The Engineer by Poe C. S

Author:Poe, C. S. [Poe, C. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Paranormal
ISBN: 9781952133190
Goodreads: 48612064
Publisher: Emporium Press
Published: 2020-05-28T07:00:00+00:00

VI

October 11, 1881

Ferguson had made it back to Shallow Grave. He’d driven that steam-powered monstrosity right into town and now stood beside an open hatch on its left side in the middle of Boot Spur Street. In a booming voice, he demanded that the silver ore—packed and waiting for the lone evening airship that stopped in Benson to unload cargo due for the smelter before traveling to Tucson—be brought to him at once.

Before he did something… regrettable.

I pulled the horse’s reins hard and swung down from the mare just as a clerk stepped out of an office with an overhead sign reading: Dexter Mining Co. “No,” I said, so authoritatively that the poor man startled and spun toward me. “Give him nothing,” I ordered, pointing at Ferguson a few storefronts away.

“But he’ll kill—”

Gunner got down from his stallion, tugged his bandana from his nose and mouth, and handed the horse’s reins to the clerk. “Get these animals to the corral. And stay inside.”

The clerk, visibly brightening at the sight of Gunner, nodded obediently. He took the reins of my horse as well, and with a cluck of his tongue, quickly led them away from the scene.

Gunner unholstered his Waterbury and cocked the pistol. “Work your clever tricks, Hamilton.” He looked down, winked again, then took off in an all-out run, barreling toward Ferguson as fast as his long legs could take him.

Ferguson turned at the pounding of boots, ducked behind the open door of the locomotive, and easily missed eating three bullets. He laughed like a man truly unhinged, climbed back into his machine, and locked the door behind him. One of the mechanical arms untucked from the side and lunged at Gunner, its iron claws snapping like the beak of a bird of prey. Gunner shot again, this time blowing the claws to pieces, cogs and screws spewing in an arc across the afternoon sky. He dodged an attempt by the apparatus to simply bludgeon him with the smoking stump and then ran down a side street, vanishing from my line of sight.

Gunner missed on purpose.

The thought—a sudden realization buzzing around in my head like a gnat—had not spawned from nothing. Gunner the Deadly was a wanted man. He was a deadeye marksman. He told me only the night before that he was in Shallow Grave with the sole intention of killing Milo Ferguson. So why, when his opportunity had been clean, had Gunner not pulled the trigger until Ferguson ducked for cover?

Choke on it.

Then it was like the gnat had been snatched out of the air and squashed between two fingers. The buzzing stopped.

Gunner has a history with Ferguson.

I had no tangible proof. No written accounts of such intimacies. Nothing conclusive I could point at and say, Ah-ha! It was only—Gunner had hesitated. More than once. Before meeting the man, I had thought that Gunner’s skewed morality was based on the here and now, action and reaction, black and white. But if that were the case, Gunner would have fired true.

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