outposts in every boom town from here to Deadwood.” Cotton turned his chair around, wheeling closer to Donnegan. “A few years back, a farmer out east said he found something buried while he was digging a new well on his land. Didn’t know what it was at the time, of course, just that it looked like a bunch of punched cards, like the big thinking machines use, only made from sheets of solid silver instead of stiff paper. So, he did what anyone would do.”

“He found someone to run them,” Donnegan surmised as he sat back down in the chair Miranda had left.

“Exactly. What was on there was... well, they call it a revelation, like a new kind of bible for the times, telling them how to deal with the new world, dictating the place of men and machines. They’d seen that leg of yours and you might’ve had trouble.”

“I take it they don’t approve?”

“Not a little. ‘To bring man and machine into union is to violate the holy nature of both.’ That’s their line anyway and they’ve a harsh way of spreading the faith.”

“What about the phonograph?”

“A machine that promotes idleness and sin. If it isn’t feeding them the word of God or helping a man keep at his labours then it’s nothing but a toy of the devil, and if there’s one thing they like more than preaching the new word, it’s smashing the devil’s playthings.”

“Doesn’t anyone complain to the Sheriff?” Donnegan asked.

The mender laughed. “The only one more devout than Sheriff Wuhl these days is Preacher Hayes himself. Only difference is, Wuhl’s devotion is to gold, not God.”

Chapter Two

The Parched Mermaid was not the largest of the town’s trio of saloons, but it was, by far, the most popular for two reasons. The first was Job Quarrel’s willingness to invest in just about any new form of half baked technological entertainment that came through his door so long as he smelled the faintest hint of a profit in it. Job had already installed three motor-kinetoscopes by the time he’d been convinced to buy the tinny sounding Victrola, barely a prototype. That meant regular trips by either Cotton or Miranda to keep the thing under repair. It also meant regular trouble with the Holy Engine.

The Parched Mermaid’s other draw was “Crimson” Cait Morrow. Cait had come to the Dakota Territory as a mail order bride, marrying a fur trader named Jonas Eldredge, a man who anyone in town could have told her spelled nothing but misery for any woman unlucky enough to find herself his bride. Violent tempered and of perverse inclinations, it came as no surprise when Cait shot her husband who was in the grip of a particularly powerful drunk. At her trial, one that had been perfunctory at best, the jury voted unanimously for acquittal. Afterwards, though she’d gained her freedom, she found herself destitute and with little to no prospects she finally turned to the oldest of all professions.

Cait, it turned out had something of a talent for the business, and for self promotion, using both the colourful sobriquet she’d received for the red dress worn at her late husband’s funeral and capitalizing on her fame as a murderess. When Job Quarrel purchased the Mermaid, he saw the necessity for an added brothel but was loathe to operate one himself and so went into partnership with Cait, giving her run of the upstairs rooms and license to bring in the girls of her choosing. Cait quickly built the brothel’s reputation on the cleanliness of the women, her refusal to tolerate opium or morphine habits among her employees, and the terror she instilled in clients who got out of hand.

The wooden floor creaked under Miranda’s boots as she entered the saloon. A trio of miners congregated at the far end of the bar, not far from Job who stood beneath the shrivelled “Fee-Jee Mermaid” that was the saloon’s namesake. In the back corner, Horace Schefly was dealing a mostly honest game of faro. Otherwise, the saloon was as yet largely empty. By evening, however, the place would be filled with trail hands, labourers, and anyone else in search good times, decent liquor and a woman of negotiable affection.

“The belt again?” sighed the box. Job shook his head.

“No rattling. It’s the gears, they keep grinding and seizing.”

“Going around today.” Miranda unfurled the small rug in front of the Victrola and sat, cross-legged upon it. Unpacking her tools, she began dismantling the machine, organizing parts one by one at her side, laying them out in tiny ordered regiments of gears and springs and sprockets.

It was well into the evening when Donnegan entered the saloon. Either he did not notice or did not care to notice Miranda, sitting on the floor in the far corner, parts and tools spread out around her, grease smeared across one cheek. Instead, he made a path directly to the bar. He had, in the intervening period, shaven and cleaned himself as much as the small room at Cotton’s would allow, giving his features a certain wounded softness that his ranging had somehow buried. Job brought him a drink and he retreated to a back table to sit alone.

For her part, Miranda returned, wordlessly to her work, ignoring Donnegan across the room as he had ignored her. A short while later, he returned to the bar for another drink, and then for another. He was well on his way to the fourth when the three engineers entered the saloon. The first, a local boy Miranda recognized had a hatchet tucked into his belt and a tin covered bible in one hand. The remaining pair each carried a long hickory ax handle. The room grew suddenly quiet as the lead engineer, the one with the hatchet dragged a chair out from the table next to Donnegan’s and climbed atop it to address the room while the other two made their way through the saloon, one towards the three motor-kinetoscopes and the other towards Miranda, or more likely towards the Victrola currently in pieces on the floor.

“Brothers!” shouted the engineer, “Oh my sinful brothers. Are you so blind as cannot see these playthings of that great adversary, that fallen one who’d lead you astray for what they truly are?” The men in the saloon looked around at one another as if one of them was about to jump up with an answer. “They are tools of the devil, brothers, here to take you down that leftward path most sinister, straight into darkness!” The engineer looked around the room, eyes full of fervour, not settling on any one of the men there. “But do not fear, brothers, do not fear, for we are here to show you the way and we will deliver his new commandments that come straight through from that most holy engine itself.”

On cue, one of the engineer’s companions began to assault the first of the kinetoscopes with his ax handle, first knocking the eye piece from the top then proceeding to smash his way through the thin panelled sides with such violence that Horace Schefly, still at his faro table flinched with each successive blow to the machine.

“He has in his grace inspired us towards a great revolution and in accordance with the first commandment of his new world let no man make light of the gift we have been given by turning its use towards frivolity or lewdness.” At this, the third engineer grabbed for the open casing of the Victrola, attempting to tip the machine over whether Miranda was in his path or not. Miranda, however, was on her feet before he could, a heavy wrench in one hand, the other pressing buttons on the bellows box at her side.

“Nobody wants to hear your talk, Grayson Wynn.” Miranda could see Job Quarrel close his eyes, afraid to watch was was about to come next as the engineer turned his attention towards her. Grabbing her by the leather strap of the bellows box, he dragged her across the room to Grayson Wynn’s makeshift pulpit.

“The second of his commandments for the age,” the engineer shouted, mirroring Wynn’s own fervour, “make no man like unto machine, likewise make no machine like unto a man for to do so is abomination and makes profane the sacred nature of both!” Grayson sneered down at her as the engineer released her at his feet.

“God’d wanted you to have a voice, he’d have given you one, girl.” Miranda looked up at him with a spark of defiance in her eyes. Reaching down to the table beside her, she grabbed Donnegan’s glass and took a long draught, then, pursing her lips, she spit the bitter beer in a long, slow stream directly at Grayson Wynn’s crotch.

