But I meant what I said to Jane back when we left the others. Jane might not see anything in herself worth saving, but I do. And until she sees it, I am not about to leave her alone.
“Well then, let us keep moving. If we wait any longer there is like to be naught but ashes left.”
And then I stride down the road toward the city, my shoulders square and revealing not a single hint of the terror that thrums through my veins.
A prudent bounty hunter knows when to let a quarry go for a better offer. After all, not all men are worth hunting to the ends of the earth. Considering the cost is what smart bounty hunters do. Plunging headlong into any bounty that comes a body’s way is what dead hunters do.
—Life on the Range, 1868
—JANE—
Chapter 41
In Which I Contemplate My Future
Katherine Deveraux is a fool.
She walks beside me as we make our way to the city, the smoke growing in volume as the fire in the city spreads, and I want to send her away, tell her to go back to the wagon train. I’d thought my determination to continue on to the city would make her turn tail. What rabbit runs into a fox’s den? But that is exactly what Katherine is doing, walking with me to a city of the dead without any care for her own fool neck.
And she’s doing it for me.
The further we walk, the angrier I get, so that when we pass through a small shantytown on the outskirts of the city proper, I grab her arm.
“Why are you doing this?” I demand. This close to the burning city the air smells of wood and cooking meat, and the smoke makes my eyes water. We can only see a little ways before us; the smoke billows around the tent city we walk through. The ground is muddy, even though I don’t know the last time it rained, and I figure it must be water pushing up from the river in some way. The stink of squalor is barely noticeable, only when the smoke clears enough for me to get a whiff. Breathing is hard, and my lungs labor, the smoky air making me cough.
There is not a soul to be found, and even if Gideon Carr had remained in the city after the dead rose, there is no way to ride out a fire like this. We haven’t even walked into the city proper and it’s already unbearable. I know he ain’t there, just as Katherine does.
But at my snarled question she raises a blond brow at me. “What do you mean? I should think it was obvious. You want to kill Gideon Carr, and you think we will somehow find him in this city. And so, here I am. I do have to admit that I think we should probably wait until the fire has died down,” she says, coughing delicately. “This smoke is abysmal.”
I’m not paying attention to our surroundings, I’m too focused on my frustration with Katherine, so it takes me a fraction of a second too long to realize that there are shapes lurching toward us through the smoke.
“Katherine,” I say, drawing my sword. “Turn back.”
“No,” she says, not yet seeing the dead around us. “You want to march into the mouth of hell to find Gideon Carr, then I will accompany you all the way to Satan’s throne.”
“No.” I push her behind me, using my elbow to steer her around. The way we came is clear, but in front of us the dead are beginning to congregate. I take a step backward, forcing her to do the same.
If they swarm us, Katherine is dead.
Despite the hazy smoke that swirls around us I can finally see clearly. I have a choice: Gideon or Katherine. Stupid, stubborn Katherine, contrary and ridiculously loyal to boot.
Gideon Carr has not yet taken everything from me. But if Katherine dies, he will have won.
I take another step back. Katherine is still behind me, and I use my body to block her and draw my sword slowly. She tenses, finally seeing the threat before us, and I keep going, walking backward a single slow step at a time. Katherine is bright enough to understand what I’m doing, and we continue to move back the way we came. The dead haven’t charged, and I have to hope that keeping myself between her and them will keep the situation calm.
“Jane,” Katherine says, her voice hoarse. I hazard a glance over my shoulder, and I see the problem. A handful of the dead, not many, have started to appear from between the rows of the tent city.
“Just keep moving,” I say. The dead seem confused, like they were this morning. They jerk this way and that, sensing Katherine but unable to ascertain her direction. A lifetime passes between every step we take, but eventually we have put enough space between us and the tent city. When we reach the road leading us back to the river, I push Katherine.
“Run,” I say.
And she does.
A few of the closest shamblers break after her, but I put them down easily, tripping a couple. The rest of the horde stays within the hazy smoke of the tent city, and once I’m certain we won’t be followed I take off after Katherine.
We run for a while, and eventually I put my sword away in the sheath that crisscrosses my body. Katherine waits near the bridge we crossed this morning, and I sigh heavily, enjoying the crisp, clean air. We didn’t make it very far.
“Well, that way is no good,” Katherine says, coughing a bit. “Maybe we should see if we can get north of the city and come in from another direction. Or what about the railways? Following the train tracks might be a better plan.”
“No, Kate, it’s over.” I shake my head. “Gideon Carr is in the wind again. It ain’t worth wasting any more time on this. We’ll head back to the wagon train, and I’ll figure out what to do on the way. He’s here somewhere, and it’s only a matter of time before he pops back up again.” I ain’t giving up on finding Gideon Carr altogether, but I have to be smart about this. Losing Katherine to this search ain’t going to help anything. It’s just going to be another death on my conscience. One I simply could not live with, if I’m being honest with myself.
She gives me a wide grin and nods. I scowl. “You ain’t got to be so happy about it,” I grumble.
“That is not why I am smiling. I just never thought I would be so glad to hear you call me that detestable nickname.”
I shake my head and sigh. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to charging into a burning city, dead or no. But now I’m right back where I started. I have no idea how to find Gideon.
“Come on, let’s go back to that wagon train.”
We reach the wagons before nightfall. Turns out even our little adventure hadn’t put all that much distance between us and them. The reactions to our arrival are mixed—quite a few folks are stricken to hear that Sacramento is no more, but mostly everyone seems to be relieved that they are gone from San Francisco, where the horde is inevitably headed, and that we’ve returned to bolster their protection detail, especially now that there are shamblers about.
“I suppose we’ll see how Edison’s Great Golden Wall fares against real resistance, now,” says a skinny colored woman who bears a striking resemblance to Carolina Jones. I cannot help but agree. San Francisco is in for a fight.
After supper, Thaddeus Stevens, blowhard extraordinaire, brings out a leather-bound Bible and reads a bit of Scripture for those comforted by such things. Quite a few of the single ladies on the train, and no small number of the married ones as well, jockey for position as he reads by the firelight. I am unsurprised to see Sue seated to his right, eyes closed as he reads. She was always taken by ridiculous folks. It’s why we were friends at Miss Preston’s. Even Carolina stands on the edge of the circle giving Stevens cow eyes.