Flames of silver, p.4
Flames of Silver, page 4
Only then did he realize he still clung to the fire axe. The dog might think he was one of the firemen. The dog ran ahead, but Mason had to follow more slowly. His body was one giant ache, and muscles he hadn’t known he had protested every move. He slipped and slid down the street to the lower intersection. The dog barked at him, waiting impatiently.
“Go on. Find your master,” Mason urged. The dalmatian only barked louder. He gave in and walked past the site of the first fire. Smoke curls rose from the wreckage. A quarter mile down the street the fire company started working to build a head of steam in the pump engine and once more refill the water tank. The helpers were fewer now, exhausted from earlier efforts.
From what Mason saw, this might be more threatening than the first fire. If it jumped from the single building already fully ablaze, it had a considerable ways to spread. A half mile or more of tinderbox buildings could go up in flames.
“You, get to work. Chop out walls that might let the fire spread.”
Mason looked around, wondering who the fire captain had called to. The barking dog woke him to the situation. Captain Delahunt was giving him the order. He raised his axe in response, but the fire captain had already turned back to getting the stream of water gushing from the hose onto the right parts of the fire. Mason saw that Delahunt fought places that looked less dangerous but that afforded spots for rapid spread. The man knew his job.
Without any further instruction, Mason hiked down the street looking for spots where the fire might jump from one building to the next. He found one office that, if it caught fire, gave an easy conduit in several directions for the voracious flames. Putting his back to it, he started chopping at the wall closest to the fire. Sweat poured off him, and breathing became more difficult as new clouds of smoke blew down the street, but he made progress. The wall began to lean, then toppled from his effort.
He stepped away and studied his handiwork. A decent fire break had formed because of his effort. If any of the wood from the downed wall caught fire, it only spread along the ground. The real danger came from jumping roof to roof. He remembered a friend in San Francisco telling of a fire across the Bay where the crowns of treetops had caught fire and then the flames had jumped from tree to tree without ever touching the ground.
The barking dog drew his attention. He went back into the street. The sight a few doors farther down the street made him catch his breath. A quick pat on the dog’s head to thank the dalmatian and he rushed to look inside.
A small fire burned in the middle of the floor of what looked to be another lawyer’s office. He wasted no time using the broad side of the axe head to scatter the papers and then stamp them out. He finished and sank into a chair to rest. The charred sheets haunted him. It was as if someone had piled up the loose sheets and then set them on fire.
“Arson?” Mason found that hard to believe. In a town so prone to fire, such a crime deserved hanging. He leaned forward and poked through the papers with the axe head, then bent over and picked up a piece of wood. He had been skeptical before. Now anger burned in him as fierce as the fire.
This fire had been started by someone dropping a lucifer into a carefully prepared pile of paper. A quick flick sent the matchstick flying. Mason got to his feet and looked around to be sure other heaps of paper hadn’t been lit. When he went back into the street, the dog barked loudly and ran this way and that. Sure that it had his attention, the dog ran for a store across the street.
Mason wasted no time to see what the dog had found in the tailor shop. A quick look around showed nothing. The dog crowded past and ran for the back room. Mason went to see what the dog already had.
Two small children huddled together under a table.
“Come on out,” Mason said. “You shouldn’t stay here with the fire so close. It’s only a few stores away.”
The children clutched each other. The boy looked to be four or five, and he was the older of the pair. The little girl wasn’t much older than three. From their matching dark hair and green eyes, they had to be siblings.
“Is this your pa’s tailor store?” Mason looked around, wondering why a parent had abandoned his children.
“Mama’s,” the boy said. “She told us to stay.”
“Where’d she go?” Mason didn’t expect an answer and got none. He changed his tactics. Trying to grab the children if they tried to get away from him would only delay them going to safety. In the distance, he heard the roar of the fire, the chugging steam engine powering the pump and commands shouted by the fire captain. If he understood Delahunt’s orders, the fire was marching along the street in this direction.