Before Wynn or the rest of the room could react, Donnegan had thrust the crooked head of his cane upward, catching the engineer who’d dragged Miranda to Wynn’s feet by the neck and yanking him face first into the table, a sudden gout of blood spraying from his broken nose. Not finished, he grabbed the wide bladed hunting knife at his belt in one smooth motion and drove it into the table beside the engineer’s head, grazing his ear and setting that to bleeding as well.

“Anyone here suppose I won’t knife fuck every mad bastard one of you that don’t let me drink my peace?” Donnegan growled. The only response was from the engineer on the table, still squealing about his broken nose. “Shut your filthy mouth,” letting go of the cane, he grabbed the engineer by the hair, “or I’ll make a permanent end to the problem for you.” Donnegan yanked the knife from the table and slid it along side the engineer’s nose, blood and tears streaming from the man’s face. The click of a hammer being pulled alerted Donnegan to the other engineer, about to come at him from the side. Cait Morrow stood at the railing above, aiming a navy colt at the man.

“Leave him be. I like his talk better than yours.”

“Ain’t no need for that kind of aggression, Miss Cait,” came the smooth, southern voice from outside the saloon’s bat wing doors. Donnegan kept his attention on both Grayson Wynn and the man on the table, trusting the woman who was already watching his back to do so a little while longer if this new player was going to start anything. He made no move towards Miranda or Donnegan, instead he waved off the other engineer, motioning for Wynn to step down off his chair and join the other man in the corner as he strode into the centre of the room, a grim vision in parson’s black. His smile was at once too wide, his teeth too big and horsey. Donnegan felt an immediate distrust of him the way he always did around men who armed themselves with nothing but their mouths and God’s words.

“Brother Wynn, brother Lundy, I trust that you do not require the kind of lesson brother Allen has received to understand the error of tonight’s exercise in piety?” Wynn and Lundy said nothing, eyeing Donnegan instead. “Go home, boys. Take brother Allen and patch up his hurt.”

Donnegan released his hold on the engineer’s hair and letting his head hit the table again with a thud before slipping backwards, his backside introducing itself to the sawdust covered floor. Wynn and Allen quickly grabbed their prone partner, one under each arm and hauled him out of the saloon under reverend Hayes’ ever watchful, ever smiling gaze. When they were gone, Hayes turned his attention at last to Donnegan.

“I don’t believe you and I have met, sir.”

Donnegan reached for his drink, brought it to his lips only to find it empty, and returned it to the table, all the while ignoring Hayes’ extended hand causing Hayes’ smile at last to falter. He had to fight not to smile himself when it had.

“I’m Reverend Hayes. I’m the local churchman around these parts.” Hayes, regaining his composure, smiled again.

“I can see that from the collar. I don’t like your men.”

“Well, a man can’t judge a whole flock by a few wayward sheep, can he? Matter of fact, you look like a man might need some help gettin’ right himself.”

“Let me make something clear to you.” Donnegan took up his cane again and stood, towering a full foot above the reverend. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of your men. And I’m sure as hell not afraid of your tin god.” Donnegan looked around at the other men in the saloon. “Don’t know what it is about you that makes these people so scared they let their womenfolk be the only ones to stand up for them. Don’t much give a damn either. You want to run roughshod over people willing to let you, go ahead. But the next three days, till I leave town, stay out of my way. I hear you bother either of these two women, I’ll make your man Allen look all kinds of pretty compared to you.” Hayes stared at Donnegan in silence for a moment. Then, he began to laugh.

“I like you mister. Got a certain brutish simpleness to you, makes you talk plain.” He started for the door, stopping next to Donnegan. “You remember what I said about gettin’ right with the lord. Come a day all the angels in their heaven and all the devils out of hell ain’t gonna lift a finger to save you. Got a feeling the day comes soon.”

“Righter than you know, reverend. Don’t expect you and yours are the ones to introduce me to my hereafter though.” Hayes laughed again, Donnegan not turning to watch him as he left. As the bat wing doors shut behind him, Donnegan looked around at the other men in the room and found every pair of eyes on him. “Go back to drinkin’. You ain’t earned the right to look at me like that.” He turned to the bar where Job Quarrel already had another drink waiting for him. Taking it, he paid, silencing Job’s inclination to protest with a look and raised it in salute to Cait Morrow as she descended the staircase from the brothel above.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Cait Morrow corrected as Job brought her a glass of wine. “It’s nothing to point a gun at a man from where he can’t reach you. Especially when someone else has already stood up to him.” She sipped her wine, then put the glass back on the bar, reaching instead for the hand that held Donnegan’s glass and prying it away from the drink as she leaned in close to him and whispered. “I don’t think there’s a woman here who wouldn’t take you into her bed, gratis.” In full view of the bar, she slid his hand beneath the folds of her bustle skirt, cut short in the front like those of her girls and into the split knickers underneath, finding the moist heat awaiting him. Closing her eyes, she ground down against his hand and sighed. “Not a one of them,” she whispered and watched over his shoulder as Miranda walked out of the saloon doors.

Donnegan withdrew his hand, albeit slowly, placing it flat on the bar. “It’s a good offer. Sorry, I’m not the type.” The madam caressed his chest with one gloved hand, feeling suddenly what he kept hidden beneath his shirt and understanding. She smiled at him again, this time not with lust, but with warmth, kissing him at the corner of his mouth.

“You change your mind, come see me.” Her hand slid along his arm as they parted and she returned up the stairs, not looking back at him. Donnegan in turn went back to face the bar, ruminating over his drink.

Chapter Three

Donnegan saw the dim red glow of Cotton’s pipe long before his eyes could pick out the man himself, sitting outside his shop in the darkness.

“Mr. Donnegan.”

“Mender. Hell of a town you got here.”

“I should probably give you back your piece and tell you to get out.”

“Probably.” There was a momentary silence, both men staring out into the night.

“Can I ask you something?” Donnegan nodded, adding a small grunt of consent. “How many men do you figure you killed in the war?”

Donnegan shrugged. “Hundred. Maybe a few more. Probably only ten as deserved it. Why?”

“Come inside. I want to show you something.” Cotton wheeled his way into the small workshop where they’d earlier talked. Lighting the electric lantern he illuminated the room, though dimly.

“Lift the tarp off there,” he instructed. Donnegan did as he was told, dust flying into the air as he removed the shroud-like sheet. Lamplight played off of the polished brass and lacquered wood underneath. “You know what this is?” Cotton asked as Donnegan stared at the thing on its wooden stand.

“I was at River’s Bridge, right before Columbia burned,” Donnegan said, nodding, “saw half a company blown all to hell with just a handful of these. This one’s simpler than I remember though. Not that I tried for a close look.”

“It’s the first of them. Banshee Mark I. I keep it to remind me of how many men are on my head.”

“You built it?”

“And god will surely damn me for doing so.”

