Blood Ties Read online

  “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN HERE?” a deep voice boomed from the doorway.

  There was the distinct click-clack of a lever action rifle being chambered. Neither Ghiss nor Jake turned their heads, but out of the corner of his eye Jake spotted a burly, black steward holding a Winchester. The rifle looked like a toy in his massive hands. He appeared to have been born without a neck. His massive shoulders ran up at a sharp angle along chorded muscle, ending at a shaved head that gleamed in the light. His arms were as thick as Jake’s legs, and an untidy beard gave him a distinct resident-head-buster look that Jake had seen in upscale saloons across the west.

  Two smaller and only slightly less imposing men flanked him, one Caucasian and one Indian, their hands resting quite comfortably on the butts of older Navy revolvers.

  “Simply a misunderstanding,” Ghiss said with that smile in his voice.

  The steward spoke with a lean accent that hailed from somewhere between Chicago and St. Louis. “Misunderstanding, hunh?” the steward said, striding into the room like a bull and leveling the Winchester in the direction of the poker table. “How about everybody who’s holding iron just go right ahead and put it away. I’d rather not have to let this long arm do my talking for me.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Ghiss said and smoothly slid his pistol back into the holster at his side. The steward’s eyes darted to Jake’s Colt. Jake slowly lowered the hammer down, and with a double backspin, set it firmly back into the holster.

  Keeping the rifle pointed like it was set in stone, the steward turned half an eye to the bartender and asked, “So, was this all just a misunderstanding, Bobby?”

  “Well,” the bartender said slowly. “I supposed you could call it that. The one with his hands up started it all. And looks like them two fellers got it pretty much under control.”

  “So, what do you want us to do here, Bobby?” the steward asked, giving a stern eye to every man at the table.

  “I s’pose if you just escort that one there back to his room and let him sleep off all that whisky, everything should be fine,” Bobby said, looking considerably more calm than he had seconds before. “Least ways until we get to Carson City. After that, them boys may just sort it out for themselves down on the street.”

  The steward sighed and set a stern look on the cowboy. “C’mon, mister. Let’s get you back to your room.”

  “But—” the cowboy blurted, looking with pleading eyes at the steward.

  The steward never made a sound. Narrowing his eyes was all it took to shut the miscreant up.

  The cowboy stood slowly, his hands still raised. “God damn machiners….” he spat with a glare aimed at everyone at the table. He turned and staggered past the steward.

  “Boys,” the steward called over his shoulder. The two behind him stepped in stride with the cowboy and followed him out of the salon. The steward let the barrel of the Winchester drift towards the floor and lowered the hammer carefully with one hand. He focused again on the men at the table. “Now, I’m inclined to take Bobby’s word for it that the other fella started the ruckus. But for everyone’s sake, I’m gonna have to ask you to keep them hog-legs tethered for the rest of the flight, if you don’t mind.”

  “I think the game is just about over,” Jake said quietly. “How ’bout you, Cole? You done?”

  “I reckon I’ve had about as much fun as I can take for one evening.” He stepped up to the table, took off his hat, and scooped his winnings into it. “Besides, I gotta get my beauty sleep,” he added and walked towards the door of the salon.

  “If you say so,” the steward said with a raised eyebrow.

  Jake collected his own money, slipping it into his vest, then stood up and tipped his hat to Ghiss. “Perhaps we’ll go up against one another some other time.”

  “I believe the opportunity may yet present itself, Mister Lasater.” Ghiss nodded his head, lamplight glinting off his respirator and oculars. “Perhaps sooner than either of us expects.”

  Jake paused for a moment, giving Ghiss a curious look. Ghiss was a statue, staring at Jake without even the comfort of looking like he was breathing. Jake wondered what the mercenary meant. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. He took a puff of his cigar, shifted it to the other side of his mouth, and followed Cole into the main passageway.

  When the passageway doors closed behind them, Cole turned his head and said, “You weren’t kidding about him being fast.” He kept walking down the passageway towards the rear section of the gondola.

