by Chloe Garner
“And if I need help?” Hansen asked.
“You need to have men you trust to get us,” Jimmy said. “We’ll patrol, and I’ve got no problem executing jumpers on the spot, but if you’re under siege or if you get run off your claim, I’m not going to come racing up into the mountains on the word of someone I don’t know. You pick the men who are going to survive the run and you make sure I know them.”
Hansen nodded.
“Fair enough. Like I said, I don’t even know if I’ll be the one digging the holes, but…” He shook his head. “I don’t envy anyone who’s going to be working out here with a real absenta claim. You or anyone else. I’d kill to be pulling the kind of stone out of the ground they say you’re getting, but I know the lifespan of diggers who are around that much absenta.”
“Not here,” Jimmy said. “I’m not going to allow it.”
Hansen laughed.
“Good luck to you, young man. I mean that. Tell me about the work force you’ve got, around here.”
He and Jimmy talked for another hour about the men coming into Lawrence, the requirement that the first group of men hired be ones who were registered in town, the potential for the Lawsons to coordinate supply runs of routine things. Jimmy didn’t like the idea of weighing down his family with those kind of responsibilities, but both he and Sarah could see the benefit to having a limited number of people traveling the mountains at any given time, and having more of those be people Jimmy had authority over was better.
The stars came out some hours later as they ate their evening meal, and Sarah set up her blanket to sleep. Hansen went to wash at a stream just down the mountain from them, and Jimmy came to sit next to her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“He’s smart and informed,” Sarah answered. “He could go either way. I think he really is here representing William, but either we disarm him or we leave and set up our own camp.”
Jimmy nodded.
“It’s good counsel.”
“If he’s faking it all, his best play is to shoot both of us in our sleep.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“His best play is to try to make it onto the train without us noticing him, but I could see how some people would come to the same conclusion as you.”
“You think that he wouldn’t get away clean, shooting us?”
“He had the coordinates to the claim and he checked in with Petey,” Jimmy said. “I know you and Petey aren’t ever going to be best friends, but the man who kills me is going to die badly when - and I mean when - Petey finds him.”
Sarah nodded.
“But he doesn’t know that.”
Jimmy drew his gun and was waiting as Hansen came up into view again. Hansen twisted his face to the side.
“Guess I shoulda seen that one coming,” he said.
“Hate to impose on your hospitality,” Jimmy said, “but this is a relationship business, and I don’t know you.”
“The lot of absenta you’ve got about to come in, I suspect you don’t know anyone,” Hansen said, holding up his hands. “Oh, sorry. I check every night.” He switched his lantern over to methane, the blue flame dancing eerily over his skin. Jimmy sat forward.
“That’s flake on your hands, there, isn’t it?”
Hansen nodded.
“I’m just into the region she was talking about. If you agree, I’m going to plan on heading back to Lawrence tomorrow, take my samples to the lab in Preston myself.”
Jimmy nodded, standing and walking over to Hansen and going through his clothes, pulling three guns and six knives.
“Got a long road ahead of you two,” Hansen observed as he squatted in front of the fire again. Sarah sat down on her blanket, watching the flames for hours as both Jimmy and Hansen fell asleep. She went through Hansen’s stuff, finding a number of additional knives and one more gun, then she lay down to sleep.
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They survived the night and got Hansen packed up in the morning to start back in toward Lawrence, then they took the opposite path, continuing away from Lawrence. Sarah worked off the sunshadows to pick a direction. She’d need a map, tomorrow, but just going about the right direction today was good enough. She knew the mountain she was headed for, and what side of it she wanted to be on.
“Surprised you didn’t ask me to tie him up, last night,” Jimmy said.
“Thought about it,” Sarah answered, reading animal signs. Dog would have had a great time, up here, but the trip was too long and over territory she hadn’t crossed, herself, before. She was remembering, though, that having an animal who slept lightly and had a fearsome set of teeth was worth the risk. She’d bring him with her next time.
