Dead Reckoning (17 page)

“I’m surprised you aren’t already in there with it,” Jett said darkly.

Gibbons shuddered. “I think I’ll wait for morning.”

* * *

White Fox felt a shameful sense of relief at riding away from Alsop. It was not because he meant to flee the fight the spirits had led him to. The destruction of the zombies and the defeat of their creator would mean a justice he’d never thought to gain for his family, his people, his
tribe
. It was odd to think he was also to be the instrument of justice for his first family, but so it was. He’d marked the site of the wagon train’s destruction on Gibbons’s map without telling her what it meant or how he knew it, and it fit as perfectly into the pattern as another silken thread on a spiderweb.

No warrior rode into battle without preparation. He was willing to be patient until Gibbons had delivered the weapons for this combat. This journey might be a useless one, but at least it took him away from a place his thoughts populated with the ghosts of too many dead.

Flatfield was a full day’s ride from Alsop, which was only to be expected: a ranch wasn’t its land grant alone, but the “unclaimed” thousands of acres of open range around it, and the ranches themselves were
widely scattered. He wondered what would change when a steel-rail road crossed the land. Or when Gibbons’s Auto-Tachypode was as common a thing as a buckboard or a Conestoga.

It was just past noon when he knew something was wrong.

This was April, the end of the rainy season (such as it was) on the Staked Plains. The cattle drive that had disappeared a few weeks back had been one of the earliest ones; the drives would continue for the next two months, until the summer’s heat became too fierce and the water holes and creeks dried up. He should have crossed paths with trailblazers, the cowhands who rode a day or more ahead of a drive to scout the way. Or with the chuckwagon (always driven as if wolves pursued it), that went ahead of the herd so the camp cook could have a meal ready and waiting for the tired cowhands at the end of the day. Or the
remuda
, the string of remounts every herd rider needed on the trail.

He saw none of those things, or even the tracks of their passage. But by midafternoon he saw the first corpses.

He’d followed the circling vultures to a waterhole heaped with the bloated bodies of cattle. More lay around it, their bodies black with flies and feeding birds. All the bodies he saw had been fed upon—by vultures and crows in the day, coyotes in the night—but
they were still intact enough they could not have been dead for long.

There’s a hundred head here at least
, he estimated.
And this is roundup season. Mister Sutcliffe wouldn’t have overlooked the absence of this many animals. He would have sent range riders in search of them. And when they found them … they would never let a water source be fouled—or leave cattle dead of sickness unburned.

Telling Deerfoot to stand, White Fox dismounted and walked slowly toward the corpses, flapping his hat to scare off the feeding birds. The vultures were too gorged to fly: they waddled away, shrieking imprecations at him. He searched until he found one of the bodies that was mostly intact and examined it quickly. He could not find any trace of a bullet wound.

And its neck had been broken.

It was the first such slaughter he found that day. It was not the last. By the time White Fox rode into Flatfield, he already suspected what he’d find there. He stopped at the gate to ring the iron bell, but no one came in answer. He rode on down to the outbuildings. Barns, corrals, bunkhouse … all empty.

He drew his pistol before entering the house itself. He’d circled it to come in through the back. That would be where any ambush was laid. But the kitchen was deserted, the pot of soup atop the stove congealed and half-evaporated, as if the household had been
interrupted just before suppertime. He didn’t find anyone in any of the common rooms, either. If not for Gibbons he wouldn’t have known what signs to look for, nor found them as quickly. But as he went through the rooms a second time, searching them as carefully as he’d ever searched the ground for a trail, he saw more than he wished to.

The chimneys of the lamps are black with soot from a guttering flame. They have all burned dry. The logs in the fireplace are burnt to ash, and the ash has not been disturbed, yet every careful housewife saves ash for cleaning
.

The keyboard on the spinet in the corner of the parlor was uncovered. No musician who treasured their instrument would leave its keys exposed to the dust of the plains.

In the library he saw two glasses half full of whiskey sitting on a table.

The bedrooms were prepared for bed, but no one had slept here.

