Sarah Todd Read online

  “She didn’t want you to come?”

  “Didn’t tell her,” Marcus answered. Sarah laughed.

  “You’re a damned fool, moving forward when I stopped.”

  “You always stop,” he answered. “Fight’s forward.”

  She always lived, too.

  She gritted her teeth at him.

  “I’m going to do a damned sight of work on you, Marcus,” she said as his eyes fluttered and began to roll. She pushed harder, the surge of pain bringing him to with a groan. “A damned sight. You live through it. Got me?”

  “Tell Enid...”

  “Tell her your own damned self,” she said, looking up as the second man came back, leading her horse.

  “In the bag,” she said, then shook her head in frustration as he tried to pick through it one-armed. “Just bring it all, damn it. Do it now.”

  He took her saddle bags off of the black horse, struggling to get them to her. She took one bloody hand and snatched everything she could get out of the medical bag, finding the pliers. She looked at Marcus again, but he was passed out.

  “Hold his hands,” she said to the other man. He shuffled, trying to figure out how, with only one arm. “Cross his chest,” she said. “Now.”

  The second man crossed Marcus’s arms across his chest and then leaned on them, nodding. Sarah shook her head and plunged the pliers into Marcus’s wound, hitting metal with a click and pulling the bullet out. There were organs in there with holes in them, and that would matter, but right now it was the spreading puddle of blood that concerned her. She found the putty and the foam canister, filling the hole with the foam and covering it with putty before mixing a pat of glue and capping the whole thing with that. The glue would bond to skin, regardless of how much blood was on top of it, and the foam would plug up anything that felt like seeping, for as long as it lasted. By design, it would dissolve in a day or so, and it weren’t perfect. If they jostled Marcus around too much, things would break free and he’d bleed into his own stomach and be just as dead.

  “Okay,” she said, sitting back on her heels. “Let’s get him out of here.”

  She looked around, but there was no better way to do it than with her blanket. She pulled the rolled wool down from behind her saddle and lay it out next to Marcus. She looked over her shoulder to find several more of the men.

  “Shift him onto that,” she said. “Bust up that patch work, you answer to me.”

  They moved Marcus over onto the blanket. She watched critically.

  “Need two men dragging him,” she said. “Thor, you’re finding a campsite for the night. Bruiser’s men will be around. Heads up, everyone.”

  The men set to work, and she walked along behind Marcus, watching as he went over the uneven ground. She gave him fifty-fifty odds of making it through the night, and fifty-fifty again tomorrow. She’d have to open him back up and try to close some of the holes before they got home. If he made it through the night, he might live through that part.

  “Caleb, you drop your corner again, I will get my whip and remind you.”

  The man looked over his shoulder and grunted. She glowered back from under her hat.

  They worked for a couple of hours to get Marcus up and out of the canyon, camping in a protected space Thor found. She peeled the glue off of Marcus last thing to check the putty. It was expanding the way it was supposed to, so she used the blood-stimulant injection on him and went to bed.

  In the morning, he was still warm.

  “Anyone with a bullet in them stays,” she said as the men drank their coffee around the small fire. “Everyone else, with me.”

  The cattle were restless, but stayed close for lack of a food source. She needed to get them back to Lawrence where the Joiners could feed and tend to them, but she had things to get done, first.

  “We ain’t going after Bruiser,” Thor said, a question.

  “You ain’t,” she said. “You’re the one good gun arm watchin’ over Marcus.”

  He didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. She looked at the ten men who were left.

  “He’s picked off homesteads all of the last year. We take it to him, now.”

  “We got the cows, Sarah,” one of the men complained.

  “And you get to push them all the way home,” she answered. “Any other thoughts?”

  There was a sullen silence and she gave them a nod.

  “Good. With me.”

  She found her horse, mounting up and riding back to where they’d been ambushed. They’d taken the cows this way, so the camp was this way. Bandits didn’t do double-backs with herds of cows. Too much work.