“I need your help. Can you help me?” Mason saw he had the boy’s attention. The girl buried her face in her brother’s chest. “Someone needs to take care of the dog. The spotted dog.”
“Smudge?”
“Yeah, Smudge. He’d like you to see that he got back to Captain Delahunt.”
“He’s a hero. My mama says so.”
Mason whistled. The well-trained dog came to him and sat at his feet.
“Smudge wants you to look after him. Both of you.” Mason motioned for the children to come out from under the table. For a second, he thought they’d argue. Instead, the boy led his sister out, both of them crawling on hands and knees. To Mason’s relief, the dog went and licked the little girl’s face until she giggled.
Mason backed away. The dog and his two charges came out. Mason did everything not to spook the kids until he got them out of the shop.
“Smudge will stay with you until you find your ma.” He saw this wasn’t the right thing to say now. The children threw their arms around the dalmatian’s neck and clung to him. In spite of his training, the dog didn’t cotton to such attention and tried to pull away.
“Tommy, Iris!” The shrill voice cut through the general hubbub. “You’re safe!” A tall woman stumbled along from the direction of the fire, arms reaching out. “My babies!”
The two children looked up at the woman. The boy—Tommy—called, “See, Mama, I got to pet Smudge.” The dog barked in response. The woman ignored the dalmatian and scooped up the boy. Iris crawled over and used her mother’s skirts to pull herself up so she could hug a leg.
“You found them,” she said, turning to Mason. “Thank you. I got cut off by the fire. There’s a barricade. It took me—”
“They’re safe, ma’am,” Mason said. “You’d better take them as far as you can from this street, though it looks like the fire’s almost under control.” He saw Captain Delahunt waving off the bucket brigade filling the engine’s water tank in spite of the fire still licking at exposed walls.
“My brother’s place is outside town. We’ll go there.” The woman gathered her young-uns and hurried off. Mason watched until he was sure they were safely on their way, then frowned. What did he care? He wasn’t a fireman. There wasn’t any reason for him to risk his life the way he had, though he felt good about rescuing the children.
Thinking about Blue Dirt Duggan sobered him up. He had saved the man’s life, too, but that might not have been any favor, from the look of his injuries.
Smudge barked and trotted away, circled and came back, barked again, then ran off to where the fire captain supervised a length of water hose being rolled up and properly stored. Mason took his time approaching Delahunt. He wasn’t sure what he should say about the pile of papers and the lucifer that had been dropped onto them.
“That’s our axe.” Captain Delahunt grabbed it from Mason’s hands.
Mason almost protested. He had saved lives with that axe—then he realized how loco that sounded.
“Glad to be of help.” He pointed to the distant figures of the woman and her children. “Got them to safety and made a fire break out of the office three or four doors down the street.”
Delahunt fixed him with a hard look. Before he said anything, Smudge barked and jumped up on Mason. He had to pet the dog.
“Well-trained fire dog, here,” he said.
“Smudge doesn’t take kindly to that. People petting him,” Delahunt said. He whistled twice and the dog tore off, jumped and landed on the seat beside the driver of the fire engine. “Is the tank drained? Then get on back to the firehouse. We’ve got some more serious drinking to do.”
“Did you miss a coal from the first fire?” Mason asked.
“We got them all. This was another fire,” Delahunt said. He stalked off, angry at the criticism of his firemen’s abilities.
Mason started to ask some more questions, but the fire captain stepped up and grabbed a handhold. The engine rattled and clanked as it headed back to its firehouse on the level above. It was all well and good having confidence in men he had undoubtedly trained, but Delahunt hadn’t given any reason for the new fire. For all that, the first was something of a mystery.
