The Damnation Affair

Chapter 25

“There you are!” Russ Overton looked like hell, his hat sideways and his jacket askew, stubbled and red-eyed. It wasn’t a surprise—Gabe looked like hell too, he supposed. “God damn you, Gabe, where the hell have you been?”

Heaving bodies over the circuit-line and destroying a woman’s faith in me. “Around.” He lifted the glass, took another belt. Coy eyed him speculatively, but wisely kept himself over at the other end of the Star’s bar, polishing some glasses with what passed for a white cloth in Damnation. “Time to ride the circuit, Russ.” And so it was. Since the simoun had died, and the bruise-dark clouds over the hills had loomed closer. There was thunder, and the breathless sense of a storm approaching.

Approaching? No, it’s damn well here.

“You’re drunk.” Russ halted in amazement, scooping his hat from his head and running his fingers through his waxed hair. It didn’t help—the sharp tight curl in it was coming back something fierce. He was pale under his coloring, too, and his bloodshot gaze was a little too stare-wide for Gabe’s comfort.

“Not yet.” The Star was a dim cave this early, the dance floor empty and the upper balcony full of shadows. And Gabe had the wonderful, marvelous thought that perhaps he could well get drunk. “Not enough, anyway.”

Everyone else in the building was asleep, including the fat, snoring Vance Huggins in the corner, who used the Star as his philosophical office every night. As long as Paul took a cut, he was welcome to, and Tils held his peace for once.

“Gabe, we have a problem. A huge problem.” Russ stepped close, grabbed Gabe’s shoulder. “It’s the marm. The goddamn schoolmarm.”

Jack Gabriel set the glass down very carefully, and Coy, perhaps sensing a feral current in the charged air, ducked through the low door behind the bar, into the cellar’s darkness. A spark of mancy popped and fizzled to give him lee to see by, a charter-rune sketched on a small glass disc he kept chained like a pocketwatch, so he didn’t have to mumble a catchphrase to light it. His ruined mouth wouldn’t shape many phrases, that was for damn sure.

“You be careful, Russell Overton.” Gabe enunciated each word very clearly. “Be very careful what you say about her.”

“Gabe, for God’s sake, listen. Remember that claim in the hills? And the boy? The Browne boy?”

What does that have to do with the price of tea leaves on a Chinoise whore’s boat? “Russ, for God’s sake—”

“Robert Barrowe-Browne. That’s how he signed the register at Ma Haines’s boardinghouse. Barrowe. And the other day, when I took her to the schoolhouse? Blood, Gabe. She’s his blood.” Russ drew in a deep breath, and his paleness was more marked. “I divined all goddamn night after riding the goddamn circuit, trying to find the connection. She’s his sister.”

The world spun out from underneath him. That was the familiarity—she had the same way of tossing her head, and the same high cheekbones. In her eyes, too—big dark eyes, similar to Robbie Browne’s and thickly lashed. Why hadn’t he seen the resemblance?

You weren’t looking for it.

“It don’t make sense,” he found himself saying. “What the hell…”

“Maybe he wrote home that he had a sweet claim and then disappeared. We just assumed he had no kin; Ma Hainey never heard him speak of none and neither did any of the whores, right? And Browne ain’t a name you would remember. He just slid by, and probably what he woke up helped with that. So here comes sister dear, looking for him.”

He thought it over, alcohol and sleeplessness fogging him. “But she’s from money, Russ. Why wouldn’t they just hire someone? One of the Pinks, or a Federal Marshal?”

“Who knows? I just know she’s his blood. And she’s here under that name—Barrowe. What if she knows where that goddamn claim is, Gabe? What if he wrote to her? What if he was supposed to meet her here?” Russ threw his hat on the bar and scrubbed his hands over his scalp again. “What are we gonna do?”

Gabe stared at the bottle on the counter. He’d taken down far too much amber alcohol masquerading as whiskey to be entirely sure of his own ability to deal with what the chartermage was telling him.

“Do?” He sounded strange even to himself. “You’re sure, Russ? You’d better be damn sure of what you’re telling me.”

“We have time, right?” The chartermage actually looked anxious. “She ain’t been out to that claim yet, has she? Has she?”

“She ain’t had a chance.” I’d stake my life on it. Funny, but he would, and he was about to. “Things in town been keeping her busy. Russ, you’re sure? They’re blood, that boy and my Catherine?” He didn’t even care if he was showing too many cards; it slipped out. My Catherine.

Even if she hated him.

“I went back to Salt’s and looked in that cabinet in back. There was the boy’s charing-charm, looks just like hers; I put it in my pocket, Gabe. Figured it was safest, what with you riding out to check the claim.” For some reason, Russ turned even paler—some trick, with someone of his ancestry. “It lit up like a goddamn Yule tree. When I had enough time to concentrate, and handed her down from the wagon, mind.”

That had better be all you handed down, Overton. “I see.” He stared at the bottle. The liquid inside was trembling, for some reason. Little circles on its surface. “The claim was open. I sealed it up again, but…”

Russ swore, vilely, and Jack heartily agreed. He scrubbed at his face, stubble and dust scraping under callused skin, and the thought of just crawling under the bar and getting real good and drunk was tempting.

