Rising Waters Read online

  Only Sarah did.

  Every blasted time.

  Horses didn’t have an easy life in Lawrence, and they more often ‘n not expired at the end of her gun on account of somethin’ that would have otherwise laid them up in agony just long enough to starve.

  You can’t love a thing what’s going to end like that and expect to hang on to who you were, but Sarah couldn’t help but foster a fondness for them in their frail stupidity.

  She’d demanded a white horse to be obstinate, to prove to him that he did what she said, and to stand out to everyone that when she told him, he went along well enough.

  And stand out, the creature did. A great big stallion with solid bones and a chunky head, he put a hole in the red around him like the sunlight had just melted it. Keepin’ him clean was gonna be hell.

  She got close enough to see the way the very corner of Jimmy’s mouth curled, and she pursed her lips.

  All right, fine. He’d won.

  She’d demanded a white horse, and he’d turned up with a charger that only a Lawson could get, flexing his power rather than bowing to hers.

  Still a damned fine horse.

  “Gonna call ‘im Flower,” Sarah said when she was close enough for him and no one else to hear her.

  He closed his eyes.

  Point, Sarah.

  He handed the horse’s reins to Rhoda - only one of the four mighta known how to handle that animal - then took Sarah’s arm through his, leading the way down the aisle with the crowd closing behind them.

  She wasn’t wearing a gun.

  Kayla had insisted there weren’t no place to put one, and in the end the complexity of the get-up had overpowered her and she’d not found her way underneath the layers of tulle to get one strapped even to her leg, where it rightly belonged.

  It was like being naked.

  The dress did come up high enough in the back for her knives.

  She might be naked, but she was never unarmed.

  Granger stood at the far end of the crowd, holding the town registry.

  There might have been another tradition, back when Elaine Lawrence’s daddy first came out to the mountains to dig ‘em up, but at this stage, you wrote down your name and the thing was done. For all the attempt at frill, Lawrence was a pragmatic town with not a lot of pretense, and that was what Sarah liked about it.

  “Kayla will have been pleased,” Jimmy murmured.

  “Pleased ain’t the half of it,” Sarah answered.

  “Can you not just… My mother hated that accent,” Jimmy sighed. Neither had so much as inclined their face toward the other, much less turned to look. Sarah kept a focus on Granger.

  “You ain’t gonna take all of me away, Jimmy. I wore the damned dress and I came to the damned wedding.”

  “You wanted this,” he said. She knew that his face wouldn’t show it - his voice only just did it - but he was frustrated with her.

  Good.

  “I wanted to be your wife, Jimmy,” she said. “All this is for you.”

  She heard the chortle, deep in his throat, and she knew the little twitch that would have disturbed his mouth.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “At least you can’t shoot anybody.”

  “Kayla told you?” Sarah asked.

  “No, you did,” he answered.

  And then they were standing in front of Granger.

  That was when the shooting started.

  The crowd ducked.

  Sarah and Jimmy stood taller, looking for where it was coming from.

  “You see it?” he asked.

  “I do,” she answered. “Who was even out there?”

  “It’s where the reception is,” he said. “All of the staff.”

  “You left a fortune in liquor sitting out in broad daylight without no’but a couple of hired hands watching it?”

  “Petey’s there,” Jimmy said as more shots scattered the crowd. Jimmy and Sarah looked at each other for a moment, knowing that Peter Lawson Jr. was only capable of making things worse.

  “Go,” he said. She glowered.

  “Lemme guess. Protect the womenfolk.”

  “You think they’re going to do it themselves?” he asked, running toward the section of town where they’d just recently erected a large number of houses that the evicted Lawsons now occupied. Sarah put her hands on her hips, wishing like hell she had a gun, then turning and running back through the crowd.

  She was taking the horse.

  That was just going to happen.

  Kayla was the first to find her, her hands on her face.

  “What’s going on, Sarah?” the younger woman asked.

