Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  “Ah,” Maxim said. “You think that someone who plays a game of chance is an idiot.”

  “House always wins,” Sarah said. “Jimmy and I get a cut of whatever comes in. You’re the one might make it, might not.”

  “But when I make it, I make it so much bigger than you do,” Maxim said. “And, admit it, you and Jimmy need capital.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but didn’t look. He might have been more likely to die of silk scarf than anyone else she’d met in her life, but he weren’t stupid.

  “Protection is what the Lawsons do,” she said, and Maxim laughed.

  “Maybe in this two-street town, but Jimmy had fingers in every game in town, all up and down the coast. Oxala is harder to crack than you’d think, but he managed it in every other major port city. He wasn’t the biggest deal in any given city, but he was big in all of them, and there aren’t many other men who can say that.”

  “Maybe so, but absenta is an illness,” Sarah said. “I seen too many men with that blue light in their eyes to ever go near it, myself.”

  “So you sell the illness to men like me, with enough money to make you rich,” Maxim said.

  “You’re the one who said you stand to make it big time, out here, the claims pan out,” Sarah said.

  “And you’re the one who said you don’t need them all to come in, to make the whole thing worthwhile. To rescue your hometown from extinction.”

  Sarah scratched her chin. He was diggin’ for something. Talk like this, it felt friendly, felt easy, felt like nothin’, but a man like Maxim, one who had sex for business purposes, he didn’t just have a chat, and Sarah weren’t the type to do it, either. She looked over at him, readin’ his posture.

  It was a game.

  It were all a game, and none of it.

  He’d told her the truth.

  He was ridin’ easy, as easy as a man could, who weren’t the ridin’ sort, eyes out, arms lax.

  “Jimmy picked a good one,” she said finally, lookin’ forward again. “Might be a bastard, but you’re good at your game.”

  “Right back at you,” he said with an audible grin. “As much as I’d like to see you chained to a wall by your ankle.”

  She didn’t answer, so he started talking again a minute later.

  “I’ve got a woman, now, back at the house. The staff are taking care of her, but she’s locked in a room, four chains and a dog bed.”

  “Ain’t got much interest in a person what ain’t got nothin’ better to do while you’re off traipsin’ around the mountains for two weeks,” Sarah said.

  She didn’t know why she answered him. She knew he was baitin’ her, but she said it, anyway. Too much dislike. She were too easy a mark.

  He laughed.

  “It was the only way she was going to get onto my calendar,” he said. “Kind of a five-six. Seven in the right bra.”

  There.

  That flash of white-hot anger. That was what she’d been warnin’ Jimmy about. Out here on her own, she mighta dumped him off the horse and left him a few days, just to… to show him. Show him she were the one with power, and damn if he didn’t know it and go after her, anyway. Always a game. Game about power, about dominance. He wanted to beat her, and she were lettin’ him, by stayin’ with him, lettin’ him by leavin’. He won every way he set up the game. That kind of man.

  “You don’t want a strong woman,” she said. “You want one what’s just strong enough to really resist breakin’, but if you actually found one what wouldn’t break, you’d be bored with her. Or mad.”

  “Don’t know,” Maxim said. “But I have to try to find out, don’t I?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re so busy runnin’ around breakin’ sticks with your knee,” she said. “Hope one of these days you find an iron rod instead, and you never walk again.”

  It wasn’t a victory, but it wasn’t the loss it could have been.

  “We can only hope,” he agreed happily, and let it go at that. She got almost an hour of silence out of him, from there, but it were hard won.

  --------

  Maxim spent a couple hours talking to Toby about the nature of bein’ a power player, in Lawrence or in Preston, and Sarah managed to ignore most of it, readin’ Dog and the land for signs that Jeffrey and his lot had been this way. There weren’t nothin’ conclusive, but here and there she saw dents in the turf what might ‘a been hoof marks, and Dog had an uneasy way to him that signaled scents what oughtn’t have been there.

  They crested the last ridge and started down toward Maxim’s second claim when Sarah smelled it and pulled ‘em up short.

