Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  “In Preston, that is how it would work,” Toby said. “Why would you ever want to live out here?”

  Sarah looked around, feelin’ the question back at him. Who would ever want to live in Preston, where there were so many people ‘round, weren’t ever a time you were more ‘n five minutes away from someone you knew.

  “Plenty of absenta in the ground, turns out, to make that an easy question,” Maxim said. Sarah shrugged.

  “Certainly why they came out, to begin with. But the folk ‘round here like it well enough. It’s a hard place, makes hard people, and it right enough ain’t got a lot goin’ for it, but that’s more ‘n any other place I been.”

  “You’ve been to Preston?” Toby asked.

  “I went to school in Oxala,” Sarah said.

  “You should see her, out in the city,” Maxim said. “You’d never recognize her.”

  Sarah reckoned it weren’t easy to miss a woman her size, no matter what she were wearin’, but this she did keep to herself.

  “Right,” Toby said. “I bet. You wear a different hat?”

  She gave him a sideways look, but the shot hit wide and didn’t bother her none.

  “So, I met the man, but you should tell me ‘bout the miner you sent up here to do your testin’,” she said to Maxim.

  “I hired him out of Preston,” Maxim said. “He used to work for the testing facility, there, but his wife died and he wanted to get out of town and start over, and I offered him a boatload of money to start off here before he figured out what else he wanted to do with himself.”

  “And what have you done to keep ‘im from double-crossin’ you?” Sarah asked. Maxim looked over at her, insulted.

  “I haven’t done anything but be me,” he said. “He knows who I am, and he has two sons in Preston. That’s all that matters.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Might be enough for most folk, most of the time,” she said. “But I seen people go minin’ crazy, and they’d trade their own arms for one more score. His sons might not be the leverage you figure. ‘Specially if he gets a notion he could get ‘em hidden away ‘fore you figure out what’s gone wrong.”

  “No,” Maxim said, shaking his head. “He couldn’t.”

  There was a certainty in his voice she recognized from Jimmy, and she nodded. Scary men had their ways, and hintin’ at ‘em was part of the fear they traded in.

  Sarah nodded, hearin’ the pot start to boil and sittin’ forward again, cuttin’ roots into the water. She sat back once more, takin’ out her bag ‘a gremlin and rollin’ a cigarette.

  “Can I have one?” Maxim asked as she lit it. “That was one of the experiences I’m not going to forget any time soon.”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow at him, but rolled a second cigarette for him and handed it over. She offered him her lighter, but he shook his head, takin’ out a heavy one with a solid tone to it when he lit it off. He took a couple long drags at the gremlin, then sat back against his own saddle.

  “That’s not bad,” he said. “Long day’s work, sitting back and taking some time to just reflect on the day and everything else? You should try one, Toby.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Toby said. “You shouldn’t either. It’s bad for you.”

  “So are bullets,” Sarah said. “Lot more likely to die from one of them, ‘round here.”

  She’d had people at Oxala tell her that smoking was gonna kill her, and she’d had no problem givin’ it up, so long as she’d been there, ‘cause they largely didn’t approve, but she didn’t have any proof one way or the other that it were a bad thing, and she saw men every night of the week go drink their brains out at the tavern. Weren’t reason to do it, but it certainly weren’t a reason not to. It kept her hands busy and her mind free, and she liked the flavor of the gremlin. Maxim blew smoke up at the sky and whistled.

  “Man. I can’t even describe that.”

  “Who is gonna run the mine, if you strike absenta?” Sarah asked. He looked over with a frown.

  “Someone called Kirk,” he said. She nodded.

  “Kirk boys is good boys. They’ll do right by you.”

  “Who is a Kirk?” Toby asked.

  “’Till the men like your uncle here get a handle on how to staff and run a proper mine, they’re hirin’ Lawrence boys to come up here and do it. They ain’t gonna stick around - the miners want their own piece of land to prospect, and the farmers is just farmers deep down. They’re only gonna come up here for the money he’s payin’, and that only for a time. So if you’re actually gonna stick it out, you’ll want to make progress on hirin’ someone what wants the job, long term, sooner ‘n later.”

