by Chloe Garner
And then, about half a mile further along, she hit the clearing.
There was no reason that it should have been there. Maybe the soil was shallow or rockier or had a chemical running off into it that kept trees and bigger plants from growing, but there it was, all the same, just knee-deep grass as far as she could see, until the mountainside vanished around its own curve and another mountain blocked the horizon.
The grass was dotted with horses.
“Damn,” she murmured.
She’d heard about wild horses, the working animals that escaped or survived after miners died, how they didn’t all just run amok and starve, that they were forming herds up here in the mountains, but she’d never given it much thought and, looking at them, she realized she’d never believed it.
She’d put too many horses down in her life to think that they were going to make it on their own.
And yet, there they were, several dozen strong, up and down the mountainside grazing in an even breeze.
One of the closest ones looked up at her and snorted, and the field distorted around her, a solidly-built roan stallion throwing up his head and charging at her with choppy, defiant footfalls. It was a warning. He wasn’t going to come fast, but he wasn’t going to back down, either.
Sarah wasn’t going to back down, for her part, and Gremlin was surprisingly comfortable standing his ground as the roan came down the hill at them. The herd formed behind him, including a handful of horses in various degrees of tack.
Once he got between Sarah and the herd, the stallion broke off his charge, just a feint to keep her away, and started pushing the herd downhill. She eased Gremlin out of the trees, watching. Most of the herd looked native enough, especially the two yearlings and the weanling foal, but the ones in halters, she watched, seeing how they didn’t move right with the rest of the horses.
Finding the two she was going to steal, she booted Gremlin hard, cutting through the herd as the roan gave chase. Most of the horses regrouped after she went through, but the two she wanted scattered, unfamiliar with the dynamics of the herd, and she cut them loose, turning Gremlin around to face the roan.
It was a beautiful herd he had. Several broke-color horses eyed her as they started to merge into the trees and disappear, and Sarah had to admire them the same way she admired anything that flaunted rules with such success and flair. They were healthy, compact, and quick.
Good horses.
The roan was furious at her, flaring his nostrils and snorting, feigning this charge and that, then turning with a quick motion to back at Gremlin. Without needing to look, Sarah unbuckled the loop that held her bullwhip to her saddle under her knee and unfurled it to the side, cracking it once without making contact. She heard the horses scatter behind her, but they were away from the herd, now, and she could collect them when she felt like it.
She missed Dog.
The roan spun again, reevaluating but not backing down from the fight.
“Ain’t worth it, friend,” she said. “They weren’t yours yesterday, and they ain’t gonna be yours tomorrow.”
The stallion backed, his ears pinned all the way back against his head, then turned to follow his herd into the wood.
Sarah turned Gremlin hard, going to intercept one of the tacked horses, getting ahold of its harness and looping a rope through it to tie to her saddle, then going to collect the other one where he’d stopped to graze.
She paused, looking at the two horses trailing behind Gremlin and pursed her lips.
“Dammit,” she muttered. “He’s gonna be impossible, from here.”
--------
The two men were more broken than Jimmy. They rode slowly, stopped often, and in the end it took them four days to get back to Lawrence. Sarah was hunting to make the meat go further, and the rest of the food gave out after three days. They didn’t stop at the house, going straight into town to Doc’s two story clinic-and-residence.
Sarah didn’t recognize it.
Someone had painted, and the front was… funny shaped.
Jimmy brought the two men in as Sarah tied off all four horses. She couldn’t shake the image of the roan stallion, knowing that someday before too long she was gonna be back out there, huntin’ him down. She was gonna bring him back. Weren’t no question of that.
She went into the clinic and frowned, looking where the wall had once been. The clinic was expanded, both into the next building over and rearward, and they’d painted in here, too. Instead of wood walls, everything was smooth white.
She wrinkled her nose.
“Who’d you let in here with a bucket and a brush?” she asked. Doc looked up from the worse of the two men.
“You’d have your city friend to answer for that,” he said, looking down again. Sarah frowned, then remembered.
“Sid.”
Even as she said his name, the young man appeared from around the stairway, carrying a tray.
“Sarah,” he said cheerfully. “Welcome home.”
As she adapted, she started to recognize the volume of machinery occupying the walls and middling space of the new clinic.
“You didn’t gather no dust now, did you?” she asked. He smiled, going over to a table where the other man from the mountains was sitting.
“You did good triage work,” Sid said. “And Doc knows his stuff. I’ve seen that a bunch of times, just since I’ve been here. Now just sit back and see what modern medicine can do.”
Doc grunted, affirming Sarah’s opinion of the sentiment, though she had to admit that Sid’s machine was impressive, scanning Leopold’s knees. The smooth, mechanical control of the operation bespoke precision and confidence that was reassuring in just the way good medicine should be.
