Gunlaw

Gunlaw 27

"I . . ." I don't know him – that's what waited on her tongue, what she wanted to say, but something nagged at her. She looked around for any other opinion, but the flies had driven most of Sweet Water's survivors away and those closest were busy making pyres out of the buildings smashed when the train arrived, eager to cook the dead before new flickers spawned inside them.

"When did a corpser ever go looking to help someone?" Remos Jax asked, proving that perhaps he had his own kind of crazy. A grown man didn't want to go looking to rile a corpser, a boy still less so. And these were no ordinary corpsers.

George found a broad smile for Remos. He took a step closer and looked down at him. Remos set his hand to the knife at his belt. "You're right, boy, corpsers look out for their ownselfs, pain will turn a man that way, and in any case I was out for number one long before my first bullet found me." He put a hand on Remos' shoulder. "Best thing about children? Nice soft skin. Easy to stitch on – stays good for months."

"But we got a different kind o' need today." Billy Ay came to stand behind Remos. The boy made no move. What Sally felt off him wasn't fear, more a kind of readiness. Ronson Greeves had some of the same flavour. "We're contracted, see? This Eben Lostchild's got a value to us. Alive. So we'll keep him that way. Now where is he, boy?"

Remos looked up, meeting the dead man's eyes. "Lostchild's an orphan name. Mister Tully's got most every orphan in his workings at the ruins."

"Workings?" George asked.

"Mines," Sally said. "There's ruins out in the desert. Half a day from here. Blocks and arches near as big as pillars. The mayor has workings underneath, scratching out what's left there. Copper, gold, even rail-metal. Can't be melted or worked, but rail-metal will sell for more'n copper ever will."

"So the ruins then." George pulled his hat lower. "Gonna be our guide, Miss Sally?"

"They ain't all in the mines." Daveos tore his gaze from Larrs' maggoty remains. "There's sick ones out in the shack. The Mrs Walmer holds . . . soirees. Parties for rich ladies. They put money in for the cripples. My ma waits on the tables, serves drinks. She says none of them ever go and see the crips, but it makes 'em feel righteous, having a good cause to talk about."

"Our boy ain't gonna be in there." Billy spun his gun from his holster, spun it back, fluid moves no dead man should ever be able to make.

"It's close though." George stretched, bones popping and creaking between his shoulders. "Best place to start looking is right at home. Lazy man once told me that."

The boys led off, eager to be of use, Remos a child again, scampering as if the horrors of the morning had shrunk like noon shadows. The two corpsers followed, and Sally too, though all her instincts told her to get back to the Horn, back to what was solid and secure. To Ed and his yucca and the whiskey and the tricks. But despite all that, she came too. A small voice worried at the back of her mind, telling her the hunska had no call for pack, telling her to leave these boys and dead men and not to let ska madness lead her. She thought of the gold waiting for her beneath the floorboards in her room, nuggets, dust, double eagles, heavy dollars minted in Ansos, all of it gleaming in the dark, accumulated year by year. Hunska watch for themselves, that had been an early lesson, the last her mother taught her. Her future, her security, lay back in that tiny room in Cobson's Hotel. Sally stopped in the street, skirts swishing around her legs as if they wanted to keep following. The gleam of gold filled her vision, but something drowned out its call. The advance of a train, quiet at first, then louder, then crashing through buildings, splintered wood exploding on all sides as she replayed the corpsers' arrival. What had seemed solid and dependable the night before, solid as timbers and foundations, solid as Ronson Greeves, had been found wanting in the light of this morning. Sally hugged herself, a brief clench of hands to upper arms, spat, and hurried after the Ay brothers.