Dead Reckoning

by Lackey, Mercedes;Edghill, Rosemary

  “There’s a buckboard in the stables. You think your buggy can pull it as far as Reverend Southey’s place?”

  “I think so, yes,” Gibbons said.

  “Good,” Jett said, nodding. “We’ve got just about enough daylight to get Mister Maxwell out there. I can put him in their stable for overnight. Tomorrow I’ll dig him a hole while you figure out how Br’er Shepherd got his hoodoo juice into the whiskey.”

  * * *

  Jett saddled Nightingale and used him to drag the buckboard from the livery stable to the saloon. The buckboard slewed maddeningly at the end of the rope, but taking it to the saloon was still easier than dragging the corpse the length of Alsop one more time. She hadn’t been joking when she told Gibbons Nightingale wasn’t a cart horse, but at least he was used to towing something tied to his saddle horn.

  Since it had been made from a regular wagon the Auto-Tachypode had the usual iron staple bolted to the back of the carriage for hitching a drag team to. A wagon brake could stop the front wheels from turning when a wagon was descending a steep grade, but sometimes that wasn’t enough to keep the wagon from either overrunning its hitch—or plunging over the side of whatever mountain it was trying to descend. It wasn’t easy to rig the buckboard to that (Gibbons had to lower the steps so they could prop the buckboard’s tongue on them), but it was possible. And between the two of them, they were able to drag the rotting corpse of Finlay Maxwell into the buckboard’s bed.

  For a moment Jett thought Gibbons had overstated her machine’s capacity, but after a long moment when the Auto-Tachypode seemed to strain at the burden like a hitch of mules at plowing time, it began to roll forward, pulling the buckboard behind.

  Jett rode on ahead to make sure there was space in the stable. The only thing in it was a battered old shay the parson—or his wife—had probably used for running errands. When Gibbons arrived, she turned the Auto-Tachypode to line both it and the buckboard up with the stable door, then backed the Auto-Tachypode until the buckboard was maneuvered neatly inside.

  “You’ll make a cutting horse out of that thing yet,” Jett said. She waved Gibbons away as she came to cut the rope. A good piece of rope was a rare commodity out here. Jett wasn’t a cowhand by any stretch—she knew she couldn’t maintain her disguise if she didn’t keep moving, just to start with—but she’d picked up their superstitious aversion to cutting a rope. A cut rope was bad luck. You burned it if you could, the same way you burned—or buried, or both—a rope that was worn out. She finally got it unknotted and coiled it up carefully, then hung it over Nightingale’s saddle horn.

  Gibbons came back into the stable just as she finished. “I found this in the church,” she said, offering Jett a spade.

  Jett took it. “Let’s go see where we’re going to plant him,” she said.

  White Fox rode up just as Jett was marking out the grave she’d have to dig tomorrow. She was about to ask him how his trip to Flatfield had gone when she saw his face.

  She’d heard plenty of things about Indians long before she ever saw one. People called them “fierce, bloodthirsty, heathen savages,” and that would have disturbed her more if she hadn’t known Yankees called Southerners the same things. She’d heard plenty of talk about “murdering rebs” after Beast Butler and his gang of crooks took New Orleans—seen plenty of deeds from them, too. So she’d reckoned the Indians would be pretty much like folks anywhere: some might try to kill you, some might ignore you, and some would go out of their way to help you. She’d met all three kinds since she’d left home, but the one thing that was mostly the same about all of them was how they didn’t wear what they were thinking on their faces for the world to see. (A preacher she’d traveled with once called it “savage inscrutability”; Jett just thought of it as good manners.) She knew White Fox was Meshkwahkihaki in all but body, so she’d never worried about not being able to tell what he was thinking.

  The fact she could tell now scared her.

  Gibbons was rattling on about all her discoveries—leaving out the part where she dang near killed herself—and talking about what she still needed to find out (Jett suspected Gibbons would be making the same speech on her deathbed). Jett just waited, watching White Fox’s face.

