by Chloe Garner
“What the hell?” Torque asked. “Is that supposed to be your version of the best of both worlds?”
Sarah looked at the four men, even-minded and unconcerned.
“I done what needed done,” she said. “But they was doin’ a job, and while I don’t reckon they done it right, they done what they thought they had to.”
Torque shook his head.
“You caved. Just like I said you would.”
She shrugged.
“Don’t rightly care what you said or what you think. You can move on, you can say whatever you like, or you can challenge me to a fistfight, whatever suits you most. But I got a train to catch, and I’d appreciate it if you decided quick.”
“You’re leaving?” one of the men asked.
“No,” she said. “Just got to be there when it gets here.” She raised her eyebrows at Torque. “You wanna see how you hold up against me, or you gonna head back and work on what happens next with the men what are lookin’ to you for leadership?”
His jaw worked, then he put his hands through his hair and turned away with a noise what were supposed to shame her for his disgust. She pursed her lips, feelin’ the quiet urge to tag him with the bullwhip, then she turned and walked back down the road to where Lise were still standin’.
“That was fun,” the woman said. “Glad I was here for it.”
“You ready to go?” Sarah asked.
“They took the cart, and I’m not riding one of those awful animals,” Lise said.
“I got a cart to borrow from Granger,” Sarah said. They was gonna need another buckboard, this many women running around what wouldn’t sit a saddle.
“My bags are ready at the house,” Lise said, liftin’ the hem of her dress and startin’ for the end of the boardwalk where she could find stairs.
Wrong way.
Sarah shook her head.
“You just say up there. I’ll gather you in the cart and we’ll get your bags. In too much rush to wait for you to dodge the bad earth down here.”
Lise wrinkled her nose, and Sarah shook her head again, goin’ back to the other side of the street and leapin’ up onto the boardwalk, goin’ into Granger’s store.
“Need a buckboard,” she said.
“I need a livery,” Granger said. She hadn’t expected that, and she held herself up.
“Say it again?”
He nodded.
“We need a livery stable,” Granger said. “At least until Jimmy revolutionizes everything with cars.”
Sarah twisted her mouth.
“You’d like to keep it?”
“Reckon I got as much need as anybody. Doc’d keep a good-sized rig, if he had a place to keep it, but I’m payin’ the homesteads to swap out their old wagons and build up new with parts I’m sellin’ ‘em. Time we had a proper blacksmith and liveryman to do that, and if I gotta pay him and house him, so be it.”
Sarah frowned.
“I’ll talk to Jimmy.”
“I rent ‘em by the day, now,” he said. “The carts.”
She grinned and shook her head. The nerve. Lawsons had dropped in front of his store not thirty minutes hence, and he were chargin’ her for a horse and cart.
“More if you ain’t bringin’ ‘em back, ‘cause I gotta pay a kid to walk up and recover ‘em.”
“I’ll bring the damned thing back,” she said. “Put it on Jimmy’s bill.”
She went out the back, findin’ the makeshift corral of horses and the line of buckboards, shakin’ her head at the shape of the world. She hitched up a big, bored mare to the likeliest of the carts and drove it ‘round to where Lise were waitin’ with bad grace. Sarah left the cart to go get Gremlin and tie him to the back, just to be sure he didn’t wander too far. It appeared Jimmy had taken the other two back with ‘em.
She drove Lise back to the house, where Lise sat delicately in the cart until Sarah caught the clue and went to the house.
“Need your hand to get in,” Sarah called, and Lise shook her head.
“Jimmy told me there’s an override for you and him on every one of them.”
Sarah took a moment at that, then put her palm to the lock, hearin’ the door click and lettin’ herself in, where she found a mountain of bags.
“What you plannin’ on doin’ with these once you get to Preston?” Sarah asked. Lise frowned.
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Obvious you don’t mean to carry ‘em yourself.”
Lise drew her head up and back.
“I pay a man to carry them,” she said. “I still don’t understand.”
Sarah raised an eyebrow, but let it pass, gettin’ the bags by loads out to the cart, then pointin’ the whole thing at the train station.
