Clash of Mountains Read online

  There was a very long silence as she and Jimmy grappled, then she lifted her chin higher.

  “Fine, but she stays over there.”

  It was a thin victory, and Sarah weren’t fightin’ it. Not like she wanted to hold the woman’s hand.

  “Standard of care would have been to do this weeks ago, but I just got this in a few days ago,” Sid said. “It’s harder than you’d think to get stuff out to here.”

  “No one in this room thinks it’s easy,” Jimmy said. Sid took out a screen and paused, looking from Peter to Jimmy.

  “Give it here,” Little Peter said. “It’s my kid.”

  Sid handed Peter the screen and then took out a small blanket, drapin’ it across Lise’s hill of a belly. He plugged it into a small white box and took out a second screen, pokin’ his way through software, then noddin’.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  Lise sighed, rolling her head to the side, and Sarah crossed her arms.

  “What am I looking at?” Peter asked. Jimmy took a step to look over Sid’s shoulder, and Sid nodded.

  “I’m doing the health diagnostics, now. Good heartbeat, good bloodflow into the brain, growth looks normal. Says that she’s thirty-two weeks along, eight weeks to go.”

  “But is it a boy or a girl?” Peter asked. Sid smiled, tapping the screen several more times. Lise twisted her head to look up at him.

  Sarah’d of grabbed the screen from him long ‘fore now, the three men standin’ ‘round her like that, peerin’ at something growin’ in her belly, but Lise just waited.

  “Congratulations,” Sid said. “You have a healthy baby girl.”

  “Congratulations,” Jimmy said, turning for the door.

  “I’ve sent for my own doctor,” Lise said. “She should be here in a few weeks, and we’ll schedule my surgery.”

  “I… I wouldn’t recommend surgical delivery,” Sid said slowly, and Jimmy turned, standin’ next to Sarah.

  “I don’t care what you think,” Lise said. “You aren’t my doctor.”

  “I wouldn’t have objected, before I came out here, myself,” Sid said. “They don’t have anything resembling ‘sterile’ in the entire town. It’s a risk to you, and it wouldn’t be doing the baby any favors, either.”

  Lise sighed, lookin’ at Jimmy.

  “Once I have the baby, I’ll go back to Intec for reconstructive surgery. Any idea you brutes had of me just dropping a baby on the ground out here… you need to forget about it.”

  “It would appear that’s between you and Petey,” Jimmy said. “I don’t care what you do.”

  Sid looked back, confused, and Sarah stewed silently.

  It was a girl.

  No one cared, no more.

  “Eight weeks, we’re like to be underwater,” Sarah said after a moment. “Just so’s all you remember.”

  Lise narrowed her eyes like Sarah was causin’ the flood on purpose, and Sarah shrugged. Looked at Jimmy.

  “You done, here?”

  He gave her the smallest of smiles, just a tightening to his lower lip, and nodded.

  “I am.”

  “Are…” Sid stood and frowned. “Are you going to give me a ride back into town?”

  “It isn’t that far,” Peter said. “You afraid of the dark, kid?”

  “We’ll wait outside,” Jimmy said. “Sarah has to get her boots back on.”

  Sarah tipped her head to the side and let it roll to look at him. The corner of one eye tweaked, and she near as drove him neck-first into the wall.

  “I have more tests to run,” Sid said. “It’ll be a few minutes, at least, and then I want to be sure to answer any questions Lise may have.”

  “It’ll take Sarah that long to get the horse back in harness,” Jimmy said. “We’ll see you outside.”

  Sarah shoved her feet into her boots while Jimmy held the door for her without comment. She went outside with him and went to track down Flower where the dumb beast was tryin’ to graze sand again.

  “Stuff ain’t good for you,” she said, and he lifted his head, whuffing at her and shufflin’ over.

  He nosed her shoulder and she looked back at Jimmy as he stood against the wagon, looking up at the stars. The light from Thomas’ and Rhoda’s windows illuminated his face, but everything behind him was black. Striking, that.

  She grabbed hold of Flower’s mane and walked ‘im back over to the buckboard, liftin’ the traces off the ground and sloppin’ ‘em over Flower’s back, startin’ to fasten ‘em.

