Sarah Todd

by Chloe Garner

  There was silence, outside of the grunts of the horses and the sound of air through dry grass. First time they’d stopped complaining since they’d left the houses. Sarah was impressed.

  They rode on.

  They stopped once for water, Sarah keeping a tight eye on the sun. This route wasn’t any easier, just because she’d done it so many times. It was still five to six hours, and without any break at all at the mine; they were looking at getting back to Lawrence at eight at the earliest. The sun would be behind the mountains by then, though the sky wouldn’t go to open stars for another hour.

  This was ludicrous.

  She pushed them harder, up and over ridges, sliding down the backsides at a pace she wouldn’t have attempted on her own - if something went wrong, it was a long way to help, out here. They were leaving a trail a mile wide, with this many riders on this direct a course, but it couldn’t be helped. Thomas rode with her for a while, but he didn’t say anything to her. Jimmy was at the end of the line with the pack horse, making sure no one stopped or got lost.

  She would turn to take a count from time to time, but she was beginning to know the men by their sounds. Maxim, the first one they’d spoken to on their tour, was in good shape, and he liked to emphasize it by grunting from time to time when he did something that involved any exertion at all. Others of the men wheezed or coughed, sighed, scratched, or wouldn’t stop talking to each other. She could tell, almost without turning around, that all of them were there within any given couple of minutes.

  Eventually, long after Sarah would have wanted to, they arrived at the mine. The men were scuffed and sore, and she actually felt a touch sorry for them that their day was only half over, but they were here, and they were seeing something that was remarkable, anywhere on the planet.

  It was the best absenta mine any of them had ever heard of.

  The men were working, bringing up cart after cart of ore and dumping it into larger wooden bins outside of the mine’s entrance under Rich’s careful watch.

  One of the men came to peer into the bins.

  “Look like rocks,” he said. “How do we know it’s actually got absenta in it?”

  “That’s the magic of it,” Jimmy said. “Come this way. First, I want to introduce you to the mine’s foremen, Apex and Thor. They’ve been running mines in Lawrence for longer than I’ve been alive, and they are the best.”

  “You’ll be staying with the mine, or are you available for work on other sites?” someone asked.

  “We plan on stayin’ here,” Thor said, “but we’re happy to give referrals for other prospectors in the area.”

  “I plan on bringing in my own men,” someone commented. Thor shrugged.

  “Ain’t no magic in it.”

  Sarah wondered at that for a moment, whether he actually believed it, then went on, following Jimmy down the hole into the heart of the mountain. Workers moved out of the way as they went by.

  “I expected tracks,” someone said in a reverberating whisper as they went.

  “What kind of tracks would those be?” Jimmy asked.

  “Isn’t that how they get the loads of ore up out of the mine?” the answer came back.

  “In a developed mine, you might expect to have a set of iron tracks that you run cars up and down on, but on early mines like this one, you’re relying on lots and lots of labor,” Jimmy said. “Fortunately, we have lots and lots of labor to spare, right now, with more arriving every day.”

  “Don’t they want to dig?” someone asked. “I thought the big rushes out here were for claims for men to dig their own mines.”

  “We’ve been through that phase,” Jimmy said. “Right now, we consider Lawrence to be a more mature mining arrangement, where most of the wildcatting is done. We’re using science, now, to predict where the major veins will be, which is what we’re auctioning to you. Given the value of these predictions, the average man swarming his way into Lawrence can’t afford a claim. If he wanted to stake one at random, Sarah would be happy to set him up with one, given our normal terms of profit-sharing, but, as I said, I believe we’ve exhausted almost all of that at this point.”

  They continued on, losing the daylight behind them and switching over to the kerosene lamps Jimmy, Thomas, and Wade carried.

  “This is plenty,” Thomas said after another minute. The tunnel they were in was much larger than it had been, big enough to stand five or six across at full height. Sarah could tell from the echoing voices beyond her that they were working on digging the mine deeper as well. She wondered if they’d found the end of the deposit yet. The three Lawsons stopped, turning down the lamps until they were only an idea of a glow and putting them on the ground, then holding up a trio of larger lamps.

  “The secret about absenta, one that every miner out in this region knows, is that it glows blue under the specific wavelengths of methane flame,” Jimmy said. He lit a piece of paper in his kerosene lamp and fed it into the larger lamp to a puff of ignition, then passed the paper over to Thomas. Wade was the last to light the large methane lamp. Slowly, the three men made their way to the walls, walking along the group of investors with the lamps overhead.

  The walls radiated electric blue like they were pulsating with current. Sarah didn’t have to reach out to touch the walls - though several of the investors did - to know that they were dry, but they looked wet in the methane light. It was stark, startling every time.

  “How do we know it hasn’t been seeded?” Coriander asked.

  “Could be,” Jimmy said. “Absenta doesn’t work that way, but I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. There’s a pickaxe there against the wall, if anyone wants to swing it a few times. You’ll note that the stone here is continuous - we didn’t bring in loose rock to fake you out with. If it comes loose of the wall and there’s absenta underneath it, I’m at a loss how to create that effect.”

