by Lila Bowen
“I know that, fool. They woulda run me down, turned me into a pile of gravy.”
“Possibly.”
Rhett held his hand down to Digby and pulled him back out of the hole, then jumped in himself before he got hollered at. He already had his pickax going before Digby caught his attention.
“Stop, Red-Eye. What I’m asking is: How the hell’d you move that fast? I didn’t even see those damn mules, and you were up here and waving them off before I could open my mouth.”
Rhett shrugged in between swings. “Reckon I can do what needs doing, sir.”
“I reckon you can,” Digby said, scratching his head and shoving his hat back down. “I reckon you can.”
The next morning, Rhett woke up to a hand on his shoulder and prepared himself for a fight, but all he found was Digby Freeman standing over him. He kept his arm thrown over his eye as if he were ashamed of his empty socket instead of trying to hide what he looked like before the witch’s powder had taken effect.
“Mmph. Sir?”
“You’re pretty fast, ain’t you, Red-Eye?”
Rhett grinned. “Faster than a jackrabbit with a lit match up his hole, sir. But you know that.”
Digby stood up and nodded. “Reckon I do. And I reckon you proved yourself here. They need a new rail runner. You got to be fast, but you got to be strong, too. You got to be a veritable Hercules. You know what that means? Kinda like a god. Think you can do that?”
“I can do that, boss,” Rhett said, completely unsure of whether he could do it and having no idea what it was anyway.
“Reason I’m choosing you,” Digby said, all slow and meaningful, “is because you’re bad with a pickax but never shirk. You did me a good turn yesterday, and I done vouched for you, so you better not try anything stupid. I know damn well you could’ve hopped on one of them mules and been gone from here, fast as you are, but it didn’t even occur to you, did it?”
Damn if that didn’t make him feel half-proud and half-stupid as hell. “It did not, no.”
“Then go on. You do me proud, you hear?”
“I will. Thank you, sir.”
Rhett sat up, turning away to arrange his eye kerch and hat and sneak a precious few grains of powder.
“Go on down to the front of the engine. Big Irish boss in a brown hat’s waiting for you.” He gave a lopsided grin. “It ain’t Big Red, I promise.”
Rhett walked to the door, and his throat tightened up a bit as he nodded at the fellers in the car. They were all watching him from their sad swayback cots, looking jealous and hopeless and older than their years. But they looked that way every day, didn’t they? Only difference was that he was leaving now. It wasn’t so much that he’d miss them personally, but they’d been good enough to dwell among.
Digby clapped Rhett on the back briefly and hollered, “The rest of you-all shirkers better wake up and get ready for work! I ain’t one for malingering, which is a damn pretty word means that no man’ll dodge a task in my car. We’re a man down, but we’re not gonna show it.”
Rhett didn’t say good-bye or anything of the sort. He was going to take this one fine chance Digby had given him to get the hell out of that hole in the ground. If they wanted something fast, and if being fast would get him a step closer to freedom and Trevisan, so be it. He started running toward the front of the train, and it felt damn good to move his legs and pump his arms. Leaping over tools and dirt and dodging around mule whackers and tent poles, he soon stood, a little out of breath, in front of a big Irish bastard who, to be honest, looked an awful lot like Big Red.
“You’re the new rail man, is that so?” he asked.
Rhett nodded.
“Me name’s Bruiser, and you can guess why.”
Rhett eyed the feller’s bulging arms and mean eyes and nodded. “Reckon I can, sir.”
“So you won’t want to be starting any trouble with me.”
“Reckon I will not, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“They call me Red-Eye.”
“Well, walk along with me, then, Red-Eye, and let’s see if you keep up longer than the last lad from Digby’s crew.”
“How long did he last?”
Bruiser’s grin was a twisted, cruel thing missing quite a few teeth. “Which parts of him?”
Rhett didn’t ask any more questions.
