Coyote Horizon (11 page)

The fishing boat tied up at the dock gently bobbed on the morning tide, its ropes creaking against its moorings. Hawk stood quietly nearby, watching as Melissa completed her negotiations with the captain. A handful of colonials made a swift transition from her pocket to his; the older man nodded, then gestured toward his boat. Melissa looked over at Hawk and gave him a furtive nod, then reached down to pick up the hempcloth duffel bag at her feet.

Hoisting his own bag by its strap, Hawk walked down the dock to join her. “They’ll get us as far as Bridgeton,” she whispered as they watched the crew load their nets aboard the aft deck. “After that, we’re on our own.”

“Did he ask any questions?”

“Sure, he had questions.” A sly smile. “A hundred colonials gave him all the answers he needed to have . . . and fifty more made sure that he’s never seen us.”

Hawk nodded. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before Joe discovered that he was gone. Indeed, the parole officer was probably already on his way to Hawk’s apartment; once he used his badge to get the land-lord to unlock his door, Bairns would find the flat just as he’d last seen it, except for the severed bracelet and discarded patch lying on the table. But the dresser would be empty and a bag would be missing, and the only other evidence that Hawk had once lived there would be his customs uniform, neatly folded on his bed.

Joe was a smart guy. He’d eventually figure out how Hawk managed to leave New Brighton. But he and Melissa would have something of a head start, or at least if the captain kept his word. And even if he didn’t, by the time Joe tracked them across the river to Bridgeton, the two of them would’ve long since left New Florida. Heading for some place where they would never be found.

The captain walked across the gangplank onto his boat. He looked around, making sure that everything was where it should be, then he turned and gave Melissa a quiet nod. “It’s time,” she murmured, taking Hawk’s hand again. “Ready?”

“Yes,” he said, and let her lead him across the plank. Finding a place to sit on the hatch cover above the live hold, they watched as ropes were untied and sails unfurled. The wind caught the sheets, billowed them outward; without any fuss, the boat slipped away from the dock.

As the fishing boat sailed out into the harbor, Hawk took a moment to gaze back at New Brighton. One last look, then he deliberately turned away from its tenements and smoke. Sitting beside him, Melissa rested her head against his shoulder.

“So,” she whispered, “where are we going?”

“I don’t know.” Taking her hand, he gazed at the distant horizon. “We’ll find out when we get there.”

We grow up believing that our minds are citadels, unassailable fortresses behind whose walls our thoughts are protected, unknowable to all save when we choose to open the gates of our mouths, our eyes, our hearts. Certain that ours is a separate reality, we spend our lives creating inner worlds, ones whose relationship to the true nature of things is tangential at best. We see the same things, but we perceive them differently; all we have in common, really, is a universe that we’ve agreed upon by consensus.

At least, this is what I once thought. Then I met Joseph Walking Star Cassidy, and nothing was ever the same again.

By the time I returned to Leeport on the last day of the seventh week of Asmodel, the springtime rainy season had begun. I’d spent the last few days in the southern half of New Florida, in the savannas of the Alabama River; three wealthy German businessmen had come to Coyote to hunt boid, and they’d hired me to be their guide. It hadn’t been an easy trip; my clients had more money than sense, and none of them had ever fired a gun at anything more threatening than a hologram on a Berlin rifle range. So when I wasn’t trying to keep them from tipping over our canoes or showing them how and where to set up their tents, I was worrying whether a boid would kill them instead of vice versa.

Yet we got along well enough, and on the morning of the fifth day, I’d managed to track down a boid just northwest of Miller Creek, in the equatorial grasslands where boids were known to migrate for the winter. It was only a young male, no taller than my head, nonetheless ferocious enough to give my clients their money’s worth. The Germans opened fire as soon as the creature charged us from the high grass; although most of their shots went wild, enough struck home to bring it down; once I was sure that the boid was mortally wounded, I allowed Herr Heinz, the group’s leader, to approach the giant avian close enough to deliver a coup de grâce to the narrow skull behind its enormous beak. After we dragged the carcass to the nearest blackwood and strung it up from a lower branch, I took the pictures that would give them bragging rights once they returned home, then we cut the boid down and everyone got feathers as souvenirs before I butchered it. Boid meat is actually rather gamey—those of us who live here eat it only when we’re desperate—but it was all part of their vacation, and once I broke out another jug of bearshine, they didn’t mind the taste so much.

