by Chloe Garner
“I’m gonna ask Thomas once he’s back at the house and gets hisself put back together,” Sarah said. “You think he ain’t gonna tell me exactly what happened?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Wade laughed. “We did what we had to do, and we don’t care what you or anyone else thinks of it.”
Sarah crossed her arms.
“You remember I’m still the law, ‘round these parts, right?”
Wade eyed her.
“Not when you aren’t here,” he answered.
“Especially when I ain’t there,” Sarah retorted. “And bein’ Jimmy Lawson’s brother ain’t gonna get you out of it. You put boys in the ground…”
“We didn’t put them in the ground,” Rich said, comin’ out of the building and standin’ next to Wade. “We made other people do it.”
She pretended he hadn’t said it. Weren’t gonna do nobody no good, him talkin’ like that. She went to ask another question, but Rich just kept goin’.
“If we’d left them on their own, we would have gotten here to find a building full of bodies. They’d have gone to war over the food, destroyed it in the process, and then starved to death. It doesn’t matter how many of them we had to kill, we saved the rest. Net gain.”
“These ain’t livestock, Rich Lawson,” Sarah said. “These are men. We got different rules, and you don’t get to pretend like it’s somethin’ else, just ‘cause you’re the big man with the gun.”
Wade’s mouth went tight, like he were fightin’ with her in his head, and she turned her gaze to him again.
“You got somethin’ to say?” she asked.
He grinned, the look of a dog what peed in the front room, and she shook her head.
“You put me in the position of decidin’ whether or not to hang the two of you, it don’t matter if you live or die, you ain’t never gonna have lives again.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Rich said. “We made examples, and we did what we had to. What Jimmy put us here to do.”
“Don’t you invoke him in this,” Sarah said. “This is ‘tween you all and me. And I’m gonna do what I always done. I’m gonna do interviews, I’m gonna find the best version of the truth I can out of ‘em, and I’m gonna do the best I know how to do right by the town.”
“You can’t hang us,” Wade said. “Jimmy won’t let you.”
“You done somethin’ worth hangin’ over?” Sarah asked, tickin’ her head back at him. Still no shame. His chin twitched higher.
“Last time I spent time with you, we killed more men than this because they were wandering in and out of our train cars,” Wade said. She worked her jaw for just a moment.
“You can’t tell the difference between headin’ off men tryin’ to assassinate your family and shootin’ unarmed men who’s hungry, you’re less a human bein’ than I gave you credit for,” Sarah muttered. She looked back at Rhoda, Thomas, and the very nervous mare as men continued to pour out of the building and past the buckboard.
“Ain’t the place,” Sarah said. “We’ll discuss it once we got the town runnin’ again and I had a chance to work out what happened.”
“Nothing,” Rich said. “Nothing happened. There. I solved it for you.”
Sarah blinked at them once, then turned on her heel and walked to the buckboard, standin’ at Thomas’ knee.
“Show me the graves,” she said.
He’d been lookin’ at Ellie, in Rhoda’s arms, and he’d been more hisself for a moment, but he blanched at this.
“Sarah,” he said.
“Now,” she said. “Get down and you show me where they buried the men what died here.”
Thomas climbed down hesitantly, and Rhoda shot Sarah a dark look that Sarah ignored, followin’ Thomas around back of the building where he stopped in front of nine shallow graves, one next to another. The most recent was still loose, but the others had baked down under the unrelentin’ sun.
Sarah stood next to him as he folded his hands before him, just to keep from fidgetin’.
She heard voices behind her, men she didn’t know, men she did. Rhoda. Ellie fussed.
They stood.
Thomas rubbed his toe in the sandy soil, not lookin’ away.
He weren’t soft.
Heart of steel, that man.
“These are the men you owe the truth to,” Sarah said. “Don’t care how hard it is to tell, you gotta tell it. Every bit. Don’t matter that it’s your brothers, don’t care what they say and don’t care what Jimmy says. You got it?”
Thomas coughed and nodded.
