‘Jesus,’ whispered Pierre. He went to say something, stopped himself, and then asked anyway. ‘Has anyone thought of rounding up all the sheriffs and deputies and able-bodied men in the county and putting a stop to them?’
Sheriff Ketchum stared at Pierre for a moment, then burst into sharp laughter. He took his handkerchief and dabbed at the corner of his eye, which made a change from his sweaty forehead.
‘Sure,’ he managed to say once his laughter dried up. ‘We’re all gunslingers and sharpshooters out here in New Havant. Why, our teacher, Miss Haversham, she can hit a bottle from a hundred yards! Hell, maybe some of her kiddies can join in our outlaw-huntin’ party too. I’ll go grab the Remingtons.’
‘Okay, okay, I get it,’ said Pierre, holding up his hands. ‘Not an option. I wouldn’t want to do it either.’
‘Not a case of wantin’ or not, son. Even if we could gather everyone, it still likely wouldn’t be enough. When I say the Bowder Boys, I ain’t talkin’ bout a couple of brothers. Not even a family. There’s damn near two dozen of the bastards out there. Might as well pick a fight with a pack of mountain lions for all the good it would do us.’
He went to pour himself a third drink, hesitated, and then threw the bottle back inside the drawer instead.
‘Well you can’t just let them ride into town and take what they want!’ said Viola, slamming her own glass down. ‘What kind of sheriff are you?’
‘The kind that wants to live,’ he snapped, before adding, ‘And the kind that wants to see the good people of this here town live, too. Besides, we ain’t lettin’ them do nothin’. If they come through here they’ll find nothin’ but a ghost town, just like you did.’
‘That’s your plan?’ asked Pierre, squirming in his seat. ‘To hide?’
‘Not under a goddamn table, if that’s what you’re imaginin’. We’ve got someone keepin’ watch in the hills, and if they see anyone comin’ this way then they flash the mirrors and we get everybody down the mines. Everyone knows they’ve been empty for years; no-one’s gonna go lookin’. And anyone who does is gonna end up more lost than a monk in a whorehouse - pardon the expression, ma’am. Only ones who know the ways in and out are us older folks.’
‘Aren’t you worried about what they’ll do to the town?’ asked Wesker.
Sheriff Ketchum shrugged. ‘Sure. But I’d rather sleep under the stars and build a new town than live in one full of ghosts. People are a lot harder to replace than houses. Though tell that to Mrs. McWaters - she’s just about popping out a new person every other Thursday.’
He politely raised his hand at a heavily pregnant woman walking down the street outside his window. She beamed a hearty smile and waved back.
‘I swear half the kids in Miss Haversham’s classes are hers,’ he said, turning back to them. He nodded to himself. ‘Everyone here’s a good man or woman, or so close to good it makes no difference. Hell, I don’t need to tell you, Henry. This town near enough raised you after your ma and pa succumbed to the cholera. I expect you’ll be wantin’ to pay a visit to some of your old neighbours before you move on, yes?’
Wesker leaned back in his chair and puffed out his cheeks.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, scratching the back of his head. ‘How are old Mr. and Mrs. Bonnetide?’
‘Mr. Bonnetide’s still tickin’ along, but we had to bury his wife back in February. Harsh winter. Come on, you can go ask how everyone’s doin’ yourself.’
Sheriff Ketchum pulled himself up out of his seat, pried his hat from off the hatstand beside his desk, and wrestled it down over his ears. Pierre and Viola rose from their chairs also; Wesker sat for a second longer, sighed quietly to himself, and then followed.
Outside the sun had dipped in the sky a little, and some of its angry heat had gone down with it. The town was full of noise again. Pierre was surprised by how many people there were for such a small and unassuming town, and how hurried everyone seemed to be. The only people not rushing from chore to chore were the few old people sitting out on their porches… or on the dry mud where their porches would have been, had their houses not been little more than wooden shacks.
Though Pierre couldn’t imagine himself suffering the hardship of a life out in untamed, nineteenth-century America, he couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of it all. The endless, uncaring deserts and prairies; the blue skies unmarked by smoke and smog; the grand mountains that rose up all around. The simplicity and the soil.