Donnegan rubbed his chin, eyes still fixed on the thing beneath the sheet. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Sometimes a man gets war in his veins, he can’t get it out. Everything becomes another fight to win, another siege to be endured. End of the day, all he can see is blood, his own or some other man’s. I’m tired of blood, Mr. Donnegan, and so are these people. You’d be hard pressed to find someone here that didn’t fight in the war or lose someone in it.” Silence fell over them again and Cotton turned away from his creation, and from Donnegan. “Cover it up.” Donnegan did as he was asked.

“I worked the docks in Vicksburg before the war,” Donnegan started, “nothing much, move something off one boat, put it on another or on a train to get it where the boats couldn’t. Sometimes the head man, he’d ask if I wanted to make some extra money, watch the boats at night, make sure nobody took anything. Had a wife then, Jeanne and extra pay for the two of us was extra pay.”

“What was she like,” Cotton interrupted, gesturing towards the empty stool still sitting along the wall, “your wife.”

“She was... everything. Till one day, the army comes calling, decides they want Vicksburg and the fort that’s there. Now I didn’t have much part in the war then, Jeanne and I weren’t supporters of the... institution, being she was a quadroon herself. But that didn’t matter much when it came to the city because we were all inside together while they sat camped out there shelling. Didn’t even attack like men, just the shelling, day and night, all the time.” Donnegan pulled the chair to sit across from Cotton, easing himself into it, feeling, at once, older than his years.

“Pretty soon, we started running out of food, people eating cats, dogs, horses, anything they could get their hands on. And there’s me and a whole lot of boats stuck in the dock, boats full of supplies for the men at the fort.”

“See, I’d gotten to know who was like to steal from the boats by then. Sometimes a captain would do something the head man didn’t like and he’d send me home with a quail or a duck he’d got, tell me to make sure Jeanne cooked a big supper that night. Take my time coming back to finish looking after the dock. I’d come back and find a few fellas leaving the yard I didn’t know and a boat that was half as full as it was when I left. Except I never got called on it. So I find one of these men, the ones I recognize, and I tell him what I’m thinking and he says it’s a pretty good idea. Few nights later, most everyone busy up at the fort instead of watching the boats, we go out and we feed our families. And a few nights later, and a few after that because I will be damned if I ever let Jeanne eat rat, or dog, or horse or anything else isn’t fit to be food. And the whole time, we knew, if we got caught, they’d string us up right there for treason.”

“Did she know?” asked Cotton. Donnegan looked blankly at him. “Your wife, did she know where the food was coming from.”

“I sure as hell didn’t tell her. But she knew. Problem was, while I was out doing what I’d decided was the right thing to do, she was at home listening to the shelling, day in, day out and now, she had me to worry about each night, not sure if one time I’d go out and not come back. I was out so much, I couldn’t see what it was doing to her, just that we were fighting more and sleeping less all the time. Til one night, maybe thirty days in, one of their big guns hits a boat we’d been skimming from. The docks caught fire, then the buildings closest the water. The fellas with me all make a run for it, but people I know live there so I stay, try to help put out the fire. She must have heard what was going on, thought I’d gone up with the boat when I didn’t come home. Or maybe she couldn’t take the cannonade anymore. Maybe both. I came back after dawn and there she was, hanging from the big beam over the hearth, chair laying on its side underneath her.” Donnegan’s grip on the cane made his knuckles go white as he relived the discovery. “Wasn’t long after that Vicksburg fell.”

“After the funeral, one of the fellas who was with me at the docks came up and asked me if I wanted to kill myself some Yankees. And there’s me with a belly full of hate and sadness and looking to blame someone. So I told him it sounded good. Sounded damn good in fact. That night we put torches to one of the barracks the Union men had taken over. Pretty soon there was a gang of us, harriers going up and down the edge of the Union raising whatever kind of hell we could.” Donnegan’s eyes were distant, haunted, the man himself somewhere else. Cotton touched him gently on the shoulder and saw the heartbreak there as Donnegan lifted his head to look at him.

“You want me to leave?”

“No,” replied Cotton, wheeling his way through the curtain and into the back rooms, “but see you don’t bring blood into my house.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Donnegan.”

Storm clouds hung low as Donnegan stepped outside and around to the back of the building, the temperature already starting to drop as the wind picked up. Exhaustion, reflection and drink took their toll as he entered the rear room Cotton had given him use of only to find himself being slapped in the face. He hadn’t seen the lantern light visible underneath the door giving away the waiting Miranda.

“I didn’t ask you for help.”

“I don’t see as I offered,” he replied, closing the door behind him.

“You broke a man’s nose and cut off his ear.”

“I nicked him. He bothered me and someone took my drink, so the only way to get another one was to get those boys to shut up.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I can see that!” Donnegan shouted, louder than he should have with the girl’s father likely just on the other side of the wall. Miranda huffed in frustration, fingers hesitating over the bellows box. “You’re braver than they are, I’ll give you that.”

“What’s that meant to mean?”

“It means I’m not unaccustomed to forgetting to think before I act and it’s an unhealthy habit to be in.” Miranda raised her hand to slap him again but found him quick enough to catch her wrist before she could strike him. He held her there for a moment, looking down into her dark eyes. Her long braid had started to come undone, the static in the air from the coming storm causing strands of her black hair to float about her face. After a moment, he released her, turned, kicked off his boots and stripped off his shirt as if she weren’t even in the room, hanging it on the bed post before climbing into bed, facing the wall. She stood, silently staring at him before reaching for the bellows box.

“Don’t help me again.”

Donnegan pulled the woolen blanket over himself.

“Goodnight, Miss Cotton.”

Chapter Four

Donnegan dreamed. In his dream, he followed the red haired madam, her hips swaying before him as she led him up the stairs of the saloon to her room. He reached out as she neared the top step, his hand sliding along the back of her leg, up to her bottom. She looked over her shoulder, smiling and quickening her step, her red curls bouncing as she moved. Down the hall, she stopped in front of him, fishing an iron key from the garter belt around her thigh. Donnegan came up behind her, wrapping one arm around her waist while with the other hand, he turned her chin towards him, kissing her as she pushed the key into the lock on the door. They stood in the hall for a long moment, she returning his kiss twice as passionate, twice as heated, her hand sliding over his resting on her waist and guiding it down to her knickers, her fingers over his, probing together the warm, wet opening between her legs.

“Come inside,” she whispered, nipping at his earlobe.

“I intend to,” Donnegan replied.

In a moment, they were inside the room, Donnegan turning her around, pressing her to him, his strong hand kneading her backside. She gasped as it moved inward, rubbing against her slit. For the first time, Donnegan realized that, in the dream, he was whole as she reached between them, working at his belt buckle, grinding herself back against his hand as she did so. Cait moaned as his middle finger made its way inside her, stroking her velvet walls. As she finally managed to open his belt, undoing the buttons of his trousers, she felt him add a second finger and lost all ability to focus on the task as pleasure took over. Leaning her head into his chest, she let his fingers take her until, at last, she screamed in a fiery crescendo.