The other two Germans wanted to stay longer, perhaps hoping they’d bag a creek cat, but I knew we were pushing our luck; where there’s one boid, there are bound to be more, and the last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by a pack with tourists at my back. So I used my satphone to call for a gyro pickup—another
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500 fee, not including my own surcharge—and by early evening we’d been airlifted northeast to Liberty. I settled the bill with my clients at the upscale B&B where I’d first met them, then let them take me to Lew’s Cantina for some serious drinking. Truth to be told, by then I was sick and tired of their company, but experience had taught me that a little indulgence goes a long way; once they’d put away a few pints of ale, the three of them emptied their wallets and put another
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300 on the table. And they even paid the bar tab.

The next morning, after I returned the canoes to the outfitter from whom I’d rented them, I hitched a ride home on a shag-team wagon hauling a load of Midland iron from Liberty to Leeport. I was exhausted by the time we rolled into town late that afternoon, but with
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5,000 deposited to my account at the Bank of Coyote—minus expenses, it came to
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3,000 that I could call my own—and another
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300 in my pocket that the Ministry of Revenue didn’t have to know about, I was solvent for another month or so. Not rich, by any means, but with luck I wouldn’t have to get a real job anytime soon, so long as I didn’t do something stupid like blowing a wad at the poker table.

My place was a two-room flat on Wharf Street, above a ceramics shop where in winter I had the benefit of hot air carried up through vents from their kiln. Once I put away my gear, I pumped some water into the tub and lit the heating coil. While the bath warmed up, I hid my cash within a knothole in the wall behind the dresser, then peeled off my filthy clothes. A long soak in the tub with a glass of waterfruit wine, then I dried off, pulled on a robe, and went to bed. I was asleep before I remembered to check my comp for messages.

I woke up later that evening, hungry and restless. So I trimmed my mustache and ran a pick through my hair, put on some clean clothes, and hit the town in search of a decent meal. Leeport was still a small settlement in those days—a dozen or so wood-frame-and-adobe buildings on either side of three muddy streets, a waterfront with tugboats and barges lined up at the piers—so that time of night there was little question where I was going to find dinner and a pint of ale.

Not surprisingly, the Captain’s Lady was only half-empty. It was Orifiel night, after all, and Leeport was a workingman’s town. Tomorrow morning, the barges would be back on the channel, the wharf lined with wagons. A handful of boatmen sitting around the hearth, warming their feet by the fire; a few more locals gathered around a nearby table, cards in hand and a modest pile of chips between them. The usual faces; a few of them looked up as I shut the door behind me, and I nodded as I hung up my jacket, then sauntered to the other side of the room. The bartender saw me coming; Hurricane Dave had already pushed a mug beneath the ale spigot by the time I reached the roughbark bar where he spent his evenings.

“Welcome back,” he said, favoring me with a seldom-seen smile. “How was the trip?”

“Good ’nuff. Where’s the chief?”

“Off for the night. Town business.” He topped off the mug, passed it to me. “On the house. Good hunting?”

“Okay.” I lifted a hand, waved it back and forth. “A little one. Made the tourists happy.” The porter was black as coal, bitter as a lie; the Lady’s ale came straight from the brewpots down in the cellar, which Dave tended as lovingly as if they were his own children. “Thanks, I’ve been waiting for this. What’s on the menu tonight . . . the usual?”

“Got a fresh batch in the kitchen. Want some?”

“Only if I have to pay for it.” I dug a couple of wooden dollars out of my vest pocket and dropped them on the counter. “Corn bread, too, if you’ve got it.”

“Sure. We’ve got some left, I think.” Yet Dave didn’t leave the bar. Instead, he picked up a rag and, making a pretense of wiping down the counter, moved a little closer. “Expecting trouble?” he murmured.

