by Chloe Garner
“Forgot to mention a breeding dog to Thomas,” Jimmy said. “That’ll have to wait, too.”
She looked up at the stars.
“Too much goin’ on, Jimmy. We’re both missin’ connections we ought be makin’.”
“I wish I could tell you that it’s going to get better,” he told her. “Come here.”
She looked over at him and raised an eyebrow.
“No.”
He glowered.
“I married you and I meant it. I haven’t so much as touched you in days. I’m asking you to come sit with me.”
“Dirt here’s plenty dry,” Sarah said, turning her attention back to the fire.
They sat as they were for a minute longer, then he laughed.
“You keep your dignity, Sarah,” he said. “Do you remember what we were like, before?”
How could she forget?
Such plans.
“We ain’t never been the touchy type, Jimmy.”
He looked over at her without turning his head.
“No, but we were always close.”
She narrowed her eyes, listening for the double meaning to that. His expression didn’t give away whether he meant it.
She pressed her lips, dismissive, and the corner of his mouth ticked.
He meant it.
She looked at the fire again.
“I ain’t the woman who’s gonna come runnin’ to your bed,” she said. “I meant every word of what I said to you, but it ain’t who I am, not who I was and not who I’m ever gonna be.”
“Is that because of who you are, or because of who you want to differentiate yourself from?”
“Wouldn’t have to differentiate myself, if you didn’t have so many women to differentiate from.”
“You are still angry,” he said.
She shook her head, not looking at him.
“Thought you were smart enough not to bring it up again.”
There was a long silence, and she thought he was done talking, but he finally took a deep breath and sighed.
“I want you Sarah. All the time. Every time I see you. You riding around up on that black horse of yours, I want to pull you down and make love to you.”
“Can’t just leave me up on my horse, can you?” she murmured. He laughed.
“Well, we could try it, but I just can’t make it work, in my head.”
She shot him a look, to find him staring pointedly at the fire with real humor on his face.
He swallowed, letting the humor fade to a genuine happiness and looked over at her.
“You are the only woman I’ve ever wanted like that. That’s the truth. I’m not going to tell you that I don’t like sex with other women, that I don’t like chasing them down, the victory of it, but you are the only woman that I want every single time I see you.”
She turned away.
“Don’t know what you think that’s gonna change,” she said. He slid across the ground, coming to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with her.
She didn’t turn to look at him, but she could feel him looking at the side of her face.
“I miss what we were,” he said. “Your mind is a continuation of mine, and I was lost without it. We may never work, but I don’t work without you.”
She gave him a fraction, looking at him out of the corner of her eye and letting her head turn toward him, his boots central to her vision. He was undisguised. Himself.
“I ain’t afraid of you.”
She didn’t know why she said it, but she wanted him to hear it.
“I don’t want you to be.”
She turned her head the rest of the way. He was closer than she was ever happy with anyone being, sharing her air, but she didn’t move away. Wouldn’t have moved away.
“You are a dangerous woman,” he said. “I never forget that.”
“Ain’t the time nor the place for pretty love,” she said. “And it ain’t likely any time soon.”
“Sarah,” he said, dropping his head toward her just a fraction. There was play in his eyes. Mischief. “We’re alone. In the woods. In the dark.” He shook his head. “There’s no one here, and we don’t have anywhere to be.”
She dropped her jaw toward her chest, looking at him through her eyebrows.
“That work on the Intec women, did it?”
He grinned. Showed his teeth and everything.
“I don’t want to talk about them.”
She felt the smile on her lips before she could do anything about it, and his fingers came up, running soft down the side of her face.
She wanted to tell him that the biggest strategy to staying clean when you were out this long was to keep the clean sides and the dirty sides of your clothes straight, and that the last thing she wanted to do was get dirt all over her skin and then have to try to figure out how to wash. She was thinking about how cold the streamwater around here always was.
But that wasn’t what happened. He kissed her, once, just leaned in to touch his mouth to hers, his fingers nothing but an idea on her face. His eyes came up to look her in the face, his lips parted, sharing every breath with her. She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of it, the heat of it, and she let her head fall slowly, inevitably to the side. He extended his jaw to fit his mouth against hers and she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, pulling both of them to the ground.
He answered her with force and energy, and all of her carefully-considered field grooming strategies died a very sudden death.
--------
“Don’t see why we couldn’t have just run around in the rain,” Jimmy chattered the next day as he dressed on the side of the stream. “Or just waited until we got back.”
“Dirty skin turns diseased too fast,” Sarah answered, rubbing her own arms to get feeling back out to her hands. Her hair dripped cold water down the back of her neck, and wouldn’t dry until well after lunch, but it had been necessary.
She was clean, if cold, and she was happy.
Weapons, absenta, homesteaders, sand, and floods, none of them had much mattered, lying with her head on Jimmy’s chest under a pair of blankets. Just skin on skin, the energy gone, but the heat lingering as he ran his fingers through her hair.
