Liahona Read Online Free

siblings.   He wondered if he thought enough , and felt dissatisfied.   Was he a fool to believe war could still be averted?   “There are Pinkertons here,” he told
his aide.   He nodded almost
imperceptibly to where Bowler Bob and Stovepipe stood on the other side of the
room, waving their calotype in the pasty faces of a clutch of denim overall-
and straw hat-wearing Scandinavians, who answered him with shrugs and
uncomprehending stares.
    “After us?”   Coltrane dropped a hand to touch the knife in his belt again.
    “I don’t know.”   Poe wondered.   “They claimed
to be after Clemens’s man, the Irishman O’Shaughnessy.   Though they knew him as McNamara .   Clemens didn’t bat an eye, lied bold as daylight, said he’d never seen
the man.”
    “Brass balls on that guy.” The dwarf’s voice sounded
admiring.   “So we’re safe.   Maybe we oughtta find the Irishman and
hand him over to those boys. That’d burn the lot, wouldn’t it?   Slow Clemens up another few days.”
    Poe squinted at the Pinkertons and considered.   “Unless the Pinkertons are in league
with Clemens, and their confrontation was a ruse to try to flush us out.   We rush to the Pinkertons to turn in
the dangerous wanted Irishman, and they clap us in irons and send us back to
Washington.”
    “Damn, you think?” Coltrane asked.   “You’re making my head spin.”
    Finally losing his struggle with his lungs, Edgar Allan Poe
coughed, hard, several times, into his handkerchief.   He balled the white square of cotton up quickly, hiding the
blood spots from Coltrane.   “Best
to be careful, Jed,” Poe said to the dwarf as he rolled with a show of laziness
and bad posture to his feet.   “We’re in the jungle here, and surrounded by man-eaters.”   But then, he reflected, he was a
man-eater himself.
    That was why Robert had sent him.
    *    *    *
    Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy huddled his birdlike head deep into
the nest of his scarf as he kicked the backdoor of the Saloon open and slipped
into the sizzling blue half-light of the stockade yard, leaving behind all the
idjits lowing into their shot glasses like cattle bound for slaughter.   It was a crisp, cold night and his neck
was thin, but the real reason to burrow into the scarf was the bloody-damn-hell
Pinkertons.   Stupid rotten cheating
bastards.   He’d known when he’d
crossed them that they’d send men after him, but who would have guessed they’d
follow him out to the Wyoming Territory?   You should have got a pardon, Tamerlane, me boy.   Or if not a pardon, at least the
Pinkertons could have the decency to look the other way, since he was a paid
agent of the Union Government and they were more or less supposed to be on the
same side.
    The Union .   Tam Sneered at the word in his own
inner monologue.   You don’t have a side , you stupid Irish lunkhead.   Besides, it’s the United
States , you idjit, and it’s best it stays
that way.   Pray Brigit and Anthony
that this bloody war don’t ever come, war ain’t good for no one except them
that sells guns.
    Crime, now, crime paid.   Crime had paid Tam when he was on the Pinkertons’ payroll,
digging coal mine shafts in Pennsylvania and listening to the grumbling small
talk of would-be dynamite tossers, and it had paid even better when he’d thrown
his lot in with the Molly Maguires and been on two payrolls at the same time
and robbing from the rich mine owners to boot.   It had paid great right up until that snoopy little Welsh
bastard Pinkerton Bevan had told Tam that he knew the score, and he would keep
quiet so long as Tam sent a little money the Welshman’s way every month.   Tam had no objection to greasing palms,
of course, but he couldn’t trust the little Taffy to keep his mouth shut, so
he’d had to slit his throat, burn the body and go west.
    Another man in Tam’s boots would have crunched the gravel of
the stockade yard loudly, but Tam had a long-practiced step that was