Sarah Todd

by Chloe Garner

  At the end, she handed Jimmy a page of names.

  “I’ve got most of these,” he said. “Forty of them. That’s the biggest mining crew I’ve ever heard of, how about you?”

  “Gonna take that many, to get down to the absenta before your investors get here,” Sarah said. He nodded.

  “I figured as much. We’re going to need supervisors. Ones we can trust.”

  “I’ve got a few men I’d trust with my life, but not with that much money,” Sarah said. “We need to keep the location of the mine secret, if we’ve got any chance of keeping everyone alive until the real money shows up.”

  “So it’s got to be Lawsons, then,” Jimmy said. “They’re going to love that.”

  She nodded.

  “One per shift,” she said. “Three shifts a day, plus someone cookin’ and looking after the camp.”

  “I’d do two shifts a day,” Jimmy said, looking at the list.

  “Won’t fit that many men in there at once,” Sarah said, “and if you work ‘em that many hours every day, they start makin’ mistakes. Put an hour at each end for handin’ off all the equipment and the events, but then let ‘em eat, let ‘em sleep, let ‘em play cards. Keeps ‘em from looking for whole days off, ‘tween now and bein’ done.”

  “So we need tents, blankets... what? For each of them?”

  “You can do a lot of it shared,” she said. “Common food and water, common toilet. A tent’ll sleep six men, if they sleep different times. Need your mining equipment.”

  “How do we get all this out there?” Jimmy asked. “I didn’t see a way to get a wagon out.”

  “Mule after mule after mule,” Sarah said. “I’d be lookin’ at the homesteads for that. Can pay to hire ‘em for a couple weeks, so long as we avoid harvest.”

  “Which is when?” Jimmy asked. Sarah looked up at the sun.

  “Oughtn’t be for another month at least, but I’d check that to be sure.”

  “I can do that,” Jimmy said. “Need you up there to help set things up.”

  “I’m no good to you for that,” Sarah said. “You need a site manager. Someone who’s actually done it before.”

  “Seems to me you’re the best I’m going to find.”

  “Let me talk to Thor,” she said. “Maybe I can get someone who’ll work for you blind, if I make the right promises.”

  “All right,” Jimmy said. “I think we’ve got a list. We should make a tour of the homesteads to try to get work animals to get everything up there, and then stop in at Granger’s for supplies.”

  “All today,” Sarah said. “Normally, that’d be a week’s work.”

  “Gotta get it done,” Jimmy said. “No other way.”

  “No other way,” she agreed. “Can you find your way to the Goodson’s well enough? I’ll go find Thor and see if he’ll join up. Meet you at the Goodson’s farm once I’ve got him.”

  “I know where they are,” Jimmy said. She gave him a nod.

  “Then you just need to drop me at home so I can get my own horse for the ride.”

  “I’m going to look like an old lady, showing up on a cart,” Jimmy said.

  “Your own fault,” Sarah said.

  “How you figure?” he asked.

  “You’re the one ain’t still used to ridin’. No one else’s fault it could be but yours.”

  “Your way of looking at the world is pretty simple,” he said.

  “Either I’m right or I ain’t,” she answered, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. “Ought to get goin’, though,” Sarah said. “Folk don’t take kindly to visitors at night, round here, and scarin’ up Granger to sell to us once the tavern’s full is gonna be a trick.”

  “He spend time at the tavern?” Jimmy asked.

  “No, but he likes to make himself scarce, round about then,” Sarah said. “You can imagine what it’s like, livin’ next door to that place.”

  “I guess,” Jimmy said, standing. “After you.”

  She let him open the door to the office and they went out, ignoring the men who were lingering after in hopes of good news.

  They didn’t talk on the ride back to her house. They’d said everything they needed to, and now there was just work to do.

  ––—

  It was a long train of mules, horses, and young men that went up into the hills two mornings later. Sarah sat on horseback watching them as they disappeared through the pass.

