by Sean Platt
Teddy, unperturbed, shrugged, then resumed poking through Edward’s things. After a moment, he said, “Bad guys are comin’, right?”
“Yar, you could say that.”
“You gonna kill ‘em?”
“Yar.”
“I’ll help. I carry my own knife and water. I got a spyglass, for spying. And I got my gun.” Teddy patted his side, where a heavy iron hung in a filthy leather holster. Clint somehow doubted that Teddy, who was small for his age, would be able to lift the thing and hold it steady — let alone summon the finger strength to pull the trigger. The only way he’d be able to use it, maybe, would be if he carried it around cocked and single-action, in which case it’d be a constant threat to blow his foot off.
“You’re too young, Theodore,” said Clint.
“Where ya goin?”
“The Flat Top.”
“Why?”
“I want to look out across the Sands.”
“You think you’ll just see ‘em coming?”
Clint inclined his head toward Edward. “I meant a different kind of seeing. Using magic.”
“Say,” said Teddy, “a unicorn’s like a portable source of magic, right? Could you summon that magic yourself, like in a wand?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Oh,” said Teddy. “I’ll bet if you could, it’d have to be a pink wand that made little pixie sparkles when you waved it around.”
Clint said nothing, and certainly didn’t volunteer the truth of Edward’s horn, which glowed a yellowish pink when its magic was used. Or that, yes, it did sort of sparkle.
“So you going to the Flat Top right now? And that’s why you’re packing?”
“Yar.”
“Okay. I’ll come with you.”
“No,” said Clint. “We’re going alone.”
“You need help. I know it. I heard you went around to get people to stand with you against Stone. How many you get? How big is our posse?”
Clint grumbled.
“The whole town will come out, I’m sure. He’s just one man, and a man can’t stand against a whole town. So what can I carry?”
Clint grumbled again. Teddy grabbed two waterskins, slung them over his shoulders, then stood waiting for further orders. His innocent face wasn’t endearing to Clint. It was annoying, and maybe even stupid. He’d need a lot of men to stand up to Stone and this other rider, but until he started finding some big men with fast hands, he’d prefer to ride solo. Teddy wouldn’t be able to help, and it wasn’t true that anything (or anyone) was better than nothing. Two was worse than one if the other was Teddy. The boy would only slow the gunslinger down, and get in the way of his bullets.
“You seem to think you’re going.” Clint shook his head. “But you’re too young, Theodore. You’ll get yourself killt.”
Teddy’s composure broke. “Aw, come on Marshal! Let me help. Everyone treats me like a man when it comes to earning a living, but suddenly when I want to help with something important, people tell me I’m only a kid. If I can get along in a Sands town without an ammy or appy, doing jobs and taking care of myself, then I should be allowed to help defend my home.”
Clint felt bad for the kid. It was true, what he said, but there was more to it. Keeping Teddy away from the approaching quarrel had nothing to do with keeping the boy protected, or shielding him from any unpleasantness. The kid was a liability. He could help, sure, but he’d likely be helping the wrong side. Teddy was small and thin even for his young age, and had a tendency to trip over things even when they weren’t in his way. Seemed as likely he’d shoot Clint or get in the way of one of the gunslinger’s shots as it did that he would land a bulls-eye himself.
“I’ve even got my own horse,” Teddy continued. “So you can ride your horse and I’ll ride mine.”
A sack of oats flew at Teddy’s head. Teddy saw it and ducked, though he didn’t seem to find it strange. It was as if people threw things at him so often that he’d grown completely used to it.
“Your horse can’t keep up with us,” Clint said.
Teddy made a face the gunslinger didn’t quite get, but then the boy turned and sprinted for the door, yelling about how his horse was like greased lightning, and how he’d show him. Clint realized he’d made a mistake. Reject kids, and you have to reject them from feather to pie. You can’t mention just one flaw in their plan. If you do, they’ll assume that it’s the only one, and that all they have to do is aim for a fix. But Clint wasn’t used to kids, or adults. He was used to Edward, the Sands, and his own fast hands.