  “So what did Mister Sutcliffe tell you?” Gibbons finally asked. “Have there been any disappearances that he knows of? Were you able to send a message to Fort Riley?”

  “No,” White Fox said. “There was no one there to ask.”

  “They were all dead,” Jett said. She tried not to show how much the news shook her.

  White Fox nodded once. “So I believe. The house was deserted, as if its inhabitants had simply walked away. But there is more to tell.”

  Jett stuck the spade into the center of the shallow rectangle of earth she’d marked out. She pushed it down with her boot. The blade sank into the earth grudgingly, but it went. At least the clay wasn’t baked too hard to dig. She left the spade where it stood.

  “Tell it back in town,” she said. “Sun’s going down.”

  * * *

  In the boardinghouse kitchen, Gibbons made biscuits to go with their meal as White Fox told the rest of his tale. The room was warm, both from the wood in the firebox below the oven and from the dozen lanterns they’d lit and placed on every available flat surface. Jett had stopped being afraid of the dark a long time ago—but that had been before she knew what it might contain.

  “But why would Shepherd want to kill an entire herd of cattle?” Gibbons said. “They’re worth money. And someone would be sure to see all those bodies.”

  “In another month—perhaps less—they will be nothing more than bleached bones scattered among the scrub,” White Fox said bleakly.

  “He had to kill them,” Jett said thoughtfully. “Beeves’ll wander halfway to the moon if you let ’em, and they’d be sure to get caught up in some roundup or other. The mavericks wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but most folks in these parts respect a brand. They might ride over to the Running D to find out why Sutcliff hadn’t cut his beeves out of their herd. And they wouldn’t much like what they found.”

  “The transcontinental railroad—whatever route it takes—won’t be finished for another two years,” White Fox said. “Shepherd won’t want to attract attention to his scouring of Texas before he’s ready to claim ownership of the land.”

  “That makes sense,” Gibbons said, nodding. She dumped her ball of dough onto the cutting board and began to roll it out. “And we have at least some idea of how the zombies are created, though we’re obviously missing some of the steps. But how does the preparation get into the liquor?”

  “Easiest thing in the world,” Jett said. “Or do you think every saloon in the Territories gets cases of whiskey in glass bottles shipped by Overland Express?”

  “I suppose not,” Gibbons said thoughtfully. “Though it could come by train as far as Abilene.”

  “And in Abilene there’s a freight yard, and every box and barrel comes with a bill of lading,” Jett said. “All Br’er Shepherd needs is an accomplice somewhere along the way to lever open a few kegs and dose them. The kegs come off the stage in Alsop, get shipped in the same load as any empty bottle the barkeep might have ordered, he fills his empty bottles from the keg, and …” She shrugged. “Shepherd could get the surrounding ranches—and the teetotalers—the same way. Pickles come in barrels. So does vinegar.”

  “Or kerosene,” White Fox said.

  Both Jett and Gibbons froze, looking around the room at the lamps. Then Gibbons shrugged. “Too late to do anything about that—if his formula survives burning as well as distillation, we’ve all been exposed.”

  Jett sighed. “We know how he makes ’em. We know what he’s doing with them. And we know how to kill them. So what are we still waiting for?”

  “Salt worked on Finlay Maxwell,” Gibbons said, picking up a knife and beginning to slice the biscuit dough into squares. “But I don’t know precisely why. Maxwell died of natural causes, so he isn’t
a typical case—maybe that’s the only reason the salt worked. And that means I can’t be sure of killing the rest of Brother Shepherd’s zombies. I need exact details of how they’re made.”

  “There’s only one place that information can be found,” White Fox said into the silence.

  “Somebody has to go back to Jerusalem’s Wall,” Jett said.

  “And preferably before Shepherd destroys another town,” Gibbons added.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jett slid down off Nightingale’s back and sat down on a rock to remove her boots and the trousers she was wearing under her petticoats. She’d liberated a pair of overall trousers from the Merchandise, since it was better than riding halfway across Texas showing her bare legs to the world.

