Magnificent Devices Read online

  Claire could not imagine what a velogig could be. A boat that ran on land? Some kind of flying machine?

  Whatever picture she had in her mind, it bore no relation to the reality that Alice assembled on the far side of the shack, which faced Spider Woman and the trackless desert beyond.

  It looked rather like a tripod on wheels. There was a bench on which to sit, and a steering mechanism formed by a bar attached to pulleys. And towering above it all was a blue silk sail that was already billowing and snapping with eagerness to taste the wind.

  “Good heavens.”

  Alice dusted off her hands and jammed a wrench in a pocket of her pants. “I’ve had it out a few times. You need to be careful—if the wind gets ahead of you the whole thing can go top over teakettle.”

  “The sons of the squire next door taught me to sail a boat out of the harbor at home. I don’t suppose this is anything like that?”

  “Dunno—I’ve never seen the ocean.”

  “Never seen it?” She couldn’t imagine going through life without having seen the ocean—so vast and changeable and full of wonders. It restored a sense of your place in the world, the ocean did, and kept you humble. “Oh, Alice.”

  “Well, when I get to San Francisco, I’ll see it then, won’t I?”

  “I hope you do. You cannot go through life without doing so.”

  “I’ve managed so far, but maybe you’re right. Come on over here, now, and I’ll show you how to steer.”

  It was not a bit like a sailboat. In fact, managing the direction of the sail as well as the direction of travel was going to prove quite a challenge. Claire trundled across the ground, feeling at any moment as if the sail would catch a good stiff breeze and send her flying across half a mile before flipping her off and continuing on to New York without her.

  “Lady!”

  She jounced back at Lizzie’s call and climbed down, halfway between exhilaration and humiliation. “Lizzie, wait till you—”

  “Lady, they’re coming!” Lizzie ran out to meet her. “A band of men, they’re comin’ this way from town. It’s too far to see, but we have to hide.”

  Alice ran into the shack and a minute later came out, a fat bundle that might once have been a pillowcase in her arms.

  “Claire, you have to go right now. That’s pa coming, lit up and looking for a fight. I just heard shots.”

  “He’s not going to fight you, is he?” Instinctively, she reached over her shoulder and touched the flared barrel of the lightning rifle.

  “No, course not. But he made a law about fighting in town, so he can’t break it. They come out here and raise a ruckus. I’m gonna lock the doors and put up the shutters, but you have to go right now.”

  “Maggie!”

  The girl ran around the side of the shack, hatbox in her hands. Claire took it from her and felt around in the bottom, under Rosie’s indignant protests. She drew out the smallest thing her fingers could find and pressed it into Alice’s hand. “This is to thank you for everything.”

  Alice opened her fingers as if they held a snake. “But—but this is a diamond—what is it, exactly?”

  “It’s a watch pin. To hold a watch upon your blouse.”

  “Don’t own a watch. Or a blouse. I can’t take this. Where in the heck did your bird dig this up?”

  “Some things must remain a mystery until we meet again. Show it to no one. Goodbye, Alice. Wish us luck.”

  “Luck,” the girl said faintly. The sun burnished her unkempt hair, turning it nearly white, as she gazed at the object in her palm.

  Claire grabbed the girls’ hands and ran.

  It became immediately apparent that five minutes of rehearsal was not going to be enough for a command performance.

  “Lady, where are we supposed to sit?” Maggie seemed close to tears after the three of them had tried unsuccessfully to fit on the bench. “And wot about Rosie?”

  It was difficult to design a conveyance with only thirty seconds to do it in. “Tie the hatbox to that crossbar there. Rosie will have to swing. Perhaps it will put her to sleep.” Scuffling and indignant squawks emanated from within.

  “She wants to see out,” Maggie said.

  “She will have to wait.” Claire took a deep breath. Hold on. “This is less like a tripod and more like a Roman chariot. Lizzie, hop up next to Maggie. You will steer. I will stand on this bar behind you and manage the sail. Quickly, now. I hear shouting.”

