Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (22 page)

But the séance apparently had already started. Zeke came clattering down the hallway waving his harmonica as though it was an opera ticket. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Where is that seductive prairie flower who was just here?”

Neil sputtered in disgust, but Harley had the presence of mind to question the adjutant. “Which woman, Zeke? A few just passed through here,” he lied.

Zeke looked a bit embarrassed, looking to all four corners of the room as though his “prairie flower” would be revealed. “Why, the brazen yet stimulating strumpet who just tried to dab me up!” He fairly elbowed Neil in his camaraderie. “Right, Neil? Dabbing it up? That’s how you say it in—”

It was becoming clear to Neil. “How did she try to ‘dab you up,’ Zeke? What did she look like?”

“Why…Just an average woman, Neil! Brown, shoulder-length hair, curvaceous figure. You know, the usual!”

“What did she do?” Harley prodded.

Zeke was really sweating it now. “Why? Who is she? She merely came up from behind and grabbed my—ah, my posterior region. She said she was no longer your belle, Neil, and she was looking for a better man. I hate to tell you that. Don’t think I’ve come to steal your belles from you, pal.”

Neil roared at the ceiling,
“Minerva!”

Zeke chuckled. “Jealous, eh? I saunter in picking up your offal—the damaged, deranged women reeling from your mistreatment!”

“Come out, come out, Minerva!” Neil shouted. “I know what you’re up to! If you’re trying to rile me, it’s working, so you can just knock it off now, hear?”

Zeke was now confiding in Ivy. “You might think twice about hitching your wagon to this maniac, Miss Hudson. See what he drives women to! Now poor Minerva is wandering around town lamenting, heading over to dab it up with Ace Moyer next, out of desperation and anguish after being thrown over by this heartless—wait, Minerva?” He chuckled. “That’s an unusual name. Two Minervas in one town?”

“Ace Moyer?” Harley questioned the clerk. “What makes you think Minerva was heading over to dab it up with Ace Moyer?”

Zeke shrugged. “She told me so.”

“What were her exact words?”

Zeke screwed up his face in an effort to recall what had just happened a minute ago. “Well. She grabbed a bottle and brandished it at the ceiling—at
you
, you pathetic lothario—and screamed, ‘Damn you, Ace Moyer, for tormenting so many women! I’m coming to get you next!’”

Neil queried, “Did she say ‘so many women’? Maybe she said ‘so many people.’”

Zeke looked deflated. “Yes. She could’ve said ‘so many people.’” He cheered up visibly and strutted like a peacock. “Your castoff women come running to me! Who would’ve ever thought? Ezekiel Vipham, Adjutant to Simon Hudson of the Union Pacific Railroad. A fancy man—me! I’m telling you, Neil, you can send them my way any time! Why, ol’ Zeke Vipham will be happy to pick up your loafers and losers, your rejects. My mother told me—”

Bonk
. A large object brained Ezekiel Vipham square in the center of his forehead. His eyes crossed, his limbs went limp, and he dropped in his tracks, a puddle of limbs on the floor.

The object that Neil snatched up was a full forty rod jug with no cork, and the amber liquid oozed down Zeke’s cheekbones, pooling in the pit of his throat. A wave of raw alcohol, sugar, and chewing tobacco wafted up from his person, and Neil saw two tiny objects glittering by Zeke’s elbow. Grabbing them, he displayed them to Ivy’s feminine eyes.

“Minerva’s earrings,” she whispered. She looked up at the ceiling. “Rodney said they were emeralds. Did they just materialize from the thin blue sky?”

“It appears so,” said Harley. “I don’t think Zeke had them in his pocket or anything.”

“A buffalo,” it sounded as though Zeke breathed.

Neil looked at his friends. “Did he just say ‘a buffalo’?”

Ivy said, “Remember, Rodney said a bison skull was wearing earrings? And Caleb’s vision from several days ago…”

But there was no time to query the insensate Zeke any further. Right outside the study window, through the field that separated Vancouver House from its neighbor, an immense brown blob streaked past. The dull sound of thundering hooves resonated inside the study, and the blob was gone.

“Bison!” shouted Neil. “There’s a goddamned bison going on a tear through the goddamned town!”

Ivy raced ahead of the men, who had taken a few moments to grab their rifles from the foyer.