  It felt strange after all this time to be wearing skirts and a bonnet, strange to be laced into the short canvas undershirt that was the frontier replacement for the boned corset. She’d just been lucky Mrs. Southey was near her height and build—they’d had to hunt all over town to find a pair of shoes that fit.

  She got to her feet, staggering a little at the unfamiliar weight of petticoats, and walked over to Nightingale. Boots and trousers went into his saddlebag, shoes came out. Her Colts were in the other saddlebag. She felt more naked without their familiar weight than she’d expected to, but they’d look pretty odd with a calico frock. When she put the shoes on—the sturdy, ugly, lace-up kind you could walk for miles in—she suppressed a pang of unease. Tante Mère had always said wearing dead folks’ shoes meant you’d be the next to be buried. Tante Mère had been right about a lot of things. Jett only hoped she hadn’t been right about this.

  Jett hadn’t wanted to be the one to do this. But White Fox didn’t move or act like a white, and Gibbons was … eccentric. It had to be her. It was too bad she’d already been to Jerusalem’s Wall, but that had been as Jett. Few people seeing her dressed like this would make a connection between her and the black-clad outlaw who’d left so hastily. But she was hoping to get in and out before anyone saw her at all. She already knew Brother Shepherd didn’t pay a lot of attention to the womenfolk in his holiness commune. Maybe that would work in her favor.

  “You just wait right here,” she told Nightingale. She’d ridden him to the stand of pines she’d stopped at before. It was the closest cover there was. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.” I hope.

  Nightingale nodded his head enthusiastically. She’d whiled away a lot of time teaching him tricks, and now he showed them off whenever he wanted a treat.

  “Sorry, fella,” Jett said. “I’ll find you something when we get back.”

  In answer, he nosed at her bonnet. It was tied on, but he managed to shove it cockeyed. She stepped out of his reach to re-tie the strings. At least—if it came down to bluffing—the length of her hair wouldn’t be remarked upon. Most pioneer women cut their hair when insects made it a torment and alkali dust made it brittle as straw. And cutting hair was a sure way to break a fever.

  You’re stalling, she scolded herself. Well begun is half-done.

  “I’ll be back soon,” she said again. “Wait for me.” She squared her shoulders and walked resolutely away.

  * * *

  Gibbons watched with barely suppressed misgiving as Jett rode away, clad in a dress and other articles of clothing that the former female inhabitants of Alsop were certainly never going to need again. She didn’t like this, not one bit. If she had learned nothing else from her own adventures, it was the maxim never divide the group. On the occasions when she considered that she needed assistance, she hired it, and then made certain that no one went haring off on his own. Or, as one grizzled old, mostly drunk (yet still amazingly competent) gunslinger had said, “There are old shootists, and there are bold shootists, but there are no old bold shootists.”

  But that was another story … and in this case, Jett had been absolutely right. The only way to get a good look at that place was for a female to slip in and slip out. And the only one of the pair of them that could do this without giving herself away was Jett. Jett was used to playacting a part. Gibbons was … in this case, unfortunately … nearly incapable of prevarication. Let one of the Fellowship out there catch her unawares, and she would very probably speak before she thought and betray herself as no kind of believer.

  That did not mean that she liked this.

  Squaring her shoulders and turning her back on the disappearing speck, she headed for her makeshift laboratory.

  It would be very nice if I managed to solve this conundrum, and we could go charging after Jett armed to the teeth with exactly what we need to put down an army of walking dead.

  Pigs will probably learn to sing like larks first, but it would be nice.

  * * *

  It seemed to Jett she had to unlearn and relearn everything she’d ever known on that walk into Jerusalem’s Wall. She strode instead of walked, flat-heeled shoes felt clumsy and strange, and her skirts whipped and tangled around her legs. The dress felt too narrow across the shoulders, though it hardly fit as closely as the demure glove-tight bodices she’d once worn without thought. The corset chafed. The bonnet cut off her vision on both sides. But when she found herself wondering if she’d ever be comfortable in female clothing again, it made her smile ruefully. Reckon I could be dead by sundown, so there’s no use fretting about it.