  She glanced over at Jimmy at a waypoint on the work, pullin’ out the bag of gremlin and rollin’ him a cigarette, handing it over to him and goin’ back to work without a word.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Jimmy finally said.

  “You ain’t got a clue what I’m thinkin’,” Sarah answered.

  “You think that, whatever I would have done with a boy, I should have done, finding out it was a girl,” he said. “You think I’m devaluing women by not pursuing it like I would have.”

  “Every year, I go up into the hills and bring down my cows,” she said, continuin’ to work. “Gonna do it again this year, even if I am late. Go up, bring ‘em down, brand the heifers, butcher the feeders, send ‘em back up. Bein’ born a boy means bein’ walkin’ beef. Ain’t so much different, for us, ‘cept you still need women to drop babies.”

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Jimmy asked. She paused, then continued runnin’ traces.

  “I long known what it meant to not be the prime breeder,” Sarah said. “Ain’t about bein’ a girl. ‘S’about bein’ yours.”

  “You said you didn’t want it, either way,” Jimmy said.

  “I did. But I’m right disappointed you’d only want it, based on what good it done ‘ya. You been raised Lawson since the day you drew air. Thought you knew better than that.”

  “Mmm,” he murmured, holdin’ out the cigarette as she finished. “Don’t know, either way.”

  She took the cigarette and went to lean next to him, settlin’ her hat as she looked up. Didn’t much do that, in Lawrence.

  “I was born here,” Jimmy said.

  “I’ll die here,” Sarah answered. He nodded, reaching across her to take the cigarette back and putting it to his lips. She watched, the quick fidget of fingers waiting to take it back, the nervous habits of hand and mouth balanced around burning gremlin. He never stopped moving.

  No.

  He did.

  But only in these… crystalline moments that Sarah horded jealously to herself.

  Like now.

  Even now, he was slowing, finding that place where everything went still.

  He dropped his hand, letting it brush against hers, and he blew smoke at the sky, his head tipped all the way back.

  And there it was.

  His eyes closed.

  And he was still.

  He’d come to see her, once, at Oxala, in a funny corner of circumstances. One where she’d needed him. He’d lied to everyone about where he was, and just disappeared for the week it took to get there and back, to spend barely an evening with her.

  They’d missed each other so painfully, but things were good in Lawrence and things were good at Oxala, and they hadn’t been able to say it. Still couldn’t, standing against a buckboard in Lawrence, years later. But the involuntary smile when he’d seen her… the one she’d done her level best to control on her own face…

  It had felt like this.

  He breathed in, a deep, firm breath, and he rolled his head to look at her.

  “Take the win, Sarah,” he said. “It’s over.”

  She nodded.

  “All right.”

  The door behind them opened and Sid struggled out with his box. Sarah cast a jaundiced eye at him, then turned, climbing the buckboard and landing in her seat hard enough to make the springs squeak. Jimmy took one more long draw at the cigarette, then tossed it away and climbed up and over her, sitting in the driver’s seat and waiting with cool eyes as S
id worked his way up into the back of the cart again.

  As the young doctor settled in, Jimmy clicked to Flower and the horse set off, back to town, back to the house, back to the next task. Always moving.

  --------

  Sarah went to bed by herself and she woke in an empty bed, Jimmy’s side cold.

  She got up and dressed, gettin’ her face washed and dressin’ in the room that had once been Elaine Lawson’s.

  Sarah still didn’t much sleep up here; she preferred the room she’d had as a child, but she’d been sleepin’ up in the main suite now and again, as much to keep Jimmy off-balance as anything else. Didn’t work when he never came to bed.

  She put on her hat and her boots and went down to the dinin’ room, lettin’ the cook bring her a bowl of gremlin mash, hot, and a glass of juice. Sarah didn’t ask ‘bout the juices, but they kept comin’ and truth was she liked ‘em, so she didn’t complain. She finished her breakfast and went up to Jimmy’s office at the front of the house and went in, sittin’ on the couch ‘till he looked up at her.

