Cold Steel and Hot Lead [How the West Was Done 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (6 page)

“Certainly. But let’s practice with just the apple for a while first.”

When they entered the dining room, however, many people seemed to be staring at them. Had they heard about her corset being cut? Was it only Alameda’s imagination? No, people were talking behind their hands and pointing at them as she led the pair back to their table.

She recognized Bob Freund milling among the tables. She was about to raise her hand in an apathetic greeting when he stiffened and pointed. “There they are!” he bellowed. “They were there this morning—they know where my Kittie went!”

Another fellow with Bob shouted, “I’ll bet they were in on the act, too—just to steal Kittie away for themselves!”

As Bob’s group surged toward them and several other patrons stood to show solidarity, Alameda raised her hands in a calming manner. “People, people. These fellows had nothing to do with Kittie’s disappearance! They want to know just as you want to know who stole our dear Kittie Wells from us.”

Bob’s friend shouted, “That guy is another magician, one of those circus charlatans!”

Alameda tried to say, “Rudy isn’t with the circus. He lives here in—”

But Rudy himself stepped forward to confront the accusers. The whole dining room was quiet now, with only the occasional clank of a fork. Rudy spoke in a clear, loud showman’s voice. “People of Laramie, of which I am now one. I am Remington Rudy, not connected with this circus currently stuck in your beautiful town. But I have experience with the romantic world of the big top, and knowledge of some of their tricks and illusions. I can tell you that Montreal Jed, the illusionist in question, who was performing when Memphis Kittie—”

“Kittie Wells, you bastard!”

“—when Kittie Wells vanished and didn’t return. Montreal Jed knew nothing of it and was as surprised as we were, which I’m sure you could tell from his reaction. Now, we have a few leads to follow. We are looking just as hard as you are for the kidnapper responsible. I am assisted in this quest by Mr. Derrick Spiro, senator for Wyoming Territory—”

“Another mountebank!” bellowed Bob Freund.

Rudy spoke even louder to drown out Bob. “
Senator Derrick Spiro,
who is on his way to Cheyenne in support of a measure he wrote proposing giving the vote to women!”

This had the desired effect, as many women’s faces lit up, and a low buzz filled the room as they remarked upon this favorably.

Bob seemed to be aware he was losing righteous ground. He looked around lamely then stammered, “Well, why should we trust a magician and a politician who don’t even know Kittie?”

Rudy opened his mouth to answer, but Derrick stepped up. He spoke in the rich oratory tone of a politician or perhaps actor. “Sometimes outsiders can look at things most clearly. So if you patient residents would be so kind, we would like to go right now and follow some of these leads. Oh, and please refrain from lynching Mr. Montreal Jed. He is quite ill and completely incapable of perpetrating such a heinous crime as this.
We will find Miss Kittie!
”

Most of the women applauded, perhaps just as much for Senator Spiro’s good looks as his introduction of the women’s bill. One woman’s voice rose above the applause, crying, “Independence is happiness!”

Alameda knew this to be a battle cry of the women’s suffrage movement. She had heard her sister Liberty utter this slogan before. Soon other women took up the chant. Alameda mouthed it under her breath, unsure of the effect this might have on the crowd, as the majority of them were still irate, roostered men.

Bob Freund looked quite crushed to have had his mission derailed. He shouted, “Why don’t you just tell me what your leads are? I am Kittie’s fiancé, and I deserve to know if you know something I don’t!”

Smoothly, Derrick said, “Because we’re not entirely sure of them yet either. Now, if you’d let us follow these leads, perhaps we will have something to tell you tonight.”

“Can you accompany us?” Rudy whispered in Alameda’s ear. “Will your boss allow you to leave?”

“Yes.” Her boss was also her sister’s paramour, Captain Harland Park, the city’s main engineer. But Alameda also had another plan.

Once out front on the sidewalk, safely away from the bellowing buffoons that seemed to make up Bob Freund’s crowd, they headed toward the Union Pacific Hotel just a few doors down.