When she had returned to her senses, she reached up, forcing her mouth against his, her tongue teasing between his lips even as her hands completed the job they’d started below, freeing his hard prick. Breaking away from him, she descended to her knees, grabbing his member and eyeing it hungrily. After only a few strokes, it was in her warm, waiting mouth. Donnegan ran his hands through her red hair, removing the pin that held her scarlet tresses up and watching them cascade around his manhood as she swallowed him. Releasing his cock, she licked along the sides with small, darting strokes of the tongue before returning just the head to her lips, kissing it again and again. Now taking the head into her mouth, she held it there as she reached behind and loosened her corset stays enough to free her pale breasts before taking him all the way into her mouth again.

Donnegan pulled her to her feet before she could finish him with her mouth. Running a hand along her cheek, he kissed her before turning her around to face the foot of the bed. Sensing what he wanted, she grabbed the bed frame, spreading her legs for him while behind him, he removed his shirt. Reaching for her waist with one hand, the other began to tease her exposed nipple, causing it to harden. His cock bobbed between her legs as he pressed up against her, teasing her breasts. Finally, she could take no more, grabbing his manhood and guiding him into her.

There was a long, lingering moment, Donnegan relishing the long forgotten feeling of a woman’s heat before he drew back and thrust again. His movements were deliberately slow, careful but powerful, each thrust bringing him fully into her, the bed frame squeaking in time with their movements, Cait gasping each time Donnegan entered her. The hand Donnegan had kept on her waist slid forward, his fingers finding her clit and she screamed, flooding him with her juices and driving herself back against him even harder as she shuddered in orgasm.

Donnegan pulled out of the warm confines of her body but the woman who turned to face him was not the red haired madam Cait Morrow. She was taller, her skin was darker and her hair black and wavy. In place of Cait Morrow, Jeanne stood before him, the loose cotton chemise he’d last seen her in untied at the neck and pulled down below her shoulders, bearing her breasts to him. She moved close, kissing his chest, his neck, and finally his lips as he stood, frozen. Crossing her arms, she pulled the chemise over her head, revealing herself to him fully and Donnegan found himself loosing all control.

Picking Jeanne up in his arms, he carried her not to the bed of a madam, but to their wedding bed, the brothel suddenly their tiny house in Vicksburg and laid her down as she giggled at his show of masculine bravado. She parted her legs as he crawled into the bed, kissing her feet. Donnegan’s lips worked their way towards her most secret of places, kissing her ankles, her thighs, causing her to laugh uncontrollably as he kissed the backs of her knees. Finally, his lips met the petals of her sex, parting her pink lips and savouring the half remembered taste of her. To know her like this again nearly caused him to weep, remembering the parts of her that only he knew, the taste and the smell of her, the way she liked to be touched, the sound of her moans as she came.

Donnegan moved up the bed and Jeanne nudged him, making him roll onto his back. Languidly, she ran her hands up his chest and along his arms, stretching them above his head as she lowered herself onto him, taking control of their lovemaking. Her hips glided smoothly over him, a dancer’s hips, he thought, as he lay transfixed by her movement. The speed and ferocity of her thrusts increased, Donnegan thrusting up into her as she made a small, growling grunt each time he pushed into her depths. As he reached his limit, Donnegan looked into her eyes and found that the woman who rode atop him, the woman to whom he made love had changed again. His hot seed rushed not into Jeanne or Cait Morrow, but Miranda Cotton as she to reached the apex of her pleasure, slowing her gyrations, her muscles tightening on his cock, refusing to let go until both of them were spent and she fell, panting, against his chest.

Chapter Five

Donnegan woke to the sound of rain and a pained, distant cry. Slipping into his trousers, boots, and coat, not bothering with his shirt, he walked into the rain slick darkness. His blond hair fell around his face, soaked completely the moment he stepped out the door to Cotton’s small guest room, following the intermittent cries to the front of the two story building. Miranda, he presumed, had her rooms above while Cotton stayed downstairs with his workshop, the door to which hung open, blowing in the wind. Drawing the knife from his belt, Donnegan nudged the door open further with his foot, keeping to one side of the doorway in case anyone inside decided to shoot before stepping inside once he was sure the room was free of anyone who wished him harm.

Cotton lay on the floor, his wheelchair sideways beside him, wheels spinning listlessly in the breeze from outside. Blood covered his hands and the floor beneath him as he pressed against a wound in his gut. Donnegan put the knife away and went to his side.

“Wren?”

“Quiet, don’t strain yourself.” He peeled the mender’s hands away from the wound, a stab to the belly, explaining why Donnegan hadn’t heard gunfire from the back room. The wound was vicious, too vicious to easily survive. “Where’s Miranda?”

“Hayes,” Cotton groaned. It was all Donnegan needed. He spotted the Banshee rifle lying on the ground behind the fallen mender. “No,” murmured Cotton, sensing where his thoughts were headed, “no more blood on my head.” He fumbled for the keys at his belt. Donnegan brushed his hand away and removed them himself.

Standing, he went to the work bench, trying keys one by one in the locked drawer. Cotton groaned again and Donnegan dropped the keys in frustration. Grabbing the drawer at the bottom, he yanked, screaming, as hard as his strength would allow. Wood splintered, the drawer giving way as the wood handled revolver clattered to the ground, the tiny wren on the handle looking up at him, glinting in the moonlight. He reclaimed it, checking the cylinder and finding it still fully loaded before slipping it into the empty holster on his belt and returning to Cotton’s side.

“Small chance you’ll see morning. You’re smart enough to know that.” Cotton gave a weak nod.

“Go get my girl, Donnegan. Get her safe.” Donnegan rose. He had to admire the old man’s toughness and hoped he was the kind of man who’d make the same choice for his daughter if he’d had one. The wind had picked up outside, an angry hollow scream that whipped the rain into his eyes as he walked down the street to the Parched Siren. The saloon was empty, gas lights extinguished though by now his eyes had adjusted enough to find the stairwell near the bar.

After a moment’s urgent banging on her door, Cait Morrow rose, a few of her girls already peering out of their own rooms to see what the shirtless, sopping man in the hallway was about. She came to the door wearing a sheer, lacy robe that hid little if any of her body and certainly wasn’t there for sake of modesty.

“It’s a bit late in the evening for changing your mind,” she said, giving him a wry smile, “but all right.”

“I need help.”

I thought that’s what I was about to do.”

“The mender’s been stabbed. They’ve got Miranda.”

“Oh dear god, is he alive?”

“Barely.”

Cait pushed him out into the hallway, turning to two of the girls who’d stuck their heads out to see who’d stumbled his way to Cait’s door in the middle of the night.

“Alice, go fetch Doc Edward. Lucy, go stay with Cotton till Alice gets there with the Doc.” Both women rushed past him, obediently following Cait’s orders as she retreated into the room, not bothering to close the door as the sheer robe dropped from her shoulders leaving her completely nude. Donnegan’s imagination had gotten the room wrong, but all of her curves exactly right, watching as she pulled on a pair of fitted riding pants and a gingham shirt.

“Do you even own a horse?”

“No, but I own a saddle.” She pointed to where it hung on the wall, barely big enough for a small pony. “There’s a regular who likes me to put it on him.”