She emerged onto Garfield Street just in time to see the bison’s hindquarters flashing as it rampaged north onto Third Street. Its enormous hooves glimmered as it turned the corner by the Fowler residence, kicking up little puffs of dust, glancing the side of a moving buggy. Ivy bounded down the street after it, her skirts whipping about her calves.

A lone bison charging through the center of town? After witnessing the rare herd on the Laramie River, Ivy had changed her beliefs about what was possible. There wasn’t even supposed to be a herd that far west, but there it was, witnessed by the three of them. It was not a case of mass mesmerism. When they’d returned to Laramie City, the whole town had been atwitter with talk about the earthquake, and many wooden structures had collapsed. The timbers of the Keystone Hall saloon had fallen on dozens of men engaged in three-card monte, smothering them with canvas. One man died with his face in a spittoon. There were rifts in the earth where plates had been torn asunder, now separated by ten-foot gaps. So many bottles had fallen from the shelves behind the Bucket of Blood’s bar, a river of booze flowed out the front door.

Ivy thought as she raced along.
A lone bison in Laramie City is entirely possible
.

The bison cantered into the barn door of the Elkhorn Barn and Livery Stable, its hind legs skittering, tail swishing alluringly. Neil and Harley overtook Ivy before she could enter the barn, and the trio briefly paused, staring at the silent building.

Harley asked, “Do you think that bison is really ‘she who talks to no purpose’?” He looked at Ivy, perhaps as being the one most likely to believe that spirits could manifest as animals. “Could Minerva
be
that bison?”

“Anything’s possible,” uttered Ivy. “It manifested the moment Zeke got brained with the firewater.”

“But we’re all seeing it,” Harley said, more of a question than a statement.

“Yes,” Ivy and Neil replied.

“I need to go appeal to her,” said Neil, quickly adding, “if indeed that’s her.” He turned to Ivy. “You stay here.”

“I’m not staying anywhere,” Ivy mumbled, following the two swaggering men clutching their rifles.

“I wonder what she’s doing in there?” Harley asked. “She must be leading us to something.”

“She told Zeke she was looking for Ace,” said Neil. “But why would Ace be in the livery?”

The question was answered when they peeked around the edge of the barn door.

Thirty feet away, a man in a derby crouched over with his back to them, obviously strangling someone with a length of reata or other cord. He strained with the strangling effort as the poor victim flailed and clutched at the rope. There was no sign of the bison.

“That’s Tom Cudahy,” whispered Neil. “He owns this livery.”

Before Ivy could even think “That’s not Ace Moyer,” Harley shouldered his rifle and squeezed off a ball at the murderer. The derby shot comically into the air, striking a low wooden beam. The strangler stood upright, spinning around to face them. The victim still dangled helplessly, but the reata was loosened enough that color rushed back into his face. Harley must have intentionally only shot at the hat, Ivy knew. From the distance he’d blown out Ace Moyer when he’d tried to rob the stagecoach, she knew he was an excellent shot, probably more experienced than the head of security.

“Ace!” Neil hissed.

For it
was
Ace Moyer. He had attempted to disguise himself with not only the derby but with a most inappropriate, droopy, and ridiculous fake moustache. It appeared Ace hadn’t had time to glue the moustache on properly, for it teetered on his upper lip as though he’d pasted a porcupine there. Ace had to release the reata with one hand to reach for his holster, but Harley and Neil advanced on him with shouldered rifles, Neil growling, “Freeze.”

Ace froze as Tom Cudahy dropped free to the horse shit at their feet, gasping for air. Ace immediately bent and grabbed the reata ends again, strangling Cudahy afresh.

“What you got against Cudahy, Ace?” Neil shouted.

“He was in my way!” Ace shouted back, knuckles white as he gripped the reata. Cudahy choked, a purplish tongue sliding from his mouth like a rotten oyster. “I didn’t mean to kill him, but he caught me cutting off hair from a horse’s tail.”

“To make that preposterous moustache?” Ivy sang from her spot by the barn door. “It looks like you cut the bristles off a shaving brush.”

Ace flashed black eyes at her. “It’s not preposterous! It’s a very able disguise—when no one catches me in the act!” He yanked Cudahy off the ground to punctuate his words.