“All right.” He dropped his hands. “All right. Let’s go have a talk with her. May be time to tell her just what happened to her brother.”

“You mean, that you killed him?” The chartermage’s hands wrung together. He was probably completely unaware of the motion.

Jack took a firm hold on his temper. “He was dead the minute he set foot in that claim, Russ.” But I don’t think she’ll understand that.

Maybe it’s best if she doesn’t, Jack. You ever think about that? Maybe it’s better if she hates the very sight of you. At least then, you won’t be putting her somewhere she can end up dead.

He took his foot off the brass rail and wished he hadn’t sucked down quite so much almost-whiskey. The world reeled again, but he held on, grimly, and settled his hat further on his aching head. “Let’s go. The circuit can wait.”

He should have known it would be too late.

The schoolmarm wasn’t at home. Li Ang merely shrugged when asked where she’d gone, and they lost precious time riding out to the schoolhouse, only to find it empty for the day. Back to Damnation, then; Capran at the dry goods store had seen her dressed in a blue velvet riding-habit, walking past with her head held high. Didn’t even say hello, he’d grumbled, and Gabe had only restrained himself from swearing by sheer force of will.

A riding-habit meant a horse, and the closest of the two liveries in town was Arnold Hayrim’s, the one that didn’t send rotgut whiskey out with the stage. Arnold was out at Brubeck’s farm looking over a few prospective hacks, but his son Joe—big lumbering dolt that he was—rummaged around in his memory for a while before saying that yes, the marm had engaged a horse for the day. She had money, and she knew how to ride, so Joe had saddled a bay mare for her and she had leapt into the saddle neat as you please. No sidesaddle, that miss, Joe said, his blue eyes gleaming. Right pretty seat she has, too.

When asked which way she went, Joe spat and shook his head. He had horses to care for and the stagecoach was due in later today. He didn’t give a damn where she went as long as she brought the mare back before dark.

The whiskey had burned off. Jack’s head throbbed, and there was a deeper ache in his chest. Russ took his hat off, eyeing the boiling dark clouds over the hills. Thunder rumbled, growing closer. The betting on just when the rains would come would be in full swing by now.

Russ scrubbed at his forehead with his fingertips. “Today of all days,” he moaned. “Do you think maybe…she couldn’t know I’ve got her brother’s charing. I was careful.”

Gabe blinked. “A letter.” Curse me for a lackwit. “She got a letter today. From Boston, the postmistress said. Goddamn.”

“Maybe it…dear God.” Russ looked sick, leaning against the livery’s splintery wall. The morning light had taken on the eerie greenish-yellow cast that meant the storm was coming sooner rather than later. “What kind of brother would tell his sister where that claim is? Or…do you think he did? Maybe she’s got some way of knowing. She’s got some mancy.”

“Enough to have a Practicality.” He wished his skull would cease squeezing itself to pieces. “Let a man think, Russ. Just shut your hole for a minute or two.”

“We may not have a minute,” the chartermage worried. “If she breaks open that claim again, she might get infected. And you know what that means.”

Gabe clapped a lid on his temper. “I sealed it up, she ain’t gonna break it.” Except where there’s a will, there’s a way, and she’s got no shortage of will. “Now just shut up and let me goddamn think.”

Russ wasn’t listening. “We may have to put her down like a rabid—”

Gabe had him by the jacket-front, up against the wall, his fists turning in the material. How the hell did I get here? “Shut. Up. You hear me, chartermage? Keep your mouth shut. That claim was sealed as of yesterday, and she ain’t gonna break in. You are gonna go check Robbie Browne’s grave and see if her mancy led her there. I am gonna go check that goddamn claim, and if I find her there I am going to make her listen to some sense. One way or another, we are bringin’ her back to Damnation.” And I am not letting her out of my sight until we get a few things settled.

Russ gaped at him. How fast had Jack moved? And it wasn’t like him to hold a man up against a wall. His temper wasn’t certain, and that was a bad sign.

“All right. All right, Jack, just settle down—”

“I ain’t settlin’ until I see my girl’s safe. You just mind me, mage. That damn schoolmarm is…well, you ain’t gonna make any pronouncements about her without my say-so.” And if she does break into that claim…No, she won’t. She can’t.

Except he had an uneasy feeling that can’t wasn’t a word he could apply to his Miss Catherine Barrowe. She didn’t know the meaning of the term. And if the thing in the claim infected her like it had her brother…

What, Jack? You’ll shoot her? Another woman dead because you didn’t do right.

“All right,” Russ was saying, the words under a heavy counterpoint of thunder. “All right, Gabe. We’d better get started.” In the distance, lightning flashed, silver stitches under ink-black billows. And that was a trifle unnatural, though it was hard to tell with the way the storms swept through at this time of year.

She would go out just as the rains were coming in. If there was an easy way to go about things, the damn woman would arrange it the other way ’round just to spite him.

“Reckon so.” His fingers threatened to cramp as he released the chartermage. “You remember the grave, right?”

“I remember.” The weird light did no good by Russ’s complexion. The man was ashen, and staring at Gabe like he was a stranger. “You just be careful up at that claim, Jack. I’d hate to lose you.”

“Got no intention of being lost.” And no intention of losing her, either.