Sarah Todd

by Chloe Garner

  “So a sawmill,” he said. She nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “Up just on the other side of the water line. Would be an effort to get a path up to it so that we could bring the lumber back down easily enough, but it’s probably worth it.”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what I figure.”

  “Sure. We’ll make it happen.”

  She waited.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “The Goodsons are gonna need help getting their homestead back up,” she said. “Half the house is gone, maybe more. Six families lost barns who’re gonna need ‘em again soon.”

  “We can’t deal with that for at least three weeks,” Jimmy said.

  “Got to,” Sarah said.

  “Don’t, actually,” Jimmy said. “They’re the minority right now, and small problems compared to everything else.”

  “Just ‘cause they’re outnumbered by the newcomers don’t make ‘em less important.”

  “It does,” Jimmy said. “They’re going to have to take care of themselves for a while, until we get all of the rest of the men up into mines and digging.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Sarah asked. “The homesteaders ain’t profitable compared to skimming mine profits, so you’ll see to your profits first?”

  “I’m more worried about riots and angry, hungry, bored men burning down everything in town, but if you want to attribute that to a profit motive, that doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.”

  “I take care of my families,” Sarah said.

  “Obviously,” Jimmy said. “And you throw everyone else to the sharks.”

  “Bastard,” she said. “Take it back. I done everything I could for those men.”

  He sighed.

  “You saved a lot of lives,” he said. “I won’t say you didn’t. I just never know what to expect from you anymore.”

  “You never did,” she said, standing. “Those folk need help and I aim to see that they get it.”

  “Will you meet me at the station tomorrow afternoon?” Jimmy asked.

  “No way a train gets through,” she said.

  There were too many miles of track to clear of too much sand. She hadn’t even considered going to check on it.

  “How many men did you see in town today?” Jimmy asked. She frowned. She hadn’t expected to see swarms of them, given how she’d split them up for the rains, but she really hadn’t seen but a handful. He nodded.

  “That’s right,” he said. “They were out on the lines, digging, since dawn. If the train can’t get through tomorrow, we’re cooked. So it’s getting through.”

  “You know how many miles of line you’re talkin’ about?” she asked. “There’s no way. What are you doin’ for food and water for those men?”

  “They’ll figure it out,” Jimmy said. “That train gets through.”

  She shook her head

  “Damned fool,” she said. “Dumber than a pig on its back.”

  “I do what I have to,” Jimmy said. “If we don’t get set for the investors, every one of those men is going to die, leave, or turn to crime to support himself, at which point you’ll kill him.”

  “And you’ll leave again,” Sarah said. “Those investors ain’t the end of the world, Jimmy. The absenta is still there, or it ain’t. You sellin’ claims don’t change that.”

  “Yeah, but my ability to fund an effort to keep order around here dies if we don’t get a successful auction.”

  “This is about impressing your fancy-pants friends from the coast,” she said. “The money is up there in them rocks, same as it’s always been. Either we can find it or we can’t. If we find it,” she shrugged, “then we got money.”

  “Are you advocating the Lawsons dig in the ground to support ourselves?” he asked. “I thought we’d both agreed that wasn’t likely to happen.”

  “No, I’m sayin’ your pride ain’t worth those boys killin’ themselves out there.”

  “They’ll be fine,” he said. “They might even be able to go off your food rations, with the money they’ll have in their pockets.”

  “About that,” Sarah said, peeved enough to bring it up. “When I make a promise, I don’t appreciate you stealing it out from under me, good intentions or not.”

  “This is about me paying Granger for their gremlin?”

  She raised her eyebrows and he shrugged.

  “You don’t have the reserves to feed that many men for very long,” he said. “I did it so you wouldn’t have to back out on them.”

  It was true, and that was the worst part. The men were eating a year’s fortune for Lawrence any given week, and their numbers were still growing.

  “Don’t patronize me, Lawson,” she said.

