Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (37 page)

Darting from beneath the chifforobe, the injured rat escaped through a tangle of kicking feet.

Stovepipe swung the Winchester and pointed it up toward the ceiling, which softened the character of the light in the room. Blue sparks crackled from the dial on the rifle’s stock, indicating that its charge was waning.

Glowering at him in outrage was the hotelier, Erik Kauffmann, whom Stovepipe had met several hours earlier when he first arrived in town. Fully dressed in his street clothes, Kauffmann carried a small brown Dachshund with his left arm, the little dog’s lips curling as a low growl rumbled from its throat, mirroring its master’s anger. Kauffmann took three steps inside the room, stopping only when a fourth would have planted his feet in the spilled whale oil. “Herr Montpelier,” he said indignantly, “vee haff a problem here.”

Before he could continue, Stovepipe kicked one of the rodent carcasses so that it rolled across the boards, gliding on a layer of slick oil until it slapped hard against Kauffmann’s toes, its long pink tail whipping around the hotelier’s ankle.

“Yes,” Stovepipe declared. “We have a
rat
problem.”

At that instant, the pewter dial on his Winchester spat out three final blue sparks. With a faint hiss, the rifle’s light beam generator went dead, plunging the room back into darkness.

B
reakfast was unexpectedly fragrant and delicious.

Stovepipe had arisen quite late, getting some much-needed rest after finally drifting to sleep near dawn, but not before
adding three more rats to his kill count. Kaufman had eventually offered to move him to a different room, giving him his choice of three. Stovepipe was allowed to pick between one on the hotel’s first floor and either of two on the hotel’s third floor. He had insisted on seeing each room and testing each mattress very carefully before committing to a decision.

“Zee man must try
all three
,” muttered the hotelier impatiently.

Stovepipe grinned. “That’s how I am.”

His new room, located on the highest floor, was smaller, noticeably colder, and had a musty smell about it, but at least it did not stink of whale oil and Stovepipe had at last slept undisturbed there. Only the sound of a late-morning firewood delivery, hundreds of split logs crashing from the back of a horse-drawn dray, had roused him.

As the sun moved toward noon, he belatedly enjoyed a hearty German-style morning meal in the hotel’s modest little six-table dining facility. Seated nearby were several elderly bearded and white-haired Europeans, displaced here in the wilds of Texas but far from free of Europe’s woes.

Or from its rats,
thought Stovepipe.

A blond girl, barely twenty years old but big-boned and wide-hipped, her hair braided in long pigtails, approached him with a serving tray. Leaning forward, she lowered it to the tabletop, displaying neat rows of soft-boiled eggs, still in their shells, each standing upright in a brightly painted wooden cup. Stovepipe took one while trying hard not to stare at the girl’s ample white cleavage, pleasantly visible as the neck of her gown hung slack while she hovered there. A direct ray of sunlight from the nearby window lit her bosom, the gown becoming almost translucent in the warm, bright aura. The effect was such that Stovepipe half expected to hear trumpets and choirs of angels.

“My name’s Thomas Montpelier,” he said, forcing himself to look up at her face instead. “But please call me Stovepipe. Everybody does, on account of me bein’ so tall.”

“I am Greta Freiburg,” she said softly, a heavy Bavarian accent
sweetening her English. “It pleases me to meet you, Herr…Stovepiper.”

“Freiburg?” Stovepipe replied, grinning. “I take it, then, that you are not Herr Kauffmann’s daughter?”

She smiled and shook her head. “
Mein
father is Fritz Freiburg, zee brewmaster. Haff you not zampled zee fine beers of New Hamelin, Herr Stovepiper?”

He shrugged. “As soon as I finish my breakfast, by all means bring me a schooner of your best.”

Greta chuckled and batted her blue eyes, blond eyelashes fluttering. “Herr Kauffmann serves no beer, nor wine, nor spirits, here at his hotel. You vill haff to go to zee Alt Bamberg Bier Garten.” Rising to her full height, she pointed through the window and up the street.

Wearing a ridiculous pink apron, Kauffmann waddled up to the table with a plate of meat and used a long, iron two-pronged fork to shovel fragrant strips onto Stovepipe’s plate. Still hot from the pan, the beef strips sizzled. The aroma was pure heaven.

“Thanks,” he said appreciatively.

Kauffmann bowed and, with an impatient gesture, urged Greta to the next table. Feigning sadness, she waved silently to Stovepipe as she carried off the egg tray.

Kauffmann turned back to Stovepipe. “Vill there be anything else, Herr Montpelier?”

“Not this morning,” he answered, reaching into an inner pocket of his long slick coat. Without a further word, he produced a tiny pewter dome from within the coat and clicked a brass switch on its side. The dome began to emit a loud ticking sound, like exaggerated clockworks. Stovepipe placed it atop his boiled egg, where it spun completely around once and tumbled off onto the tablecloth, taking the top of the egg with it. Now upended, with its tiny blades pulsing uselessly, the little dome ticked all the louder for the indignity it suffered. Stovepipe switched off the device and, after adding a dash of black pepper to the open top of the egg, plunged his spoon inside.

Kauffmann picked up the little pewter device and turned it
over in his hand, admiring it with open astonishment. “Old Fooks would love ziss.”

“Old folks?” asked Stovepipe, puzzled.

“Old
Fooks
,” said Kauffmann. “Herr Fritz Fooks. He vuss a clock-winder back in the old country.”

“Is he staying here? I’d be happy to—”

“
Nein
. He vurks out at the woodchoppers’ camp now. Vee haff little use for clock-winders in New Hamelin, but vee haff much need for chopped wood.”

