Jesse drove slowly, the only speed the damaged Blackjack would allow, and only stopped when he pulled up in front of a saloon that abutted the equipment lot on the cliff edge of town. He looked up at the sign, a simple, white painted marquee with the word “Saloon” painted on it in black. He shook his head. Whether at the sign or his own sorry lot in life, he would have been hard-pressed to say.
He was alone. Not just without Frank or the Coles, but his whole gang, dead or scattered to the dusty winds in one afternoon. He could not remember the last time he was this isolated, this lost. Never mind turning the tables on Billy. Never mind proving, once and for all, his own prominence in the hierarchy of western legends. He could very well fade into obscurity right here in this dingy little burg at the arse end of nowhere.
Jesse shook his head and dismounted. He pushed the Blackjack up onto a recharging pad and jury-rigged a connection between the built-in generator and his battered ride. He then pulled the two saddle bags from their armored compartment, and pushed his way into the darkening interior of the saloon.
Inside, the place looked much like any other frontier watering hole. With a few words to the leery bartender he was able to discover that Billy had, indeed, intercepted the driller during the battle and had made off with it back south, the way Jesse himself had intended to go. The remnants of the Union Advanced Patrol had fled back east. He felt bitter amusement at the thought that Billy must have driven right past him.
Did the Kid think he was dead? Did he even care? Jesse was troubled by the fact that the Youngers had not returned for him. Most upsetting of all, though, was the lack of any sign concerning his brother. Had Billy dragged him out of the wreckage? Had the Youngers? Had the damned Union? Jesse was shocked by how much he did not know.
The outlaw found a table in a darkened corner and carried a small bottle and glass from the bar into the shadows. The RJ-1027 lighting here was spotty, it seemed to waver gently, brighter and then softer, brighter and then softer. It was nearly enough to make him sick.
Jesse stared into the liquid in his glass. Part of him wanted that drink very badly, but another part of him was absolutely sure the pain it would cause his tortured throat would knock him out for sure. He straightened his shoulders, steeled himself, schooled his face to stillness, and tossed the shot back. He needed the alcohol more than he needed to avoid a little more pain.
He nearly screamed as the drink hit his gullet. After a moment, though, he shook himself and settled back. He could feel his body starting to relax, and knew he was going to be okay.
As he had entered, most of the folks inside had looked at him with hooded, resentful eyes. They knew who he was and what he had done, but their fear kept them cowed. He felt a slight grin twist one side of his face as he thought about how much harder his life would be if people were not such gutless sheep.
Jesse poured himself another shot and was preparing himself to toss it back when a lithe shape glided up beside him and immediately drifted down into the seat opposite without asking for permission.
“Look, kid, I don’t wanna—“ His voice cut short as he looked up into the eyes of Lucinda Loveless.
She looked concerned, but also angry, and a little frightened. “Fancy meeting you here, stranger.” She gave him the full force of her smile, and his heart nearly stopped.
“Hey, Lucy.” He pummeled his mind desperately for a witty remark. “You followin’ me?” It was the best his mind could provide, and he cringed as he heard his own voice.
Her smile widened. “Sort of, yeah.” She took the drink from him and tossed it back, gasping slightly as the heat hit her stomach. She seemed to be struggling with something herself, and Jesse wondered what it could be. He could not look at her without seeing that cringing form in the garret back in Kansas City, though, even though he knew Misty had never been any kind of a match for Lucy in any way. The guilt and the anger and the confusion were still very much there, and conjured every time he looked into Lucy’s eyes.
So why, then, was it so hard to look away?
“You look like death warmed over, Jesse.” Her words were playful, but there was real concern in her eyes. “Did you get in a fight with a mountain lion or something?”
He shrugged, putting a brave face on his injuries and his appearance. “You know what they say, Lucy: if yer bleedin’, yer still breathin’.” He grinned as much as his tight, torn face would allow.
