Clash of Mountains Read online

  “Tell ‘em to stay out ‘a my room,” she answered. Paused. “And tell ‘em to bring Kayla up, too. She shouldn’t be alone with nobody left down at town.”

  He gave her a small nod, looking at the nearby hillsides.

  “It will be better, when we’re all up here, again.”

  She looked north, toward the flats.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  “Let’s go,” he answered. She gave Gremlin a nudge and he set off. Sarah resented havin’ to get down to open gates ‘tween here and the open ground, but Merlin kept too much stock around the house to not have fences for ‘em. Weren’t long and they were out of sight of the house, of the fences, of the presence of other people, and Sarah found herself relaxin’ into the ride.

  Jimmy sat higher’n her by a couple inches, stone-faced as he watched the horizon through squinted eyes.

  “Talk it out,” she said, and he nodded slowly.

  “The problems here are just problems,” he said. “None of them would end us, if it weren’t for Pythagoras.”

  “And why does Pythagoras care?” Sarah asked. He gave her a quick look, noddin’ to hisself. Talk it out. Were what they’d always done.

  “It’s not just the competition with Descartes,” he said. “But it is that. We are on the verge of re-making the world economy and controlling it from Lawrence. Apex and Thor…” He looked at her again, suckin’ on a back tooth. “They need more than just a safe to deal with the wealth they’re going to have, coming in. We should talk to them about getting an accountant and a wealth manager in Preston, at least, and letting the bulk of the money stay out there. There’s no use for it, in Lawrence.”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose, but nodded. She and Jimmy’d get their cut, but she saw what Jimmy did, ‘bout what might happen to the boys, if the line of absenta held up like it looked like it could.

  “Pythagoras ain’t worried ‘bout new money boys out on the frontier,” she said, and he shook his head.

  “Pythagoras is worried about contagion,” he said. “Someone else figuring out what you did and using it up and down the range. Swamp the world economy, break a lot of things unwittingly.”

  “Why ain’t Descartes worried about that?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m not saying he isn’t,” Jimmy said, squinting harder. “I wouldn’t put it past him at all to do exactly what Pythagoras is doing to us…” He paused. “Exactly what Pythagoras is doing? They were trying to cart Apex away?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Hog-tied ‘crost the back of a horse, when I caught up to him.”

  Jimmy’s head ticked back and forth.

  “There’s nothing to say Pythagoras isn’t trying to do exactly the same thing Descartes is,” Jimmy said. “He’s going to try to win the horse race, he just hasn’t got a horse in the race yet.”

  “You think they’re both going to stand back and watch the world economy crumble, so long as they was the one what caused it?” she asked.

  “That kind of control?” Jimmy asked. “Why not?”

  “Maybe on account of Descartes ain’t got that kind of control?” Sarah answered. “You do.”

  “Descartes probably thinks he’s running us,” Jimmy said, “but he knows me better than to put a lot of faith in that.”

  Sarah rolled her shoulders back, lettin’ her tail settle into the saddle deeper. This were the kinda ridin’ she could do all day long and again tomorrow.

  “How do you play the game when you ain’t got nothin’ on the power of the two big guys on the board?”

  “Be faster,” Jimmy said simply. “And it isn’t just the two of them. There are six or seven of them, just on our coast, and another handful around the planet just as powerful. They could walk in and take over just about anywhere they wanted, but their attention is too divided, fighting with each other and doing things that are a lot more important.”

  “So your weapon ain’t you and it ain’t us,” Sarah said. “It’s Descartes.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you move him around?” Sarah asked. He nodded slowly.

  “Exactly,” he said. “No problems with the reservoir concrete tempering, no applications, no route-mapping for absenta… How do we get ourselves where we need to be for Descartes to strike back at Pythagoras?”

  Dog trotted alongside as the land got less sandy and more baked-clay. Sarah got out her water skin and drank, offerin’ it over to Jimmy.

  Weren’t no need for talkin’, so neither of ‘em did any.

