Fifty Years of Peace (Abrupt Dissent Series) (8 page)

“I can smell a traitor. I’ve always had that skill, ever since the reconstitution, and they’ve all hung Richard. All of them.” He turned and called to the column, “Arrest this man for the crime of high treason. The rest of you get after that girl!”

***

Jenny dug her heels into Zeus’s flanks, urging her horse faster. Sparing a glance over her shoulder, she saw George thundering a few feet behind her, and at least five of the Texans peeling off from the house.

“Once we get across the river,” she shouted, “we can lose them in the mountains!”

“My parents are there!” he pointed to a low peak nestled a few hours away in the first range.

“Come on!” she cried, and urged Zeus forward.

The river bounced in front of her as the horses stretched out into a full snorting gallop. The south herd of cattle trotted away from her as she blurred past. Morning air rushed cool and damp over her face, and she hoped that her rushed plan would work.

A number of trails led from the river crossing. She’d head due east, making the men think she was headed over the border with George, then leave the horses where the trail turned rocky and turn north toward George’s parents’ camp on foot. She hoped they had enough supplies in the saddlebags her grandfather had filled. She hoped they could outrun the heavyset Texans on borrowed horses. A tree branch sheared off in front of her. A half-second later, she heard the crack of the pistol behind her and went cold. Most of all, she hoped the Texans wouldn’t hurt her grandfather. He’d always known what to do, and the feeling of being on her own for the first time in her life was terrifying.

Glancing back again, she saw that the Texans hadn’t made up any ground. A few bullets whined through the trees but the men were too far behind for any kind of accuracy. She faced forward and snapped Zeus’s reigns as they closed on the river. His hooves hammered against the bridge logs and she was across. George followed a split second later. Another puff of bark knocked from a walnut tree in front of her, but no more shots followed. George pulled even with her as she slowed her horse to take the rutted game trail that led east.

“They’ll catch us,” George said, “we need to go faster.”

“The horses will break a leg if we do.”

“My parents are dying!” he snarled. He snapped his reigns, and his panting horse edged in front of hers at an unsteady trot.

“George wait!” she called. “We’ll get there in time, I promise, but if our horses get injured we’re all dead!”

He didn’t look back.

Another glance behind showed Jenny that the Texans still hadn’t reached the bridge, and she knew they’d lose even more ground once the Texans’ animals reached the unfamiliar footing of the track that Zeus had followed ever since Jenny had been riding him. She pushed Zeus forward at a wider point in the trail and nudged him perpendicular to George.

“If you keep going like this you’re going to get someone hurt, do you understand?”

Sweat bloomed on George’s face. Desperate breaths swelled in his chest. The fear for his parents he’d been holding back was all spilling out as he neared them.

“We’ve almost lost them,” she said, “and we’ll be there soon.”

He looked past her down the trail, his eyes burning.

George exhaled a deep breath, and looked into Jenny’s eyes. “I’m sorry Jenny, I’m just worried about my parents…”

“It’s okay George, I completely understand, but they are going to be all right.” Jenny grabbed his hand and held it firmly in support.

George looked down at his hand in hers, and let out a brief smile though he still looked worried.

“Let’s keep going.”

***

Jenny eased their pace as they rode up the mountain. The trees soon swallowed them and she lost sight of the Texans. The air grew cooler, a relief for the sweated horses, and they rode in silence. After another thirty minutes, the trail opened out onto the rock fall exactly where she remembered. She pulled Zeus to a halt, dismounted, and threw the saddlebags over her shoulder. George dropped from his horse and followed her across the rocks. There would be no way for the Texans to track them from here, no way to know which direction they’d gone. They were safe.

She opened her canteen as they hiked, offering the jug to George, but his face had hardened, and he took no water. Instead, he stepped in front of her and led the way toward his parents’ camp with a compass he wore strapped to his wrist. He kept a strong pace through the forest undergrowth, forcing his way through thickets of wild rose where no clear path existed, offering his hand when they needed to clamber over boulders and pulling her up. She thanked him, and he smiled back, but the concern on his face was clear and they spoke little.