When he returned to the pantry, he found the door to the root cellar open, and for a moment he dared to hope. But all that was there was a bible at the bottom of the ladder, open as if it had fallen. The cans and preserves, the bottles of whiskey and brandy that lined the shelves, stood untouched.

He searched for hours, until he realized he only
continued to search because he didn’t want to admit Flatfield and all who’d lived here were another casualty of Shepherd’s madness. The fact the house’s furnishings lay undisturbed only meant its occupants had been lured—or
driven
—from it before they were killed.

But at last the red light of sunset warned him night was coming and he must seek shelter. He returned to the house one last time to collect some supplies: the still-full lamp he’d found in one of the bedrooms; salt and cornmeal from the untouched pantry; the humidor of cigars he’d seen in the study. The
wasichu
called what he meant to do “sorcery” and said it was wrong, but White Fox knew better. It was medicine for the spirit, just as herbs were medicine for the body. He didn’t want to risk camping in the open—not with so many predators attracted by the slaughtered herd—and the house itself seemed too much like a place of ghosts.

He led Deerfoot into the stable and used the loop of braided leather she wore as a bridle to tether her to one of the center posts. He made certain she was settled, then closed the stable door and propped a full sack of feed against it. He couldn’t bolt the door from within, but this would keep it from swinging open. When that was done, he took the meal and salt and walked around Deerfoot sunwise, drawing a wide circle of salt and cornmeal on the ground. Spirit medicine wasn’t body
medicine, but if the zombies returned, perhaps this would keep them from knowing he and Deerfoot were here. This was not Meshkwahkihaki medicine, but he dared to hope the medicine would answer his call, for in the long ago all the People had been one people.

Last of all he took apart several cigars to make four small piles of loose tobacco, one in each quarter of the circle. He lit one of the remaining cigars at the lamp flame, then used its coal to light the loose herb. The smoke was sweet, and the air was still. He watched the smoke stream upward for a moment before stubbing the cigar out, returning to the center of the circle, and dousing the lamp. The last light of day was visible through the cracks between the boards, but it fled swiftly. He sat quietly. The only sound was Deerfoot chewing the oats he had found for her. The only sight was the fading glow of burning tobacco.

With the leisure to think over what the day had brought him, White Fox realized he’d been counting more than he’d known on the possibility this journey would permit him to send word to the Tenth. Now—when it was too late—he realized he should have done so immediately upon their arrival in Alsop. Only he’d had nothing to report then, and by the time he did, the zombies had destroyed the telegraph office. His only alternative was a message rider, and he’d hoped to find one here. It wasn’t that he’d expected help—Fort Riley
was far away—but his report would have been a record of events that was beyond “Brother” Shepherd’s reach.

There was nothing he could do about that now.

White Fox did not spend an easy night, but he spent a quiet one. When the dawn light shone through the gaps between the boards, he collected his belongings, swept the salt and meal away with a brief word of thanks, and rode for Alsop.

* * *

That morning Gibbons was so excited at the prospect of finally doing what she called “real research” she didn’t even stop for breakfast before enlisting Jett to help her move the corpse from the jail to her makeshift laboratorium. It was too heavy to carry, so Jett rolled the body onto a blanket and the two of them dragged it up the street. In the daylight, the body looked even worse than it had in the cell. Its hands and face were battered and broken where it had tried to hammer its way from the cell, and its skin had a waxy grayish undertone, as if the body was slowly dissolving. On the other hand, it didn’t smell quite as bad anymore, though that might have had as much to do with the half bottle of Florida Water Jett had poured over it as the removal of any curse.

“This—would be a lot—easier if we used—your horse!” Gibbons gasped as she stopped to rest.

“Nightingale’s got more sense than both of us put together,” Jett answered. “He wouldn’t stop running till he hit the Rio Grande.”

“Almost there,” Gibbons said determinedly, grabbing her end of the blanket again.

It took them over an hour to cover the distance from the jail to the saloon, and when they got the body up the steps and onto the makeshift table White Fox had created from a door and two sawhorses, Jett collapsed into the nearest chair.
Couldn’t have done
that
wearing a corset,
she thought. Now and then, her costume had real advantages.