  Before she’d even finished the word, a gunshot rang out. Lizzie yelped and jumped up, and Claire grasped the cords of the sail.

  If one pulled the rightmost, the sail moved one way. The leftmost, the other. She had no idea what the middle one did, but first things first.

  “Steer, Lizzie!”

  “Where?”

  Claire tightened the rope and the sail bellied out. They began to roll across the ground, bumping and jouncing.

  “I don’t care—away!”

  The wind caught them just as Ned Mose burst around the corner of the shack and raised his gun.

  Chapter 15

  Both girls’ shoulders hunched up to their ears in unconscious expectation of a bullet. Hers probably had as well, but the only thing that would get them out of range was speed, so Claire focused on the sail as if it were her salvation.

  The velogig careened across the ground in the direction of Spider Woman, the sail bellying out like the breast of a frigate bird. The wind’s speed might be constant, but its direction did not seem to be. Claire realized that as soon as they’d gone a hundred yards. She trimmed the sail and once again it filled. They flew toward the monolith as if they had wings, and both girls shrieked with either fear or exhilaration.

  “Lizzie, to the right, or we shall drive straight into the rock.”

  “I dunno how!”

  “Push your left hand out.”

  The velogig veered to the right and Claire distinctly felt the leftmost wheel leave the ground. “Gently, Lizzie.”

  “But you said—”

  “It’s all right. We are out of range of the bullets!” She laughed in sheer relief mixed with a healthy dose of terror.

  The strange vehicle flew to the south, then Lizzie steered it around the worst of the rocks.

  “Now to the north. We must get as far away as we can by nightfall. I wonder how many miles per day one can travel on this thing?”

  “Where’s north?” Lizzie held onto the steering bar like a drowning person, her knuckles stiff and white.

  “To our left. A gentle arc, yes, that’s it. The wind is coming from the south, so it will push us along nicely.”

  Lizzie pushed with her right hand even more, and the velogig’s course curved in an arc until they were heading due north.

  “’Ow do you know which way is north?” Maggie said through clenched teeth, one hand gripping a brass support and the other her sister’s dress. “It all looks the same to me.”

  Claire adjusted the sail and they flew forward on the very wings of the wind. She would give anything to know their speed—but if the tears whipped from her eyes were any indication, it was faster than the landau had ever gone, and it topped out at forty miles per hour. If she only had her goggles!

  “North is the only portion of the sky where the sun does not travel. We shall choose our landmarks each morning and simply do our best.”

  “’Ow far is it?”

  Belatedly, Claire realized she might have asked more questions of Alice before their abrupt departure. “I’m not sure, but Miss Alice said there wasn’t another landing field for two hundred miles, and the Rangers came from Santa Fe. So I would assume that is how far it is.”

  “Two ’undred miles,” Maggie squeaked. “That’s from London to Cornwall.”

  Dear me. It was, nearly. “Just pray there are no canyons to traverse. That will make it longer.”

  “Lady, I’m scared.”

  Claire risked a glance down and tried to smile with reassurance. “There is nothing to fear, darling. We are
together, we have food and water, and Ned Mose is at least two miles behind us already.”

  But somehow Maggie did not look comforted. “’E’s going to be awful angry with Miss Alice.”

  And there was the awful truth that Claire had been trying to evade even as they had evaded their pursuers. “I expect he is. But she is a lady of resources, too, and his own daughter. Lizzie, watch that mesa coming up. We must steer for that saddle-shaped valley in the middle of it.”

  “Bein’ someone’s daughter never ’elped us,” Lizzie muttered, but the wind snatched away her words and Claire wondered if she’d actually heard them.

  When life found some semblance of normalcy, she must bring it up again. In the meantime, she must concentrate on the movements of the air.

