by Chloe Garner
Sarah understood that the wholesaler was going to melt down the ore to get the pure absenta, so the report was simply a way for the wholesaler to estimate cash flow. The small changes up and down as prospectors worked their way through a vein were of no importance to the buyer, but they were one of the ways the Lawsons made their money. Depending on how much they disliked a miner, they would select which of the recent reports on a claim they wanted to use for charging the claim protection. A number of them, it was always the most recent, for some of them it was a recent average, and then for maybe half, it was the largest number from the last year. Or so. Sometimes Peter forgot to update the pay rate for longer than that, and Sarah could read the old rivalries in the books.
Hundreds upon hundreds of claims over thirty years, updating with new dig data as often as the miners themselves chose. Prospectors, by their nature, were optimists. Some of the reports were as frequent as every week.
Sarah tacked Pete’s report to the wall and stared at it some more.
It was significant. It was more than significant, it was life-altering.
Life. Changing.
Those numbers would have leaked, no matter whether Jimmy or anyone else was paying for them, because Lawrence was considered to not just be a dead town, but a long-dead town. They hadn’t produced an ounce of absenta in nine years. Everyone would have been desperate to know whether Pete had faked his results, just bought enough absenta and mixed it cleverly with the base ore rock to get it through the lab, make himself look like a rich man for a little while. It had happened before. Fraud was almost as common in the prospecting community as optimism, because when everyone’s optimistic, the guy who strikes it rich first is the hero.
But Pete was dead.
There was no one to evaluate, no one knew where his mine was but Sarah. No one even knew where his claim was but her. On the map she’d stored back away in the safe under the rug, she had it marked out in code. With enough time and energy, they could have eliminated the other claims, but she was the only one who could read that map and definitively say which little plot of land was his.
That information was worth a fortune. It was worth killing for.
She needed to know what she intended to do with that information, before anything else. She could walk directly to Pete’s mine, but even knowing where his claim was made the search for this treasure trove of absenta possible. And Jimmy expected her to not just hand that over, but to figure out where a bunch more absenta would be so he could auction off claims rights to rich city guys.
She didn’t disagree with the auctioning off claims rights part. She certainly didn’t want to be the one to dig the absenta out of the ground. She didn’t even want to pay someone to do it. The management and concern over what happened to each ounce of ore, the threat of armed theft or embezzlement, the constant worry over whether or not the vein went on any further and what to do when it ended - these were things that she didn’t care to occupy herself with. Let someone else take the risk that the ground would give up its treasures and that they would be able to keep them. She just wanted the cash off the top for facilitating a legal claim and an ongoing supply of income for maintaining protection of that claim.
In the beginning, Peter and Grin Lawson had killed a lot of men for claim jumping. Then things had settled out, and while the men hoping to make a quick buck by night digging good claims might have been disappointed, most of the prospectors were happy enough to be working on a legal grid that they understood and could trust. And they were willing to pay for that. In those days, there had been enough absenta to go around that everyone thought if they could get a claim and put a hole in the ground, they’d make good.
A lot of them had. That was how the Lawsons got their start.
But those easy holes, they came up dry more and more often, and guys had to know where to look to find little pockets of absenta, and then even those had stopped happening. The land out there was full of holes just big enough for a man to squat in, digging far into the heart of the mountains with hope and optimism.
It was out there.
You just had to find it.
And then they’d stopped finding it entirely. The pockets of absenta marked on the Lawson map were clustered in certain areas, and it seemed like every profitable little hole had been dug, already.
They’d expanded south and west, hoping to find another rash of the stuff, but no one had.
Until Pete.
Pete was way, way out of the range that had traditionally yielded absenta. His claim was only about ten acres, and he’d hit that lode of absenta. Who knew how big the field might have actually been.
Over the years, he’d released one claim and set another maybe fifteen or twenty times. Sarah was patient with him in his ongoing optimism that this time he’d figured it out, that he was going to make money with this one, and she’d honestly thought he was probably just panning this stream or that.
Because all of his claims had been on streams.
She took her feet down and looked at the map, recalling from memory where he’d been. She couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t been panning, at most or all of them, but it was a starting place.
She looked at the stack of books.
She could do this.
If Pete could do it in eight years, she could do it in a week, with that stack of books and her native wit.
She sat back in her chair again.
The problem was that she had to decide what to do, if she did figure it out.
The allure of absenta was almost absolute, but she had been around it too much of her life. She could and would resist it. There was money to be made, and she respected that. She would make sure she got her taste of it on the way by. And she wasn’t going to just hand everything over to Jimmy just because he told her to.
She was going to have a plan. A shrewd one. And before she even started dishing out information that everyone was going to be willing to kill for, she was going to make sure that that plan got her what she thought was most important.
She took out a blank sheet of paper and started a list.