  “I saw the contents of your safe, Todd,” he answered. “Or did you forget? I now know your net worth within a very neat margin.”

  She would have slapped him, if she’d been able to reach him. He seemed to know that, and to be even more pleased at the knowledge.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, standing.

  “Have a good night,” he answered with a politeness that nearly brought her across the desk.

  Well played, Lawson, she thought as she gathered her wits and left the office. She’d put him off-balance with her revelation about Lise, so he’d done it right back to her.

  Had it ever been another way, between them? She couldn’t remember.

  She was ready to storm out the front door, but a motion caught her eye as Kayla came streaming down the stairs in a nightgown.

  “Sarah,” the woman said happily. “I thought I’d heard them say you were here.”

  “Kayla,” Sarah answered. “That’s an interesting get-up.”

  “Thank you,” Kayla answered happily. “I made it myself. Wade likes it a lot.”

  “Reckon he does,” Sarah said.

  “I’ll be selling them in the shop, once I get it up and running, if you ever want one.”

  Kayla looked like she wouldn’t even need a breeze to float away, she was in so many layers of cloth that were each individually transparent. Stacked as many deep as they were, all Sarah got was the shadowed impression of the woman’s slim body, but it wasn’t something she would have chosen to wear... anywhere she could think of, not to mention the Lawson’s front foyer.

  “Can I come see you tomorrow?” Kayla asked. “They say I can go wherever I want whenever I want, but there’s so little to do, I never do it, you know?”

  “I got to go to the station with Jimmy in the afternoon,” Sarah said, looking for a more firm reason to turn the woman away. Kayla nodded earnestly.

  “Oh, I’ll come early, if that’s best. I’ll bring breakfast.” She finished brightly, smiling at Sarah and darting back up the stairs before Sarah had a chance to answer.

  She had too much to do. Her house was still full of sand and people who depended on her were missing a house entirely. She didn’t have time to play tea party with the woman, and yet, she realized standing there by herself, that was exactly what she was going to do. She scratched her forehead and put her hat back on, going out and looking for the black horse.

  “Damned animal,” she said. “You blend in out here. I told you not to wander.”

  She finally found him down near the road, taking him back home in the dark, her pace abnormally slow on the messy surface. She was tired when she got home.

  There was too much to do.

  She almost missed the days when her biggest event was going and having a shootout with a crew of bandits. At least after that, she’d been able to spend the rest of her day the way she liked.

  ––—

  Sarah was sitting up with a cup of tea when Kayla got there the next morning, fresh-faced, sunny disposition infallibly annoying Sarah.

  “What a wonderful morning,” Kayla said. It wasn’t a question, so Sarah didn’t tell Kayla what she thought of it. “I brought muffins. Do you like muffins?”

  “Ain’t had ‘em in years,” Sara
h said. “Generally they’re too much effort, out here.”

  “That’s a shame,” Kayla said. “Our cook is wonderful at them. Not like the cook back home, but really wonderful, anyway. She says it’s really hard to get enough flour, out here, but Jimmy’s working on it, I know he is. I really can’t complain.”

  She set up on the kitchen table, laying out a tablecloth and then placemats and cloth napkins, plates, and silverware.

  “I generally just take my tea,” Sarah said warily.

  “I know I overdo it,” Kayla said, “but breakfast was such a big deal in my family. I just love having a big breakfast and sitting and talking over it.”

  A bit shellshocked, Sarah sat down where Kayla indicated, watching with a raised eyebrow as more and more food came out of Kayla’s basket.

  “How many folk you figure were gonna be here?” she asked.

  “Variety is the spice of life,” Kayla said. “That’s what my mama always said.”

  Fruit, breads, juices, little salted meats came out on colorful plates. Things Sarah didn’t recognize.

  “Thought you just brought muffins,” Sarah muttered.

  “Here they are,” Kayla said with a bright smile, bringing out a large platter of them. “Chocolate. I love chocolate. I think that may be what I miss most about Intec.”