She nodded, clearly not convinced that he was alright, but shrugged in return. “So,” she continued, ignoring the conflict in his eyes. “I would love to hear the tale that ends with you sitting alone in a saloon in Diablo Canyon, a wrecked battlefield nearly within walking distance to the south, and a heap of machinery reported stolen from the equipment yard just yonder… all with a UR-30 Enforcer stalking the premises.”
He stared at her for a moment, confusion and the brutal force of recent memory driving the phantoms away. Again his brain failed him. “What?”
She smiled, but generously toned it down to a more manageable radiance. “I’m just saying, the last time I saw you, you were holding court in that little dive on the back end of Kansas City, surrounded by the knights and jesters of your merry band.” She gave him a brief inspection, her beautiful dark eyes running quickly up and down. “Now, I would hardly recognize you.”
He shook his head and then realized that the image of the two of them sitting in a saloon in Diablo Canyon was strange on more than one level. He peered at her, taking his glass back. “Mind telling me how you ended up here? I’m sure there’s an exciting tale to tell there as well.
She leaned back, one elbow thrown casually over the chair back. “Not really. Got a hankerin’ for a different vantage, so came on over this way.”
Jesse nodded and then made a show of looking around. “And your partner? Hank, was it?”
She laughed. “Henry. Business called him in a different direction.”
Jesse shook his head. “So now you’re wanderin’ around the territories on your own, brazen as you please, and just happened to turn up in Diablo Canyon?”
It was her turn to shake her head. “Not just turn up, no. And not wandering, either.” Her smile turned sly. “As for brazen, well, you’ll have to make your own judgment on that call. You were going to tell me about the robot?”
His old grin began to return, and he settled back against his own chair, ignoring the pangs of torn muscles and bruises. “Well, why d’you assume I’d know anythin’ about that?”
Lucy looked around the room. “I’m not seeing anyone else that could have handled one.”
He perked up a bit, wincing at the pain but ignoring it. “So, you admit you think I could handle one.”
“I’m not saying you could either.” She smirked and jerked her chin towards the rest of the room. “But the rest of these boys? No, there’s no way they could have handled it.”
Jesse’s grin was wider as he made a great show of relaxing. “Well, to tell you the truth, the way I heard it, the thing went for a walk across the bridge.”
Her smile slipped a little. “The bridge that isn’t finished?”
His grin grew wider still. “Isn’t it? Then yeah, I guess that one.”
She stared at him, either impressed or angry, he could not tell. “You destroyed a UR-30 Enforcer.”
Jesse shrugged. “Don’t much matter to me, now.” He poured himself another drink and tossed it back without thinking. Frank’s face kept rising into his mind, followed by Harding, and Gage, and Chase. Lastly the ghostly image of the kid, Ty’s, face rose up in his mind, the eyes glowing a hellish red.
“You destroyed the most advanced tool of law enforcement in the world, and it doesn’t matter?” It was definitely anger in her eyes now.
Jesse leaned over the table towards the woman, his mechanical hands folding together before him. “Listen, lady. You obviously know about the battle, you mentioned it. Any thought to what I might have lost out there? My brother’s gone. My friends are gone, eit
her dead or fled. I’m alone, and the last thing I’m gonna worry about is that damned metal man. Did we blast ‘em? Yeah, we blasted him to hell! And yeah, we tossed the bits down into the canyon. So what?”
“Your brother is dead?” Every other emotion or thought had drained from her eyes as he’d said Frank’s name, and now she reached out to lay one delicate hand over his mechanical claw. For the firsts time in his life he wished there were feedback pads on the backs of his hands, but he could not have said why.
He shook his head, not wanting to meet her gaze. “Don’t know. His body ain’t back there, but that don’t mean much. His ‘Horse got blown to kingdom come, ‘n I would ‘o sworn I saw him burnin’ up. When I came to, he was gone, dragged away, maybe. But whether he was alive or dead? That I couldn’t say.”
She said nothing for several minutes, and then took his metal hands in both of hers, and he could tell from the feedback mechanisms that she was squeezing hard. “Maybe it’s time to put all this behind you.”