Train station weren’t much different than the day before, rails under smooth sand leavin’ just a lonely wood buildin’ and a metal rockin’ chair. Sarah pulled Lise up to the platform, lettin’ her off at wagon-height before she went to kick the sand off the rail. Took a bit of doin’, but she finally got enough clear to put her head down to it.
“So?” Lise asked from the platform.
“Cleaner ain’t far off,” Sarah said with a satisfied nod. She started offloadin’ Lise’s gear while Lise sat on the rockin’ chair.
Finally, weren’t nothin’ more to do but wait. Sarah took to a wall, rollin’ herself a gremlin cigarette while Lise looked out across the desert.
“So you won,” the woman finally said.
“Reckon you didn’t do so bad, yourself,” Sarah said, and Lise snorted.
“No, I suppose I haven’t. Freedom, wealth, status… Things I wouldn’t have ever had, staying here.”
Sarah nodded at nothin’ much, smokin’ the cigarette.
Lise looked back at her.
“He’s a good man. Jimmy is. Sleeping with him…”
She paused and Sarah took her moment.
“Don’t rightly want to hear nothin’ of it.”
“Peter says you were a virgin when you married Jimmy. Is that true?”
Sarah bristled, pursin’ her lips and chewin’ her answer for a moment.
Lise shook her head and looked back out at the desert.
“In case it is… you wouldn’t know. There’s… there are men who play games. Powerful men and sex… it’s about bagging big game. I am the biggest game. But a trophy is a trophy, and once they’ve taken it… Jimmy is a good man.”
Sarah looked at the back of Lise’s head, then sighed and held out the gremlin cigarette in her field of vision.
“Are you kidding me?” Lise asked. Sarah pursed her lips, then took one more drag on the cigarette and let her arm fall.
“This is going to take forever, isn’t it?” Lise asked.
“Got every indication,” Sarah agreed.
Took another hour for the train to show up. Jimmy’s car weren’t on it, so Lise bought an entire car to herself and Sarah started loadin’ bags, keepin’ her head up for Sunny when she saw a man come stumblin’ off one of the backmost cars. Pair of men in proper suits followed him, kickin’ him to the platform and standin’ over him and Sarah glowered.
Weren’t the first time she’d seen someone try to dump an outlaw out here.
She finished up with Lise’s kit as Sunny came off the second car.
“If I’d known I was going to be there so long, I’d have stayed closer to the coast,” Sunny said on the way past, not slowing on her way to the cart. Sarah tipped her head, not lookin’ over her shoulder ‘cause weren’t no point, but feelin’ put out at takin’ care of Lawson women just this day.
She went on to the back of the train, where the suits were standin’ over the scrubby, bloody man.
“Can’t leave your trash here,” Sarah said. “Not without my say-so.”
“And who are you?” the closer man asked, turnin’ to look at her.
“Local gun,” Sarah said. “No dumpin’.”
“Sarah?” the man on the ground gasped.
&nb
sp; She frowned at him. Dark skin, color of half-dried mountain dirt, under long, dirty black hair. Black beard, unstyled. He were lean, with the hands of a clever man, but his clothes were torn and dirty with the look of a vagrant. She couldn’t tell if he were skinny or downright unfed in the tatters.
“Who’s that in there?” she asked, just lettin’ her eyes turn down to him.
“That is Yip Lawson,” an elegant, masculine voice said off to Sarah’s side, just out of her view.
She lifted her head, keepin’ her eyes forward.
“Descartes,” she said.
“I was going to return him, either way, but the invitation from Jimmy to come in person… Very intriguing. I like intriguing.”
Sarah nodded, finally turnin’ her head to look at him. A massively overweight man, the type who would have sagged off chairs everywhere he went, was squeezin’ his way off the train behind Descartes.
“Pythagoras,” Sarah said.
He smiled, glistening lips turning out in almost a pout.
“They told me about you,” he said.
