Tom and Brian spoke both at once, in frenzied whispers.
"Does she mean us?"
"My God, what do we do?"
Mallory felt trapped in nightmare. A word would break it, he thought. "She's just a woman," he said, quite loudly and calmly.
"Knife it!" Fraser hissed. "Be still!"
"Nothing to tell us?" Bartlett taunted. "I thought not"
Mallory rose to his feet. "I do have something to say!"
With the speed of jack-in-the-boxes, three men rose from within the audience, their hands raised. "Dr. Barton! Dr. Barton?"
Bartlett nodded graciously, gestured with the chalk-wand. "Comrade Pye has the floor."
"Dr. Barton," cried Pye, "I do not recognize these comrades. They are behaving regressively, and II think they should be criticized!"
A fierce silence wrapped the crowd.
Fraser yanked at Mallory's trouser-leg. "Sit down, you fool! Have you lost your mind?"
"I do have news!" Mallory shouted, through his gingham mask. "News for Captain Swing!"
Bartlett seemed shocked; her eyes darted back and forth. "Tell it to all of us, then," she commanded. "We're all of one mind here!"
"I know where the Modus is, Mrs. Bartlett!" Mallory shouted. "Do you want me to tell that to all these dupes and slaveys?"
Chairs clattered as men leapt to their feet. Bartlett shrieked something lost in the noise.
"I want Swing! I must speak to him alone!" As chaos rose, Mallory kicked the empty chair before him into skidding flight, and yanked both pistols from his belt. "Sit down, you bastards!" He leveled his pistols at the audience. "I'll blow daylight through the first coward that stirs!"
His answer was a fusillade of shots.
"Run!" Brian screeched. He, Tom, and Fraser fled at once.
Chairs splintered, toppling, on either side of Mallory. The audience was shooting at him, ragged popping shots. Mallory leveled both his pistols at Bartlett at her podium, and squeezed the triggers.
Neither gun fired. He had neglected to cock the hammers. The Marquess's gun seemed to have some kind of nickeled safety-switch.
Someone nearby threw a chair at Mallory; he fended it off, absently, but then something struck him hard in the foot. The blow was sharp enough to numb his leg, and knock him from his stance; he took the opportunity to retreat.
He could not seem to run properly. Perhaps he had been crippled. Bullets sang past him with a nostalgic drone from far Wyoming.
Fraser beckoned at him from the mouth of a side-alley. Mallory ran to him, turned, skidded.
Fraser stepped coolly into the open, raising his copper's pepperbox in a dueling stance, right arm extended, body turned to present a narrow target, head held keen-eyed and level. He fired twice, and there were screams.
Fraser took Mallory's arm. "This way!" Mallory's heart was jumping like a rabbit, and he could not get his foot to work.
He limped down the alley. It ended abruptly. Fraser searched frantically for a crawl-way. Tom was boosting Brian atop a great unsteady heap of cartons.
Mallory stopped beside his brothers,
crash.
Mallory yanked the bolt back, flinging the dead cartridge. "I should have taken that damned bandolier"
"Ned!" Brian appeared suddenly to their left, crouched at the top of a heap. "Over herecotton-bales!"
"Right!" They followed Brian's lead, scrambling and heaving atop the booty in a cascade of whalebone and candlesticks. Bullets whizzed and thwacked around themmore men in the rafters, Mallory thought, too busy to look. Fraser rose once and took a pot-shot, to no apparent effect.
Dozens of hundred-weight bales of Confederate ginned cotton, wrapped in rope and burlap, had been stacked almost to the rafters.
Brian gestured wildly, then vanished over the far side of the cotton-stack. Mallory understood him: it was a natural fortress, with a little work.
He and Tom heaved and toppled one of the bales free from the top of the stack, stepping into the cavity. Bullets thumped with gentle huffs into the cotton as Fraser rose and returned fire.
They kicked out another bale, and then a third. Fraser joined them in the excavation, with a leap and a stumble. In a frantic, heaving minute they had burrowed their way into the thick of it, like ants amid a box of cube sugar.
Their position was obvious now; bullets popped and thudded into the cotton fortress, but to no effect. Mallory yanked a great clean wad and wiped sweat and blood from his face and arms. It was dire hard work, hauling cotton-bales; no wonder the Southrons had relegated it to their darkeys.
Fraser cleared a narrow space between two bales. "Give me another pistol." Mallory handed him the Marquess's long-barreled revolver. Fraser squeezed off a shot, squinted, nodded. "Fine piece" A volley of futile shots came in reply. Tom, grunting and heaving, cleared more space by lifting and dropping a bale off the back of the heap; it struck something with a crash like a splintering pianola.
They took inventory. Tom had a derringer with one loaded chamber; useful, perhaps, if the anarchists swarmed in like boarding pirates, but not otherwise. Mallory's Ballester-Molina had three rounds. Fraser's pepperbox had three caps left, and the Marquess's gun five rounds. And they had an empty Victoria carbine, and Fraser's little truncheon.