“Really?”

“Some folks have odd romantical notions. But he pays well and he’s polite. You know where we’re going?”

“I was hoping you’d have an idea.”

“Wynn’s daddy. He owns a slaughterhouse down by the stockyards. Built it completely mechanized, doesn’t take more than a few men to run it. He put a lot of men from the old place out of work when he built it but, lucky him, the Holy Engine showed up around the same time telling folks it’s all right, God meant for us to mechanize to ease our labours.”

“Sounds like the kind of man who makes his own luck.”

“He’s close with the preacher, that’s certain.”

“And a slaughterhouse is as good a place as any if you find yourself stuck with a body you don’t want.” He was, by now, already heading for the door. “We’ll need to go by the livery on the way.”

“Why.”

“I need my mule.”

Chapter Six

Frank Lundy fought the urge to scratch his broken nose as he looked out into the darkness, wishing he was inside with Allen and Wynn and the mender’s girl. The preacher had already said they weren’t to have their way with her but he’d just see what Grayson had to say about it. After all, hadn’t it been him she’d embarrassed, spitting on him like she had? And hadn’t he himself been the one to take the beating after? Reaching for the flask in his pocket, he unscrewed the cap and took another drink of rye, the pleasant burn on his tongue doing nothing to mellow his mood.

Somewhere in the night, a high loud braying broke through the sound of the storm outside. He squinted, trying to make out the figure approaching the great steel doors where the cattle were lead in during operation but to no avail. Taking up the rifle he’d left leaning against the wall and an electric lantern, he opened one of the twin doors, stepping outside for a better look.

“Who’s that commin’ out there?” Lundy shouted and was met with another bray. “I said who’s out there on the mule? You stop ridin’ or I’ll shoot!”

“It’s Crimson Cait, Frank, I got a peace offering.” As she neared, leading the mule by the reigns, Donnegan’s body slumped across its back, he could see how her soaked gingham shirt clung to her breasts, revealing every curve. Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about preacher Hayes’ commandments after all.

“That’s far enough. You just send the mule on over here.” Cait stopped walking and the mule stopped with her until she slapped its backside and it wandered forward towards Lundy. Donnegan hung limply, bouncing with the mule’s every step until Lundy picked up the reigns himself and brought it to a halt. “How’d you get one over on him?” Lundy asked, keeping the rifle pointed in Cait’s direction, eyeing the pistol that protruded from her waistband.

“How do you think?” she shouted back, “now call Hayes and Grayson out here and lets make amends.”

“Why do you think I need anyone else out here?”

“We both know they’re the ones that get to say if the deal’s good.”

“Except I already got this old boy so you’ll have to find something else to bargain with!” Cait started to put her hands on her hips in frustration and Lundy levelled the rifle at her, thinking she was going for the pistol. A sudden feeling of dread took him as he felt the muzzle of Donnegan’s colt pressed into his belly.

“You people really must put your faith in some kind of god, leaving a man loaded up on laudanum and whiskey to keep watch.” Lundy looked down at the gun jammed in his gut, taking his eyes off Cait who took the opportunity to draw on him as well. “Lower the rifle,” ordered Donnegan.

Lundy did as he was told and Donnegan slid backwards off of the mule as Cait joined him, taking the rifle from Lundy’s hands.

“How many inside?” Cait demanded. Lundy looked from one to the other, then back again before beginning to laugh.

“You caught me with my pants down, good for you, but you are one real dumb whore if you think I’m gonna tell you anything. What are you gonna do, shoot a man that’s unarmed?” Cait and Donnegan looked at one another.

“He’s got a point,” Cait admitted.

“He does.” Lundy never saw the rifle butt until it was too late as Cait drove it into his broken nose with a crack. He went down hard and fast, clutching his face as he rolled on the ground. Cait stopped his squirming, putting her boot against his throat, the barrel of the rifle against his forehead. He clenched his teeth, breathing through his mouth as blood soaked the bandage that wrapped across his nose and around to one ear.

“You don’t get to use that word with me, Mr. Lundy. Now answer the question.”

Donnegan would have mistaken the rifle shot for the sound of thunder if not for the mud that splattered as the round struck the earth beside him. Both he and Cait made for the cover of the metal ramp leading up to the big cattle doors through which Lundy had come, one door still hanging open. Cait turned, firing in the direction from which the gunshot had come giving Donnegan time to stump his way over to her and cover.

“Lundy you idiot!” Donnegan didn’t recognize the voice and assumed it must be Allen, the third man from the saloon.

“Can you see him?”

“Top window, I think,” replied Cait, “far side.”

Lundy scrambled off the ground and headed for the open door, hands still clutching his bloody nose. Allen fired again, trying for Cait and Donnegan but instead, felled Lundy, his body falling before them, eyes glassy and staring into nothingness. Cait rose from behind Lundy’s body and fired three times in quick succession before Donnegan pulled her down again.

“Cait!”

“What?”

“Aim, then fire.”

“I only ever did this once and he was drunk at the time, okay?” Her breathing was rapid, adrenaline coursing through her. “Can you get inside if I cover you?”

“I’m not fast enough,” Donnegan admitted, “He’ll gun me down before I get there.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“And what, take on whatever’s on the other side of that door?” They both went silent, watching the upstairs window. After a long moment, Donnegan reached up, grabbing Lundy’s body by his coat and dragged him to the edge of the ramp.

“Rest your rifle up there.”

“What?”

“Rest it up there and aim for that window. He sticks his head out, you shoot. Don’t worry about me. Just aim, breathe, shoot, understand?” Cait nodded and Donnegan got to his feet.

“One...” Cait braced the barrel of the rifle on Lundy’s corpse and took aim as best she could, rain stinging her eyes.”Two... Three!” Donnegan set off at a loping run, keeping himself at a sharp enough angle from the building to force Allen to expose himself at the window if he wanted to have any chance at cutting him down.

Rifle thunder rolled again and Allen screamed as he came toppling out of the window, hitting the muddy ground with a wet thud.

“Good girl,” Donnegan breathed, too quiet for Cait to hear as he stopped running, “good girl.”

“Donnegan!” Cait called, lowering the rifle, “your leg!” Had she not called out to him, he wouldn’t have noticed the tear in his trouser leg where the bullet had grazed his wooden limb. He stumped his way back to the ramp, stopping to pick up Lundy’s electric lantern along the way.

“Stay here. Get yourself underneath the ramp. No one comes out this way but me or the Cotton girl.” Cait nodded and he started for the building.

“Wait!” She called, running up behind him. Grabbing the collar of his oilskin coat, she pulled him to her, forcing her mouth against his. They stood there in the rain, her tongue exploring his mouth, surprised but not unwilling until she broke their kiss.

“Sorry. Had to see what that was like in case you don’t come back.” She started back down the ramp and scrambled underneath as he turned back to the door.

“Hey.”

Donnegan looked over the railing at her, peering her head out from beneath.

“You should come back, all right?”