Truth be told, running rails was a pleasure compared to digging the grade. The runners were all quiet, medium-sized fellers like Rhett, the kind of men who looked like they were made of wire twisted around mesquite thorns and stuck together with hornet blood. They were a mixed bag outside of that, with several whites, a few dark-skinned fellers, and some medium-brown folks like Rhett himself. Apparently, the big, strong men weren’t quick enough, and the wee, quick men weren’t strong enough, so the men in between landed here, if they lasted long enough and proved they could get along in camp. Taking a beating in public had given Rhett quite the reputation for toughness, which the other runners shared and respected.
He caught on quickly to the work, which happened in short bursts. Rhett and another man grabbed a rail off the car, one on either side, and then four more men grabbed it in the middle bits and they all ran it to the marked place, where they dropped it carefully in position and got the hell out of the way for the next set of six runners with a rail. Once the rail cart was empty, they tipped it over and off the track to make way for the new cart, all while a man on a fast horse delivered the empty carts back to the train at a furious gallop that Rhett mightily envied. It was a peculiar sort of dance, runners weaving in and out of line, all pulling their weight equally, and it was easier to lose himself in the work, as compared to beating on the ground all day without much to show for it but more dirt. You had to be careful to run rails, but being careful took up most of the time a man would otherwise spend worrying.
As the afternoon drew long, one of the runners must’ve done something wrong. Rhett didn’t directly see what happened, only that the rail was lying out of place, five men were standing in a circle, hands on hips, and Bruiser was hollering and cussing fit to be tied. With the sharp authority Rhett had come to admire, Bruiser ordered the biggest man in the crew to carry his fallen comrade back to Grandpa Z. As they hurried past, Rhett smelled blood and saw a flash of bone poking out of the injured man’s ripped trouser leg.
“What can Grandpa Z do for somebody like us?” Rhett asked.
“Set the bone,” said Arrows, the dark-skinned feller he’d been paired with all day. The man’s accent was somehow both sharp and mellow, his t’s sharp and his o’s long.
“That happen often?”
Arrows shrugged. “All bad things do. At least a broken bone grows back stronger.”
That made a hell of a lot of sense to Rhett in a lot of ways.
“Back to work, you bastards,” Bruiser shouted, and everybody hopped to, setting the dropped rail back to rights and reentering their intricate dance.
But Rhett had a plan.
That night, he bunked in a different car with the rail running crew, which he took to mean he’d done a decent-enough job that he wasn’t getting sent back to Digby and the cut line. The rail crew car was slightly nicer, with whitewashed boards and a cleaner floor and cots that didn’t smell quite so much like mold and sweat and piss. Rhett realized that he’d left his doctor’s bag behind in the old car, but what good was it anyway? Cora and Grandpa Z had already taken what little wealth it possessed, with no thanks to the bearer. All Rhett owned now were Dan’s clothes on his back, Sam’s hat, and the leather pouch Winifred had crafted to hold the magic powder that made sure everybody knew why his name was Red-Eye. He slept hard that night, as he had every night in the railroad camp, exhausted to his very bones.
The next morning, the rail crew passed the pickax crew on the way into the breakfast tent, and Notch and Beans and all the fellers acted like they’d never met Rhett, nor worked and slept alongside him. Digby gave him a slight head nod of respect, but that was it
. Apparently moving up in the world was frowned upon. Not that it mattered, because Rhett was about to undo all the good he’d done, getting promoted to a slightly more comfortable life.
The first couple of rails he delivered quick and sure, but the fourth one he fumbled in a spectacular fashion. He’d been mentally preparing himself for it, knowing that if he didn’t commit one hundred percent, if he didn’t at least punch a bone through his own flesh, then they’d just brush him off and set him back on his damn feet. But no. He did it. He dropped that rail right on his leg and fell over it. He was rewarded with a pain like all the fires of hell, and he saw his goddamn arm bone jutting out of his skin in a gush of hot blood that made him feel just as mortal as a little old church lady tiptoeing through town.
