by Chloe Garner
“They came on the train,” Sarah said, trying not to show how impressed she was at the mechanisms. “They had to be small to make it here.”
Nina was a clever woman - the ones who survived out here had to be - and she was capable of reading what the machines had morphed into, but she still had her ego to deal with.
“They ain’t gonna touch the house until I see how they do with the barn, and if they even touch the gremlin, I’m shootin’ someone,” the woman said, tipping her head up. Sarah nodded, eying the gremlin field.
“I can do that,” she said, going over to talk to the men. She looked back at one point to make sure that both Dog and Flower had water, then she spent the next two hours watching the men make use of substantial talent, moving around heavy pieces of the barn while two of the Joiner men bolted things into place. Finally, Nina came to stand next to Sarah, folding her arms.
“Back of the house is on timbers what need shorin’ up like I can’t even tell you.”
“My pa’s house ain’t gonna make it through the next flood, on account of the timbers splittin’,” Sarah said. Nina nodded.
“Wasn’t sure we were gonna, either,” she said. “But those… They’re gonna keep us up and dry.”
Sarah nodded.
“I don’t know how many of us would have washed away this year, if it weren’t for Jimmy,” she said. “And believe me, we may be married, but it don’t mean we’re always gettin’ along. I don’t like sayin’ it any more than you like hearin’ it.”
Nina snorted.
“Bein’ married means you get along less than you ever did.”
Sarah looked over at Nina, trying to read the woman’s weathered face. Her husband had died in a bandit raid, and there was a cemetery behind the house where two of her sons were planted alongside him.
There was a reason she was a hard woman.
“Don’t know that I’m ready to take your word for it,” Sarah said finally. Nina laughed.
“Shouldn’t ever. You fight for it ‘till the day you decide it ain’t worth it no more, and then you’re done.”
Sarah nodded.
“Need to get them packed back up and on the road. Got other homesteads to get to.”
Nina nodded, then slid her shotgun down until the butt rested on the ground, angling it down against her boot.
“You done good work, Sarah. Can’t nobody say you ain’t. But this war… I don’t reckon both sides live through past the end of it.”
“Ain’t nobody lookin’ to push you out,” Sarah said. “I know I ain’t been around so much, but there’s been nothin’ to do about it, ‘till now. Lot changin’, and can’t nobody stop it. Jimmy’s just tryin’ to keep it from rollin’ over us like so much floodwater.”
“The boys is all excited ‘bout goin’ up in them hills and diggin’ treasure outta the ground.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Don’t take much to make a nice, rational farmer into an absenta-mad digger, does it?”
“Not much,” Nina said. “Keep ‘im in line. We need you.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Think that ship’s sailed, but I’m gonna keep watchin’ out for you, anyway.”
Sarah left Nina and went to speak to the equipment operators.
“Don’t know what Jimmy was thinkin’, just givin’ me a day, but if we push, I reckon we can get to the Kirk homestead from here and get some work done before we lose sun.”
The crane operator leaned back, peering around the corner of the house.
“Which is faster, the horse or the dog? We have a bet.”
“Horse’ll outrun the dog over anything bigger than a hundred yards,” Sarah said. “Why?”
The man shook his head.
“Doesn’t really matter. Either way, if you can draw us a map, we’ll find the house and meet you there. The faster you get there, the more we’ll get done today.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You think your crane is gonna outrun my horse?”
He gave her a half smile, rubbing at stubble running up his jaw.
“I’m willing to take some more money off of someone if you were interested in a bet.”
She pursed her lips. It was more playful than she normally had interest in, but it would keep their pace up.
“Ain’t gonna wait around for you, and if you get lost, it’s you explainin’ it to Jimmy.”
“Don’t know who Jimmy is, but it isn’t gonna matter. You give us a bearing, we’ll find it.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Kirk’s is that way,” she said, pointing.
“Compass,” one of the other men said. Sarah went up to Flower and got out a map, measuring out the direction more carefully and going back to give them an exact bearing. The crane operator gave her a wager amount, enough to be interesting but not enough that she’d feel guilty holding out her palm and letting him put the shine across it when she won, and she went back, folding the map and stashing it away.
She mounted up, whistling for Dog, and then started off in the direction of the Kirk’s homestead at an even pace. They’d be fifteen minutes packing everything away, and then another hour, at least, to get across the intervening desert. She was going to have plenty of time to prep the Kirks for their arrival.
Except that that wasn’t actually how it happened.
Less than two minutes later, the three contraptions went whipping past her fast enough that Flower leaped to the side, almost unseating Sarah. She heard a crow as they disappeared into their own dust, and Sarah swerved Flower off into the clean air, holding her hat as the three machines disappeared.
“Well, damn,” she said to the empty desert, then gathered Flower up to his right pace and kept on.
Money well spent.
--------
She got through most of her more important homesteaders, using her usual order of priority, favoring getting more done over everything else, but picking her path to ensure that the Hunters and the Goodsons got the attention they needed, and that Pete’s folks were doing well.