“I do.”
“All right,” Sarah said. “Get.”
He turned and left and Sarah stood for another moment.
There were too many men runnin’ around town these days to even guess if she might’ve known some of these, but weren’t entirely unlikely. New men’d do what they were told. It were the strong ones, the bright ones, the ones that tended to catch her attention, what would start somethin’ against the Lawsons, if there were cause.
She hoped like hell there hadn’t been cause. That it had just been firebrands leadin’ a charge for the power of it.
The shantytown were a violent place. She knew it. Men died there more days than they didn’t. Nine in near as mattered three weeks weren’t a bad pace, all told. Problem was what did ‘em in. Problem was Rich and Wade Lawson puttin’ bullets to men what weren’t carryin’ guns. Problem was, if the Lawsons had been puttin’ down mad dogs, at least some of the men leavin’ this place would ‘a been grateful.
Weren’t a one of ‘em cast a grateful eye at none of ‘em.
Nine bodies.
This was gonna be hell.
She walked back around the building to the buckboard, findin’ Wade and Rich loaded up in the back.
Rhoda, Thomas, and Ellie in the front.
Took everything Sarah had not to drop the twins in the dust and make ‘em walk home. Problem with that was that it was a death sentence, and it probably weren’t a sentence for the two of them.
She wished she’d tied Gremlin to the back of the buckboard, at least, so she’d have a mount to herself.
She wouldn’t get in the back with the twins, nor would she make Thomas move.
She wouldn’t risk Ellie among the men, not a fraction.
She walked ‘round the buckboard to Rhoda and looked up at the woman.
“Take her, take them, get. Go straight to the Lawson house and get inside. Lock it down. The minute Jimmy shows his face at the house again, you send him back up here with a spare mount. Clear?”
“What?” Rhoda asked. “You aren’t staying.”
“I got things I need to look at ‘fore they go missin’,” Sarah said. “Keep her safe.”
Rhoda looked at her with alarm, but Sarah was already turnin’, headed for the double doors into the building.
The building didn’t have power. No real surprise there, as the Lawson house was the only place in town what did, before Jimmy’d added the new houses for the investors. Most of the buildings around town, though, knew how to capture the right angle of light to keep ‘em well-lit through the day.
Somethin’ had gone wrong with the design, here, and there weren’t no windows to let in the sunlight from where it stood. Standin’ in the doorway, as men passed her on their way back to town, slowed to a trickle by now, and some of ‘em lookin’ right weak, she felt like she were lookin’ down into a grave.
She rested a hand on the butt of one of her guns, smellin’ the place. Air were still wet, and the Lawrence land didn’t like that none. Didn’t matter how happy it made the hobflowers each season, the wet brought rot to everything else, and she could smell it easy here, same as in town. Wood made to withstand dry heat would open up like the pages of a book to wet like that, take it in deep, and never be the same again.
That weren’t the only smell, though.
Overpowerin’ that were the smell of men. Men what ain’t bathed in weeks, what didn’t take the trouble to use the facil
ities when nature intended. It was sharp and sour, not old enough to be stale, but with the promise of that kind of lingering for weeks or months on.
Sarah hadn’t been here when the place were fresh, but she had the sense now that the best thing to do with it would be to tear it down and start anew.
She looked over her shoulder once to make sure Rhoda and the lot were safely turned and on their way, then she took a step out of the sun and into the putrid building.
There was a man curled in the corner, snoring quiet like and she made a note to check on him on the way out, then continued through the front room.
The building was built like a dormitory, one front lobby with tables and chairs, long benches. Everything was made out of wood or metal or stone, to keep the rot and decay away in the long stretches that they weren’t in use, but the design weren’t over-sparse, and a kind eye could envision men playin’ cards, sittin’ to meals here, jawin’ to each other to burn the hours. Evenin’ time, it would be a better space, ‘cause the sun would lend it light. For now, it were shadowed and dank, and invoked the idea of creeping vermin.