Kauffmann placed the device carefully back on the tabletop and turned to offer his beef platter to another guest. At that moment, however, an enormous brown rat darted from the cover of a dangling tablecloth and skittered between Greta’s feet, with Kauffmann’s little brown dog in rapid pursuit. Greta screamed, tossing her tray skyward. Eggs flew in all directions, several of them connecting with Kauffmann’s head. Stunned, he dropped his plate of meat, which shattered on the floor.

Stovepipe got to his feet. He pulled a large, thin, flat steel knife from the slender sheath on his belt. It required only a split second for him to adjust the center-mass weight on its double-edged blade before he threw the knife across the room. The knife spun like a wheel, turning exactly six rotations before the razor point of its tip connected with the rat’s body at midspine, pinning the unfortunate pest to the floorboards and killing it instantly. The Dachshund approached it, tentatively sniffing its limp carcass.

Stovepipe walked over and retrieved his knife, taking note of the rat’s partially crushed left shoulder blade and mangled left front leg. “This is the one that escaped from my room last night,” he observed, turning to face Kauffmann. “I think that—”

He stopped in midsentence, staring in astonishment at the spectacle playing out across the room. The platter Kauffmann dropped had broken into dozens of irregular white fragments, but the fresh-cooked meat it carried had all landed between two dining tables. The rats were helping themselves to it.

Rodents of all sizes were darting from cover, seizing strips and chunks of it between their teeth, and then skittering away to
enjoy the feast in private. In seconds, every bit was gone. Kauffmann’s dog charged into the midst of the shattered platter but arrived too late. The canine whined in frustration.

Stovepipe sighed. “I think you
really do
have a rat problem here.”

T
he laughter of children seemed incongruous to him amid the gloomy gray streets of New Hamelin, but Stovepipe realized that they had adapted well, making a game of the rat infestation.

The sky had turned cloudy again and the air was cool, not unusual for so late in the year, but the dust beneath Stovepipe’s feet was as powdery as any dry desert. He trudged up the street, boot leather plowing his path. He wore his shiny ankle-length fish coat and a wide-brimmed brown bowler hat with built-in sand goggles, although at the moment the goggles were retracted and concealed in the hat’s brim. His Winchester carbine hung from a leather sling over his right shoulder, muzzle pointed toward the ground. Despite the customized weapon’s mechanical problem, its familiar weight was a comfort in any unfamiliar territory, from the wide wilderness of Comanche hunting grounds to the dusty streets of little Texas towns.

Rats darted from beneath the boardwalks and porches of New Hamelin’s many pinewood buildings. Whenever one appeared, several small boys—and occasionally girls—would leap after it, shrieking and cackling as they gave chase, armed with rocks and sticks, which they hurled furiously at the furry fugitives. Stovepipe saw one little fellow who had fashioned himself a small bow and several crude arrows from sagebrush wood. The child’s well-practiced archery proved deadly to several fleeing rodents.

Stovepipe paused and watched them for a moment, regretting his inability to open fire and execute the fleeing vermin. Two potent clockwork grenades remained in his arsenal, and he wondered briefly what effect they might have if tossed into a large congregation of the pests.

A dog began to bark.

Then another.

From the hotel behind Stovepipe came the sound of a third, Kauffmann’s little pet, yapping and turning itself excitedly in circles. More dogs joined in from farther up the street, some of them letting loose long, wailing howls.

The sound of a train whistle roared from somewhere in the distance, toward the east. It instantly brought the whole town to a stop. Riders and wagon drivers reined up short. Folks resting on sidewalks or chatting at doorsteps looked up, startled, pausing in midconversation. Shades rolled up in second- and third-floor windows, faces pressing against the glass. Doors flew open, curious heads poking out. The children stopped running and turned, facing toward the sound. Momentarily freed of all hostile pursuit, the legions of rats skittered for cover.

The choruses of barking, howling dogs grew louder and more frantic.

The faraway whistle sounded again, now accompanied faintly by the unmistakable chugging of a powerful steam locomotive. The ground began to shake.

Stovepipe knew what everyone was thinking and why the dogs were in such alarm. There were no rails within a hundred miles in any direction. The town of New Hamelin lay much too far west for the Great Northern Railroad and way too far north for the Texas Western.

So
what
on earth is making that noise?

The answer arrived a few minutes later. It rolled directly into town on wheels made of gigantic ribbed-iron drums, leaving two parallel trails of corduroy impressions punched into the sandy plain behind it. It was a massive thing, a land-ironclad, part locomotive and part battleship. Its sooty black boiler stood as tall as the Hotel Kauffmann’s second story and was crowned by a row of smokestacks almost as high as the third. White clouds ballooned from some of these iron columns, while black smoke trailed from others. The tubes of an immense pipe organ, darkened with dust and webbed with verdigris, protruded like porcupine spines from the machine’s rear.

Women screamed. Men ran for cover. Children fled up staircases. Dogs leaped and yapped as if possessed by demons. Horses whickered in terror, many of them rearing up on their hind legs and casting their riders into the dust. Near the hotel, a team of Percherons hitched to a half-empty lumber dray bolted in panic, slinging the wagon left and right, split logs spilling from the back end as it lurched forward.

The elbow rods connecting the ironclad’s wheels churned more slowly as its speed slackened. Rolling over the spilled logs, the wheels cracked them like matchsticks and ground the resulting splinters into sawdust. Loudly losing momentum, the machine crunched to a halt in the center of New Hamelin, dripping rusty water and stinking of heated iron.