  “I’m goin’ up to get my cows,” she said.

  He paused.

  Drew breath and sighed, looking at his papers.

  “Contracts,” he said. “Signing men to work for me in security. More applications than I can get through. Need to do interviews, but I don’t have time, and I want you to be there.”

  Sarah waited.

  The last time she’d talked of goin’ up to get cows, he’d said he’d go with her, insisted he’d have time if he said he did.

  And then the world had blown up ‘round them, with Pythagoras sendin’ men to wipe out the whole town, and they’d been puttin’ together pieces ever since. Merlin, the man Jimmy had brought from out east to tend the livestock had been up and back to get the Lawson herd, but Sarah’s were still up, and if she didn’t get ‘em down, she were gonna miss a whole breedin’ season.

  And they were hers. Hers.

  Jimmy got that.

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Papers on that desk ain’t gettin’ any less, and, come bullets or floodwaters, town can’t survive with both of us gone.”

  “Talk to me,” he said. “How are we going to keep everyone alive, the next flood?”

  She looked at the wall, mind’s eye seein’ the long, flat, red of the badlands north of Lawrence. Nothin’ stopped the water pourin’ down across those.

  “Put ‘em up in the hills,” she said finally. “Then find a way to keep ‘em from dyin’ of exposure or hunger.”

  Water weren’t a problem, but it could be as much as a couple ‘a weeks ‘fore the water went down low enough to go see what were left.

  “Ma always wanted to put them up here, too,” Jimmy said. “Pa said there wasn’t a way to keep them from fighting and wandering off into the mountains to die up there, instead.”

  “Might be true about the shantytown boys, but the homesteaders wouldn’t ever get lost up there,” Sarah said. “And you ain’t gonna get them out of their houses. Need to be there, keep ‘em in place and be the first to make sure everything is locked down after.”

  “We haven’t had a bandit raid since the wedding,” Jimmy said. “Are they still all that concerned about theft?”

  “Ain’t a memory that’s gonna die easy,” Sarah said. He nodded.

  “Willie and Paulie didn’t manage to do much for us,” he said. Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  “The death-trap? No, I weren’t much impressed with it.”

  “We need structures,” Jimmy said. “And provisions.”

  “Cause we got a surplus of hands ready to put to more buildin’ projects,” Sarah said.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, standin’ and wavin’ his hands over the papers. “I don’t want to look at this, anymore. I want to be out. That’s where I’ll figure all of this out.”

  She crossed her arms and looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

  “Then we best go. You gonna tell Little Peter and Thomas? Pick someone to keep on?”

  “Thomas is already gone again,” Jimmy said. “He’s scouting locations for sentry cabins with Wade.”

  Sarah lifted her head.

  “When you get that done?”

  He put his hands through his hair and nodded.

  “I need space,” he said. “I could be missing things that are staring me in the face, dealing with all these details.”

  Sarah watched him, the little tics as he moved. His fingers worked at raw air as he stood, and she shook her head.

  “When was the last night of real sleep you got?” she asked. He shook his head quickly. “Go get changed,” she said. “I ain’t takin’ you out like that again.”

  He looked down at his clothes, heavy-duty cloth for the coast, but too well-cut for Lawrence, too dark. He looked up, humor coming to his face.

  “You prefer my cowboy git?”

  She shrugged.

  “If you weren’t tryin’ so hard to be a joke, it’d suit you fine.”

  He smiled, real, surprisin’ her.

  “You adapted to Intec,” he said. “I suppose I owe it to you to do the same, out here.”

  “’Bout time,” she answered, and he grinned.

  “All right. Do you need to pack?”

  “Ain’t gonna take me more’n ten or fifteen minutes,” she said. “Can’t spare more’n a couple days out and a couple days back, and it ain’t like I have to pack for bandits.”

  It weren’t just that the bandits had been playin’ at being workin’ men, these days. The good grazin’ country were up in the mountains west of the badlands, and if you reckoned on gettin’ there in any good time at all, you went straight ‘crost, quick as you could manage. Hot as hell, but you got and you got done.

  Water, food, and a bedroll’d just about do it.