Inside the doors, Donnegan found himself in a wide, fenced chute. Following the chute would, presumably, lead him directly to the killing floor and whatever sharp and deadly machinery lay there to slaughter and process the cattle that were lead through. Lifting the electric lantern high, he found the gate along the right wall through which Lundy must have passed on his way outside. By now, anyone remaining within must have known that he was inside already leaving little use for subtlety. He decided instead, as he so often did, for intimidation.

“Grayson Wynn!” His voice sounded throughout the building and he wondered if whoever was there could not only hear him, but see him already as well. The vast complex of machinery that he could already see through the fences occupied most of the building would make firing a shot a dangerous prospect with a high risk of ricochet however so chances were they’d have to confront him head on.

“We can still walk away from here, Wynn. Just give up the girl.”

“How’s the old man?” Wynn called back, a sadistic mirth in his voice. “Is he done dying yet?”

“Old man’s just fine. Lucky for him you’re shit with a knife, boy.”

Wynn laughed.

“You don’t sound like someone who’s going to let me leave here.”

“I promised Cotton I wasn’t going to shed more blood than I had to. You’ll leave alive. Just a question of how many pieces you’ll be in when you do. Might make me look like a whole man compared to you.” Donnegan heard a heavy knife handle switch somewhere in the depths of the mechanical abattoir and the machinery of the killing floor churned to life. Amid the clanking, whirring, crashing sounds of the machinery, built with singular sanguine purpose, he considered his next move. The noise of the machines could only serve to cover the sound of Wynn’s own approach which meant he was putting himself on the attack, coming for Donnegan instead of waiting to be found.

Swinging the electric lantern by the handle, Donnegan cast it ahead of him into the darkness and retreated back into the small room from which Lundy had seen his approach. Something in the lantern cracked and sputtered as it landed causing it to flicker erratically. Moments later, as Donnegan had hoped, Wynn approached the light, a lightweight pistol in one hand, the hand ax he’d earlier had tucked into his belt in the other. He waited, watching from the shadows as the other man screamed with rage and kicked the lantern in his direction. Donnegan took no small pleasure in Wynn’s look of horror as the flickering light revealed him, pistol at the ready and pointed in his direction, then died a flickering, buzzing death.

Donnegan’s colt lit up the night for an instant, the smell of cordite mingling with the charnel smell of the slaughterhouse. Wynn’s gun hit the ground as he howled, his right arm hanging limp, the wound there ragged and ugly. Desperate and full of hate, he charged Donnegan with the ax, swinging wild but full of as much force as he could muster, striking him in the ribs with the butt instead of the blade, knocking him off balance. Instead of pressing his brief advantage, Wynn made for the cow chute leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Righting himself, Donnegan gave chase, nearly slipping more than once on the blood Wynn was swiftly losing. He was unlikely to have much more than whatever strength his hate gave him now, but as Donnegan entered the first of the slaughterhouse’s mechanized stations, a massive pneumatic bolt gun hanging from the ceiling, Wynn charged him again, screaming, flecks of spittle issuing from his mouth as he swung for Donnegan’s neck. Too late to move out of Wynn’s path, Donnegan instead yanked the bolt gun between them, pulling it down and driving it into Wynn’s pelvis as he did so.

If the gunshot wound in his arm had made him scream, words failed to capture the sound that followed the bolt gun’s pneumatic hiss and the crunch of bone audible over even the machinery of the slaughterhouse. Wynn squirmed, writhing in pain on the floor amid the muck and blood the two of them had tracked about trying desperately to crawl backwards away from Donnegan as he picked up the hand ax and tucked it behind his back.

“Your daddy ain’t here to buy your way out of trouble, so before you start blubbering you need to remember that. Now I’m going to give you one chance to answer. Where’s the girl.”

“Or what? You said you wouldn’t kill me, old man.”

“I did that,” Donnegan acknowledged, “stupid of me. I ain’t used to lettin’ people live on principle though, and I didn’t promise I wouldn’t just let you die.” He prodded Wynn’s hip with his boot and Wynn screamed himself hoarse with pain. He hoped beyond hope that the preacher, still somewhere in the building could hear it and that it gave him pause.

“You won’t ever walk right again. Nothing to be done about that. But you won’t last long enough to lament it if that arm’s not bound. I can do that for you. Might be you make it past morning. Where. Is. Miranda Cotton?”

“She’s in the cold storage room, you fucker!” Wynn squealed. “Now bind me up!” Donnegan turned and started to walk away, back towards the chute.

“Bind me up! You said you would!”

“I make it back, I will. Best hope you told me straight and your preacher’s sensible.”

Donnegan returned through the chute gate, back through the little room and down the darkened hallway from which Wynn had attacked him. Nearing its end, he came to an open metal stairwell leading downward to a lower portion of the killing floor. Not far from it, a ladder fixed to the wall ascended to a catwalk above where Allen had stationed himself before. Moonlight streamed in through the broken window and he wondered if the storm had at last passed.

A wide sloped hall waited at the bottom of the stairs leading to the lowest part of the building, several feet below ground. The insulation of the earth around it coupled with the modern gas cooled refrigeration system in the cold storage room allowed for the preservation of beef until it could be put onto rail cars and taken across the country. He found the preacher outside the heavy insulated door to the cold room, kneeling, hands clasped in prayer.

“I see the wolves within my flock have failed in their duties,” Hayes said at his approach, not looking up.

“Looks that way.”

“Coming to blows with a man of God would be sinful, son.”

“Preacher, God and me got plenty to have a reckoning over, but knocking the hell out of you ain’t one of those things.” Hayes stood, facing him, brushing the dirt from his knees with one hand.

“In that case, there’s plenty of money here for us both. Wynn’s flush with more cash than he’ll ever be able to spend.”

“Figured it’d come to that, sooner or later.”

“Doesn’t it always?”

“Wynn goes for mechanization and the Holy Engine keeps the folks he forces out quiet and peaceable by telling them it’s God’s will that they be put out of work and that the real reason for their troubles is all them new kinds of sinners you bring forth.”

“Oh, he hires them back,” Hayes assured him, “Down at the mines instead.”

“Where there’s twice the danger and half the pay and the company owns everything about you.

There even a real church back East?”

“There is.”

“First surprise I’ve had all night.”

Hayes smiled.

“You understand of course that if you kill me, my people will come for you. You’ll have half the town howling for your blood.”

“Good thing I don’t plan on killing you then.”

“I don’t see as you’ve got much choice, but I’m willing to hear you out.”

“You walk away from here.” Donnegan told him.

“That’s it?”

“You don’t come back. Leave these people to sort out their own problems.”

“These people...”

“These people,” Donnegan interrupted, “don’t have any use for you. The can stand or fall on their own.”

“Son.”

“Hmm?”

“Afraid I can’t take you up on your offer.” Steel flashed as Hayes revealed the palmed Derringer and fired. Donnegan’s knife was nearly as fast and more accurate by far as it left the sheathe at his belt and wound up lodged to the hilt in the meat of Hayes’ shoulder. The Derringer fell to the ground and Donnegan kicked it away.

