Clash of Mountains Page 2

  He started to answer, and she put up a hand.

  “And why in hell is she sendin’ you to ask?”

  “Because she knew you’d tell her no, and she thought I could talk you into it.”

  Sarah tipped her head back, exasperated.

  “I’m right done with the lot of you figurin’ you can make me do somethin’, just ‘cause you want me to.”

  “You met her family,” Thomas said. “You saved her brother’s life.”

  “Right after I got him shot, sure,” Sarah said. Thomas went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “You know so much more about her than any of the other wives. She’s more like you than any of them.”

  “And yet, she ain’t a bit like me,” Sarah said.

  “How do you figure?” Thomas asked.

  Rhoda was short, pretty, intricate. She put on makeup and did up her hair, she’d be anyone she liked. Sarah were a giant, near a tall as Jimmy and taller than Thomas, big enough to throw a cow on her own. Right asset, in Lawrence, but nothin’ like the bundle of lady-wits that were Rhoda.

  “Come on,” Sarah said. “You stand me up next to her, I ain’t got a single thing in common with her,” Sarah said.

  “I think she’d be offended to hear you say that,” Thomas said, and Sarah looked over at him.

  “What, that she ain’t a cow-wrangler fitted for a bullet someday?” she asked. “I ain’t like none of them, and they ain’t tryin’ to be like me. Don’t make me no shorter.”

  Thomas glowered.

  “She grew up out here, just like we did,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Sarah. “All exceptin’ y’all outgrew the place.”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “She went to school. Just like you did.”

  “She never went home,” Sarah said.

  Thomas sighed.

  “I told her it was pointless, but she insists, it’s you or no one.”

  “Ain’t no such thing in Lawrence, anyway,” Sarah said.

  “There’s time,” Thomas said. “We’re waiting for hobflower season.”

  Sarah looked at him, horrified.

  “No,” she said. “Not you. Thought you’d at least ‘a picked up that much of Intec.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s how they do it, in Lawrence.”

  Hobflowers.

  Perhaps the single greater bane to Sarah’s existence than the bandits what were gonna kill her someday.

  Every year after the big flood, the hobflowers came up from nothin’, coverin’ the desert with blooms what shriveled and died not much more’n a week later, leavin’ petals what floated on nothin’ of a breeze and got everywhere.

  “No,” Sarah said. “You came, engaged, you ain’t gonna suddenly say you ain’t.”

  Thomas laughed.

  “The way I remember it, she came engaged to Jimmy.”

  “Hell, Thomas. Jimmy picked you for this run on account of I wouldn’t knock you senseless for bein’ senseless. Makin’ him out an idiot.”

  Thomas laughed.

  “She came because… well, yeah, we’d agreed we want to get married, but I never proposed and she never accepted. So we’re waiting for hobflower season.”

  Sarah shook her head.

  Didn’t pick more fight, and weren’t no more comin’.

  They rode up into the mountains in peace.

  --------

  First night out, Sarah put out her cook-pot, fillin’ it from a stream. They’d crossed to the wet side of the mountains, but left too late to make it to the first claim ‘fore dark, and she didn’t want to come up on the claim ‘till mornin’ anyway. She made a beef-broth stew, feedin’ it dried gremlin leaves and mountain-dug vegetables until it filled, then goin’ to lean against her saddle to watch it steep. Dog lay in the flickerin’ shadows of the fire, watchin’ with cool eyes.

  She took out her bag of dried gremlin, rollin’ a cigarette out of it and startin’ it, then offerin’ it to Thomas, who sat on a big rock against the tree line, watchin’ the fresh stars.

  “No, I kicked that habit when we got to Preston,” he said. “I don’t plan on picking it up again.”

  Sarah shrugged, taking another draw on the cigarette and blowing smoke up at the sky.

  “So how did you and Rhoda meet?” Sarah asked. He looked over and she shrugged. Yes, the accent was optional. “We’re stuck together for a while,” she told him. “May as well be on friendly terms.”

  “I never look at you as unfriendly,” he said, and she laughed. She knew that was the truth, even if it didn’t make sense, entirely.