  “You four, up high,” she said, pointing. “Everyone else, stay sharp.”

  They rode more slowly, now, passing the bodies of the bandits they killed yesterday. Her black horse shied at one of them and she slapped him.

  “Stupid animal,” she muttered. “It’s just meat.”

  The canyon narrowed as the sun began to peek over the top ridge. They rode two across in knee-deep water that smelled of death. They passed a varmint that had drowned in it.

  “They’ll feel right at home, in this,” Sarah observed to no one in particular. She rode with her rifle planted against her thigh, eyes up more than down.

  There was a shout. Sarah threw herself off the horse into the shallowing water, running forward to find cover as the shouting multiplied. The canyon widened rapidly to a small, walled-in valley. She ducked behind a loose boulder as the camp stirred to life like an insect mound. Excitable bandits lit off, shooting at nothing yet. She and her men stayed low. There were sounds above them, and she looked up to see bandits on the ridge, engaged with her men up high. She pulled her handgun and shot one, then turned to look out over the valley.

  It was a nice setup, all things considered. They had water, they had a little grazing grass, and they had cover on all sides, right until Sarah’s men owned the ridge. Then they had a kill pot.

  There were several dozen horses and a few more cows off to the side. Sarah aimed to take them all, ‘fore the day was done.

  “Pick your shots,” she said. “More’a them than us.”

  A body fell from above. She didn’t bother to look, instead setting her rifle on the top of the boulder and picking a target.

  ––—

  Twenty-six horses and another thirty cattle of various brands. That was her take. She had six more men to patch, but only one more that couldn’t ride. Marcus was still the only one who was in danger of dying on her. They rounded up the livestock and rode them back out of the valley, leaving dead and dying bandits behind without much concern. She’d killed Bruiser herself.

  It had been a good day.

  They got back to camp in time to break and push back toward Lawrence for a couple hours before the sun got too low, then they staked the herd and made supper. She checked on Marcus, pulling glue and putty to find the foam almost gone. She spent the evening applying tiny bits of foam to things she couldn’t close and trying to get everything else stitched or burnt closed by the light of a small lantern and a headlamp. Long after dark, she filled the hole back up with foam, covered it over with putty and glue and gave him another shot of blood stimulant.

  As much as she could do.

  She didn’t know if they was one day out or two. At the rate they managed with Marcus, it could yet be three.

  He wouldn’t make it three.

  “We break camp before dawn,” she told the men. “Be ready.”

  ––—

  She sent two of her abler men ahead at the end of the next day. Gave ‘em a list of things for Doc. Marcus was turning gray, but he was still breathing. They’d have to push hard the next day.

  ––—

  Enid was at the Joiner homestead when they got there. So was Doc. The sun had been down for hours, but they made it. The men worked on getting the cattle put up in temporary pens. Doc worked on saving Marcus.

  Enid cried.

  Sarah went home.

/>   ––—

  Pete showed up the next day to hand over the Perpeto and to tell her Marcus had pulled through.

  “I killed Bruiser,” she told him. “That’s another one down.”

  “There are too many of them, Sarah,” Pete said.

  “Doesn’t stop me from killin’ the next one, does it?” she asked, sipping her tea.

  “I’m headin’ up to my claim tomorrow,” Pete said. “Unless you need me.”

  “Have fun digging,” she said. He grinned and tipped his hat to leave. She put her feet up on her desk and sipped her tea.

  Another one down.

  ––—

  The first of the calves came in a rush of blood and gore, like they always did, getting up, wandering, suckling. The cow was a good mother, getting him clean and dry before Sarah got involved. He would be jerky by next year, or smoked, one. Humans wanted sons. In the cattle community, being born a boy meant you were meat.

  Sarah found justice in that.

  She tended to the Joiners best she could, getting ground laid for a barn raising by week’s end and seeing that their seed went in the ground on time, and in all the community was feeling good about things. Wiping out a crew of bandits did that for them, at least for the here and now.