Rather than following the fire company back into their saloon, Mason began poking through the ashes of the first building. The side toward the crossing street was in the worst shape, as if the fire started on that wall and spread. Mason slowly walked the perimeter, not sure what he sought. The next building down had suffered some serious damage, but as he neared the site of the second fire, he saw less trace of fire. Wood had been scorched, but it hadn’t ignited. When he came to the far wall of the second building, he saw how the flames had reared up and fanned out.
The source of the fire was a huge burned spot.
“Whatcha doin’?”
Mason looked up. A fireman wobbled about and finally tried to keep himself upright by leaning against a burned stud in the front wall. It gave way and he stumbled about. When he came closer, Mason realized the man would go up in a bright blue flame if he got too near heat. He had been drinking, and he wasn’t one of Delahunt’s crew. His brass buckle proclaimed him to be a member of the other fire brigade. The numeral 2 was smudged with soot, and other parts of his uniform showed he wasn’t part of the current firefighting effort. Suspenders were marked with yellow stripes, not brass buttons, and he wore a curious insignia on his right sleeve.
“What’s that mean?” Mason pointed to the insignia.
The man came closer, bent and stared at the source of the second fire.
“Somebody got real careless, that’s what it means. Why’d anyone miss the fireplace that much?”
“No fireplace,” Mason said. “There’s a Franklin stove.” The iron, potbellied stove stood forlornly at the middle of what had been the main room. Everything around it had been turned to charcoal. “But I meant your insignia.”
“This? We’re the Fire Drake Brigade. Best damn firemen in Virginia City. They may have started ’fore us and call us Fire Brigade No. 2, that’s why they got number one on their buckles. But we’re better. Finley’s Fire Drakes.” He braced himself against the wall and peered at the fire pit. “Somebody set the fire. Why’d they go and do a thing like that?”
“You know about this?”
“Been with ole Donald Finley goin’ on three years. I’m the best he has. Course I know. I teach the greenhorns what it takes to get a fire going. Fuel, fire and . . . and . . .”
“Air,” Mason finished for him. “I’m a chemist. I know some of what it takes to smelt ore.”
“Air. You’re right. I’ll tell Captain Finley to recruit you.”
“That’s good,” Mason said, “but we should tell somebody about this. If it’s arson, he has to be stopped before he sets more fires.”
“Arrest him! That’s the ticket!” The fireman waved his arm around. “The marshal’s off over there. Let’s go tell him.”
Mason considered what the lawman might think if a newcomer to Virginia City reported a crime. He wasn’t sure having a drunk fireman telling of arson was much better. The two of them might carry some weight.
“Lead on. I don’t know where the marshal’s office is since I just arrived this afternoon.”
“New to town? Well, you can’t just join any of the brigades. No, sir. You got to be recommended. You got to be upstanding and then you can volunteer. We’re the town’s royalty, we are. Common folks, they look up to us.”
“There’s rivalry between the two brigades?” Mason steered the man into the street and waited to see which direction he took. He was drawn back past the steep cross street.
“Two? Rivalry between two of us? There’s seven other brigades. Sometimes we get into fights over who can put out a fire.”
“The victors are heroes, at least for the day?” Mason shook his head sadly. The “winning” fire crew was feted, given free drinks and probably a lot more.
“We got traditions to uphold. The Fire Drakes are the oldest.”
“Why’s Captain Delahunt get to put ‘one’ on his belt buckle, then?”
“Finley never thought of it, that’s why. One day we saw Delahunt’s boys show up with those buckles. They stole a march on us, but we were first in town. We’re the best. Ask anybody. The honest ones’ll tell you that.”
Mason had to support the man the more they walked, but when he saw the jailhouse, the drunk seemed to sober up. He stopped in the middle of the street and pointed at two deputies coming from the office.
With a roar like a lion, the drunk pushed Mason aside and charged. He crashed into the two lawmen, fists swinging wildly. The trio went down in a writhing, fighting, clawing pile. Mason stared, not having any notion what to do.