  “You trust them?” Toby asked.

  “I do,” Sarah said.

  “Why would you trust someone from here more than he should trust someone from Preston?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s askin’ the right questions. I trust ‘em ‘cause their families are rooted to the ground, here, and ‘cause gettin’ out on the train, secret-like, with a load of absenta ain’t the easiest thing in the world. Most of ‘em ain’t never been past Jeremiah, and they got nowhere to go to, to spend their absenta. I ain’t gonna say they wouldn’t never skim a little, keep their family goin’ durin’ a hard time down the road, but it ain’t like the kind of absenta you’d miss, you get a good mine goin’, up here.”

  “But you’re saying that you expect them to steal from us.”

  “Everybody steals,” Maxim said, admiring the cigarette in his hand. “It’s the ones who are trying to steal what they shouldn’t that you have to be concerned about.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “You pay ‘em right, they might skim, they might not, but they’re gonna do the job with the aim to keep it.”

  “But you just said they’re going to quit. Didn’t you? That’s what she said?”

  “That’s what she said,” Maxim said. “But it’s her job to make sure no one walks off with more absenta than they can reasonably hide. If people start getting away with stealing big amounts from the mines, all of the order falls apart, and they have chaos. Here. Where they live.”

  Sarah nodded. This was the man Jimmy liked. The one who thought like that.

  “Jimmy’s got plans for keepin’ people from sellin’ what ain’t theirs.”

  “Like what?” Toby asked. Sarah shrugged.

  “Just plans.”

  “Wouldn’t recommend asking him,” Maxim said. “Guy like you came sniffing around anything this big I was working on, I’d shoot him just to be sure.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Wise.”

  “What universe are you two from?” Toby asked. Sarah tipped her hat down a fraction and smiled, then leaned up again to stir the pot once more.

  “Smells good,” Maxim said. “What is it?”

  “Stew,” Sarah said, shiftin’ over to her bag to get jerky out, then cutting it into chunks and feeding it into the stew.

  “Is that… dried meat?” Toby asked. “You’re boiling dried meat, and you call it dinner?”

  “Better than the jerky you had on the trail,” Sarah answered, leanin’ back on her elbows once more. Jerky had enough salt to it to start formin’ a scent as it cooked soft, makin’ for a broth your nose knew about.

  “I didn’t eat that,” Toby said. “It’s gross.”

  “You’ll wish you had, tomorrow,” Sarah said. “My advice? Take any meal you can get, out here. Ain’t no guarantee the next one’s gonna happen.”

  Toby looked over at her.

  “You’re serious?”

  “You see that bag?” Sarah asked, indicatin’ the leather satchel with a nod. “All our food is in there. We get in a scrape and it gets lost?”

  “We starve?” Toby asked. She laughed.

  “No. I hunt game, before it comes to that. But I been known to come up dry, a meal or two, huntin’ varmints up here. Ain’t so many of ‘em to guarantee a meal every time your belly’d like one.”

  A
s if on cue, Dog came trottin’ out of the brush with a bloody muzzle, layin’ down alongside Sarah with a mistrustful eye for Maxim and Toby.

  “Why bring him?” Maxim asked.

  “Better ear ‘n any of us, and he’ll tear the throat out a man if he has to, keepin’ us safe. Anything ain’t right, he’ll let me know.”

  Maxim shrugged.

  “How did you train him?” Toby asked. Sarah frowned.

  “You don’t train a dog. Either he’s got it or he don’t.”

  “Got what?” Toby asked. She shook her head.

  “Dumber than ground rocks.”

  She stirred the stew again, then got out bowls and portioned it, puttin’ one in front of Toby before handin’ another to Maxim and tuckin’ into her own.

  “You know how to shoot a gun?” she asked Toby as he looked suspiciously at his stew.

  “You think I’d bring him out here without that much training?” Maxim asked. “We’ve been working on it for weeks.”

  “Weeks,” Sarah said, and Maxim shrugged.

