by Chloe Garner
“Can’t believe you smoke that stuff,” he commented again, and she smiled.
“Keep offerin’,” she said, and he shook his head. Mary wouldn’t let her smoke in the house.
“Jash went into town today, this afternoon,” Merv said. Sarah let her head rotate on the back of the chair to look at him. He nodded, giving her a sharp look. “There were a couple of men from the last train asking about a woman.”
She nodded.
Easy to say it could be anyone.
Hard to believe it.
“Big town,” she observed, and Merv shook his head.
“Don’t know about where you’re from, but in Elsewhere, folk look out for each other, when it comes to the long-timers. Town turns over too fast, otherwise, if you don’t look to the ones gonna be there the next time things turn bad.”
Sarah nodded.
“Never my intent to bring down trouble on you folk,” she said, shifting. “I’ll look to gettin’ my stuff put together and be out, come dawn.”
“Rhoda would never let me hear the end of it, if we run you out the moment it looks like you need an ally. You’re stayin’ ‘till Jimmy comes, like the plan always been.”
“Once they find me, they ain’t gonna stop comin’,” Sarah said. Merv nodded slowly.
“We’ll see to that when it comes,” he said. “No tellin’, now, that they’ll find you.”
She shook her head.
“They knew I was on that train, Merv,” she said. “Only so many stops for a train to make.”
“You coulda got off anywhere,” Merv said. “You said it yourself, ain’t likely they’ll turn up the relations of the once-and-again girlfriend of the least of the Lawson brothers.”
Sarah didn’t recall puttin’ it just like that, but it weren’t far off the truth, as she saw it.
“You got a pretty family in there, Merv. Mine’s all done got dead, and it ain’t for nothin’ I been alone all these years. Let me play it my way. Keep y’all safe.”
“Won’t hear it,” he said with a tone that had a certain finality to it.
Didn’t change Sarah’s mind at all, but she let him have the talk.
They watched the long, flat plain out ahead of them as the sun went down and the moon took over the job of lightin’ the place, for what little good it was worth.
“I hear you thinkin’, Sarah Todd,” Merv said. “You try to leave here without a blessin’ from Mary, you better s’pect us to come drag you back. Ain’t but one train out of this place, either.”
Sarah smiled, undeterred, but charmed.
He looked at the sky.
“Time to turn in, I reckon.”
She nodded.
“Reckon.”
--------
The younger of the Orb boys was the one to wake her from a deep sleep.
“Remmy says there are riders comin’,” he whispered. “Pa’s out with Temis shooin’ the cows off, and Ma and the girls are hidin’ under the barn.”
Sarah sat up in bed, feelin’ the sense of the place in a way she hadn’t had to, yet.
“You defend this place much from bandits?”
“Bandits?” he asked.
“Thieves. Lowlives. Scoundrels.”
“Men with guns who try to take stuff,” the young man said. “Not much. We’ve got… People know ‘bout Pa.”
Sarah nodded, going to the chest and gettin’ out all of her guns, strapping each one to its accustomed spot, then standin’ and testin’ the weight of it, feelin’ herself for the first in a long time.
“You afraid?” she asked.
“No,” he said, indignant.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “Ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, if you is. Just need to know if you can hold a point on your own, or if you’re better holdin’ my back.”
He swallowed, the lamp in his hand casting flickering shadows across his face. Damn if not every one of them looked like Rhoda.
“I ain’t done this,” he allowed, and she took that for what he didn’t want to say.
“Then you stay here,” she said, indicating her left side. “Behind, aware, and shootin’ anything that ain’t an Orb.”
He nodded.
“Maybe they just want to talk.”
“Boy, I left Jimmy Lawson on a platform in Intec in a gunfight with these same bastards, fightin’ for his life. You blink for a second and think they’s here to make nice, you’re gonna be dead. Hear me?”
He nodded, and she snatched the lantern away from him, pulling the heavier curtains across the window and headin’ for the door.