  He nodded and pointed at the door.

  “Then I’ll see you out at the barn.”

  She nodded, followin’ him out of the office and takin’ her own way out to the barn, whistlin’ up dog. Gremlin called back to her from in the barn, and she went in to turn him loose, gettin’ his gear ready as he went out into the yard, just listenin’. Actually looked like a creature with some sense, like that. Flower lipped at her elbow as she went past, and she gave him a bump.

  “Don’t know what I was thinkin’,” she muttered. “Ain’t in need of two horses any more’n I need two mouths.” The horse bobbed his head at her, and she shook her head. “Jimmy ain’t got nothin’ like a proper horse, just takin’ whoever’s standin’ around.”

  Flower wickered and she shook her head and sighed, goin’ back to the tack room to get out his gargantuan saddle.

  “All right?” she demanded. “You happy?”

  She set him loose, too, and went back up to the house, goin’ in to the back door at the kitchen and raidin’ the pantry for staples she could cook on a cast iron pan over a fire. Gremlin flour, lard, some dried vegetables, dried meat. Weren’t gourmet, but she liked it well enough. Wouldn’t be no huntin’ ‘tween here and the pastures.

  Dog trotted a path around her feet as she walked, takin’ bits ‘a jerky as she tossed ‘em and barkin’ at her, happy little noises.

  He were a workin’ dog at heart, and goin’ up into the mountains was all he wanted, too. Him, Jimmy, and Sarah all the same.

  She hauled a saddle up onto Flower, then got Gremlin tacked, puttin’ on water for five and feed for three. Cows’d be on their own, leggin’ it down to the Lawson house. Make it and eat, else die and have Sarah come back for the meat. Simple enough. She hadn’t ever lost one; the grazin’ up in the mountains were good enough to fatten ‘em up for a week-long walk, if she could find ‘em water.

  She put on her bedding and an extra kit for Jimmy, checkin’ her rifle, her guns, her knives. Jimmy turned up near the end, taking a moment to look at Flower.

  “Should I ask?” he asked.

  “He needs the trek time, but I ain’t tak
in’ him up without a better horse to keep him on track.”

  Jimmy nodded slowly.

  “So he’s… my… horse.”

  She looked at him flatly.

  “Sure,” she said. “Soon as you’re settled with me tellin’ your buddies back in Preston you go flouncin’ ‘round on a giant white horse named Flower.”

  “Flouncing,” Jimmy said, runnin’ his hands down Flower’s side, checkin’ the tack and feelin’ his coat. He had good horse hands.

  Sarah raised her chin, lookin’ at what he’d picked to wear.

  He finally looked like a man from Lawrence. Sure, his git was all brand new, but it were made of the sturdy leather and loose white cloth that kept the sun off and the air goin’ through. He even had a brimmed hat goin’ all the way around, keepin’ sun off his neck and his face at the same time. Weren’t a proper cowboy hat, but it kept from pointin’ out how wide his ears were. She nodded, and he noticed, taking a step away from Flower and puttin’ his arms to the side.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Didn’t know you had it in you,” she said. “You feel like less a man, stoopin’ to your roots like that?”

  He frowned, but it wasn’t entirely sincere.

  He held up a finger, rootin’ in a pocket to bring out a kercheif that he tied ‘round his neck, then turned his face to her again.

  “You makin’ fun?” she asked.

  “No more than you are,” he answered. “Are we ready?”

  “More your question than mine,” she said, goin’ to Gremlin and steppin’ up into the stirrup, swingin’ her leg over and lookin’ down at him.

  He nodded.

  “I left word for Petey to keep on with everything that’s happening. Rich is going to keep getting the absenta out of the house and to the train on schedule.”

  Sarah nodded.

  One ‘a Jimmy’s tactics: bringin’ down the absenta in littler loads and storin’ ‘em at the house, lettin’ em go in small batches to the train, keep opportunists from gettin’ a crack at the whole load at once.

  “You got someone watchin’ the house?” Sarah asked. He gave her a sideways look.

  “Lise and Petey are going to come stay, while we’re gone.”