The machine went across both knees and doubled back, spraying a mist over Leopold’s knees and then shooting lasers in a pattern through it. Mesmerized, Sarah continued to watch as the machine worked back and forth across the damaged tissue, covering the raw tissue that Sarah had just kept bandaged with a tan-colored veneer that looked like a babe’s skin. She looked at Doc as he worked at Gregory’s knees with a pair of long-handled scissors, cutting away the bits of skin and flesh that were irreparable. Even knowing what she knew about Doc, and even with her mistrust of the young doctor, Sarah would have preferred the smooth action of the machine over watching Doc cut away bits of her.
Sid did Leopold’s hands next, then rolled the machine across to Gregory, where Doc stood. Sid squinted down at Gregory’s knees and nodded appreciatively.
“Between Sarah and Doc, there’s a good chance you’ll walk normally again,” he said. “Don’t put too much faith in this. It’ll fix you up, but getting you ready for it is the hard part.”
He patted the machine, and Sarah frowned, surprised. Jimmy, off to the side, smiled, seeing it. He came to stand next to her.
“I know what I’m doing when I pick my friends,” he said, winking then motioning for the door. She followed him outside, where he started untying his horse. Gremlin was nosing around under the boardwalk as if grass would be taking refuge under there from the sun.
“We still have work to do,” Jimmy said.
“We goin’ back out?” Sarah asked. “Need more rations, if we do. And more medkit.”
He shook his head.
“I need to talk to my brothers, first.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“That gonna take all day?”
“You’d rather leave yet today?” he asked. She shrugged.
“Goodson boy ain’t gonna have but just hit Preston,” she said. “Guns are gonna get here five, six days from now. Rather be here for it, than out there.”
“The last camp is just a three-day trek, right?” he asked. She worked it once in her head to be sure before she answered.
“Plan for four.”
He nodded.
“We can go today,” he said. “Go get stocked and meet me at Thomas’.”
She nodded, walking the boardwalk and then crossing to
Granger’s store.
He sold her what she asked for without much commentary, watching a pair of young men who were like as not to fill their pockets when nobody was looking. Sarah bought extra gremlin, then went back out, walking to the Lawson houses and looking at the changes that were happening around town.
Paint was showing up everywhere, and not just the sterile white on Doc’s clinic. The tavern had a red door and shutters over creme walls, and Kayla’s shop was an explosion of pastels with deep blue around the window.
Which still had Sarah’s damned dress in it.
She walked on, checking that Gremlin was following along. She stopped when he got close enough to unload goods onto, and then continued on, on foot.
The Lawson space was full of people running around, tending this or that, serving staff chatting with each other during the down time between meals. She wondered where they ate - in individual kitchens, or at some big communal table they commandeered from somewhere or other.
Not that she cared.
She went to Thomas’ house and glanced at the swing, then went past, knocking on the door.
Rhoda answered.
“They’re in the kitchen,” she said. “Did you hear?”
Sarah raised an eyebrow. Hard to believe that Rhoda would bring her gossip that Granger hadn’t gone out of his way to tell her, but the man was busier than he’d ever been while the Lawsons had been gone.
“Too much goin’ on for that to be much use,” she said. “Hear what?”
“Someone told Little Peter that the Joiners are planning on declaring independence from Lawrence.”
Sarah let her shoulders drop.
“Is that all?” she asked, walking past Rhoda and into the kitchen.
“… won’t stand for it,” Little Peter was saying.
“You will,” Jimmy answered evenly. “Because I say.”
Sarah leaned against the doorway, crossing her arms.
“What difference does it make?” Thomas asked. “Let them do what they want.”
“It’s the principle,” Peter said. Sarah tried not to snort. “They can’t just tell us that we don’t matter.”
“But we don’t,” Thomas said. “Not to them. They just farm.”
“They’re afraid,” Rich said. Sarah turned her head, not having noticed him by the sink.
“Ought to be,” Peter said indignantly, and Sarah shook her head. Jimmy turned to look at her.
“I’d hear what you had to say,” he said. She shrugged.
“Joiners have an independent streak no more no less than any other homesteadin’ family in Lawrence,” she said. “They ain’t gonna take lightly whatever grand plan y’all got for ‘em, but they’ll see reason. They say they’re the nation of Joiner, they gotta handle their own guns, and I ain’t gonna come runnin’ no more when their timbers start creakin’.”
“They say you don’t come running anymore, anyway,” Peter said. She looked at him, but he didn’t shrink. She was going to have to work on that.
“Only way any of us survived all that time was together,” Sarah said. “They’s mad, sure enough, but they ain’t gonna cut themselves off like that. The rest of the homesteaders start talkin’ the like, then we got a problem.”
“Why?” Thomas asked.
“Because they own all the land, for one,” Jimmy said, and Sarah nodded.
“Every livin’ stable occupant of town goin’ back as far as anybody remembers is from one of those families. You want someone you can count on, you go to one of ‘em. Jimmy and I done it, both of us, just this week. You put good money in their pockets, they come through.”
“We don’t want a land war,” Jimmy said. “I can buy plenty, but when they start looking at themselves as something other than Lawrence, the pressure to not sell goes way up.”
“So what do we do about it?” Little Peter asked.
“We don’t do anything,” Jimmy said. “We ignore it and we let them talk themselves back down off the cliff.”