The pain was so bad that Rhett maybe fainted, but not in a womanly fashion. Arrows had him cradled up in his arms like a baby and was breathing hard as he ran Rhett to the handcar and pumped him back to the train and its little town that moved magically along with the engine. Rhett’s vision faded in and out, the prairie rolling by, and he couldn’t help noticing the black shadows of sentinels on horseback. Had he and Arrows turned and run for the hills, there’d have been no escape from those fast horses and faster rifles. No matter how fast men might be, they couldn’t outrun horses, nor could a bird outfly gunpowder. Rhett didn’t doubt Trevisan kept sharpshooters ready to punch men like him out of the sky with bullets. All the while, his arm screamed, the pain almost as bad as being peppered through with silver and lead. He was careful not to look down at the wound lest he make a further mess of himself.
Things went dark. Next thing he knew, his head was sticking through the tent flap.
Cora looked up from Grandpa Z’s table. “Another? Go on back. We have him.”
Arrows dumped him on the cot and left without a word, at a run.
“Tripped on a rail, did you? Still foolish, I see.”
With a sigh, Cora left her work at the desk and kneeled at the side of the cot looking more annoyed than kindly.
“Hell of a nurse you are,” Rhett muttered. “Not even a whimper of sympathy.”
“I am not a nurse. I am a doctor. And this is going to hurt.” She took Rhett’s arm in her small hands and said, “Deep breath now.”
“Wait,” he said, although it was a bit of a splutter.
“For what? The bone to set incorrectly due to negligence? Fool.”
“I need to tell you something.”
She leaned down only slightly, looking distrustful. “I will listen. But know that I have a knife, and I know how to use it.”
“Good. That makes me like you better. Now, you want Meimei, right?”
Cora changed entirely, going from a vexed woman to a dragon bitch in the space of a heartbeat. Her eyes flared with white-hot fire as she leaned closer, a curl of smoke escaping as she hissed in an altogether different voice, “What of Meimei?”
“Well, I reckon the only reason you and your grandpappy don’t turn into giant dragons and burn the whole damn railroad down is because Trevisan has your sister in a cage in his caboose. But if you could save her, you could just kill everybody and leave, right?”
She cocked her head like a lizard. “Perhaps. Why do you say this?”
“Because I want to help you do it. I want Trevisan dead.”
“Many people want that, but more people still want him alive. What do you propose?”
Rhett grinned, or tried to. He was in a powerful lot of pain, slipping in and out of sanity, and he could feel his lips quivering. “I propose we break her out.”
Cora’s eyes half closed, and she stroked her chin with a dragon’s claw. “I believe I begin to see your plan. You just want to die quickly. Now hold your tongue.”
Before Rhett could say anything else, she grasped his arm in two places and did something that involved the worst, most grinding pain in the damn world and a loud snap. Rhett swooned before relaxing into the cot as boneless as a snake, the pain fled. He knew without looking that his arm was back in its right place, the bones already knitting together.
“Thank you kindly,” he said weakly.
“You won’t thank me, should you try to rescue my sister.”
“I’ll thank you for trying to help.”
He closed his eyes, just for a moment of rest. Cora placed a cool, wet cloth that smelled of herbs on his forehead, and he sighed. Next to going to sleep across from Sam or fumbling in the dark with Winifred, this was about as close to heaven as he’d been—this sudden removal of abject pain.
The next thing he felt was the cold prick of a knife over his heart.
He’d been still—but he went stiller.
“So tell me first—why should I trust you, Red-Eye?”
Rhett opened his eye, but not quickly, like he was afeared. Slowly, as if to match her deadly, measured, reptile-like way of doing things.
“You don’t have to trust me. You just have to listen to my plan and do what I say.”
“Trevisan might kill you outright.”
Rhett shook his head, his eye never leaving hers. “I don’t think he will, though. He likes torturing things. I’m something different and rare. You might even say he considers me downright interesting.”
“Then why has he put you to dangerous work?”
Rhett shrugged a little, like it was nothing. “All the work here’s dangerous. He’s curious to test my mettle, maybe. Botched that up right fine, didn’t I?”
Cora withdrew her knife from its precarious place and drew it over the glittering scales on her palm with a screech, a small smile tugging at her mouth.
“To be honest, I am also curious. Why do you pretend to be a man?”
