Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  She waited.

  He blew smoke off to the side, then offered the cigarette back to her.

  “If they murdered nine men in cold blood, between the two of them, without a shadow of cause, I will not stand in the way of you hanging them,” Jimmy said.

  “There’s a hole in that permission I could drive a herd of cattle through,” Sarah said.

  “Of course,” Jimmy said, watchin’ as she pulled air through the cigarette and let it fall to her side. “I’m not going to let you execute my brothers to make an example of them. And I don’t think you would, once you get to the real truth. They’re trained. Not formally, but they’re trained, and I trust them. I know they’ve both killed people, that they’ve killed people in self-defense and in the heat of a fight. They may have even killed people for being inconvenient to a project, though nothing comes immediately to mind where they’d have done it on my orders. But men who were innocent, or simply inconvenient as people?” He shook his head, lookin’ out over the plain toward the house, somewhere off over the distance. “No. Neither of them would do it.”

  “We’ll see,” Sarah said. “Weren’t neither of them up for lookin’ me in the eye, when they left.”

  “They’re afraid of you,” Jimmy said. He put out a hand, and she let him take the cigarette. “They know your temper and they know you don’t like them. It’s natural for them to be cagey when they’ve done things you would have done differently.”

  “Them’s dodgy words again,” Sarah warned. He shrugged, lettin’ the cigarette waggle from the corner of his mouth.

  “There’s a difference between doing something differently from how you would, and doing it badly enough to warrant hanging them.”

  “That may be,” Sarah said, “but all three of ‘em were ashamed of what happened here. Shame ain’t easy to come by, for Rich or Wade.”

  The corner of Jimmy’s mouth came up.

  “You know, most people can’t tell when you’re lying,” he said.

  She pursed her lips and followed his gaze out.

  There was a long silence, then he drew once more on the cigarette and lifted his hand to take it from his mouth and toss it away.

  “I won’t presume to tell you how to do your job,” he said. He glanced over at her, then went to where Gremlin and Flower were standing.

  “I still need to check on everyone,” Sarah said. “There could be a dozen or more of ‘em still in there.”

  “I’ll send Doc,” he said.

  He swung a leg up and over Flower’s back and looked down at her. She yet hesitated.

  She was going to have to sweep the building, room by room, potentially breakin’ down doors where they didn’t open easy.

  “You have a master key to this place?” she asked.

  He shifted, slipping his hand into his pocket and coming up with a large magnetic key. It didn’t conclusively prove that the locks on the doors were electronic - she didn’t suspect they were - but there were locking systems that used permanent magnets to make ‘em harder to pick.

  He tossed the key across to her and yet sat.

  “Help me,” she said.

  “No,” he answered, his eyebrows lifting a fraction. “You think this is your responsibility, I won’t stop you. And you’re right, Doc should come help them, if there’s something contagious or dangerous going through. But they die every single day, back there, and they’re going to keep doing it until we get an economy built up big enough to sustain them. So while you go check to see if they’ve all still got pulses, I’m going back to the house to try to keep the rest of them alive.”

  “Dammit, Jimmy,” she said. “You look and sound like a bastard.”

  “Sarah Todd, you’re the only one who doesn’t think it’s true.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, and yet he sat.

  “You think I’m comin’ with you,” she said finally.

  “I do,” he answered.

  She swallowed, thinkin’ of the young man layin’ against the front wall not two dozen feet from her.

  “Only because I’m gonna go get Doc and Sid and bring ‘em back,” she said.

  He gave her a phantom of a smile, looking away as she got up onto Gremlin’s back and hauled his head around to point him at the Lawson house.

  “How long do you think it will take them to get the line cleared to Jeremiah?” Jimmy asked.

  “The sand’s pretty deep,” Sarah said. “Probably two days. Might not even try, today, with it still wet.”

  He nodded, lettin’ Flower pick a pace to match Gremlin’s trot.

  “One more thing,” he said, and she looked over at him.

