Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (9 page)

Sure, Campbell was a good sheriff. The
reason
he was so good was that the only rules he played by were his own, and one of those rules was making sure people like Hitch never got a second opportunity to defy him.

Dan slung his towel over one shoulder. “Don’t worry about Campbell. Your brother will fix it all, I expect.”

“My brother?” Hitch looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Why, Griff’s a deputy now, didn’t you know?”

His little brother was working for Campbell? His ears buzzed. Griff knew better than that. He’d always been the smart one—the straight one.

“When did that happen?”

“Oh, about seven years, I reckon. He’s a good deputy too. You haven’t seen him?”

“Not yet.”

Dan picked up his notepad and pencil. “Well, what’ll you have, lady and gent?”

“Um.” Hitch ordered from memory. “Roast beef, mashed potatoes, and green beans.” Except in his memory, he’d been a lot richer. “Or wait, just two cheese sandwiches and two cups of coffee.”

Lilla took her glass back. “You’re missing out. The orange phosphate is delicious. I’m waiting for Rick. He finally found a station to put gasoline in the motorcar. He thought the first two places were disrespecting him.”

“What’d they say?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”

Probably because there hadn’t been anything
to
notice.

Lilla leaned forward to see around Hitch. “Hi, there. I’m Lilla Malone.”

On the other stool, Jael sat about as easy as a broncbuster on a confirmed outlaw. She gripped the edge of the counter and kept looking over her shoulder. She eyed Lilla, then glanced at Hitch.

He nodded. “It’s all right. Lilla works for me. This is Jael.”

Lilla reached past Hitch to offer her hand. “How do?”

Jael looked at it.

“She’s not from around here,” Hitch said.

“Oh, well, that’s all right.” Lilla pulled her hand back. “I’m new here too, come to that. Your kerchief is lovely.”

Jael touched her head, then smiled. Her whole face changed when she smiled. The hard angles faded, and the silver specks in her eyes sparkled.

“Tonk you.”

“So you’re a friend of Hitch’s? From when he lived here?”

“Not exactly,” Hitch said. “I kind of found her this morning. I’m trying to get her a place to stay.”

“Oh, that’s no problem. She can stay with us.”

“No, she’s got to be here—in town—so that when her friends come looking for her, they’ll know where to find her.”

Jael snorted. “Friend? No. If someone come, he is not friend.” Then she actually turned her head to the side and spat on the floor.

“Hey!” Dan dumped the two sandwich plates onto the counter. “What kind of establishment do you think this is?” He flipped his towel into her lap. “Get right down and clean that up.”

Her eyes got dark. She stood up from the stool and tensed the arm holding the towel,
that
close to snapping it back in Dan’s face.

Hitch caught her arm. “Now just you wait.”

She tried to jerk away.

“Hold up a minute. The man’s not asking you to do anything unreasonable. You got to understand that around here, spitting inside—especially
ladies
spitting inside—ain’t exactly the thing.”

Behind him, Scottie scoffed. “
Lady
?”

Lilla twirled her stool around. “Hey!”

Jael tried to twist free again, but uncertainty edged her face.

Hitch lowered his voice. “Trust me.”

She hesitated. Then she dropped to her knees and swiped the towel across the planks.

Before she could come back up, a familiar roar howled down the street outside.

Hitch’s heart revved like it always did at the sound of a plane engine. He joined the general movement to the windows.

A star-spangled Jenny buzzed the street, so low her landing gear cleared the lampposts by only a yard. People outside ducked as the winged shadow sliced overhead. They came back up, hollering and waving. In the rear cockpit, the pilot held out his own hat—a white Stetson.

Col. Livingstone himself had come to promote his circus.

The man was a heckuva showman. That was why he owned one of the biggest airshows in the country. But he wasn’t half the pilot Hitch was. And
that
was why, before many years more, Hitch would end up owning an even bigger airshow.

Winning this weekend’s competition would be a start. What he really needed was to get Livingstone to strike a deal, hiring Hitch’s crew to do their act as part of his circus for a while. Although it wasn’t a long-term strategy, that kind of regular work would give them the start they needed. But
first
he had to figure out the right kind of stunt to get Livingstone to notice him to begin with.

The plane whipped on by. Then the engine cut out. No doubt Livingstone was putting her down in an empty street so the folks could come out and see the plane for themselves. Nothing was so sure for luring customers to a show—and nothing mattered more to Livingstone than the luring of them.

“Whooee!” Lou said. “I wouldn’t ride in one of them contraptions if you paid me.” He cast a sideways glance at Scottie. “A feller might fall out.”

“You wait,” Hitch said. “Before the week’s out, you’ll be paying me to take you up.”

“I’d go up there with you,” Scottie said. “People been fallin’ straight out of the sky lately, haven’t you heard? Somebody needs to go up there and see to what’s happening.”

Hitch glanced at Jael beside him.

But she wasn’t watching Scottie—or the plane. She was staring across the street. Her face had gone as pale as alkaline soil, and she gasped, fast and hoarse.

“What’s the matter?” Hitch asked.

“Zlo.” And then, out of the back of her boot, came Matthew’s knife.

“Whoa, now.” He jumped away. “I thought we were past all that!”

She turned toward the door and, in her haste, smacked into Lou. He backpedaled, arms windmilling. His feet tangled with hers, and he fell backwards, pulling her down with him. She landed on top of him, her elbow in his stomach, the knife only inches away from his mustache. Behind his specs, his eyes bulged.

Dan dove into the fray. “What in tarnation? Get this crazy woman off him!” He reached for her knife hand.

