Free Deseret by D. J. Butler

the confident, masculine red of a
hunting lodge, its three large sofas were a brilliant gold and all the wood,
most conspicuous being a deep, broad and tall desk, absolutely clean on top,
was stained dark and well-polished.   There was a globe in one corner of the room, and full bookshelves (and
that surprised Sam—hadn’t Young been a cabinetmaker, or some similar sort
of tradesman in his Yankee, pre-Mormon career?).  
    Two more tall, stone-faced gunmen stood inside the
door.   A fifth stood by a tall,
yellow-draped window, and as Sam coolly looked him over, he thought he saw,
just flickering in the corner of the window, a face.   He wasn’t sure, but he thought, again, that it might be the
face of the midget Coltrane.
    He fought back a spasm of astonishment.
    Should he say something?   Best not to, he decided quickly.   He didn’t want to take responsibility for anything the
midget might do, and besides, Young’s security guards would certainly catch him
any moment.  
    If he was even really out there, after all.
    Two men stood up at the sofas from a tray of tea and Sam
crossed the office to shake hands.   President Brigham Young wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t short either, and he
was powerfully built.   With his
curly hair, the beard around his jaw and chin but clean-shaven upper lip, and
ox-like shoulders, he looked like a man who knew how to use a plane and chisel.
    “Fornication pants!” Young snorted.
    Sam froze, unsure he’d heard the man correctly, thinking
maybe he was witnessing some rough Mormon attempt at humor.
    “He is a modern man, Señor Presidente,” the other man
said.   He was a heavy black
gentleman, completely bald and clean-shaven but for a little sharp spike of
graying hair beneath his lower lip, and he wore a careful smile on his face.
    “That doesn’t give him liberty to seduce my daughters,”
Young barked, “no matter how convenient he, or they, might find the unbuttoning
of his pants!”
    “I… I…” Sam found himself stuttering, an affliction from
which he hadn’t realized he suffered.   He swallowed hard, to get rid of the fragmented sentences, and tried
again.   “I hadn’t realized that Mr.
Levi-Strauss’s trousers were so potent,” he essayed a disarming joke.   “Will it put you more at your ease if I
remove them?”
    “Mr. Clemens.”   It wasn’t a question, and it was growled.   They shook hands.   “This is Mr. Juan Jermaine Tomás Salvador María Zerubbabel Armstrong,
Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Deseret from the Republica de los
Estados Reunidos de México.”   He
grinned.   “Give or take a name or
two.”
    “Joo have no missed one yet,” Armstrong said.   He radiated gravitas.   He and Young both did.   If not for the fact that Armstrong also
exuded a certain easygoing humor and charm, Sam would have felt daunted by
Young’s bear-like assault on Sam and his innocent Levi-Strauss pants.   Sam shook Ambassador Armstrong’s hand,
too.   “Mr. Clemens.   Joo are the United States man, aren’t
joo?”
    “Yes I am,” Sam admitted.   “The way people talk about me around here, I’m starting to
imagine that my arrival was expected.”
    Crash!
    The glass of the tall window exploded inward in a fury of
tiny splinters, stinging Sam’s cheek and lodging into his curly hair.   Sam stumbled back and away from the
window as he turned, his eye barely able to follow the blur of action.  
    There was a man, short but built like a bull, and he has a
sword in his hand.   No, not a
sword, the long fighting knife they called the Arkansas Toothpick.   Long hair and beard and buckskins
flapped behind the newcomer as he charged.
    The bodyguard standing by the window moved, but not fast
enough.   The intruder threw his
body at the bigger man.   Before
anyone could react he had a forearm around the man’s throat and his long,
wicked knife pointing directly into his eye.
    The other guards froze.  
    “You’re not the