  “The plan kind of fell into place all at once.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “I see.” She took out one of her hand guns and checked it, then handed it across to Toby. He glanced at Maxim, then took it.

  “I assume you ain’t carryin’,” she said, and he shook his head. She raised an eyebrow at Maxim.

  “You seen how bad it can get out here,” she said. “You ain’t so much as armed him for self defense?”

  “He wouldn’t take one,” Maxim said. “Said the gun belt chafes.”

  “Bullet is gonna chafe a hell of a lot more,” she said. “Show me what you can do.”

  Toby sighed and set the bowl down, standin’ and pointin’ the gun at a tree across the clearin’. Sarah watched his stance, the way his arm bounced and wandered like a strung rope in a breeze, and she shook her head.

  “Give it back.”

  “But I haven’t even tried, yet,” Toby complained.

  “You’re as like to hit yourself as what you’re pointin’ at,” Sarah said. “Thought you prided yourself on bein’ strong.”

  “I am strong,” he said. She took the magazine out of the gun and popped the last round out of the chamber, catchin’ it in her fingers, then handed it back.

  “Show me you can hold it steady.”

  He looked at Maxim again, and the other man noisily slurped down the last of his stew, then tossed the plate aside to Dog and wove his hands behind his head.

  “You’re getting a lesson from one of the greats,” Maxim said. “Learn something.”

  She pursed her lips as Toby raised the gun again. Grip was… technical. Two hands, one under the other, elbows out. Feet were poor, but not gonna be the thing what undid him.

  “You look like someone’s taught you to hunt with a spear, ‘stead of shootin’ a gun,” she said. “That feel natural? At all?”

  Toby looked at Maxim for backup, but the other man were enjoyin’ himself and of no mind to lend aid. Toby sighed.

  “No.”

  “Give it here,” Sarah said, takin’ the gun from him and goin’ to stand in front of him. “Hit me.”

  “No,” he said.

  She tossed her hat across the fire to land on her pommel and tucked the magazine and gun into separate pockets of her duster.

  “Hit me,” she said again, flingin’ out her hands to get her fingers nimbled, but otherwise givin’ him a flat stance to look at.

  “I don’t hit people,” Toby said.

  She decked him.

  Coulda just caught him in the belly, laid him out, but she wanted it to smart for a couple days, yet. A lesson worth rememberin’. Caught him just under the eye, not enough to swell it shut, but enough he’d have a hell of a black eye when they got back to the Lawson house in two days or so. He landed across Maxim’s lap, already scramblin’.

  “What the hell is wrong with you people?” he shouted. “Why?”

  She was just as relaxed as she’d been ‘fore she hit him, shoulders loose, feet side-by-side and out, like she’d stand anywhere else.

  “Hit me,” she said again. He had his hand on his face.

  “I’d hit her,” Maxim said. “Just saying.”

  “No,” he shouted. “I don’t hit people.”

  She swung at him again and he ducked out of the way. Back, he’d ‘a been fine, but he went low and she planted her foot in his midsection, knockin’ him back without wind. He lay on the ground for a full minute before groanin’ back to his feet again.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “I thought this was about guns.”

  “Is,” Sarah said. “You ain’t got any instinct for what a gun is for.”

  “It’s for shooting people,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s for killin’.”

  He turned his hands out without liftin’ ‘em.

  “What’s the difference?”

  She shrugged.

  “Not much, ‘cept whether or not you’re gonna hit what you’re aimin’ at. And whether you’re like to pull the trigger at all. You point a gun at a man, you gotta be willin’ to end him. You ain’t, you just took up both your hands without findin’ a weapon what’s gonna do you any good.”

  “It could scare him off,” Toby said. Sarah turned the corners of her mouth down.

  “Maybe for me,” she said. “But the kind ‘a man you’re gonna be willin’ to draw a weapon on? No. He’s gonna shoot you dead the second he realizes you ain’t got it in you.”

  He put his hand to his face again.

  “What’s that got to do with me not being willing to hit you?”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head.

  “It’s not the same,” he said. “You’re our guide. You’re Uncle Maxim’s friend. You’re talking about someone who would kill me.”