Clint figured he and Edward could slip away while Teddy was running off, presumably to gather his horse. He slung his rucksack over his shoulder along with the two remaining waterskins, then fought with Edward for two minutes before leaving the barn, trotting down Main past the Otel — seeing no sign of Mai — and out into the open Sands toward Flat Top.
Clint rode in silence, thinking of Mai.
When the gunslinger first arrived in Solace as an exiled marshal, astride a unicorn with two seven-shot guns hanging from his sides, everyone had stared, knowing what he was even if they didn’t know who he was. Clint had gone into the saloon, practically begging the barkeep to challenge him or his right to drink an apple brew before using the tall closet. Clint’s hand had hovered at his side, almost twitching. Fast as he was, Clint with his right hand above his holster was like a normal man holding his gun ready, cocked and well aimed.
If the barkeep was fool enough to make the wrong comment, or ask Clint a question he didn’t eye proper, the man would’ve found himself dead on the floor in seconds. But the barkeep served Clint his apple brew and turkey pie without a word. Same for the man at the boardinghouse. Only later did Clint see that the reason everyone was so complicit was because Solace was used to doing what a man with a gun told them to do.
Even after Clint had run Stone from Solace, his distrust of its citizens lingered — along with their distrust of him. He’d ridden alone, with only a unicorn as a companion, for too long.
By the time he’d met Mai, though, he was respected in Solace. He’d won himself an official tin star, which made him their marshal. But a tin star wasn’t a stand-in for friends. Clint lived with a constant expectation that the townspeople would cross him. He felt their stares, and knew they were whispering stories whenever his back was turned.
Mai changed everything. Maybe it was the purity of her magic and the way it counterbalanced Edward’s jaded, cynical conjuring. Perhaps it was her beauty, or how she saw something noble in the disgraced, exiled gunslinger, even when he refused to see the same in himself.
Now she was sitting at the Otel, waiting for a carriage out of town — and, quite likely, out of his life forever. How quickly everything changed. Sure, Clint could tell himself they’d meet again in Sojourn. But how likely was that? How likely was it that Stone and the mysterious dark rider would arrive and that Clint would handle them quickly without getting killt, or that he’d be able to make it to Sojourn before Mai began a new life, moved on, or found someone else?
A narrow window was closing in front of his eyes. Maybe Mai was right.
Was Solace really worth giving up his one chance at being truly happy? He’d come to town loathing those he felt duty-bound to save. He’d always let his gunslinger’s nature take precedence over his human side. Was that how he wanted to spend the rest of forever, always setting the needs of others before his own? Was he really willing to subjugate a future of contentment for a bunch of yallers who wouldn’t even raise a hand to save their skins?
Clint patted Edward’s neck.
Edward didn’t like that Clint was bonding with Mai, but he knew, deep down, that Clint would never give up Edward (or even his guns) like the law said he must. He’d leave as he came, as a marshal who wasn’t really a marshal. A gunslinger who was only supposed to sling a single gun at a time. No one would stop him when he left. They didn’t have the courage to try.
But jealousy over Mai would
be a petty irritation to Edward compared to the news that a unicorn of a different color was approaching. To Edward, even more than to Clint, the idea of a unicorn polluting his magic enough to mar his color away from the purity of white bordered on obscenity. The thought that a unicorn would surrender his will to any master was incomprehensible. And not just incomprehensible, either. It was bizarre, troubling, and downright profane.
Edward didn’t like the idea of Mai, but he would see taking Mai to Sojourn as the lesser of two evils. All Clint had to do was make the suggestion. But he held it inside, riding in silence.
Ten minutes later, within sight of the Flat Top, Clint heard a set of clumsy hooves behind him. The gunslinger turned to see Teddy riding up on a pony that was somehow both less appealing and more awkward-looking than a mule. Its mane was frizzy, like a woman with full hair and no comb. Its teeth were visible even when its mouth was closed, and as it galloped (or maybe hobbled) closer, Clint noticed its lazy eye aimed in the wrong direction. It was panting and wheezing as if smoking a barrel of tobacco.
