Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  “Maybe a week,” the tanner said, and Sarah nodded.

  “We’re keepin’ him from his work and his bed,” Sarah said finally, exasperated. “Make a choice and move.”

  Wade stood, pickin’ up a pair of boots and handin’ ‘em to the tanner.

  “These.”

  The tanner told ‘im the price, and Wade paid it, leavin’ behind a pile ‘a boots on the floor. Couldn’t take him nowhere. They walked back to town and Sarah went into the chemist, gettin’ her order, then goin’ back out to walk with Wade toward the inn.

  “You ain’t stayin’ in my room,” Sarah said.

  “Outside of it or inside of it, your choice,” Wade said. “But, tactically, you don’t want someone flagging which one is your room just because I’m sitting outside.”

  She looked over, and he shrugged, grinnin’ forward.

  “If it were me, I wouldn’t fight you over it. I’d just go get a good night’s sleep. I’m buzzed, I’ve got nice new footwear, and there’s no way I’d be trying to convince you to let me sit up all night. But this is Jimmy you’re fighting with, and we both know what he’d say.”

  Sarah went in the door at the inn, glancin’ back at Wade and shakin’ her head, then goin’ to the desk where the innkeeper waited.

  “One room,” she said.

  “What name?” the innkeeper asked.

  “You don’t need one,” Sarah said.

  “We like to be able to route messages, should they come in,” the man said pleasantly.

  “Ain’t gonna be none,” Sarah said. “We’ll be out, tomorrow morning.”

  He dipped his head and brought out a key, brass and mechanically simple. Sarah put her money on the counter and he made change, dippin’ his head again.

  “Breakfast is as dawn. Would you like food brought up to your room, tonight?”

  “No need,” Sarah said, and he smiled.

  “Let me show you to your room.”

  He walked up a set of stairs, takin’ a key off a ring at his waist and unlockin’ a door, then openin’ it for ‘em and standin’ aside.

  “Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you need something,” he said, closin’ the door behind him as he left. Sarah threw her hat on the bed and went to the bathroom, washin’ her face, then went to the bed again, pushin’ off her new boots and settin’ down the box with the hats in it, then sat down. Wade were sittin’ in a chair in the corner, gun out in his lap.

  Foolish.

  Foolish for him to be here. Foolish for him to be up all night. More foolish for Sarah to stay up, too. She shook her head, then lay down, grabbin’ her hat from the bed and puttin’ it over her eyes. She slept just about as well in her duster as she did any other way.

  --------

  Dawn.

  Light through the windows woke her, and Sarah moved her hat aside, lookin’ over at Wade where he slept in the chair. Too much alcohol and too little will power. She stood, goin’ to shower with the door locked, then came back into the room and kicked the leg of Wade’s chair.

  “Time to be off,” she said. “Whatever you got in your overnight bag, go get it done and meet me out front.”

  He wiped his sleeve across his mouth, lookin’ down.

  “Won’t tell Jimmy,” she said. “Didn’t make no difference, and he weren’t lookin’ for you to stand sentry all night, nohow. Just about makin’ sure someone had my back, out here, and you done that.”

  She left, just grabbin’ her box and droppin’ the key with the innkeeper, then went to stand on the boardwalk, listenin’.

  Weren’t right.

  Somethin’ about the way the folk were movin’, the way they were talkin’ to each other, weren’t the same as every other day, in Jeremiah. She waited on Wade, then jerked her chin at him.

  “Stay sharp,” she said. He frowned, but fell into step a half step behind, a full step to her left, right where Sarah’d’ve been with Jimmy. They walked toward the train station, then Sarah went through the doors at the saloon, Wade followin’.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Closer we get, weirder everyone gets,” she said. “Train ought just gotten here. If there’s something on there ain’t supposed to be, this’ll be the path news takes.”

  They took a table in the near-empty saloon, just listenin’ as people went past outside, came in to find out who knew what were goin’ on. Sarah saw it on Wade, true enough, he read it same as her. He had his gun sittin’ ‘crossed his lap even as they settled, and Sarah listened hard at whispers, but weren’t nobody gonna say nothin’ loud enough for the two of them to hear it. Time went by and Sarah lifted her head.

