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  Cole wanted to argue—tried real hard in his head—but he came up short, which made him feel even worse.

  Chapter Seven – Consarned Contraptions

  “I was always grateful for the clockwork that gave me my life back, but I can sure as hell see why normal folks hated machiners.”

  ~ Jake Lasater

  Midday sun beat down on Jake and Cole as they rode along the trail leading into Denver. Jake shifted his butt in the large saddle strapped behind Lumpy’s hump, wishing the Good Lord had invented larger horses. Lumpy was not at all well suited to riding, but Jake didn’t like putting his clockwork weight on a horse. It made him feel guilty. Besides, having a Brahma around came in handy from time to time … like when you had to drag a twelve-foot-tall monster up a mountain valley for instance … but that’s another story.

  “So, what’s the plan with Qi?” Cole asked. He eyed Jake from behind his tinted brass goggles and pushed his hat a bit further back on his head.

  “Well, she’s a tinker there in Chinatown … you may recall a shop right down the street from Hang Ah’s where you and I met.” Jake shifted again in the saddle, relieving some of the pressure on his sore butt.

  “Qi’s Emporium of Wondrous Power?” Cole asked, impressed and surprised all at once.

  “That’s the one,” Jake confirmed. “That’s hers, and it’s where we’re headed.”

  “You know, I actually met her … played cards with her at Hang Ah’s, in fact.”

  “Chinatown ain’t that big,” Jake said with a smile.

  “She took me for a hundred and fifty dollars playing five-card one night. Hell of a player.…” Cole slid Jake a suspicious sidelong glance. “And drop-dead gorgeous as I recall.” Cole had loaded the observation with an accusation of impropriety and hit Jake with both barrels.

  “That she is,” Jake agreed with a tone that implied Guilty as charged.

  “There wasn’t a man in Hang Ah’s who didn’t want to walk out the door with her on his arm.…” Cole’s voice trailed off, and he looked at Jake from the corner of his eye. “So … uhh … how well do you know her?” he asked with as much innuendo as he could muster.

  Jake grinned like the Cheshire Cat and chuckled slyly. After a mischievous pause he said, “A gentleman doesn’t kiss, or anything else for that matter, and tell.” He winked at Cole. “I will say we did more than play cards.”

  “Oh, you dog!” Cole almost shouted. “And since when are you a gentleman?”

  “I can be,” Jake wanted to defend his honor, but that would be even more hypocritical than taking the moral high ground with Skeeter. “You’ve just never seen me at my best.”

  “I suppose not. All I’ve ever seen is the dreg I’m lookin’ at now.”

  “Dreg?” Jake cried, sounding injured. “I’ll have you know I’ve courted some of the finest ladies ever to grace God’s green Earth … on both sides of the Mississippi!”

  “Yeah, right,” Cole replied dryly.

  Jake’s gaze drifted away from Cole and focused on something in the distance. “What the hell is that?” He nodded in that direction.

  Cole turned and stared north, easily picking up a small dust cloud moving quickly across the plain. “Rider?” A faint, high-pitched chattering drifted across the plains, but it was barely audible.

  Jake put his hand over his eye to try and cut down some of the glare. “If it is, he’s moving like death is on his tail. And the cloud don’t seem right.”

  “Looks like he’s headed for Denver, though,” Cole added.

  “Try the scope on the Thumper. Maybe you can get a better look,” Jake suggested.

  Cole quickly pulled the Thumper out of the sheath on his saddle. The Thumper was an aether-powered rifle given to Jake as a birthday gift from Maggie Mae Swanson. It had a cherry wood stock and glowing red lights dotting the top behind the firing chamber. The chamber was made mostly of brass, and the weapon had a narrow, copper barrel with steel rings set every few inches. The barrel got wider in a gentle curve as it stretched away from the main body, making it look almost like an old blunderbuss. Its creator had etched MKII Thumper on the main housing. It had a big brass dial on the side above the stock with four settings: STUN, CROWD CONTROL, THUMP, and HAMMER. A long scope ran along the top of the rifle, fashioned in a different style from the rest of the weapon, designed and mounted there by Skeeter’s careful hand.

