Throughout the Month of March, I will be posting parts of Adventuresses
From the opening story, "Adventuress"
Clarissa stood on the deck of the airship, shivering in the cold wind, trying to hide behind her brothers. Tom and Matt stood very tall and fierce looking with their hair whipping in the wind. They'd protect her from any man in shoe-leather.
The alert siren had sounded half an hour before, and the next minutes had been a frenzy of racing crew, fainting women and general chaos. Clarissa kept her head and watched the pirate airship heave them to.
The crew, a motley collection of men and women in clothes that only half-fit them, swarmed aboard. In their midst, a tall woman, taller than most men, strode through the mess. Clarissa watched her with unseemly interest. She'd never seen anything like her and wanted to memorize every detail. Perhaps the paper in Dodge City, or penny dreadful publishers would pay her to tell the story.
The woman's left boot came over her thigh, but the right was cut away to let her draw the arcane looking pistol she carried. Two more, of different make, crossed in her wide leather belt, Mexican style. Her long duster coat fell to her knees, and Clarissa saw the straps holding it close to her thighs. A man's embroidered waistcoat and a band-collared shirt, without collar or tie, led Clarissa's eye to the woman's face. She flinched at the sight of a scar that ran up from her jaw and disappeared under an eye patch. A set of flying goggles, one lens blacked out, rode the brim of her battered leather hat.
“Toldja we should have taken the train, Matt,” Tom grumbled, as he glared at the pirates.
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