Lestrade and the Sawdust Ring by M. J. Trow

Author:M. J. Trow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BLKDOG Publishing
Published: 2020-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

❖7❖

D

awn had barely slashed crimson-mauve in the eastern sky when Lestrade felt a toe nuzzling his ribs. Once again his cranium collided with the wagon-workings. He peered out from his blankets. Thank God. Whatever had nudged him awake, it was too tall for a colobus monkey, and it wore its top hat at too rakish an angle.

‘Mr Lestrade,’ the silhouette above him crouched to reveal the leathery features of Lord George Sanger. ‘Fancy a little ride?’

‘Er . . .?’ the sergeant was rather non-committal. After all, it was not yet daylight and he wondered what beast Sanger had in mind for him to straddle.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sanger sensed the man’s unease. ‘We’ll take my gig.’

Lestrade hauled on his shirt and trousers, fumbling with his waistcoat buttons as he ran in the showman’s wake. They crossed the dead fires, not yet rekindled for the morning’s breakfast, squelched through the straw-strewn mud where the elephants swayed and rattled their chains. Misty figures in the dawn light joined them. An ox of a man Lestrade had not seen before took the reins of a wagon, his red beard still damp with dew. Beside him, in rather more conventional attire now, Tinkerbelle Watson arranged the folds of her pelisse over her biceps. A rangy man with the spine of a snake hopped up behind them and last, a cowboy in a long duster coat, then fashionable in Wyoming, leapt aboard.

Sanger halted beside them, then patted Dakota-Bred’s arm. ‘Don’t take your guns to town, Jack,’ he smiled. ‘Leave your guns at home, son. Don’t take your guns to town.’

The Dakotan sighed and hauled a sawn-off shotgun out of his coat, then a Henry repeating rifle, two revolvers and a Derringer. ‘Aw, shucks,’ he said.

‘I think you know everybody,’ Sanger introduced Lestrade as ‘from the Graphic’. ‘Oh, have you met Jim? Jim Crockett, lion tamer.’

The huge man with the auburn beard nodded and grunted. Too long with his lions had made him monosyllabic, terse. At least he showed no inclination to roll over and lick Lestrade, so the sergeant was grateful for small mercies. Sanger stepped up on to the running board of his gig and urged on his horse as Lestrade gripped the iron beside him.

‘Where are we going?’ the sergeant asked, as the circus camp faded in the mists behind them.

‘Wakefield jail,’ Sanger told him. He checked back that Crockett’s heavier wagon was keeping up, the spotted horses getting into their stride.

‘Wakefield jail?’

‘As far as they know, you’re covering a story on the extracurricular activities of the circus. In reality, I may want you to use your metaphorical tipstaff and get us inside.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’ve got my agent and I want him out.’

‘You can’t just break people out of jail,’ Lestrade said, suddenly aware of the situation.

‘Why not?’ he turned in his seat and shouted, ‘Dakota-Bred!’

The cowboy leapt from the lurching wagon and sprinted alongside the gig, hauling himself up on to the boards. ‘Yo!’ he announced himself.

‘Tell Mr Lister about the time you sprung your friend in Apache Wells.

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