  They crossed most ‘a the flats that day, settin’ a camp near dusk where Sarah set to lightin’ a fire with the coals she’d packed and cookin’ a short dinner. Jimmy took out a knife and started carvin’ in the ground with it.

  “We need the reservoir to be done by the time the rains come, or else it won’t have had any point.”

  “Need it to be done by the time the rains come, or else it won’t be, no more,” Sarah said. He nodded.

  “Doesn’t matter. If it fails, I’m just going to do it again. Lawrence needs it.”

  “Needin’ somethin’ don’t mean you’re gonna get it,” she said. “We done fine, this long.”

  “Do you remember the water trains?” he asked.

  She raised her head from the hardtack.

  “Do remember somethin’, but no specifics,” she said.

  “The depth of the well water is variable,” Jimmy said. “There are no guarantees there will be enough for everyone and the crops all the time. There was a dry season up in the mountains, and the deep-ground runoff wasn’t enough to keep everything alive, so Pa paid the trains to run extra cars, just water for months. Until the next flood, really. And the homesteaders still lot most of their crop.”

  “Jimmy,” she said, sitting. “That’s happened twice, since, only there weren’t no train and there weren’t no Peter Lawson to save everything. People what could took to the mountains, brought back what water they could trek. Pete’s folk lost a full seed crop. Took ‘em years to get back to full crops again.”

  Jimmy stuck the knife in the ground and leaned back on his elbow, looking east. This close to the mountains, weren’t much to see but them, west, but east weren’t nothing but flat far as the mind could imagine.

  “I can fix it, Sarah. I can make it work.”

  “There’s a reason ain’t no cars in Lawrence,” Sarah said.

  “And what’s that?” He turned his head to look at her.

  “Water’s hard, Jimmy. Imagine how bad it’s gonna be when we’re trying to keep a supply of fuel, too.”

  “That’s not like you, Sarah,” he said. “See the solution, not the problem.”

  “I’m just bein’ pragmatic, Jimmy. What, you want a showpiece car to prove you’re the boss? I got no problem with that, other than that it makes you a pretentious idiot with clean shoes. I ain’t even fightin’ you on that.”

  “I know you don’t want Lawrence to change. This is my home just as much as it is yours. But it can’t stay like this.”

  “Cars won’t make it up into the mountains,” she said. “And putterin’ around Lawrence don’t make much sense, neither, because you can walk just as easy as drivin’. Homesteaders, sure, they might use a car to get to town and home once in a bit, but they ain’t got reason to be in town more’n a couple times a month, ‘cept to drink.”

  “And we all know how you feel about that,” he said, working his thumb over his fingers. She ignored the unintentional request for a cigarette.

  “That bar killed your Ma,” Sarah said. “Don’t know how you can just overlook it.”

  “A man with a gun killed Ma,” Jimmy said. “Drunk or not, that’s what happened. I own bars. You’ve drunk in them.”

  “All the problems in Lawrence what ain’t related to bandits are caused by that damned bar,” she said. “Can’t shut it down, but I ain’t gonna go out of my way to put money in their pockets.”

  “And that’s why you’d keep cars out?”
Jimmy asked. “To spite Willie and Paulie?”

  “Because we don’t need ‘em,” Sarah said. “And ‘cause there’s nowhere to put ‘em, no way to fuel ‘em, and they’s just somethin’ you’re gonna bring in here to prove you ain’t Lawrence.”

  “I see,” he said. She turned her attention back to the hardtack, flippin’ it in the lard and pushin’ it around the pan to get all of the fat soaked up ‘fore she pulled ‘em out. She pulled the pan for Dog to lick when it cooled, then took out a pair of tin plates and went to sit down next to Jimmy, puttin’ the hardtack, jerky, and dried fruit on the plates. She handed him his and he took it, long fingers picking at hot hardtack.

  “Every time I go home, I try to get the cook to make this, but it’s never the same, and I can’t be sure if it’s because she’s inept or if it’s because I haven’t spent the entire day riding,” he said. She smiled.

  “It ain’t the cook,” she said, tearing jerky with her teeth. “Tell me about the boys.”

  “Which?”

