Marshal Reeves pulled up, and I saw he hadn’t oversold his hidy-hole. But he hadn’t much undersold it, either. It was a nook, was all. A bit of alley with a bend at the back and no gas lamps. And nothing to stop the sky dripping on us, neither, though he was right in that it was more or less out of the wind.
We hunched under our hats, angling our heads so the rain didn’t drip off the brims down our backs. We stayed mounted, and I imagined we was both anonymous and shapeless in our oilcloth capes. He smoked under his hat, cursing occasionally when the rain put his cigarette out. The horses didn’t waste their energy shaking or stamping. They just stood, ears only a tetch droopier than their heads, and occasionally heaved great horsy sighs profound enough to make Marshal Reeves’ spurs jingle.
We waited.
And waited — long enough for the butterflies in my stomach to start tying knots to pass the time, long enough that I started at every sound, expecting shouts or gunshots. Much, much longer than I had hoped or expected — or so I guessed. I had a little watch on a chain that had been my mother’s. I didn’t dare pull it out and check the time for fear of it being ruined by the rain — and it was too damned dark to see it anyway. I was trying to keep from checking Miss Lizzie’s tracker, too, other than glances under the cape to see if its light had come on, since I didn’t know how that would respond to being doused, either.
Even less cheerfully than the horses did, that was my supposition.
I did look at it once, shielding the whole thing with my oilcloth, but I had to edge over close to the gas lamp to see it at all, and while I kept the gadget dry, I got rain all down my back in the process. As near as I could figure through the dark and the rain stinging my eyes, Miss Francina was off in the direction of the cribs and some distance away. Right there where she was supposed to be, in other words.
I gave up on the gadget. Might as well save its juice for if she got kidnapped and we had to chase her down and save her.
Despite my being on edge and my checking over my shoulder approximately every thirteen seconds, I still would of screamed and fallen off Scout’s saddle when Tomoatooah appeared if it hadn’t been for Scout giving him away in advance. But by her pricked ears and turned head I knowed somebody was approaching, and by her pleased expression I knowed it was someone as she knowed and liked. The Marshal, of course, wasn’t taken by surprise at all.
I already had Adobe’s reins unlooped from my biscuit and extended when Tomoatooah came up on us. He weren’t running, though, and he didn’t reach for ’em, so I dropped ’em back over the horn and waited to see what happened next.
We both knowed something was wrong. The Marshal didn’t bother asking, just turned his head and looked down at Tomoatooah from the height of his saddle.
Whatever the question was, it must of been contained in their prolonged association. Because Tomoatooah nodded. He started to say something in what might of been Comanche, then glanced at me, pitched his voice lower, and replied, “There were men with rifles on the rooftops. Who would post sentries over a cribhouse?”
“Somebody who had more in there than starved, beat whores,” Marshal Reeves said. Then he glanced at me. “Begging your pardon, Miss Memery.”
“Wait,” I said. We were all talking — not in whispers, because whispers carry. But in low conversational tones. “There were men with rifles?”
Despite the dark, I made out Tomoatooah’s modest shrug, and wondered if he’d ever be getting around to naming some young cousin Kills on Rooftop. The chill that gripped my spine had nothing to do with the drip of rain.
Then he grinned and said, “I imagine they’ll get out eventually. Wet rawhide stretches, and I used my second-best knots.”
The Marshal’s posture eased a little; in the dark, I couldn’t see his face. But he sounded relieved when he said, “Counting coup on Bantle’s men is a dangerous pastime, Sky.”
“That’s the point of coup,” Tomoatooah said. “Killing is easy. There’s no face in it. Any sign yet of our friends?”
The men exchanged another look I couldn’t read — couldn’t barely detect, in the rain and the gloom. Then — I thought for my benefit — the Marshal said, “Five more minutes and we leave the ponies with Miss Memery and go in after them.”
I might of protested. But somebody did have to stay with the ponies. And having just seen Tomoatooah move down the alley like a panther on greased ice, I couldn’t justify any argument I came up with to me, let alone the Marshal. Besides, I knowed I could handle the horses. I’d be a help here, and not an impediment.
The Marshal checked his revolvers — careful to keep them dry under the shelter of his hat — and I swear I heard him singing under his breath: “Two herring boxes without the tops on / Just made the sandals of Clementine.…”
Damnedest thing I ever witnessed, but I supposit we all got our ways of keeping the wolves amused if we can’t keep ’em at bay.
It didn’t take five minutes, though. I was counting one-Mississippi two-Mississippi for the third time and Marshal Reeves had just finished up with Clementine and was moving on to, “Fare thee well, Fare thee well, Fare thee well, my fairy fay,” when that shouting I’d been afraid of broke out. It was a ruckus that should of invited the squeal of police whistles except there weren’t nothing legal about the way Bantle kept his girls. The constables weren’t going to cross him and go in after any Indian or Chinese whore, I mean — but they weren’t going to help him get one back, neither.
Some of them constables had used to be slaves before the war, too, I heard tell.
Before I really knowed what was happening, Tomoatooah was up in Adobe’s saddle. He leaned way out, so one knee hooked the saddle bow, and lifted the reins off Scout’s pommel before I did more than start reaching to loose ’em.
The Marshal was already pushing Dusty into a canter. He tossed me Pongo’s reins as they passed — as if to make up in a weird sort of way for me losing Adobe. I grabbed those reins and held on: the gelding wanted to follow his stablemates, and Scout had to turn in a circle a time or two to convince him otherwise.
By the time me and the horses was sorted, the Marshal and his posseman had about vanished into the rain. They were just big, bulky black shapes in the gas lamps of Commercial Street, and as I nudged Scout up to the edge of the alley I could make out the grim dull lights of Bantle’s cribhouse at the end of the block.
A cribhouse, if you ain’t seen one, is sort of a stable for people. It’s one or more long buildings, a single story tall, not built to keep the weather out. And rather than having stalls that open on to a central corridor, it has cells that open out to the outside, built side by side and back to back.
Well, one of those cells was open and grimy lamplight spilled out on to the street. A tall figure, strangely lumpy on thin legs, was half-running and half-staggering toward Marshal Reeves and Tomoatooah, booted feet stomping big splashes out of puddles. Behind him, a hue and cry was swirling out into the street — half a dozen men at least, though some of them seemed the worse for drink from how they was staggering.
The horses’ hooves rang or thudded, as the state of their farriering dictated, and the foremost running figure hurled itself toward them. They charged past, and I realized suddenly that if that was Miss Francina, then the plan was changing and I needed to get Pongo up there tout suite, as Beatrice would say.
I gave Scout my heels — just a touch — and she responded like an angel. Like an avenging angel, jumping forward through suddenly heavy palls of rain. I hoped Merry Lee could hear the commotion, and had sense enough to take herself off.