––—
Dusk was settling and Sarah was sitting at her pa’s desk drinking gremlin tea when someone knocked on the door. She got up to answer it, taking a gun and strapping it to her waist, then picking up her rifle before she opened the door.
“Evening,” Jimmy said.
“You said you were gonna gimme a few days,” she said.
“I thought about that after you left,” he said, raising his eyebrows. She took a step to the side to let him in. He waited until she closed the door to speak again. “I realized that we aren’t on the same terms that we were, when I left.”
She gave him a surprised look and he shrugged.
“Fine. It’s probably my own damned fault. Okay?”
“It’s a start,” she said. “You want tea?”
“Yes,” he said. “But not the stuff you call tea.”
She glowered and went back to the office. He followed.
“It occurred to me that, if I were in your place, I’d be looking to extort as much as possible out of me.”
“Learned it from the best,” she said.
“I know. And I should have thought of it earlier.”
“Not that it woulda done you much good,” she said. He shook his head.
“No, but the time for negotiations is early, before one side gains a lot of leverage and decides to go it alone. I don’t want war with you.”
Was he actually afraid of that? Or was he just saying it to put the threat on the desk, that he might go to war with her if things went bad?
“I ain’t lookin’ for war, neither,” Sarah said. “But I do expect you to take into consideration that I stayed when you cut and run. I expect you to make good.”
“And I expect you’re going to make it cost me as much as I can bear,” Jimmy said. “Which is why I came.”
“‘Fore I found any big pots of absenta and decided not to share?”
she asked.
“How much did Pete find?” Jimmy asked. “It’s the best we’ve ever seen, but how much is there?”
She shrugged.
“I tol’ you I ain’t seen his mine.”
“And I believe I was quite clear, calling you a liar, when you did.”
She shrugged again.
“My terms,” she said, putting her heel up on the sheet of paper.
“I’m listening,” he answered.
“Locals get good claims, good rates. Them that stuck by me all this time, in particular.”
“I can live with that,” Jimmy said. “Depending on how many people we’re talking about.
“Apex and Thor get Pete’s claim,” Sarah said. She saw his throat seize. Waited.
Pete’s claim was the cherry, the one proven site where a guy could pull absenta out of the ground. It was possible Jimmy had intended to give it to one of the Lawsons themselves, though that would have surprised her. It was worth a fortune, and it would limit the number of people he could draw in for auction. Once you were all the way out to Lawrence, you might as well bid on a claim and see what you got, but a lot of the speculators who would have come to get the claim that yielded Pete’s absenta ore might not show up if that was the only proven claim.
“We can talk about it,” he said. She shrugged.
“We can talk about anything you like,” she said.
“What else?” he asked.
“I want an even split of the income,” she said.
“You think that’s fair?” he asked.
“I’m providin’ all the value to this little operation, vision or not,” Sarah said. “Lise and Petey can set up their little fiefdom however they like, but they ain’t got scratch without absenta, and if anyone’s got absenta, it’s me.”
“You provide the bearing on your best guess for claims, and you think you deserve half of the income that that generates for the rest of time?” he asked. She settled in her chair, weaving her fingers behind her head.
“You prefer to get seventy-five percent of nothing?”
There was a phantom of a smile.
“I see,” he said. “So the Lawsons get half of the protection and claims money for Lawrence, grandsons of the original prospector, and you get half because... you stayed.”
“Think you woulda called it makin’ my own luck,” she said. He wiped his fingers across his mouth to keep the corner from rising.
“I’ll have to discuss it,” he said.
“With who?” she asked. “Back in the days before, you’d of come to me to talk it out.”
“I know,” he said. “Petey hasn’t gotten any better about it, and Lise would tell you to stuff it.”
“Bet Kayla would tell you to take it,” Sarah said. “She wants her dress shop.”
“There are five of us,” Jimmy said. “I can give you an even split among the six of us.”
She snorted.
“Only if y’all can cough up five out of six claim sites.”
“So now you deserve all of it?” Jimmy asked.
“You think I ain’t gonna be out there on horseback with a gun, just like the rest of you?”
“No, I don’t,” Jimmy said, “but that isn’t the point.”
She arched an eyebrow and crossed her legs, letting the heel of her suspended boot tap on the desk.
“Half,” he said. She shrugged.
“Let’s go on,” he said. “I assume you have a longer list than that.”
“Oh, I do,” she said. “And you ain’t gonna like any of them any more’n the ones you already heard.”
“I liked it better when we were on the same side,” Jimmy said.
“This is the way to get back there,” she said. It was a negotiating sort of statement, but she also secretly thought it might be true. Did she hope it was true? She wasn’t sure.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Granger’s,” she said. “Granger stood by us, through thick and thin. If we need more shop, his is the one that picks up.”
“I have no problem with that,” Jimmy said. “Unless that’s directed at Kayla, at which point, that’s just mean-spirited.”