  “Reckon we’re just gonna have to go see. You fit?”

  “Yeah,” Wade said. She nodded, then went to the bartender and paid him a note to keep her kit ‘a goods behind the bar ‘till she got back, and they headed out, walkin’ down the boardwalk ‘long the main stretch toward the train. Final buildin’, Sarah went to rest her back against it, takin’ out a paper and rollin’ herself a cigarette. She offered one to Wade, who held up a hand.

  “Lost my taste for it, back in Preston,” he said, and she shook her head.

  “Weren’t bein’ friendly,” she said. “Looks a lot less questionable, two of us standin’ here smokin’ than the two of us just hangin’ out.”

  She offered it to him again and he took it, unlit, and held it in his mouth.

  Sarah rolled her head to the side, lookin’ over at the train and seein’ three cars out at the end of it with an awful lot of activity goin’ on for nothin’ comin’ off or goin’ on.

  “Shape of those cars,” she said, “there at the end. It tell you anything?”

  Wade looked around her then let his head drop again.

  “Those are for automobiles,” he said. “We used to ship ours like that, rather than all of us drive.”

  She twisted her mouth to the side.

  “Reckon those are Jimmy’s cars, then?”

  Wade shrugged.

  “No one tells me, but I’ve heard rumors.”

  Sarah looked over again.

  “Awful lot ‘a guys goin’ in to look at ‘em, for a through shipment, you think?”

  “Certainly don’t have any easy explanations,” Wade said. “You want to pull one of them aside for a private conversation?”

  “Don’t reckon we could without lettin’ the rest of ‘em know somethin’ ain’t right,” Sarah answered.

  “What do you want to do, then?” Wade asked.

  “Reckon we go slip in, see what they’re up to,” Sarah said. Wade snorted.

  “I thought you’d just ride in, guns blazing. Your temperament even out while I was gone?”

  “Nope, but if they’ve got more guns than me, I’d rather have a right good vantage for shootin’ ‘em, where they can’t all come at me, at once. Box is as good as any.”

  “You’d trap yourself with no escape so that you have no choice but to shoot them all?” Wade asked. “That’s more the woman I remember.”

  “Just like to have my back to somethin’ I trust nobody is gonna shoot me through,” Sarah said.

  “Jimmy said I was supposed to watch your back,” Wade answered. “Wouldn’t that mean dragging you away from here and letting him deal with whatever is going on, on that train, when it gets to town?”

  “It would, if it weren’t betrayin’ Jimmy himself, not doin’ something about this while they ain’t got no clue we’re here,” Sarah said, liftin’ her head again as someone walked toward the last of the train cars with a crate.

  “You know that symbol?” Sarah asked. Wade squinted.

  “I do.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “So do I. We do this now.”

  He sighed.

  “Yup. We do this now.”

  Sarah threw away the cigarette and drew her gun. Wade shook his head.

  “I’m never going to hear the end of it, that I let this happen,” he said.

  “They ain’t here
for me,” Sarah said. “No point, you even bein’ here, for this to happen. We’re just fixin’ somethin’ gone wrong while we’re watchin’.”

  He drew a gun and they swung ‘round the corner of the buildin’, handguns at the level, takin’ aim at the same time and droppin’ two of ‘em at the same time. Men scrambled, takin’ cover and lookin’ to return fire, but Sarah and Wade were runnin’ by this point, Sarah easin’ just to take two more shots and Wade gettin’ past her, hittin’ another guy off to her left. Sarah ducked, runnin’ low the last ten yards or so to dive into the railroad car and puttin’ her back to it as Wade took the other wall.

  “Well, they got a bug, now,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, the problem is they also have explosives,” Wade said. “I need to get that deactivated, in case they have a remote detonator.”

  “You know your way ‘round one of those?” Sarah asked, lookin’ at the box on the floor of the car.

  “I’ve worked for Jimmy Lawson my entire adult life,” Wade said. “I know my way around most available explosives, yes.”

  Sarah frowned, genuinely impressed, but not feelin’ the particular need to say it.

  “I’ll cover, then,” she said. “You keep us from gettin’ blowed up.”