  She took Dog out and put a serious dent in the varmint population around the barn, now that there was grain ‘round again, then made herself visible. The payments for Perpeto trickled in as folk picked up their allotments bit by bit, and wherever she went, people put money in her hand. She turned up where folk needed her, but she turned up faster for her friends. And Sarah’s friendship could be bought.

  Lawrence was hardly an upstanding town, by rights. They had their purebloods, true enough, the families who’d been eking out a living longer than most, and they had their scoundrels, the dirty men who were most often found at the tavern, or ‘round behind it, where Willie dumped them when their funds ran out. Sarah was something of a special case.

  Clinton Todd had been a scoundrel. Everyone knew it, and no one cared. Mutt to the bone, he’d never held land bigger than the bit his house sat on and he’d never held money more than the cost of the cheapest booze at the tavern. He’d prospected and he’d hustled and he’d made enough to keep himself in beer and cheap boots, but he’d never amounted to much. From his teens, he’d been a failure, same as his daddy before him.

  No one knew why Babe married him. Sarah had never had the chance to ask, seeing as Babe had died when Sarah was still measured in months and inches, and there’d never been much important about her, save one thing: she was Elaine Lawson’s best friend.

  Elaine was Lawrence royalty. Lit’rally, depending on how you took it, considering she’d been Elaine Lawrence before she’d married Peter. Her pa, Eli Lawrence, founded the town, and Peter Lawson had settled it, making it run, making it right. He and his brother Grin had legendary tempers, short fuses both of ‘em, and a sense of impulse that they rarely controlled. Elaine, by contrast, was like her pa, measured, careful, and always tending confidences. She and Peter had been a power couple since their teens, and their joining had created the core of Lawrence. Everything about Lawrence was what it was ‘cause Elaine or Peter said so.

  And Elaine had loved Babe like a sister.

  And hated Clinton, like any right-minded woman would.

  When Babe died, Elaine had swept in, taking Sarah with her and leaving Clinton to rot, as he would have either way. Peter had never approved, but he wouldn’t go ‘gainst his wife on anything, not even a little Todd baby roaming the house. Jimmy Lawson, incidentally, was four weeks older than Sarah. She’d learnt to talk first, but he’d been the first walking. He had the first teeth, but she was the first to make use of ‘em. Their whole lives had been like that.

  Sarah was a Todd. Ev’ryone knew it, but no one said. Elaine wouldn’t stand for it. When Elaine died, Peter’s patience with Sarah was at ends, and he sent her back home to Clinton, where she stayed, even after her pa died, more and more a Todd, but with vestiges of her learnin’ with Elaine and a continuing friendship with Jimmy. She didn’t much care for the other Lawson boys, Lawsons through and through, the lot of them, but Jimmy took after Elaine, and for a lot of years, the pair were inseparable. She weren’t a blueblood, but her word carried plenty of weight with them who knew. When the Lawsons picked up and left, the folk ‘round town had no place to turn but to Sarah, and so it was.

  She was the son of a mutt and a nobody, with little land or respectability to her name, but folk tipped their hats and spoke careful to her, all the same, on account of her being all the Lawson there were left in Lawrence.

  The week was calm, for a week in Lawrence. After Bruiser, she didn’t kill anyone else, and that was something, at least. She cleaned her guns, ordered her ammunition, and spent several evenings at the train station, watching the rails disappear into the distance.

  There were still no supplies.

  And then Pete came back.

  “Sarah?” he called from the porch. “You home?”

  She thought knockin’ would do just as well, but she opened the door.

  “What is it, Pete?” she asked.

  “Got somethin’ to show you,” he said, lookin’ like a puppy what killed his first varmint.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Will you come?”

  She shrugged, pulling the door closed and puttin’ on her hat.

  “Should bring Dog,” Pete said, hopping sideways down the stairs like a long-legged bug.

  “Where we goin’, Pete?” she asked, whistling for Dog.

  “My claim,” he said with a grin, dashing back to his horse.

