“I guess it's fitting,” Nox said. He had the star of a sheriff on his breast, but as a bounty hunter, it might as well have been the skull and crossbones.
He took a step into the dark of that path, reaching up towards the sign as he passed. He pulled it down and let it drop to the ground, where the bones rocked for a moment, then went deathly still.
12 – THE BONE PATH
The passage was even more poorly lit than the previous one. It got a bit of natural light through a few cracks in the rock, but most of the light in this place came from the far-off glimmers of oil lamps. He saw one through a little alcove in the wall to his left, where he could also see his little mechanical canary going about its business.
He checked the tracker on his left wrist. The two red dots pulsed steadily, almost like a heartbeat. He'd put a lot of love into toys just like them in the good old days, right down to adding a little copper heart. But these ones? No. These didn't get to have one. They got to hunt out the beating hearts of others, and help put a stop to them too.
He reached what he initially thought was a dead end, but he spotted a tight gap in the corner, just big enough for someone as thin as Handcart Sally to squeeze through. He'd probably fit too, were it not for his equipment. He had to take his guitar off and pass it through first, and then the oxygen tank that was connected by tubes to his mask. It was lucky it was made fairly flat or he would have never got it in.
The tunnel here was darker, and it seemed the wooden support posts were old. A few of them were rotten, and a few others had fallen over. But the roof still held—for now. He could have made a light of his own to guide his path, but that'd show him up too. It wasn't so bad being blind if your prey was blind too.
He continued on until he heard a crunch beneath his feet. He was glad it didn't feel like rope or wire, but he wasn't much relieved when he found out what it was. The ground was littered with bones, picked clean. You couldn't move without stepping on them, and hearing that awful crack. Something told him it was just Handcart Sally trying to scare him off. Another something told him it was something else.
The darkness made the little blinking red dots stand out more, so he noticed fast when one of them went out. That was the one that took the left, unmarked path. Something had got it. He probably should have taken that passage after all. This was the problem with gambles. Sometimes you lost.
He heard the sound of something like a lever, and froze. He looked around, barely seeing anything in the gloom. He grumbled as he was forced to pull a box of matches from his pocket and strike one. A little flame like that barely made a difference on most occasions, but in this pitch the difference was huge. He could see the shape of the walls and the winding passage, and the carpet of bones much more clearly. He could also see a pressure plate buried beneath them, and buried beneath one of his boots.
He sighed, and the smoke from his mask snuffed out the dwindling flame. He struck another and tried to get a better look at what he'd set in motion. He didn't want to lean down too much, in case he'd inadvertently apply extra pressure, and he didn't want to ease up on the pressure he'd already placed. It didn't seem like this trap sprung when you stepped on it, or he'd probably already be dead. It was more likely it'd trigger once he lifted his foot.
He looked around for some rocks, trying to contain his growl as another match burned out. There wasn't much there within reach. The bones weren't much use either, not with the meat not on them. They didn't weigh a whole lot without it. He knew that well, as he sometimes had to let the carrion birds pick a body clean to lighten the load when heading back into town. Except the head, of course. He had to keep that intact for identification. If anyone complained that there wasn't much of a body left to go with it, he'd go with his usual retort: “Ya shoulda drawn more than a head on the poster then.”
He looked back and noticed a large rock lining the path he had come from. He tried to reach for it, but it was just outside his grasp. He took his guitar off his back again, and used it to close the gap, with the curve in the wood and metal acting like a hook. He dragged the rock closer, then placed it down on the pressure plate.
He took a deep breath as he eased his own foot off. He could feel the plate shifting a little. That was probably fine, so long as it didn't shift a lot. He didn't even know what or where the trap was. He thought it better if he never found out.
The rock held the plate down, and he managed to step over it, strapping his guitar up again. He continued through the passage, barely getting ten careful paces before another match went out. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder, turning sharply to it, gun raised. The faint light revealed a net hanging up on the ceiling, with two bodies inside, looking fresher than the rest, but still well dead. If this was Handcart Sally's work, then she was even worse than the poster said.
Suddenly, he heard a rush of sounds behind him. He turned, gun at the ready, but he barely saw anything before he felt a thump on his head, and everything went black. That wouldn't have been so bad, but it was in the blackness that he could see the fire.
13 – THE SAWDUST SPARROWS
The Coilhunter wasn't used to going out cold, not even after a hard night at the prairie dew. When he came to, he wasn't just at sixes and sevens, he was mumbling to himself something frightening.
“I need to stop the fire,” he said, still half in a daze. It took a moment for the blur to fade, before he could see Handcart Sally crouching down beside him, with a whole posse of good-for-nothings lined up behind her.
He tried to reach for his guns, but he felt the tug of the rope around his wrists, tied tight behind his back. There was nothing in the holsters at his waist. Hell, they'd taken every bit of a blade off him too. You couldn't blame them, even if you wanted to blame them with lead.
“Seems you was havin' a nightmare,” Sally said, patting the mask on his face, as if to wake him up. He was surprised they hadn't removed that too. If they had, he'd probably already be dead.