  Looked at Toby.

  He were a grown up, a man, no matter how he looked. Had he been from Lawrence, she wouldn’t have paused him at all. But lookin’ like he did, and actin’ like he did, she had an instinct to treat him like a child.

  “What is it?” Maxim asked.

  “You smell smoke?” Sarah asked back, and Maxim lifted his head.

  “I do.”

  “Stuff don’t burn up here on accident,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe it’s just a cooking fire,” Toby said, cranin’ his neck to try to see. Sarah shook her head.

  She’d spitted too much meat to miss it; either they hadn’t realized what they were smellin’, or they were denyin’ it in hopes they were wrong. From the look of ‘em, neither had even thought of it. Livin’ in a city, you get used to all kinds of odd smells comin’ at you. Up in the mountains, ain’t so many smells to consider normal, makin’ the odd ones stand out more.

  She pulled her feet out her stirrups and slid to the ground, grabbin’ her rifle. Maxim followed suit and Toby were only a beat slow, this time.

  She walked direct away from the horses, not gettin’ any closer to the smell, and she took in a slow sweep of the mountain, what were visible through the trees. She’d be damned hard to see in her duster and her hat, but Maxim and Toby stuck out in their clean black clothes. Movin’ they stood out clear, and made fine targets.

  “Stay low,” she said.

  “What is it?” Maxim asked as Dog whined, rollin’ over his paws all the way down on his belly. It were Dog that told her for sure.

  “You smell it?” she asked.

  “Smoke,” Maxim said quietly with a nod. She shook her head.

  “Meat.”

  She nodded down at Dog.

  “Meat what don’t smell like meat ought.”

  “You don’t mean…” Toby said, then stopped.

  “Your man from Preston ain’t gonna be takin’ no more samples,” Sarah said. “And Jeffrey knows exactly where your other claim is.”

  She finished her sweep, as certain as she could be weren’t nobody but them around, and she started down the hill again, the smell of burnt meat gettin’ stronger as they went. They found a tent and a horse’s body next to a little cook fire with a tripod and a kettle over it. Fire was maybe a day old. Sarah stayed there while Maxim and Toby went a little way around the mountain to find the man from Preston. She heard Toby heave and shook her head. No point goin’ to see it, ‘less she were the only one available to put it in the ground.

  Maxim’s man, Maxim could do the diggin’. She went and found a shovel, standin’ and waitin’ for Maxim to come back. She handed it over, and he gave her a hard frown, and nodded. She went back to the fire, stirrin’ it to life and takin’ the kettle down to the cut between mountains where a stream ran, lookin’ for bigger water. Toby was by the fire when she got back.

  “You’re just… going to take over his camp?” the kid asked.

  “Don’t know what use he’s got for it,” Sarah answered.

  “But he’s dead,” Toby said.

  Sarah twisted her mouth. There were questions what needed answers, before this were over, but she suspected Toby weren’t the one to answer ‘em, neither because he had the answers nor because he were ready to give ‘em.

  “You want tea?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t want tea
,” Toby spat. “They burned him.”

  “Gathered that,” Sarah said.

  “Why?” Toby asked. She put the kettle back over the fire and went to sit on the dead man’s stool nearby.

  “Two reasons a man burns another man,” she said. “Either because they were doin’ it in pieces while he were alive to get answers, or to make a statement to others of his like that they don’t want no part of what happened to him.”

  Toby wretched again and Sarah took out her bag of gremlin, rollin’ a cigarette and lightin’ it.

  “How can you just live with that?” Toby asked. She shrugged.

  “It ain’t the livin’ with it, one way or the other,” she said. “It’s gonna happen whether or not I’m here. It’s livin’ with not doin’ a thing about it I can’t do.”

  “What are you going to do?” Toby asked.

  “We killed three of ‘em,” Sarah said. “I’ll keep an eye out, at town, for the fourth to turn up and I’ll hang ‘im high, I catch ‘im. The man what led ‘em up here, I’ve got more men, more time to go lookin’ for him, now, than what I had any time in the last eight years. Maybe this time I can track him down and put an end to him.”