As the day wore on her stomach growled but there was no time to stop. They’d climbed high enough that they’d reached the pine forest, and the going had become easier. Here and there, breaks in the canopy let her see the whole valley stretched before her, and if she squinted, she could make out the tiny square of the Two Star Ranch’s cleared fields. She knew what George was feeling. With each step, she worried more and more about her grandfather, and spent longer and longer looking down at the views of the ranch.

After another hour, they reached a cluster of thick-trunked pines split by a granite ridge that rose from the mountain. George led her through the left copse of trees to a narrow channel that wrapped around to the eastern side of the mountain.

“Mom, Dad, it’s me,” he called as the path opened onto a small clearing sheltered by a rock overhang. It was an excellent shelter completely hidden from New Louisville. She saw blankets and other signs of habitation, but no one was at the camp.

Then the floor of the clearing lifted in front of her. Startled, she jumped backward.

“Dad!” George called and ran toward a man who wore what looked like a cape of pine needles as camouflage. He’d been lying in a small depression, covering them with a sniper rifle.

“George!” the man answered as he struggled to his feet. His left arm hung in an improvised sling, and she could only imagine the pain of lying down on such a wound. George hugged his father gingerly, then helped him remove the needle covering. His father was a lean man, bearded but pale. She could see blood spotting the sling at his collarbone, and knew the pain would have been intense.

“We need to work on your noise levels son. I heard you coming five minutes ago. Now who’s this?”

“This is Jenny dad. She helped me in town, and Assemblyman Arnold came after her. Her grandfather had some old tech, but I’m pretty sure they took him.”

George’s father held out his good hand and shook Jenny’s.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under better circumstances, my name’s Aiden. My wife, George’s mother, is Lenora.”

“Dad, where is mom?”

His father’s face fell.

“She’s not doing well George.”

Limping over to what looked like a pair of heavy pine boughs that had grown enmeshed between two trees, George’s father untied a cord, and the branches fell to reveal a small green tent. Inside, an unconscious woman lay under a pile of blankets. Rags stained with crimson had been tied across her stomach, and her chest barely fluttered.

George knelt at her side and rested a hand on her forehead.

“She’s cold dad.”

George’s father nodded.

“The bullet hit something inside. She’s…she’s going to need surgery to survive George.”

The boy covered his face, and Jenny saw that he was crying. Everything that he’d held back the last two days was coming out, and his father knelt and held his son close with his good arm. She wanted to hug him, to comfort him, and tell him everything would be ok, but she wasn’t sure that was true.

“George,” Jenny said, “I know Doc Stinson in town, and he can help; he’s a friend of my grandfather’s. It should only take a day to get to town and back if I don’t sleep.”

“I’m coming with you,” George said. “We’ll go right now.” He pulled away from his father and started checking his gear.

Jenny set down the saddlebags.

“There’s food here for a week. It shouldn’t take more than a day to…”

“George…” Aiden said. He was wincing, leaning on the butt of his rifle for balance. “I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out.”

George looked from Jenny to his father. She knew what had to be done.

“It’s
all right George,” she said. “You stay here. Now that I’ve been here, I’ll know how to get back. Plus, I know the town so it’ll be easier for me to get in without being seen.”

“No, you can’t go,” George said. He was staring at his mother, a look of utter defeat on this face.

“It’ll be dark soon.”

“I can find my way with the stars. Grandpa showed me.”

“That’s not it Jenny,” Aiden said. “They can see in the dark.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“It’s technology from before the war,” George said. “They can see you even when it’s night.”

“We didn’t know they still had it,” Aiden said, “Or we never would have…never would have made the mistake we did.”

“Then I’m just going to have to make them look someplace else,” she said.

