As the two made the last preparations for launch, the gathered crowd started taking on some of Hostlebeck’s nervous enthusiasm. Even the children had called a halt to their play and were standing still, anxiously awaiting the spectacle.
As Booth and Hostlebeck worked, the rain-maker spoke a little about how he’d ended up in Kansas. Booth listened, finding himself surprised by the depth of faith the townspeople were showing this man. To have been promised rain – not once or twice before, but fully five times – and to have been rewarded each time with disappointment… well, Booth could hardly credit it. The singular fact that they had not given up hope on him struck Booth as truly exceptional.
“Ready?” Hostlebeck called down from the far end of the line of rockets.
Booth gave him a thumbs-up gesture and brought a hank of smoldering slowmatch down on fuse trailing from the first rocket. Hostlebeck did the same on his end and the two men quickly ran toward each other lighting fuses as they went. When they met in the middle, both men turned and ran to shelter at the rear of the big casket wagon. Behind them, rockets sputtered, flared to life, and lept into the sky with such a bang and a roar that it sent children scampering for the safety of their parent’s legs.
From his vantage point, it looked to Booth as though the rockets themselves were inert and simply perched atop ever rising columns of black smoke pushing themselves up into the sky. One by one, they disappeared into the clouds above, and after a few moments a series of distant explosions sounded off like a line of cannon being fired on some distant battlefield.
A cheer rose up from the onlookers, but Hostlebeck stood silent and motionless, his gaze locked on the thin sheet of clouds. His body was tense and rigid as though he could bring the rain by sheer force of will. Fully five minutes passed before a peal of thunder rumbled. Startled by the sound, Booth gave a little start. Hostlebeck ignored him and remained still, looking impassively at the sky.
A fat drop of rain struck Booth’s upturned face, followed by another, and then another, and in moments it was a deluge. The almost forgotten feel of it on his bare skin was as unexpected as the crack of thunder had been.
Hostlebeck tossed his hat aside as he started dancing up and down, whooping and laughing like a madman. Soon everyone joined him. As rain poured down by the barrelful, the parched earth swallowed it up greedily. Men and women cupped their hands together to catch it, seemingly to prove it was no dream or illusion.
Booth let out a low whistle and thought, well I’ll be damned. He did it. As unlikely as Moses parting the seas, but he did it. Chalk one up for science, I suppose.
The rains lasted less than twenty minutes, but nobody seemed to care. They lifted Hostlebeck up and paraded him down the muddy main street like a conquering hero. Later, Booth met up with him again at the town’s boarding house where the rain-maker was enjoying the finest meal of his life. Once or twice he tried to offer the landlady some money, but she would hear none of it.
“No one who can do what you did today pays for a meal in my house!” she laughed.
Hostlebeck laughed too. He was drunk on good beer and good company, but mostly on a sense of vindication and accomplishment. He’d done what no other could lay claim to. He’d brought the rain and had done it without resorting to craft.
Booth sat down in a chair recently occupied by a pretty young girl in a long skirt. Hostlebeck’s eyes, somewhat dulled by the evening’s good cheer, nonetheless followed her hungrily until she was out of the room.
“My God boy, can you believe it?” he said to booth, his gaze still lingering on the door the girl had gone out through.
Booth grinned. “I sort of have to believe it, Mr. Hostlebeck. I was there after all.”
“Oh, I cannot tell you what this means. When the Meteorological Society in New York hears of this, there’s going to be a hue and cry they’ll hear all the way in Sacramento!”
“Actually, I was meaning to ask you something,” Booth said, ignoring the man’s jubilation.
“Anything, anything,” the rain-maker said, downing a nipperkin of whiskey.
Booth shifted in his chair slightly, leaning forward in an attempt at some discretion. “Well, you mentioned something earlier. I think it was something like, sab-o-tage?” he said, sounding out each syllable of the word.
Hostlebeck looked confused for half a moment at Booth’s awkward pronunciation. Then nodded after realizing he was not familiar with the term. Reaching for another glass of beer, Hostlebeck said, “Oh yes, that business. Twice now some vandals have attempted to damage my gas generator.”
“Oh,” Booth said, thinking for a moment, then asked, “Where do you keep your machinery, when you aren’t using it I mean?”
Hostlebeck gestured at the wall behind him. “At that fellow Pieper’s stables – the hostler and livery man. Charged me an arm and a leg for it, but his was the only place which could accommodate it to my satisfaction.”
Booth frowned. “The way I hear folks around here have been treating you, even before today… seems like they hold you in some high regard.”
Hostlebeck nodded, his face ruddy but serious. “Oh yes, I must admit they’ve been very kind about this whole business.”
“Seems unlikely then that any of ‘em would be responsible.”
The rain-maker set his glass down on the table. Sobering for a moment, he said, “I take it you’re driving at something?”
Booth nodded. “Tell me. Who do you think is behind it?”
Hostlebeck paused to order his mind. It was more difficult that he anticipated and it took a moment. Hesitantly he said, “There were some competing interests up state, I must admit. They were fairly upset when I started working on some of my experiments there. Certainly didn’t take kindly to my manufacture of lightning, and they took positive umbrage at my rain experiments.”
“Suppose one of them wanted to put you out of business. You think they’d bother following you all the way down here?”
Tilting his muddy hat back on his head, Hostlebeck replied, “Lord… I don’t really know. The real problem is that I ran afoul of a local man, a fellow by the name of Winters. He had the water rights pretty well sown up. Made a mint selling it off to the locals. Smart man, but colder than anyone I ever met. He even threatened me with violence once, if you can believe it.”
Booth rubbed his chin. “I saw a man out there today: a stranger. I have a bad feeling about him.”
Hostlebeck frowned, “Did he say anything?”
“No, but he spells trouble in letters big enough for any man who wants to see them.”
“I, ah, don’t suppose you’d be interested in helping me out again, in a protective capacity?”
Booth mulled it over. He was no hired gun, but he did possess a certain natural aptitude when it came to those sort of things. Colonel Beatty had mentioned it from time to time in his war dispatches. But did Booth really want to embroil himself in someone else’s affairs?
A minute passed followed by another. Hostlebeck watched Booth intently, as though trying to divine how he would answer. At last, Booth nodded and said, “I think an arrangement could be worked out.”