She couldn’t see the resemblance one to the other. Descartes was trim, off his Perpeto enough to have graying hair that he didn’t dye, sharp everywhere.
Pythagoras looked like he’d melt under the right application of salt.
She looked out the corner of her eye at Yip.
“I need to find Doc for him?” she asked.
“Won’t be necessary,” Descartes said. “My men know the line of pain versus fatality.”
She looked at the two suits, re-measurin’ ‘em and findin’ it were just as Descartes said.
Pythagoras clapped his hands out in front of him, his whole body wobblin’ as he looked out at the expanse of desert leadin’ up to the mountains.
“So this is what’s causing all the problems?” he asked. “I could just blow the whole place up.”
“You tried, by my recollection,” Sarah said. Descartes gave her a dry smile.
“That’s what I like about you,” he said. “You never play coy.”
She shrugged.
“Place like Lawrence don’t have much tolerance for things like coy.”
He nodded to her.
“Just so. Well, I will turn your young Lawson over to your custody.”
Sarah looked at the suits once more.
“That all you got?” she asked. “Woulda reckoned you’d bring more firepower with you.”
“Very direct,” Descartes said with another basilisk smile. “Very direct, indeed.”
She turned to the two men, lookin’ ‘em up and down. Man like that knew how to hide the guns, but they were both armed. She nodded.
Outnumbered.
Two options.
Let herself, Yip, Sunny, and likely Lise die, keepin’ ‘em here for now, or bring the four to the Lawson house, bringin’ the enemy into the stronghold, but also into strength.
“Well,” she said. “Ain’t gettin’ any cooler. Reckon you’ll want air conditioning and somethin’ to drink.”
“Unless you’re interested in giving Pythagoras the tour of the town he just bought,” Descartes said. Sarah gave him a tight-lipped smile and went to Yip.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Yip said.
“Shut up, Lawson,” Sarah answered, puttin’ his arm ‘cross her shoulders and pullin’ him to his feet. Underfed. She could feel his ribs through his shirt.
She limped him to the cart, where Sunny were sittin’ in the front, watchin’ the four men come behind.
“This is Sunny,” Descartes said as they got close. “I’d heard she was missing.”
“Should have stayed that way,” Sunny commented. Sarah hauled Yip into the back of the wagon, then looked at the four men.
“Ladies get front, gentlemen,” she said. “This is Lawrence. But if any one of you so much as touches Yip, I will put a bullet to you. Ain’t puttin’ up with that.”
“Sarah,” Yip groaned.
Descartes chuckled.
“If there was anything else we wanted to do to him, we would have done it before we got here. We had plenty of time.”
Sarah dipped her head to him and sat down with the reins.
The four men loaded in behind her, two guns and two of the richest men on the planet totin’ around in a buckboard what Sarah had rented.
She took ‘em straight to the Lawson house, avoidin’ town altogether. Sunny kept her hands in her lap the whole way, and Sarah heard Yip groan a couple times when they found uneven sand what rolled him about in the back.
Weren’t nobody out waitin’ for ‘em at the house. Sarah stopped the buckboard at the front steps and went to stand at the back of the cart, watchin’ as the four men climbed down. Pythagoras took help from the two guns to manage it, but Sarah kept out the way and waited, finally climbin’ up to get Yip. He’d always been a tan kid. The proper Lawsons tanned like normal men, and Jimmy tanned not at all, but Yip had gone dark and darker, ‘till there weren’t no resemblance to him at all, against the other Lawsons. He weren’t as dark as he’d been, when the family had left, but he were still darker than any of the others. He was taller, too. Taller ‘n Sarah by a good three, four inches, and the growth of beard confused her - she’d never known him to tolerate hair on his face.
“Doc is here,” she said quietly to him as the men started toward the front door. “He’ll see to you.”
Yip gave her a dark laugh, leanin’ hard on her as they got to the back of the wagon.
“We’re all dead, Sarah. You just don’t know it yet.”
She sat him down at the end of the wagon and helped him to the ground, then handed him off to Sunny and went up to the door to let Pythagoras and Descartes into the house.
