Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  “Where have you been my whole life?” Jimmy asked, his head hangin’.

  “You know the answer to that,” Sarah said and Jimmy’s back surged with a quiet laugh.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  She worked the salve in, spreading out from his spine down at his hips, along the line of his linen shorts, and he sat up, almost tippin’ back onto her. She pushed him back forward. Went back to her bag and got out the steroid again, doin’ a new mix of it and goin’ to stand in front of him, droppin’ to a knee and puttin’ her hand to the inside of his thigh. He tipped his forehead against hers, just breathin’ as she found how far the saddle sores went. Wet skin didn’t stand a chance, and even Sarah were feelin’ it, this trip.

  “Socks,” she said, and Jimmy groaned as he leaned down to strip the socks from his feet. She wiped the rest of the steroid mix on the outsides of his thighs, then put her thumb to the inside softness of his kneecap, and he sprang away, standin’ ‘fore his mind knew why. Sarah waited quietly while he came to sit again, and she cupped her other hand around the outside of his knee, findin’ the sore again and pressin’ to it, gentle, but firm enough that he grunted - more pain than the holes on his back, all told. She knew that tendon. Had taken her a year, more, after she’d come back from Oxala to get it back in right shape. Weren’t nothin’ to do for it, nothin’ to help. She nodded, then sat down flat, pickin’ up his foot into her lap.

  She ran the outside of her thumb along the skin there, feelin’ how wet his feet had been for most of a week, now, findin’ the sickness there.

  “Should put your feet in a salt bath under your desk,” she said. “It’ll help kill of what’s growin’ here. You don’t, you got a lot more’n just muscle sore comin’ at you, the next couple weeks.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “I’ll get you the salts,” Sarah said. She’d used ‘em for footsore horses and cows. Got ‘em from Doc for drivin’ out infection from skin. Weren’t a miracle cure, but it’d do good damage to most anything weren’t too deep-rooted.

  She switched feet, seein’ what were there. It weren’t about the shape of the foot, exactly. Was about how it were made to work. Every horse had different feet, liked to be a different way, worked best when they were kept that way. Not every horse had good sand feet, nor good rock feet, but tryin’ to make ‘em better at sand or stone just weakened the animal, compared to just doin’ what they were made to be.

  She set Jimmy’s foot down and went to get a paste out of one of her kits, one she didn’t often use, and put it around the roots of the nails, where she could see from the red that the foreign were startin’ to beat out the native, there. She set his feet back down and pressed her hands to the floor, gettin’ up. She looked him in the eye, liftin’ her chin a fraction.

  “I will not send you up to Maxim’s claim on your own,” Jimmy said, and she gave him a nod.

  He lifted his hands and put both of them on her wrist, turning her hand palm-up and stretchin’ the fingers back and away, readin’ her just as she’d read him. She stood for it for just a moment before she closed her hand and pulled him to the side.

  “Get yer clothes on,” she said. “You still got work, and if I’m quick, I might find some heat left to my tea.”

  He smiled, not lookin’ up at her, and not a wide smile, but a real one.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Shoulda told me,” she answered, goin’ back to her gear and gettin’ it squared while he dressed. She went back downstairs with him, cool, composed, no need to look to each other as they went into his office and she took her seat again, pickin’ up her tea. Was cold, but the pot was hot enough to stir it to enough life to be worth drinkin’.

  He glanced at her.

  “Did you need anything else?” he asked.

  “I’m gonna go back to my Pa’s house and make sure ain’t nothin’ more there I’m gonna miss, then I reckon I’ve got a trip to Jeremiah to get Perpeto for the next few months.

  “I’ve been corresponding with a chemist who’s going to make that trip unnecessary, soon,” Jimmy said, poking one of the letters with his pen. “Might be your last trip.”

  “Gotta put him up, somewhere, you expect to keep a professional like that ‘round here. And ain’t nobody got no money to pay him.”

  “They will, soon,” Jimmy said. “All of the miners are going to have wages, wives, and children. They’ll want to maintain a steady supply of it, just like the homesteaders always have, and they aren’t going to want to have to go all the way to Jeremiah to get it.”