  “Nope. In a straight fight he’d cut me in two. But there was something you probably didn’t pick up.”

  “What?”

  “His left.” Jake’s eyes narrowed as he pulled hard on his cigar and remembered the sequence.

  “What about it?”

  “My left beat his. He got his right pistol out, across his chest and at that guy’s throat in the time my Peacekeeper was just pointing over the table. But his left … He didn’t plant that hand on the cowboy’s gun till after mine was up.”

  “You could tell all that?”

  “Comes with the arm,” Jake said easily. “Maggie did a hell of a job on me.”

  “I’ll be damned.…” Cole added.

  “Yeah, well … the cowboy was right about one thing,” Jake added with a touch of weary resolve.

  “What’s that?”

  “Us machiners … we are freaks … and it never goes away, you know what I mean?”

  Cole’s tone was soft, somewhat understanding. “Yeah, Jake, I do. Remember?” Cole pinched his check, highlighting his mulatto skin. “Regular folks just don’t have much use for anything that’s different.”

  “Good point, amigo.” Jake nodded.

  They made their way through the rest of the gondola in silence. Cole unlocked and opened the door, and they stepped inside. After counting out their winnings, they discovered that they’d both cleared almost six hundred dollars. They slipped the money into their saddlebags and walked to their bunks. Gun belts went over hooks near their pillows, and then they sat down. Four boots slid off and hit the floor with dull thuds.

  “Not a bad night,” Cole said cheerily.

  “What, you mean aside from running into Ghiss and the gunplay?” Jake tried to force disappointment into his voice.

  “C’mon,” Cole chided. “I know damn well you love that stuff. Who do you think you’re talking too?”

  Jake chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you got me pegged.”

  “Ghiss is a son of a bitch, though.”

  “You got that right.” Jake stood up and pulled off his hat, setting it on a shelf above the bunk. He draped his vest on a hook near the door. “You ready for the light?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.” Cole leaned back and pushed his hat over his eyes.

  Jake flipped the switch, and the room went dark. His metal heels thudded across the thick carpet as he approached the window. A sliver of a moon highlighted the faint edges of dark, sparse, shadowy clouds that drifted by. Jake watched them slip through the night, each cloud just another mass of fainter darkness in an ocean of it.

  He found himself wondering about Skeeter and what trouble she might be getting into back home. A part of him regretted having to leave her behind. She really had gotten Jake and Cole out of a few fixes over the past six months, but the thought of Skeeter ending up in a slaver’s whorehouse terrified him.

  The zeppelin hit an open stretch of sky and something caught Jake’s eye. Somewhat lower and far off in the distance, he swore he saw a faint flashing light the color of blood. Jake reached up and turned a dial, rotating the outer lens of his ocular as he watched the pulses continue. With the ocular fully open, the flashes were as bright as a torch at the bottom of a well.

  “Hey,” Jake said. “Take a look at this.”

  “Take a look at what?” Cole replied, lifting his hat.

  “If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t need you to look, now would I?”

  Cole sighed but sat up in his bunk. “I guess you got
a point.” Jake pointed out the window, and Cole looked in the general direction. “So what am I looking at?”

  There was another brief series if irregular flashes.

  “There!” Jake adjusted where he pointed. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “That red flashing … way off in the distance.”

  It stopped.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Cole said, confused.

  Jake peered intently into the darkness, and then the flashing started up again.

  “There it is again,” he said, pointing in exactly the same spot. “You saw that, didn’t you?”

  “Sorry, Jake,” Cole apologized, sounding worried that his partner might be crazy.

  The flashing continued, a chain of irregular staccato pulses.

  “Wait a minute,” Jake said as another sequence of long pulses started. He covered first his good eye and then the ocular. “Well I’ll be damned.”

  “What?” Cole asked, perplexed.

