by Chloe Garner
“Dumber than tree brains,” she said, making her way out of the camp and down Main Street again.
The dress.
The damned dress, there in the window at Kayla’s shop.
It was more than she could pass by once more and again without some comment. She went to the stairs, going up to the boardwalk and knocked on the door to Kayla’s shop.
She’d been planning on letting herself in and doing something about the mockery of a dress, but Kayla actually answered.
“Sarah,” she said, delighted. “How are you? Come in.”
Sarah let the woman draw her into the little shop, looking around at the heavy curtaining on the walls.
“Wanted to talk to you ‘bout that dress,” Sarah said, jerking her thumb at the light blue cloth hanging from the ceiling that separated the front window from the rest of the shop. Kayla’s eyebrows went up.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Kayla asked. “It was Nina’s idea, and Rhoda said I ought to make a replica dress to go with it.”
Sarah dropped her head slightly, looking hard at Kayla.
“Nina Joiner told you you ought put my tore up weddin’ dress in the front window?”
Kayla nodded, looking over at the blue curtains.
“She said it would remind people just how far you’re willing to go for the town.”
Sarah drew a deep breath, trying to square that with the conversation with Nina that morning.
“Don’t like it,” Sarah said.
“You told me I could have it,” Kayla said.
“Did I?” Sarah asked, and Kayla smiled.
“And you never said I couldn’t make another one.”
“What was Nina doing here, anyway?”
“Ordering a dress,” Kayla said, grinning. “I told you, once the women in town started seeing what I can do…”
“A weddin’ dress, ain’t it?” Sarah asked, and Kayla nodded. Sarah sighed.
“Don’t leave it up forever.”
“You have to change the display,” Kayla said. “It’s how people start imagining what else you might do, if they asked you.”
Sarah snorted and shook her head. It was gonna bother her plenty, just leaving it, but she saw Nina’s point, and Rhoda’s, too. She’d been gone a long time. She needed to be able to count on her foundation, here, with the homesteaders, and if Kayla was helping her own way… Sarah could at least try to not get in the way.
She jumped off of the boardwalk and climbed up at Granger’s, going in and putting in an order for a week’s worth of supplies for two, up in the mountains. Canned food, water and water purification, fresh blankets, gremlin.
Another pack of wrapping papers for cigarettes.
Ammunition.
Granger hadn’t stocked much ammunition, before, because it was dangerous to have it on hand. Sarah had held most of it, and the homesteaders bought in big lots that only sat in Granger’s store for a day or so before they picked them up and brought them home. His glass case full of boxes of bullets was… stark. New. Sarah appreciated that they were there, that maybe she wouldn’t have to tend her own stock so close, but at the same time, it implied a loss of control.
Bandits got bullets. Stealin’ ‘em from where they’d got to, on purpose, or goin’ upline to get ‘em themselves, Sarah had never known, but they had bullets. Outside of that, though, Sarah had always known where the rest of them were. That any guy could walk in, put down the right stack of shine, and walk out with killin’ bits of metal in whatever shape and quantity he liked?
It was how it had been. Sarah remembered that. There had been too many people, and not everyone had a house like the homesteaders where they could keep deep stocks of food, ammunition, and feed.
Sarah had a flashback to the Lawrence that had been, sturdy wooden buildings… Where had they been? Men and women out and around them, talking, laughing, planning, living. Music at the tavern, dancing.
“Back from the dead,” she whispered, handing cash over to Granger and collecting the goods he’d piled up for her.
She went back out, finding Dog having a stare-down with Paulie as she sat in her rocking chair out front of the tavern, rifle across her lap.
“You ain’t finished with the housin’ yet,” Sarah said, coming to stand next to Dog. “You finish it, and we’ll see about whether or not I let you open again, or if I got some more stuff for y’all to do, first.”
“There are rooms,” Paulie said. “Ain’t our fault you ain’t found work for nobody yet, and they can’t afford ‘em.”
“Tavern’s closed,” Sarah said, going on. Dog followed alongside her merrily, his tail swishing and his mouth hung open. She went to the end of the street, crossing Second Street to where the wells still held unbuilt ground and she dragged up a bucket of water. She filled her canteen and then dumped the rest into a trough there. Dog stood on the edge of the trough as she let the bucket fall back down into the well and pulled it up again, putting three or four more buckets into the trough. Gremlin moseyed up from wherever he’d been, slurping at the water with a sigh. Dog waited until Sarah was done splashin’ around to stick his nose down and drink his fill.
Used to be everyone what used the wells’d drop a couple extra buckets into the troughs to keep ‘em useable for passing stock, but the young men weren’t that civil, and it looked like everyone had stopped.
She adjusted her hat, waiting, and when both Gremlin and Dog popped their heads up to look at her, she mounted up, heading for home.
--------
There was a small crowd of men reclining on the porch, jawin’ at each other and waitin’ for her to get back. She let Gremlin loose after she saw the stable boy waiting for him and she went up to the porch. Dog made himself scarce. He was okay with crowds, but he preferred to be on his own, and Sarah couldn’t fault him for it.