“Nah, Granger’s ain’t made for dresses and frilly boots,” Sarah said. “She can have her boutique. But when Lise starts talkin’ ‘bout bringin’ in devices, or high-minded food and drink, or anythin’ else she’s got a mind to force onto this poor town, either Granger stocks it or no one does.”
“So you’re going to use Granger to bottleneck what Lise wants to do,” Jimmy said.
“Oh, no, that’s my next condition,” she said. “I get say-so on any development in town.”
“I can’t do that,” Jimmy said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because we may as well just pack up and leave now, if you intend to leave things exactly the way they are now.”
“What kinda fool you take me for, Lawson?” she asked. “Ain’t no one like to see that town picks up more’n me. Those folk deserve it, and if I ain’t gotta fight of bandits every other week from the homesteads, I’m a happy woman. I just get to say how it goes.”
“I still can’t agree to that,” Jimmy said. “Dammit, Sarah, will you talk to me like the college-educated woman you are?”
“I’m representin’ Lawrence, now, Jimmy. This is how it’s gotta be. You ain’t gonna waltz in here after near a decade and just throw it all away ‘cause it inconveniences you.”
She’d have put her hat back on to vex him, but it was off in the kitchen somewhere.
“You can’t enforce any of this,” Jimmy said. “We can write it down and agree to it, but we both know that the minute it comes down to making the right decision or honoring an agreement we made here today, I’m going to make the right call.”
Sarah dropped her feet on the floor.
“Glad you said that,” she said. “That’s where the next bit comes in. Leverage.”
The look of pain on his face was at least partially honest.
“Money,” she said.
“Money,” he echoed. She nodded.
“Money. There are only two levers in this world, and we both know ‘em.”
“Money and guns,” he said. She nodded.
“Now, there bein’ five of you and only the one of me, obviously I ain’t gonna outgun you when things go bad. So I get to hold the money.”
“No,” Jimmy said. She raised her eyebrows.
“Oh, I’ll give you your half, fair as fair, every month on the first. But all of the money that comes in, it goes to me.”
“You want to put my balls in a jar on your shelf, too?” he asked. She smiled.
“You take me to your meetin’s with your high-falutin’ folk, introduce me as your business manager. Couldn’t be more reasonable.”
“You wouldn’t show up as...” He looked her up and down.
“Oh, Jimmy. You know that I am perfectly capable of blending into the world of global finance,” she said, her voice honeying. He chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“If we were to fight, you know I’d just come take it from you with guns.”
“If it comes to war, it’ll be bloody, sure enough, but if I’ve got the money, I at least got myself a fightin’ chance.”
“If we can’t be friends, that’s actually not unfair,” he said.
“Jimmy,” she said. “Only thing you’re loyal to is blood, and as far back as we go, we ain’t blood.”
“No,” he said softly. “We aren’t. You have anything else?”
“You keep them women away from me,” she said. “Lise has somethin’ to say ‘bout the way I do what I do, she can tell you and you can decide whether or not you even want to pass it on.”
“That’s just cruel,” he said. She smiled.
“And I mean Little Peter, too, when I say the women,” she said. This made him snort, but he didn’t answer her. She nodded firmly.
“I don’t want to deal with them, Jimmy. They ain’t Lawsons to me, and I ai
n’t gonna treat ‘em like Lawsons, ‘cept to respect ‘em when we cross paths.”
“That’s all you do for my brothers, either, except Thomas,” Jimmy said.
“Fair enough. That’s true,” Sarah said. She glanced at her list, knowing what was there.
“I keep the claims,” she said. “And the books. All here.”
“May as well,” he said, throwing up a hand casually. “Keep my money company.”
“You go behind my back, I stop payin’ you,” she said. “Flat and simple.”
“You screw me, I’ll kill you,” he answered. She nodded. That was the Jimmy she knew.
“Your brothers ain’t gonna like it,” she said.
“They’ll go along if I tell them to,” he said.
“Little Peter is going to be spittin’ mad,” Sarah said, “and his wife...”
“I can handle Lise,” he said.
“You can keep the train runnin’?” she asked.
“You’re going to do that,” he told her. “The minute you tell me you know how to find absenta. I put word out up and down the coast, and the train can’t stop. They have to buy a new one.”
“We need a chemist,” she said. “Someone who can mix Perpeto here in town.”
“You haven’t got one?” he asked. “How have you been getting along?”
“Pete would make runs,” she said. “Horseback. Always with someone tryin’ to put a bullet through him.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“Hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Yup,” she said. “Perpeto’s like water to you folk. Round here, both are pretty scarce, if you don’t know how to get ‘em.”
“It won’t happen again,” Jimmy said. “Not as long as we can get viable claims running.”
Here, she finally turned honest.
“You know I can’t promise.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know the laws of mining.”
Long ago. Long, long ago, they’d talked about the reality of trying to pull minerals out of the ground, the luck of the draw, what it was that prospectors were actually attempting. One of the laws of mining was that if it was a sure thing, you were a fool.