Nox gave out a low growl. “Seems you're havin' one now,” he said. “Difference is, you're starin' at it.”
She let out a cackle. “D'ya hear this?” she said to the gang behind her. His vision was still too blurry to make them out proper.
Sally turned back to him. “Who sent you?”
“The Devil.”
“You mean Blood Johnson? I told him I'd have his money this week.”
“No,” the Coilhunter rasped. “I was sent to bring you back to Hell.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Who sent you?” she asked again, more aggressively.
“No one. I'm a lone wolf.”
“Funny, that,” she said. “So am I. Actually, scratch that. I ain't that lonely. I'm still a wolf though. Let me introduce you to the pack.”
She stood up, clearing the way. When the Coilhunter wasn't focused on her, the rest of them came into vision, and he recognised them all. The Sawdust Sparrows. He had posters for them too. There was Cross-eyed Candy with her red straggles all twisted like brushwood, staring at him with one eye, while the other stared off somewhere else. Beside her, sitting just as bad as he was, was Limp-leg Trish, with her brown hair pulled back tight, which showed the soot on her face real good. Further on, there was Nine-finger Nancy, who was done up to the nines in guns and holsters, and only needed one finger to shoot them. They used to say you didn't face Nancy; you faced a whole damn arsenal.
Of course, they never did give themselves those names. They just stuck. The Coilhunter knew all about that.
And that was them, the Sparrows. All three of them, or so Nox thought. Normally gangs like that went down in number, because of him. Yet, normally he wasn't tied up by them either.
“Didn't take you for a Sparrow,” he said. “Thought you were a wolf?”
She didn't like that. He knew she wouldn't. If you didn't have your guns, you still had your mouth. Of course, you had to be careful how you f
ired that off. He saw the fire in her eyes, and how hard it was for her to control it. She didn't like looking weak, not in front of the gang. She tried to keep her temper, show it didn't bother her, while deep down it gnawed away like a bullet.
Nox gestured with his head to the rest of them. “Quite a bunch you got here. Bit of a circus, even. You sure you belong? I mean, don't you have to have something wrong with you?”
“You'd fit in just fine,” Trish said, pointing a blackened finger to his mask.
He smiled, knowing they couldn't see it, and let a puff of black smoke loose. “Well, I'm ready to join when you are. Just let me out of these bonds and I'll go sign the dotted line. Why, I'll even hoot and chirp for ya.”
“He fancies himself a comedian, this one,” Cross-eyed Candy said, holding up a serrated dagger. “I usually give those types a proper smile.”
“Told you we should've slatted him silly,” Nine-finger Nancy responded, spinning a revolver—his revolver—around her left index finger. She looked like someone who was more show than shot. Yet, the Coilhunter knew enough about her to know she liked to play with her victims, taunt them before killing them. And she'd killed plenty with the Sawdust Sparrows. Hell, that was how she got so many guns. Nox made a silent promise that she wouldn't get to keep his.
“If he moves,” Cross-eyed Candy said, “you can do whatever you want with him. But keep him alive. We might get a nice ransom for him if he's got family that wants him still breathin'. We've got to sort out the heist. Keep an eye on him, will ya?”
She led Trish and Sally out, leaving the Coilhunter with the one-woman army of Nine-finger Nancy. All those guns probably kept most hostages quiet, but when two of them were his, Nox couldn't help but talk.
“You,” he said. She perked up, pistols ready. He had that effect on people. They had the same effect on him. She stared at him, cold and silent, like how the barrel of a gun stared. It brought new meaning to the phrase a murderous look.
“You look like you've got some skill with those there six-shooters,” he lied to her. She had a lot of six-shooters, but he couldn't see a hint of skill with them. With the others, he would've offered them a chance to make some chink, but she didn't seem that interested in coils. She was here for a different kind of metal, the kind with a trigger—and the thrill it gave.
She still didn't answer him. She was the silent type, the type you only heard with exploding gunpowder. With that many guns strapped to her breast, she didn't need good aim. Hell, she didn't even need luck. You only had to get hit by one lead pill and you were probably done for.
She was short of one digit, but she had a whole necklace of other people's fingers, so she didn't just collect guns. Some of them were long rotten, but others looked freshly cut. The Coilhunter didn't care much for the stories of demons down south, but he knew there were plenty of them just like her running around the Wild North.
“You ever find that missin' finger?” he asked her.
She looked at her right hand, where the index finger was cut to a stump. Some said she lost it in an accident, when she was playing soldier with a live grenade. Others said she was taught a lesson by the law, and they took her trigger finger to make her keep on learning. Those were the lessons the Coilhunter liked. Why, he was quite the teacher himself.
“I can help you make those hands a little even,” he offered. It must've sounded like a tempting offer, even if it did come from him.
“How?” she asked.
“Ever heard of a game called Rock, Paper, Scissors?”
She looked at him, silent for a moment. “Yeah,” she cawed.
“Well,” the Coilhunter said, shifting in his seat, leaning a little closer, as if he was going to tell her a secret.