The sky darkened as they were finishing up repairs to the barn at the Pillars and Sarah let the men go. The crane operator told her that the reservoir was lit up like a beacon, and that so long as they got within a half a mile of it, they’d have no trouble finding it, and she made a note to go see it as soon as she could find the time.
And then she remembered how mad she was at Jimmy.
She shook hands with Jameson Pillar and mounted up after she checked that Dog and Flower had both gotten their fill of water, and she started back for the Lawson house.
She put Flower away herself, letting Dog come into the house with her to sit next to her chair for a solitary dinner, then she sent him out onto the porch and went to wash.
When she got out of the shower, she found her clothes gone and just a negligee hanging off of the sink.
She looked at it for a long time, feeling a fuse burning shorter, shorter, shorter, and then it was done.
She snatched the garment off of its hanger, wearing her towel into the hallway, a thunderstorm rolling across a desert, unstoppable, devastating.
If there had been a fireplace anywhere in the house, she’d have made a stop there, but the only things burning were candles and lamps, and that got down to the level of petty. She went to her room to dress.
Jimmy wasn’t in their room, nor was he up in his own. It wasn’t until she checked his office that she found him.
“This your idea of a joke?” she asked, throwing the gown onto his desk. “Think you’ll get me to do what you want, what, why? Because I got so angry I self-immolated?”
He looked up.
“That,” he said, nodding down to indicate the purple swath of cloth, “was Kayla’s wedding present. She stopped by this evening to give it to you, but you were indisposed.”
“So you leave me nothing but that? What were you hoping I would do?” she asked, not shamed.
He looked up at her. Smi
led.
He actually damn well smiled.
“It appears I’ve found a new level of anger, at least,” he said. “Where did your accent go?”
She tipped her head back, the fingers of her right hand itching for the blade from her back, just one slit, just there, below his ear, enough to make his body good and afraid. Nothing a strong mind could do about it. Just primally afraid.
Her pulse raced at the thought, a heat flushing through her arms.
He stood.
A very small part of her sat.
Which just made her angrier.
She was almost out of control.
She hadn’t been this angry…
… ever.
Not that she could remember.
He was watching her with a piercing, scientific interest, walking around the desk, his body turned to face her, eyes quick, so quick.
“Why does it bother you?” he asked.
“I will not be your toy,” she said. “You can treat any other woman in the world like that, and that’s between you and her, but I am not your toy. I am not convenient, and I am not here to please you.”
“Clearly,” he said, and the blade was in her hand. His fingers grazed her wrist, but he wasn’t quite fast enough.
His head tipped off to the side, letting the bottom of his jaw sit open, undefended.
“What now, Sarah?” he asked. She felt her mouth, uncontrolled, spasming in the overwhelming surge of anger.
“I told you this couldn’t work,” she said. “And you kept coming. And kept coming. And let Rhoda drag you into her damned scheme. I didn’t even know the half of why it couldn’t work, but I was right, wasn’t I? We’ve tied ourselves together and we’re just going to kill each other by bits or all at once.”
He hadn’t wiggled. Not even to the beat of his heart. Steady as a rock, he looked at her around the point of her blade.
“How many times?” he asked. “How many times did I tell you to let me go, when you weren’t even there?”
She took half a step back, lessening the pressure on the stiletto without withdrawing it.
“What?”
“Preston,” he said. “Tyrew. Boon. Delburgh, Munate, and Intec. Everywhere we went. The boys found women who made them happy, and all I wanted was for you to let go.”
His hand was over hers.
If she’d jerked away at that point, she’d have stuck him through to the brain, and they both knew it.
He swallowed, eyes still steady on hers.
“Even now,” he said. “I can’t stop, because I need you and we both know it, but that, that’s going to be enough to end us.”
She let her arm drop and his fingers slipped back off of hers. He turned and went back behind his desk.
“I needed to speak to you, anyway. Clarence has real fears that he isn’t going to beat the flood, so I’m hoping that you got everything done that you intended to, today.”
“Don’t think anybody is going to wash away in the next flood,” Sarah said, whipcracked.
“Good,” he said. “And did you fill the rest of the foreman positions?”
“I did,” Sarah said. “Everyone’s excited to see absenta come out of the ground.”
“Any rumors going around about Hansen?” he asked.
“None.”
“You told Kayla.”
“Thought it was right for her to know.”
“Don’t do it again,” he said. “Kayla and William are close, but the rest of the wives, their family don’t share the same level of confidentiality.”
“’Cept Rhoda,” Sarah corrected. “Kayla’s the only one I would talk, anyway, to because I hate Lise and Sunny never talks to me. Don’t talk to me like I’m some kind of idiot.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, sitting and returning his attention to his papers.
She sat, looking across the desk at him.
“Jimmy,” she said. He looked at her through his eyebrows. She waited, and finally he sat back in his chair, crossing his arms and dropping his ankle across his knee.