Of course. He’d told Teddy where he was going, so it was simple enough for the boy to follow them once he got back to the barn and found them missing.
Teddy grinned, waving at Clint when he saw him looking back. His face was half greeting and half I-told-you-so over the speed of Teddy’s stallion.
“How much further is it to…” Teddy started to say, but Edward turned and shushed them. The unicorn’s horn began glowing as he squeezed his eyes tight. He blinked, and after a moment said, “Okay, we can talk, but we must lower our voices. There’s a party of five men over that rise, toward the base of Old Man Hill, sitting ‘round a stew pool. They won’t hear us yet, but they’ll be able once we summit the hill.”
“How do you know that?” Teddy asked.
“I’m a unicorn,” Edward said dismissively. He’d been speaking to Clint about the party of men, and he resented Teddy being in earshot.
“My horse can’t do that,” said Teddy, almost sadly.
Clint flinched, but Edward ignored the insult. He was too busy taking in Teddy’s mount from head to hooves to tail.
To the horse, Edward said, “You are one ugly mother…”
Clint interrupted him. “Come on. Let’s summit the hill. You can insult each other at the top.”
CHAPTER SIX:
BANDITS
Clint dismounted at the top of the hill, dropping the group’s overall height to make them less visible. Teddy dismounted too, but his horse was so short that the boy’s head ended up only slightly lower than when he was riding.
Edward turned to Teddy, apparently fine speaking with the boy as long as the words he spoke were insults.
“What is this creature’s name? Jeb? Cletus? Eeyore?”
“Pinto,” Teddy said.
“Fantastic. Reminds me of my old pal, Stumpy. He kept running into doors whenever he tried to enter a room. Liked to drink kerosene. Not good, the time he peed on a fire.”
“Teddy,” said Clint. “Do you still have that spyglass?”
Teddy patted a pouch at his side.
“Give it to me.”
“Sure. Once we get up to the top.”
“No. Just give it to me.”
“We’re a team, Marshal. I’ll give it to you up top. You gotta let me come if you want my glass.”
Clint opened his mouth, ready to tell Teddy that he could break his neck six times before the kid could raise a wrist to stop him. Instead, he closed it with a sigh and and started silently up the hill, leaving Edward and Pinto behind where Teddy had him tied to a scraggly tree. Edward was looking at the small horse as if it were an oddity at one of the Sprawl’s traveling freak shows, his face a blooming rose of disgust.
Thirty feet further up, they found a spot where they could spy the hill’s far bottom, maybe a quarter mile off. There were, as Edward had said, five men sitting around a stew pool, refilling waterskins.
Clint slapped Teddy’s jacket with the back of his hand. Then he did it three more times, until the boy reached into the pouch, removed the spyglass, and handed it to Clint.
The gunslinger extended the glass and peered through the tiny lens at its small end. The men looked a month’s worth of dirty, and were dressed head to toe in dark gear. They had five horses, all tied to hooks driven deep into several large rocks surrounding the away-facing edge of the stew pool. The horses were all carrying over-stuffed saddlebags and seemed too heavily burdened with gear.
“They’re not traveling light,” Clint said to Teddy. “Not a day trip. Wherever they’re going, they’re planning to stay.”
“Solace?” said Teddy.
“Yar. Likely. I can see their path, and it stretches behind them. They’ll climb this hill once they’ve finished resting. Unless they spin off into the Sands, which they won’t, they’ll hit Solace in her nose. These men are either coming to stay, or merely passing through. A stack of chips on the former.”
“Is Stone with them?”
Clint adjusted the glass and scanned the short row of men.
“Nar. But they could be an advance party. The Water Reader said he saw Stone riding with a… another man. None of these men are he.”
Clint didn’t tell Teddy the reason he knew that the dark rider wasn’t among the men: there was no dark unicorn amongst the horses. Few people knew about unicorns of a different color, and even fewer understood what they did or what they really were. A dark unicorn could get them killt like nothing else, and Clint didn’t want to worry the kid. He didn’t exactly care if Teddy was scared, but he figured if the kid were frightened, he’d be more of a liability than he already was.
