Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories Read Online Free PDF

black train. I couldn't make out the riders' faces none 'cause they wore kerchiefs 'cross their mouths and goggles over their eyes, but I knew it were the Glory Girls. Oh, they were a sight to behold, with their hair flying out free and the dust rising up into a cloud, like the mist of a primeval forest. One of the girls raised her arm, and I couldn't see what happened real well, but a blue light bubble come over the train and it stopped dead on the tracks. Then the picture crackled up like old Christmas paper, and there weren't no more. Chief Coolidge turned up the gas lamps again.
    "What do you make of that, Miss Jones?"
    "Well, sir, I don't rightly know."
    "Nor do we. No one in the divisions has seen anything like it. However, we've heard that someone who may have been Colleen Feeney was seen near the mines, inquiring after a watchmaker." He leaned both fists on his desk. "I need a woman on the inside. You could gain their trust. Alert us to their plans. It would be a chance to prove yourself, Miss Jones. But of course, it's your choice."
    Your choice. It were what John Barks said to me once.
     
    Chief Coolidge set me up in a rooming house near the mines just outside Speculation. We'd heard tell that the Glory Girls come through there every now and then for supplies. It were let known that I could be handy; I fixed the furnace at the brothel and got the clock in the town square working again after a Pinkerton done a bit of helpful sabotage on it. I went about my business, and one afternoon, there were a knock at my door and then I were looking into the sly green eyes of a girl not much older'n me from the looks of it. Her curly red hair were tied back at her neck, and she walked like a gunslinger, wary and ready. Miss Colleen Feeney had arrived.
    "I hear that you're handy with watches and gears," she said, picking up my magnifying glass and giving it a look-through.
    "That so?" Chief Coolidge had said the less you spoke, the better off you were. I didn't talk much anyway, so that suited me just fine.
    "I've got something needs fixing."
    I jerked my head at the box of parts on my desk. "Everybody's got something needs fixing."
    "Well, this is something special. And I'll pay."
    "If it's beedleworm dumplings and good-luck charms, I ain't interested."
    She grinned and it made her face a different face altogether, like somebody who knew what it was to be happy once. "I got real money. And earbobs with emeralds the size of your fist. Or maybe you'd like some Poppy?"
    "What'm I gonna do with emerald earbobs on this dirt clod?"
    "Wear 'em to the next hanging," she said, and then I were the one grinning.
    I packed up my kit, such as it were, and Colleen stopped to pick up some sugar and chewing tobacco at Grant's Dry Goods. She bought a bag of licorice whips and give one to all the kids in the store. On the way out, we had to pass through the revival tents. It were the one time I got a might nervous, because Becky Threadkill took sight of me. Becky and I done all our catechisms together, and she were always the one to tell if somebody stopped paying attention or didn't finish making their absolutions. I figured her to call me out, and she didn't disappoint.
    "Adelaide Jones."
    "Becky Threadkill."
    "It's Mrs. Dungill now. I married Abraham Dungill." She puffed herself up like we oughta be laying at her feet. I had half a mind to tell her that Sarah Simpson had been his first choice and everybody knowed it. "Over to the township, they say you got yourself in some trouble." Her smile were smug.
    "That so?"
    "'Tis. Heard it told you stole two bottles of whiskey from Mr. Blankenship's establishment, and you was in jail three long months for it."
    I hung my head and shuffled my boots in the dirt, but mostly, I were trying to hide the smile bubbling up. Chief Coolidge done a good job getting the word out that I were a thief.
    Becky Threadkill took my head hanging as confirmation of my sins. "I knowed you'd come to no good, Addie Jones.