  Sarah couldn’t argue, there. Chocolate was intensely rare here, grown only on a couple of very small islands where the climate and soil was favorable enough for it and in a few Earth-soil greenhouses with carefully controlled temperature and humidity. As far as Sarah knew, only a few of those greenhouses actually offered cacao for sale. The rest of it was internally consumed by the family and society that had been able to afford to import the soil in the first place.

  “Your ma makes dresses,” Sarah said, looking at the muffins. Kayla smiled.

  “I told you she was good.”

  Sarah shook her head and selected a muffin, taking a slow bite and enjoying it.

  “You’ve had it before,” Kayla said, sounding almost disappointed.

  “I ain’t just a backwoods heathen, child,” Sarah said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “I have been out of Lawrence a time or two.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Kayla said. “I just, I wanted to surprise you.”

  “It’s a delight,” Sarah said. “It don’t need to be a surprise, too.”

  The young woman took this well enough, settling into her own chair with a certain amount of primping and taking a muffin of her own.

  “You heard that Lise is pregnant,” she said. Sarah glanced at her, and Kayla shrugged. “You hear things, you see things, people think you don’t notice because you’re dumb.”

  “You dumb, Kayla?” Sarah asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Kayla said. “Just friendly and optimistic.”

  Sarah thought that these were the defining characteristics of dumb in Lawrence, but she kept this to herself.

  “What do you think of that?” Sarah asked.

  “Of me not being dumb?” Kayla asked.

  “Of Lise being pregnant.”

  “It’s gonna be hell,” Kayla said. Sarah raised an eyebrow and Kayla shrugged, wiping crumbs off of her lips. “She’s gonna lord it over us even more than she already does. The first Lawson baby. Peter Lawson’s baby, no less, the first baby to the oldest son. Given that Jimmy doesn’t look like he’s ever going to have kids, everyone knows that this is the important one. I don’t know what I’ll do if it turns out to be a boy. You know, my parents had six girls, and I don’t think they ever once thought they’d missed out because they didn’t have a boy. But we come out here, and all anyone wants is sons.”

  “Women ain’t good for much, outside of birthin’ and raisin’ sons,” Sarah said.

  “You do it,” Kayla said, leaning forward over the table. Sarah shrugged.

  “Lotta people might argue I failed as a woman, bein’ the way I am.”

  “What, that you’re more of a man than a woman?” Kayla asked. “What an ugly thing to say.”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “Don’t bother me none.”

  Kayla sighed, picking at a few other things and arranging them artfully on her plate.

  “When Wade told me we were coming out here, I had this big idea of coming to a place where everyone was tall and rough and spoke their minds, and that we would have parties and take the edges off, and that it would be like the best of the city without all of the wallowing and the best of... well, of this place, but without the roughness, you know? And then I get here and I’m just locked away up in the house with Lise and Sunny all the time, and I never see anyone and there’s nothing to do.”

  “You were wanderin’ around town the first time I saw you,” Sarah said. “They let you do whatever you want.”

  She grimaced.

  “Wade doesn’t like me wandering on my own with all of the men around who don’t know who the Lawsons are.”

  “Don’t stop me,” Sarah said, amazed that she was making the same argument Kayla had made at their first meeting.

  “You carry guns,” Kayla said. “I know and you know and everyone else knows that I’m not built to take care of myself.”

  “Horse manure,” Sarah said. “Ain’t anyone can’t carry a gun and take care of themself well enough, if they avoid the bad stuff. You should be able to come to town in daylight and not be afraid.”

  Did she believe that? She probably did, though she had a hard time imagining herself saying it to Kayla if she hadn’t had the fight with Jimmy and the exchange with Lise the night before. An independent Kayla would bug both of them, and that was just bonus.

  “Actually,” Kayla said, leaning further across the table. “I do carry a gun.”

  “Well, now,” Sarah said. Kayla shifted carefully, hitching up her dress as discretely as she could and bringing a tiny hiding-gun out and setting it on the table.