  “I’m not staying,” Toby said. Sarah shrugged.

  “’Tween you and him, though you got a lot more options if you ain’t tied to his money.”

  Toby looked at her balefully and she shrugged again.

  “Money ain’t everything, kid. Livin’ the life you choose is just as important.”

  He rubbed his hands over each other, like tryin’ to get rid of somethin’ weren’t there, and she shook her head.

  “Have some tea.”

  She got him a cup and poured hot water over gremlin leaves, handin’ it over and sittin’ again. Didn’t point out he were drinkin’ out of the Preston man’s cup. No sense in that.

  Maxim came back ‘bout an hour later and collapsed next to the fire. Sarah finished her second cigarette and tossed it away, standin’.

  “I read you right, we want to camp somewhere closer to home than here,” she said. “I’m gonna rustle up the horses and we’ll get.”

  Toby looked over at the little camp.

  “We’ll just leave it all here?”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “You see anything there you need?”

  “He has a family,” Toby said. Sarah snorted.

  “They ain’t interested in the piece of canvas he slept under, out here.”

  Toby stood.

  “They might be.”

  Sarah pursed her lips.

  “You want to pack up his camp and ride it out, that’s up to you. I’ll help you get it up on the horse, but it’s your problem, from there.”

  He nodded quickly, and she glanced at Maxim, who was rubbin’ dirt off his hands, gazin’ at the fire. He’d seen death, no question in her mind, but Sarah paused to consider that he might never seen a man killed slow, with that much pain. He presented himself as a man with experiences, but if everyone thought you were capable of a thing like that, didn’t actually have to prove it, more ‘n not.

  She let it pass, goin’ to find Gremlin and the other two horses up and over the last ridge, grazin’ in a patch ‘a sun. She led ‘em down, over their objections at the smell, and she stood by as Toby wrestled the tent and the cook gear into a canvas sack he found inside the tent. Weren’t done well, and like as not it’d all fall out on the ride out, but it was his to do, and if he were gonna get the value out of it, he’d have to do it hisself. Sarah weren’t gonna get in the middle of that, and Maxim was still starin’ at the fire.

  Late in the day, they started back eastward, headin’ down into a valley that Sarah vaguely knew to have warmer nights. A hot spring fed a trickle of water what disappeared underground a ways off, but it kept the valley comfortable without a blanket, so long as it didn’t rain. They bedded down, and Sarah let ‘em sit through the final hours of the day. Finally Maxim looked up.

  “My claims are compromised,” he said. She shrugged.

  “Only gonna be a matter of time ‘till there’s a list of where all of ‘em are, floatin’ around where anyone can find it what wants to know,” she said. “Ain’t like they’re gonna move.”

  “I’m going to have to get men out here to defend them,” he said. She nodded slowly, lettin’ him get where he was goin’.

  “You’re still going to do it?” Toby asked.

  “Hell yes,” Maxim said. “Anything so valuable they’re willing to go to those lengths to shut it down, you don’t just back down. You’re on the verge of something you don’t even realize.”

  “What if it kills you?” Toby asked.

  “It isn’t going to kill me,” Maxim said. “It might kill you, but it isn’t going to kill me.”

  “Lotta men gonna die, ‘fore this is over,” Sarah murmured, leanin’ against a tree as Maxim scratched his chin.

  “It would be better if they knew their way around the mountains,” Maxim said. Sarah nodded slowly.

  “Problem with that is payin’ ‘em enough to be worth it,” she said. “Everyone’s gonna know that they’re riskin’ their lives, bein’ out here.”

  “But… absenta,” Maxim said. Sarah shrugged.

  “Up to you to make that balance level,” she said. “Absenta’s worth a hell of a lot, but only if you can get it sold.”

  He twisted his mouth to the side.

  “Jimmy wasn’t exactly clear on just how complicated this was going to get.”

  She looked at him, cool.

  “Have you ever known one of his big plans to be somethin’ other than complicated?”