“Maybe they’re just travelers,” Teddy suggested. “Good guys.”
“I don’t think so.” Clint shook his head. “How often do people cross the Sands, willing to get lost in the Sprawl? How often do new people arrive in Solace? Nar, I’d say the chance of random travelers arriving on the same day as Stone are about as likely as magic true on the dusty side of the wall.”
“Okay,” said Teddy. “Let’s kill them, then.”
“Have you ever killt anything?”
“Rats. And I once had to shoot a mad cat. Winged it right across its left ear.”
“A rabid cat?” said Clint. You heard about rabid dogs sometimes, but not usually cats.
“A mad one,” said Teddy, in a voice suggesting that Clint should probably pay closer attention.
“And now you want to ride into a group of five armed men and kill every one?”
“You could do it,” said Teddy.
“Yar, but you said we. Why do I have to get dragged into a we situation filled with stupidity when I’m not the one needing a bib to soak up my drool?”
“You just said…”
“I said they’re probably part of Stone’s party. Stone and this other rider aren’t with them. Can you think of how we might find Stone and the other? It doesn’t involve killing them all outright.”
“Follow ‘em? Spy on ‘em?” Teddy suggested.
“Good for you,” Clint growled. “Finding a way to use that worthless shoulder pumpkin.”
Teddy turned his head, looking from one shoulder to the other.
Clint tapped the boy on his back, waited for Teddy to turn, then gestured with his head toward where Edward and the pathetic Pinto were standing. The pony was nibbling grass, eyes split in two directions. Clint could tell from the poor creature’s defeated body that Edward was insulting it, and probably hadn’t stopped or even slowed since they’d started up the hill.
They returned to their mounts, and Clint told Edward what he’d seen. The unicorn nodded since he’d seen most of it with his magic already.
“Now I suppose you want to go down there,” said Edward.
“Yar. We need peer into their conversation.”
“We?” said Teddy.
“Stone and the other rider aren’t with them,” Clint told Edward, ignoring Teddy. “We need to find where they’ll m
eet, and what they’re doing.”
“We, like… all of us?” Teddy said again, swallowing. He looked like he was trying to solve one of The Realm’s problems without a solution.
“Fine,” Edward agreed. “The sooner you can kill whatever needs killing, the sooner I can return to my turkey pie, and the sleep that follows.”
“We… including a unicorn?”
Edward said, “I’m the most important one here, seed for brains.”
“But…”
“Are you wondering how a 1400-pound, bright white creature will sneak close enough to eavesdrop on a stew hole?”
Teddy nodded.
“You’ll see. Watch from where we were before.”
Teddy said, “Wait. No, I’m coming with you.”
“No you’re not,” said Edward.
“I’m the only man you were able to get,” said Teddy, standing tall and puffing his chest. “Like it or not, I’m number two in this two-man posse.”
“I tried to ride alone,” Clint reminded him, leaving out the part about Teddy being only a boy.
“And I found you anyway! Now that’s a dedicated posse!”
Clint looked at Edward, raising his eyebrows.
“I can fit him. Plus, if he comes with us, he might get shot.” Edward said the last part as if it were a bonus.
“Fine,” said Clint. He accompanied Edward to the hill’s edge, near enough so the men at the stew hole would soon be able to see them if they looked up. Teddy followed, holding Pinto by the reins.
“You’re kidding, right?” Edward sighed, as if Teddy’s stupidity was an extra thousand pounds on his back. “That thing stays here.”
“But he’s my mount. What if we have to ride?”
“Then you’ll be lucky to not have a handicap between your legs,” said Edward.
Teddy wrinkled his nose, then went back to the tree and lashed Pinto to it again. As Teddy started toward Edward and Clint, Pinto began a low, desperate whinnying.
“Shut it up,” Edward ordered.
“He hates being left,” Teddy explained. “Even at the barn, he’s never alone. Pinto has a goat, named Cheesy.”