  “It isn’t loaded,” Kayla said. “Wade said I’d be just as likely to hurt myself as anyone else, if I did, but... I carry it anyway.”

  “Where’d you get that?” Sarah asked, picking it up after a nod of permission from Kayla and inspecting it.

  “I saw it in Intec before we came and I thought it was so cute, so I asked Wade to get it for me, and he did as a present, but he didn’t think I’d use it. He offered to get me a glass box for it so I could hang it.”

  It was a nice piece of decoration, Sarah had to admit, but all of the functioning parts were there to make a bullet go.

  “It’s pretty,” Sarah said, “but it’s gonna have a bite like a varmint. You ever used it?”

  Kayla’s face went wide-open.

  “No.”

  “You want to?”

  There was a long, long, long pause, then she nodded slowly.

  “You wouldn’t tell Wade?”

  “I don’t speak to Wade if I can avoid it, beggin’ your pardon,” Sarah said.

  “Or Jimmy,” Kayla pressed. Sarah shrugged.

  “If you prefer.”

  Kayla nodded, faster this time.

  “Yes. I want to learn how to use it.”

  Sarah shrugged, standing and going to the pantry. The bullet caliber was standard, small, but one she kept in ready supply. Mostly she just used the bullets this size to shoot varmints that Dog flushed for her, but it wasn’t a bad light-weapon bullet for when she wasn’t expecting a fight.

  She loaded the two bullets it would hold, checking the mechanisms again.

  “How old is this piece?” she asked.

  “Maybe four months,” Kayla answered, coming to stand behind her. “We bought it new.”

  “Should clean it after we’re done,” Sarah said. “I’ll show you how and give you the supplies you’ll need.”

  Kayla nodded again. On an impulse, Sarah grabbed one of her favored handguns and put it into its holster, strapping that around her waist and then handing the small gun back to Kayla.

  “It’s loaded,” she said. “Only ever point th
e end of it away from you and other people, unless you mean to shoot them.”

  Kayla nodded, holding the gun like a bird. Sarah shook her head and closed the pantry doors again, leading Kayla outside. Dog raised his head, and she waved him back down. She didn’t want Kayla to get excited and accidentally hit him.

  They went out to where the barn had been, finding a fencepost that was still standing a ways away. Sarah pointed at it.

  “That’s your mark,” she said. “I want you to think about it for a minute, then shoot it.”

  Kayla raised her arms and closed one eye, twisting her mouth.

  “Nope,” Sarah said quietly. Kayla looked over at her.

  “What?”

  “Little gun like that ain’t made for shootin’ someone like a target,” she said. “Move up.”

  Kayla took a few steps forward and looked at Sarah again. Sarah waved her forward again. And again. Finally, Kayla was only about three strides away from the fencepost.

  “You ain’t never gonna have cause to shoot a man any further away from you than that,” Sarah said, “and you’d best shoot him before he gets any closer, cause if you don’t, you ain’t gonna get a chance. You understand?”

  The gun went off and Kayla dropped it with a shrill yelp. Sarah walked forward, unsurprised.

  “I assume you pulled the trigger on purpose?” she asked. Kayla was holding her hand.

  “I did,” she said. Sarah nodded, picking up the gun and holding it in her palm.

  “Problem with a gun like this is that can’t no one, not even someone with fine little hands like yours, get all their fingers on it. You can’t brace it proper, and the action is bound to hit some part of you, cause you don’t have space to get out of the way. Let me see.”

  Kayla uncovered her hand and opened it. Sarah found the cut on the top of her thumb, just where she’d expected it would be.

  “I’m bleeding,” Kayla said.

  “You is, but you hit him,” Sarah said, nodding at the fence post. It had been a near thing, but Kayla had managed it. “I told you this gun would have a bite like a varmint.”

  Someone with conditioned skin could probably fire it four or five times before it actually drew blood, but the eventual result would be the same for most anyone. Sarah offered Kayla the gun.