  Cole put the scope to his eye and peered at the distant figure just as it dropped below a hill. “Couldn’t get a look at him. He’s in the river bottom now.”

  “Damn,” Jake said quietly. “Something wasn’t right about that.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The dust …” Jake’s face turned thoughtful. “You know how the dust goes up in puffs when a horse is galloping?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, think about it … it wasn’t doing that … it was steady … like a constant cloud.”

  “I see what you mean,” Cole replied, nodding his head.

  Jake shook his head. “Eh … doesn’t matter. He’s gone. Ain’t none of our business anyway.”

  Cole shrugged, slid the Thumper back in its sheath, and went quiet. After a few minutes they crested a small ripple in the plain. The great expanse of the South Platte River valley and the rise of plains beyond came into view, stretching out into the rolling prairies that butted up against the Rocky Mountains.

  “It looks like a zepp is coming in,” Cole said, pointing northeastward. Jake’s eyes followed in that direction, and they both could see the elongated shape of a red zeppelin. It was low enough to be headed for the terminal built around the Colorado Brewery.

  Thirty minutes later Jake and Cole guided their mounts up onto Grand Avenue, the east-west thoroughfare running through Denver. The center of Denver had more than a dozen buildings over five stories, and its skyline drooped down and out as the homes surrounding Denver spread in a wide swath bordering the Platte River and Cherry Creek.

  A bright red steam-carriage swerved around the corner from Speer to Grand with a hissing lurch, its wheels squealing across the cobbled street. Two horses pulling a wagon headed the other way spooked and reared. The driver was barely able to keep them under control.

  The steam-carriage, copper pipes wrapping the front end like candy, swerved back and forth erratically towards Cole and Jake. Both men recognized Moritz Sigi, owner of the Colorado Brewery, behind the wheel.

  The fool was drunk and driving again. As the steam-carriage swerved, a cloud of steam enveloped a group of finely dressed, sign-toting ladies from the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance League, and they barely had enough time to avoid the inebriated brewer.

  The drunken sod even had the gall to wave gleefully at them as he passed by, tipping his black top hat like he was saying hello on his way to a Sunday service. Adjusting their feathered, flowery hats and dislodged bustles, the ladies scowled and turned their noses away from the clattering, hissing contraption. The women clucked like angry chickens, pointing at the man as proof of their righteous cause.

  Koto shied away from the oncoming vehicle as it trundled along and belched white steam into the air behind it. Sigi had to swerve at the last second to avoid hitting the more massive and totally uncaring Lumpy. Jake sat immobile as the steam-carriage went by, his eyes boring into the rheumy orbs behind Moritz’s copper-rimmed goggles.

  “SON-OF-A-BITCH!” Jake shouted, loud enough to be heard by the ladies of the Temperance League. That prompted a few more scowls and gasps. Jake abruptly turned in his saddle. His clockwork left darted down and out faster than a rattlesnake.

  His Peacekeeper glinted in the sunlight as it barked angrily at the back wheels of Moritz’s carriage. Jake worked the hammer and trigger in a blur of thumb and finger. Slugs tore first through the left and then the right rear wheels of the carriage, and the impact caved in the spoke rims enough to start the back end of the steam-carriage to bouncing and shimmying up Grand like the ass-end of a frightened fi
sh.

  Sigi slammed on the brakes and came to a grinding halt fifty yards down-range from Jake’s still smoking Peacekeeper. The engine of the contraption shrieked, sputtered, and died. Every person within earshot looked at Jake with an open mouth.

  Moritz leapt out of the carriage and turned on Jake with furious, red-rimmed eyes. His spotless white suit and tan, leather long coat stood out starkly against the red backdrop of the car, and his crimson cravat, dangling down the outside of his green paisley vest, was the only thing out of place.

  “Lashater!” Moritz screamed, “Are you outta yer damn mind?” His right hand hovered close to the pearl-handled, forty-five caliber showpiece at his hip, which he called a pistol but everyone else considered nothing more than trimmings on a fat goose dinner. “You could have killed me!” His hand inched closer to the gun.

  “Moritz,” Lasater growled, “you better think long and hard about the trouble your right hand is fixin’ to get your ass into!”