She got to the point where the long cross-hallway hit the room and she looked to either side. There were doors at the ends of the hallway that let in some light, but again, they were dark as mining tunnels, near as bad as the half-wit attempt at housin’ Willie and Paulie had put in, in town, to get the tavern back open again.
Should’ve been lamps, at least. Place needed windows, sky-lights, to let in enough sun to keep it clean and hospitable. Sarah turned left, pushin’ doors open as she went along, findin’ one or two latched closed, and a handful locked. Smell of men made her eyes water, and she passed the bathroom in quick strides, knowin’ she had to go in there and yet waitin’ for a better time, sometime later.
Halfway down the hallway, she found the first one.
Weren’t the last.
The rooms were identical, save which way they faced. Four bunks, built into the walls, a sink, a desk of sorts, a pair of chairs, and a bench. Enough space for four men to not quite run into each other, but not enough for them to have more ‘n a change of clothes with ‘em. Brutal, but effective. Keep ‘em sheltered, fed, and watered, they could ride out most anything.
So long as a Lawson didn’t shoot ‘em.
What caught her attention was the busted-in door. Doors were made of thin wood, not much for privacy protection, and it had split down the middle, most likely when a foot came through it. Hinges had held, but the second half of the door lay on the floor. Inside, the little bit of beddin’ in there were a mess, tossed around more like it’d been used for cover than that someone’d gone through the room lookin’ for something. Chairs lay on their sides. A brown stain, nearly round, covered a good quarter of the floor.
Sarah looked at it with pursed lips for a moment, then dropped her head about a foot and a half and looked ‘round the room, findin’ the bullet lodged in the wall under one of the bunks.
She looked around the room again, playin’ the various ways it could’ve gone, then went on.
Seven of the men had died in their rooms.
“Dammit,” she muttered, standin’ in the seventh, up on the third floor of the building.
Up here, they had put in sky lights, and the environment were much more forgiving, though the smell weren’t.
By her count, every last one of the men who had died in his room had done it with one or both of the twins breakin’ in to get at him. It were at least possible they’d all been executions of one kind or another.
Possible they’d been men breakin’ into each other’s rooms and the Lawsons comin’ in and breakin’ things up best they could, but that weren’t the kind of read she’d got off Wade, Rich, or Thomas. Thomas would’a felt bad, but not as bad as he did, bein’ party to men dyin’ desperate like that, but the kind of sick he was showin’ meant he thought Wade and Rich had gone too far.
Rich and Wade hadn’t done much to make Sarah think elsewise.
She started back down, headed for the supplies and the room the Lawson boys would have been stayin’ in, when she heard Jimmy’s voice.
“I’m up here, Jimmy,” she hollered back, not changin’ her pace.
There was a gap, quiet voices as the remainin’ men realized they wasn’t as alone as they thought, quick footsteps.
“Where?” Jimmy called.
“Here,” Sarah answered, roundin’ the second staircase to head down the first. He appeared at the bottom.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked.
“I aim to find out,” Sarah answered. “But it ain’t good. Who in hell designed this place? It’s a prison as bad or worse than the one Willie and Paulie built. All I can say for it is that it’s standin’.”
“There were supposed to be lamps,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know why they didn’t get installed, yet. We ran up against the flood.”
She shook her head, movin’ past him toward the bank of rooms with powered locks on ‘em. Right up by the front, she’d seen the Lawson’s lodgings right off, but left ‘em for last, save the wretched bathrooms.
“Rhoda couldn’t tell me what happened, and the boys wouldn’t,” Jimmy said. “What do you know?”
“That they wouldn’t tell you,” Sarah answered, puttin’ her hand to the first lock and waitin’ for the door to open. It clicked and she pushed it open, findin’ a black-dark room that at least didn’t reek. She saw a glint of glass and took the lamp down off the wall, takin’ out her lighter to it and puttin’ it back up on the wall.
Room was… Unremarkable. Beds weren’t made, but that was about it. Sarah looked at Jimmy.
“We got a problem.”
“Tell me.”