  “Never, ever leave my daughter with Rhoda and Thomas in a situation like that, when they’re as close to it as they were,” he said.

  She drew her head back.

  “What?”

  He glanced over at her, out of the corner of his eye.

  “Behind a locked door, they’re fine guardians, but when there are men around who might turn violent, she stays with someone who is armed and willing to pull the trigger.”

  “You’re sayin’ you’d’ve rather she came in with me?” Sarah asked.

  “Better than with the two of them,” Jimmy said. Sarah shook her head, but Jimmy looked over at her full-face now.

  “You’re the strongest person I know,” he said. “I’d rather she be with you against an army of armed bandits than with Rhoda against an angry man and his fists.”

  Sarah nodded slowly.

  “We ain’t talked ‘bout what she is to me,” she said.

  “For now, she’s your ward,” Jimmy said, his voice even, a tell he’d thought about it. “Once Lise sets foot on the train to Preston, you’ll be her mother. It’s in the contract Lise and I signed last night.”

  Sarah chewed her tongue at the back of her mouth.

  “You signed it,” she said.

  “I did,” he said. “And so did she.”

  “Didn’t so much as mention it to me,” Sarah said. He shot her another sideways glance.

  “Do you want to know the details of my business, at that level?” he asked.

  “Hell, Jimmy,” she said. “I always have in the past.”

  He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

  “The business details are many and tiring,” he said. “She’ll be a liaison for us, but it’s going to cost me.”

  “You have any reservations givin’ up the house in Intec?”

  “The least of my expenses,” he said.

  “Pretty house,” Sarah said.

  “I’ll always have the memory of you laying out by the pool while I conducted business. Can’t tell you how many times I imagined it. That you were just around the corner, in the next room.”

  “Lie,” she said. Didn’t know if it were or weren’t, but she had to call it. He didn’t correct her.

  “The house will go, as will holdings in multiple other cities she knows about. She’s right that it’s just a fraction of the wealth that her family represents, but it will at least give her a foundation to make advances among the business and political communities on our behalf. She won’t strike it truly wealthy unless we do, so our interests are aligned.”

  “You sure she ain’t gonna go against you, out there?” Sarah asked.

  “Not with the incentives I gave her and the limitations on her behavior within the contract,” Jimmy said. “Everything reverts to us if she engages in absenta-related business dealings that go against our best interest.”

  Sarah pulled her head back.

  “Ain’t no way to prove that any decision she makes is in our best interest,” Sarah said. Jimmy laughed quietly.

  “Lise is a shrewd woman, but she over-estimates her intellect. Thought she could go against me in a contract. She lost.”

  “You sure you didn’t, too?” Sarah asked.

  “I found a few thorns and a poison pill and took them out,” he said. “She could still get me, but that’s the nature of it.�
�

  “That’s what they make lawyers for,” Sarah said. Jimmy shook his head.

  “On the top-side, that’s what they do,” Jimmy said. “Among our people, too many lawyers had too many secrets and got dead. They won’t work with this kind of contract, anymore.”

  “They won’t work with you, you mean,” Sarah said. “Not unless you found some kid and sent him to law school.”

  Jimmy laughed quietly again.

  “There’s a guild of lawyers that has a black list. I’m on it. So are Lise’s people. Sunny’s mom. Most of the family. Rhoda isn’t important enough.”

  “Kayla?” Sarah asked, plain curiosity.

  “Her mother is a legitimate businesswoman. Nothing crooked or violent about her.”

  Sarah nodded. Kayla had that feel.

  “She and Wade…” she started, then frowned.

  “Yes,” Jimmy said. “She and Wade actually love each other. Hard as it may be to believe. Wade, who you may yet have to hang.”

  She set her mouth firm.

  Weren’t many homesteaders she’d had to do more’n whip for misbehavior, but there’d been a few. Men what were important to their families, to the population of Lawrence as a whole. She’d been unwaverin’, even in the face of wives, of mothers, beggin’ her for mercy.

  She’d do it, now, if she had to.