  “My ocular. It lets me see the light … filters it somehow.” As he continued to watch, it occurred to him that the flashes were dots and dashes, but it wasn’t Morse code, or if it was, it wasn’t in English. He’d learned Morse in the army, and although he’d picked up some of the letters flashing by, none of them matched up to any words he knew. Some of the characters seemed to be off as well. “Hey, you got some paper and something to write with?”

  “I think I have one of those fancy, new fountain pens in my saddle bag. Picked it up a few weeks ago back in Denver. Ain’t got no paper, though.” Cole got out of his bunk and headed over to his saddle bags.

  “What about all that money?” Jake asked.

  “You want me to write something on my money?”

  “Just get the pen, would you?” Jake said urgently. “And hurry.”

  “All right,” Cole sighed again as he went to his saddlebags and dug through them. He came back with the pen and pulled out one of the bills he’d won. Putting the bill up against the window, he waited for Jake.

  “Write this down.”

  “Write what down?”

  “I’m getting to that.…” Jake mumbled, a hint of impatience in his voice as he waited for another series of flashes. “Dot-dot-dash, dash-dash-dot, dash-dot-dot.…” This went on for a few more seconds then stopped. A few seconds later the gondola passed through a thick cloud, and Jake saw a series of light pulses reflected against the cloud, coming from below and forward of their cabin. He rattled off the dots and dashes for Cole before they stopped abruptly. Once they were clear of the cloud, Jake focused on the same position in the distance and waited. It wasn’t long before the flashing started again, exactly in the spot Jake was looking. “Dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dot-dash-dot-dash.…” He continued on for a few more seconds and then the flashing stopped.

  He waited a few more minutes, his left eye straining against the darkness to see if there was any more flashing, but after a while he realized that whatever communication had been going on was over.

  “Is that it?” Cole asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Jake said, pulling his ocular off and rubbing his left eye.

  “So … ummm … Jake.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You wanna tell me why the hell I just wrote Morse code all over a brand new twenty-dollar bill?”

  Jake turned to Cole, his permanently dilated left eye seeing Cole perfectly in the darkness. “There’s a zeppelin out there, and someone on that zeppelin is talking to someone on this one … down in the cargo hold.” Jake slipped his ocular back over his head and strapped on his Colts. “C’mon.” He grinned like a fox finding the coop unlocked. “Let’s go check it out.”

  Cole gave Jake a dirty look, stared at his bunk, and sighed, shaking his head. “You like getting into trouble way too much.”

  Jake grinned in the darkness.

  Chapter Eleven – Just One Lump, Please

  “People thought Jake was fearless, but he wasn’t. He got scared like any man. He just figured he was already dead, so he didn’t pay it no nevermind.”

  ~ Cole McJunkins

  “You know the doors to the cargo hold are gonna be locked, right?” Cole asked as they walked quietly down the narrow spiral staircase in the forward section of the Jezebel’s gondola.

  “And you know about my pinky finger,” Jake chided, referring to the lock-pick that Tinker Farris had thoughtfully included with the clockwork arm.

  “What if there are guards?” Cole sounded despondent.

  “Look, I got the doors figured … I’ll cross any other bridges when I come to them.”

  “You better.” Cole’s tone was sour.

  “You get so grumpy when someone gets you out of bed in the middle of the night.” Jake smiled and patted Cole on the shoulder as they made it to the bottom step.

  “You’re damn right I’m grumpy.” Cole pushed his hat back on his head and gave Jake an evil eye. “Them red flashes ain’t got nuthin’ to do with us.”

  “You don’t know they don’t.”

  “You don’t know they do,” Cole retorted.

  “You know what the problem is?” Jake asked. “The problem is trouble follows you around like a dog behind a meat wagon, and you don’t like it.” Jake managed to keep from laughing, but it tested his control to the limits.

  Cole turned his head slowly, stunned by disbelief. His eyes said more than his mouth ever could in the presence of bullshit stacked that high.

  Jake tried to meet Cole’s look while keeping a straight face, and he even lasted for a few seconds, but he finally chuckled, unable to maintain the hypocrisy. “Okay, okay … so it follows me around like stink on shit.”