It was too familiar, too tender, but she couldn’t possibly have wanted anything else, just for that moment. It was taking advantage of a narrow window when they didn’t have to prove that they weren’t vulnerable, weren’t soft, and they could just be together.
She didn’t know where those windows came from, and there was a piece of her that was afraid, wondering if maybe this would be the last one. If she couldn’t control them, couldn’t create them, what if it never came back?
She went to get Gremlin, packing up her bedroll and kicking out the remains of last night’s fire, then looking back as Jimmy finished his own cleanup chores.
“We’re late,” she said. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
She mounted up, feeling like herself again, the window gone, but Jimmy rode alongside her, and it was good.
He was the continuation of her own mind, just as he’d said, and she liked him being there, easy or otherwise.
“How are you going to harden the main house?” she asked.
“Hmm?” he asked.
“Our house,” she said. “What are you going to do to it?”
“Walls,” he said. “To start. Not just fencing. Real walls. After that, I want to get more housing right there, on that hill and the next one over.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t want walls.”
He laughed.
“And why is that?”
“Because all they’re gonna do is give your attackers cover,” Sarah said. “They brought a coach to go after the Orbs. You put up a wall, all they have to do is get close and ain’t nothin’ you can do to take ‘em out, short of a bomb.”
“Bombs,” Jimmy said. “Now that’s interesting.”
“Jimmy Lawson, you put landmines around your house, I wil
l disown you.”
He smiled at this, but didn’t answer.
“So what would you do?” he asked after another minute.
“Staff housing is good,” she said. “Gettin’ your brothers out of town and right close again is better. Ain’t doin’ it for Lise, but you need a place they’re gonna want to stay, if you want ‘em around. Keep ‘em out of the tavern, at least. Easy enough to walk up, come nightfall, and just wait for the Lawson boys to go by, drunk, and pick ‘em off.”
Jimmy frowned.
“Hadn’t thought of that. They stay together, usually, but…” He nodded. “Until we get a handle on who’s here, you might be right. They should do their drinking at home.”
“What’re you thinkin’, when you say ‘get a handle’?” she asked.
He looked over at her.
“How would you do it?”
She pursed her lips.
“Shoot Pete before he started digging.”
He laughed.
“You can’t keep looking at this like a curse. You have enough money, right now, to do anything you want for the rest of your life. We’re going to keep everything throttled tight and we’re going to have rivers of money flowing into our pockets. You are literally in the position to re-shape the world.”
“What good is it, if someone puts a bullet to one of us, or both?” she asked.
“And how is that different to what was going on here before Pete found the absenta?” Jimmy asked.
“Funding.”
“On both sides,” Jimmy said. “Try harder. What would you do?”
Landmines were compelling, when she really did think about it, but she’d never forgive Jimmy for putting bombs in the ground that Dog or anybody else might set off by accident.
“Sight,” she said. Jimmy nodded.
“Know they’re coming.”
“Hard to tell a stranger from an enemy, and we’ve got plenty of both, these days, but it keeps us from bein’ surprised.”
“All right,” he said. “What else?”
She closed her eyes as she rode for a ways, seeing every fight she’d had with bandits over the years.
“The house is on a well, ain’t it?”
“It is.”
“How much water is it runnin’, at its max?”
“Haven’t ever hit it,” Jimmy said.
“Ought to get water out to the barn, keep it maintained and ready to stop a fire.”
“All right.”
“Good cover outside, for us,” she said. “Brick is good. Stone is better, if it’s good stone. Want to get us spread out across the face of the house and away from the glass.”
“I was thinking we might put a stone front on the porch,” he said. “And add access to the underside from inside the house.”
She nodded.
“I like it.”
“The train’s a weak point,” Jimmy went on. “For everyone. It isn’t going to take them long to figure that out, so we should see how we can use it first.”
“What’cha figure?”
“They don’t come any way but on the train,” Jimmy said. “You agree?”
“Sure,” Sarah said. “Rough regions ‘tween here and Jeremiah where you’re gonna lose men unless they’re quick and know the territory.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Then there’s only one place to watch for them. A pinch point, if we need it.”
“Pinch point full’a people don’t deserve nothin’ but a chance at a job and a life,” Sarah said. “No good.”
“So what if we went through the trains and pulled people off one at a time?” he asked. “Talked to them, made sure they knew why they were here.”
“Jimmy,” Sarah said. “There’s no way in hell we’re tellin’ hired killers from drifters comin’ off that train. Nobody knows where they’re goin’ or what they’re doin’, when they hit the station. They’s just hopin’ somethin’ good happens.”
“What do you suggest?”
She turned her head off to the side, remembering the train, coming into the station at Lawrence, what it felt like. What it looked like.
She’d been on that train a few times, now. How would she tell the man who meant to kill her from the man who just wanted to make a living?
“Shoes,” she said. “Put a man at the station watchin’ everybody’s shoes. Somebody goes by with shoes what’s meant for hard work, comes in a group of at least five, and then goes lookin’ for a horse? That’s the one we want to catch before he’s got a plan set in his head.”