Alameda told the men, “Why don’t you stay at my sister’s house while we’re trying to find Kittie? Senator Spiro, surely the hotel is full with stranded passengers from the train, and my sister’s house is empty. She and her husband are in South Pass, actually, where they own a mine.”

“Indeed?” said Derrick. “Which mine?”

“The Carissa Lode.”

This trivial information seemed to have an enormous impact on the two men, who stopped cold in the street.

Derrick said, “The mine that Paddy Worth used to own.”

“Why, yes. That poor unfortunate fellow died too soon to see the enormous lode taken from the Carissa Mine, but he willed it to my sister and her new husband. They’ve spoken of Paddy many times.”

The two men shared comradely looks. Derrick said, “That’s a very kind offer, Miss Hudson.”

“Please call me Alameda.”

Derrick’s look was warm and passionate. These two men had some kind of brotherly love, that was plain to see. They claimed to have met only that morning, but it was clear their bond went back further than that. “Alameda.”

She smiled. “I think you’ll be comfortable in Albuquerque House. There are five bedrooms, but as I said, everyone is up in South Pass right now, and from the looks of the weather, they’ll be—”

“Wait.” Derrick took her by the wrists. “Did you say
Albuquerque House?
”

“Why, yes. In fact, maybe I’ll stay there, too. I’ve been staying with my father at Vancouver House, and it’s not as comfortable. There’s a fellow, an adjutant to the railroad, with a traumatic brain injury from the recent war, and—”

Her two new friends were laughing like jackasses. They were slapping each other on the shoulder and were so weak with mirth they had to cling to each other to stay upright. The source of the hilarity involved Albuquerque House. They kept gasping over and over things like “Albuquerque House!”

“The Phenomenal Percy Tibbles!”

“He was right again!”

“We need to call on him for more clues.”

What was so damned funny? Alameda smiled and even chuckled, too, although she had no idea why.

Rudy had seen Simon Hudson around town, pointed out to him as the richest merchant. He had even encountered Alameda’s sister Ivy, who worked the telegraph in the depot. But he wondered if old Simon had fucked the Hudson maid to produce Alameda. Ivy was also dark and beauteous, with high rounded cheekbones like Alameda. But Alameda was of a different breed altogether.

She seemed to have some Latin blood in her. It wasn’t just her fiery disposition, her lust for life. Ivy seemed to be that way, too. No, it was her voluptuous figure and her dark-lined chestnut eyes that set her apart from her sister. Her shape was the body poets had written about and playwrights had committed suicide over. Her abundant breasts sat high and muscular on her frame, begging to be sucked. Her small waist sloped to an ass of ample proportions, one could easily see, although she obviously didn’t wear a crinoline. Her ass was a balcony you could do Shakespeare from. Alameda had the classic hourglass proportions that the usual men sought in a mother for their children, and Rudy wondered why she had never wed. Twenty-eight, she had said she was. How did such a striking woman get to be that age without having been wed?

Rudy didn’t want to be attracted to a woman again. He had put such effort into only dallying with other men the past few years. He had dreaded this moment, but in the back of his mind, he’d known it would happen. His cock had just erected when he had smeared mustard oil on the luscious upraised titties. Well, what man would not obtain an erection under such circumstances? A man who was dead set and determined in his pursuit of the Italian fashion with other men. A man who was convinced that yes, indeed, women were the scourge of the earth and to love one again would be his annihilation.

Rudy was obviously, suddenly, not that man anymore. And it terrified him.

He would have to finish this Memphis Kittie business and leave town, perhaps with the Great Wilson Circus. He would never allow his love for a woman to devastate him so thoroughly again.

Now they sat in the parlor of Albuquerque House, which he discovered was not named after the territory in New Mexico but after some Portuguese explorer who had gone to India. Alameda found some whiskey in the sideboard, which she served the men. She took some herself, but Montreal Jed could only tolerate sarsaparilla. They had fetched him from his hiding spot in Rudy’s hotel room, and he draped himself weakly in a wing chair, his gaudy vest askew on his skeletal frame.