  “Give ‘em hell,” Wade answered, slidin’ his gun across the floor to her and disappearin’ into the dark ‘round the far end of the car. Sarah checked the weapon, not likin’ to put her life into the fate of an unknown gun, but she trusted the Lawsons to at least take good care of the things, knowin’ they was at least as likely to use ‘em as Sarah were.

  She listened to the voices outside, gettin’ a feel for who was out there and how they moved, poppin’ her head around the doorway to catch a look and measure response. Three shots went off, not fast enough, but certainly read for her, should she try to line up a shot. Law in Jeremiah weren’t no more ‘n Sarah in Lawrence, and he weren’t likely to intervene at these odds. Bandits didn’t make it this far east on account of the number ‘a men with guns and the lack of big scores to put ‘em profitable long enough between ‘em. Jeremiah could ‘a rounded together to put ‘em back, but woulda happened by now, were it gonna. Train weren’t a part of town, not the way it were in Lawrence. They hadn’t ever known a time the train didn’t come, and they had more ‘a the skills necessary to keep the town runnin’ in a space of time where it got held up.

  Or blowed up, as the case might be.

  Sarah knew right enough they didn’t know what were goin’ on at that level, ‘cause Jeremiah weren’t gonna tolerate strangers comin’ in and blowin’ things up no more than any of the other towns up or down the line. They thought this was a fight over stuff, and Sarah couldn’t blame ‘em for not turnin’ up for that.

  She squatted lower, poppin’ her head around again as the voices outside got quieter. Less excited, more able to plan. Needed to stir, regardless, but she also wanted to see what they were up to. Couple ‘a shots bounced off the side of the train - good metal, there, for holdin’ up to sandstorms at need - and she stepped back into cover.

  “There’s another bomb comin’,” she said.

  “This one isn’t remote,” Wade said. “But I can make it go off, if that’s useful.”

  “Reckon you mean somewhere that ain’t in here,” Sarah said, but he didn’t answer. Couple minutes later, as the voices outside started gettin’ excited again, Wade turned up next to her holdin’ somethin’ the size of his palm.

  “How big a boom you reckon that is?” Sarah asked.

  “Enough to kill everyone in the car and anyone ten or fifteen feet away from it,” Wade said. “Knock down that sorry excuse for a train station, if the cars were too close.”

  Sarah nodded, thinkin’ through the distances.

  “What if it went off in here?” she asked. Wade knocked on the container wall.

  “That would probably hold. But you can’t be serious about setting it off in here,” he said. She shook her head.

  “No, I’m thinkin’ about beatin’ ‘em at their own game. How long to make it go?”

  “Tell me what time you want,” Wade said. “It’ll take me a minute to get it set, maybe two…”

  “Wrong answer,” Sarah said. “You quote it to me in seconds.”

  He sighed.

  “You sound like Jimmy. It’s not like setting an alarm clock. It’s going to take me a minute to make it talk to me again. I shut it down, you know?”

  “Don’t know why you’d do a fool thing like that. Need maybe five, six seconds, no more.”

  “All right, starting when?”

  “Startin’ when you say,” Sarah said. “And if it ain’t quick, they’re gonna win this race, and we’re gonna be wallpaste.”

  “Wallpaste,” he muttered, droppin’ to a knee and settin’ to work on it as Sarah listened outside.

  Damned quiet, out there.

  Wade lifted his head and nodded. Sarah put out a hand to take the device from him, feelin’ out the weight of it and then takin’ one slow breath as Wade’s eyes got bigger. She spun, lettin’ her duster swing out, sweepin’ along behind her as she moved into the cargo box’s doorway, grabbin’ the handle on the slidin’ door and keepin’ on, one movement, so much as she could make it. Door took a tug to get it movin’ - and Wade were on his feet, gettin’ out of the way, too - and guns went off, makin’ noises what weren’t much use to Sarah as she threw the bomb and kept goin’, slidin’ the door now, closin’ it in the face of a very wide set of eyes carryin’ a bomb just like her own, not a dozen paces away. Sarah gave the door one more hard tug, then ran for the far end of the train car.