“Welcome to the Lawson house,” she said, openin’ the door.
House was empty, at first glance, but for Jimmy sittin’ at the dinin’ room table. Sarah led the four men into the entrance and motioned behind ‘em for Sunny to take Yip upstairs.
“I would rather think Jimmy would like to see his brother,” Descartes said. “They haven’t spoken in years.”
Sarah looked the graying man in the eye, then nodded.
“Ain’t wrong,” she said, goin’ back to get Yip from Sunny, and then shooin’ her up the stairs on her own.
She walked Yip into the dinin’ room and set him down in a chair, takin’ a step back toward the wall as Jimmy continued to read from the large paper he had unrolled in front of him.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, gentlemen,” he said without lookin’ up.
“Refreshments?” Sarah asked as the four men came into the room.
“I’d wager you haven’t got anything worth drinking, out here,” Pythagoras said.
“I’ve heard mystical rumors of a plant that only grows out in the desert, here,” Descartes said, watchin’ as his men took to two corners of the room. “One that, perhaps, you use to make tea?”
“Gremlin,” Sarah said. “I could use a cup myself.”
She went into the kitchen, findin’ just Tania there.
“Where’s Ellie?” Sarah asked.
Tania shook her head.
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell any of us.”
Sarah nodded.
“Good. Gremlin tea, please.”
The woman gave her a nod and Sarah went back out to the dinin’ room, takin’ up one of the unoccupied corners as Jimmy kept on readin’ and Yip slumped a bit in his chair. Doc ought to have been upstairs with Sid, lookin’ to the twins. Yip was in fair need of him, but Sarah weren’t willin’ to consider takin’ him up herself and leavin’ Jimmy with this lot on his own.
Descartes seated himself at the opposite end of the table from Jimmy, and Pythagoras slurped into the chair beside Yip.
Finally, Jimmy drew a crisp breath and looked up at Yip.
“Welcome home, brother,” he said. Yip nodded drunkenly.
“Good a place as any,” he said, and Jimmy gave him a tight little smile, clapping him on the should
er and turnin’ his attention to Pythagoras.
“I hope Sarah gave you the tour through town and showed you where we are going to be putting up the bank.”
“She didn’t,” Pythagoras said.
“Reckoned we was in a spot of hurry,” Sarah said. Jimmy’s eyes didn’t leave Pythagoras.
“Perhaps on the way out.” Now he looked at Descartes, liftin’ his chin to take in the other man and turnin’ to face him full on. “I didn’t expect you on the first train. You must have been waiting in Jeremiah for at least a few days.”
Sarah could only see Descartes in profile, the way he gave Jimmy a chipper, stoic look.
“Very informative, seeing what it’s like out on the frontier.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Indeed, indeed. Well, it isn’t going to be frontier for much longer, so it’s good you saw it while it still was.”
“Smug bastard,” Pythagoras said. “You really think we’re going to let you keep this rinky little town and everything in it.”
“Patience, brother,” Descartes said. “We agreed to a meeting, and we should at least see it through before we sweep everything here out of existence.”
Yip lifted his head.
“You… invited them?”
Jimmy nodded.
“Yes. I needed to speak with both of them, and things are a bit… pressed here, as we have everything going at once. I sent them a message during our flood season and asked them to come speak with me at their earliest opportunity.”
Yip looked at Jimmy like he’d put a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. Jimmy looked over at Sarah.
“Come, now,” he said. “There’s no need to lurk in corners. You have a seat at this table as much as anyone.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but he’d already moved his attention back to Descartes. Castin’ one more look at the guns in the corners, Sarah went to her seat next to Jimmy, puttin’ her hat on the back of the next chair over.
“I’m impressed you talked them into a satellite for this region,” Descartes said. “I have my requests turned down routinely for such things.”
“I have Sarah to thank for that,” Jimmy said, still not looking at her. “She has some pull with the LaVelle.”
“Yes,” Descartes said. “I understand she was a part of the exchange program. I could use someone with her skill set on my staff.”