  She laughed.

  “Only part of that what’s true is me bein’ a guide to you. I ain’t askin’ you to shoot me. That would be different. This is just you showin’ me what guts you got for violence, and I gather you ain’t got none at all.”

  “Why does it matter?” he asked.

  She laughed quietly, gettin’ the gun back out of her pocket and handin’ it to him once more.

  “Don’t care about your stance or your hands. You hold that like you’re shakin’ a friend’s hand. Like it belongs in your hand. Do that, we’ve got somethin’ to start with, at least.”

  “I used to take him to the range when he was little, and he was so excited to get to use the guns,” Maxim said. “Now he thinks they’re uncivilized.”

  Sarah snorted, goin’ back to her seat and pickin’ up her stew again.

  “That right there is the backbone of civilization,” she said.

  “That’s not true,” Toby said.

  “It is,” Sarah said. Something about her voice drew his attention, and he let the gun fall to his side as he looked at her. She nodded. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from Lawrence or Preston or Oxala. All of civilization comes down to the right men holding the guns. If the wrong men get the guns, civilization ends and slavery begins.”

  “You…” Toby started slowly.

  “She’s got more to her than meets the eye,” Maxim said. “Just like Lawrence and everything else here.”

  Sarah breathed, holding her eye even to his.

  “You aren’t the right people,” Toby finally said. She smiled, leanin’ back on her saddle and tippin’ up her bowl ‘fore she gave it to Dog to lick.

  “Nope,” she said. “You’re right and you’re wrong. There are lots ‘a men out here what are worse ‘n me, every way possible, and I’m sure there are men who’d do a better job keepin’ justice and the like from sufferin’ a long, desert death. I done what I knew to do, though, and we made it from there to here. Ain’t gonna get an apology from me for that.”

  “I mean you and Uncle Maxim,” Toby said.

  Maxim laughed.

  “
I don’t care about your civilization and your slavery. All I care about is whether or not I can get what I want and keep it from everyone else when they come for it.”

  “Lawrence’ll kill you quick, you stay here without understandin’ what manner ‘a place it is. You don’t wanna be here, I’ll pay your ticket out, just so I don’t have to be the one what sticks my neck out to save yours, down the line,” Sarah said.

  “You cut and run, don’t come running to me, or your mother, for support,” Maxim said.

  “You’re a bastard,” Sarah said, leanin’ against her saddle and listenin’ to the sounds of the horses somewhere out of sight. Night noises. Restin’.

  “I may be a bastard, but I’m a live one, and a rich one,” Maxim said. “It’s beyond time this kid either learns how to earn his standard of living or find a new one.”

  Sarah looked at Toby.

  “You got that?” she asked. “This is you, decidin’ whether you want to be decent and broke or like him and rich.”

  Toby sat back down again, lookin’ down at his stew and crossin’ his arms at his chest, starin’ out at the woods.

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Damn. Bein’ rich is worth that much to you.”

  “Isn’t it, to you?” Toby asked. “I mean, look at what you’re doing.”

  “What, exactly, do you think that is?” Sarah asked. He looked over, measurin’ her up with a cold expression, new to that bored face.

  “I know who Jimmy Lawson is,” he said. “I was just a kid, when he was living in Preston, but I saw what he did to the city. He and my uncle are friends. And you’re his wife. That makes you twice as bad as Uncle Maxim.”

  She nodded slowly, not disputin’ the logic of it.

  “Ain’t about me nohow. I made my decisions, I’m livin’ with ‘em. Don’t rightly care what you or no one else thinks of ‘em. This is about you. You willin’ to stay out here, risk dyin’ with a bullet in your gut, diggin’ absenta out the ground, or you want to go back to your fancy-shoed city with nothin’ but a good education and your wits?”

  He swallowed, his jaw working as he stared off at the trees again. She looked over, where the sun was settin’, invisible, through the trees.

  “Ain’t no point makin’ a big deal out of it now,” she said. “You’re here, and you gotta survive it, either way. I just don’t like havin’ to bury boxes full of bones what never belonged here.”