Page 45 of Runaway Hucow

Peyton laughed. “Okay fine, Roscoe’s an asshole. The biggest fucking asshole I know, in fact. But once you get to know him, he’s really not so bad.”

Tess had her doubts about that.

And Peyton must have sensed those doubts, because his face suddenly became serious again.

“Listen, Tess. It doesn’t matter what Roscoe says about keeping you here. I’m the one who knows how to fly the airship, and once it’s ready, there’s nothing Roscoe can do to keep me from taking you to Arizona.”

“You would do that?” Tess asked, a little taken aback. “You would take me to Arizona against your brother’s will?”

“Yes’m… If, when the time comes, you still want me to.”

Tess felt certain she would want him to. She couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life around a beast like Roscoe, and she doubted the next thirteen days would change her mind about that. However, she thought it was probably best to keep that to herself for the time being.

She raised herself up onto her tiptoes and placed a kiss on Peyton’s mouth.

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel much better about everything now. Still, regardless of what happens, I will be staying here for the next thirteen days or so, and I do think your brother was serious about wanting me to ‘pull my weight’ around the farm.”

“Right,” Peyton said, with a nod. “Follow me.”

They continued down the walkway toward the far end of the barn, Peyton in front and Tess following close behind. She glanced once or twice at the massive balloon of the airship, but mostly her eyes kept going back to Peyton’s sexy backside flexing beneath his tight britches. Even in her foul mood, it was all she could do to keep herself from reaching out and giving those hard buns a little squeeze.

As for herself, Tess was wearing one of the dresses provided by the Walker women. She was grateful to be wearing something other than the dead bounty hunters’ clothing, something that made her feel a little more feminine. Unfortunately, the dress fit her even more poorly than the men’s clothing had. It was simultaneously too large and too small for her. The Walkers were not tall people, but they were taller than Tess was, and the skirts of the dress hung down so low she had to hold them up to keep them from dragging on the ground.

At the same time, her larger bust strained against the upper part of the dress, and she barely managed to fasten all the buttons running up the garment’s modest front. At least the undergarments fit fairly comfortably—a camisole, a petticoat, a pair of women’s drawers, and some stockings that came up past her knees.

“All right,” Peyton said as they neared the end of the walkway. “Here we are.”

Even though it was late morning, and the sun was already well up, this far end of the barn was only dimly lit. The minotaur turned a dial on the wall, and an electric light bulb flickered to life, bathing the area in a soothing, golden glow. Underneath the light, a small table was butted up against the wall, and atop the table sat a machine consisting of different-sized brass cylinders connected by coils of wire and a pair of small brass wheels holding spools of narrow ticker tape paper.

Tess gasped, and all of her concerns about her conversation with Roscoe vanished. “Is that what I think it is?”

Peyton grinned. “Depends. What do you think it is?”

“It’s a telegraph machine.”

“Yes’m. A wireless telegraph.” He pointed toward the ceiling. “The antenna’s built into the weathervane up on the roof.”

Tess was amazed. A wireless telegraph machine was a state-of-the-art piece of equipment. Until a few years prior, messages had been sent over wires connecting telegraph offices in towns and cities across the country. Then an Italian child prodigy by the name of Marconi had figured out a way to send transmissions using radio waves. He had partnered with Joseph Coppelius in New York to patent the first radio telegraph machine. Within a few short years, wireless telegraphy had almost completely replaced wired telegraphs all throughout the west.

But it was a rare thing indeed for a family to have their own personal radiotelegraph machine.

“Did you build this yourself?” Tess asked in disbelief.

Peyton’s face darkened a little. “No ma’am, not from scratch anyway. The Walkers brought the machine back after one of their excursions to town for provisions. They got it for a song because the telegraph office was just going to throw it out. It was an old-fashioned wired telegraph machine, and they’d just gotten their brand new wireless replacement. The Walkers know I’m interested in such things, so they brought it back here, and I tinkered with it a bit to convert it to wireless.”

“You tinkered with it a bit?” Tess gave the bisonman a teasing bump with her hip. “Peyton, I think you’re being a little too humble.”

The bisonman rubbed the back of his neck and blushed a little harder. Tess liked it when he did that. It made him look kind of cute… if a bisonman could be called cute.

She looked at the machine again.

“But why do you want a telegraph machine?” she asked. “I mean, who do you send messages to? The Walkers live just down the valley, and I was under the impression you didn’t really talk to anybody else.”

For a moment, her mind went back to Roscoe’s stern face explaining the importance of keeping the valley hidden.

“Actually, we don’t send messages,” Peyton explained. “We only receive. The machine is configured to pick up any signals within range, so we use it to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world outside the valley…”

As he was speaking, the machine suddenly clattered to life in a series of stuttering clicks. A length of ticker tape unspooled from one of the brass wheels. Tess leaned over to examine the dots and dashes on the paper. It had been a little while since she’d read Morse Code in her late father’s telegraph office, but it came back to her quickly enough. The first part of the code indicated that the transmission had been sent by Western Union, at the behest of someone named Stafford. The message followed.