“Lynch mob?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I didn’t stay to ask.”
“They didn’t see you come in here?”
He shook his head. “I came down from the roof.”
“Hm,” I said. “Something tells me you ought to get out of Rapid, pronto.”
“No flies on you.”
A sarcastic houseguest. That was just what I wanted to be awakened by at dawn. I sighed.
“Well,” I said. “As long as we’re up, we might as well get some breakfast.”
I managed to rustle up some of yesterday’s bread and scrape some dripping into a pan while Tomoatooah blew up the banked fire and got a little flicker going. I fried up the bread and warmed some cold coffee without waking Connie in her room down the hall — she would have cooked us two breakfasts apiece, but she deserved her sleep as much as any of us — and we ate the greasy salty bread standing up over the plank work top, hands cupped to catch drips.
By the time we were done, Connie had woken up of her own accord, and she got Crispin to help her hide Tomoatooah under some empty coffee sacks in the back of the wagon so we could spirit him away. Crispin promised to get him to the edge of town and then personally take a message to Marshal Reeves as to what had happened and where the Comanche would meet him — Connie suggested an old sawmill up the river two miles — and when that was arranged I went the hell back to bed.
It weren’t the most successful endeavor I ever undertook. Mostly I laid there with a pillow over my face, worrying. Tomoatooah wasn’t safe in the city no more, not with Bantle convincing half the town he was the killer. And how safe was Marshal Reeves going to be without his posseman?
I didn’t like any of it. Not at all.
Hell, for fifteen minutes I even wondered if there was any sense in going to see Horaz Standish and seeing if some kind of a truce could be brokered. He had the reputation of being a reasonable man.
But I figured Madame Damnable would consider that interfering with Bantle without her permission, and at this point I figured if I did that she might just break all my fingers for me before she tossed me out on the street.
* * *
So began a long, cold wait.
I read somewhere that there’s little in this world more frustrating than having a plan and the desire to carry it out and being thwarted in expression. But thwarted I was, and all I could do was work, read, write, and fuss over Priya. And frankly, there just weren’t that much work to be getting on with. The parlor was nearly empty most nights — there was more girls than men, even counting Crispin and the Professor. Madame came and went at strange hours, and there was three or four men I didn’t know who came in, spoke right to Miss Bethel, and went up to Madame’s office without further ado. Crispin walked each one up, but they came back down on their own and left likewise.
We got some business from the constables, if you can call it business when they didn’t pay. In fact, I saw Miss Bethel handing at least one of them a little cloth purse as he left. Seems to me as you should take your bribe in money or flesh. To ask for both seems like trying to use your fat to fry and spread it on your cornpone, too. But I suppose if you’re taking grease from a whorehouse, you ain’t too concerned with the appearance of venality.
I kept hoping to see the Marshal or Merry Lee, but other than one quick note from Bass Reeves delivered by a street urchin, I heard nothing from either one of them. Priya didn’t go back to see her sister, either, though I know Aashini sent her a letter in some language that looked to me like a whole set of brush doodles. Pretty brush doodles, but Greek made more sense. Going to see her would of been too dangerous — anybody could have followed Priya to wherever Merry had Aashini holed up. Priya, though — she was walking on air the whole time.
And Priya and me … well, whenever she was around I was walking on air, too. I taught her how to braid rugs, and things was so boring she made me one in about three days, to replace the one I’d given her. And there was more kissing, too, although sometimes we’d be curled up all comfortable together and she’d suddenly have to get up and pace or she’d find something needed doing right desperate like, and in a different room.
That’s all I’m going to say about that except the other girls — and Crispin, even — got to treating the two of us as if we came as a set and that didn’t gripe me none at all.
That note from Reeves just told me to hang tight and watch my back. Because I hadn’t been doing that without his urging, nor Priya’s back, neither. It hinted at progress but didn’t spell none out, which made me wonder if he weren’t just telling me something good to keep me quiet and out of trouble. As if I needed anything more than Madame’s threat against Priya to manage that.
I tried like hell not to fuss when I didn’t hear again. Maybe they was lying low or tailing Bantle’s Russian mechanic and they didn’t have much time to chat.
I didn’t tell Priya what Madame had threatened, because I knowed what she would say. That she could take care of herself and that she’d help me go get Bantle any time I said the word. Hell, she’d lead the charge and I’d be the one holding her gloves.
So mostly I got a good big lot of sewing done. Sewing sewing, I mean. Not the other sort, though I took my turn with the constables when it came around and pretended to like it. Priya and Miss Lizzie had turned that Singer into the next best thing to a steam shovel, and the sewing went quick. Priya got another pair of trousers and two shirts including the pretty one — she hid her face in her hair when I gave it to her — and Miss Francina got the trim work done on a bodice, and I had to let down all of Beatrice’s hems because she wasn’t getting any bigger around, but she was shooting up like a stem.
* * *
One good thing that happened, though, was when Priya took me to the circus as a thank-you for the rug and coverlid. Mostly good, anyway. Well, the circus itself was a great idea. There was all those elephants, and a pink poodle that drove an automaton after some clowns, and a trapeze act with rocket packs. There was a tiger who jumped through flaming hoops and didn’t seem very impressed with the whip the trainer kept cracking. I liked the tiger fine, and the popped corn, and the dog-faced boy — but I could have done without the whip. Given what we’d found out by the trash bins, I don’t think Priya or me really needed the reminder.
There was some trick riding, though, that was Cossacks and the equal of anything Da could’ve done. Maybe better. Neither he nor I could have managed a bareback handstand. I had to look away from the horses after a while, though, and watch the girls in their tight bathing costumes sailing around under the big top on buzzing mechanical wings.
Priya wanted to go around the back after the show and see the elephants. She said she’d heard sometimes you could ride on them or feed them peanuts.
I didn’t feel the need to make the acquaintance of an elephant, but I was happy to go wherever Priya led. She could look at elephants and I could look at her, and we would both be happy. I didn’t want to stay too long — I was thirsty and didn’t want beer, and God knew what could be in the water out here: cholera, the dysentery … tiny piranhas.
There was a good crowd out by the elephant pen. I say “pen,” but I don’t believe for an instant those split-wood rails would do one damned thing to slow down an elephant that wanted to be on the other side of them.
Priya pushed up right by it anyway, leaning on the rails, so I came and stood beside her. The elephants mostly seemed interested in their hay — they picked it up with their long curly noses and stuffed it into their mouths — and I didn’t expect any trouble from ’em. Some folk had brought apples or peanuts to tempt ’em, and pretty soon one of the smaller ones wandered over to the fence and started to lift goodies from people’s fingertips. One of the keepers was loitering nearby, keeping an eye on what people fed to his charge, but he didn’t seem concerned overall.