He barked a cruel laugh and moved to pull his hands away, but she held them tighter with surprising strength. “No, listen to me. Maybe now is the time to turn your back on all of this. Break the cycle and make a new choice? You don’t have to chase the blood forever, Jesse. You could walk away.”
He snorted and shook his head, but the dire urgency in her eyes trapped him and he could not look away.
He stared into her eyes and muttered, “You goin’ to walk with me?”
Lucy pulled back abruptly, releasing his hands and looking at him as if she were shocked at the suggestion. There was a blush there too, however, and a confusion that she could not completely hide. “Me? No! I mean, why would I… what do I have to walk away from?”
He laughed at her discomfort and relaxed back into his chair. “Life? Eh, you know what they say, you can’t cash in your chips till yer done, an’ even then, no one knows what they’ll be good fer. The Gospel sharpes, they’d like us to all ‘walk away’, eh?” He shrugged. “There’s only one life I know, an’ only one thing I’m good at, but I’m the best. I ain’t gonna walk away ‘till I can’t play no more.”
She watched him, then said. “Do you know what you and your gang have done, destroying the UR-30? What’s going to happen now to Diablo Canyon?”
He shrugged. “Be a bit more like home?” His grin was bitter.
“This town will tear itself apart, Jesse, it will be a pit of vipers again in a matter of weeks at most. All of the people here who have spent years trying to build something of their lives will once again be at the mercy of men and women who don’t care about such effort, and don’t think past their next swill of whiskey, or their next bed.”
“Folks like me, you mean.” He shrugged again, clearly not finding the idea troublesome.
He watched her react to his words, and would have put money on her leaving right then and there. He could tell what he had said troubled her more than he would have expected. Could she really care about the sheep mewing around Diablo Canyon or any of these other two bit towns? He shook his head, the anger returning, and spit on the floor beside him.
“Don’t matter one way or t’other.” He put his hands on the table, but he could feel the red-tinged darkness rising behind his eyes. His brother, Billy, all the dead men who had followed him out here, every fear that had driven him, and every mistake he had made along the way, built up inside him. Now this belle wanted to know how he felt about the cattle?
Jesse’s hand snapped closed, shattering the bottle and sending the rest of the whiskey washing over the dry wood of the table. He forced his hand to slowly open and looked at his palm. Several splinters of glass were embedded in the rubber pads. He quirked an eyebrow as the pain registered, then carefully pulled the long shards out. He watched as the black liquid inside spurted out into the pool of whiskey, quickly clouding it up. The fluid stopped almost immediately. He looked back up into Lucy’s face. She was staring at him in a mix of concern and frustration.
“There’s more you don’t understand than you do, Lucy.” Jesse shook his head and looked back down at his hands. All signs of damage had smoothed away. “William Bonney is convinced there’s something out there in the dust and the grass that’ll be worth an awful lot to the right people. Whoever gets it, though? They’ll be writing their own ticket, and when everything shakes out, there name’ll be written so big in the history of the territories, ain’t no one ever gonna be able to erase it.”
She shook her head in response. “I don’t care. Whatever this thing is, how many lives have you destroyed already, just following its trail? You’re better than that, Jesse. You’ve got real power, you’ve got real strength. You could be a force out here in the territories. You could help make them safe for these people, as everyone tries to build a better tomorrow than the sad today they were born into.”
He snorted again. “The sheep? Who gives a tinker’s fart what the sheep want? Not that it matters. I don’t even know where to go next. My brother –“
“Is out there somewhere, Jesse, and finding him would make perfect sense. I could help you with that. I want to help you with that. Frank’s smart, I know. He might even agree with me.” One of her hands was on his again, and it was as if neither of them even thought twice about it.
He looked at her, stunned. “You want to help me?”
She nodded. “I do.”
He swallowed, looked away, then forced his eyes to return to her face. “Why?”
It was her turn to look away. “Jesse, that’s about enough heavy thinking today, without quite enough heavy drinking.” She stood up. “I’m going to secure myself a room upstairs. It’s almost dark, anyway.”