  He grinned. It was a fake grin, put on because he felt like it ought have been there, but it were the first any of ‘em had smiled since the claim.

  “No.”

  She shrugged again, tuckin’ her hat lower over her eyes.

  “Get your walkin’ in. Only way to get your legs back under you after that much time in a saddle. Tomorrow, we ride through. Should get back to the house in time for a late dinner.”

  She heard Gremlin snort like he’d sniffed in a bug, and the other two horses answer. Dog sat on the ground, lickin’ his paws. The breeze smelled of sulphur, but not so bad you noticed after ten minutes or so, and the air was quiet. Fine ground for defendin’, fine ground for restin’.

  Her mind turned to Jeffrey.

  He hadn’t been much more ‘n a nuisance in the years since the Lawsons had left. Took what he could grab, but never did it with an intent to kill the man he were robbin’. Not the way the proper bandits had done. Sure, he’d shot at Sarah, hit her, but that were self defense. Sarah didn’t actually think he’d ever shot no one else.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek.

  If Pythagoras had gotten hooked up with him, Jeffrey might know the mountains better than Sarah herself, or Apex and Thor. He might actually be dangerous.

  She had no idea where he made home. Range was big and had plenty out-of-the-way spots Sarah never woulda gone. That big mule of his ‘d eat an armload of grass any given day, but it weren’t rare, up here. If the man were willin’ to live on what he could hunt or dig, didn’t take much to keep a body alive. He weren’t on Perpeto, and he stood out for it, but he was still strong, wilier than most. Made Sarah think maybe the Perpeto kept men from turnin’ into what they naturally woulda been, if they was able to actually get old.

  She was gonna have to do somethin’ about him, this time. He’d been there, when the guns had murdered the man from Preston. She had no doubt that Jeffrey had been the one to find the claim. Outside guns had no hope, this far into the range.

  He hadn’t robbed a prospector. He’d crossed Jimmy. Weren’t no grace for that kind ‘a thing.

  Too many big problems, though. Jeffrey were tied to a big problem, but Sarah didn’t reckon he made it to the list of big problems, hisself. Jimmy’d have an opinion, and she were interested in hearin’ it, but if he thought combin’ the mountains were worth it, with the days they
had now, she’d check his fever and put him back in the bed.

  When she got back, she was goin’ to Intec.

  Hard to put that into real thoughts.

  She looked away, up through the woods, just listenin’.

  Gettin’ the absenta out of these rocks… Fool’s mission.

  Too much ground, and too many weak points. Only way to do anything with any semblance of safety, out here, was to be alone and fast.

  Like Sarah.

  She could fill her pockets with absenta and make it to the train by tomorrow mornin’, if it were important enough, and nobody was gonna get the jump on her, take it away. Just not gonna happen.

  Mule trains and carts and unarmed men with shovels and picks and explosives?

  Sittin’ targets.

  No way to do it.

  Pythagoras didn’t even have to do what he were doin’, to beat ‘em. The absenta would beat ‘em all on its own, same as it always had.

  It beat Peter Lawson Sr, and it beat Elaine Lawrence. It beat Lawrence, the town, and then it left ‘em to die.

  And yet.

  They were all right. It were the life blood of towns like Lawrence, and the only hope the place had to keep kickin’ more ‘n six months or a year. From here, she could see it. The train had all but stopped. Lawrence couldn’t have survived much longer.

  She went to her pile of gear, from where she’d dumped it off Gremlin, and she started goin’ through it, simple habit, makin’ an inventory of what were there and what were short. Didn’t pay much attention to Maxim or Toby, not carin’ what they got up to in their rest, and they left her well enough alone. The day passed, and then the night.

  She slept with her hat over her eyes, listenin’ in a passive way to Maxim and Toby struggle, knowin’ full well when mornin’ came that they were in trouble.

  They’d needed rest, both of ‘em, but she hadn’t kept ‘em up, workin’. Walkin’ at the least.

  When Toby got up, he walked like he’d taken beatings all night long, and Sarah suspected Maxim were near as bad, though he had the sense not to wander around and show it off.