Liahona Read Online Free Page A

silent
without being stealthy, effortlessly inconspicuous and unnoticeable without
looking sneaky.   He floated like a
ghost around the side of the Saloon, figuring he’d hide in the Jim Smiley for the night.  
    He knew Clemens would never give him up, not that stubborn
son of Missouri, good old Sam Clemens.   He’d spit in the devil’s eye, tell him a joke and swear he’d never seen
no Irishman in all his born days before he’d knuckle under to another man.   Sam Clemens had taken Tam under his
wing, recruited him into Intelligence (ha! Tam thought, as if) when the
Pinkertons were on his trail and scuttled him out of the country right under
their noses.   Clemens was the first
person since Mother O’Shaughnessy herself who had ever taken an interest in
whether Tam lived or died.   Also,
Sam had cash.
    “Egad, what if we’re caught?”
    Tam stopped.   The
words almost sounded like part of his own stream of thoughts, but the voice was
the frightened whine of some bloody effete aristo Englishman, some useless
Etonian fop.   It came from the
corner of the stockade yard, ahead of him and to the left, where the blue light
of the electricks splashed ineffectually against the bulk of steam-trucks
resting from their east- or west-bound labors.   The voice was followed by a loud, rattling clank! of metal on metal.
    “Great thundering Ganesha!” barked another English voice,
this one stronger and harsher.   “ You insisted on coming along, now the least you can
do—and I do mean the very least —is not get in my way!”   A grunt, then more rattling.   Tam thought he could tell where the
sound was coming from, and a great hulking beast it was, a track-borne iron
behemoth, many times larger than the Jim Smiley , hunched in the shadows.   Two dark figures lurched across its deck, one straining its
shoulders against a heavy load.   “Besides, they’ve only a few hours to catch us, and they can’t possibly
even know what we’ve done yet.”   The figures sank into the deck of the big steam-truck, presumably
climbing down some hatch or stair into its belly.
    Suddenly, Tam had a bad feeling about the whole thing.   First the Pinkertons showed up on his
trail, and now suddenly here were two English bastards up to no good.   If there were only the one of them, Tam
would kill him without a second thought, just to be on the safe side, but two
men always made an attack a little more of a throw of the dice.  
    “Hell and begorra.”
    Tam gave the strolling Englishmen a few seconds to get well
inside their truck, then crossed the yard to the Jim Smiley .   He had
to skirt out of reach of the electricks’ blue light, which made his scuttling
circuitous and piled additional time into his state of anxiety, but a couple of
minutes later, heart beating a little faster than he would have liked, Tam
stood next to the Jim Smiley and
surveyed her for visible damage.
    She looked fine from the outside.   All six of her enormous, heavy India-rubber tyres bulked
full and unscathed.   The immense
inflated India-rubber skirt that wrapped all around her hull was also
fine.   The big elephantastic wheel
in back sat on its axle, unimpeached and unassailed, as far as Tam could
see.   Black smoke puffed, wispy and
hard to spot in the blue-black gloom, from her raised exhaust pipe.   Tam almost relaxed.
    Almost.
    He sent himself up the ladder quickly, conscious that he was
visible here from the doorway to any vulture that knew where to look, and then
slipped into the wheelhouse for a moment to scan the shadowed deck through its
large windows.
    Nothing.   Bloody-damn-hell nothing.
    You’re jumping at shadows, me boy.
    Tam crossed the deck again and started down the stairs into
the boiler room.   He flicked the
light switch in the iron stairwell and nothing happened.   He flicked it again, and nothing.   That wasn’t good.   He wasn’t a mechanick like Clemens, but
he knew that unless the emergency battery was engaged,