“Now that you’ve got him, what are you going to do with him?” she asked warily, with the caution anyone would show who’d known Miss Honoria Gibbons of San Francisco more than a few hours.

“I’m going to take him apart and see how he ticks!” Gibbons answered happily.

Jett bolted to her feet as if she’d sat on a bee. “You—you
do
that,” she said quickly. “I’ll be—I’ll be
around
.”

She made her escape before Gibbons could ask her to do anything else. Like
help
.

She’d seen a tin bathtub in the back of the barber shop. It took her far too many trips to the town pump to fill it with water, and it wasn’t a hot bath, but she stripped to the skin and scrubbed herself until she’d
scrubbed away the memory of having touched the cursed flesh that Gibbons was even now dismantling. By the time she emerged onto the street again, the Auto-Tachypode was back in front of the saloon. She’d heard the noise of it coming up the street, but by now that was a familiar sound. Jett could remember down to the day and hour the last time there’d been anything familiar in her life. It had been the night Court Oak burned.

I’m not going to think about that
, she told herself firmly.
Not here, not now. Maybe not ever. I’ll find Philip and … and maybe we’ll go to California. Nobody cares who you used to be in California. I just have to find him first.

To distract herself, she went down to the livery stable to check on Nightingale. He regarded her with disgust from the far end of the corral. He’d probably run out of the stable when Gibbons was moving her buggy.

“Don’t look at me,” Jett told him. “
I
didn’t build it.”

But she dragged a bale of hay out into the corral for him, then brought out a bucket of oats. The water trough here was dry, so then she had to go up to the town pump and carry more buckets of water until it was full. When she was done, she was as hot and sweaty as if she’d never had a bath at all. The water barrel at the back of the stable was closer—there were water barrels under every drain spout in town—but
this late in the spring the water in them was stale and brackish. It would do for cleaning and bathing, but it wasn’t something a body would drink if they had a choice.

She’d taken off her coat and her vest before she started carrying water. Now she dipped up a bucketful from the trough and poured it over her head. It was warmer than her bathwater had been, and made her linen shirt cling to every part of her, but there wasn’t anyone here to see. When she set the bucket down, Nightingale walked up to her and began nudging her in the chest. He knew buckets meant baths, and he always thought it was hilarious to knock her flat in the dust when she was soaking wet.

She was laughing, threatening to lock him in the barn and sell the barn, when she heard Gibbons cry out and heard the sound of breaking glass.

She was wrong—I was wrong—the salt didn’t kill it, it just made it get up in the daytime!
Jett thought wildly as she ran toward the saloon. She’d reached the Auto-Tachypode when she smelled a foul odor. Not like zombie. Like burning hair and vinegar.

“Gibbons!” she shouted. There was no answer, and sucking in a lungful of that stink made her start to cough. She hauled her shirt out of her pants and dragged it off. Her neckerchief was in her coat, and her coat
wasn’t here. This would have to do. She held it over her face as she ran into the saloon.

The zombie was still where she’d left it, and now the bar was covered with jars and copper tubing. The contraption looked a little like a still at Court Oak she’d never been supposed to know anything about, and a lot like nothing she’d ever seen before.

And Gibbons was lying on the floor in front of it, unconscious.

“Dammit!” Jett’s eyes were watering as if the room were filled with smoke. Even breathing through the wet muslin, her throat burned and she desperately wanted to cough. This was no time to stand around and ask what was going on. She ran across the floor to Gibbons, then wrapped a fist in Gibbons’s collar and pulled. The twill fabric was sturdy. It held. And Gibbons didn’t weigh quite as much as the late Finlay Maxwell had.

Jett hauled the unconscious Gibbons outside, but she didn’t stop there—the air outside the saloon was nearly as foul as the air inside it. She felt sick and dizzy, but she dragged Gibbons along the street until dark spots danced in front of her eyes, then dropped her and clung to one of the newel posts, gasping for air. It didn’t help much. The dizziness wasn’t fading. Jett sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and leaned back against the rail, gasping for breath.