Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (18 page)

They
moved camp. That evening Sowter made a smokeless fire from tinder-dry brushwood
pulled out of a rocky-flanked arroyo and started a pot of beans and dried
chilis boiling. Clay and Mal took turns with the file, sawing locks off the
steel boxes.

The
contents varied. All were less than half-full. Most held a few bits of silver
or gold jewelry mixed with trade goods like cloth or clothing, tanned leather,
wax, thread, needles and tools, bags of seeds, bottles of medicine, coins. One
contained ammunition of varying calibers and a bundle of unused notebooks. One
notebook had been used to tally the goods - all protection fees collected from
local farmers, Grey thought, with additions here and there from murdered
travelers. They consolidated the contents into two chests after picking out
what ammunition fit their guns and a quarter of the cash, and headed south and
east.

Cory
Jones was an unhappy man. He’d been to the Castle for Creedy’s big speech and
had come back to Potter’s Creek unimpressed. His little corner of the kingdom
produced one thing of value: Horses. His ranchers ran a thousand head or more,
and the best of the two- and three-year-olds went to the Castle to be broke and
trained. Creedy’s men went through a lot of horses year-to-year. They did a lot
of miles in bad country, and many of the Castle soldiers weren’t much good at
caring for the animals in any case.

Jones
thus had a vast supply of valuable horses, which was wealth he couldn’t spend.
They weren’t something you could stick in your pocket when the CDF came and
claim poverty. He also wasn’t convinced the new bosses would keep a one-eyed
local commander with a taste for youngish boys - and he suspected a lot of the
ranchers would be quick to point him out as a thief, anyway. If they didn’t
keep him on, well, what would he do? He didn’t fool himself that his innate
charms would woo the smooth-faced boys he liked, and without cash he’d be left
half-blind and alone, surrounded by people who didn’t like him much.

Jones
aired his worries to his sergeants, in confidence of course. He’d have been
horrified to learn how quickly everyone in town knew that Cory, known widely
behind his back as Boyfuck Jones, was worried he was going to be out of a job.
The one thing he did notice was a rise in disorderly behavior by some of the
ranch hands. He had a few whipped, and that settled down.

So
the timely appearance of a cold-eyed man named Simmons who needed a business
partner was music to Boyfuck’s ears.

Simmons
was a big-bellied man with a squint who drank constantly as they talked. He’d
walked into the old fire hall Joes used as barracks and office, dropped his
weapons on the counter in front of a surprised guard, and said that he was
there to talk business with the boss. After a minute of confusion, the guard
escorted Simmons upstairs to Jones’ suite of rooms. Simmons asked to speak in
private, so Jones had taken a seat on the old sofa, laid a pistol on the seat
cushion beside his hip, and told the guard to go.

The
visitor made an offer that seemed too good to be true.

Simmons
needed a partner. He was setting up shop independent of the Castle, preying on
the ever busier trade route along the old Interstate 90 corridor, and needed a
local angel to help shift stolen goods. It was the sort of arrangement that
would have gotten Jones killed in the old days, but with Creedy handing over
the reins to the CDF, the horse breeder saw it in a different light.

“I
need a fence,” Simmons had said, downing his third or fourth shot of Jones’
whiskey. “I wouldn’t cut anyone in, but with the army coming, I want a
respectable way to shift stuff. You have the horses and a business, and will be
sitting pretty to move goods after these army idiots finish running around.”

“But
if they find out, they’ll line me up against a wall and shoot me,” Jones
objected.

“Why
would they bother? You’re taking trade from someone. Tell them it was for
horses. Not your fault the goods were liberated somewhere else. It’s a straight
fucking deal. My boys and I do the dangerous work; you get a thirty percent cut
for doing nothing. You just load it on your horses whenever you’re selling nags
down south or on the coast, and change it for cash and ammo.”