  “The ones you aim to hire to watch our backs when there ain’t enough Lawsons to go ‘round,” she said. He nodded slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Yeah,” he said. “There just isn’t enough to distinguish them. I should be able to sort the company men from the desperate in interviews, but I’ve been too busy trying to get the house repaired and get the reservoir finished.”

  “Have Rhoda do it,” Sarah said.

  “Hmm?” he asked.

  “At least to filter ‘em down,” Sarah said. “She handled you. She knows how to read a man. And if I’m going to stand up for her at her weddin’, she can at least carry her own weight.”

  “What’s this, now?” Jimmy asked, sitting up. “She asked you?”

  “No,” Sarah said sourly. “She sent Thomas t’do it.”

  “And… you said yes?”

  “What, she was goin’ t’ask someone else?” she asked. “Kayla? Sunny? Lise?”

  “What did he threaten you with?” Jimmy asked.

  “Why?” Sarah asked.

  “Because I could always use a new trump card in my deck,” Jimmy said, eyes sparkling at her. He settled back down on his elbow and finished his dinner. Dog whined at Sarah and she tossed him bits ‘a jerky until he came to lay down next to her, and she looked back at Flower and Gremlin, makin’ sure they’d found their shallow pans of grain and were finishin’ them off right. Weren’t enough to make up for the length of the ride, but it’d get ‘em to grass tomorrow, and then they’d take an easy day up in the hills while Dog scented out the cows.

  “So,” Sarah said, pullin’ over Gremlin’s saddle and tippin’ her hat down over her eyes as she lay back onto it. “How do you push around Pythagoras, guessin’ that he’s lookin’ for a pro to make sense ‘a how to find absenta?”

  “How do you feel about bodyguards?” Jimmy asked, layin’ out on his back with his hands woven behind his head.

  “I am the bodyguard,” Sarah said. “Ain’t got the time to train up another guy for backup, so it’s you or one of the boys. And I’m more concerned about me killin’ guys up in the hills than them killin’ me. This is my land.”

  Jimmy nodded at the sky.

  “I hear you, but if he’s got one really good play, it’s going to be taking you.”

  She watched him, bland as dust.

  “He ain’t rightly prepared for what he’d get, he tries it.”

  The corner of Jimmy’s mouth came up.

  “I don’t think anyone could be.”

  --------

  The ride up into the mountains was hard. It always was. Steep, dry, with the sun beatin’ down on ‘em the whole way, they finally crossed to the wet side of the mountains and Sarah stopped for lunch, settin’ Dog loose to see what he’d find. They ate jerky and vegetables by a stream in a copse of tall, bare-trunked trees, Flower and Gremlin grazin’ in the valley next over. Sarah didn’t mind the shade none, and Jimmy weren’t built for hard sun, Lawrence in his blood or not.

  “Hobflower season soon, then,” Jimmy said as he finished his meal and brushed his hands off. She started a cigarette and handed it over, but he just sat with it dangling between his fingers, watching the way of the trees overhead.

  “Don’t know what matter it is, ‘less you’re in the market for a broom and need to move up the buy.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched.

  “You’ve noticed there are more women on the trains, coming in, these days.”

  “I noticed Jezzie seems to be settin’ up a brothel above the bar, right enough,” Sarah said.

  “You plan to try to shut it down?” he asked.

  “Ain’t made up my mind. What problems ain’t comin’ from the bandits or the bar come from Jezzie, and I ain’t shiny on the idea of a whole bunch more women for the wives to give look to when their husbands ain’t home on time.”

  Jimmy snorted.

  “It’s not just whores,” he said. “There are some, and there are some women who will end up, up there, without ever planning on it. Saw the opportunity and grabbed at it, got something else. But a lot of them are girlfriends. Men with mining jobs, trying to build a life, out here.”

  “Ain’t no place for ‘em,” Sarah said. “Gonna end up in brothel-beds one way or the other.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “They haven’t got the money to build,” he said, “and Granger hasn’t got the supplies to sell them, even if they did.”