  Thor had agreed to supervise the excavation, and Thomas, Rich, and Wade were taking shift work to manage the group. The first couple of days, managing would just look like making a list of stuff they needed and coming down to get it. After that, they’d have to start watching for men trying to hide absenta ore, or what they thought was absenta ore, and the fighting that would ensue if they didn’t do a good job of killing off any theft motive early.

  Thor would be as good as his word, just managing diggers and helping the Lawsons, right up until it appeared men were getting away with things, at which point he would fall back on his prospector instincts: grab what you can while it’s there. Sarah had promised to make it worth his while, but that was as specific as she’d gotten. Apex was recovering from his bullet wound and out of commission for a while longer, so Thor didn’t have much better to do, anyway.

  Sarah didn’t need to be there to watch men move rocks, so she wasn’t going. Instead, as the last of the beasts and the men disappeared, she turned the black horse back toward town and made her way to the Lawson house. Jimmy and Peter were waiting for her. Lise came out onto the front porch as Sarah got there and started to make noise, but neither of the Lawson men were in the mood to stand for it, and she quickly and disapprovingly disappeared back into the house.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Peter said. Sarah glanced at Jimmy who seemed unconcerned.

  “If they want a show, we’ll give them a show,” he said. “You’re the one who killed a couple of men in the street.”

  “I’m not fighting, am I?” Peter asked. They mounted up and followed Sarah into town. A crowd was gathered to watch, and Sarah went through her normal ritual, clearing a space between two hitching posts and affixing leads to each before going to get Peter from off of his horse.

  It always went mostly like this, with the man who was there for punishment waiting quietly under the supervision of some of his family. The family would be there to make sure that everything went smoothly. No one wanted a runaway with Sarah showing up at the homestead looking for him, angry. Rather get it out of the way, and then clean up afterward.

  “Shirt,” she said. “You’ll want to let Jimmy hold it.”

  Peter waited a moment, stalling, then pulled off his leather vest and linen shirt, handing both of them to Jimmy. Sarah waited, allowing him his dignity, as he dismounted his horse, then went to stand next to the leads. He glared at her, up close, but didn’t say anything as she pulled his arms taut and tied his wrists.

  She retrieved the bull whip from her horse then went to stand on her spot, the crowd clearing to leave her plenty of space.

  The bullwhip was a fearsome implement, the way it split through the air with a noise that bordered on whining, cracking across Peter’s back. Most of the people at the front of the crowd took an instinctive step back as the leather made contact with flesh. Peter staggered forward, then found his feet again.

  She hit him again.

  The first couple of hits only left welts, but the third and fourth slashed through skin to draw blood that rolled down his back and sides. One more, and Peter lost his feet and didn’t regain them, just hanging by his arms. She took two more lashes with the whip, then coiled it up and returned it to her horse.

  Doc stepped forward from the crowd and inspected Peter and the lashmarks, then Sarah untied the Lawson man’s wrists, standing with her shoulder against his chest until he got woozily to his feet. She showed him no joy in her eyes as he wavered. She genuinely didn’t enjoy this part of her job. Hurting men who had no means to defend themselves w
as simple necessity and nothing more.

  “You won’t want to lay on that for a bit, but they’re clean,” Doc said. “I’ll stop by later this morning to get them patched over.”

  Peter said something incoherent, and Jimmy appeared at his elbow to help him back to his horse.

  “It was good work,” he said quietly to Sarah. “Everyone should be satisfied by that.”

  She nodded. She knew that. Peter said something else that didn’t make any sense and Jimmy led him away. Sarah took down the leads and went to stand on the walkway.

  “What Peter done weren’t murder, but we don’t tolerate killin’ in Lawrence, murder or not. You keep that in mind when you’re out doin’ your drinkin’. I happen to ev’ryone the same.”

  She looked around the gathered crowd, picking out more faces she didn’t know than ones she did, then nodded and went to get on her horse.