“Put him down, Moyer,” Neil bellowed. “We’ve got you nailed. There’s no way out of this.”

Harley commanded from the corner of his mouth, “Ivy, get out of the barn.”

But she didn’t.

His face twisting into all sorts of angry shapes, Ace appeared to struggle with his next step. Being at the barrel end of two Sharps rifles must have made the decision for him, for he released the grip on the reata and ripped through a rear barn door, out to where the animals were corralled.

Again, Harley shot, this time getting him in the same lame leg he’d shot the week before. Ace vanished out the door, though, and since Neil dashed off after him, Harley couldn’t shoot again.

Ivy followed, peering out around the corner of the door for protection, just in time to see Ace shoot his revolver into the air, perhaps as a warning. Blood already stained his injured leg, which he now clutched with his free hand, and he shrieked, “I was coming to get you next, Tempest! You’d be stone dead if it wasn’t for your sharpshooting, bum-sucking pal here!”

Bum-sucking?
So it’s common knowledge in town what we do behind closed doors?
Ivy was distracted for a split second by the bison, crouched down serenely with its front legs curled under its chest. The bison regarded the scene with wise eyes, apparently unperturbed at who might shoot whom next. In fact, the bison looked way too worldly to be Minerva Shortridge. She was an apparently uneducated woman from the same bog-hopping area of Ireland as Ivy’s ancestors and wouldn’t look that sagaciously at anyone.
It must just be a real bison.

“How many times do I have to shoot you?” Harley shouted. “You must be mighty stupid to want to rile an ex-convict and a captain of the East India Company.”

“Hah!” barked Ace. “I
knew
you were a convict, Tempest! I could tell by your loco lingo. I was telling everyone our head of security was nothing but a criminal jailbird.
Agh!
”

Ace did drop his revolver then in order to grab his thigh. A critter of some sort scurried up the cuff of his pants, now burrowing around underneath the fabric, little bustling bumps appearing up Ace’s bloody leg.

“A rat! A goddamned rat is attacking me!”

Harley chuckled and lowered his rifle. The men advanced on Ace, and Ivy came out from hiding. Neil snatched up the fallen revolver and took some bracelets off his gun belt to shackle Ace. Ace squirmed and hopped about, leaning on his good leg and shaking his bad leg so assiduously that droplets of blood flew, decorating Harley’s face.

Harley gripped the homicidal buffoon and spat, “Not too smart, warning Neil you intended on making him your next victim.”

The rat was apparently still scuttling around in the vicinity of Ace’s crotch. Ace flailed so thoroughly Harley had to grip his wrists together in the small of his back for Neil to snap on the cuffs. The helpful rat must have been chewing away at his testicles or supping on the blood from the wound, for Ace jerked like a man in the throes of religion.

“Get the rat out of my pants!” he squealed in a high pitch. “Take it out! Take it out!”

Harley looked Neil calmly in the eye. “Do we feel like reaching our hands inside his odiferous pants?”

Neil shook his head. “I don’t particularly feel like it, Harley.”

The bison eyed the whole act calmly, blinking.

To add drama to the scene, another now-familiar earthquake shook the ground beneath their feet. Ivy staggered uncertainly, as though wallpapered, and a large crack in the earth opened up in the field beyond the stables. Horses whinnied and shied about, but the bison didn’t move a muscle. As Ivy clutched a rail to steady herself, the canyon opened up toward them, ripping a deep opening in the grass about eight feet wide, heading right toward the three men.

Ace’s back was to it, but Neil and Harley leaped apart as it came, abandoning the thrashing murderer. It was a sight to see, the ground opening up beneath Ace’s feet, tearing apart the soil between his legs so that now he had one foot on opposite sides of the canyon.

“What the hell?” Ace wailed. He tried to balance, straddling the new canyon, his shackled hands of no help. Just as the rat fell out of his trouser leg and into the darkness below, a solid object shot through the air, walloping Ace on the skull with a resonating
thud
that could be heard even over the ripping and cascading roar of the soil. The clout was enough to knock the teetering Ace off his last grip on gravity, and he followed the poor rat into the gorge below. Only one boot could be seen over the lip of the hole, so it must have been very deep, and suddenly Ace didn’t utter a peep.