  “Bandits,” Sarah said. “Don’t know what’s good for ‘em, and they’re after the take.”

  “All your gifts,” Kayla despaired, and Sarah all but let her head fall back.

  Course.

  She hadn’t even thought of that.

  Jimmy Lawson might be buying the town, but there was a whole world out there interested in buying a little bit of Jimmy.

  “Hang ‘em all,” Sarah muttered. “Where’s my horse?”

  “Rhoda…” Kayla said.

  Sarah shook her head, putting an arm across Kayla’s shoulders to keep her down. The shots were gettin’ closer as Jimmy drew the fight toward him.

  Just like that man.

  Weren’t that Sarah thought he was wrong. Just that she should’a been next to him, doin’ it.

  “Get back in the shop,” Sarah said. “Where are the rest of them?”

  “Here,” Rhoda called, dragging the white horse through the crowd. “Lise and Sunny ran. Don’t know where they went.”

  Sarah shook her head, taking the horse’s reins from Rhoda and giving them a solid jerk. She looked the foot-churning creature in the eye, putting a good portion of her weight on the reins to drag his head down.

  “You listen here, fool,” she said. “This is my world. You think somethin’s scary, you just look at me, and know I’m more scary. Got it?”

  She flared her nostrils, breathing audibly at the horse, and it settled.

  “Good,” she said, looking back at Kayla and Rhoda. “Goes for the two of you, too.”

  “I’ll go anywhere you point me,” Rhoda said. “I don’t like guns.”

  “Now there’s someone who has some sense,” Sarah said. “Back in the shop. Block the windows and lock the door.”

  “What are you going to do?” Kayla asked. Sarah gave her an indignant look.

  “I’m gonna go help Jimmy run ‘em off,” she said, hefting the dress up so she could get up to the boardwalk, then pulling Rhoda and Kayla up after her. All around her men and women were running, looking for shelter. A number of the other men were armed, the homesteaders, mostly, and they were either forming a defensive position inside the town or they were already after Jimmy, and Sarah turned her head, realizing that someone coming from the other direction could do a heap of damage.

  “Get in,” she said, waiting for Rhoda and Kayla to get into the shop. Sarah dashed to the edge of the boardwalk, tying Flower there quickly and shaking a finger at him.

  “You pull that loose, you’re gonna hear it from me,” she said, taking one more look around and finding Lise stranded in the middle of the street.

  Tempting as it were to leave her there, Sarah whistled, and Flower put his ears back, lining up a kick as Lise tumbled toward them.

  “Here, now,” Sarah said to the horse. “Now ain’t the time.”

  She pulled Lise up onto the boardwalk and pushed her at the door, looking one last time for Sunny, then shaking her head and going into Kayla’s studio after them.

  It was packed.

  Well, of course it was.

  Kayla was an open-hearted woman, and the town was full of helpless young men.

  “Guns,” Sarah said. “I need my guns.”

  “You need to change,” Kayla said and Sarah shook her head, digging her gunbelt out of the pile of clothes in the corner and kicking off the lav
ender slippers Kayla had hand-made for her, pushing her feet into her boots and brushing past everyone back out onto the street.

  She reached in once more, grabbing her hat off of the hook just inside, then pulled the door closed behind her. Satisfied only when she heard it lock, Sarah pulled Flower’s lead back off the boardwalk and dropped a leg across his back, giving him a good big boot.

  Gremlin had her rifle holster on his saddle; she was gonna miss that, no doubt.

  She got to the far end of town, watching mostly young men scatter as they headed for their shantytown, hopin’ in nothin’ more than odds that they’d stay out of trouble, there.

  The gunbattle was still raging near the new section of town, and Sarah was itching to go see what she made of that, but this was the hole. And sure enough, as she watched, a pair of men came creeping along the side of Granger’s store, pistols in hand.

