by Andy Monk
Irritation fuelled by his own pain and discomfort flared in him several times, but he bit it down, it wasn’t her fault after all. So, instead, he spent his time scouring the horizon for riders while they plodded slowly on towards Hawker’s Drift. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d do if he saw any more of the bastards. Even if his arm didn’t have a hole in it he wouldn’t be able to outshoot them, so he guessed Laura would have to suck up her pain and ride as hard as she could. Given what she’d experienced at the hands of the Scourge she should be able to do that.
She didn’t say a great deal, her head mostly lolling forward as they rode. Occasionally, she let out a low little moan and he looked over afeared that she was gonna pitch off her horse, but she stayed upright and they kept moving on.
Whatever the hell Cece Jones had done for her looked like magic to him. Though after the old black lady had appeared out of thin air he was more inclined to believe in magic than he had been. He didn’t understand most of what had gone on back there, certainly not why Cece had hit him, nor why he’d had an overwhelming urge to hold her in his arms after she had.
What… have you done to me?
Those words kept floating into his mind, he’d realised, were said in a voice sounding a lot like Cece’s.
Perhaps all the beatings he’d taken had knocked a screw out somewhere. He couldn’t think of another explanation.
However, he didn’t want to dwell on any of it. At the end of things none of it mattered much. Instead, he thought about killing the Scourge. How good it had felt to shoot one of them out of the saddle. To see their lifeless corpses staring up into a sky that didn’t give a shit about them. Just like his Ma. He just wished Amos had left a few more of them for him to put down.
He hadn’t had anything to do with the quiet gunslinger before he’d strode into the Scourge camp to slaughter their captors, despite a quiet nagging feeling that somehow, he did know him from somewhere. He wished he was still at his side, whatever they were up to. He could learn a lot from a man who could kill as smooth and easy as he could. He needed to learn. His farming days were done. All he would be doing from now would be hunting down the Scourge. Not just the ones who’d killed his Ma, though he would give them preference, but all of them.
They’d ripped his life apart and now they needed to pay.
But Amos had some other business that didn’t involve either the Scourge or Sye Hallows. He’d been irked at first to be sent away, though he could see the logic. And if they weren’t going where the Scourge were then it wasn’t the best place for him to be anyway.
Once Laura was safely in Hawker’s Drift, he’d be pitching in with whoever was gonna be raising gun to deal with the scum.
“We gonna stop?” Laura asked suddenly.
The sun had sunk beneath the horizon and the land was inexorably fading into a bruised purple twilight, the silence interrupted only the last bubbling songs of meadowlarks.
“We’re not far from town, we should keep going… unless you need… a rest or something?”
Laura shook her tangled hair, “Not sure I could get back in the saddle if I got down.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Sore,” she pulled a face from behind a curtain of greasy hair, “guess I got lucky, huh? Horse going down like that, I could have been killed.”
“Yeah, real lucky…”
She didn’t remember much, which was for the best as he had no damn idea how to explain what he’d seen.
“Thank you,” Laura said after the world had slipped further into darkness and the birdsong had been replaced by the crickets’ choir. She was little more than a silhouette against the velvet sky from which the brightest stars had emerged.
“For what?”
Laura gave a little laugh. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh, he realised.
“For what you did. Standing up to those men. Not leaving me when my horse went down.”
“Didn’t do much but get my face rearranged. It was Amos who done all the heroic stuff.”
“You were very heroic too. I think,” She flashed a shy fleeting smile in the gloom before looking down again.
It was his turn to laugh, he wasn’t any kind of hero, but it made him feel kinda warm and nice all the same. No one had ever called him a hero before. Shame it was just a girl rather than…
Cece Jones!
…a grown-up woman. He shook both thoughts away. He had more important things to think about than wishing his new-found hero status could get him laid.
They’d found the road heading into Hawker’s Drift and he’d been in two minds whether to follow it or stick to riding cross country. He didn’t know if the Scourge would be about at night, they hadn’t moved much after dark when he’d been their prisoner, but if they were planning to attack the town then maybe they’d be watching the roads in and out. Then again maybe not. It would be quicker to stick to the road as more of the land was farmed here and they’d be fences, barbed wire and drainage ditches to navigate in the dark if they rode cross country.
In the end, he opted for speed over caution, spending the hours as the moon climbed the sky straining his eyes to see what was ahead of them. He didn’t relax till the sky started to brighten ahead and Hawker’s Drift loomed above them. It looked like they were burning every lantern and torch they could lay their hands on. He’d never seen the town so brightly lit.
“They welcoming us home?” Laura whispered.
“No,” he smiled in spite of himself, “they’re letting the Scourge know we’re ready for them.”
*
“Who the fuck goes there!?”
A wagon had been rolled across the North Road as it entered Hawker’s Drift and barricades had been erected on either side; a mixture of wooden stockades, overturned flatbeds, sandbags, crates and other assorted junk that filled the space between the road and the buildings on either side which, unlike most of the rest of the town, were unlit. There were probably riflemen in the windows, maybe up on the roof too.
“Friends!” he hollered back as Laura looked nervously in his direction. He smiled back at her. They’d both been through far too much to get shot by their own side now.