Jones
wrinkled his nose. He had a broad baby face, and whenever he spoke or grimaced
it moved like putty, with deep creases and folds that crawled across his
visage.

“Don’t
pretend there’s no risk to me,” he argued. “If I don’t have a convincing reason
to have a sack full of gold teeth or Mexican opium or whatever your boys borrow
off the trade routes, it’ll be my ass against the wall.”

 Simmons
grunted, belched and looked annoyed.

“Fuck
me, there’s always some risk in anything,” he said, face flushing. “We could
fall off our horses and break our goddamn necks. This is guaranteed gold. My
boys aren’t about to hit a caravan moving fucking Mexican dope. The last thing
we need is a cartel pissed off. But think of the stuff moving through now that
the shipping is coming back. There’s goddamn silk from
China
for sale
around Wenatchee and at George. There’re silversmiths on the south coast and
they sell to mercantile concerns all over, and that silver moves through
Snoqualmie pass, then down across the lonely old scabland. Hell, even the
basics for the shitkickers like salt and seeds will make us a pretty penny and
all we do is put it in a different sack and resell it.”

Simmons
paused and stared at Jones.

“And
I can always find someone else. I came to you because you have horses. But so
do a lot of guys. So quit dancing. Do you want in or not?”

“When
would we start?” Jones asked.

“I’ve
got enough for a first run already,” Simmons said. “People in town say you
usually take a string of horses to the coast this month, so that could be our
trial run.”

 Jones
cocked his head to one side. “My horses, and I’m going to have risks, as you pointed
out, so I want a bigger cut. No one will be able to find you if it goes bad,
but me, I live right here. So I want sixty percent.”

Simmons
had a talent for profanity and Jones let him go for a while. In the end they
shook on forty percent and Simmons proposed a toast to their partnership.

With
a little luck, Jones thought, this would net him the cash he’d need, if things
went the way he was afraid they might. And if the CDF looked like it was going
to be a problem, well, he could always go off with a caravan to the coast, and
if neither he nor any of the money came back? That would be a problem for
Simmons to work out.

Sowter
and Mal, backed by Georgia on a distant rise, made the exchange with Jones and
three of his men. Grey watched and followed after the meeting broke up; making
sure no one was trailing his people. They met a few hours later at their
campsite, a level, sandy area screened on three sides by steep basalt outcrops.
It sat on a low rise, not far from a chain of weedy lakes in low-lying rocky
holes that supplied their horses with water.

Red-eyed
and still smelling of whiskey, Sowter recounted his talk with Jones. He was
just finishing when Harmon and Ronald walked into camp after picketing their
mounts. Grey nodded to them.

“We
got the stuff to Jones. How’d you do?” Grey asked, once they’d sat down. Harmon
pulled his boots off and wiggled his toes.

“I
think we managed it,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know how fast word will
get out, but Ronald was damn convincing.”

The
younger man grinned and looked up. Grey raised his eyebrows. Ronald’s left eye
was swollen mostly shut and was surrounded by a massive blue-black bruise.

“I
take it there’s a story behind that?” Clay said. Doc rose and tried to examine
the eye, but Ronald, still grinning, waved him off.

“It’s
fine, I just got a fist in it,” he said. “You want to tell them, Harmon?”

“You
got punched for it, so you get to tell the story,” Harmon said.

“It
was luck, more than anything,” Ronald said. “We stopped at Vantage, where the
ferry runs, and hung around the little bar that’s built under the wreck of the
old bridge. It had some stupid-ass name that I forget.”

“The
Squat Hole,” Harmon put in.

“Right,
that was it. Anyway, we drank beer and made sure we looked drunker than we
were. People were all talking about the garrison we hit - no surprises there.
We wedged right in with the guys at the bar, and Harmon and I were talking
about the riders we’d seen leaving the crossroads Shell a few days back - going
like hell toward Potter’s Creek and taking loaded mules with them. I was
arguing that they were just traders in a hurry, that they’d seen the massacre
when they stopped to pay toll, but Harmon kept harping on how they had too many
guns. It wasn’t too long before half the guys at the bar were asking about it,
and we were just spooning it out, smooth as porridge.