“And what do you do with him?” Jimmy asked.
She narrowed her eyes.
The house wasn’t a bad place for a firefight.
If she had to pick a place to do it, it would either be from good cover or…
“Better numbers,” she said. “You need men you can count on to outnumber anyone who comes in and seems suspicious.”
“Don’t have it,” Jimmy said.
“Then you split ‘em up,” Sarah said. “Find a time they’re vulnerable and send ‘em home, one at a time.”
“Not kill them?” Jimmy asked. Sarah glanced at him.
“I can’t stomach killin’ ‘em just ‘cause we got a feelin’ about ‘em, and I s’pect you can’t either.”
He smiled forward.
“I like the shoes,” he said.
“So what’re you actually gonna do?”
“Shoes,” he said. “Arrest, search, and figure it out from there.”
“Gonna need an army,” she said.
“Just us,” Jimmy said.
“What about them?” Sarah asked. “What are they gonna do with the train?”
“Put it off the rails,” Jimmy said. “At some point, that’s going to be the play. If you can’t stop the absenta coming out of the ground, you stop it from getting to market.”
Sarah paused.
“Jimmy, you can’t let that happen.”
“The minute they start building levitating trains, I’ll be sure to get one,” he said.
“Ain’t funny.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Tell Maxim,” Jimmy said. “If I have to, I’ll involve more of the others.”
“What about Descartes?” Sarah asked. Jimmy shook his head.
“We don’t ask him for help,” he said. “Makes us look like we can’t handle ourselves, even if it’s in his best interest to help us.”
“He helped us before,” Sarah said. Jimmy nodded.
“Yes. I’m still concerned what that’s going to cost me.”
“What does that mean?”
“He liked you, and he wanted to meet you. And it was in his best interest to keep the two of us alive. Right up until it isn’t. And the point where he decides we’re not worth it…” Jimmy shook his head. “He’s not likely to pay that much attention to us, unless we draw his attention negatively. Make him some money, keep him aware of what’s going on down here… It’ll be enough to keep him amused and interested.”
“Jimmy,” Sarah warned. “Talk sense.”
“He plays a power game that we don’t have the buy-in to even get to,” Jimmy said. “But we’re going to. Until then, I don’t want him to notice us.”
“You’re going to take him on, direct,” Sarah said with some disbelief.
“Not unless I have to,” Jimmy said. “I’d rather he be an ally. But a lot of people are going to see us as a threat, with the assets we’re going to be directing, the knowledge you control…”
It was something Elise had told her when she was young: the best secret was the one that only existed inside her own head.
“You’re gonna get me killed, Jimmy.”
He smiled.
“I don’t think I’ve increased your chances any since just before I arrived,” he said. “Either Lawrence collapsed around you and went to chaos, or… This. This way, you go out in style.”
“Gee,” she said, and he laughed.
“I
wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think I could win,” he said.
She looked over at him, evaluating all of him. The way he held the reins, the way his feet sat on the stirrups, his posture. He wasn’t a proper rider, either by the disciplined standards of the equestrian club at Oxala or by the hard-riding men who had lived their lives horseback up and down the range, but he was comfortable, he was confident, and he was capable.
She liked the look of him. He glanced.
“You believe me,” he said.
“I do.”
He nodded.
“That’s why we’re going to win.”
--------
The last camp was abandoned. There wasn’t any sign of the men who had been there, and the campfire was muddy ash. It’d been rained on at least three times since the men had left.
“No blood,” Jimmy commented.
“That we can find,” Sarah agreed. “The dig don’t look too interestin’, either.”
“Could be they didn’t have the right gear. We might have even passed them on the way in.”
“Could be,” Sarah said. “Could be a lot’a things. I want to check in with Apex and Thor, while we’re out.”
“Sure,” Jimmy said, looking around for another moment. “It is creepy, though.”
“Abandoned mines always are.”
--------
Pete’s mine didn’t look like it had, when she’d left it. She hadn’t been up to it since they’d pulled Pete’s body out of the ground, and she was grateful not to recognize it. Thor was going through payload with a man who moved like he knew what he was doing, and a parade of laborers were coming up out of the ground: they’d arrived at shift change.
“Sarah,” Thor said. “Apex, hey, get up here. Sarah and Jimmy are here.”
Jimmy dismounted, going to shake hands with Thor, and Sarah browsed through the part of the mining camp that was just there at the top of the shaft.
There was a good firepit for boiling water. She smelled in it the same brew that Hansen had had at Kayla’s uncle’s claim. Men came and poured cups of the brew for themselves, leaving space for Sarah to either side and standing with their hands wrapped around the cups for several minutes, talking about the day’s mining and the typical relational politics of a group of men that shared such a confined space.
“Where’s your waste pile?” she heard Jimmy asked. She came over to stand with him as Apex joined them.
