Chapter Ten
We knocked off work a little after two, it being early in the week, and Miss Francina and I both separately pled tiredness and headed upstairs. I changed myself into plain clothes and no stays and no crinolines. Remembering what Marshal Reeves had called me, I’d taken a few minutes to tack up the hem of my sturdiest navy broadcloth day dress almost to the tops of my boots — just like Annie Oakley wore. I envied Priya her trousers and might almost have borrowed a pair, but they’d never stretch over my hips and anyways, she’d want to know what I planned on using them for.
I slipped the Marshal’s Morgan dollar back into my boot top, though. For luck.
When I sneaked back down and met Miss Francina out by the dustbins, I could hardly credit my eyes. I mean, standing there gave me a shiver, like that poor dead girl’s half-flayed corpse was still cooling on the stones. But the real shiver was because of the tallish, slender man with his blond hair slicked back in a plait and dropped down the back of his collar. He looked so familiar … and yet so strange. He had narrow, aristocratic features — the sort you’d expect from a Bostonian, maybe. Or an Englishman. The eyes were deep set and drowsy, gray under a pronounced curve of bone. The nose was long and elegant.
He wore workman’s togs, though — dungarees and a check shirt with a dingy red bandanna for a cravat — and hard boots laced to the mid-calf. And when he talked, he talked like me, or any of the girls who ain’t yet learnt all Miss Bethel has to teach ’em.
It was like meeting a good friend’s hitherto-unexpected kin. It gave me a good hard unsettle, that I don’t mind reporting.
“Do I pass?” Miss Francina asked me. And then she smiled, and it was her again, just dressed up in men’s kit.
“I’d not have recognized you on the street,” I admitted. Then I said, “Your teeth and your skin are too good to be visiting Bantle’s girls.”
“Some like rough trade that can afford better,” Miss Francina said sourly. “And some like a girl who’d like to fight back, but can’t afford to.”
“Gah,” I said, though of course I knowed it. “How are we going to find you, once you’re in?”
She dug in her big coat pocket. “I borrowed this from Lizzie.” When she held out her hand, there was something like a miniature wireless telegraph set in it, except it had some dials set in the front and two antennas. I tapped on a dial with my fingertip; the needle stayed pointed right at Miss Francina. The other needle seemed to be pointing at the first dial.
“Slip that in your reticule,” she said.
“What is it?”
She flipped her coat open and showed me a brooch pinned to the lining. “It tracks this,” she said. “The left needle points toward the brooch. The right needle swings toward the left needle depending on how close the brooch is. And the brooch has a switch in it so if you click it the right way, it’ll make a light light up on the dingus. Merry Lee will be waiting for your signal. So when I have Aashini, I’ll click the switch. You wave Merry in to take the girl. I’ll get her up to the roof.”
I felt my forehead crinkle right up like a ruched skirt when you draw the strings. “That’s genius.”
“That’s Lizzie,” she replied.
* * *
I don’t mind saying I were on pins and tenterhooks and broken glass the whole way down to the Lion’s Den. It ain’t a nice saloon, by any means, and when I walked in on Miss Francina — I mean, Alias Zach Murphy’s arm, a lot of heads turned to see the lady. Nobody commented on my tacked-up dress, though, even though there weren’t a lot of other sets of skirts in there.
Merry Lee was nowhere in sight, which was probably wise. Some of these men might get the wrong idea about a Chinese girl walking in here, and that would end badly for everyone. But Bass Reeves was elbowed up to the bar. He had a shot of whiskey on the plank before him, black enough that I wondered if it was wood alcohol darkened up with some coal tar. I might of warned the Marshal, except he didn’t seem to have any intention of drinking that stuff.
A real western saloon ain’t the kind of dusty tavern with swinging doors they write about in the dime novels. I mean, sure, there’s some barrelhouses ain’t got more than a plank laid over sawhorses to serve on, but the balance of ’em have got carved mahogany back bars — ours ain’t even the nicest I’ve seen — mirrors, Oriental carpeting. Glass windows, some of ’em have.
Except for this place, apparently. There was nothing on the bare splintered floor but sawdust and eyeballs. The bartender’s stock was on a couple of plank shelves against the back wall, none of it looking too appetizing. Sawhorses would of been a step up: the plank bar balanced on empty barrels, and the clientele apparently used ’em as spittoons.
I followed Murphy as “he” cut through the crowd to the bar, bellied up, and in a raspy monotone told the bartender, “Kill me quick!” “He” laid a shiny silver trime on the counter; it was quickly superseded by a shot as black and tarry as the one in front of the Marshal we were pretending not to know.
“Anything for the lady?” the barman said, looking at me dubiously.
“No, thank you.” Under my breath to Murphy, I said, “You know they call it that for a reason.”
“He” nudged his shot of “kill me quick” with a thumbnail, then picked it up and downed it. The grimace that followed was as elegant as “his” voice when he rasped out, “Turpentine,” quietly enough that only the Marshal on “his” right and me on “his” left might hear “him.”
“Well,” I answered. “My guess was coal tar. Have you gone blind?”
“No, more’s the pity.” Murphy gestured to the piss-stained sawdust on the floor. “He” called for another shot of the coffin varnish and let this one sit, much to my relievedness.
After a bit, I edged in between Murphy and the Marshal and we engaged in a bit of business with money changing hands. I left with Marshal Reeves. The plan was for Murphy to come out after us and proceed on to Peter Bantle’s cribhouse. Marshal Reeves and me would stay with the horses, since I’d allowed as I could ride. We were Miss Francina’s way out. And the distraction, and the backup plan. We hoped we could hand Aashini off to Tomoatooah and Merry Lee, who should already be in place on a nearby rooftop. They would whisk her away, and the Marshal, Miss Francina, and I would be able to lose our pursuit in the rat’s nest of alleys down by the docks, or in the shantytowns that washed away whenever the summer storms got bad.
Merry still wasn’t in any shape for daring escapades, and I was passionately worried about her. She’d not been willing to tell us where her safe house was, though, and so she was in whether we wanted her to be or not.
I would just have to count on Tomoatooah to defend her. Given the fearsome reputation of the Comanche, I didn’t expect him to disappoint me. But I was still worried. For him, too, of course. For Marshal Reeves and me. But chiefly for Miss Francina — I mean Murphy. And for Merry Lee.
It was overcast, and that was our friend. But it was starting to rain — lightly, but enough to render roof tiles and cobblestones slick as ice. That might be our friend … but it was just as likely to be our enemy.
I hoped Aashini could climb and run. I hoped she was as tough and smart and stubborn as her sister.
I was worrying about that and a dozen other things when the Marshal and I made it back to the horses. He’d paid a pair of small Negro boys to watch them, and I waited in the shadows until he’d given them each a pinky-nail-sized flake of gold — for urchins, the very large wealth of a dollar. The urchins (children with homes to go to weren’t running wild in the streets at three in the morning) vanished into the same shadows I emerged from.