Timpanogos Read Online Free Page A

oomph ,
grabbed the canister—
    and rolled to his feet.
    “Brigit!” he howled, pain lancing through his twisted ankle.
    Miraculously, all the bugs stayed inside.   They were quiet and still, and Tam
jammed down both buttons again.
    Click-clack-clatter, click-clack-clatter , he heard in the canister as he raised it over his
head.
    The midget froze, gun pointed at Tam.
    “They’re activated, you little ape, do you hear me?   They’re turned on!”
    The dwarf spat slowly on the ground.   “I can hear ’em,” he admitted.
    “Shoot me and I throw the little buggers!   Then we both die!   Is that what you want?”
    The midget seemed to be considering.   “I want you to leave the boy alone,” he
said.
    “I don’t give a fook about the boy!”   Tam felt hysterical.
    “Then what the hell do you want?”
    Tam considered, for a split second, the possibility of
telling the dwarf.   Maybe they
could reach a deal.   They could
both agree not to talk to the Pinkertons, to lie low, and soon enough he and
Sam Clemens would have finished this rotten mission and be out of the Kingdom.   Tam could go off to California, or Novy
Moskva, or somewhere else where the Pinkertons would never find him.
    Hell, he might even be willing to go back to Ireland.   Potato blight or not, he’d learned
there were worse places to be.
    Tam shook his head.   No, he could never trust the midget.   The man was crooked, he might turn Tam in for reward money,
or worse.   He might turn him in
just because Tam was a Union man, and the dwarf was with the South.   Or maybe he hated the Irish.   The southerners were notorious for that
sort of ill-will, and the little fellow had that horrible loping sound to his
voice that marked him as a Mississippi monkey, or Louisiana, or something… Tam
wasn’t very good at telling those accents apart.
    He had to bluff, or threaten, or fight.
    Tam drew back the arm with the canister in it, like he was
going to throw.
    The dwarf cocked his pistol.
    “Stop!”
    The voice rang through the confusion of Tam’s thoughts and
over his thudding heartbeat like a bell.   It came from somewhere over in the tall grass.   Tam tried to split his eyes, send one poking around to look
for the source of the voice while the other stayed fixed on his opponent.   He could see the dwarf doing the same.
    The voice belonged to the boy, John Moses.  
    He stepped out of the grass and into the clearing.   “Stop fighting,” he said.   “It isn’t nice.”
    “Oh yeah?” Tam sneered.
    “Yeah,” John Moses said.
    Then Tam noticed that the little boy held the strange
rapid-shot gun.   It looked gigantic
in his childish hands.   He
struggled, but he managed to lift it and hold the barrel more or less
level.   Level enough to mow Tam
flat, judging by what he’d seen it do to the front of the hotel.
    “I said stop fighting,” John Moses repeated himself in his
wee piping whistle of a voice.   “And I mean it, you fooks.”
    “Shite,” Tam said.
    *    *    *
    “You’re all under arrest,” called one of the cavalrymen in a
loud, trumpet-like voice.   The men
were out of their ordinary uniforms and wearing the strange gray outfits, but
the speaker had two chevrons on the sleeves of his jacket.   Poe inferred that the chevrons marked
him as a corporal.
    “By what authority?” Poe demanded.
    “On what charges?” Roxie chimed in.
    “Who in blazes are you?” asked Captain Jones.
    “Authority be damned,” the Corporal drawled, “charges go to
hell and I, you shiftless truck-gypsy, am the government .   Haven’t you heard?”
    “We’re armed,” Poe called out.   He very deliberately didn’t raise his pistol—he didn’t
want to provoke an actual shooting match, outnumbered eight to one as he and
his allies (if they really were allies) were—but it felt heavy and
conspicuous in his hand.   “You may
not find us so easy to govern, Corporal.”
    The Corporal rode his horse-machine down the