“Assume y’all remember what order you got here in,” she said, shooing a Killian out of her accustomed rocking chair.
There was agreement and Sarah nodded.
“So here’s what I done. I told them city folk that if they want locals runnin’ their mines, I’d scare up some men to do it, but I didn’t make ‘em no promises how many there’d be what’d do it, nor how long you’d tolerate diggin’. They gotta pay you right and treat you right if they figure on keepin’ you for any space of time, and that’s their part.
“Y’all gotta come through. Don’t reckon I blame you, one way or the other, if you ain’t hittin’ nothin’ but rock, down under them mountains, but if you ain’t movin’ rock, that’s your fault, and you’re failin’ not just the fella out there payin’ you a heap of wealth to get ‘em out, but me, on account ‘a me vouchin’ for you. You find absenta, it’s your job to keep it from walkin’ down the mountain in the wrong pockets, you got it? You’re straight with these guys. Don’t care if you’re makin’ a thousand lifetimes’ fortunes for ‘em, you do ‘em right and you don’t take what ain’t yours. You want more money on account of you bein’ the one doin’ the work of pullin’ all that absenta out ‘a the ground? Tell ‘em so. Be ready to walk, if it’s worth it to you. But you don’t cheat, you don’t steal, and you get the damned job done. If that ain’t what you’re lookin’ for, your horses are standin’ just fine and they’ll get you home in time for supper.”
The men shifted, but no one left.
“The money you said they’d be payin’,” the eldest Pillar boy said. “You’re serious?”
Sarah shrugged.
“Top bid’s higher’n that, then we’ll see if we run outta bids or outta men first. Money ain’t what you’re lookin’ for, ain’t no bother to me.”
She looked around, then nodded and went into the house, coming back out with the papers from Preston.
“First man here,” she said. One of the men stepped forward, and she read the top bid and the claim owner. There were whistles. She handed him the paper and wrote down the match on a separate page. She worked her way through the rest of them, gratified that the men of Lawre
nce had the dignity not to argue over their arrival order, even as it became apparent how much money it was going to make in difference.
In the end, there were two claims that were gonna have to make their own plans, though Sarah wondered if she might not get another couple of men in, looking for those jobs, as excitement built among the homesteads to have that much cash comin’ in, on the horizon.
She watched the last of the men as they rode away, then she went into the house, going back to the kitchen. A woman with quick hands and mottled skin was standing at the sink, washing something. Sarah looked around the kitchen.
She’d told Jimmy she didn’t want any staff. She’d lived alone for a long time, now, and she was used to it. He’d talked her into compromising to a minimal staff to take care of the house and - as it turned out - feed them, but she still didn’t like having someone in the house when she got home. Made her itchy, like she needed to go through the entire place and menace anyone who turned up who didn’t belong.
“I’ve worked for Mr. Lawson for five years,” the woman said. “You may be good, but you aren’t as sneaky as he is.”
Sarah nodded.
“I’ll look into that.”
The woman chuckled and turned, drying her hands on a towel and throwing it back onto the counter.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Todd?”
“Last night,” Sarah said.
“Heard a rumor you weren’t impressed with the celopod.”
“Jimmy tell you to go high-nose with that meal?”
“His menu,” the woman said.
Sarah took a gun out of a harness that she wore under her shoulder - not one of her two routine handguns, but a backup for those two in the event that she needed one faster than she could reload - and she set it down on the counter at the end of the kitchen. The woman looked at it and then at Sarah.
“Every meal,” Sarah said. “I can rustle up my own breakfast, and I don’t rightly expect to be around for midday, but the night meals, when we’re here, I want them to include somethin’ what comes off a cow.”
The woman frowned, thoughtful.
“I haven’t got any problem with that.”
“I’ll butcher ‘em for you, if it comes to it, but if I ain’t got one thing in a whole meal that I don’t know where it come from, we’re gonna have another conversation.”
The woman crossed her arms, tipping her head back to look at Sarah.
“Such reputation,” she said. “You live up to it marvelously.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes, then turned to go, leaving the gun on the counter. She went out to the barn, checking that Gremlin was untacked, fed, and watered, and she gathered up the supplies that the stableboy had unloaded.
“You’re going out?” the boy asked, appearing from around a post in a stall.
“I am,” Sarah answered, repacking things and working them into two piles so that Jimmy would be able to just tie his to the back of his saddle and go.
She was torn between taking Flower and Gremlin up into the mountains. Gremlin was a fool horse, but all of ‘em were. Flower had no experience at all, out here, and was like as not bought from remote parts, meanin’ he had no desert experience or hardiness, either. She needed to toughen him up, but he’d be unreliable in the meantime.
Dog nosed her hip and she handed him a bit of jerky, looking at the two kits.
It would do. She’d decide on a horse in the morning.
The boy was standing next to her.
“He keepin’ the vermin out of the feed?” Sarah asked, indicating Dog.
“He’s a good boy,” the child answered. “Kills everything that doesn’t belong here.”
Sarah nodded.
“Good dog ought to earn his keep,” she said. The boy nodded.