  “You thinkin’ on becomin’ Lawrence’s premier landlord, while you’re doin’ everything else?” Sarah asked. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “Someone has to,” he said. “You want men who are going to be loyal to the town, give them wives who live there. Babies.”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Lise’s doc is gonna have to set up a shingle,” she said, and he looked up again with another phantom of a smile.

  “Now that would be culture shock,” he said.

  “So where you reckon you’re gonna get the men to put up houses enough for all of ‘em?” she asked.

  “Lawrence used to be that big,” Jimmy said. “We have the investor village. We need a third street and a fourth street. Todd Avenue, maybe.”

  She gave him a witherin’ look, but he missed it, lookin’ up at the sky.

  “Growth is natural,” he said. “Where there are resources, people will go and get them. We just have to bring the right resources together and let them happen.”

  “You got a buildin’ crew,” Sarah said. “I trained ‘em up myself. What are they doin’?”

  “Clarence?” Jimmy asked. “He’s working for Granger.”

  “So maybe Granger needs to start doin’ house-raisin’s for credit.”

  Jimmy looked at her.

  “A mortgage industry,” he said. “I could do that easily enough. I have an accountant.”

  She reached over, layin’ out to get the unsmoked cigarette from him and put it into her mouth.

  “That’s workin’ for company scrip again,” she said. “Still ain’t a fan.”

  “I pay them real money,” Jimmy said. “Put it in their hands, each and every week. I’ll put my own workers up in homes of real quality, and I’ll welcome their wives and their families, should they choose to have any.”

  “Said the spider to the fly,” Sarah said.

  “I abuse these men, they aren’t going to be willing to die for me,” Jimmy said.

  Sarah gave him a cool look that he turned his head to appreciate.

  “And that ain’t the sound of a man ready to use men to his own purpose,” Sarah said.

  “We need allies,” Jimmy said. “My brothers would die for me, and I’ll die for them, but you’re right, I want another line between us and the guns. If we die, everything ends.”

  “Sprinklin’ your personal aspirations with the faintest dew of virtue,” Sarah said.

  “How is it different from what you did here, the entire time we wer
e gone?” Jimmy asked.

  “I cared about the town,” Sarah said. “I didn’t get rich off their backs.”

  “But you did take their money and you spent it how you saw fit,” Jimmy said. “I’m just making sure there’s more money running around.”

  “And if the lion’s share winds up in your pockets, all the better,” she said.

  “Says the woman who negotiated for half of everything,” Jimmy said, sitting up. She smiled.

  “I’m the one what knew where to find the damned stuff.”

  He nodded.

  “That you did. How about cows? You know where to find them?”

  “Nope, but that’s what I brought Dog for,” she said. “You rested?”

  “Thought we were resting the horses,” he said, standing. She grinned.

  “That’s just what I told you to get you to lay down and take time. I ain’t gonna forget what it is to ride these mountains in a week or two, but you ain’t been up here anywhere near enough to hold up to it, day-in, day-out.”

  He brushed off his pants and put on his hat.

  Lawrence.

  He looked like Lawrence.

  And he damn knew it.

  He grinned, teeth and all, and she shook her head.

  “You’ve never looked at me like that, before,” he said. “Is this what you’ve wanted?”

  He put his arms out, fingers sweepin’ to indicate the clothes.

  She tipped her head back.

  “Maybe when you got the body to hold up to the promise,” she said, pursing her lips. He made a round shape with his mouth, but followed her out to get the horses with nothin’ more than happy silence. She whistled up Dog, who turned up bloody-muzzled and ready to work. They went up the water line, Dog scentin’ around mostly out of sight, and he rustled up a herd of cows once, but they weren’t Sarah’s animals and they went on.

  “How long has this taken, before?” Jimmy asked.

  Sarah looked back.

  “Cows know they come in for birthin’,” she said. “Mostly they’re in close, this time of year. When they ain’t, it can take a week or two. Big territory, up here, they’re grazin’.”

  “Feels… arbitrary,” Jimmy said.

  “I know about how far north they go, and I know ‘round how big a range Dog is runnin’,” she said. “We’ll turn back and go south again, we don’t find ‘em this pass.”