  “Least they ain’t gonna be fightin’ off men with guns to keep it,” Sarah said. “Though. Reckon once it’s around again, it’s gonna be worth just about as much as the next meal, for some of these guys. They know they’re on the downslope, some of ‘em. Gonna want to hold on to that youth that they’re sellin’, they hope to ever make a life out here.”

  “I trust you’ll manage,” Jimmy said. “Though I hope you don’t resort to buying it for all of them, like you have with food.”

  “What kind of damned fool you take me for?” Sarah asked. “Man what kills for food is just tryin’ to stay alive. Man what kills for Perpeto is a murderer.”

  “Isn’t anything just about killing for food,” Jimmy said. “I’m thinking that I might need to have a monthly train to Preston that’s free to board.”

  Sarah nodded, feeling that one out.

  “Might see the wisdom to that,” she said. “Gets the ones out what never gonna make it ‘fore they turn into bodies.”

  “You have any men working for you that you want me to find special posts for?” Jimmy asked. Sarah frowned.

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked.

  “Just want to put them at the top of the list, if you want them there. You’d said you did.”

  She nodded.

  “There are a few,” she said. “You keepin’ track of any?” she asked.

  “I still have a funeral detail,” Jimmy said. “I have paid enforcers and paid informants all over that camp.”

  That sounded just like him. Enough that Sarah probably should have predicted it.

  She sat, taking a piece of paper from him and listin’ ‘em out, then turnin’ it to him.

  “Ain’t no good way to find ‘em but to know ‘em,” she said.

  “I’ll put up a notice that we’re looking for specific individuals who have worked with you in the past.”

  “Good way to get a lot ‘a liars through,” Sarah said, and Jimmy tapped the paper.

  “Good way to eliminate a lot of them from all consideration,” he said. “They lie to me that transparently, I don’t want them working for me.”

  She stood.

  “I’ll be overnight, if I can catch the train on its way out this afternoon.”

  “Take Wade,” Jimmy said without lookin’ back up at her.

  “Why in hell would I do that?” she asked.

  “Because I want someone watching your back, and if I didn’t have to go over to the reservoir to check on the damage there, I’d go with you myself.”

  “Ain’t no reason for anyone to go with me,” Sarah said. “It’s just Jeremiah and back, and it’s on the damned train. You wanted someone watchin’ my back, should ‘a been here when I was runnin’ it on horseback through Teegan’s guys.”

  “Teegan?” Jimmy asked, lookin’ up sharp. “He went rogue?”

  “Jimmy, ain’t nobody who didn’t go rogue or get dead,” she said.

  “Thought he just left,” Jimmy said. Sarah gave him a shrug. She knew he and Teegan had been friends, as teens. Didn’t half stop Teegan from tryin’ to kill her every time she went through.

  “I ain’t takin’ Wade to Jeremiah,” Sarah said.

  “You are,” Jimmy said. “If I have to go with you and give him an order to not let you out of his sight, you are. I assume you’d rather tell him yourself.”

  Sarah considered with a dour look.

  Better
Wade knew she didn’t want him there than she show up and tell him Jimmy says he’s babysittin’, but it weren’t that much better, Jimmy shows up with her and tells Wade, over her objections, that Wade’s gotta babysit.

  “The construction group,” she said, and Jimmy twitched his head up a fraction. “You make sure they get a cart and a good horse,” she said. His nostrils twitched.

  “I’ll put a bounty on all of the most important labor industries,” he said. “First to put a plausible business plan in front of me will get it.”

  She dropped her head a fraction.

  “Ain’t gonna make a habit of this,” she said and he shook his head.

  “You won’t need to. Once this is done, I’ll be watching your back and you’ll be watching mine.”

  She crossed her arms, then nodded and turned, goin’ to the front door to get her hat and headin’ out to the stables again. By the sun, she had a couple hours ‘fore the train ought be ready to head out, and she needed one more look at her Pa’s house ‘fore the next flood.

  Damn, but she hated the place. Two story house up on stilts, lettin’ the water go through underneath, and a barn of the same type, big enough for eight cows and no more. Little fence ‘round the front along the road, just to let people know they weren’t s’posed to wander off the road ‘long this stretch, gate what were broken, again, just a few weeks after she’d moved out. She left Gremlin in the front yard, lettin’ herself in the front door.