  “That’s better,” Cole agreed, nodding his head.

  The staircase opened up onto a small room with three doors leading to the sides and towards the back of the gondola. Jake stepped up to the forward door, bent down, and tried the knob. Finding it locked, he twisted a latch on the tip of his left pinky finger, and a small lock pick popped out. He worked the lock for about thirty seconds and finally got the knob to turn. With another twist of his pinky, the pick disappeared into the appendage. Still bent over, he opened the door slowly, peeking around the doorknob into the room beyond.

  “Do you see anything?” Cole whispered.

  “Yep,” Jake said in a normal tone of voice.

  “What do you see?” Cole’s whisper was barely audible.

  Jake sounded like he was talking about the weather. “A couple of those stewards … big ones … with pistols. And they’re looking right at me.” He stood up straight and opened the door. “Howdy fellas,” he said, sounding like they were old friends, and stepped into the room.

  Cole followed him in and watched both stewards’ hands slide up easily to rest on the butts of their holstered pistols. The room was ten by twenty, and behind the stewards stood a big pair of oak doors with a heavy padlock securing them.

  “Can we help you fellers out?” the bigger one asked suspiciously. He narrowed his eyes and stepped up to Jake as the other steward moved off to the side to keep a bead on Cole. Jake realized these guys were not run-of-the-mill stewards … they knew their job. He could get the drop on them if he needed to, but there was no reason in the world for things to go that route. He was there to help.

  Cole looked at Jake expectantly, knowing full well that they’d just stepped onto the bridge Jake hadn’t given a thought to. He couldn’t wait to see how Jake handled the complication.

  “Well,” Jake began, calm as you please, “I was looking out my window and thought I saw some flashing lights coming from out of the cargo hold. We both have our mounts in there and were worried.”

  “Why didn’t you tell someone?” the second man asked, his eyes flickering to Jake briefly.

  “Well, I did.… Just now. I told you.” Jake tried to sound as innocent as a child, but Cole had to admit it was pretty thin.

  “A light?” the smaller one asked, and it sounded like he hailed
from England or thereabouts.

  “How’d you see a light coming from above,” the larger one asked.

  “Saw the flashing reflected in a cloud we passed through,” Jake offered casually.

  “We ain’t heard nuthin’,” the big one said.

  “Well, maybe they’re being real quiet,” Cole offered.

  “Maybe.” The big one flicked his eyes to Cole and back to Jake.

  “How long you boys been here?” Jake asked.

  “None of your business,” the big one said tersely.

  “Fair enough,” Jake admitted. He got a thoughtful look on his face. “But if you’ve been here a while, then they’ve been in there a while, too …” Jake scratched up under his hat, “which don’t make no sense.”

  Cole stepped forward and raised his hands, an imploring look on his face. “Look, fellas, there was something going on in the cargo hold. We ain’t makin’ this up. Don’t ya think you oughta at least check it out?”

  The little guy looked to the big one expectantly.

  The big one nodded. “Stay here and cover ’em,” he ordered. “That all right with you two?” he asked, turning to Jake and Cole.

  “Just fine with us, as long as someone goes lookin’,” Jake offered.

  The small one pulled his pistol out to cover Jake and Cole while the big one turned, pulled a large key ring from the back of his belt, and unlocked the door. He slowly pushed it open and stepped into darkness. A moment later they heard a click, and light filled the cargo bay. The smell of a barn wafted out to them, but there was the smell of very fresh air blowing through as well, and it was cold, as if something was open to the sky outside.

  “You smell that?” Jake asked the steward pointing the gun.

  “Smells like cows and horses and shite,” the small man muttered, his accent heavily laden with the green hills of Ireland.

  “There’s some fresh air in there, too, like someone left the barn door open. Kinda reckless at five thousand feet, don’t ya think?” Jake put more sour than sweet in his voice.

  “Yeah, I suppose.” The steward got an uncomfortable look on his face, and his eyes drifted to the door behind him.