  In her entire life she had never been quite so focused on the small shifts of wind direction that meant the difference between slowing to a bumpy creep and taking off like a sea bird from the surface of the sea. Around midday they stopped for some water and a few bites of the odd, hard strips of meat Alice had stuffed into the pillowcase.

  “Wot is this?” Maggie chewed and chewed, and finally tore off a piece to give to Rosie, who swallowed it in one gulp. At least the bird had managed to find grass seeds under a bush, and was presently occupied in cracking a nut with her beak.

  “I have no idea.” Claire swallowed it half chewed. “But if Alice gave it to us, she must have believed it would be suitable.”

  “Tastes all right,” Lizzie said. “It’s better wiv water.”

  “Don’t drink too much. We do not know how long it will take to get to Santa Fe and believe me, I have no wish to expire of dehydration out here.”

  Rosie made a chirruping sound and flattened herself under the bush. Far above, a bird with a wingspan of at least eight feet wheeled lazily against the sun.

  “That’s not good,” Maggie observed. “She don’t do that for doves and robins, nor crows neither.”

  “I’d be very glad of the sight of a robin right now,” Claire said. “Come. Let’s be on our way.”

  Lizzie had cut a hole in the hatbox for Rosie to poke her head through, but when they really got going, the hen hunkered down out of the wind. By sunset, Claire was wishing she could do the same. She patted her cheeks. Dry—chapped—she would be looking like the bottom of a dry lake before long.

  “Lizzie, are those trees greener than any we’ve seen since Resolution?”

  “Seems like.” She pushed the bar, and the little craft made for the line of trees. “Let’s go see if there’s any water about.”

  There was not only water, there was a creek!

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful.” Claire took off her boots and divested herself of her clothes. “I’m going to lie right in it.”

  If one could take a bath with no soap and while lying prone in two inches of water, then they managed it. Claire rinsed her underclothes, too, just for good measure.

  Then they ate a little more of the bread and cheese, and gnawed on the meat strips.

  It was not until the sun slipped below the huge tumble of rocks to the west that Claire realized their mistake. Night was falling and all their clothes were wet.

  And cold.

  And they had nothing—not even a pair of drawers—to change into.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I think we ought to have waited until the morning, when the hot wind would have dried us as we went.”

  “You mean we’re to sleep starkers?” Maggie felt her dress, which, while not sopping, was still too wet to put on.

  “I don’t see a way around it, unless we—”

  “The sail.” Lizzie fingered the fabric. “We can wrap up in it, like bugs in a rug.”

  Claire considered the fastenings. It had gone together quickly. It would come apart just as quickly. “An excellent idea, Lizzie. The silk is treated, too, so no chilly breezes will be getting in.”

  Before the dark had fully fallen, they had bundled up in the sail, all together, with Rosie bedded down in the hatbox with the diamonds next to their heads.

  “I have to say, I’ve never slept out in the open before,” she murmured. “Have you?”

  “Outside, inside, in squats,” Lizzie said sleepily. “In a tree once. That were ’orrible. A wasps’ nest not two feet from our ’eads, and a nasty waking it was.”

  “I fell out,” Maggie added. “Nearly broke me leg. Sprained me ankle.”

  “Trees big enough to fall out of are one thing we don’t need to worry over,” Claire said. “Good night.”

  But the girls were already sound asleep under their stiff blue coverlet, stretched out on the ground. Claire lay watching, thinking, until the quarter moon rose over the horizon in the east, looking at least as big as any full moon ever had back in England.

  What a vast country this was.

  What an enormous, starry sky stretching to infinity.

  And how very, very small and out of control she felt under it all. How very tired of being brave and positive and adult.

  And it was only the first day.

  She rolled over and tried to keep the tears from coming, but she could not say she succeeded.

  *

  Claire woke with a start to the sound of shrieking panic right next to her head.

  Clawing her way out of the blue sail, she rolled onto all fours, trying to clear the fog of sleep. “Rosie! Rosie, what is it?” She reached for the hatbox and froze.