‘Henry? Henry, is that you?’
A young woman in a large bustle dress that spilled all the way past her ankles rushed over, carrying a parasol and bearing an enormous, curious grin. She climbed the short steps of the sheriff’s office and stopped under the shade of its overhang.
Wesker smirked despite himself. ‘Sure is, Isabella. Great to see you.’
‘Why, you look just the same as I remember you - just as handsome as ever.’
Pierre and Viola looked at one another.
‘Is everyone apart from us unable to see that Wesker is clearly a middle-aged man and not a young boy?’ Pierre whispered.
‘And one who looks like a pair of well-worn leather slip-ons you’d find gathering dust under an attic window at that?’ replied Viola. ‘Apparently so.’
‘What brings you back our way?’ continued the frilly woman known as Isabella, twirling her parasol over her shoulder. ‘Did you miss me? No, don’t tell me. I’m late to help Mrs. Browning redecorate the town hall as it is. It’s ever such a bother having to stop and start every time that blasted mirror flashes. Do come by before you leave town, won’t you? We’ve so much to catch up on.’
She stood on the toes of her shoes to give Wesker a peck on the cheek, giggled, and then pranced off towards the far end of town. A couple of the townsfolk waved to a blushing Wesker as they walked in the same direction.
‘Unbelievable,’ mused Pierre.
Ketchum led the three of them out of the shade and down the creaky steps, effortlessly slipping back into the habit of dabbing his forehead free of sweat. But no sooner had they stepped into the dusty dirt street than they heard the approaching galloping of hooves.
A lone horseman was riding into town, kicking up a thick dust cloud in his wake. Isabella darted aside to let him through, and everyone in the town froze in the middle of what they were doing to watch. Despite the pervasive heat, Pierre felt the tone of the whole community drop to near freezing.
The man came to such a rough and abrupt stop that the rider was forced to turn the chestnut horse around in a circle to keep it from bucking him off. He wore a ragged shawl that billowed down his whole body, a hat with a brim even wider than Sheriff Ketchum’s, and an expression of utter morbid panic.
‘They’re comin’, Sheriff,’ he gasped, coughing into his bandana. ‘I’m sorry, I got here as fast as I could…’
The sheriff’s hand shot to his revolver. ‘The Bowder Boys?’ he shouted. People in the street started to shriek and panic. ‘How long have we got? And why in blazes didn’t Cassidy use the mirrors?’
The man on the horse shook his head and looked back at the desert behind him. ‘I’m guessin’ they got to him, Sheriff. And about five minutes, I reckon. Maybe less. They’re ridin’ like lightnin’, boss. Wasn’t sure I’d even make it back ‘ere before ‘em.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ muttered Ketchum, taking off his hat and running a hand through his thinning hair. ‘That probably ain’t enough time,’ he added in a hushed voice. ‘Joe - you knock on every door you see and get as many people down the mines as you can, ya here? The rest of us will have to buy y’all some time.’
‘Sure thing, Sheriff,’ said Joe, jumping down from his horse and tethering it to a hitching post. He sprinted down the length of the street. Word travels fast in a small town; most of its citizens were already doing the same.
‘The rest of us?’ asked Wesker. ‘What do you mean, the rest of us?’
‘Derricks?’ shouted Sheriff Ketchum, ignoring him. ‘Derricks! Get
out here, boy!’
The door to the sheriff’s office flew open and the young man who’d served them glasses stepped out onto the porch, eyes wide and ready.
‘Go fetch us the guns, kid,’ continued Ketchum. ‘And then get yourself down the mines with the rest of them.’
Derricks ran back into the office and, after a lot of clattering and clunking, emerged with an armful of bolt-action rifles. He staggered down the steps and handed them over to the sheriff.
‘I can help, if you want?’ he said, eagerly. ‘I am the deputy, after all.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ snapped Ketchum. ‘I ain’t explainin’ to your ma how you got your head shot off tryin’ to be a hero. Go with everyone else and make sure they’re all safe. You’re the law while you’re down there, got it?’