At that, Rhett went still, his eye narrowing and his fingers clenching painfully into fists. “Now, why would you say that?”
“Don’t be angry. I am a woman who dresses as a man so that the hard men of the railroad won’t think to look at me, but I live my inside life as a woman. You are a woman who dresses as a man, but I sense that you truly wish to be one. I have met people like this before, back home in Yerba Buena. I make no judgment. I am merely curious.”
“You’re not from Chine?”
She snapped her claws at him and chuckled. “Tit for tat. I understand you, and I will play your game. My honorable parents came to Calafia when I was small, and I have lived only here, in the Federal Republic. My grandfather joined us more recently. My ways are new ways, different from those of my ancestors. I am a new thing, and I am unashamed. Perhaps your ways are new ways, too?”
The wings of her eyebrows rose to spur him on. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? That she wasn’t all mares-and-stallions, too?
“Tit for tat,” he grumbled. Before he went on, though, he scanned the tent for the green cloak and long gray braid of Grandpa Z, who didn’t seem to be nearby. What Rhett was going to say wasn’t something he wanted shared around. “So maybe I was born wrong, but being a girl brought me nothing but trouble and discomfort. I live how I want to live. And that’s in pants, among hard men, on horseback, with a gun in my hand. I’m glad to shoot anybody who has a problem with that.”
“Your name is not really Ned, is it?”
Rhett looked at her like she was dumb as a possum. “Names don’t mean shit, and you know it. I could change my name to Lord Percival Montgomery Assface tomorrow, and it wouldn’t change who I am.”
At that, Cora’s dragon face finally cracked, and she laughed behind a hand. “This is true, and something I had not considered.”
Rhett gave as much of a shrug as he could, lying down, then realized he could sit up and not look like a damn baby. His arm was sore and achy but mended, and it felt better to be upright, on the level and staring Cora in her peculiar, beautiful, hypnotizing eyes. “I reckon I’m on my fifth name by now, and I’d bet good coin it won’t be the last one I travel under. Doesn’t really matter what you call me. I’m still me, and that’s never going to change. And I tell you now that I’ll do
my best to save your sister if I can just get myself into Trevisan’s caboose.”
“Few who enter his car leave alive.” She cocked her head, amused, and her eyes somehow smoldered like a banked flame and went back to a cool blue-green. Rhett suddenly realized he had a powerful yearning to kiss the hell out of that smart mouth of hers.
“What makes you think you’ll succeed where others have failed, Red-Eye Ned?”
He gave her his cockiest grin. “I got something they don’t.”
Her eyebrows rose, her fingers—now soft girl fingers, not dragon claws—grasping Rhett’s chin. “And what’s that?”
“Pluck,” he said softly, leaning in to kiss her quick, before he lost his nerve.
He half expected Cora to give him a new scar with her talons, but instead, her fingertips moved to his jaw, holding him lightly in place and bringing him back into the kiss. His eye flickered to the tent flap, expecting Grandpa Z to bustle in and ruin everything, but the world, for once, didn’t interfere. Kissing Cora was entirely different from kissing Winifred, which Rhett had not expected. The girl had a soft precision to her that Rhett liked, a little cat tongue that darted about curiously and gentle but persistent hands that didn’t hesitate to put Rhett where she wanted him.
When Cora pulled away, she was smiling, and so was Rhett.
“I did not expect that,” she said.
“Pluck has its rewards,” was his response.
They considered each other in the silence, which wasn’t really silent, thanks to the constant pings and bangs and shouts of the camp.
“So will you do it?” Rhett finally asked.
“I don’t want to bring you to harm.” Her voice was gentle, apologetic, but firm. “Selfishly, I wish to keep you around. We could explore many things together in stolen moments like this one. But I spend every moment of my life knowing Meimei is in a cage, and any enjoyment I take is at the expense of her pain. So I will do this. I will help you kill Trevisan. But I ask for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Rhett was expecting the worst. That she wanted to get married, or to be escorted to Calafia with her cantankerous grandfather, or that he kill Trevisan a certain way that wouldn’t be nearly as fun. What Cora said, however, surprised him.