As she turned to begin her trek, George grabbed her hand and pulled her back into his arms. He gave her a long hug and whispered softly into her ear, “Thank you.” There was a feeling of comfort in George’s arms that she’d only ever felt from her grandfather.

After taking one last look at George, she began her climb down the mountain, hoping that her plan would work.

Dillon watched the tree line through his binoculars, waiting for the boy to make his next mistake. The boy was smart, but he was young; there was no way he could slip past him twice. As evening approached, Dillon knew he had his target.

He raced toward the thin smoke that curled up from the trees at the base of the mountain, surprised at how little ground the boy had managed to cover before starting his campfire. Then again, maybe he hadn’t been planning on escaping east after all. One of the questions he’d ask before he ended the boy’s life was why his family had chosen the tactics they had. That way he would be better prepared for the next group of spies that tried to cross the bridge.

The evening light scattered through the trees as Dillon made his way through the forest. He climbed a low hill to check his bearings, and saw a second fire a few hundred feet away.

“No,” he growled to himself,
and then he sprinted forward. After ten minutes of cutting a path through the thicket, he arrived at what he’d thought had been the boy’s campfire. It was nothing more than a great handful of smoldering leaves, and when he climbed to the top of a tree, he saw two more fires burning hundreds of yards apart.

The boy had tricked him twice. There would not be a third time.

***

The rail station sat on a bluff above the river that looked out into Kentucky. Mayor Trestle limped beside Assemblyman Arnold on his crutch as the New State’s great locomotive settled to a hissing stop. Behind him, dozens of the town’s stevedores stood ready to load New Louisville’s produce from warehouses filled nearly to the rafters with bags of wheat, corn, potatoes, beets, hams, sausages, cheeses, and the rest of the town’s bounty. The mayor would have been proud of his people, if darker thoughts weren’t clouding his mind.

“I want that girl found Mayor,” the assemblyman said.

“We’ll find her Linden. She’s just confused. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

Linden stopped, and then pulled Trestle in close.

“I don’t know if I quite believe that. Her grandfather was buying her time. I’m sure he’ll tell me why when I question him, but right now I’m growing more and more concerned with what’s going on in New Louisville. It’s something I intend to take up with the Assembly when I return. I’m not sure we’ve been as vigilant as we need to be here.”

A conductor dropped from his compartment in the engine and jogged down to each car, knocking a fist against the door. One by one, the latches cracked and the doors slid open while the stevedore’s captain barked at his men to line up their loads with the car doors.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to imply things like that,” Mayor Trestle said. “People are innocent until proven guilty.”

Linden stopped, a scowl crossing his face for a moment. Then he smiled and gripped the mayor’s arm.

“You know Mayor, you’re right. The stress of the past few days has led me to forget my manners, and I owe you an apology. Your town is about to do a great service to its fellow citizens, and I couldn’t ask for better cooperation with my investigation. I appreciate all the support you’ve provided, and I am profoundly, sincerely sorry.”

“Well…well thank you. That’s very kind of you.” But while he smiled, the mayor’s concern was only growing. Men sweating and angry from what must have been a long journey were jumping down from every rail car. Hundreds of Texans in their cowboy hats and boots were filling the platform, drawling orders and pushing past his people as if they knew their business better than his citizens did. The Texans wore a khaki uniform jacket over brown pants, and each carried a long rifle strapped to their backs, and a pistol belted to their waste. It was an army if he’d ever seen one.

“Would you be kind enough to tell me…” he started to ask.

“Good, good,” the
assemblyman said, “now if you’ll excuse me, I must speak to some of my friends that have just come in. I’ll see you back at the police station Mayor. I’m looking forward to our conversation with Mr. Williams.”