Lucy turned away, but quickly turned back. “You can join me upstairs. Plenty of time to think tomorrow.”
He could see she was not completely comfortable with the advance, but of all the offers he had ever received, this one was the only one to hit him this hard. His mind, once again, failed him. “What?”
She looked exasperated, shaking her head and almost walking away. With a careful breath she calmed herself enough to look down, putting her hands carefully back on the table as she leaned over. “I’m getting a room. You may come up and join me if you wish.” Their eyes were locked on each other, and he felt an unfamiliar, warm burn rising in his chest. She stood abruptly and turned away, leaving him to fall back into his own mind.
“But I don’t want you to make the right decision for the wrong reason, Jesse. I want you to have all the information in front of you before you make a call. Billy took the drilling machine south, wide of the battle, following the railroad a bit first to hide its tracks. And although I doubt Billy knew it, there’s enough old RJ-1027 residue on the rail bed that it should mask them from anyone using tracking tech as well. You should be able to pick up their trail just south of the battle site.”
His face twisted in confusion. “How could you—“
She saw a myriad of questions in his eyes, and chose to answer one. “I saw the tracks from… my transportation. You’ll have to trust me, that’s where they went.” She did not look down at him again but moved towards the front of the saloon. “I’m going to get that room now. I’ll see you when I see you.”
*****
Lucinda made her way up to the small room and put her things in a corner. She sat on the bed, a torrent of thoughts running through her mind. What had she done? She had never been so hopelessly entangled before. She looked down at the small pistol in her hand. The barrel was not the bleak hole of a normal gun’s snout, but a fork-like two-pronged affair. Tesla promised it would discharge a bolt of RJ-1027 into a target from a few feet away and knock them painlessly into a deep, instant sleep.
Did she have the nerve to shoot Jesse when he came through the door? For a woman disused to ever questioning herself, she had already shown quite a bit of nerve already that day, so who knew? She had made sure he knew what room she was in, so there was really no question he would come. But would she shoo
t him, or… ?
The agent paced up and down along the wall of the small room, the pistol in her hand. Her nerves kept her moving around the room, and soon she put the weapon on a small side table and continued to pace. Her hand writhed nervously against each other. What was keeping him?
Soon she was too tired to pace. The energy and emotion of the past few days caught up with her. She sat on the edge of the bed and meditated for a while, bringing her heart and her mind into cold alignment. The sudden exhaustion hit by surprise, and she lay back on the bed to stop her head from spinning.
Lucinda awoke to warm light streaming through the chinks in her window’s slats. Warm morning light.
She sat bolt upright and reached for the weapon. A quick survey of the room showed that none of her things had been tampered with. No one had entered the room.
“Son of a… “ She rushed to the window and threw it open, thrusting her body out into open air, hanging by one hand and her knees on the sill.
Below the window was the reason she had chosen this room; she could see the recharging platforms in front of the saloon. Most of them were occupied. All but one, in fact.
A single recharging station was empty, its pad stained with puddles of oil and other liquid, as if the vehicle that had rested most recently there had been in very poor repair.
Or severely damaged.
Lucinda Loveless slumped back against the window frame, unable to untangle her own complex emotions.“Damn.”
Chapter 15
The machine struggled through the rutted, reddish dust of the desert. It had bulled its way through gullies and across vast stretches of open, rocky ground for hours. Its rider, slumped in the saddle and barely conscious, watched the land drift by through slit eyes, focused on the regular pattern of massive divots and impact craters that lined his path. He had learned early on in the chase that his goggles made spotting the tracks difficult in the shifting sands. The glare and grit were small prices to pay for staying latched to his prey.
Jesse’s mind kept slipping back to the previous night. He had almost taken those stairs. In fact, he had stood with every intention of following Lucy right up to the room before she had even disappeared up to the next level. As he turned, however, he had a sudden flash back to Kansas City. A flickering image of Misty crashed into his mind with force enough to drive him back into his seat. A ghostly figure of his brother loomed up before him as well, and he knew his path lay elsewhere.
The Jessie James Archives Page 30