She looked back at Jimmy.
“Neither one of us thought he was a fake, and it’s hard to fool both of us.”
He nodded.
“It’s true.” He was quiet for a spell, then she heard him draw breath to speak again. “You’re going easy on me, aren’t you?”
“You need it.”
She didn’t have any particular reason to hide it from him, so she didn’t. He snorted.
“You shouldn’t take risks just because you think I’m too soft to sleep on open ground.”
“But you are. We’ve got a lot of hard nights ahead of us, probably some cold ones, if I can’t find some likely firewood, and I’m not going to turn down a flat spot with a fire.”
“You’d have left him and gotten an hour behind you before you camped, wouldn’t you?”
She considered.
“Probably. Should have brought Dog.”
“I need to look into getting one, myself.”
She glanced back at him.
“You want one born here, Jimmy. Dog’s too important to buy out of a city.”
“I know that. You know anyone who has spare?”
Sarah stretched her mouth to the side.
“Someone asked me about breedin’ Dog, the other day,” she said. “Could look at buying a bitch.”
“You’d do that?” Jimmy asked. “Tolerate a litter?”
“You keep ‘em out at the barn, bitch takes care of ‘em,” Sarah said. “He’s a good dog. Made it a long time, hunts like a pro.”
“I’ll make it happen,” he said.
They rode for hours without any more talk than that. The sun passed overhead and the shadows came from ahead of them now. She shot a poisonous animal that she saw along the path ahead of them and Gremlin jumped, but he kept his feet under him. Jimmy’s horse was less settled, and probably would have bolted if Gremlin hadn’t been ahead of him.
“You given any more thought to the sawmill?” Sarah asked as dusk approached and she started watching for a good place to hole up for the night.
“It’s a good idea,” Jimmy said. “And I see why we’d put it earlier on the list. I’ve thought that there’s some potential for some artisan work, along with just having the raw lumber there for building.”
“To be an artisan, you gotta have skill to start with,” Sarah said. Jimmy snorted.
“Or the balls to tell everyone you do, even when you don’t,” Jimmy said. She looked back at him, and his eyebrow ticked, defying her to argue with him. He was riding without stirrups, his legs stretched long to either side, relaxed. It was a mixed signal for how he was holding up. The ability to relax like that was proof that he was comfortable, and that he’d ride that casually wasn’t absolutely conclusive that he was sore, but at the same time, you kicked your feet out of the stirrups when your knees started to get sore, first thing. Odds were good that he was wearing thin.
“That horse steps sideways on you, you’re going over the side,” she said.
“Good thing I know well enough when he’s going to do it,” Jimmy answered. She shook her head.
“We’re two days away from help, Jimmy Lawson.”
“Good thing I’m traveling with Sarah Todd,” he answered. “She once got a man back, three days out, with an exploded liver, dragging on th
e ground behind a horse.”
“Who told you that?”
“People who want me to know that they think you’re more important than me.”
She smiled to herself, turning frontward again.
She found a dry space under a huge, branching tree at the bottom of a valley, where it would stay marginally warmer overnight, and she dismounted, looking for dead wood and using a hatchet to chop it up as Jimmy tore dry grass and then bits of wood off of her firewood, setting it for her to light.
Gremlin wandered the rest of the way down the hill to drink from the stream there. Sarah set up her tripod as the fire took, watching as Jimmy sat down against the tree trunk, his feet up on the knotted roots there.
“You gonna make it?” she asked. He glanced up at her, humored.
“Don’t have any choice,” he answered, “though I’m willing to admit I’m feeling it.”
He smiled, rubbing his knee.
“I can give you something to help,” she said, but he shook his head.
“Don’t waste it on me yet,” he said. She nodded, turning back to tend the kettle again.
“You want tea or just water?”
He sighed.
