Free The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman Page B

thought she’d fled and left me to my fate and who could blame her and she said, “I did. Who knows why but I changed my mind.”
    Another thing I saw as we stumbled toward the door was that a man reached out to seize Miss Harper, and Old Man Harper came up out of nowhere and struck that man with his iron-shod stick in the back of the knee and in the soft parts of his back in a way that was practiced and efficient and devastating. It made me a little sick to watch but I am sure it was worse for the man he struck. Then we got outside and I stumbled and Miss Harper let go of me, and when I got up again she was gone. Both of them were gone.

    To my surprise the crowd did not destroy the Apparatus. They left it mostly untouched, as if they were afraid of it. Me and Mr. Carver waited until they had dispersed and we crept back in to salvage what we could. The Apparatus was a little dented and the meeting-hall itself was a mess. Benches were overturned and the lectern was broken like a lightning-blasted stump and somebody in a sudden whirlwind of nihilistic despair had taken their knife and carved fuck you in answer to each one of the slogans on the walls.
    The Reverend was sitting on the edge of the podium with a tragic look on his face. He was no doubt thinking about the cost of repairs, and when he glanced up at me I could see he was wondering whether I could be held responsible.
    I was sorry for him but I knew that I had to be firm. I sat beside him, and after some thought as to how to proceed, I patted him on the back.
    I said, “I can see how you might feel aggrieved.”
    “Professor Ransom—”
    “I won’t tell you that adversity is good for the soul, or that every disaster is an opportunity, or any of that kind of thing, Reverend. All I’ll say is—”
    “Diversion, you said, entertainment—”
    “Is this. My Apparatus was damaged too, and you may not believe this but the Apparatus costs more than your meeting-hall and maybe more than all of Kenauk”— this was not exactly a lie, as I consider the Apparatus priceless. “Now I am no lawyer, but I have had run-ins with the law— I admit it. I have been held accountable for the actions of my horses, and I was held to be at fault the time my assistant Mr. Carver insulted a man’s wife. It seems to me that you are the master of your meeting-circle, and the responsibility is yours.”
    He quoted Scripture. “No man is master of another man.”
    “The law may say otherwise. Who knows? Courts are unpredictable devices.”
    “They didn’t teach us the law, Mr. Ransom. Only what’s right and decent.”
    “Right and the law are not always in parallel, I think.”
    “There can be no question of that.”
    “So. What say we agree that neither of us will sue the other, and neither of us will mention the other ever again, and I go on my way?”
    We shook on it. He forced a smile. It was not bad but I have to say that I have seen better.

CHAPTER 5
BLACK CUT

    Today I had to maintain the Apparatus. There was water in it from the river-crossing and one of the new recruits, a young man named Tomasi, had proved to have an ulterior motive and had taken a hammer to it before the Beck boys could wrestle him down. A wrecker. I guess he is still mad about something that I did or that somebody said I did back in the War. And besides these incidents, as we go West the Apparatus needs fine and constant recalibration.
    I work alone these days and nobody is allowed to come close. A good time to write.
    Today I think I am going to write about Mr. Carver.

    Mr. Carver and I spent the night after the incident in Kenauk in the wagon, out on the edge of town. In the morning we went into town and there was a woman there who laundered and mended my white suit. I think I recognized her face from the night before, when she had been yelling. She did not meet my eye. She sold us some tomatoes, which she fried and Carver and I ate sitting on a bench looking out over the vineyard. I remarked