***

The mayor rode back to town on a carriage lent to him by the Gifford’s Distillery. One of his aides, a young man named Stewart, took the reins, while the mayor tried to find a position that would settle his leg as they rattled through the town’s streets. The people watched as he passed, wanting him to reassure them about a future he did not know. Townspeople gathered at the old drug store and offered half-hearted waves, and a few questions about his health, but he barely heard them. Instead, he focused on the two Texans who’d tied up their horses on the corner under the store’s porch. Both men tipped their hat brims to him, then turned right back to looking in the direction of the rail depot as if they were waiting for something.

“Take me to see the sheriff,” he said to Stewart. The boy nodded and snapped the reins. New Louisville’s downtown wasn’t much, a few streets of hardware stores, diners, city buildings, and some of the nicer homes in town. You could walk the core of it in an easy morning, greet your neighbors, and come home to lunch with a nice new shirt from one of the tailors, but not this morning.

Sheriff Dickson was standing outside the police headquarters when Mayor Trestle rolled up. The sheriff was a stout man who kept the peace and still found time to enjoy a good beer with his supper. His thick face and dark black beard seemed hard and serious to those few townsfolk that ran afoul of the law, but in private, it wasn’t long before his charm would break through. The sheriff was a man concerned with helping the town, rather than making arrests. It was why Mayor Trestle had chosen him.

“I was thinking it was about time you made a visit Jim,” he called. “We’ve got a bit to talk about.”

“That we do,” the mayor said. The sheriff offered him a hand down from the cart, and Stewart tossed him his crutch so he could limp into the station. “Any chance I can see Richard while I’m here?”

The sheriff paused at the station’s door, turning back to him.

“That was a hard thing for my boys this morning Jim,” he said. “I don’t think there’s been an arrest for treason in this town in…”

“Fifty years,” the mayor finished for him.

Dickson nodded, tapping his belt.

“And for it to be Richard. I’d like to think we had more sense than that.”

“Maybe we do. That’s one thing I’d like to talk to him about. Is he inside?”

“In the jail, yes, but you can’t see him.”

“What?”

“Assemblyman’s orders. He’s got two Texans in there, along with Jacob Johnson. He won’t even let me say talk to him.”

“Jacob works for me.”

“Not anymore. He’s with the assemblyman now.”

“Lou, what is this?” the mayor asked.

The sheriff’s brow lifted in sympathy.

“I think this is the wind blowing different than we’ve seen it Jim. One of my boys got here just before you, said there’s an army getting off the harvest train. I’m supposed to keep the peace in this town Jim. That’s what you asked me to do, and I’m going to keep on following your lead, if you catch my meaning. But I’d like to know how I’m supposed to keep things safe when a man leads his own personal army into our town and doesn’t even give us a hint of his intentions.”

“I should have expected this. The bombing was an act of war…”

“And now I’ve got Richard Williams in my jail for it? That’s doesn’t make sense and you know it. Neither do five hundred Texans prowling around here.”

“Has there been any word on Jenny Williams?”

“No, and I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad to say that. I’ve been puzzling on this for quite some time. You know her better than I do Jim, and she’s a smart girl. Hell, Richard raised her better than you or I would have after her parents passed. She wouldn’t have stuck her neck out for an outsider…”

“Unless she thought it was the right thing to do,” Mayor Trestle finished. “The same thing occurred to me just now.” The mayor stared at the red brick of the sheriff’s station, thoughts working through his mind.

“Lou, those Texans look like they’ve come for a fight. I need you to be prepared.”

“I’ll tell my boys, see if we can help settle the main lot of them outside of town. It might help the townsfolk feel more secure.”

“You’re a good man Lou,” the mayor said, then waved for Stewart to bring the cart over.

“Oh and Jim?” the sheriff called. “You give much thought to train schedules?”

“I don’t follow.”

“That train must have left Dallas two days ago minimum. The bombing was yesterday. You tell me why those troops were on that train before anything ever happened here…”

“Thanks Lou,” the mayor sighed as he settled in next to Stewart, “I will keep you informed.” As Stewart tapped the reins, Mayor Trestle hoped that what he already knew in his heart wasn’t true because he knew his town wouldn’t survive a war.