  Weren’t much left, no more. Kitchen table, wood stove, her Pa’s desk. Upstairs were a bed and a bronze tub, a vanity, and a second bedroom, no more fitted out than the first. Nothin’ worth rescuin’ to take to the Lawson house, but a few pieces some ‘a the homesteaders might be able to make use of, given the number of boys they were takin’ in these days. Sarah wrote a note to leave with Granger, lettin’ Nina Joiner know what were there and givin’ her the code to let herself in, should she want any of it.

  Were the best she was gonna do. She crawled under the house, lookin’ at the timbers underneath it, thinkin’ of the promise Jimmy had made to look into puttin’ a sawmill up on the wet side of the mountains, startin’ to bring in their own lumber, local, then crawled back out, goin’ to scout the barn. They’d taken near everything, here, and it made her glad. She’d put this barn back up more times ‘n she could count. Next time, it’d be down for good.

  She went to stand in the yard, Gremlin comin’ to see if she’d found anything to feed him from inside. She’d lived here a good lot ‘a years, kept herself fed and alive, but weren’t much more to it, than that. Just keepin’ time.

  There stood old Lawrence, in front of her, on split timbers and under settlin’ dust. Her Pa’s house. Didn’t know why she were so tied to it, lookin’ at it from here. She spat on the ground, then mounted up and gave it a last look. She’d ‘a lit the whole place on fire, weren’t for the brass tub and the fact that the day were goin’ faster than her. She set Gremlin to the road toward Lawrence, stoppin’ in with Granger just to drop the note, and then goin’ to knock on Kayla’s door. The bright-faced young woman opened it and grinned.

  “Thought you’d be at the shop,” Sarah said. “Was lookin’ for Wade.”

  “Oh,” Kayla said. “He’s over with Rich.”

  She looked disappointed.

  “I’m goin’ to Jeremiah, and Jimmy wants one of the boys watchin’ my back while I’m not in town.”

  “Oh,” Kayla said. “I thought you were coming to talk about what you’re going to wear for Rhoda’s wedding.”

  In what universe would Sarah have come for that, voluntarily?

  “Not likely,” Sarah answered.

  “It’s going to be amazing,” Kayla said, and Sarah shook her head.

  “I’m gonna go find Wade,” she said. Kayla waved happily and waited in the doorway. Watchin’.

  Sarah backed a step, then turned, not known’ rightly how to react to that.

  Kayla were lonely.

  Sarah twisted her mouth to the side, pausin’.

  Kayla had growed up with a family full ‘a girls, all workin’ at her Ma’s dress shop, people comin’ in and out all day long. No wonder she were feelin’ alone, workin’ at her shop by herself and bein’ in that house all on her own. She spent a lot of time with Rhoda, Sarah gathered, but it weren’t the same as bein’ with a busy, chatty family, much as it would ‘a drove Sarah crazy. She turned.

  “Jimmy tells me there are women comin’ into town, lookin’ to meet up with their guys and get married, settle down,” she said. Kayla frowned, nodding slowly.

  “I think Wade has talked about that, some,” she said. Sarah nodded.

  “Ought go out and find yourself an assistant or an apprentice or whatever you like. Much work as you got, sure there’s some you could put onto someone else, easy like.”

  Kayla lit up.

  “You’re right.”

  “’Course I’m right,” Sarah said. “Wade’s got the money. And you’re lookin’ to be a business woman. Better you spend your time doin’ the work, not cleanin’ up and whatever else. Be doin’ the girl a favor, too, givin’ her an income to keep herself fed and sheltered while she works out what happens next.”

  Kayla grinned.

  “Maybe I’ll hire two.”

  Sarah closed her eyes, thinkin’ to tell her not to get carried away, but that weren’t a warnin’ would do no good, with Kayla Lawson.

  “Run ‘em past Rhoda, ‘fore you hire anyone,” Sarah said. “She’ll help you keep out the ones you ain’t gonna want to keep around.”

  “Okay,” Kayla said, grinnin’ again. “Thanks, Sarah.”

  Sarah hated how often Kayla made her feel like the heroic big sister, comin’ in to make her life better. Weren’t ever Sarah’s aim. Didn’t rightly know why she kept intervenin’, anyway. She walked ‘cross the space amongst the houses and knocked on Rich’s door. Sunny answered, steppin’ out of the way.