  Maxim was the first one to jump at the offer to swing a pickaxe, and he did, with great gusto and very little effect. Someone who knows how to use a pick knows that you swing it nearly parallel to the wall, taking off rock in shale or flakes, breaking it at as sharp an angle as you can. He hit the rock dead on, like he was hoping to cause an explosion. It didn’t matter. Absenta ore was a hard stone, but it wouldn’t stand up under that kind of assault. Bits and pieces of stone sprayed off of the wall where Maxim hit it, leaving little dings in the stone. He squatted to pick one up and went to hold it in front of one of the methane lamps, while someone else picked up the pick and continued the absurd assault on the solid wall.

  Without any sense of surprise at all, Sarah noted that the stone in Maxim’s hand was absenta ore, through and through.

  “We’ve claimed all of the ore that has come out of the ground under our watch,” Jimmy said. “We’ll shut down the camp temporarily when we leave today and whoever buys this claim will be responsible for paying the wages of the workers from this point forward. Obviously,” he said, indicating the walls, “that won’t be of consequence compared to the value of the claim.”

  “How far does it go?” someone asked as a third man took his spot at the wall and added to the mess of pock marks.

  “We’ll walk you to the end of the current mine,” Jimmy said. “But you’ll note that we have not done any test drills here. The same as every other site, what you can see is as much as we know.”

  It wasn’t entirely true. Sarah had the ability to guess how much absenta ore there was underground based on the shape of the tunnel the men had dug. It wouldn’t be close, but it was as close to a guarantee as anyone in the crowd was likely to get.

  A fourth man came to use the pick, and then they followed Jimmy down to the end of the mine, methane torches illuminating the blue in the walls the whole way down. It was astonishing. Sarah could feel the greed fever in her own body, and she sensed it in Jimmy. She couldn’t imagine what it was doing to the investors, there wholly unprepared for the effects of miner’s lust.

  As hard as it was going to b
e to get everyone home in one piece, it was a stroke of genius to bring them all here the day before the auction. They’d have nothing to do tonight but drink, sleep, and think about the fortunes that absenta can bring.

  They finally came back up out of the mines and the Lawsons extinguished their lanterns. Jimmy went to the ore boxes and pulled out a handful of the smaller stones that he could hold in his hands, passing them out to each of the investors.

  “A memento,” he said. Sarah watched the eyes of the workers as a fortune that they’d have been shot for pilfering went to the rich men for nothing. She understood it. Having a working man’s wages in your pocket, something the size of a pebble, it was something that burned you, leaving marks on your skin, on your fingertips, that the eye couldn’t see. You didn’t readily give something like that back.

  “Let’s get mounted up,” Sarah said, looking up at the sun. “We’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

  Getting organized to go back was a little easier than the first attempt, if only because the investors were now much more focused, but it still took longer than it should have, and the sun was well past its peak by the time they started back toward Lawrence. It was going to be well and truly dark by the time they passed the Lawson house again. Jimmy came up to ride by her for a minute.

  “Worth it,” he said quietly, looking back at the men.

  “Didn’t say it weren’t,” Sarah answered.

  “You thought it,” he said. “They’re going to go into bidding wars over this, and every other claim we’re offering. I just tripled the price we’re going to get, at least.”

  “Didn’t say it weren’t,” Sarah said. “Thought that it’s gonna be hell gettin’ home with everyone intact, and that don’t change nothin’ you just said.”

  “We’ll keep them moving,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that bad.”

  “Says the one keepin’ the rear,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m the one gonna walk off a cliff if I ain’t careful,” she said. Take two or three of your men with me, the level of mountain smarts we got goin’ on back there.”

  “So move fast,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re injured, so long as they can bid.”

  “You’re all heart, Lawson,” she answered. “Get back in line.”

  He winked at her and let himself drift back as she continued on.

  It was a hard ride, and the complaints she started to hear were becoming more legitimate. Saddle-sores were a real thing, and the muscles associated with a long ride were nearly unique to riding. They had a long way to go, yet, and there wasn’t anything she could say or do to make that ride easier, so she kept her hat on, her head forward, and her horse moving.

  And then something went funny.

  She heard the noise up ahead before she registered what it was. It was one of those things that long training and lots of ambushes cued, but at the same time, she’d been so long without seeing a bandit that she didn’t expect it when it happened.

  Men talking.

  It was soft, the sound of two forward scouts murmuring to each other over cigarettes while they waited for something to happen, but it was something she’d killed men in a counter-ambush for, in the past. As it was, she only just got the line stopped in time. She signaled to Jimmy, but the light was failing and she was nearly certain he couldn’t tell what she was trying to tell him.

  “Get down,” she hissed to the second man in line as Thomas came riding up. “Get the hell off that horse,” she said.

  “What?” Thomas asked, as the first bullet whacked into a tree nearby. He fell off his horse in a neat motion that indicated that his body hadn’t forgotten what to do when guns went off. In their defense, the rest of the men and Coriander had similarly well-tuned responses. Those of them who didn’t get to ground at least ducked low over their horses’ necks. Unfortunately, horses are stupid animals. The greater portion of them took off running as the shots continued. Sarah spun quickly, looking for cover.