  Just as she’d hoped, the “dooryard” was deserted. It was why she’d left Alsop before dawn; she suspected everyone was somewhere else, at least until the dinner bell rang at noon. I’ll be gone by then, she told herself hopefully.

  She cut back behind one of the new bunkhouses—a dormitory, probably, considering how many people lived here—and followed White Fox’s careful instructions until she reached the old bunkhouse. The one with no bunks and a door in the floor it shouldn’t rightly have. The one that had to hold secrets, because who locked a door that didn’t have anything behind it?

  Her heart beat fast and her palms were wet as she walked up to its door. She’d stood in the middle of a street facing down a man who wanted her dead with more calm. But that had been different. Whoever died there wouldn’t have gotten up and walked away.

  She took one last glance around herself and lifted down the bar. It was new; the wood had darkened to brown but not yet faded to silver. Who put a bar on the outside of a door? What was Brother Shepherd keeping in?

  She felt better once she had the door shut behind her. At least she was out of sight, even though with the windows boarded up it was just about pitch-dark in here. A little light came in through the chinks between the boards, but not enough to see by. She groped among her petticoats until she found the pouch she’d tied around her waist.

  Wellborn young ladies had servants to escort them and carry their things, butlers to open their doors, family names respected enough that they could shop on account. Ladies who had none of those things carried reticules to hold their money, their keys, and—sometimes—their gun. And because they had no one to protect them, they carried their reticules tied to their petticoat strings, with a slit pocket in their skirts to reach them.

  She hauled her skirt up enough to take the weight off the pouch’s drawstrings, then groped around inside it until she found the candle and one of the Lucifer matches. Gibbons was the one who’d thought of them. When they were planning this, it had slipped Jett’s mind that a shed with no windows would be pitch-dark even in the daytime.

  She struck the match on the door and lit the candle. The bunkhouse smelled familiar. The smells of sweat, horse, tobacco, and wood-smoke were soaked deep into the wood, but they were all that was familiar. Just as White Fox had said, all the furniture was gone.

  The doors in the floor looked like the entrance to a storm cellar. She’d seen one, once, when she and Philip had been sent east during yellowjack season. Its iron handles were bolted into the wood. A chain ran between them, secured in place with a lock. She walked over and knelt down in front of it, swearing softly under her breath at having to pull her sk
irts out of the way. She swore a little louder when she got a good look at it, and brought her candle close to make sure. White Fox was the only one who’d seen the lock, and that only very briefly. It wasn’t the usual “smokehouse” type—easy enough to get past—but one of the newfangled “heart” locks, the kind the railroads used. Supposed to be burglar-proof.

  He should have said something! she thought. The shape was distinctive, and so was the spring plate over the keyhole. But somehow she doubted an Army Scout spent much time trying to force padlocks. He probably thought the shape was just for decoration. But I’ve got the key.

  I hope.

  Gibbons had given her a selection of keys she’d found around the town. Maybe this was Jett’s lucky day. She spilled a little wax and stuck the candle against the floor, then poured the contents of her reticule into her lap. Some of the keys wouldn’t go into the lock at all. Others would fit the keyhole, but wouldn’t turn. Jett sighed in exasperation once she’d tried the last one. If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.

  Gibbons had given—loaned—her something to use if the keys didn’t work. She took a deep breath and unscrewed the little wooden case. Two heavy pieces of wire dropped out. I guess we’re going to see just how “unpickable” this lock really is. She’d picked a few locks in her time, but ones where a hairpin would do the trick. Jewelry boxes and medicine chests—there’d been a hundred different locks at Court Oak.

  The silver chest in the pantry, Mama and Tante Mère shrieking in anger and fear as the Union soldier threw it to the ground and scooped the utensils out of the wreckage. …

  She spent five minutes of poking and twisting at the hidden interior of the padlock. Each time she got started, the lockplate sprang back to jar the picks from her hands. Finally she gave up. The folks who’d made this lock weren’t bragging. The only way she was getting it open was with the key.

  Where was it?

  Not here. There’s nothing here but dust, doors, and a lock and chain.