  --------

  Sarah weren’t in the habit of losin’ time. Outside of sleepin’, here job was to see everything and react. So she didn’t black out. That didn’t happen. The next few moments were right fuzzy to her recollection, though, walls bein’ where they ought not be, the sound of metal unhappy about most everything, a car bouncin’ ‘gainst the far wall.

  Next Sarah was clear about, she was movin’, goin’ to find the door of the traincar again. It’d been dark in there, before, but with the door closed, weren’t hardly any light to see by. Car was in the way, so Sarah climbed over that, feelin’ a slick of blood on her hand, but everything seemed to be where it ought be, so she let that go for the time. She still had a gun in her other hand, and that were what mattered, when there might be survivors outside.

  Gettin’ to the door, where uneven bending in the wall let through a palm-wide gap ‘a light, Sarah could hear shouting. Bullets. Door didn’t pull and didn’t make any motions like it were like to, short of cutting it. Sarah heard Wade moving behind her.

  “You good?” she called, still listenin’ to what were goin’ on outside.

  “You threw one hell of a party,” Wade answered. “You get ‘em all?”

  “Someone’s cleanin’ up what I didn’t,” Sarah said.

  “How do you know?” Wade asked.

  “You think the citizens of Jeremiah suddenly took to shootin’ each other?” she answered.

  He grunted, then reached around her to tug the door. She resisted pointin’ out that he weren’t gonna get that door open if she couldn’t, mostly on account of that fact that she were likely gonna be stuck in here with him for a good long while, one of ‘em didn’t get killed in the meantime.

  “How do we get out, now?” he asked.

  “Wait for someone to come get us,” Sarah said.

  “Great plan,” he muttered.

  “I got ‘em,” Sarah said, as the guns stopped shootin’.

  “How would you know?” Wade asked. “You threw a bomb at them and took cover.”

  “I saw where they was and, assumin’ you knew your stuff when you told me what it could do, that bomb took care of most of ‘em. Jeremiah’s gonna get the rest.”

  “Why would they show up now, when they weren’t doing a thing, before?”

  She heard voices, and Sarah banged on the side of the train car, creatin
’ a resoundin’ noise nobody in town was like to miss.

  “Who’s in there?” someone called.

  “Sarah Todd from Lawrence, and Jimmy Lawson’s little brother,” Sarah answered. “Get us out of here.”

  “Are there any of ‘em in there with you?” the voice asked.

  “If they was in here, they’d already be dead,” Sarah said. “Get this door open.”

  “We’re gettin’ the tools from the blacksmith,” the voice said. “It’s gonna be a bit.”

  “Then get us some beers,” Sarah said. “They’ll fit through here, fair enough. They all dead?”

  “Dead or dyin’,” the voice said. “What’d they want?”

  “Settin’ bombs to the Lawson cars in here,” Sarah said. “Like to blow ‘em all up, when the Lawsons came to pick ‘em up in Lawrence. No tellin’ if they’d ‘a done it.”

  “What’d Jimmy do to make folk that mad at him?” the voice asked.

  “Run fetch us some beers,” Sarah said. “I ain’t gonna sit here and talk politics with a guy out in the sun while I’m stuck in a box.”

  “Hey, and leave all of the other cars alone until I look at them,” Wade called. He lowered his voice. “Don’t want anyone setting one of them off by mistake.”

  She glanced at Wade, who shrugged in the dim, then leaned against the buckled door and slid to the ground.

  “This is gonna take forever,” he said. “And that’ll have derailed the train. No way we’re getting home today.”

  “Oh, we’re gettin’, alright,” Sarah answered. “Jimmy needs to know what happened, and the rest of the train’ll be fit to run, soon as they decouple the cars. Up to them to figure out how to get everything runnin’ ‘fore the train gets back.”

  Wade snorted.

  “Why would that matter?” he asked.

  “’Cause Jimmy’s got business goin’ up and down this line day on day, and he ain’t gonna take kindly to it bein’ disrupted, no matter whose fault it ain’t. And that’s where the money is. You know it, I know it, and they know it. They wasn’t gonna interfere when it were just the train cars, but when it’s Jimmy bein’ angry at ‘em for not fixin’ somethin’ they ought fix, ain’t no place to hide from that.”