  Even if the Lawsons did need every one of ‘em, if they hoped to survive the process of turnin’ Lawrence into an absenta center, even if it would estrange her from the family for the rest of her life, even if it would break Kayla’s heart.

  She looked over at Jimmy.

  He didn’t look back.

  Yes. Even Wade Lawson, if that’s what she had to do.

  --------

  They got back to the house, where Rhoda was sittin’ on the front porch with Ellie.

  “Told you to get in the house and lock the doors,” Sarah said, leapin’ off Gremlin’s back and stormin’ up to the stairs.

  “I’m keeping watch,” Rhoda said. “There aren’t enough of us to really fend off a big mob, so if things went bad, I was supposed to take Kayla and Ellie Mae and go to the Joiners.”

  Sarah stopped.

  “Whose plan was that?” she asked.

  “Mine,” Rhoda said, face plain, openly confronting Sarah’s anger.

  “Fine,” Sarah said. “Fine. How is she?”

  “Hungry,” Rhoda said. “Kayla just went in to get a bottle.”

  Sarah nodded, glancin’ back at Jimmy.

  The men at the shelter. Wade, Rich, and Thomas. The threat of a fight at the house.

  Three paths.

  Jimmy was gonna work to the future, like none of ‘em existed - she believed him that far. She went to take Ellie from Rhoda, standin’ with the baby in her arms again for just a moment.

  Small. Soft. The child whined and shifted, tryin’ to find a bottle Sarah didn’t have.

  “Give her to me,” Jimmy said. “I’ll take her into the office while I work and make sure she gets fed. You have work to do.”

  “It can wait, can’t it?” Rhoda asked. Still Sarah held Ellie.

  The world was too big, and needed too much.

  She handed the baby over to Jimmy and went into the house.

  “Thomas,” she called as Jimmy slipped past her into his office. A door opened upstairs and Thomas came into view above her head.

  “You’re comin’ with me,” she said, aware of Rhoda at her back.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “You got a story to tell me, and I ain’t got time to sit here in the cool and listen to it, so we’re goin’ out in the sun to do it.”

  He didn’t look like he understood what was goin’ on, but nor did he fight her on it.

  “Sarah,” Rhoda said, behind her, voice soft.

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Not gonna hear it,” she said. “This is my job, my first and biggest job in Lawrence, after killin’ back bandits. I ain’t gonna let nobody in this family tell me how to do it.”

  “It’s okay,” Thomas said to Rhoda as he came down the stairs. Sarah waited, then turned back to go through the door into the humid heat outside again. She went down to the stable, where she found the boy rinsing down the mare.

  “How’s she holdin’?” Sarah asked.

  “Ran hot,” the boy said. “Needs a lot of water.”

  “Need a different horse hitched to the buckboard, then,” Sarah said. The kid stood straight, then nodded quickly, goin’ to pick one of the other horses out of the stable and hitchin’ him up decent quick. Sarah nodded to Thomas.

  “Take your pick.”

  He frowned.

  “My horse is back at the shelter,” he said, and she nodded.

  “We’ll sort out horses and wagons when men ain’t dyin’ everywhere,” she said. “For now, pick one of Jimmy’s.”

  “I’m riding?” he asked.

  “Next to me,” she said. “But you ain’t goin’ back up to the shelter with me, after. You’re comin’ back here.”

  “I’d rather help, if I can,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m goin’ down to town to track down Doc and Sid, get ‘em up lookin’ at the boys what couldn’t make their own way down to town again.”

  He pressed his lips, his brows drawing tight.

  “I wish I knew what was going on with all of them,” he said. “They started getting sick in ones and twos not long after we got there.”

  “Doc’ll see to the end of it,” Sarah said. “I just gotta get him up there. How did the mounts hold up?”

  “I fed them every day,” Thomas said. “The men never thought of them as a target.”

  She glanced over, shiftin’ her jaw to the side, then nodded.

  “Pick a horse and tie him off. We’re gonna get goin’.”

