Clementine Read Online Free PDF

soul if I have to replace you before you’ve done me any good. Be ready to hit the road in forty-five minutes.”
    He paused to take a breath. She took the opportunity to stand, and say, “Thank you sir, and I’ll take that under consideration. You have my word that I’ll do my very best to prevent myself from getting killed, even though my very first assignment will throw me into the path of a hardened criminal and his crew of bloodthirsty air pirates.”
    Pinkerton’s face fashioned an expression halfway between a grin and a sneer. He said, “I hope you didn’t think I was asking you here to sit still and look pretty.”
    She was poised to leave the office but she hesitated, one hand resting on the back of the chair. She turned to the door, then changed her mind. She said, “Mr. Pinkerton, over the last twenty-five years I’ve risked my life to pass information across battlefields. I’ve broken things, stolen things, and been to prison more times than I’ve been married. I’ve shot and killed six men, and only three of those events could lawfully be called self-defense. I’ve been asked to do a great number of unsavory, dangerous, morally indefensible things in my time, and I’ve done them all without complaint because I do what needs to be done, whenever it needs to be done. But there’s one thing I’ve never been asked to do, and it’s just as well because I’d be guaranteed to fail.”
    He asked, “And what’s that?”
    Without blinking she said, “I’ve never been asked to sit still and look pretty.”
    And before he could form a response, she swished out of the office, turning sideways to send her skirts through the doorway.
    Outside the office door, the company operated in measured chaos. A man at a typewriter glanced up and didn’t glance away until Maria stared him down on her way past him. Two other men chattered quietly over a fistful of papers, then stopped to watch the lady go by. She gave them a quick, curt smile that didn’t show any teeth, and one of them tipped his hat.
    The other did not.
    She made a note of it, guessed at what she might expect from all three of them in the future, and found her way to the spot Allan Pinkerton had designated as hers.
    The last desk on the left was empty and naked except for the promised folder on top. The folder was reassuringly fat until Maria opened it and realized that most of the bulk came from an envelope stuffed with crisp Union bills. Accompanying the envelope was a note explaining how to record her expenses and how to report them, as well as a small sheaf of telegrams that added up to a clipped, brief synopsis of what Allan Pinkerton had told her. And then, typed neatly on a separate page, she found the rest of what was known about the details of her first assignment.
    She withdrew the wooden chair and sat down to read, momentarily ignoring Pinkerton’s initial order that she be on the road within forty-five minutes. She’d rather be fully prepared and a little bit late than overeager and uninformed.
    In drips and drabs, Maria extracted the remaining facts from the small sheaf of paperwork. The Clementine was coming from San Francisco, where it underwent a hull reconstruction following battle damage—for it was a retired war dirigible. On the ship’s voyage back east she was moving medicine, bedding, and canned goods to a sanatorium outside Louisville; and there, she would be assigned to a Lieutenant Colonel (presumably of the Union persuasion) by the name of Ossian Steen. Upon the Clementine ’s safe and formal arrival into this man’s hands, Maria would be recalled to Chicago.
    Little was known about the ship in pursuit. It was described as a smaller craft, lightly loaded and perhaps lightly armed. This unknown vessel had made at least two attempts upon the Clementine . The most recent had resulted in a crash outside of Topeka, Kansas, but wreckage of the unnamed ship had not been located. It was suspected that the ship was once again