“You want this?” she asked.
“What, exactly?” he asked. It wasn’t the cool tone she’d expected from his posture, but it wasn’t far off.
She had another surge of temper. How did he expect her to react, going from real, live Jimmy to that cold persona he used for the rest of the world in an instant, like that?
“I told you I’d be your attack dog. You remember? I told you that we wouldn’t work, but that I would be by your side, making sure you always won. I offered you that.”
“I remember.”
She blinked.
“It looks an awful lot to me like that’s where we are, today,” she said.
His hand drifted up, pulling at the underside of his throat.
Strangled.
He felt trapped.
At least it wasn’t just her.
“We don’t have enough space,” he said. “Not for both of us. I don’t know how to do this, but I don’t know any other way, either.”
“I offered you the way out,” she said. “You kept coming. You turned me down. I’m going to hold you to it. We’re married, we’re together, and you need to get your head around it and act like it.”
“We’re going to own the entire world, Sarah Todd, if we don’t kill each other, first.”
“Come to bed.”
--------
They were pouring concrete, out at the reservoir. They’d dug a huge pit, maybe fifty feet deep, at the center, and all around the edges, they were pouring foot after foot of concrete. Sarah didn’t know where it was all coming from, but the supplies coming off of the train were never-ending, these days, with rock and cement and lumber. There was no progress on the mill, and she could see now that there wouldn’t be until after the next flood, at least.
Three weeks after they’d gone up to see the mines, boxes of flat black slabs showed up, heavy, and Jimmy hired three men from town to spend a day assembling them. There was an acid involved, one that melted the black material and let them bond it together, but it only worked on certain sections of the boxes, and once they’d melted, they wouldn’t deform again. Jimmy had given Sarah one of the boxes to destroy any way she could think of, short of going to the reservoir and using the heavy equipment there, and by the end she still hadn’t been able to mark the box enough to tell it from any other.
A herd of mules showed up on the train.
Sarah thought that hiring them from the homesteaders would have been better, but Jimmy didn’t want to work around their schedule, and they needed more mules than all of Lawrence could marshal, so coastal mules were what they had, going up into the mountains.
It took them almost four days to get up to the camp, where they left Rich and the herd of mules.
“I’ll send someone up to escort everything back down in a few days,” Jimmy said. “We need to get this on the train.”
“I’ll be coming down myself,” Apex told him. “Want to see it off, right.”
Sarah waited until they were halfway down the mountain, taking a different route back out, to speak to Jimmy again.
“You figure out how you’re getting it all to Preston?”
“Going to break ground on the track to Magnum as soon as I get back,” he said. “I’ve been sending crates to Preston every day for the last week and a half. If someone’s going to hit the train, I want to know about it before we’ve got absenta on it.”
She nodded. They’d been fragile with each other for weeks, still working out how to talk to each other, but they hadn’t had another big fight, either. Hadn’t had the family over for dinner again, either.
“We’ll store most of it at the house,” he went on. “Let it go out at a controlled rate. I’m working on getting an engine for a separate train that we can run off-schedule, but the track is going to have to be upgraded to run more than one train on it, between here and Mont Blanc.”
She nodded again, letting Gremlin pick his own path aroun
d the mountain.
“I figure we need to take a couple of extra days getting out,” Jimmy said. “And I heard a rumor Hansen is back. Would you like to check on him?”
“Yeah,” Sarah told him. She looked back. “How are you for cash?”
“I’m not carrying much,” he said. “Why?”
“Not pocket money,” she said. “I mean the original investment. The money we split.”
“Ah,” he said. She waited a minute, but that was all he said. She looked back again, then checked up Gremlin to wait for Jimmy, and then letting the big black horse fall into step.
“How far?” she asked.
He licked his lips, watching forward.
She shook her head.
“I’m taking half the cost,” she said. “My project, too.”
“That isn’t in your contract,” he said.
“I know it isn’t,” she said. “But I’m paying my way.”
He nodded.
“It’s so expensive to get everything out here. I’d forgotten.”
She nodded.
“Even with the train running, it’s a long way from here to there, and everyone wants to get paid. Did you talk to the conductors about getting protection on board?”
“I did starting the first day I put crates on there. It won’t be enough to take on a full attack, but it might be enough to keep the opportunists off of them.”
She looked forward again, ducking under a low branch.
“How’s your riding seat? You don’t get enough time in the saddle between trips out here. Too much time at your desk.”
“I’ll be fine,” he answered, but when she looked over, she could see the flicker of anger that told her she’d found something. She shook her head.
“We’ll make a short day today to let you catch up.”
“And do what in the meantime?” he asked. She shrugged.
“Never wrong to just put your feet up and enjoy a good fire for a day,” she said. “If you haven’t got anywhere else to be.”
“When do you need to bring your cows down?” he asked.
She looked over at him.
“You going to sign off on me going up, myself?” she asked. His eyebrows went up with a chortle.