She told him about the graves and the blood, the doors. The way the men had moved, headin’ back toward town. He listened without comment, then followed her to the supply room, where the door opened for her palm print, same as the last.
She pushed open the door and stopped.
They’d left the lamp burnin’, here, and the room was trashed. Worse than the front room or the bathrooms, it showed all the signs of anger, destruction, misuse, and Sarah found the last two blood pools here.
“Tell me what you see,” Jimmy said, standin’ next to her.
She shook her head.
“Revolt of some kind,” Sarah said. “Fear or resentment, one, and two men dead, immediately. Probably among the first, though there ain’t no tellin’. Like as not, Wade and Rich hunted ‘em down, after this, shot ‘em as they stood.”
“They had enough supplies for months,” Jimmy said. Sarah nodded.
“Still do, if someone were willin’ to go through and find what ain’t destroyed. Water, back over there, still looks good, most of the cans’ll still be food inside.”
Plates, trays, utensils, cooking gear, blankets, pillows, medical supplies. She could see evidence Jimmy had thought it out, careful, plannin’ this room. Nothin’ breeds violence faster’n scarcity, and he’d done his level best to head that off.
“They’re going to tell you that they were attacked,” Jimmy said. Sarah shook her head.
“They would’a done it, when I saw ‘em, if they thought it’d fly. You worried for Thomas?”
“What do you mean?” Jimmy asked. She glanced over.
“Thomas knows what happened, here, and he ain’t gonna sugar coat it or try to deceive me none, tellin’ me about it.”
“You’re assuming he’s innocent,” Jimmy said.
“I am,” Sarah said. “But that don’t change nothin’. He’s gonna tell me ‘cause men died, and he owes it to ‘em.”
“You’re worried Wade and Rich are going to punish him in advance,” Jimmy said.
“I ain’t rulin’ out those two killin’ the witness,” Sarah answered. “He ain’t armed and neither is Rhoda. You’re relyin’ on their sense of restraint or Little Peter not bein’ drunk.”
“I’m relying on their sense of self-preservation,” Jimmy said. “If t
hey cause permanent damage to Thomas, there isn’t anything you would ever do that would compare to what I would do to them.”
It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t emotional at all. It was simply the stated truth.
He pinched the inside of his cheek between his teeth, lookin’ ‘round the room.
“I could use a smoke, how about you?” he asked.
“Need to check on the men what ain’t got what it takes to get out of here on their own,” Sarah said, and he nodded with a small, clerical frown.
“It’s a good thing to do. But I’d rather get a smoke outside, first.”
She looked over at him.
“Men died here,” she said. “And I might very well be lookin’ at sparin’ your brothers a hangin’ just ‘cause they belong to you. And I ain’t so sure I got that in me.”
He ticked his head toward the door, then turned and started down the hallway. Sarah followed, closin’ the door to the supply room behind her.
“You saw it, though,” she said as she caught up to him. “They let those men bleed out and die without so much as checkin’ on ‘em, went on with what they were doin’ long enough they didn’t even leave footprints when they got around to movin’ ‘em. Same with all the others. And this weren’t all at once. Graves are all different ages.”
“I’m sure you’ll do a very good job figuring out what happened and doing something about it. I want a smoke and I want to go outside.”
“You going to let me hang Rich and Wade if they executed those men in cold blood, without cause?” Sarah asked.
They walked through the front room and Sarah left Jimmy’s side to check the man layin’ against the wall in there. He had the sweats and a tremor she didn’t like the look of, but his heartbeat was strong.
“Need to get Doc up here, I reckon,” Sarah said. “Don’t know if they’ll all make it down to the camp on their own.”
“We let them die down there, every day,” Jimmy said.
“But up here, they’re our problem,” Sarah answered, walkin’ past him in the doorway out into the sun. She took out her bag of gremlin and rolled a cigarette, gettin’ it started and handin’ it off to him. He held it between straight fingers, then switched it to his thumb and forefinger with a deft motion, puttin’ it to his lips.