‘Got it,’ nodded Billy. He rushed off to join Joe in rounding up the leftover townsfolk.
Wesker patiently tapped Sheriff Ketchum on the shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The rest of us?’
‘Well you’re trackers, ain’t you?’ the sheriff replied, passing out a rifle to each of them in turn. ‘Should all know your way around a gun. Like I said… here’s to old friends arrivin’ in times of need.’
Chapter Eleven
There was only the billowing of the dust and the roar of thunder. The cool, sharp breeze swept their hair back as if they were headed for a hurricane.
The Bowder Boys were riding into town.
James - or “Jimmy”, which was his preferred moniker - rode a horse’s length ahead of the others, just as he’d emerged from his mother a slick fifteen minutes before his brother those twenty-one years before. Samuel “Sammy” Bowder, the younger of the two brothers and James’ closest friend since the womb, galloped close behind alongside Jimmy’s squeeze, Polly “Snapjaw” Wright.
Fifteen or sixteen horsemen (and one other horsewoman) rode behind them in a great and furious herd, piercing through the desert like an arrow. There was Rabid Rogers; there was Mickey Jones; there was Harry “The Hammer” Grayson.
But Jimmy only saw what lay ahead of him - a small and unassuming town called New Havant, ringed as if with a halo by a setting sun that hung just above the line of the horizon.
Carnage. Tonight there would be carnage.
The two brothers had been nine when they’d first identified the hunger that plagued them both. They’d been walking along the trail back from a neighbour’s farm with their mother when a band of convicts, on their way to the gallows in an iron cell of a stagecoach, broke free from their constraints and murdered their captors. Marie Bowder had tried to stop her children from watching but it was no use; they were entranced by the furious way the convicts had squeezed the spark from out the eyes of the lawmen, by the way the crack of the guns broke the silence of the empty hills. And when one of those prisoners came lustily for their mother, they felt not fear but a thrill. Perhaps their story would have ended there, had one of the smarter convicts not insisted they move on from the grizzly scene as quickly as possible.
Instead that hunger had only grown, until first the Bowder Boys had taken a knife to their family dog, and second taken that same knife to their mother’s belly, when it had started to swell with a third child - that of Rufus Higgins, that same willowy farmer from Tumbleweed from whose farm they’d been returning that fateful evening.
Ever since then they’d been riding, and their tribe had only grown. From town to sorry town they’d spread from coast to coast, taking what they wanted, taking whomever they needed, leaving behind what they didn’t and what was ruined.
And still the hunger remained.
But it wasn’t a hunger that they dreamt to quench. Oh, no.
It was a hunger they fed to grow.
‘Can somebody please explain to me why we’re hiding in the rafters of a barn house, waiting to give our lives to save this soon-forgotten town in the middle of sorry nowhere?’
Viola glared at Pierre, only to realise that it was actually Wesker who had asked the question.
‘Isn’t this your town, Wesker?’ she replied, keeping her voice low. ‘Isn’t this where you grew up, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Yes, but it was awful! There was never anything to do! Why do you think I was so keen to leave this place? Why do you think I was so keen to leave this entire when?’
Wesker stopped and took a deep breath.
‘I’m not saying I want anyone here to get hurt, or that I don’t want to help,’ he continued. ‘I’m just saying that I don’t want me to get hurt, either. Or die, which seems much more likely.’
Pierre looked around at the quiet barn. They were camped inside the upper floor of the stables, which gave the three of them a good vantage point over the entrance to the town and the bulk of Main Street. There were three “windows” of sorts - wooden panels that lifted up like skylights to allow access to the roof. It was through these that they would watch - and shoot, if need be. Their only other companion was the lone horse munching on hay down below. The sheriff had elected to stay on the ground, on the off-chance the outlaws could be reasoned with.
Pierre thought this was mighty stupid, but no amount of mad gesticulating had convinced the sweaty man otherwise.
‘Sheriff Ketchum said we’re to only start shooting if it looks like the riders are going to search the town,’ Pierre said, peering out of the window closest to him. ‘The entrance to the mines in particular.’