“What fucking friends?” the voice came again from the other side of the wagon.
“Sye Hallows! And Laura…” he glanced at the girl, realising he had no idea what her second name was.
“…Beerens! Please help us, we’re running from the Scourge!”
“Come forward so we can see you. Slowly!”
They did as they were ordered. Tar torches had been set alight along the barricades and they walked their horses forward until they reached the flickering light thrown out onto the road.
There were figures either side of the wagon and there were undoubtedly plenty of guns levelled at them. He didn’t think one man with a bad arm and a teenage girl looked like much of a threat, but the man who’d called out had sounded damn nervous. Hopefully the men with rifles trained on them were all a bit calmer.
“Ok boys,” a different voice finally called out, “let em through, they don’t look like mad-eyed killers to me.”
The wagon, after some huffing and cursing, was rolled back and they were ushered urgently into town by a rotund and overly whiskered figure he didn’t initially recognise as Harry Calhoun, Hawker’s Drift’s best, and only, baker.
“Sorry son,” Harry growled, “can’t be too careful just now.”
“I understand, Mr Calhoun,” he eased himself from the saddle, which was a lot harder with only one good arm. Laura, who he suspected was smarter than he was, stayed where she was.
“The Scourge?” Harry nodded towards his crudely bandaged arm, which was dark with dried blood
“They killed my Ma…”
Harry blew air through his teeth and pulled off the baggy cap he wore, “Sorry to hear that, Mrs Hallows was a fine Christian woman.”
He nodded again and concentrated on sucking back the tears that chose that moment to bubble forth.
Strange. Maybe he’d been too scared or angry or exhausted to cry for his Ma before, but now he was back in town he wanted to curl up and sob.
Harry pulled some kind of expression beneath his whiskers and shuffled on his feet, before gently tapping his arm a couple of times and coughing. At least he hadn’t patted his wounded arm.
“Sorry…”
“No need. You ain’t the only one who’s lost loved ones to these bastards,” he jerked his head towards the barricaded road, “but if they come here, they’re gonna get some payback.”
“Payback sounds good,” he sniffed it up and told himself to be a man, “where do you want me?”
There were dozens of men working on the barricade; rolls of barbed wire and piles of sandbags – filled with soil rather than sand presumably - waited to be added to the rudimentary fortification. It looked like the whole town was chipping in, though he couldn’t see any of the deputies around.
“We got plenty of work to do, we’re throwing up barricades around the whole town, but we’re gonna be thin manning them, so we’ll need every gun we can muster – but first get yourself and the little lady up to the church. Doc Rudi’s set up a hospital there and you need to get yourselves looked at.”
“I’m fine,” he bristled.
“Go get that wound stitched and cleaned properly, that goes bad you’ll be no use to no one.”
It rankled being told what to do, but he couldn’t argue the sense of Harry’s words. Cece wasn’t here with her magic medicine after all.
Before he could remount, a slight man with long grey hair and scratchy half-assed stubble covering his sour looking face scurried over on bowed legs. Audley Cobham.
“Where’d you get the horses?” Audley demanded, peering at his mount. He was cradling a double-barrelled shotgun that looked even more decrepit than he did.
“Took them from the Scourge.”
“Did ya now?” Audley’s skinny neck snapped around.
“They took us prisoner…” he explained, adding with a shrug “…we escaped.”
“You and her?” Audley jerked his old shotgun in Laura’s direction, violently enough for the girl’s eyes to widen in alarm.
“Easy with that thing,” Harry Calhoun snapped, pushing the barrels down.
“Yeah, me and her.”
“Kill any of them bastards?” Audley glanced up at Laura, “excusing my language, Miss.”
“A few.”
Audley shuffled closer, “I hear they’re all mad-eyed murderous devils, only interested in killin’ and rapin’. That true?”
“Pretty much.”
“How many of em you gun down?”
“A couple.”
“Hey boys!” Audley shouted over his shoulder towards the men working on the barricade, “Young Sye Hallows here put a couple of those Scourge bastards in the dirt!”
Before he could explain that Amos had done most of the work, the men were whooping, hollering, clapping and calling out his name.
“I tell ya son, if those sonsabitches show up here they’re gonna get both my barrels,” Audley had his ancient shotgun up in their faces again, “both damn barrels, I tell ya!”
“Ok! Ok!” Harry yelled, “Back to work, we don’t know if they’re coming here, but we sure ain’t gonna be ready for them if we stand about jawing all night!” He turned his eye on Audley, “that means you too, let these kids go see the Doc.”
“Yeah, yeah, go get yourself patched up hero, we gonna need you here soon.”
“We don’t know for sure-”
“They’re coming here,” he interrupted Harry, “we heard em talking about it.”
“See,” Audley jabbed a finger at Harry Calhoun, “been telling everyone troubles coming. My hens ain’t laid right for weeks. Sensitive critters are chickens-”
“Riders coming in!”
The voice came from atop Vickery & Son’s Building Yard, a dilapidated two-storey structure to the right of the road. It had the honour of being the first building in Hawker’s Drift (or last, depending on your direction of travel).