“One
big guy did most of the work for us,” Ronald said, chuckling. “I kept being the
voice of reason - argued that they were just traders and that Harmon was full
of shit, when this guy starts off on how he was a Castle soldier, and he wanted
to hear Harmon, and I should just shut the fuck up.”

Harmon
started to snicker. “So Ronald here turns to him, looks him in the eye and says
‘then you ought to have the brains to know that Boyfuck Jones wouldn’t have the
balls to try and shoot up a Castle garrison and steal from your boss.’”

Ronald
grinned, then winced and rubbed his eye. “He punched me a good one for that.
The room went kind of spinny and I fell over.”

Grey
saw Doc joined in the laugh that followed. He was glad; the old man had been
very quiet since the girl had died. The punch in the eye had apparently
distracted Ronald from thoughts of her, too.

“Then
we have a good start. Now we sit back and watch the fireworks,” Grey said.

“You
think maybe Creedy will come out?” Mal asked. He was, as usual, already in his
bedroll and trying to sleep.

“I
doubt it. Not yet,” Grey said. “But I want to see how many men he sends. If he
only sends a few, I may want them, too.”

Ronald
scratched his head and studied Grey.

“It’s
funny,” he said, “but I don’t know how to feel about any of this.”

“Which
bits?” Grey asked.

“Well,
the killing, setting up more killing, the girl from the station, the farmers so
scared they won’t come out to see who’s riding across their fields.”

“You
feel confused?” Grey asked. “Kind of foggy?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s
normal, kid,” Grey said, poking their little fire with a twig. “It’s because
you’re a good man, and this is ugly stuff. Just remember that it needs doing.”
Grey shrugged and tossed the twig onto the flames. “It’s a good thing. You ever
get to where it doesn’t bother you, and you’ve lost something you may not get
back.”

Mal
cracked an eye at that - the man slept more than a cat, Grey thought - “Are you
impugning my amoral nature, sir?”

“No,
you get a pass if you were born that way.”

“Okay
then. Can someone wake me up for my watch, please?”

Teddy
was fourteen and pudgy, with angelic curls and blue eyes. He’d been a swill boy
at the local brewery, and had caught Jones’ eye last summer. An exchange of
goods had moved Teddy to Jones’ over-furnished rooms, and the boy had turned
out to be both mercenary and sensual. He was in his room on his bed, reading
one of the crumbling comic books that Cory had found for him, carefully
sounding out the words, when the noise started in the street outside.

Potter’s
Creek had a small mercantile core with a drygoods, barber/dentist and
blacksmith, a little cafe that turned into a bar at night and a ramshackle
motel that served horse traders and caravaners that came through. A gutted semi
parked perpetually across from the fire hall had been converted into a stand
that sold vegetables in season. The town’s access points were shielded by
staggered barricades made of old sections of concrete K-rail. Three or four of
Jones’ ten men were supposed to patrol town at all times. Right now they were
gathering in the road next to the semi, facing a group of riders three times
their number, and the confused babble rising from the crowd interrupted Teddy’s
slow reading of Spider-Man. He went to his window and pushed it open so he could
hear more easily. There was a thump below him on the fire hall’s first floor.
Down the street he could see other men with guns moving in and out of
buildings. He knit his fingers into a nervous knot and watched.

Harris
sat slumped in his saddle and stared at Jones. The Potter’s Creek boss was
talking, but Harris had quit listening some time ago. His men were searching
the town. This needed to go right, to go
smooth
. He’d only just clawed
his way back to a position where Creedy would trust him with a job, and he
didn’t mean to fail. The scarred flesh on his back writhed as he considered the
possibility. He frowned, his moustache giving him a misleadingly sad and
sympathetic look.