  There was a tremor in Sarah, a sense that the ground weren’t as strong as she’d thought. She went to find the black horse, back at the barn with the cows like he belonged, then they rode next door to secure the feedin’ and tendin’ services of the Pillar boy again.

  Pete’s claim was about a six hour ride up into the mountains, and he chattered for large parts of it, pointing out rocks and features that mattered to him.

  Pete was a dumb guy, weren’t nothing going to change Sarah’s opinion of that, but she had to give him credit. What he knew, he knew but good.

  “That there,” he said. “Igneous rock. Means that were a volcano, long time ago. Lotta these mountains here ‘cause of volcanoes. You can dig down round them, and sometimes you find diamonds or peridots.”

  “You been findin’ diamonds?” Sarah asked.

  “Few,” Pete said. “Sell ‘em when I go to Jeremiah. Got a guy there.”

  “And you ain’t been cuttin’ me in?” Sarah asked with a small smile.

  “Figure I pay my dues my own way,” Pete said cheerfully enough.

  “That you do,” she agreed. “How big a rock you been findin’?”

  “Most are ‘bout as big as your tooth. One as big as your eye, maybe. They’re blue, ‘round here, on account of the impurities in the lava.”

  “Lava,” Sarah said. He shrugged.

  “Long ago, ‘fore we got here, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  He pointed again at a stream winding its way down through a valley as they crossed it. They’d passed into the green side of the mountains a ways back.

  “That’s a good place to pan for gold, if you’ve a mind,” he said. “Two, three of the peaks up there got good deposits, but you want where the water slows down, like through here, to drop it.”

  “Why ain’t you claimed it?” Sarah asked. “You been free-prospectin’?”

  “Just pokin’ round,” Pete said. “Got some good flakes, once, but not ‘nough worth sellin’.”

  She shook her head.

  “You could make a livin’, Pete.”

  “I already do,” he told her. She grinned.

  Those were the big two, these days. Gold and diamonds. The giant rocks out here still had both left in ‘em, and they sold for good enough money to keep Lawrence afloat. There was talk of dig
ging on the flats to see if there weren’t no coal around, either, but Sarah thought that was dreamers’ talk. Just ‘cause it always had didn’t mean that diggin’ in the ground was going to get you something worth gettin’.

  Pete wouldn’t tell her what he wanted to show her. He just kept talking’ ‘bout how old the rocks were, how old ev’rything was, down under the dirt. He was hintin’ at something, but Sarah had never made a practice of understanding what it was the prospectors did, and she weren’t gettin’ there.

  Finally they got to his claim.

  Dog ran off huntin’ when she got down, and she took a look ‘round Pete’s camp.

  It was sparse, but most prospectors’ camps were. Tripod over ashes where he’d cook his meals and heat his coffee, tarp over his bedding, more to keep the dust out than the rain, and a metal box for food. A stream ran by close enough that he didn’t have to tote his water, which was fortunate.

  “There gold in there?” she asked, looking at it.

  “Little bit,” Pete said. “Nothin’ worth getting excited over.”

  She grinned again. He waved her forward.

  “This way.”

  He took a lantern off a hook and started down a small tunnel, hand-dug, most likely, and braced with mining props, the likes of which Granger once sold by the hundreds.

  “What do you know about mining, Sarah?” Pete asked.

  “Little as I can manage,” Sarah told him. The light from outside faded to nothing, and they were just in the orange of the lantern, continuing along flat, and then gradually down.

  “Findin’ diamonds is a trick,” Pete said. “You gotta know your rocks, know your alloys, know what colors mean what, and what’s like to be under ‘em.” He turned so she could see his face. “I’m one of the best.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. He grinned, edging on.

  “It ain’t like gold or absenta,” he said. “Any fool with a pickaxe or a pan can go find those, cause they’s easy to find. Gold lives down here, too, but it’s easier when the water brings it to you, like it does. You just find a nice calm spot and take the gold out of the gravel, like god givin’ it to you.”