Dave was a big guy, a giant even in a town full of men with a lot of muscle. His boss didn’t tolerate troublemakers in her establishment, and neither did he; firearms were surrendered at the bar, and anyone caught with a knife larger than those used to clean fish were evicted at once. So if Hurricane Dave sensed a problem, it was worth taking seriously. “Not really,” I said quietly. “Why do you ask?”

“Two guys, at the table behind you to your left.” Dave kept his voice low, didn’t look in their direction. “Came in a couple of days ago. Took a room upstairs, paid for it a week in advance. Been asking questions about you.”

“Uh-huh.” I felt the hair on the back of my neck begin to rise. There wasn’t a mirror behind the bar; otherwise, I might have been able to sneak a peek at them. “What sort of questions?”

“Where you’ve been, mainly . . . also if you’re reliable.” Dave continued to swab the deck. “Dana’s done most of the talking. She told them that you’re a good guide, if that’s what they’re asking, and that you’re out of town and she didn’t know when you were getting back. Didn’t let ’em know where you live, just that you drop in now and then.”

“I see.” Good old Dana: always watching my back. “Anything else?”

“Sure. Two more things. They wanted to know if you and her were . . . y’know. Related.”

An old question, yet one I still hadn’t become used to, even after all these years. There weren’t very many people of African-American descent on Coyote, and sometimes I wondered if people thought we all came from the same family. “I hope she set ’em straight,” I muttered, and when Dave raised an eyebrow I knew she hadn’t. “Aw, hell . . . so what’s the other?”

“One of them’s coming over now.” Dave backed away from the counter. “White chili and corn bread,” he said aloud, scooping up the money I’d just put down. “Anything else, sir?”

I might have asked for the stunner he kept under the bar, just so I could have it in case this was someone’s jealous boyfriend, yet that was out of the question. Dana Monroe wasn’t only the proprietor of the Captain’s Lady, but also Leeport’s mayor, not to mention one its founders. So while she and I were close friends, a brawl was the last thing she wanted in her place of business. Not good for either commerce or politics.

“No,” I said, “thanks anyway.” Dave nodded and headed for the kitchen. I picked up my mug and took another sip of ale while I waited for someone to ask my name.

“Pardon me, sir,” a deep voice said a moment later, “are you Sawyer Lee?” And that was how it all began.

 

 

 

The guy who’d come up behind me was only slightly smaller than Hurricane Dave, with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and a thick beard. I wondered how I could have missed seeing him; perhaps I was more tired than I thought.

“You’ve found him,” I said. “May I help you?”

“Yes, sir, you can.” His voice was surprisingly mild; despite his size, there was nothing menacing about him. “I have someone with me who’d like to speak to you, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” I nodded toward the beaded curtain through which Dave had just disappeared. “I just ordered dinner. If your friend wants to come over here . . .”

“He’d like to speak to you alone, please. At our table.” He paused. “If that’s inconvenient just now, we’ll gladly wait until you’ve finished your meal.”

Jealous beaus are never so polite, and this bloke could have easily wrenched my arm behind my back and frog-marched me wherever he pleased. Instead, he was giving me the option of eating in peace before attending to whatever business his friend had in mind. Not only that, but apparently the guys had been patiently waiting for me to reappear in Leeport, to the point of renting an upstairs room and staking out the tavern for the last two nights. And Dana’s accommodations don’t come cheap; she provides soap with a bath and even changes the bedsheets three times a week.

I decided to take a chance. “No, no . . . I can have dinner over there just as well as over here, Mr. . . . um?”

“Kennedy.” A dour nod. “If you’ll follow me, please . . . ?”

As he led me across the room to his table, a few people I knew in the place gave me curious looks. One of them was George Waite, a tugboat operator who’d carried me and my clients as passengers on more than one occasion. He was having a drink with his nephew, Donny; the boy ignored us, yet I couldn’t help but notice the cautious expression on George’s face. I gave him a brief nod, and he reciprocated with one of his own, and in this way a silent understanding was reached: if there was trouble, he’d back me up. That’s the way things are out on the frontier; friends look out for each other, particularly when strangers are involved.