The young man followed her down the stairs to the kitchen, where Merv and the older Orb boy were coming in from out back.
“Livestock are scattered,” Merv said. “Reckon you’re a lot better at the rest of this than we are. What’s the call?”
“Where’s Remmy?” Sarah asked. There were two young stablehands Merv kept in food and clothes, though they didn’t eat with family.
“He and Bub are under the barn with the girls,” Merv said, and Sarah nodded. She’d’ve used ‘em as watchers, but Merv’s priorities weren’t wrong. Odds with ‘em, the men coming to take her wouldn’t think to burn the barn. Was one of the favorite tricks of the Lawrence bandits, burnin’ barns. Proved they’d been there.
Sarah looked out the window.
“Two of you good to hold the house?” Sarah asked, indicating Merv and the older boy.
“What are you going to do?” Merv asked.
“Gonna take ‘em from the side, one at a time, until they’re all dead.”
Merv’s eyes went to his younger son, a man by any right, but much slighter than his older brother or his father.
“What of Gun?”
Gun. That was the kid’s name. Apparently a family name.
“He’s gonna keep me in bullets and keep ‘em out of my back,” Sarah said. “You keep him here, he’s gonna freeze.”
It weren’t kind, but she didn’t have time for sugar-coatin’ things. She started for the back door.
“Sarah,” Merv said. She looked back.
“We’ll hold. You can count on that.”
“Your wife greeted me at the door with a shotgun,” Sarah answered. “Ain’t got no doubt.”
--------
Sarah lay on her belly with the rifle to her eye, watchin’ shadows in the dark. Moon was havin’ a rough go of it against a bank of clouds, and the light was weak everywhere.
“Speak up if you see ‘em anywhere near us,” Sarah whispered. “I’m watchin’ the house.”
“Can you really hit ‘em at this distance?” Gun whispered back.
“Wouldn’t’a come this far if I couldn’t,” Sarah hissed. It had been a long, flat run, but she had her advantage. She weren’t uphill, but she’d be able to see them long before they’d find her.
“I count six,” she whispered after another moment.
“We’re outnumbered,” Gun said and she turned her head to look at him.
“You ain’t never outnumbered if you got a better line of fire,” she said. “They’s out in the open, ain’t got any sense of the land, ‘round these parts, and they’re paid to kill. Us? It’s win or die. We’re gonna win this.”
Gun sighed, unconvinced, but Sarah turned her attention back to her sight.
They were still moving too much, but she could make out where they were, more or less, and that they’d brought a proper stage with them, not just a buckboard.
Good cover, a stage, if you wanted to use it like that.
From the look of things, that was exactly what the bastards intended to do.
Problem was, they hadn’t accounted for Sarah.
“We need to move,” she hissed.
“What?” Gun asked, standing and staying low.
Survivor’s instincts. She respected that. Jump when told, but stay under the stray bullets.
“They’ve got a damned stagecoach with ‘em,” Sarah said. “Ain’t a bullet your pa’s got th
at’s gonna go through that. We need to get right behind it to pin ‘em and pick ‘em off.”
Gun nodded, moving along the ground with the native instincts of a canine.
“There’s a little gully up here,” he whispered. “Ground’s soft, and it washes away every time it floods. Hasn’t filled with sand again.”
“Perfect,” Sarah murmured, head up. The man were lighting things, and she cursed.
“What?” Gun asked, standing a fraction taller.
“Fast,” she hissed. “Fast as your feet go.”
They ran, and then he slid feet, knees, hips, down a shallow embankment, landing with his face toward the coach.
“They’re gonna burn down the house,” he said.
“They’re gonna make perfect targets,” Sarah answered, putting her eye to the rifle sight and not taking any more time than that to line up a shot and take it.
The men behind the coach startled, losing track of what they’d been doing when one of their number slumped to the ground, and Sarah smiled grimly, pumping the bolt on her rifle and slamming another bullet into the chamber as gunfire erupted down at the house.