  Thomas was the youngest of the Lawson boys who had come home. Yip, the baby, had stayed out in the wilds with a woman he’d fallen in love with, and because of the power-play that the woman represented, Jimmy had allowed it. Sarah had grown up in the Lawson home, and Thomas had been the right age for her to treat him like her baby doll. They’d always had a special relationship, even though she’d been no kinder as a child than she was as an adult. Maybe less angry, but no more merciful.

  If nothing else, she had defended him from the machinations of Rich and Wade, twins of the worst sort, and that did legitimately count for something.

  He scooted down the rock so that he could lean against it.

  “We met in Intec,” he said. “At a party.”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “I’ve heard this story before,” she said. He nodded.

  “I know. It’s how Kayla and Wade met, too. It’s how Pete and Lise met. That’s what we did, in Intec. We worked where Jimmy told us to work, we did a lot of business, and then we had parties at the house almost every night. The number of people who went through at least one of those parties… I can’t even understand it. It’s how Jimmy did business.”

  Sarah thought of the night she’d spent at the Lawson house in Intec, her stomach clenching with a sort of out-of-control anger that she didn’t want to show Thomas. She looked away.

  “Love at first sight?” she asked. Thomas laughed.

  “No. Rhoda hates the city people. Thought we were the worst of them, and we kind of were. We ran our corner of Intec, but where the bigger, richer people had more of the city, we were more… woven in, I guess. We knew everyone and we knew everything that was going on, and we were involved in so much of what we did. We didn’t just pay people, you know?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Not Jimmy’s way.”

  “It always killed him, to move on,” Thomas said, and for a moment she thought he was talking about Lawrence. “Preston was the worst. We came up from almost nothing, just a little bit of money and no reputation, and we had all the businesses and the contacts… Going to Boon was great for us, and Preston still makes great money, I think… not that Jimmy tells me about it, but, you know, you can tell… But to walk away and leave it all with managers… It kills him.”

  Sarah nodded.

  That sounded like him.

  “No,” Thomas said. “Rhoda didn’t like any of us. She was with friends, and one of them…” He hesitated.

  “Just say it, Thomas,” Sarah said. “At this point, there isn’t anything you can tell me that’s going to break new ground.”

  He glanced over, then settled lower to look at the fire before he went on.

  “One of them had a huge crush on Jimmy, and she was bringing her friends with her to try to get him to…”

  Ah. The friends were part of the bid. Sarah gritted her jaw and nodded.

  “I saw his room, there,” she said.

  “You went to Intec? I guess you’d have to, to end up in Elsewhere.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “We went to Intec.”

  “Well, Rhoda didn’t realize that that was why they were there, and she and her friend had this huge fight in the middle of the party, and Wade told me to get her out of there before they…” He sighed, glancing over at Sarah again. Guilt. “Before they ruined the buzz.”

  Pack of wolves.


  She’d gotten the picture pretty clearly. Jimmy had made sure of that. But the fresh idea - even if it wasn’t new - still made her angry.

  “I see. You were the white prince,” Sarah said.

  “She threw a drink on me and left,” Thomas said. Sarah laughed, silently acknowledging that maybe she had more in common with Rhoda than she’d given the woman credit for.

  “That’s a better story than Kayla’s got,” Sarah said.

  “She came back three days later to apologize,” Thomas said. “Wouldn’t speak to any of the rest of us, but she said she felt bad about throwing a drink at me, and she wanted to say she was sorry.”

  “What took her so long?” Sarah asked.

  “She still thought I deserved it,” Thomas said. “She came back because she couldn’t forgive herself for being uncivilized. Not because she was sorry she did it.”

  Sarah grinned.

  “All right. I’ll give her points for that.”

  “I took her to dinner, skipped the party that night, and…” Thomas shrugged. “It hasn’t been smooth sailing. She still hated most of what we did, and we broke up like every other week for the first six months.”

  “I thought she wouldn’t come here with you,” Sarah said.