“I’ll give you a moment to think it over” Hayes winced as Donnegan shoved him out of the way, opening the cold storage room. There, hanging among the frozen beef was Miranda Cotton, her hands bound above her head to a steel hook. Her body shivered uncontrollably, her eyes barely recognizing his presence as he lifted her up, off of the hook, letting her slump over his shoulder.

Hayes was struggling to pull the knife from his shoulder as they passed and Donnegan let him fight with it as he took Miranda to the stairwell. A moment later, he returned and drove Hayes to the ground with a fist to the gut.

“New offer.” Donnegan yanked the knife from Hayes’ body with one hard pull. Unlike Wynn, Hayes’ reaction to the pain was not to cry out, but to clench his jaw tight. “Come dawn, either this town’s going to be less one preacher or this preacher’s going to be less one arm. Best decide fast. Cuttin’ on a man’s long, slow work and dawn comes fast. I’d just as soon get started.” Donnegan gave Hayes a silent three count and was ready to go for him again, but Hayes waved him off and with a laboured grunt lurched to his feet. He began to walk, haltingly, using the wall to brace himself against each time he faltered until he disappeared around the corner, passing Miranda on the stairs where she sat slumped against the railing.

Cait had him in her sights moments later as he staggered down the ramp and out into the dark, ready to pull the trigger when Donnegan called out.

“Let him go, Cait.” He stood, Miranda’s arm around his neck, his around her waist, keeping her upright. Aside from her body temperature and the numbness in her arms from being suspended, she appeared physically little worse for wear, merely exhausted.

“You’re going to let him live,” Cait questioned.

“That’s between him and god. Next town’s two days ride from here, wilderness all the way. If he’s clever enough to follow the rail line, he’ll get there in three. Question is whether the wolves or the mountain lions get him before that. Help me with her.” He passed custody of Miranda over her and started back inside to make sure someone found Grayson Wynn alive the next morning.

Chapter Seven

By the time they returned to town, dawn was visible on the horizon. The storm had left in its wake a cool, wet odor in the air and the town seemed to have awakened earlier than usual. Cotton had been moved during the night to the doctor’s office, tended to by Doctor Edwards and Alice. His chances of survival were still scarce at best but for the moment, he was alive. He woke not long after Donnegan had arrived.

“Miranda?”

“At home. Asleep.” Cotton said nothing and Donnegan thought he might have passed out again.

“Take her out of here.,” he said, opening his rheumy eyes. “Sheriff won’t do anything to us, but Wynn’s daddy isn’t one to let a thing go.”

“I can’t,” Donnegan replied flatly. “Staying with me... she’d be in for a worse kind of hell than what she’d face here.”

“You don’t know Jefferson Wynn.”

“No, but I know Cole Hauser, and I know what he’d do if it meant getting to me.” Cotton began to cough uncontrollably, violently. Alice, still dressed in her night clothes brought a porcelain pan over to him and he hocked phlegm and blood and spit into it, then fell back against the bed.

“What do you mean to do, then?” He croaked.

“I mean to live, old man. Just a question of how long I get away with it.”

He found Miranda at Cotton’s workbench when he returned, sifting through the strewn pieces of his mechanical leg, trying to work out how they fit together. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up to her elbows, her ankle length skirt likewise tied on either side, raising it to her knees. Sweat beaded on her furrowed brow and between her breasts. She did not notice him as he stood in the doorway and he was about to leave when he heard the bellows box ratchet behind him.

“He’s dying, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. He decided then to trust her to handle the truth of it.

“Most like, yes. You should be with him, not here. Not with this.” He gestured towards the mechanical leg.

“You had a deal. Three days.”

“He wants me to get you out of town, away from reprisal.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Then I need to finish it before you leave, don’t I?”

“I’m not leaving.” At this, she finally turned to look at him. “There are harder men than me coming soon and they don’t mean to leave here with me still breathing. I mean to let them come.”

“That’s why you needed this done.”

“I hadn’t planned to face them before.”

“What changed your mind?”

Donnegan turned to the door again, not answering. Behind him, she pulled the box’s lever again.

“What changed your mind?”

Donnegan sighed.

“Stay away from me when they come. Reckoning’s mine to have, understand?” With that, he returned to his room to make his peace with what was to come leaving Miranda alone.

Almost immediately he heard her begin her labours anew and the sound of her continued frustration kept him from his hoped for quietude. He knew that in this hour, he should if anything be anxious and on edge about what tomorrow was likely to bring but the only worry that he felt was for the girl trying so desperately to help him, to make him whole enough for a real fight while her father lay even now in his own fight with death’s grim shadow, neither of them a fight either man expected to win. It was well into the night when she finally relented and the noise ceased at last.

Chapter Eight

Miranda lay down her father’s tools and wiped the sweat from her face, her eyes and fingers aching from the delicate work. That the hope of a man so hardened could rely on a machine so intricate and fine was perplexing. She hadn’t been there when Cotton had taken it apart and as he’d said the first time he’d seen it, pieces of its like were few and far between, so she’d been forced to go on intuition and no small amount of guesswork to reassemble it. And all the while, her thoughts returned to him. How she’d told him not to to help her and how he’d come for her anyway. How would he spend his last day? Back at the saloon? In the brothel with Cait Morrow? Cait, who’d come with him to rescue her. Who’d made sure her father was taken care of, maybe even saved his life along with hers. She felt an unexpected pang of jealousy and her face flushed.

She flexed her fingers one by one and stood.

Miranda needed a drink.

The saloon was far less busy than it should have been when she arrived. Word of the previous day’s events had apparently gotten around as all but the most regular customers were staying away. Already it seemed to Miranda as if it were in the distant past. The disassembled phonograph and ruined kinetoscope had been moved to the far corner and the mood without the raucous sound of music was dour. Cait Morrow, dressed more conservatively than Miranda had ever seen her descended the stairs and approached her as she entered.

“How is he?” Cait asked going behind the bar and pouring for both of them from her private stock.

“I thought he’d be here with you.” Cait stared at her for a moment before her error dawned on her. “You were talking about my father.”

“You weren’t.” Cait put the bottle down between them and picked up her glass. “He wouldn’t have me, you know.” Miranda gave her a small smile.

“More fool him.”

“Indeed.” She knew the look that haunted Miranda’s face, even while she smiled at her. She’d worn much the same look since they’d parted ways on returning. “You’re worried about him. Donnegan, I mean.”

“He’s infuriating.”

“So are you, at times.”

“He’s like a child.”

“He’s hurt, Miranda, damaged. But he’s not broken, I don’t think.”

“Then why does he act like he’s already dead?”

“Perhaps he’s simply needs to be mended.”