  It was a shame Sarah didn’t know everyone in town, anymore. Used to be, if she didn’t know a guy, she’d shoot him and always be right to of done it. These days, the ‘all kinds’ running around Lawrence made it hard to see who weren’t supposed to be there, though there were rumors that a lot of the surviving bandits from the badlands outside of town had been sneaking in to mingle with the mining hopefuls, realizing their prospects looked better with a job than keepin’ on with the scroungin’ and thievin’. Chances were good as they weren’t that these two had gone to get guns out of some cardboard box somewhere in hopes of snatching a booty from Granger’s store before they went and melted back in with the rest of the boys.

  Which was gonna make punishing this kinda stuff harder and harder in the future.

  Sarah slipped to the ground on Flower’s far side, walking the horse to the boardwalk before letting him loose to go where he pleased. Horse like that, new to town, was like to wander someplace inconvenient, and she might lose him entire, but she didn’t want him shot in the crossfire, and a horse what weren’t used to the shooting was a liability waiting to happen.

  The creature trotted a few steps away, ears up, feet high, then quit.

  “Stupid,” she muttered, peeking over the boardwalk.

  The two men were at the corner of the shop, and she gave them a few more steps to be sure that they weren’t forming a part of the community defense before hauling herself up onto the boards behind them.

  She was a big woman, and she hadn’t expected to do it quietly, but she was less coordinated than normal, in the giant dress, and both men turned, pointing guns at her.

  She just kept moving.

  At least they’d made the call on who was a bad guy easy enough.

  Both of them shot at her as she made for the corner of the shop, putting her back against the wall and waiting, listening to their feet.

  Forward or back?

  They came back.

  One of them put an arm around the side of the building, pointing a gun over her head as she squatted, and she reached up to grab his wrist at the base of his hand and twist it hard with the gratifying noise of breaking bones. He yelled, and the other man ran around the corner already firing. Bullets hit the wall over her head as she shot him in the chest, then she pulled the first man forward, throwing him to the ground and stepping hard on his broken wrist. The gun in his hand fired.

  Some people forgot to account for that, but Sarah Todd wasn’t some people. She were well out of the way, and there weren’t much to hit that way, besides the side of Granger’s shop and an awful lot of desert.

  She pointed the gun down at the man, letting her lower lip slide out as she weighed things out in her head.

  “Not worth the risk,” she said, pulling the trigger, then pushed the gun out of his hand with her boot and ran back to the edge of the boardwalk. She sat to slide down to the street below.

  “C’mon, useless,” she said, grabbing Flower’s reins again and leaping back up onto his slick back.

  Needed some tack, certainly, though she could see why Jimmy had refrained. Nothing as spectacular as a great white horse in the buff. Jimmy went for spectacle over function, when it suited him.

  Sarah booted him again, this time toward the other end of the main street, checking the walks as she went past, but she didn’t see anything else that alarmed her, so she kept going, checking Flower hard to the left and racing out of town toward the new section and the remaining gunfire.

  Two men stepped away from a building ahead of her and fired at her, and Flower jigged to the side, unseating her. She rolled where she landed and got her feet under her on the move, returning fire as she looked for cover and the rest of the action.

  She could see Jimmy in the central courtyard, sidearm shooting at something that was obscured by the very building the two men were using as cover.

  They were both still taking shots at her, and this finally made her angry.

  She needed a rifle, but that was neither here nor there.

  She stopped moving, leveling her gun at them and drawing a breath, then letting it out.

  Two shots, two hits, two kills.

  That was Sarah Todd.

  The number of shots was dropping, the way popcorn in a pan did when it was near as done, and Sarah ran, hitting the nearest house and sticking her head around to see what Jimmy was going after.

  Three men, their backs pressed against the painted wall of the house - the house itself was made of a purple goop that hardened in the sunlight ,so they’d had to do something about the color - all focused on Jimmy.

  One of them swung around to take aim again, and Sarah shot him, ducking back behind her own cover as the other two looked at her.

  Cornered.

  Them, not her.