She flipped over like a cat, rolling away from Lou and coming up in a crouch. She held the knife out in front, the other hand groping behind her for the door. Her teeth were bared in a snarl, but her eyes were big and afraid.

Hitch eased toward her, palms extended. “Calm down. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Just give me the knife. You don’t need a knife.”

“Now, I don’t know,” Lilla said, from over his shoulder. “A girl never knows when a knife might come in handy.”

“Shut up, Lilla.”

Dan and Scottie backed Jael up against the big window.

“Wait a minute,” Hitch said. “She doesn’t mean anything. She’s scared, can’t you see that?”

“You think Lou
ain’t
?” Scottie said.

Dan grabbed a chair and held it up, like a lion-tamer. He lunged forward, and Jael lunged sideways. One of the chair legs caught the corner of the window and went all the way through. The whole thing shattered in a rain of glass.

“Oh, great,” Hitch said.

Jael ducked around the corner of the open door and disappeared.

Lilla pushed Hitch. “Well, go after her.”

He followed Jael down the sidewalk and around the corner.

She had stopped and turned back, and she practically plowed into his chest.

The knife was still out, so he caught both her wrists and pushed her back against the wall.

She struggled. “
Pozhaluista, pozhaluista.
Here he is, I must be gone. Please!” She looked up at him, desperate, pleading.

He wasn’t about to let her go. Not after what she’d pulled out at the Berringers’. But he loosened his grip. “Look, it’s all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’ll go back to the cafe. Everything’ll be fine.”

“No!” She bucked against him. At least, she wasn’t kicking. “If he sees me— He cannot see me! I will be not having breath—I will be
mertvaya
—I will be dead!”

“It’s the other jumper from last night?” He looked over his shoulder, saw nothing worth seeing, then turned back. “Who is he? How come he shot that flare at you? And at me too, come to that?”

She only shook her head, panting. “Help me to leave far away from here! Please!”

This was not a good time for him to leave town. The one thing he needed to do this week was impress Livingstone. And Livingstone was
here
in town. For the moment, Hitch had the man all to himself. If ever he was to get a solo opportunity to help Livingstone promote the show—and get in good with him—this was going to be it. But then again, even though Hitch was here, and Livingstone was here—Hitch’s Jenny surely
wasn’t
.

He glanced over his shoulder again.

People milled down the sidewalks. They all looked like ordinary Joes. Farmers, bankers, workers from the sugar-beet factory on the edge of town. Nobody seemed interested in Jael, much less champing at the bit to do her harm.

But he couldn’t just leave her. For one thing, who knew what she’d do now that she was all worked up again. And for another... the kind of fear burning in her eyes didn’t show up out of nowhere. In fact, it was kinda making the skin on the back of his own neck itch.

So much for giving her back to whoever she belonged to.

He sighed. “You’re turning into a whole lot of trouble, you know that?”

She shook her head, not understanding.

If he was going to get her out of here, he needed a plane. If he was going to get Livingstone’s attention, he also needed a plane. And the only plane around right now was painted red, white, and blue.

“Give me the knife.”

She clenched it harder, her eyes boring into his, as if trying to get at the core of him. Then just like that, she let it go. It clanked to the sidewalk.

“All right.” He left the knife where it was and let her up from the wall, keeping hold of one of her wrists. “I’ve got an idea. It’s crazy, but it might work out for both of us.”

It might work out
if
Livingstone was as big a sportsman as Hitch remembered him being—and
if
the ploy drew in the crowds like he thought it would—and
if
he didn’t get arrested first.

He pulled her off the curb. “Stay close!”

They ran across two roads, dodging honking automobiles, and sprinted down the sidewalk to where Col. Livingstone had landed his plane. The man himself was standing a few yards off, pontificating to the gathered crowd. Nobody paid too much attention when Hitch snuck himself and Jael right on by. He loaded her into the front cockpit, started up the engine, and hopped in back.

Then people started paying attention.

Eight

HOW COULD HE have thought this was a good idea? In the rather impressive list of bad ideas—or at least
semi
-bad ideas—Hitch had come up with over the years, this one would have to be written in the history books with red ink.

In less than the time it had taken him to taxi this heap of Livingstone’s down that empty street, he had probably ruined any chance of even being
in
the competition, much less getting a job with Livingstone. His stomach turned all queasy and rolled over on itself.

He flew low over town, headed north toward the impromptu airfield. Half a dozen motorcars careened through the streets, giving chase. In the lead car, a man in a white suit brandished his Stetson. Hard to tell from here, but he looked a little red in the face.

A crowd was following him. That much, at least, was going right. Now Hitch just had to make Livingstone see it that way.

He turned forward again.

In the Jenny’s front cockpit, Jael rode like she was born to it. She sat up straight, neck craned to see the ground below, the tails of her red kerchief snapping in the wind.

He banked hard right just to see what she’d do.

She dropped a hip and rode the turn out like she’d known it was coming. Didn’t so much as grab the cockpit rim. She seemed to catch sight of him out of the corner of her eye, and she turned her head and actually smiled at him. Whatever had scared her on the ground didn’t seem to bother her much up here.

He grinned back.

The sky was like that. Up here, problems slipped away. People couldn’t make demands when you were in a plane. Even if they were riding with you, you wouldn’t be able to hear them. Once you spun that propeller and launched into the blue, fears and worries disappeared. Up here, everything was solid and fluid at the same time. Life was the buzz of the stick turning your hand numb. You held it, you controlled it. It was yours to keep or lose.