Rudy said, “I’m glad we don’t have to venture to New Mexico Territory to figure out what Albuquerque meant.”

Derrick shared a conspiratorial look with him. “Percy said we would find out more in Albuquerque. What do you think he meant?”

Alameda exhaled. “Now, who is this Percy fellow you keep mentioning? He told you to venture to Albuquerque to find out more about Kittie? Then he must know me or my sister, but I’ve never heard of any Percy here in town.”

Rudy had been figuring out how to explain the Phenomenal Percy to her. He hadn’t come up with anything satisfactory, so now he said, “He’s a sort of spirit guide, a mentor you might say. So he didn’t have to necessarily know you to suggest we might find answers in Albuquerque. He can see things other people can’t. “

“And sometimes people can’t see
him
,” Jeremiah said with disgust and a shudder.

“Jeremiah,” said Rudy, to change the subject, “I’ve been thinking that you might be neurasthenic. You tire easily, and you’re plainly not cut out for the showman’s life. Would you be agreeable to me treating you with my animal magnetism?”

“Animal magnetism?” Alameda sat up straighter. “You have healing powers?”

“Indeed,” Rudy answered grandly. “I have healed many people of trivial ailments such as headaches and women’s disorders and have even seen improvements in cases of consumption, insanity, and typhus.”

Alameda said, “I do wish you’d been around while my mother was ailing of consumption. But we tried everything, including healers who laid their hands on her, and nothing helped.”

“I’m so very sorry,” Rudy said. “But it can’t hurt to try, can it? Jeremiah here is much too fatigued to even rejoin his troupe or help us search for Kittie.”

“I’m sure,” said Jeremiah, “my fatigue is partially due to the shock of actually seeing The Phenomenal Percy. In the flesh, if you will.”

“Now, now,” said Rudy. Standing, he moved his wing chair near Jeremiah’s. “Let’s just give this a try. It’s called animal magnetism because it controls the fluid that moves in the bodies of animate beings.”

Jeremiah cringed back into his chair. “But I don’t
want
my fluids controlled.”

“Relax. I barely have to touch you.” He took his seat and expounded more to Alameda than to Jeremiah. “Health is the free flow of life through thousands of channels in our bodies. Illness is caused by obstacles to this flow, like in your asthma. Restoring this flow produces a crisis that restores health.”

Jeremiah wailed, “But I don’t
want
a crisis! I’m sick to death of crisises!”

Rudy cocked an eyebrow. “
Crises
. Well, you just said it. You’re sick to death and will be dead soon if you don’t do something about this. Now. Since Nature is failing to aid you, I am just provoking her efforts.”

Jeremiah squealed, “I thought you weren’t going to touch me!”

Rudy had only touched his knees to the patient’s. “I said
barely
touch. Relax. This isn’t bodily fluid we’re talking about. It’s a fluid that is the basis of the cosmos, the basis of which matter is made. It’s an energy, a life force. When it circulates, we’re healthy. When it’s blocked, we’re sick. Trust me.”

“Trust him,” Alameda echoed. She sat so far on the edge of the couch she was nearly toppling off. Rudy was proud that she was so interested. Then he despised himself for caring what she thought.

“Now.” Staring into Jeremiah’s fearful eyes, Rudy made passes with his hands hovering about an inch over Jeremiah’s form from his shoulders down his arms. He wished he had his glass harmonica—playing its crystalline tunes seemed to enhance the movement of cosmic fluid—but he had found success without it.

“This is creepy,” Jeremiah whispered.

Now Rudy had to press his fingers lightly to Jeremiah’s diaphragm.

Jeremiah giggled and squirmed. “I’m ticklish.”

Rudy hadn’t mentioned that this portion of the treatment could be held for an hour or so. The desired effect was a convulsion that would enhance the cure. “Do you feel any sensations?”

Jeremiah giggled. “Only the heat from your hands.”

“Well, you must relax. It’s what the Chinese call
chi
, the flow of energy—”