  “She wouldn’t,” Thomas agreed. “That was why we broke up, the last time. We’d been steady for a couple months, at that point, and then Jimmy said we were coming back, and she couldn’t stand the idea of…”

  “Of leaving her books,” Sarah said. “I know. She told me.”

  Sarah remembered that feeling clearly. It wasn’t the paper books, though they were an indulgence you didn’t get out this far from the coast. It was the culture of accessible knowledge. Everything was knowable or findable at a moment’s investment.

  Thomas sighed.

  “She still misses them.”

  Sarah nodded, finishing her cigarette and throwing it at the fire.

  “She’s a good woman.”

  “And you won’t stand up for her at our wedding?” Thomas asked.

  “Thomas, I don’t believe in weddings,” she said, and he raised an eyebrow. Yeah, she didn’t buy that, either. She pressed a smile down, going to stir the stew to buy herself a moment.

  “Can I guess?” he asked.

  “Guess what?” she answered.

  “You believe in weddings. It’s that you don’t want to buy into other people’s decisions. Yeah, you hate the excess of ceremonies like that, but you did it. Even wore the dress. You buy it. You don’t want to attach yourself to Rhoda. Or me, for that matter, any more than you did when we were kids. Honestly, I don’t even know how Jimmy still gets through to you.”

  “Neither do I,” Sarah murmured, smelling the stew and nodding. It had the right stuff; just needed time, now.

  “You worry about him?” Thomas asked. Sarah went to lean against her saddle again, listening to the horses off in the woods nearby, grazing.

  “Jimmy? No. He’s not the type you worry about. Doesn’t do you any good.”

  “He didn’t say much, when you got back,” Thomas said, “but the way you two were moving… They hunted you both, didn’t they?”

  Sarah nodded slowly. It wasn’t her place to tell Jimmy’s secrets, but Thomas was a special hole in all the rules, the gentle, kind spirit that she and Jimmy both trusted as a person, more than just as a Lawson.

  “Wanted the secret dead, and the only way to do that is to kill the mind.”

  “That’s an assassination, not a war,” Thomas said. “Why send all those people, when they could just send a guy with a knife to live in the shantytown?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Because it won’t work, for one,” she said. “Jimmy… If I don’t kill him, myself, one of these days, it isn’t going to be some stranger in the street who gets him.”

  Thomas scratched his chin and nodded.

  “I worry,” he said, shrugging.

  Sarah looked over at him. Rich and Wade had scruffy beards that they were tending with some pride, and Peter, the eldest Lawson, was growing a mustache and playing with different styles of face-fur, seeing what he liked. Thomas and Jimmy were the only two Lawsons who stayed clean-cut. Thomas, it made him look softer, more innocent. Jimmy just looked angular, sharp. A beard would have softened him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You worry about you, you worry about Rhoda. You let me worry about Jimmy, and Jimmy…”

  “Jimmy worries about all of us,” Thomas said. Sarah smiled.

  “Jimmy doesn’t worry about anything but the future,” she said.

  “I missed you, when we first left,” Thomas said. “I don’t think I ever got a chance to tell you that.”

  “I don’t remember,” Sarah said. “But I know you did. More’n Jimmy, I expect.”

  He pinched the inside of his cheek and looked away.

  “I don’t want to say,” he said, and Sarah shrugged lower, shifting her duster with her, then pursed her lips to look up at the stars.

  “Gonna be a long ride,” she said, drawl back. “You fit for it?”

  “No,” Thomas said. “But I better get there.”

  She grinned and rolled another cigarette.

  --------

  First mine on Sarah’s list was the one they’d claimed to Apex and Thor.

  Pete’s mine.

  Still struck Sarah like a stone in her gut, going up the mountainside to that hole in the ground where she’d shot her only friend in the world for bein’ too good at chasin’ a dream.

  Dream she’d stripped ‘im of and stole it away, without so much as blinkin’.

  Weren’t how she’d meant it, but that weren’t what mattered, in the world. What mattered were what was.

  Sarah’d seen to his family, true enough, but Pete oughta’d been here, not Apex and Thor.

  But.

  Past was a snake that’d bite you just for gettin’ too close. Sarah let it lie.