The men on the barricade immediately dropped whatever they were using to reinforce the fortification to snatch up rifles and take their firing positions.
“How many?” Harry bellowed, as he turned towards the barricade, his jacket flapping open to reveal a star pinned to his shirt.
“Twenty at least…” came the reply from the roof of Vickery’s, “…and a couple of wagons!”
“Don’t sound like survivors this time,” he muttered, spitting tobacco juice through his few remaining teeth.
“Sye?” Laura twisted back and forth in her saddle.
“Get down,” he hissed, ignoring the pain in his wounded arm to take the girl by the waist and help her off the horse.
She cried out and her knee half buckled once she was down, holding on tight to keep from falling. And maybe from sheer terror too.
“Don’t you worry, Miss,” Audley reassured, “they gonna get both barrels if they’re up to no good, I can tell ya.”
Despite his bravado, Audley made no move to make the barricade and instead ushered them over to the doorway of one of the modest little houses lining the street opposite Vickery’s. No lights burned inside, presumably the inhabitants were either working on the barricade or had been moved into the centre of town.
“Who the fuck goes there!” A voice shouted out over the barricade. It was Bart Keener, he realised, whose daughter, Katy, he’d once had a crush on back when he was doing his schooling. He’d spent most of one autumn and winter staring at the back of her head when he should have been learning his letters.
Then he’d heard she’d been kissing…
…some less deserving fellow…
…Aiden Pinto round the back of the school outhouse and all his day-dreams had come crashing down to nought. Strange how such things had once seemed so important.
He wanted to draw his gun and join the men on the barricade. If there were Scourge riders to kill, he wanted, he needed, to be there pumping lead into their worthless carcasses, but Laura was clinging to him so tightly he couldn’t even get to his holstered revolver. He could feel her shaking and she was trying to suck back tears.
“They’re not going to get you again,” he whispered, “I promise.”
He didn’t know if he could promise any such thing, but he would do his best. He’d failed his Ma and he’d failed Nicole when Cave and his comrades had come for her, but he wouldn’t fail Laura. And he wouldn’t fail himself again either.
He wasn’t like those murderers in black sashes and he never would be…
“Let them through,” a figure emerged from the shadows behind the men, tall and thin, wearing a heavy woollen suit and vest despite the warmth of the night.
Symmons.
The name came, though he’d never met or even seen the man as far as he could recall.
Harry Calhoun turned away from the barricade, the frown visible on his plump face as Symmons entered the light of the burning tar torches.
Symmons pulled back his jacket to reveal a silver star, “On the Mayor’s authority.”
“Our orders were to challenge everybody and let nobody in we couldn’t vouch for.”
“I can vouch for these men Mr Calhoun. Rest assured.”
“I-”
“They’re from the Mayor’s ranch, summoned to help defend the town. Trust me, Mr Calhoun, you’ll be very grateful these men are on our side. They have a talent for killing cocksuckers, I can assure you,” Symmons smiled. There was something predatory in the gesture, like the tall thin man was an oversized carrion bird that had flapped down on giant greasy wings in the expectation of dead meat. Laura’s fingers grasped his shirt a little tighter.
Harry Calhoun didn’t look happy and he glanced around for guidance before seemingly remembering someone had seen fit to put him in charge of defending the North Road.
Eventually he nodded, accepting Symmons worked for a higher power he ordered the wagon to be whe
eled clear of the road once more.
“Come in nice n easy!” Harry bellowed, before telling Bart Keener, “If they try anything funny…”
Bart nodded and passed the message along as half a dozen of the town’s defenders shoved the wagon aside.
Symmons moved to the side of the road where he stood impassively, hands behind his back, watching proceedings until his head slowly swivelled towards Sye, Laura and Audley.
“Mr Hallows as I live and breathe…” that not-quite-a-smile again “…isn’t she a little young for you?”
“Do I know you?” he asked, ignoring both the way the torchlight flickering over the tall man’s sharp, bird-like features put him in mind of a torturer about to commence his evening’s work and how Laura held him all the tighter as soon as the black beads of Symmons’ eyes had fallen on them.
“He’s the Mayor’s man, don’t normally come out of the Residence though,” Audley hissed, before shaking his head, “strange times…”
“As Mr Cobham rightly says, I am the Mayor’s man.”
He’d never seen Symmons before him, would never have had cause to if he rarely left the Residence, but for a moment an image of following Symmons towards a pair of imposing closed doors came into his mind along with the memory of feeling both the most scared and the most excited he’d ever felt in his life.
…the lady’s been prepared for you…
Symmons’ voice hissed in his mind, full of dark, knowing mirth.
Before he could focus on whatever it was he thought he was remembering, the clatter of hooves on hard dirt tugged his mind back to the present as the riders entered Hawker’s Drift.
There were no black sashes in sight. Each of the men wore battered leather duster coats and darkened spectacles beneath their low-pulled hats. The men’s horses were all lathered from a hard ride, their skin glistening in the torchlight, rolling-eyes and foam-flecked mouths as they were reined to a halt. Two covered flatbed wagons brought up the rear of the group.
He counted twenty-four men and they all sat motionless in the saddle as their horses snorted and pawed the ground.