“When are you bringing the cows down from the high country?”
“Couple of months, yet,” Sarah said. She needed to let the new calves get big and hale enough to survive the trek back across the badlands.
“You going to tend the Lawson cows, or just yours?” the boy asked.
She frowned down at him. She hadn’t thought about it.
“They have the fencing up to ‘snuff, ‘round here?”
The boy shook his head.
“No, ma’am.”
“Tell Merlin to hire what men he needs to get it done,” Sarah said. The boy nodded, looking around for a moment and then disappearing elsewhere.
Sarah put her hands on her hips, giving Dog one more bit of jerky to get his nose out of her pocket, then she went back toward the house. Jimmy was kicking his feet out of his stirrups, sweeping off of his horse and onto the ground with a distinctly un-Lawrence sense of flair. He let his horse go, and the stable boy went racing past Sarah to collect it. Sarah started up the hill toward Jimmy.
“You get everything done you wanted to, today?” he asked.
“Ready to leave in the mornin’,” she said.
“I need to send someone to Preston to pay for the guns and get them shipped,” Jimmy said. “You have any recommendations?”
“Kirk boy has done work for me before,” Sarah said. “Or you could get one of the Goodsons to go. I trust any of ‘em.”
Jimmy nodded.
“If I still had staff, I’d ask one of them to send a message. I’ll have to go myself, now.”
“They all get up before dawn,” Sarah said. “We could hit either place on our way out in the morning.”
He took his hat off, running his fingers through his hair, then putting it back on with a quick nod.
“That will do.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“How did your call for foremen turn out?” he asked her.
“Filled almost all of ‘em,” Sarah said. “May get a couple more, may not. Need to get names in the mail to the investors so they can get things started.”
Jimmy nodded.
“I think we’ll see more of them venturing out here as the news about our existing mine goes out.”
“What news is that?” Sarah asked. Jimmy smiled, his eyes glittering.
“Quality keeps going up. I got a note from Preston that said that it’s more like they’re pulling absenta out of the ground than absenta ore. Price per ounce is…” He shook his head. “If we can get anything even resembling that, anywhere else.”
Sarah nodded.
“We’ll get up there and see how they’re going.”
He looked out at the horizon.
“We can control the world from here, Sarah. You and me.”
“I’d settle for keepin’ the bad elements out of Lawrence,” Sarah said, and he smiled, offering her his arm. They walked up onto the porch and he used his hand on the screen by the door to unlock it and let her in.
“Still strange to come in this door,” Sarah said. Jimmy nodded, looking up at the ceiling, thirty feet overhead.
“We always had to use the back door, all the way until Pa died.”
His jaw worked, remembering, and Sarah went to take her hat and duster off, hanging both by the door.
He went to sit in the front room and she followed, cutting through to the kitchen and putting a kettle on to boil, then coming back to sit down at the other couch.
“I have heavy equipment coming in,” Jimmy said without looking at her. He was watching whatever grand plan he had in his head. She knew that look.
“What heavy equipment?”
He turned his face toward her now.
“Digging,” he said. “Cement. Bulldozers and excavators.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows, crossing one leg.
“What you figure on doin’ with it?”
“They come with operators,” Jimmy said. “Clarence has been looking at it for weeks, working with an engineer in Preston.”
“Jimmy,” Sarah warned.
“We’re going to build a reservoir,” he said.
She tipped her head.
“Ain’t possible,” she said. “You know it as well as I do.”
He shook his head.
“I know no such thing. The volume of water we see go by each and every year would support an oasis as big as we could imagine it,” he said. “All we have to do is hold onto it.”
“What oasis?” Sarah asked. “It all washes away every year.”
He smiled.
“I didn’t rent the equipment,” he told her. “I bought it. That’s not all I have in mind.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Fool Lawson,” she said. “Thinkin’ you can control the weather.”
“I’m not trying to control it,” he said. “I’m just trying to nudge it.”
She snorted.
“If it were possible, every town up and down the range woulda done it by now.”
“It’s expensive,” he said. “And I have no illusions that it’s going to be permanent. We’ll have to maintain it. But if we want to improve our quality of life, here, we have to have a city that doesn’t sit under three feet of water for days every single year. Where everyone doesn’t run the risk of simply being washed away every year.”
“That’s Lawrence,” she said. “It’s too big, Jimmy.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up slightly.
“Is it because you don’t think it can be done, or is it because you’re proud that you survive it?”
“How many men died in the last sandstorm?” Sarah demanded, fighting the urge to stand. His face fell calm, but he didn’t answer.
“How many?” she asked again.
“Thirty-eight,” he said.
She turned her face away. More than maybe she’d been ready to hear.
“I ain’t gonna say that Lawrence makes men tough,” she said. “It does, but it makes more of ‘em dead. Days like that, I think maybe we ought to move everybody up into the mountains and just accept that it’s two days’ ride to the station, pullin’ a cart.”
“We can’t survive like that,” Jimmy said. “You know that. I do think that, long term, we need to move more of us up into the hills, but that’s after we get everything paved…”
“Paved,” she said. He nodded.