“Watch my back, not the fight,” Sarah muttered. “I ain’t watchin’ behind us.”
“That’s my family,” Gun answered. “Like hell am I going to watch the stars, instead.”
She snorted, taking another shot and cycling the bolt again. Two shots, two hits, two kills.
Even at this distance, she could hear the sound of lead hittin’ wood, and glass breakin’. She felt bad for Mary’s kitchen, but only insofar as Mary had been a gracious hostess. Weren’t nothin’ in there that had much value to Sarah, elsewise.
“Shells,” she said. “Pocket on that side, need three more.”
She spent the third shot, three kills, and the other three men huddled behind the coach, tryin’ to figure where the fire was comin’ from. One of them got the brilliant idea to go out with a bang, settin’ light to a bottle of what Sarah could give easy guess was hard liquor.
Gun frantically tugged at the box of bullets from out of her pocket, sliding it open and counting out the bullets. Sarah rolled onto her back.
“You keep ‘em on the other end of a gun,” she said, handing him a handgun. “Shoot short, but keep firin’. Empty that one out, then do the one I’ve got on my hip. Don’t hit the house. You got it?”
He was already shooting, and she worked the reload.
There were rifles that’d shoot a lot more times in a row without a reload, but she preferred the bolt for the range it gave her, and the accuracy she knew it for. Her hearing was goin’ fast, and she needed to be able to tell if she’d missed any of ‘em before they got close, comin’ back in. She needed to end it.
She rolled back onto her stomach.
“All right,” she said, shoulderin’ Gun. “I’ve got it.”
The two remaining men had the makeshift bomb lit and one of ‘em was ready to brave the house. Sarah leveled the rifle as he rounded the side of the coach, but his body convulsed and he fell before she got her shot.
She looked back at the other two men through her sight, getting set for another shot, but the glass bottle shattered as the man fell, and then there were two men, alight with burning alcohol, scrambling around.
She paused.
“What are you waiting for?” Gun asked.
“They tried to burn down your house,” Sarah said. “Wouldn’t serve ‘em wrong to go down like that.”
“That’s not who we are,” Gun said, and Sarah sighed, shrugging slightly and lining up her next two shots in mechanical succession.
Five shots, five hits, five kills. One to the Orb men in the house.
Sarah stood.
“Can you still hear?” she asked.
“Not very good,” Gun answered, and she sighed.
“Keep your eyes open. Could still be more of ‘em, waitin’ to see if they flush anyone.”
Gun nodded, and they started the slow walk back toward the house.
“Merv,” she shouted about halfway there. “Merv, we’re comin’ in.”
She hated givin’ away their spot, but she’d have hated more if she or Gun got shot after the fight was over.
“I see ya,” Merv shouted back.
She kept a sharp eye, but she didn’t see any more motion.
“Comin’ out,” Merv shouted.
“Stay in cover,” Sarah yelled. “Till I say.”
She knew he wouldn’t like it, but she didn’t leave any room to argue, snapping once at Gun to stay where she knew he’d be.
The first man had run directly toward them from the stagecoach, and lay smoldering on the thin grass. She drew her handgun as they got close enough to smell him and she shot him.
“Why?” Gun asked.
“Man who knows he’s already dead has a powerful motive to take you with him,” she said. “I seen them do all kinds of stuff, tryin’ it. You make sure they’s all the way dead before you get close enough for them to know where you are.”
She shot the two men slumped against the coach wheels, then went to look at the other burnt man, a good piece away from everyone else in another direction.
There were two gun shots, and she turned her head to see Gun stumble back.
She cursed under her breath, running.
Merv was on the porch with a rifle, and the man that he and the older boy had killed lay sprawled in the muddy red dust with a gun out.
She looked at Gun, peeling his hands away.
“Merv,” she called. “Clear the table. Get your boy out here to check the bodies.”