  The crates linin’ the way weren’t so high as they had been. Jimmy’d designed ‘em hisself, unopenable without a key or a proper dynamite, and they’d been walkin’ down the mountains on the backs ‘a mules for the better part ‘a three months, now, makin’ it to market, cash comin’ home. Apex and Thor were the richest miners Lawrence had seen since Eli himself, richest in town save Jimmy an’ Sarah.

  Absenta.

  Mineral new to humans, one they’d found had a mess ‘a uses in medical and space tech, and one they had no history with diggin’ outta the ground. Eli Lawrence had founded the town on the back of absenta, and when it had run out, the town died.

  And then Pete had found it.

  Not just found it, hell no.

  He’d come up with a theory on the stuff, found it by science.

  Dopey kid what’d followed Sarah ‘round since he were old enough to carry a gun, and he’d broke the whole world with his brain.

  Sarah’d stole the theory, same as the claim, and she were sittin’ on a dragon’s hoard ‘a gold, on account of it.

  It were the way of things, in Lawrence. Guy what shot you took your git, and you weren’t ‘round to mind no more.

  Didn’t mean Sarah liked it, but she knew the world well enough to keep ridin’.

  Gremlin snorted at the scent of spent powder, acrid on a drift of air, and Sarah looked back at Thomas.

  “Ain’t no reason they ought be blastin’,” she muttered, drawin’ her gun from her hip and slidin’ to the ground.

  Horses were good for chargin’ in fast and sudden, but soon as the guns started goin’ off, they was a liability like to buck you off just as you were linin’ up a shot. Sarah’d landed on her butt enough times, comin’ off a gunshy horse, and she didn’t like goin’ into a fight on one of the beasts, if she could see it comin’.

  She whistled Dog in and motioned him to stay. He’d take a bullet for her, right enough, but weren’t no need for it, today.

  Thomas followed her lead, drawin’ his own handgun. She reached up for her rifle and pulled it over
Gremlin’s back, creepin’ up the side of the mountain, listenin’ for the sound of voices.

  There was a heap ‘a men, workin’ this mine. Took labor to pull rock outta the ground and put it in a box, and it were the kinda labor what could set a man up for life, if he were happy with a small enough life. Homesteadin’, for instance.

  Shoulda been voices all around them, men loadin’ boxes, eatin’ their meals, takin’ the moment to chew the fat with the guy gonna be next to them down in the black, next shift.

  Nothin’.

  She looked back at Thomas, makin’ sure he was sharp, and he pointed through the trees down at the camp. She raised her head, lookin’ to see what were down there, and she didn’t see anybody.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, speedin’ up. Last load ‘a boxes had been on time. Whatever were wrong, it were new-wrong.

  They’d worked hard to keep the spot ‘a the mine a secret. Took a new route every time up to try to keep a path from formin’, kept the map with claims marked locked away. But this. This had been comin’ since the day Pete’d found the place.

  Fightin’ over absenta were as old as Lawrence.

  Fightin’ over resources were as old as man himself.

  Gun went off and Sarah sped, sweepin’ wide round the next bend and landin’ on her belly as she heard a body hit the ground.

  Particular kind of noise a body makes, hittin’ earth. One you know when you know it. She motioned for Thomas to stay low and she rolled to her elbows, watching as a pair ‘a men in gray and blue jackets - lightweight stuff, nowhere near enough for livin’ up in the mountains nor down in the desert - shot another ‘a the workers.

  Sarah put a hole in the first one, pullin’ the bolt on the rifle to chamber the next round as the second returned fire, pullin’ a worker off his knees to use as a shield.

  “Sarah,” Thomas muttered, closer’n she’d’a reckoned.

  The second man shot again and Sarah shook her head slowly, lettin’ her breath even out. They was a hard shot to make, with a squirmin’ man against your chest and a heart rate like a horse at run. She’d dropped his buddy, no warnin’. Didn’t matter how hard a man was, that were enough to put him off his aim.

  She took her time.

  “Sarah,” Thomas said again as the man shoved the worker forward, gettin’ closer to shoot twice more.