Chapter Nine

Even with the silence that had fallen in the workshop on the other side of the wall, Donnegan found that he could not rest. Instead, he resorted first to cleaning his knife properly which he otherwise would have chastised himself for neglecting. He wiped the dried blood from the steel blade before it had a chance to encourage corrosion and sharpened it diligently. When that was finished, he turned to his colt, brushing out the cylinders and the barrel and oiling the metal parts. Even after this meticulous set of jobs, he found himself restless and he looked at himself now in the dirty mirror. He should have been out howling at the moon one last time. He should have been running like hell, as far and as fast as he could. So why did the thought of it leave a sour taste in his mouth?

Plunging a hand into the cold water in the wash basin, he ran it through his blond hair, across his face, and down to the paired rings that hung from the chain around his neck. A second, more delicate one joined it there, reaching around him even as the other wrapped around his waist. He hadn’t heard her enter, it seemed as if he never did and for a moment, he wondered if he was dreaming again as Miranda gently kissed his back and shoulders and neck. He brought her hand to his lips, kissing her fingertips before turning to face her. She had loosed her braid and her long black hair framed her face as she looked up at him. For the first time, when she looked at him, he saw not bold defiance, but relief. Peace.

She smiled as she led him to the bed before unbuttoning her linen shirt and straddling him. Her breasts were small, her body almost boyish yet there was nothing either frail or unwomanly about her. She descended on him, her nipples rubbing against his chest as she trailed delicate kisses from his neck to his cheek and finally to his lips. His hands gripped her waist, running up her sides and she shuddered, kissing him harder as they made their way to her breasts. His thumbs touched her nipples and she pressed down against him reflexively, her thighs gripping his legs tight. Her hand reached between them, working at his belt, their lips never parting. She raised herself up, allowing Donnegan enough room to remove his trousers and hiking up her skirt to reveal her lack of under-things. Lowering herself once more, the lips of her sex all but kissed his manhood, running along its length, up to the purple head and down again to his balls. She did this, teasing him once, twice, and on the third time, grabbed his cock and took it inside her.

They both sighed and Miranda closed her eyes as she began to ride him, her hips swaying in a steady rhythm as she rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. She placed her hands on his chest, increasing her speed even as his own went to her hips, driving her down harder and faster until her face clenched in a silent scream and she flooded him with her juices. Pulling out of her, he turned on his side and she followed suit, facing away from him as guided himself back into her. They lay there together, their breathing slowing, Donnegan’s thrusts deep and deliberate and almost gentle until he at last spent himself inside her. Still they did not part, but fell asleep, his arm around her waist, his manhood softening before falling out of her into the cool night air.

Chapter Ten

Cole Hauser walked the early morning streets of town from the train station, much of the day’s business not yet begun. He found Donnegan sitting outside the saloon, drinking coffee and was surprised when he hailed him.

“Cole.”

“Wren.”

“You’re later than I thought you’d be.”

“Yeah, well, Rathburn got the crotch lice from some whore when we went to toast my brother’s passing. Had to wait till morning so he could find a doctor. Otherwise we’d have to listen to him bitch about it the entire way.”

“Poor Rat.”

“I told him not to go with that one but he don’t listen. Also someone burnt the only bridge across the James for fifty miles when he went through.” Donnegan continued drinking his coffee, steam curling from inside the mug. “Made it so we had to give up the horses and take the train into town. I liked that horse too.”

“You stole that horse.”

“Only cause I liked it so much.”

“You gonna make this fair fight?” Donnegan finally asked.

“Shit no,” replied Cole.

“Haven’t really got a reason to do this you know. We could each just let the other one live.”

“You killed my brother, Wren.”

“Quentin was a maniac who put a little girl to the noose cause he thought her daddy was holding out on him.”

“You ain’t wrong,” Cole admitted, “but blood’s blood, you know that.” Donnegan said nothing, holding his coffee with both hands, staring into its depths as if trying to divine a way out. “Quentin was wrong, by the by. They didn’t have no money. Found that out after we went back to kill the girl and her daddy.”

“Cole.”

“Yep.”

“I was wrong when I said I’d let you live.” Donnegan hurled the scalding cup of coffee into Cole’s face and drew his pistol, firing wild as he made for the bat wing doors of the saloon. Cole howled like a wildcat and fired back blindly, his free hand trying to wipe the hot liquid from his eyes.

Dabney Bowles was already inside the saloon waiting for him, having circled around through the back while he talked with Cole. His paired Remingtons fired and Donnegan fired back, scrambling for cover behind the bar. He crouched there, trying to slow his breathing. In the mirror above the bar, he could see Bowles approaching. In a moment, Bowles would be able to see him as well. Seizing his chance, Donnegan broke cover, rose, and fired. Bowles dropped his pistols and clutched the whistling hole in his throat, grasping at it as if he were trying to force the blood back inside. Seconds later, he was dead.

Donnegan made his way to the back of the saloon, intending to leave the way Dabney had come but a sudden shot as he opened the door let him know it wasn’t an option. Quentin’s filthy whipping boy, Rathburn was waiting outside. He supposed that Cole had now inherited his brother’s toy. Out in the main room, he could hear the sound of Cole Hauser’s boots and knew he’d been penned in.

“Wren, you’re through, son, you know that,” Cole called and Donnegan knew he was right. He could try to shoot his way out, but both men would have their own guns trained on the doors and Rathburn was probably already on his way from wherever he’d secreted himself to keep watch on the back door to the saloon. His fight was over.

“All right, Cole, I’m done,” Donnegan shouted.

“Damn right you’re done,” replied Cole, entering the room and stripping him of his gun. Only a second later, the back door opened and Rathburn showed his greasy face.

“Lemmie shoot him,” Rathburn insisted.

“Cole, if we were ever friends, for the love of god, do not let it be said that I was killed by the likes of Ed Rathburn.” Cole laughed and Rathburn looked as if Donnegan had wounded him.

“I’d wanted to kill you myself, but go ahead, Rat, he’s all yours.” Rathburn cocked his pistol. A low theremin buzz filled the street followed by the sound of thunder and a great cloud of dust as Rathburn’s chest collapsed in on itself with a twisting crack of bone. His eyes were wide as he fell to the ground.

“What the fucking hell is that?”

Donnegan laughed and got to his knees, putting his hands over his head as he lowered it to the ground.

“All the angels in their heaven, and all the devils out of hell.” Cole Hauser never heard him finish as Miranda came around the door and the Banshee screamed again, his skull crushed inside his skin by the terrible wave of sound, his head almost seeming to deflate as he fell.

“Sometimes, you’re a spectacularly handsome idiot, you know.” Miranda took off her dirt caked goggles and offered him her hand.

“Spectacularly handsome?”

“Idiot.” Standing the Banshee against the wall, she unslung the brass parcel strapped across her back and handed it to him.

“You finished it?”

“Last night. I was going to tell you in the morning but you were gone.” Donnegan smiled.

“Spectacular idiot.”

“What now?” She asked.

“North.”

“North? That’s your plan?”

“The law’ll be here for me sooner or later and Canada’s supposed to be nice. Mountains full of gold up there and miners bring plenty of work for a good mender, knows what she’s doing. You could come with me.”

Miranda leaned up and kissed him. “North.”

The very next morning, they rode.