  Moritz, startled, looked down at his right hand as if it belonged to someone else. He shot it straight out, attempting to put the errant appendage as far away from the pearl handle as his skinny arm would allow. “I’m tellin’ the sheriff what you dun to my carriage, dammit!”

  “You go right ahead, Mister Sigi. And when the sheriff brings me in for questioning, I’ll be sure to tell him the name of every person on this street that you could have killed with that contraption of yours.” Jake pulled the hammer back on his Peacemaker. “If I’da wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have bothered shooting them wheels. Hell, I probably just kept you from killin’ yourself, and this is the thanks I get for doin’ it?” Jake was silent for a few seconds, his good eye boring into Moritz. He slowly lowered the hammer down. With a double backspin he put the pistol back in its holster. “Go on home, Moritz. Dry yer sorry ass out before someone really gets hurt, and I won’t tell your wife what you’ve been doing on Friday nights with that blond barmaid you’ve been doing it with.”

  Moritz’s eyes went wide, and without another word he turned and stumbled his way up Grand, weaving toward his home and, as everyone in Denver knew, a particularly shrewish wife with a straight razor for a tongue.

  Everyone along the street started clapping, and Jake took a bow from the saddle, tipping his leather top hat in thanks. He spurred Lumpy and got the beast lumbering down the street toward the ladies of the WCTL. He tipped his hat to the Temperance League as they beamed at him in all their finery.

  Deliberately loud enough for every one of them to hear, Jake said, “Come on, Cole, let’s go get a beer.”

  The beaming stopped, and the ladies’ faces looked as if someone had just farted during Grace at suppertime. Jake’s face was stony as he looked every woman in the eye, and the fit-to-be-tied WCTL President glared at him with righteous murder in her eyes.

  After Jake and Cole turned down Speer and were out of earshot, Cole whispered, “You just couldn’t help taking that parting shot at the ladies, could you?”

  “Nope,” Jake said quietly, and they both chuckled.

  “You’re goin’ straight to Hell. You know that right?” Cole said almost gleefully.

  “If I believed in the place, I would be.”

  As they approached the Colorado Brewery, they spotted a group of people picking small crates up off the dusty street and loading them into a wagon at the corner of Market and Speer. Cole drifted towards the brewery, ready to take Jake up on his offer of a libation. Jake, however, headed straight for the wagon, so Cole fell in with him.

  “What happened here?” Jake asked a plump, dirty fellow who appeared to be the wagon owner.

  The man pulled dark goggles off his face, letting them dangle around his neck, and removed his bowler. Producing a threadbare and clearly well used handkerchief from inside his coveralls, he wiped an expansive forehead. The man’s sweat had run a ring round his heavy goggles and left white streaks down his cheeks through the dust that coated the rest of his face.

  He shook his head as he looked up at Jake. “Some jackass on one of them consarned contraptions come tearing down the street. Had to yank back on my team, and this shipment of ladies’ finery ended up all over the damn place.”

  “Moritz Sigi?” Cole asked.

  “Nawww … ’Tweren’t that drunk son-of-a-bitch.” The man pointed to where another group of people further down Larimer talked excitedly. “This guy, little fella, come hauling down Speer, turned up Larimer, and disappeared a few blocks down.”

  “Contraption?” Jake asked, his eyebrow rising and a sneaking suspicion growing in his guts.

  “Hell yes, a contraption,” the man sputtered. “Three wheels, some sort of saddle in between … more like a bicycle than a carriage. And the damn thing whined like metal screeching on metal.” He put his bowler back on and slid the soggy rag back into his pocket. “Ain’t never seen ’nuthin like it.”

  “The rider we saw?” Cole offered quietly.

  Jake nodded. “Well, sorry for your trouble, Mister.”

  “I’ll tell ya, I’ve about had my fill of all these consarned contraptions. Gimme a good old-fashioned horse any day.” The wagon owner got a curious look on his face, finally noticing the great mass of Lumpy beneath Jake. He smiled up at Jake in an almost condescending manner. “Well, as long as it’s got four legs, it can’t be all bad, now can it?” He chuckled, but in a friendly manner.

