Deseret (18 page)

He didn’t waste time or effort looking to see what was
happening to the hotel, but he heard Danites yelling, and their shooting
ceased, and the air was shredded by the sound of every window in the big house
shattering at the same moment.
 
Coltrane’s borrowed gun sounded like an army of roaring beavers
chewing
the hotel to pieces.

“Take that, you whoreson kid-stealers!” Coltrane shouted,
and then Poe was safe, behind the
Liahona
.

The more normal gunfire resumed as he dragged his body up
the ladder and threw himself onto his belly on its deck.
 
Poe coughed deeply, almost choking on
the thick ball of blood and phlegm that came up and that he spat over the side.
 
He wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve
like any barbarian, and when he looked up he found himself staring into the
face of Captain Dan Jones.

“Welcome aboard!” Jones shouted.
 
“That’s an impressive weapon your friend has, boyo, but I
can’t say I know what you’re up to!”

Poe pointed to where he could just see the Irishman and the
boy, disappearing into the weeds at the bottom of the hotel’s long yard.
 
“I’ve got something in the hold,” he
explained.
 
“Something to put an
end to the fight, so we can get the boy.”

Captain Jones’s face lit up into a snarl as he saw the
child.
 
“To hell with the hold, Mr.
Jamison!
 
I’ve got something in the
wheelhouse.”
 
He gripped Poe’s
shoulder in solidarity.
 
“Hold on!”

Jones scrambled on hands and knees into the
Liahona’s
wheelhouse, under the chest-high scythe of whizzing
Danite bullets.
 
Poe wondered if he
was about to fire the railguns at the Danites, but they didn’t seem to be very
accurate, especially at short range.
 
All he would do is punch holes in the hotel, which was already in bad
shape.

Then Poe realized what Jones was up to, and wrapped his arms
around the base of the nearest Franklin Pole.

The
Liahona
groaned
as she shifted into gear, steam and coal smoke exploded out her tailpipes, and
she lurched into forward motion—

Poe held on—

he heard a ragged cheer from the stable—

then the
Liahona
plowed into the Hot Springs Hotel and Brewery.

The dusty blue sky above and around Poe exploded into timber
fragments and shattered furniture.
 
There was suddenly a ceiling above him, and then there wasn’t, and then
there was again.
 
Startled Danites
on the second storey of the hotel turned to shoot at the
Liahona
as it moved through them.
 

Poe drew his pistol and gamely returned fire, along with
several of the truck-men, but the gun battle was brief.
 
The Danites disappeared, flying away
into oblivion as the hotel fell asunder under their feet.
 
Poe felt tired and rattled and his lung
felt like a stinking swamp of death.
 
He struggled up the Franklin Pole to his feet, peering through the
exploding and collapsing walls around him to try to see the Irishman and the
boy.

Or Roxie.

Had she said “I love you” to him?

CLANG-NG-NG-NG!

The
Liahona
crashed
to a stop and Poe fell to the deck, hard, and skidded.

His head spun.
 
Steam billowed up around him.
 
Had the Liahona ruptured its boiler? he wondered.
 
But it seemed like there was too much
steam for that.

Screaming.

Poe reeled to his feet, vision still swimming.

Half the hotel was gone, reduced to a pile of crushed
matchsticks beneath the immense treads of Captain Dan Jones’s steam-truck.
 
The portion that still stood wobbled
like a drunkard about to finish his evening badly.
 
Jones and his sailors lay about on the deck of the vehicle,
groaning, nursing injuries, and helping each other to their feet.

The
Liahona
puffed
out steam and smoke, but it wasn’t moving.
 
Poe risked a look over the side, and saw that the treads
were still.
 
He looked at the
ladder to make sure there weren’t Danites coming up the side, then made his way
forward to the wheelhouse.

“What happened?” he asked the truck’s Captain.

Jones shook his head and staggered to his feet.
 
He carefully armed himself with a long
pistol from a rack above the inside of the wheelhouse door before
answering.
 
“I don’t know,
boyo.
 
I’m pretty sure I was aimed
straight when we hit the hotel, but once we were inside, the wheel jumped and
everything got muddled.”

Poe walked with Captain Jones to the front of the
steam-truck.
 
They moved carefully,
watching for attackers, but the only living Danites they saw were running down,
out and away from the hotel.
 
Around
the front of the
Liahona
rose a veil of
steam.

“The water tank,” Jones realized.
 
“I hit the water tank.”

“I think your steam-truck may be in grave need of a little
maintenance,” Poe advised him.

Poe heard feet on the ladder and braced himself with his
pistol.
 
It was Roxie, and he put
his pistol away.

“Have you seen Burton?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around him.

“I haven’t seen him since he went into the hotel,” he
finished lamely.

“Burton will be fine,” she assured him.
 

“He could be dead.”

“Then Old Scratch and his minions have their hands full
right now.
 
Annie and the English
girl are looking for the other Englishman now.
 
And your dwarf is running down the hill after the little
boy.”

“I’d better go help him,” Poe suggested, but he didn’t move.

“Yes, you’d better,” she agreed.
 
She didn’t move, either.
 
She smiled elegantly, with poise and grace.

“Trouble,” Poe heard Dan Jones mutter in his ear.

“Aren’t they always?” Poe asked.
 
He felt warm and calm and blissful.
 
Somewhere in this bouquet of roses, he
thought, there must be a thorn that would draw his blood.
 
For the moment, he was content to smell
the flowers.

“I don’t mean
her
,”
Jones snorted.
 
“I mean
them
.”

Poe disengaged and looked up to see what Jones was pointing
at.

Behind the
Liahona
,
on the highway above the Hot Springs Hotel and Brewery, stood perhaps
twenty-five dusty brass clocksprung horses.
 
Their riders wore gray uniforms now, and had pistols drawn.

They looked very serious.

The Third Virginia Cavalry.

“Dammit,” Poe cursed.
 
“The cavalry’s here.”

Here ends
Deseret

Part the Second of
City
of the Saints

Part the Third is
Timpanogos

###

About D.J. Butler

D.J. Butler (Dave) is a novelist living in the Rocky
Mountain northwest. His training is in law, and he worked as a securities
lawyer at a major international firm and inhouse at two multinational
semiconductor manufacturers before taking up writing fiction. He is a lover of
language and languages, a guitarist and self-recorder, and a serious reader. He
is married to a powerful and clever woman and together they have three devious
children.

Dave has been writing fiction since 2010. He writes
speculative fiction (roughly, fantasy, science fiction, space opera, steampunk,
cyberpunk, superhero, alternate history, dystopian fiction, horror and related
genres) for all audiences. He has written and is writing novels for middle
grade, young adult and adult readers. He is working on getting published via
the traditional route; in the meantime, he is entertaining readers with
City
of the Saints
and
Rock Band
Fights Evil
. Dave has always had a soft
spot for good pulp fiction.

Follow Rock Band at
http://rockbandfightsevil.com
.

Hear about
City of the Saints
and D.J. Butler’s other writing projects at
http://davidjohnbutler.com
.