CHAPTER FIVE
Morgan Mason’s first instinct was to run. The three men rolled over and over in the dirt, kicking up a small dust storm. He backed off a step or two, then remembered why he had brought the fireman here. The idea of someone sneaking around town setting deadly fires had to be addressed. Whoever did it hadn’t killed anyone yet—that he knew of. If both fires had been set by the same varmint, there might have been others set earlier. From the look of the town, the smallest fire could turn deadly if more were set in the future.
He stepped forward, saw a flash of suspenders marked with stripes, grabbed and yanked as hard as he could. His feet shot out from under him, but he clung to the fireman’s suspenders long enough to pull him off the two struggling deputies. They rolled away and came to their knees, both reaching for their six-shooters.
“Wait, stop, don’t shoot!” Mason’s voice cracked with strain. “We came here to report a crime.”
“Jasper Jessup’s the only criminal I see,” snarled one deputy. He cocked his six-gun and pointed it at the fireman, who sat cross-legged in the dirt.
“Don’t!” Mason stepped around the seated fireman. He held his hands out to stop the lawman from firing. The look in the man’s eyes told him a second dead body in the street wouldn’t cause him to lose any sleep.
“What’s the ruckus? Put that hogleg away, John. You know better ’n to shoot an unarmed suspect.” A tall, thin man made of piano wire and cured leather strode from the jailhouse. “You, too, Luther. You know what I told you boys.”
“He’s the one, Marshal. He’s the one what gave me a hotfoot over at the Crazy Eights. The whole danged bar laughed at me.” John thrust his six-gun out and wove about to get a shot at Jasper Jessup around Mason.
“I don’t know what he’s done, but him and me have something important to tell you, Marshal. Real important.” Mason stood his ground.
The marshal stepped forward, grabbed his deputy’s collar and pulled him to his feet. He whispered something in John’s ear that made the deputy turn fiery red in the face. Grinding his teeth, the deputy lowered the hammer and shoved his gun back into his holster.
“Come on, Luther. We got a patrol to do.” John stepped around Mason, shot him daggers in a look that cut deep and hurt hard, then stormed off. Luther slid his six-shooter back into his holster. His glare was reserved for Jasper Jessup.
“I just saved you from getting ventilated,” the marshal said. “This had better be worth my while. Otherwise, I’ll call my boys back and let them use you both for target practice.”
“John started it, Marshal Benteen. You know how he is when he gets a snootful of whiskey. He was downright disrespectful and needed to be shown what for. He had the gall to say the Fire Drakes were slackers and that Delahunt’s scoundrels were the best in town. Them’s fighting words!”
“Jessup, you cause more trouble than any three others. I don’t care if you’re Finley’s pet. The townsfolk might look at you like you’re some kind of god, but to me you’re a troublemaker and nothing more.” The marshal took Jessup by the shoulders and lifted. For a man who looked like he had one foot in the grave, being so thin and all, he showed considerable strength. Mason vowed not to cross the lawman.
“You still owe us the bounty for putting out the fire last week, too.”
“The mayor’s got the reward money all tied up. Finley will get it when I do. And after today’s fires, Delahunt will demand to be paid first. Those were big fires compared to the one you put out.”
“Marshal Benteen, we have proof the fires today were set on purpose.” Mason had no desire to get caught up in the city’s politics. From what he had seen, the fire brigades were the first and foremost cause of gossip. For a boomtown floating on a sea of gold and silver, that made some sense. The miners who had struck it rich weren’t inclined to do anything but work their claims, and who wanted to hear the sad stories of prospectors unable to find a decent vein to work?
“That’s a mighty serious charge. How do you know?” Benteen looked him over from head to toe. He obviously did not approve.
“I can show you what I found.”
“What you found? Not him?” Benteen shook Jasper Jessup like a terrier with a rat. The fireman’s teeth clacked.
“He agreed with me when I pointed it out.” Mason shifted nervously from foot to foot. This wasn’t going the way he’d expected. “Come with us and I’ll show you.”
