Horsepeople

Chapter Twenty-Four

Life had gone well since the ceremony. Will and Joanna often rode across the Porcupines to check on the bison and, as far as they could tell, the herd was thriving. The calves were growing by the day and the pastures remained lush. After the dance and song, the townsfolk had thrown themselves into planting their grain crops for the year, more planting than Jo had ever done in her life. The land required to feed twenty people and provide seed for next year was thirty acres, and it took them a week to till and seed.

During that time, the broodmares had started to foal and nearly everyday a brand-new four-legged baby wobbled to its feet to join the herd. Nanny, too, gave birth to twins, one of which was slaughtered within the week, allowing them to use the rennet in his gut to make cheese. They kept the female.

Without Nanny in milk, finding food for Laura's baby, named Rosie, had been difficult and the baby had wilted. Jo had resorted to milking the first broodmare to give birth, a task neither of them liked. But with the arrival of Nanny's kids, Rosie began to thrive.

Fluffy new chicks huddled under their mothers and the shrill cries of piglets could be heard a mile away. And so a month passed like this, the town so full of new life they almost forgot about the ones lost.

Returning from across the Porcupines on what they called a Buffalo Ride, Will and Jo dropped into the Sweetwater Valley. They were going to be late for dinner. But the sun was too warm, their horses too supple, the birdsong too pleasant, and the juniper and sage too fragrant for them to worry about it. Underneath the birdsong, though, something was growing.

"Do you hear that?" Jo fell silent and strained her ears. She heard a rumbling sound from the east, hooves beating across the dry ground. Exchanging a look, they squeezed their horses into a lope to the Livery and turned their eyes east. Turning off the range road and through the gates of Sweetwater was a group of riders, and two honest-to-God chuckwagons with pneumatic tires and neon traces. They raced up the track to Lille in a barely-controlled gallop. Running her eyes over the ragged-looking men, Jo counted twelve in all.

Will and Jo had not been the only ones to see them. From where he had been sitting on his porch, Harold rose and limped over to the Church, rang the bell, and returned to his seat. People lined the boardwalks when the group arrived in town, the men wrenching on their horses' mouths to stop them.

One man kicked his horse so that it stood apart from the rest. He wore a dusty red serge, unbuttoned on such a warm spring day, and a broad brown hat. He had an unkempt blonde beard, bleached even lighter in the sun, and a pink complexion. Yanking a rein, he turned his horse in a circle to appraise the town.

Before his eyes reached them in the barn, Jo noticed Will shrink into the shadows of the Livery, invisible. He watched from behind the doorway, a vacant look on his face that she had only seen once before: when Jordan had escaped the Government with only his life. This must be them. The Government, the ones they had been waiting for all winter, and, to hear Jordan tell it, the harbingers of their doom. Will's face was blank and unreadable as he stared at the blond man, lost so deep in memory that he was somewhere else. Knuckles white, his hand gripped his shoulder.

"Hello, good civilians," the blonde man said, his speech stiff and formal, "My name is Captain Brian Smith and this is the Calgary Militia, assembled by the Government of Alberta. We have been assembled to protect you, the people, from gangs, looters, and other criminals that have taken over this land in this time of crisis. It is our job to enforce the Law and deal with those who violate it. In doing this, we can unify the people under one Government and one Law, so that we can make our country great again!"

Parched from the ride, his voice cracked through the town by the end of his speech, charging the air and leaving the Captain red-faced. He looked around, hoping to see smiles and applause from the people for once. He had worked very hard on his speech and practiced it many times during their long rides, so he couldn't understand why every wretched group they ran down weren't more pleased to see them. Instead, he was met with the same suspicious silence and the Captain struggled a snarl from his face. Every group was different, he had found, and had to be played its own way. By the looks of this town, its boardwalk and Hotel, he thought he would enjoy playing this one.