The plating, the weaponry, and the overall size of the tremendous craft made these things impractical. There was nowhere to simply “stop” the ship unless they wanted to abandon it outside of town and then walk.
“We could try that,” she said. “But I don’t know if it’s wise.”
Simeon tilted his heavily dreadlocked head back and forth, weighing the options as if his skull was the axis on a set of scales. “I’d hate to toss her,” he said. “She’s a sweet set of wings, and not much in the air would dare try to stick us.”
“You suggesting we keep her, and bail on the Crow?” Hainey asked with warning, but also curiosity.
“No, I ain’t suggesting that. I’m suggesting we might not want to cut this angel loose until we’re good and certain we’re done with her. We land on the other side of the river, maybe—we start in Indiana and walk our way over—and then what? Maybe we find the Free Crow, and maybe we don’t. Maybe Brink sets our girl on fire and kicks her into the Ohio. Maybe we need to make a getaway fast, and then come back to try again. Maybe a whole lot of things could happen, and we’d need a ship as big and fast as this one to see us safe back west. If we’d taken anything smaller or lighter than this warbird, we’d have never made it out of Missouri, and you know it same as I do.”
“I know it,” Hainey griped. “Nobody’s arguing with you. And it’s a quandary, I know. But Louisville is east, it ain’t west. And I can’t…” he looked at Maria and then frowned in a way that said something she didn’t understand, not at first. “There are places in Kentucky I couldn’t go even if the law wasn’t looking for me.”
Then he turned to Maria and addressed her directly. “Three black men and a white woman walking into town together, that’d go over real well, don’t you think? That wouldn’t raise a lick of suspicion in anyone, anywhere.”
“You have a point.”
“I usually do.”
“But perhaps I can help.”
Hainey almost laughed, but he restrained himself enough to say, “What do you have in mind?”
She said, “Put me down on the far side of the river and wait over there, in the woods if you have to. Tether down, and I’ll catch a ride into the city. I’ll send a few telegrams, ask a few questions, and see if I can’t locate our mysterious sanatorium, which—as you and I both know—is no sanatorium at all.”
Simeon spun around in the first mate’s chair and eyed her angrily. “And then we…we what? We sit like fish in a barrel and wait for the charitable Belle Boyd to return?” He turned to the captain and said, “She’ll leave us here and finish her job, let her Yankee bosses pat her on the head, or maybe she’ll come back over the river with the law, and we’ll all be hung by morning!”
Lamar said with less venom, but more measured concern, “Once we’ve set her down and sent her off…if she finds the sanatorium she’s got no need of us.”
“But I do!” she objected. “Our goals are not so dissimilar, gentlemen,” she cajoled. “You want your ship, I want to stop your ship and destroy this weapons laboratory—by hook or crook if necessary. Perhaps I could do this alone and perhaps I couldn’t, but this ship is the best hope I have for intercepting another vessel, now isn’t it?”
“It’s surely your most obvious,” the captain said before the crew could complain.
Simeon tried to bark an objection regardless. “But Captain, she—”
“Time is of the essence, don’t you think?” he asked the first mate. “We could set the ship down, go our separate ways; and we could try through our connections to learn where the sanatorium lies, or she could try to learn it on her own, through channels that wouldn’t let us pass the front door or the back door, either. Who do you think will learn the most, the fastest?”
“She would,” Simeon scowled. “But we can’t trust her.”
“Who said I trust her?” Lamar sniffed, and the captain said, “I trust her to shoot like an ace, and I trust her to fight for the country that’s turned her away. I trust her to be as sneaky a bitch as ever the South did breed, and I trust her to understand that we’re her best hope every bit as much as she’s ours, because like Minnericht, and like you, and like me, that woman isn’t an idiot and she can see where the sun’s shining today. Now woman,” he said to her, “Did I tell any lies just now?”
She was seated still, hands folded in her lap over the gun she’d drawn from her handbag. Quietly she said, “Every word the gospel truth. I have no reason to lie to you. The captain is right and I am a patriot for my country, and although I generally desire my country’s approval, that goal will be best served by preserving Danville from utter destruction. You’re fugitives, yes, but what good would it do me to hand you over…if there is no nation left to prosecute you?”