  She climbed back up onto the buckboard and waited for Thomas to come around, tyin’ a horse to the back gate then climbin’ up next to her. He looked nervous, though less pale than he had a couple hours earlier. She set off, lettin’ the gelding pick a walkin’ pace what suited him, and she looked over at Thomas.

  “You pick any point in the story seems right for startin’,” she said. “But you leave out anything important and I find out about it, I’ll give you lashes for it, if I figure you done it on purpose.”

  He looked at his hands.

  “I’d deserve it,” he said. “They weren’t armed.”

  “Nope,” Sarah said. “Ain’t none of ‘em with the means to carry a gun, nor the foolishness to have one around, in that chaos.”

  “A few of them had them,” Thomas said. “Jimmy wouldn’t let anyone go up to the shelter with one. We searched them all.”

  Sarah glanced over, surprised, but nodded.

  “Ain’t the wrong thing.”

  “Granger was holding all of the ones they turned in,” Thomas said.

  “All right,” Sarah said. “You’re talkin’, now. Tell me what happened.”

  Thomas sighed.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess… While it was raining, it wasn’t that bad. We had cards and gremlin beer, and everyone was… okay. They hung out in the common room or in their rooms… Some of them went out to watch it rain. It didn’t feel like we were in charge, so much as just… Passing out the things people needed as they needed them. There were a few fights, and I was talking to people at meals and getting a sense of how the groups were working out…” That sounded like Thomas. Peace through diplomacy.

  “Go ahead,” she said after he trailed off, just rememberin’.

  He drew a bracing breath and nodded.

  “It didn’t start until a few days after the rain let up. They were spending more time outside and things weren’t so crowded. The sick men… We started moving them into rooms together so that, if it was contagious, they wouldn’t spread it any more than they already had, and Wade and Rich assigned men to take care of them. I helped as much as I could, but Rich s
aid that, if I got sick, one of them would have to take care of me, and that would leave just one of us watching everything out there. They always talked about out there.”

  “That sounds like them,” Sarah said, pullin’ him back again. He glanced at her, still shame-faced.

  “So I wasn’t supposed to take care of the sick men anymore,” he said. “And no one else wanted to, either. I offered to pay them to do it, but Rich said we were already putting them up and feeding them and keeping them from washing away in the flood. He wasn’t going to pay them to see to their own. See to their own.” He paused. “Sarah, none of them know each other. I mean, they have… a system… and there are men who look out for each other…” He frowned, lookin’ at his boots. “Everyone belongs to someone. They told me that. I belong to Jimmy. They all had someone they belonged to, and that’s who kept them safe. The name over them.”

  Sarah pulled her mouth to the side. It were a natural way for a thing like that to go. She should have learned the names of the players by now, like she had with the bandits, but it evolved too fast, and she’d been too busy with everything else. Tryin’ to get ‘em employed, like Jimmy had said.

  Thomas shook himself once more.

  “But it isn’t like they owe each other. If there’s a fight, they have sides, but they aren’t family, and most of them aren’t friends. A few of the guys had friends who would check in on them and make sure they got their meals, but some of them were just… starving to death, if they couldn’t make it to the common room. And then Wade said they shouldn’t come to the common room because that was just going to get everyone else sick, too…”

  It was a powder keg. Always had been. Sarah had known that from the first train full of boys. It had gone unstable a few times, more bodies lyin’ around, more for the burial crew to do, but Sarah hadn’t much been involved in it, nohow. She had mines to get runnin’ and investors to entertain, Jimmy’s buildin’ projects and her own supplies and herd of cows to tend to.

  But anyone lookin’ at that camp and thinkin’ they’d work it out was foolin’ themselves.

  “Keep goin’,” Sarah said.

  “So Wade said that that they weren’t allowed to come out of their rooms until Doc looked at them, after the flood went down, and he assigned people to bring them their meals. I was supposed to help those guys get food ready and ‘supervise’ them taking it to the sick men, but no one wanted to do it, and they kept sending other people to do it.”