“Where’s the girl?” Marshal Reeves asked.
“Girl?”
“You get another murdered girl?”
“Yes,” Sergeant Waterson said shortly. “She’s down there. Whipped to ribbons, too.”
The Marshal reined Dusty over, closer to the edge of the road than I thought she’d go, but she trusted him enough to step right up against it. I held my breath. There ain’t no railing. Every week, a drunk or two tumbles off the edge of the street and is crippled or he dies. In the papers and over at the coroner’s office, they call it involuntary suicide.
If I’d been holding my breath a minute before, now I squeaked. Because the Marshal hooked one knee over the saddletree and just slid right down Dusty’s side, hanging there upside down with his head next to the red mare’s knees. “Torch!” he yelled, and somebody brought over a lantern and held it out.
“You could dismount,” Sergeant Waterson said dryly. “Because that looks more than a little ridiculous.”
The Marshal flipped upright again, so smooth in the saddle he hardly even nudged me. “Son of a bitch ain’t got far. Begging your pardon.”
“What’d you see?” Waterson asked.
“There’s a butt still smoldering there.” Reeves pointed. “Right by the mark where he ran his rope to lower her.” He turned in the saddle, left and right. “And we know he likes to watch the fun, now don’t we.… Hang on, Miss Memery!”
I grabbed for his gun belt quick as I’d grab for a bolting colt, and I got it, too. My fingers hooked leather, spurs rang, and the next thing I knowed Dusty was stretched out running like she was after hounds. I have a vague recollection of her clearing a couple of constables and of me striking against Bass Reeves’ back when she landed, but it ain’t more than the memory of a story somebody else had told you.
I just put my head down and tried to hang on while the Marshal laid his rein ends against Dusty’s shoulder — just once — and she somehow accelerated. “You saw him?” I yelled over Reeves’ shoulder.
“I saw something!” he yelled back. “Man on foot, shadow of that building over there. Could just be a damned rubberneck, but if so, why’s he lurking back there? And why’d he take to his heels as soon as I laid eyes on him?”
Dusty cornered like a cutting horse and barreled up the next street — it was River Styx Road. No, I don’t know who names these damn things. We also got us a Sarcophagus Street. Anyway, as she ran it, I saw a flicker of movement up one of the ladder escapes on the building sides.
“There!”
The Marshal reined Dusty so sparks flew. “Damn,” he said, “Can’t shoot at him. There’s people behind those windows.”
He didn’t bother dismounting, just jumped up on her saddle, tossed me the reins, and threw himself up at the first landing on the escape. It was a jump out across that drop-off to the sidewalk thirty feet below us that would of curled my hair if Mr. Marcel hadn’t handled that already.
“Follow on the ground!” He yelled something else, but it was lost in his boot nails ringing on the wrought iron.
I grabbed the reins and did the best I could. Dusty’s stirrups was too long, and no time to fix them, so I kicked my calves into the straps to keep the irons from banging her belly. She didn’t think much of the change of rider, but she was too much a professional to do more than flick an ear at me and smack my thigh with her tail. She moved for me, though, and no argument, and that was the bit that mattered.
Craning my head, I could make out the silhouette of a man vanishing over the roof edge, slightly darker against the moonlit clouds. He was only there for an instant — the same instant I realized that the Marshal had left me a long arm in the saddle holster. The Winchester with the chip out of its stock. Damn it, I’d had a shot.
But I didn’t know who I’d have been shooting at or if he’d committed any crime worse than running from a Marshal. Hell, I’ve run from an officer of the courts once or twice myself.
I felt a horrible chill at the thought that the Marshal didn’t have a weapon. I almost yelled up to where I could still hear his boot heels climbing the iron, but then I’d be letting the maybe killer know Reeves’d left his gun. I was just about to expire from apoplexy when I remembered the gun belt I’d grabbed.
So he was heeled, and all I was doing chasing myself in circles down here was letting our suspect build up a lead.
I reined Dusty forward again. She went, asking for more rein than I was comfortable giving. But she took the corner easily, and in time to see somebody hurtle past overhead, jumping between buildings.
“This way!” I yelled, in case the Marshal could hear me, and gave chase.
I kept Dusty as tight to the building walls as I could without putting her in the sidewalk ditches. No bullets yet, but that didn’t mean old what’s-his-face up there didn’t have a gun. Just that he hadn’t decided to use it yet.
Dusty and me followed on, trying to track him. We saw him jump one more time, and we followed — but two or three blocks later and I had to admit we’d lost him somewhere. I was about to turn Dusty around to go look for the Marshal when I heard a rising whistle and suddenly I was just a passenger on the big red mare. She whirled and snorted, then trotted along as businesslike as you please, back the way she came.
We met the Marshal standing at the roadside, looking crestfallen as a cat trying to seem unconcerned at a mousehole.
“No luck, either,” I told him. “Where the hell did he go?”
The Marshal shook his head. “I had him. I was right on him. And I slipped on a damned roof tile.” He turned his head and spat. “That’ll teach me to chase people across rooftops without Sky.”
I offered him Dusty’s reins. She weren’t listening to anything I had to say through them, anyhow. “I wish the damn constables had gotten that search dirigible they’re always trying to pry money out of the mayor for,” I groused. “We’d have seen him try to give us the slip then.”
The Marshal laughed, not sounding too happy. “I got enough of a look at him to say he’s a white, at least. Not as tall as me. Hat over his hair, more’s the pity, and his face all muffled up.”
“It’s winter,” I said. “So is everybody’s.”
He stood there, stroking Dusty’s nose. He didn’t talk, but I could about smell his frustration.
I sighed, heart hurting as the excitement faded and I remembered the other business at hand. “We should go find out who’s dead.” I hoped it wasn’t somebody I knowed, and I felt awful about that at the same time.
“Miss Memery,” the Marshal said. “I make you a promise that I will do everything in my power to stop this man. I’ll catch him, and if I can’t catch him…” He shrugged. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll bed him down.”
He meant a pine bed, and a narrow one. “God bless you, sir,” I said. “Now come on, let’s go see whose murder you’re next to be blamed for.”
Chapter Fourteen
When I walked into Madame’s office the next day, she looked startled and irate. Neither of which was how I was used to seeing her. She had been bent over an account book, pince-nez slipping down her scowl, and now she closed it with a snap that made me think she might be more mad at the accounts nor me.
That weren’t settling to my spirits. In fact, it plumb took me aback. But I grabbed up my courage anyway and I said to her, “I know how to fix all our problems.”
She cleaned the nib of her pen, still frowning.
“That’s a pretty tall order, young lady,” she said. “Are you sure you know what all our problems are?”
Da would say that first you make a list of everything that needs doing. Then you figure out a plan to get it done. If you can’t get it all done, you figure out what’s most important and you do that.