Hainey swung a hand out and pointed it at her, as if to say, “See?” but he did not say it aloud. Instead he said, “On your word then, lady. On your word as a Southerner, and a Confederate, and, and,” he searched for something else to bind her. “And a widow. On your husband’s grave, and on your—”
“That’s enough,” she snapped. “On that—all of it. On that and more, I give you my word that if you send me into the city to gather information, I’ll return to you with everything I know.”
One hour later, she was deposited without ceremony beside the road that led to the bridge that would take her into the city.
When Maria returned—and she did return—she brought them the location of a brand new facility south of the city. And she climbed aboard, and neither she nor the captain nor any of the crew said another word until they landed their craft behind the Waverly Hills Sanatorium forty miles outside of town.
10
Behind the Waverly Hills Sanatorium the forest was high and a creek rolled through the grounds, making light, pretty noises as it trailed between the trees. The sky was perfectly clear, without a cloud to hide behind; and in the end, the Valkyrie settled down in what passed for a small clearing at the edge of a fruit grove, half-concealed by the edge of a green knoll.
The folding stairs extended, and all four of the ship’s occupants disembarked. Three black men and a white woman together looked strange enough indeed, but there was no one to see them while they plotted amongst themselves.
Maria attempted to straighten her deflated skirts. She gave up and asked, “I didn’t see any other ships moored anywhere close, did you?”
The captain shook his head. He said, “I didn’t, but that’s not to say the Free Crow isn’t docked and stashed someplace nearby.”
“It must be smaller than the Valkyrie,” she guessed.
“It is,” he said. “Maybe half the size overall. Oh, she’s not so tiny that she’d be a snap to hide—don’t misunderstand me. But if the boys in blue are hiding a weapons facility, pretending it’s a hospital for the deranged, then I wouldn’t put a damn thing past them. For all we know, they have a…a secret set of docks. Maybe there’s something hiding in the trees, or maybe one of these hills isn’t what it looks like.”
Lamar looked warily from hill to hill before saying, “It’s possible, sir. But there’s no reason to make yourself crazy over it.”
Ever since stepping down the folding stairs, the first mate had been rolling himself a cigarette. He stuck one end in his mouth, lit the other end, and stared at the sky. He said, “I think we beat them.”
“We must have,” Maria insisted. “We dumped all that cargo, and full speed, you said. Your true and proper ship is loaded down and moving slowly, or so you mentioned. Head start or none, I think it’s likely we’ve made it here first.”
She set her large tapestry bag down on the ground and laid the small handbag beside it.
“What are you doing?” Hainey asked.
“Reloading.”
Inside the large bag, beneath a layer of ladies’ underthings, stockings, and a second pair of boots, she revealed a long burlap bag stitched into pouches, like a workman’s tool belt. Inside each pouch was a stash of ammunition, divvied up into such an orderly fashion that Hainey was forced to marvel.
“No wonder you enjoyed shooting the Gatling. Get a hundred shots out without having to sift through your little bag for more bullets.”
“I don’t reload often,” she said without taking offense. “Because I don’t often shoot, and when I do, I don’t often miss. But I want to take a different set of guns into the facility—something with more kick and, in case of trouble, more capacity.” She hoisted a pair of Colts into the daylight and flipped the wheels open. While she thumbed bullets into the chambers she explained, “I don’t know what I’ll be walking into, in this facility. Twelve bullets are better than six, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” Hainey said, and he hesitated. “You said…I suppose. Well.”
“There’s nothing to suppose, Captain Hainey. I’m going into Waverly alone, because you have no business there. You came to Louisville for your ship, which may appear at any time. I came to Louisville to prevent a weapon from completion. Now, there’s nothing for either one of us to do but chase our own paths. You’ll wait here and watch the sky; and I’ll go inside to look for this Ossian Steen.”
“And what will you do when you find him?” the captain asked.
“When I get to that bridge, I’ll burn it,” she drawled.
She finished loading the Colts and holstered them on a belt. The belt had received an extra set of holes in order to accommodate her slender waist in a fashionable way; she strung it over her hips, fastened it, and tested the weight of both weapons against her hands before replacing them in the holsters. She slipped her arm through the handbag’s thin strap, and took the other one’s handle into her fist.