“I’ll take the tea tonight,” he said. She put the gremlin directly into the water, going to get grain out of Gremlin’s bag and putting it out in a shallow dish for both him and Jimmy’s horse. They were taking an easy rate, letting the horses graze through the day, but at this altitude, she wanted to make sure they weren’t working too hard. She’d known of horses to suffer heart attacks up high in the mountains, just from not being in strong enough shape to handle the slopes and lack of oxygen. Jimmy’s horse was a Lawrence native, and Gremlin was plenty fit, but it didn’t hurt to keep them well-fed anyway.
She took out a metal pan, putting it on the bottom pegs of the tripod, just above the fire, and she poured a can of beans onto it, then went back and peeled the lid off of a can of smoked beef strips, stirring them and pouring a little of the weak gremlin tea over top of it just to keep everything from drying out before it heated. Maybe a minute later, she scraped the resulting meal into a pair of bowls and tipped the plate off of the tripod with her toe to let it cool. She brought both bowls over to the tree, sitting down next to Jimmy and giving him one.
“I can’t tell you how good that smells,” he said.
“Best thing for a meal is a healthy appetite,” Sarah answered. “If you want it, I can make hardtack, too.”
He snorted, shoveling beans into his mouth.
“I made hardtack at home, once,” he told her. “It was awful.”
She nodded.
“It ain’t made for eating when there are choices,” she said. “Night like tonight, it’d warm your belly and make you feel like you ain’t missin’ nothin’, though.”
He smiled, tipping his head back to look up at the branches overhead, dark silhouettes against a dim sky.
“You wish your life could be this simple.”
“’Course,” she said. “Who doesn’t?”
He smiled.
“I think that may be why I loved you when we were eight. You don’t know the answer to that question.”
She ignored that, knowing better than to probe into it.
“You want the hardtack or not?”
He swallowed, taking a deep breath and sighing contentedly, then nodding and sitting forward a fraction.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
She poured tea and made hardtack bread, just gremlin flour and rendered beef fat, and she went back to sit next to him again, giving him tea and bread. He devoured that as well, then grabbed his blanket from the pile he’d pulled off of his horse when they stopped, pushing off his boots and covering himself with the blanket.
“Gonna wake up sore in a dozen spots, like that,” Sarah said, going to a flatter spot next to the fire.
“Like it here,” Jimmy said, already falling asleep. She smiled, laying out her own bedroll and laying down. She watched the sky finish darkening, pulled the heavier blanket over her as the fire died and the thin mountain air lost all of its heat. Eventually, she pulled her hat down over her eyes, letting herself drift as the bugs in the wood around her took to song.
Yes.
This was all she really wanted from life.
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Jimmy walked like an old man the next day, but he got up onto his horse without help and he rode through the first half of the day without complaint. Sarah stopped early for the rain, making a spare lunch that was at least better than eating in the saddle, and she watched as Jimmy gimped to a flat rock to sit down.
She sighed.
“You ever tell anyone about this, I’ll slit their throat and beat you,” she said, going over to him as he sat. His eyebrows went up, and she shook her head, pulling his boots off one after the other, feeling her thumb up the ridge of his foot for the tightness that she knew would be there and screwing her thumb into it mercilessly. Jimmy yelled, trying to pull away, but she had a firm grip across the top of his foot and she worked the spot until it went lax. He gasped, falling forward with his arms across his knees, and she put her hand out for the other foot.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked, letting her have his other foot. The yell wasn’t any less loud the second time, nor was the self-defensive reflex, but the tendons eased faster and she squatted, bracing his toes against her knee and pressing hard to lengthen his calf, then running both thumbs the length of the muscle. He dropped his head back.
“Ain’t hard to figure,” she said. “I been out ridin’ rough country most of my life.”
He panted as she pressed his toes harder with her knee, then let the pressure off and grabbed the wide part of his foot, twisting his ankle around to its limits.
“No,” he said. “My mother didn’t teach you this.”
She looked up at him, switching feet again.