  A pair of eyes glowed in the gray light before dawn—eyes that had no business being so big or so close.

  A low growl was her answer.

  Rosie had succumbed to utter terror and the hatbox lay silent, a paw on top of it.

  A large, feline paw. Larger than that of a house cat, but smaller than that of the lion she’d seen once at the Royal Menagerie.

  Claire met the creature’s eyes as it growled again, obviously as surprised to see her come alive as she was to meet it face to face. It also made it plain that it had plans for Rosie, and she was not welcome to share.

  “How dare you! Mopsies!” Maggie whimpered, and behind her, Claire felt a scuffle of movement. “Billy Bolt!”

  The girls took off at a run, dragging the sail with them. The feline did not move. Instead, it snarled.

  “I think not, you wretched thing.” She snatched at the hatbox and wrenched it out from under the paw.

  The cat screamed and leaped for Rosie. Claire dropped the box and grabbed it, holding it under its forelegs as she might a house cat.

  “Oh, dear.” Now that she had it, what was she to do with it? For heaven’s sake, why hadn’t she just thrown a rock at the horrid thing?

  It screamed again, kicking with hind legs that had no business being that long. She felt the claws hook into her arms, dragging and tearing the flesh.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” She must get control of those lethal legs. The cat kicked and shrieked, but Claire gathered all four of its feet into her hands, holding it like a sack of candy. The infuriated beast wriggled and bucked, but it could not move. At last it hung there, glaring at her and panting with its exertions.

  “Throw it!” Lizzie screamed from twenty feet away.

  “What good would that do? It will just come back.”

  “Not before we get out of ’ere.”

  “We can’t re-rig the sail until we can see. Lizzie, come here and pick up the lightning rifle.”

  “Lady, no, I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can, and you will. Now, before this creature decides to use its fangs on my hands. I can’t hold it forever.”

  In tears, Lizzie fetched the rifle and pulled it from its holster.

  “Activate the cell by pushing the lever forward. Good. Now give it a moment to build the charge and walk over here.”

  “I can’t get close. What if it bites me?”

  “It’s a lot more like to bite ’er, Liz,” Maggie told her. “Hustle yer bustle.”

  “It’s not you who’s never shot this thing!�
��

  “Lizzie, it were goin’ to eat our Rosie. And it still plans to, soon’s it gets away. We gots to put an end to it.”

  Her breath one shudder after another, Lizzie approached.

  “Now, take aim and fire.”

  “But—but—what if I ’it you?”

  “You shall take care not to do so. Take a deep breath, aim, and pull the trigger.”

  “But—”

  “Lizzie, do not fear. You are only five feet away. Even Lewis could hit a target at that range.”

  “Lewis would’ve been in Santa Fe by now, ’e’d be runnin’ so fast.”

  “At your convenience, please, Lizzie,” Claire said through gritted teeth as the cat wriggled and hissed. Any second now it was going to rear up and bite her hand, and she would have to let go.

  Lizzie hefted the rifle, and it wobbled as she sighted down the barrel. Then she squeezed her eyes shut as she squeezed the trigger.

  A bolt of lightning sizzled the air, caught the cat in the midsection, and ended its attempts on Rosie’s life forever. Claire dropped it and turned away as the life writhed out of it, and gathered Lizzie close.

  “Well done, darling. It’s all right. It’s over now.”

  “I killed it!” Lizzie wailed, dropping the rifle at their feet. “I didn’t want to, Lady.”

  “I know. We never want to take another life. But it was the cat or Rosie. We are responsible for her safety. She is an innocent, and we must do what we must.”

  Lizzie drew back. “Lady, you got blood on me cammy.”

  There was almost enough light to see colors. “So I have. We will rinse it out again when the sun comes up, which will not be long now. Come. I’ll wash off and bind up these scratches with a piece of my petticoat. And then we shall sit with Rosie on that rock and watch the sunrise.”

  And think of life, not death.