“I get ‘em the supplies they need to get through the next flood,” Sarah said. “We’re doin’ fine for now, but the work they need done takes time, and they’re gonna run out before the next flood hits.”
“When is the next one?” Thomas asked. She narrowed her eyes.
“You ought’a know that,” she said. He shrugged.
“It’s been a long time.”
She shook her head.
“They come ‘round ‘bout yearly, but some years there’s two or three good ones. Last year was particularly bad, on account of the sandstorm what came right before, but that much water… it ain’t ever good.”
“Do you know what they need?” Jimmy asked. Sarah nodded.
“I got an idea.”
“All right. I’m going to be hardening the house and checking in on the other building projects. Since you haven’t got any faith in those, anyway, you should plan on getting that stuff running, when we get back.”
“With what men?” she asked. “I’m about to send most every workin’ aged man up into the mountains. Sent the mail out ‘fore we left.”
He nodded.
“You need skilled men?”
She considered.
“Some, at least.”
“Make me a list,” he said. “I’ll get them.”
“From where?”
Thomas grinned.
“All you have to do is promise to cross a few palms with the right shine, and you can buy anything in Preston.”
Sarah shook her head.
“They ain’t gonna like having outsiders come and tell ‘em how to do things.”
“What if that outsider comes with a crane?” Jimmy asked. Sarah turned to look at him, alarmed.
“Say that again?”
He nodded.
“Thomas says it’s up and running. I don’t have any problem lending it out for a half-day at a time to get things raised more quickly.”
She closed her eyes.
She had no idea if that was going to be the last straw, or the relief the homesteaders finally needed.
“Let me think on it,” Sarah said.
Jimmy’s mouth twitched.
“They’re going to have to accept what is,” he said. “It isn’t going back.”
She sighed.
“No, it ain’t.”
Thomas looked at her with some surprise.
“That’s not like you,” he said, and she laughed darkly.
“What’s that mean?”
He shook his head, unable to articulate it, and Jimmy spread his fingers across the surface of the table.
“William Turnlake’s agent found absenta,” he said. “It’s just where Sarah said it would be. He’s already out of here on a train, and we aren’t going to speak of it to anyone, but it will get out very soon, and when it does…”
There was silence.
“Brace,” Sarah said. “And keep your guns loaded.”
--------
Jimmy gave Thomas a stack of letters, and he gave Peter stern orders to stay away from the homesteaders for the time being.
And with that, they went out and got back on the horses.
“You have everything you need?” he asked. She shook her head.
“Not by a stretch of desert miles, but this is the next thing.”
He nodded.
“I need everyone to know that we’re actually overseeing the mines, especially with Hansen.”
She nodded.
She understood.
The bubble of being up in the mountains was done - the reality of more absenta was right there with her. She wondered that she hadn’t thought to shoot Hansen, one last time to keep the secret inside Lawrence.
“He tell you how Apex and Thor are doing?” Sarah asked. Jimmy nodded.
“No change.”
She cursed under her breath, and she heard him laugh.
“You up for some speed?” he asked. “Missing the shade.”
She looked over at him and frowned.
“You in the shape for that?”
“I am if I say I am,” he answered, urging his horse faster. Gremlin surged up in pace, just matching, and Sarah let it go. They rode like that for as long as the horses held up comfortably, then they eased, riding another hour under a setting sun before they got to the wet line.
They camped at a spot that Sarah knew. The fire pit was ringed with stones, it was used commonly enough, and they sat watching the fire dance for several hours after deep dark, each with their own thoughts.
“I’m worried about the Goodson boy,” Jimmy finally said.
“What about him?” Sarah asked.
“My contacts swore he was reliable, but if the dealer gets a better offer and crosses us, he’s going to think that I’m far enough away that I can’t get to him.”
“Or they could be watching him,” Sarah said. “Whoever it is. Knowin’ we’re gonna need guns.”
Jimmy nodded morosely, not looking at her.
“No way of knowing whether he gave us up on purpose,” he said. “I’ll have to kill him either way.”
“Hard to kill a gun dealer,” Sarah said, and the corner of his mouth turned up with real humor.
“Wouldn’t be the first.”
Sarah watched the fire again.
“You’ve survived an awful lot of people woulda liked to put a bullet to you,” she said.
“I have.”
“I used to think about it, that there was a bandit out there carryin’ around the bullet what was gonna end me,” she said.
“I don’t,” he said. “But I am worried about the Goodson boy. If something happens to him, the homesteaders might not act in their best interests.”
“A week,” Sarah said. “He ought to be back out here on the train in a week.”
Jimmy nodded.
Then laughed.
“I still can’t believe you did it,” he said. She looked at him, and he lifted his face from his palms. “You found absenta. Predicted it. No one ever thought that was possible, but you did it. Even if you only do it once, the world has every right to be afraid. No one’s ever done it, but you.”
She hadn’t thought about it yet.
Still didn’t.
“Meant to stop and get Dog on the way back up,” she said. “Like havin’ the set of teeth watchin’ overnight.”