  “Rich is in the dining room,” she said, her eyes never leavin’ Sarah’s face.

  “Lookin’ for Wade, actually.”

  “Where else would Wade be?” Sunny asked, and Sarah raised an eyebrow, but it didn’t have no effect on Sunny. Never did.

  She went past the dark-skinned woman, into the eating area of the house, findin’ Wade and Rich at the table there. Both of ‘em looked up from beers.

  “You,” she said, pointin’ at Wade. “You’re with me.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “Doin’ what?” he asked.

  “I’m goin’ to Jeremiah to pick up a load of Perpeto, and you’re my second gun.”

  Wade looked at Rich and shifted in his chair. Individually, they were nearly unlivable, but together they were completely intolerable.

  “Since when does Sarah Todd admit she needs someone armed lookin’ out for her?” Wade asked.

  “Since I’m the only person, face ‘a this planet, what can find absenta up in them mountains,” Sarah said. “I only got two eyes, and they’re both pointin’ the same way.”

  Wade sighed.

  “Pass.”

  “Tell it to Jimmy,” Sarah said, turnin’ for the door. “Was him what said you had to. You think this were my idea?”

  She heard Wade and Rich whisper to each other, and a chair scoot across hard floor. She didn’t make her way all the way to the buckboard ‘round behind Thomas’ place ‘fore Wade caught up carryin’ a satchel.

  “You got yourself an overnight bag?” Sarah asked.

  “There’s no food on the train,” Wade said. She gave him a dark look, goin’ into the barn and bringin’ out the little mare Kayla had taken a shine to and hitchin’ the creature to the buckboard.

  “Run, tell Rhoda we’re takin’ the buckboard and she ought send Thomas to get it from the station,” Sarah said.

  “You do it,” Wade said, getting up into the buckboard and proppin’ his feet up on the wood there. Sarah turned to look at ‘im, restin’ a hand on the mare’s neck.

&
nbsp; “I’m sorry,” she said. “I b’lieve I gave you the wrong impression. When I said you were my second gun, I meant you were the sorry fool what was gonna have to go, fetch, carry, and watch over everythin’ I do when I’m in Jeremiah. You don’t, I’m’a tie you up on the train and leave you to ride it all the way out to Preston and ‘splain to Jimmy when you finally get your sorry, sore tail end back here why it was you weren’t doin’ what he told you.”

  Wade leaned forward.

  “It’s been a lot of years since I’ve been afraid of you, Sarah.”

  “No,” she said, shakin’ her head. “It’s been a lot of years since you remembered why you was afraid of me.”

  She stood, still restin’ her hand there on the mare’s back, and she held his eye.

  Lawsons had a lot ‘a pride. Were a lot worse off for years of success in Intec. Had a hard time backin’ down from a fight, but Wade and Rich were smarter men than Little Peter. Little Peter was like to get hisself killed, one of these days, not backin’ down when he ought. Wade, ‘specially, had a look to him that he knew better and couldn’t find his way back.

  Kayla had married the man.

  Sarah hadn’t yet worked through that puzzle.

  “Try again?” Sarah asked. “Run, tell Rhoda she needs to send Thomas up to the station to get the buckboard. I’ll finish up here.”

  His jaw worked, the scratch of beard coverin’ his whole jaw just rollin’ as he thought it through. Rich had a rounder face than Wade. Beard took to him, better. Wade’d of done better shaved, on account of it kept his features cleaner and more up-front. Wasn’t the way of things in Lawrence, where a beard kept skin covered what weren’t protected by a hat, but it were a style she’d come to appreciate in Oxala, for whatever reason.

  “I’m not going to take orders from you, just because you’re Jimmy’s wife,” Wade said. Sarah smiled, cold.

  “No. You’re going to take orders from me because any way you measure us up, I’m gonna beat your hide ‘till there ain’t none left. Git.”

  There, that blink, were the face she’d known, twin boy, devious, defiant, but ultimately her junior and afraid of what she were capable of. He spat over the side of the buckboard, then jumped the other way, saunterin’ back to the house. Sarah finished runnin’ the traces through the harness and she were waitin’ up on the driver’s bench when Wade got back.