  She had an errand to run today that had nothing to do with the Lawsons.

  She directed the horse out of town and up toward the station where she turned the horse loose and waited for the train.

  The train actually came at predictable intervals, now.

  She sat on the station platform for a while by herself, then a few young men showed up and loitered around as well. It pulled in, brimming with fresh-faced new hopefuls, and Sarah waited for them to clear out before she got on, handing the money for a ticket to the clean-pressed conductor and finding a seat far enough away from everyone else that she wouldn’t have to deal with them. The train took an hour to unload and load everything, then was under way again.

  It was a day and a half to Jeremiah, then she’d have to wait there for three days until the next train. In all, she’d be gone a little under a week. It would have been faster to go by horseback, but this was much simpler, and it gave her an opportunity to wander Jeremiah for the first time since she’d been a child.

  She’d heard Jeremiah had suffered much the same fate Lawrence had, but that small industry had managed to keep enough people there to support not just a grocer but the chemist and a real doctor. Doc was a good guy, and he knew his stuff, but he didn’t have supplies like the doctor in Jeremiah, so he mostly patched and hoped.

  All that was changing, but how fast?

  She slept on and off all the way to Jeremiah, then got off to find a slightly more mature town than Lawrence, one that was dealing with a slightly smaller influx of young men looking for a new life. Someone had told her once that Jeremiah was a slightly better version of Lawrence in every way possible, and that Carson was a slightly better version of Jeremiah. She couldn’t remember who had said it, now, but she found it hard to argue.

  The train station was much closer to town - she could actually see buildings from the station - and someone had put down coarse sand where the road went so, presumably, it didn’t wander as riders and pedestrians made it up anew each time there was cause to use it. The only permanent road in Lawrence was the one with the general store and the tavern on it, and it only went about a hundred yards.

  She wandered in and out of small shops run by older men and women who were struggling to keep up with their customers, finding an actual grocer who carried nothing but food. At the end of the first street, she found a dispensary where she went in and told the woman at the counter that she was from Lawrence.

  “Where’s Pete?” the woman asked. “We’ve been expecting him for a few days.”

  “He died in an accident,” Sarah said. “I need to pick up our Perpeto.”

  “You’re Sarah, aren’t you?” the woman asked. Sarah frowned, and the girl smiled brightly.

  “He talked about you every time he came in. I’m sorry to hear.”

  “This is the list,” Sarah said, off-put by the girl’s friendliness and familiarity.

  “I’ll give it to the chemist,” the young woman said, glancing at it. “We’ve been a little afraid that you were going to expect us to have all the ingredients on hand for all the new men who have been showing up, but this is just the regular supply, isn’t it?”

  “They’re on their own,” Sarah said. “I only take care of the people actually from Lawrence who pay for their medicine.”

  The girl gave her the smallest of frowns, then shrugged.

  “It’s going to take some time,” she said. “That’s what Dr. Addler is always saying. You can have anything you want, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “How much time?” Sarah asked.

  “I expect he’ll have it done by this evening, but let me go confirm,” she said, disappearing. Sarah browsed absently, picking up a few things on the way by that she was low on or that she hadn’t seen before and putting them on the counter in front of the girl when she returned.

  “Just this for you, for now?” the girl asked, beginning to tally the cost.

  “That’s fine,” Sarah said.

  “The Perpeto should be ready tomorrow morning,” the girl said. “He’s got a bunch of other orders he’s working on now, and he can’t promise them tonight. Is that okay?”

  “Train don’t leave for three days,” Sarah said. “Just need to know when to come back.”

  The girl put the stuff Sarah was buying into a bag and gave her a firm nod.

  “Tomorrow morning, for sure.”

  She told Sarah her total, and Sarah paid, leaving and going back out into the street to find an inn.