  Nice to be on this side of the fight, for once.

  She lay her shoulder against the wall, easing her face forward again to look for the right opportunity to finish off the other two, and something clicked behind her.

  “That’s a weddin’ dress, ain’t it?” a man asked. Sarah straightened.

  “Drop the gun,” the voice said. She dropped it, not turning yet.

  He was teetering on the verge of drunk, this one. Probably a little nerve juice before he hit the horses, then some more of the party drink before the shootin’ started.

  Which would mean his reflexes would be slow.

  “Turn around, nice and slow,” he said. “Hands up. Lessee what I caught.”

  She rolled her other shoulder against the house, her hands against the sides of her head.

  He shoulda known from the hat.

  Idiot.

  He met her eye and cursed, his fingers caught up in his belt and his attention off of a drooping gun. She pushed it to the side and drew one of her knives in the same motion. The long, thin blade disappeared under his chin and didn’t stop until somewhere inside his brain.

  His eyes didn’t go dull. Normally they did, but his had already been glazed from drink.

  Ugly stuff. Sarah didn’t often touch it.

  She pulled the blade clear and thoughtlessly wiped it on her thigh as the man slumped to the ground, puttin’ the knife away again and stoopin’ to retrieve her gun, then peerin’ around the corner.

  The two men were fleeing toward a restless mass of horseflesh some distance away, and the shooting around her was all but done. She lined up the shots, taking three to hit both moving targets, then put her gun away on her gunbelt and standing straight as she brushed off her hands.

  “Jimmy,” she yelled, kicking the dead man on the ground on the way by. “I’m comin’ around the side of the buildin’ here.”

  “I got you,” he said. She came into sight, looking around at the mess of a reception. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged.

  “Thanks for backup.”

  “Any time.”

  “Where’s the horse?” he asked.

  “Damned thing threw me,” she said. “Never ride a horse in a gunfight.”

  “Your rule,” he nodded. “Wonder where he ends up.”

  She jerked her head towar
d the herd, not knowing whether Jimmy had sight of ‘em or not.

  “That’s a good guess. One witless animal in the midst of a dozen others.”

  “Jimmy,” a man said, panting. “I think we’ve got them all.”

  “Take Petey and Rich and go house to house. Check the doors and the windows and make sure that anything that isn’t locked gets checked out. Send Thomas out with Wade to get the horses out there. Make sure they’ve got a couple more guns with them, too.”

  “I’ll go,” Sarah said. “Get back my fool horse.”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “I think you’ve done enough damage for a day,” he said.

  “Not if there are any more of ‘em around,” Sarah growled. “Thought we’d seen the last of ‘em, this time. Offer ‘em good work, instead of thievin’, and they still show up…”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “That wasn’t the damage I was talking about,” he said, his eyelids dropping as he looked at her dress.

  This was the first she noticed it, holding her arms out as she inspected it.

  “Kayla’s gonna kill me.”

  --------

  Thomas, beau to Rhoda and the best of the Lawson men by a country mile, jogged over, leading an indignant white charger.

  “Sarah,” he called. “We’ll get the rest of the presents up to the house, but I thought you’d want to take him, yourself.”

  Sarah looked up from the plate of frail pastel pastries in her lap.

  “Helluva party you boys throw,” she answered, and he grinned.

  “I bet everyone still comes back,” he said. “Free food is still too hard to pass up.”

  “Free booze, you mean,” she said, and he winked.

  “If you don’t want it, you don’t have to drink it,” he said with a patronizin’ diplomacy.

  “I’m the one gonna be out here all hours breakin’ things up, tonight.”

  “Not tonight, wife,” Jimmy said, takin’ the tray out of her lap and pullin’ her onto her feet. She narrowed her eyes and he stood her down for several seconds. She picked up the tray and took three more delicacies between her fingers, stuffing two of them into her mouth before she put the tray back down and cocked her head once at him.

  “I give you Lady Lawson,” Jimmy said.