  It was a good ambush, but it wasn’t perfect. She’d caught it in time, and there were big trees and a stand of rocks just that way far enough to make it a risky run. She dragged the black horse behind her, heading for a thicker set of trees, gun out. The first muzzle flare she saw, she shot back. Somewhere to her left, there was a scream as a horse got hit, and to her right a grunt as a man took a slug who was used to it. She shook her head.

  “Dammit,” she muttered. Too much money, too little planning.

  “Who are they?” Jimmy asked. She wondered how he’d gotten to her so quickly, but didn’t dwell on it.

  “Bandits,” she said. “The gangs didn’t completely break up, just ‘cause y’all came home. I’ve wanted to go huntin’ ‘em, but there’s been too much goin’ on.”

  “How many?” he asked. Around them, the world felt like it was breaking apart, but right there, between two trees in thick cover, it was just the two of them, quiet, confident, apart.

  She listened to the guns, the voices. Some of the investors were returning fire. Jimmy’s kind of people. Thomas was yelling, trying to get the remainder out of the line of fire. Horses stamped and ran, trumpeting fear. Those things didn’t matter.

  It was the guns around them that mattered.

  She heard the rifle that sent the bullet, listening hard to the replay of the delay between the two in her head, calculating a distance. She nodded slowly. Jimmy waited.

  “Two scouts,” she said, pointing at where she’d heard the voices. “Idiots. Bored and unprepared. Three snipers,” she pointed in the approximate directions of the long guns. “I’ll have to do them. The rest of the party is around us. We didn’t go all the way into the kill box, so they’re mostly in front of us, but they’re working their way around now.”

  “Thomas,” Jimmy yelled. “Wade. Outflank. Spread.”

  She nodded, listening to the investors and Lawsons respond to Jimmy’s orders. More shots. More hits. Both sides.

  “Dead,” she said, pointing. “Them.”

  “How many of us gone?” Jimmy asked. She sighed, listening harder.

  “Some of ‘em went with horses. No tellin’ what happens to ‘em.”

  “I understand.”

  Focus.

  She heard the rifle shot again and raised her rifle - it had been in her hands since she’d hit the ground, by simple habit and reflex - looking in the direction of the shot. Only one good spot for hiding, up there. There was a flash and she shot it.

  “You get him?” Jimmy asked, following her shot.

  “We’ll see,” she answered.

  “We’re hard to kill,” Jimmy said. “They’re gonna be surprised when they figure that out.”

  “Figure on us bein’ loaded down with a bunch of rich bastards, not the cream of the crime world,” Sarah said sardonically, then shook her head.

  More shots.

  “Eight. Maybe nine. Not including the riflemen. We have fourteen, including three Lawsons and me.”

  “Down five,” Jimmy said.

  “Most of them on horses,” Sarah said. “I don’t see or hear any dead guns.”

  He nodded.

  “We need the rocks.”

  “Would help.”

  “Tie him here,” Jimmy said, looking over his shoulder at the black horse. “He won’t run, and they shouldn’t be gunning for him once we move on.”

  She wouldn’t have admitted it, not to Jimmy, not to anyone, but the idea of abandoning the animal made her queasier than anything else about the ambush. There was a sense of inevitability. She’d done this too many times, it hadn’t killed her before and it wasn’t going to kill her now. But she didn’t want to leave the horse tied and defenseless. It was a bad way to go, and he deserved better than that.

  “He’ll be okay,” Jimmy said. “We need to move now.”

  She looked at the reins in her hand, then nodded, slinging them over a bush so that they tangled. If he needed - really needed - to get away, he c
ould, but it would hold otherwise. She glanced at Jimmy, who ignored her, making for the edge of the thicket and looking out. He whistled, a peculiar tone that the Lawsons would have recognized, and then he did something odd.

  He stood.

  Straight, undefended, uncareful. He stood and he walked into the next bit of clearing, drawing a gun and firing it five, six, seven times quickly and in precise, calculated directions. Sarah was already moving and unable to appreciate the specificity of those shots. There were shouts as Thomas and Wade got the rest of the men moving. Sarah found herself running alongside Coriander.

  “Human shield,” the woman said quickly, ducking low behind Sarah’s flapping jacket. Sarah shrugged. If she was going to cast a shadow, someone may as well stand in it.

  “Keep up,” she answered, putting on more speed as they neared the rocks. Bullets bounced off of the stone ahead of them as the bandits easily put together what they were doing, but Jimmy kept their heads down enough that they couldn’t make easy shots. As they got close enough for Coriander to scurry into a cleft between two of the towering stones, Sarah dropped to a knee and lined up a shot on one of the snipers. She saw the flash, felt the thud as the bullet imbedded itself into the ground by her foot, and she blinked once.

  This was what rifle fighting in the woods was about, and she was the best. Better than Jimmy, better than anyone she knew. If he didn’t hit her on his first shot...

  ... he was dead. She took her shot and rolled, holding her hat on her head as she ended up with her back pressed against the stone. She drew a handgun and fired four times in the general direction of the nearby bandits, letting men get past her.

  “Get up high,” she muttered, “and keep your damned heads down.”