With a sudden swiftness, he leapt up, letting his worn-away bonds slip from his wrists. He grabbed one of the nearby rocks quicker than she could let off a shot, and bashed it against the side of her head.
“First, I use this rock,” he said, as Nine-finger Nancy dropped to the ground. “Then I take this paper with your face on it.” He unfurled the Wanted poster, letting her see what the law looked like, in black and white, before the red got into her eyes. “And then I find me some scissors.” He pulled one of his daggers from her collection and squatted near her as she spasmed on the track, holding up her good hand. “And I make this hand match that one. Then you'd be Eight-finger Nancy. But that doesn't quite roll off that tongue, does it? So, we'll leave you with all nine. But ya see, you should've taken a better look at that poster. It don't say Alive or Maimed. To me, it don't even say Alive.”
He pulled a pistol from one of the holsters strapped to her, and fired faster than she could dream of firing. She went out cold. Some called it a mercy shot, but for types like her, he hadn't got much mercy. That was the thing about the Wild North. The desert tended to dry up everything, even the good stuff. Your compassion, your conscience—it didn't matter. It all blew away like dust.
He heard approaching footsteps and put his back to the wall near the door. He waited, wondering if they'd spot the body first, and run away, or run straight into his waiting gun. He heard a muted gasp, then a rush of boots. In popped Handcart Sally with her luscious locks and pale, soot-stained skin.
Nox pointed his pistol and cocked the hammer.
“Any last words?”
“Wait!” she cried. “I know what happened to Waltman.”
14 – KNOWLEDGE IS A DANGEROUS WEAPON
“I'm listening.”
She took a moment to compose herself. It was one thing to blurt something out when you felt the barrel against your temple. It was quite another to say something with intent, to string all those spilling words together into proper sentences.
He decocked the hammer. It was like giving her tongue back.
“He was lookin' for you,” she said. “He came lookin' when he shouldn't have been lookin'.”
“So you killed him?”
“No! I didn't kill nobody. Not in my whole life.”
“There are a whole lot of posters out there that say otherwise.”
“Yeah, and they don't always say the truth.”
She was right there, but that didn't mean she was right about herself.
“Go on,” he said, nudging her with the barrel.
“He said he knew something you'd want to know. He said it was urgent.”
“Why did he tell you this?”
“He didn't. I was told it later.”
“By whom?”
“Blood Johnson.”
“The debt collector?”
“That's puttin' it mildly.”
“What did Blood Johnson want with Waltman?”
“He wanted him dead. He said he was told by his … his superior … that Waltman had to go.”
“His superior,” Nox mused.
“Yeah.” She turned her head to him, ignoring the risk, until the barrel pointed straight between her eyes. “I think that's the man you're lookin' for.”
It was such an odd feeling to lose his grip on the gun. It almost slipped. It almost fired too. He could kill a snake in the brush from a hundred yards, a skill honed by years of practice, years of discipline. Yet here he was, barely able to hold the weapon tight.
“He was in a carriage,” she said, “and Blood Johnson was talkin' to him. He had a deep, rough voice, like granite. I didn't get to see him. I think he only came to make sure the job was done.”
“What job?”
“Burying Waltman.”
The Coilhunter took a deep breath. The deeper he took them, the blacker the smoke that came out of the exhaust. It was quite a concoction in that drum upon his back. He wasn't just breathing in oxygen now.
“I didn't kill Waltman,” she said. “He was already dead before I was called in. Blood Johnson made sure of that.”
“So, why'd he call you?�
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“That's what I do. I get rid of bodies. I put them places no one'll find 'em. That's why they call me Handcart Sally. I load those poor souls up in the handcart and bring 'em out to the wastes, to where even the sun don't dare go. But I don't kill 'em myself. I ain't never hurt a fly.”
“But you wrapped them up for the spiders though.”
“I ain't proud of what I do.”
“Good. You shouldn't be.”
“He makes me do it, y'know. Blood Johnson. It started with one loan, and then it kept gettin' higher. I can't shake it, and I can't shake him. No matter what I do, I always seem to owe him some. It's like he doesn't really want me to pay it all off. He owns me. So, when he tells me I need to hide something for him, I have to go and hide it. And I just went and done something stupid, got another loan. But it wasn't for me this time. It was for … a friend.”
“The things we do for friends,” Nox said.
“That's why I got in with the Sparrows. We was lookin' to rob some people on the road. Then I could clear my debts and get away from all this.”
“Get away from all this.” Nox shook his head. “It ain't that easy.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “I know.”
“Even if I pull this trigger, you'll still owe those debts.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Well, you owe me something, that's for sure. You can bring me to where you buried Waltman. And if you're lucky, and I find out from his ghost what his livin' self was gonna tell me, then maybe I won't ask you to dig another one of those graves you're so good at diggin'. Maybe I won't ask you to dig it for yourself.”
Coilhunter - A Science Fiction Western Adventure (A Coilhunter Chronicles Novel) (The Coilhunter Chronicles Book 1) Page 5