“Learned it myself when I got back from Oxala. Had all that muscle built up and trained all them years, hard to admit that it’s gone to nothin’, gettin’ back with my fancy degrees and all those plans of yours.”
He grinned, in pain, and she stood, letting one of his legs rest to the side and straightening the other. She caught his toes under the arch of her boot, pulling the top of his foot flat with his shin, and she dug around in the ligaments and tendons around the top of his knee.
The next words he said were a random, violent selection of gibberish, but he traded legs without hesitation. His knees would be the worst, for pain, even given he’d slept on tree roots the night before.
When she walked around to the far side of the rock, tossing his shoulders far out over his knees, he thrashed for a moment to take his jacket and shirt off, leaving his skin bare under the dim light of the shading tree.
“Why,” he started, then lost his air again as she took to work on his back, finding knots and soreness there from sleep the night before, but working slower. His skin under her hands wasn’t something she was accustomed to, outside of him taking her hand in Preston or Intec. He had a fine build, lean, but well-defined and strong, shoulder blades that formed peaks to either side of his spine. She pulled his chest back to force them to lay flat so that she could work his upper back and neck, and his breathing turned normal again.
“Why don’t you want anyone to know you can do that?” he asked as she rolled his head to the side, his ear resting against her palm, her thumb pulling the muscle where his head connected to his neck, long and smooth.
“You know what a masseuse is, in Intec,” she said, no drawl, no hiding.
He was very still. He was so very seldom completely still, like that.
“You have healer’s hands, Sarah,” he said. “You let too many people take what you are away from you.”
“It’s soft,” she said, rolling his head to the other side. The rain began to patter down on leaves overhead, but the ground around them was dusty dry, and none of it reached them. All the same, the sound put a shiver down her back.
“That may be,” he said. “That may be.”
She sighed, flicking the back of his head and going to pick his shirt up off the ground.
He sat straight, eyes closed, just breathing.
“Thank you,” he finally said, not opening his eyes.
“Don’t sleep stupid again,” she answered, going to check Gremlin. When she looked at him again, he still hadn’t moved.
“Don’t tell me I broke you,” she said, pouring out the last of the tea and setting the kettle away from her small cooking fire.
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought so clearly,” he said. She gave him a wasted dour look, picking up her tripod and putting it out in the rain.
“You could at least put on your shirt,” she said. “You look a fool.”
He smiled, but he ignored her.
Finally, as the rain subsided, he stood and wrestled his shirt back over his head without bothering to unbutton it, then putting on his jacket and retrieving his hat from the ground.
“I’d have paid a week’s wages for that in Intec,” he said, eyes still distant. She shook her head, going to get Gremlin. Jimmy’s horse followed along behind just to not be alone.
“It’s like hardtack,” she said. “It ain’t meant for when there’s options. It’s just amazin’ when it’s all there is.”
He smiled, giving her a look like he knew the same thing that she did, only she wasn’t willing to admit it, but he didn’t argue with her. He got up into the saddle and Sarah packed the last of her supplies, tying them down behind her saddle and mounting up, checking her map and nodding forward.
“We’re about an hour out, I’d say,” she said. “Claim’s small and on a steep bit of mountain. If anything kills you, this trip, this’ll be it.”
“You mean that literally or figuratively?” Jimmy asked. She stopped next to him, peering at the trees as if she could see through them.
“You ride with your feet in the stirrups, Lawson. That horse aims to make it home in one piece, so you’d best stay on it.”
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The plants grew more sparse around them. The ground was still wet, thick with lichen and moss, but nothing flew, here, not even the bugs. A few of them hopped out of the way as the horses went through, and Sarah let Gremlin pick his own pace, both because of the lack of air and because the lichen was over a slick slate base that let the ground cover slide away easily. The wrong step, and the horse would go down, and she’d have to put a bullet to him here and now and find a way to walk home. She checked Jimmy frequently, but he was watching the world below him.