Liahona Read Online Free Page B

the lights were powered
by the electricks, which were powered by the boiler.   No lights meant the boiler wasn’t on.
    Tam drew his pistol, a shiny Webley Lonsgpur (not his,
originally, but Bevan’s, but the weaselly little Taffy didn’t need it now, did
he, and him all singing away, Bread of Heaven in the celestial men’s choir?).   Saints Brigit, Patrick and Anthony on fire.   Could be he let the coal run too low in the furnace and the
fire had gone out.   Sure, that was
it.
    No, you idjit.   There’s smoke out the exhaust, means the fire is going.
    Could be a burned out bulb.   Didn’t they burn out?   They burned out, he was sure of it.
    Sure, it could, and it could be bloody leprechauns opened a
valve and let out all the steam.   Put your balls back on, O’Shaughnessy, and stop fooling yourself.   He shook his head to clear his
thoughts, then cocked the hammer of the Webley.
    Gun first, he sprang noiselessly into the boiler room.  
    Nothing.   Empty,
no one there, just the shovel and the pile of coal and the boiler throwing out
its mad red grin into the room through slitted teeth.
    He quickly checked the other rooms below decks—locker,
galley, bunk room—and determined that he was alone on the Jim Smiley , alone on a steam-truck with no functioning
electricks.   He was standing,
Webley uncocked and reholstered, in the boiler room, scratching his head and
beginning to feel relieved when he saw the holes.   All the pipes connecting the furnace to the boiler were
smashed open.   No wonder the electricks
didn’t work—there was no steam to power them.
    With no steam, the truck wouldn’t go anywhere either,
couldn’t budge an inch if it was pulled by ten Clydesdales.   Well, Sam was a dab hand with steam
machinery and electricks, he’d fix it proper in short order, he had patches
precisely to cover this sort of an occasion, right in his toolbox.   Still, how in hell did something like
this happen?   Some kind of
explosion?   But that couldn’t be
right, the holes in the pipes looked like they’d been smashed inwards, not
blown out.
    Then Tam noticed that Sam’s well-used crate of tools was
missing.
    He heard the rough Englishman’s voice in his mind.   They only have a few hours to catch
us .
    “Bloody hell!” he yelled, his voice gigantic and booming in
the engine room.   He remembered the
Pinkertons, and squeezed his voice back down to a whisper.   “It’s sabotage!   We’re holed by the English!”
    He rushed back up the stairs to the deck, whipping out his
revolver again, and flung himself prone to survey the stockade yard.   No sign of the Pinkertons (and isn’t
that a blessed relief, after me going stupid and shouting my head off inside a
great metal drum?), but there was a fellow on his hands and knees just below
the electricks, vomiting on himself, and two men in frock coats strolled
casually across the yard, from the far shadowed corner where Tam had heard the
English voices towards the Saloon doors.
    A little too casually.   Forced casual, like people pretending they hadn’t just been having a
quarrel.   Squinting, Tam saw that
the older fellow, with the big wild mustache, looked like he might bite the
head off a mountain lion any second, and the younger, who was clean-shaven and
wore a top hat, appeared on the edge of tears, like a little girl.
    That’d be the bloody Etonian.
    Tam lay flat and out of sight, waiting for the Englishmen to
go inside the Saloon.
    *    *    *
    “All ticketed passengers on the Liahona , Fort Bridger to Salt Lake City!   Attention, all ticketed passengers on
the Liahona !”   The man yelling looked to be about
fifty, with a square face, serious eyes and curly hair under a shapeless blue
cap.   He was dressed in white
shirtsleeves under a brass-buttoned blue vest and his accent was some kind of
English-Irish-somethingerother, Jed had seen enough of the world to know there
were different kinds of Brits, but he couldn’t really