  “I suppose you’re right.” Jake tipped his hat and got Lumpy moving again. “Come on, Cole. Let’s go get that beer and then see about some zepp tickets to San Fran.”

  “You’re buying, right?” Cole asked, grinning.

  Jake sighed. “Yeah, I’m buying.”

  As they turned their mounts towards the brewery, Jake looked up at the massive trans-con zeppelin docked at the tower above. Like any of the long range, commercial dirigibles of the Central Pacific Line, it was nearly a thousand feet long. It had a bright crimson envelope and the gold CPL insignia emblazoned on the sides and nose. A much smaller zeppelin was docking at the shorter tower that rose above the south side of the brewery. The smaller zepp was all white, and from Jake’s angle it looked like some sort of bird had been painted in black near its tail.

  Sigi may be a drunk, but he’s a hell of a businessman, he thought.

  The air terminal was the tallest structure in Denver, with an eight-story main tower and a smaller one that reached only five stories. The building itself was four blocks long and able to handle any commercial zeppelin built to date. Zeppelins would run up alongside one of the towers and great claws would then extend from the tower or the zeppelin’s gondola to hold it in position. A central platform within the terminal allowed passengers to disembark and make their way to ground level via a grand spiral staircase that Moritz Sigi had spent a fortune decorating.

  The staircase had deep crimson carpet all the way down, and artwork from around the world decorated its walls. There were chandeliers that glowed with bright, electric light powered by Sigi’s own steam-driven generators housed in the deep basement of the building. An army of handlers offloaded cargo into large elevators that took goods down to street level and waiting wagons.

  When Sigi had heard about Central Pacific looking for a location for their terminal, he shrewdly purchased the lots adjacent to his brewery and agreed to build the terminal specifically for the Central Pacific Line. He offered it up to the CPL for a fraction of its actual cost. Every crewman and passenger who came through Denver in a zeppelin would have to go through the Colorado Brewery to get to the city. And Sigi was free to charge non-CPL airships heavy docking fees. He also employed the crews that loaded and unloaded zeppelins, and all airships paid for that service.

  Jake and Cole hitched their mounts in front of the brewery and grabbed their saddlebags. Cole hefted the Thumper and they walked inside. Music washed over them as they stepped into the cool interior. Off to the left, well away from the bar, stood Sigi’s automaton band, which had been a real draw from the first day Sigi had either bought
or rented it … or them. Jake wasn’t quite sure which.

  There were three automatons—shiny, clockwork-driven machines fashioned in the shapes of men. They wore bright clothing in a contemporary style. The gold one played drums in the back. The silver one played a guitar, and the bronze one had some sort of small piano keyboard that he held in his hands. He would occasionally blow into a tube that connected to the keyboard and played it like a weird, electric piano. They all sang, their mouths opening and closing stiffly, but the music sounded wonderful to Jake’s ears, and the harmonies, mechanical though they were, came out sweet and clear. Without skipping a beat, all three mechanical heads turned towards Jake, and their faces appeared to smile stiffly at him.

  “Them fellers, if you can call ’em that, have voices sweet as honey,” Jake observed. Cole nodded in agreement. As they headed for the bar, the automaton with the keyboard kept his eyes fixated on Jake.

  “Musta cost Sigi a fortune,” Cole added.

  The Colorado Brewery was, without a doubt, the largest and finest saloon Jake had ever set foot in. Its extravagant interior was done wall-to-wall in dark stained oak. Great copper vats lined up behind the bar, with pipes going in every direction. Sigi might be a drunken sod most of the time, but he had a grand vision when it came to the business of drinking. Truth be told, Jake thought he made some of the best beer on either side of the Mississippi, none of it as good as Cap’n Plat, though.

  “Two Cap’n Plats, Clara,” Jake said to one of the buxom barmaids behind the long, brass-finished bar.

  “Coming right up, Jake,” she said and gave him a more than friendly wink.

  Cole shook his head. “I still can’t believe you and your old man are the ones who came up with Cap’n Plat.”

  Jake shrugged. “Dad was a hell of a beer maker, and I’ve liked the dark stuff since I was a kid. Coming up with Cap’n Plat was one of my favorite summers with him.” Jake chuckled sadly. “He was an awful businessman, though.”