‘Or if they start shooting at him,’ added Viola. ‘He was particularly adamant about that last point.’
‘We should have told him we were Mormons,’ moaned Wesker, fiddling with his rifle. ‘Saying we were trackers may have given him unrealistic expectations.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Viola, rolling her eyes. ‘We’ve got the high ground and the element of surprise. Can’t ask for much more than that.’
‘Are you kidding? Of course I can! I can ask to be back at home - proper home, that is - serving wines and sherries to ungrateful bastards. Or drinking them myself, for that matter.’
‘Quiet,’ whispered Pierre, crouching even further down than he already was. ‘Somebody’s coming.’
They could feel it in the very wood of the barn - a trembling that grew alongside the roar of near-eighty hooves on dry earth. Figures on horseback breached the top of the hill over which Pierre, Viola and Wesker had trekked earlier that very day and cascaded down the other side. In less than a minute a whole herd of riders - just shy of twenty, Pierre reckoned - came to a slow trot under the sign that welcomed visitors to the town.
Visitors they may have been, but they sure didn’t look very welcome.
The man at the front of their group dropped down from his horse, as did the man and woman immediately behind him. It was clear to anyone whose eyes fell upon them that the two men were brothers - they shared the same slightly crooked nose, the same piercing, unhinged eyes - but the man up front had a chin full of stubble and long, brown hair. The marginally younger of the two had long hair also, but it was a sandy-blonde colour and the rest of his face was shaven clean. The woman was younger than both of them - perhaps only seventeen, eighteen at a push - and was grinning.
‘I don’t like the look of her,’ muttered Viola. ‘She looks… abrasive.’
Wesker and Pierre swapped a look behind her back and said nothing.
Some of the other riders got off their horses and spread out between the buildings, whilst those that remained in their saddles stood watch over the town’s entrance. The three known as Jimmy, Sammy and Polly took a few steps further down the street.
‘That there hitchin’ post is far enough,’ came a booming voice from somewhere towards the street’s other end. ‘You folks don’t need to be comin’ no closer than that.’
Sheriff Ketchum came marching out from his office with his rifle in hand, his hat sitting square upon his head. His shadow stretched out thirty feet in front of him. By the time he came to a stop, it was lapping at the Bowder brothers’ shoes.
‘There ain’t nobody left for you in New Havant,’ he continued, his fingers tapping the neck of his rifle. ‘Nobody save for me and my friend here. And we don’t want no trouble. Everyone else cleared out a year back. All that’s left is the bare essentials I get by on. You take it if y’all need it but then you get on your way, ya here?’
Jimmy Bowder stood watching the sheriff with his hands on his hips. A smile crept across his face.
‘If that’s the case, good sir,’ sneered the outlaw in his sleazy, gritty drawl, ‘then why have you hung all them dresses out to dry? Or are you gonna tell me they’re yours?’
A knot grew in Pierre’s stomach. He leant out of the window and peered down the street. There was a line of wire tied between two wooden posts in one of the houses’ barren yards, and sure enough a dress hung from it, drying fast under the setting sun. The owner must not have had the time to bring it inside before running for the mines. Perhaps she simply forgot.
At least Ketchum had the good sense not to turn around and check.
‘I won’t tell you again,’ he said, tightening his grip on his gun. There was a noticeable wavering in his voice. ‘Leave this town now and we won’t have no trouble.’
Jimmy Bowder’s grin didn’t shift an inch. Neither did the rest of him.
‘Well that’s the problem, see,’ he said, through his frozen grin. ‘Trouble is all we came for.’
His hand moved faster than even Viola could have expected; one second it was resting on his hip, the next it was pointing the six-shooter from his holster out in front of him.
There was a tremendous bang. Sheriff Ketchum went tumbling backwards into the dirt.
‘Ketchum!’ shouted Wesker, readying his rifle against the lip of the skylight. There was a sudden crack as he fired, and a small explosion of dust erupted a couple of inches from Jimmy’s shoes. He looked up at them with mad and murderous eyes, but that same grin was still drawn across his face as if with permanent marker.
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