  The inn here wouldn’t be a part of the tavern. Jeremiah had a small flow of traders who came through the town on regular intervals and needed a place to stay. Amazing what a difference a consistent supply of transportation did for the place.

  She took a room at the inn and continued to wander, but by that evening, she was bored. Wanting a gun to clean and a cup of gremlin tea, instead she took a meal at the inn’s restaurant and went to bed early.

  The next day, as promised, the Perpeto was ready. Sarah considered hiring a horse to take her back to Lawrence, but didn’t want to mess with trying to get it on a train to come back. She wasn’t sure why this was so much less fun until she realized the last time she’d been in Jeremiah had been with Jimmy.

  That made the next two days even less fun as she waited for the train and made the uneventful ride home.

  She’d done her job.

  The families in town still needed Perpeto, and they were still looking to her to arrange it. She had a supply that should last a couple of months, again, and again they would come to her with their cash to trade for the drug. Everything was as it should be, but she felt strange and unsettled, like this was her only real role any more.

  She got home and did the cleaning and tending that needed to be done, then went to bed, expecting to be up early in the morning to take the cows up to the high country the next day.

  Morning didn’t come round by the normal way.

  Someone was banging on her door. She found the lamp on her dresser and turned it up, going downstairs to find Grant, the neighbor boy, looking winded.

  “Fire, Miss Todd,” he said.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Where all the new men are staying,” he said. “Ma says it’s bad and you should come.”

  “Go home,” Sarah said. “Tell your ma to lock the door. I’ll look into it.”

  She went back upstairs to dress, finding her boots, hat, and duster on the way out the door. She whistled and Dog appeared at her feet, but she sent him back to bed, too. She didn’t need Dog. She needed the horse.

  It took her four minutes to find him drowsing at the far side of the barn, hips cocked contentedly, and she booted him in the side.

  “You come when I call you,” she said, tacking him quickly and loading her rifle into its holster. She was on the road in less than ten minutes, riding hard for the shantytown. Before she got close, she could see the telltale glow on the horizon that always came before a fire. She whipped the black horse and leaned forward, holding her hat.

  The shantytown was in an uproar. The men were fighting each other as their makes
hift homes burned. A few clusters of them stood to the side and just watched, but the overwhelming majority were intent enough on hitting anything in front of them that they occasionally went rolling through the smoldering remains of this box or that. Sarah sat on the black horse for a moment, taking stock, then identified a huge man in the process of smashing two smaller men into each other.

  “You,” she shouted, driving the black horse through the tangled men to get closer to the brute. “You, do you want a job?”

  He looked up.

  “What?”

  “Do you want a job?”

  He dropped the other two men.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good,” she said. “You follow me. You do what I say. I’ll pay you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. She shook her head, charging back into the crowd of sooty men. She kicked this one, brought her rein knot down across another one’s face, pushed the horse through clusters of fighting men.

  “Get him out of here,” she shouted back to her burly man, pointing at a man at the center of a large fight. “All the way out.”

  The colossus waded through the men and tangled the one she’d identified by his arms, dragging him out of the group. Sarah pointed, and he kept going. She snagged a wood beam that hadn’t completely burned and started beating men with that as she went by.

  “Break it up,” she yelled as she went. “Ain’t doin’ no one no good.”

  Her bruiser was back. She found another young man at the center of a large, ill-fated conflict, and pointed at him.

  “Out as far as the last man,” she said. He nodded and did as she asked.

  There was nothing to be done about the fire. Everything here was disposable, save the men, and most of the useful refuse was already consumed. It would burn itself to ash by sunrise. She just needed to get the men through the rush of violence that came with anonymity and fire.

  She looked up to find Jimmy on horseback nearby, doing much the same as herself.

  He saw her watching, and she pointed at the man returning to her.

  “He’s my man,” she said. Jimmy nodded, pointing beyond her. She turned to find a pair of men, probably brothers by the way their blond hair had sooted exactly the same, wading toward them from another direction.