Gun sat down hard, and she hauled him back to his feet.
“Told you to stay close,” she said. “Told you.”
He blinked at her stupidly.
She pulled his arm across her shoulders as Merv came to help. The bigger boy ran past with a handgun, and there was a quick set of shots behind them. Merv looked, but Sarah didn’t. She couldn’t tell guns apart, individually, but she could tell when all the shot was comin’ out of the same gun, and that was one damned mad older brother, right there.
Sarah threw Gun up onto the table and pulled a knife to cut his shirt away from the bullet hole in his stomach.
“Temis can ride to town, fetch Doc,” Merv said. Sarah shook her head, pulling the key out of her pocket.
“First you go up and get my stuff,” she said. “I’ve got a proper patch kit up in the trunk.”
He stripped the key out of her fingers, running upstairs and Sarah put both hands over the hole, just holding tight. She looked at Gun as he shouted in pain.
“You ain’t gonna die,” she said. “Not on account of me comin’ here. You got it? You ain’t dyin’ for me.”
“How is he?” Temis asked.
“Go get everyone from under the barn,” Sarah said.
He paused and she gave him a sharp look that set him moving. Merv came back down with her box, and she opened it, pullin’ out the long metal tongs and setting them over a lighter flame until they were red.
She jerked her head at Gun’s head.
“You hold down that end, you got it?”
Merv nodded, going to his son’s head and putting weight on his shoulders. Sarah got up on the table and put one knee across his thighs, bearing down with most of her weight as she sent the tongs after the bullet. Gun yelped and thrashed, but Sarah’s skill with this part was too routine.
Temis came back with the rest of the family and the two stable boys, and Mary made an angry noise.
“What can I do?” she asked, standing next to Gun as Sarah held up the bullet.
“I’m gonna go get Doc,” Temis said.
“Not yet,” Sarah said, dropping the bullet on the table and getting out her foam. She pushed the nozzle into the hole, fillin’ the space inside the man with the expanding foam as Gun tried to get away again. She looked at Temis. “You give ‘em thirty minutes, no less, to show themselves or flee. I ain’t sendin’ you out there to get yourself
killed in a rush for a brother who ain’t dyin’.” The last was addressed to Gun, whose face was twisted away.
“If he needs Doc…” Temis started.
“He’s okay,” Merv said. “She’s right. And she’s got this.”
She looked at Merv and gave him a curt nod, going back for her glue. It would harden with the foam and form a cap over the hole, puttin’ pressure on anything inside that might be tryin’ to bleed. She smeared the glue over the foam and sat back, watchin’ Gun.
“What can I do?” Mary asked again. Sarah shook her head.
“I got him. Ain’t a two-man job.”
It weren’t kind, but she was too busy to think it out more than that.
Satisfied Gun weren’t gonna up and die on her, Sarah let her knee up, goin’ back to her kit for a green salve she put ‘round the glue. Weren’t another minute and Gun went lax.
“You carry good stuff,” Merv observed, and Sarah nodded.
“You’ll need a proper Doc to fix him up, but he’ll make it to mornin’ like that, nobody moves him.”
“Can I have a pillow?” Gun asked weakly, and Sarah jerked her head at Mary. Gun’s wife was at his head, putting her fingers through his hair with a stunned look.
Merv gave Sarah a look, and she climbed off the table, followin’ him to a front window and lookin’ out at the beginning of a new dawn.
“I was gonna tell you that, if they were still lookin’ for you, odds were good Jimmy’s still alive, out Intec way, but I ain’t so sure, no more. Appreciate what you done for Gun, but I still gotta ask. Is it possible y’ain’t been straight with us ‘bout why you’re here?”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Sarah answered.
“That’s a right load of cash you got up there. Sure you ain’t pulled a fast one back in Intec and took to ground here, hopin’ no one would search you out?”
“Ain’t nobody after that money who’s got more rights to it than me,” Sarah said. “Came to me right and voluntary.”
