Gunlaw

Gunlaw 45

Chapter 31

"End of the line."

Mikeos reached for his gun, thinking the words a threat, then let his hand fall. He raised his head, pushing up the brim of his hat. For too long the sleepers passing beneath his feet had been all he saw, beating out time to his death march. He kept telling himself 'look up'. Jim Bright could have picked him off any time, picked them all off, from any ridge. All he'd need to do was wait, and Mikeos Jones, the great gunslinger of Ansos, would shamble into view, blind to the world, and get shot.

"End of the line." It could have been Bright's judgement on him, but instead it was Hemar's dry bark.

Mikeos tried to blink the blur from his sight. In the distance a ridge rose up blocking the tracks' passage, and against the dusty ochre of the slope some black projection . . . the last water-tower! Mikeos's parched tongue twitched at the thought of the coolness in that raised tank. Hemar had already started to run. The sun had almost fallen behind the rise, throwing a long shadow that advanced along the tracks almost at walking pace.

"No!" Raising even a half shout tore something in his chest but it was enough to stop the dogman. "Jim Bright ain't killed us yet. Where else can he be but watching that tower? Letting it sucker us in so he can shoot us off the ladder? Nothing else makes sense."

Hemar slouched back, reluctant. "Can you see him, Jenna? Hex him out?"

Mikeos turned to see Jenna coming up to join them. The Dry had wrung her out, painted her grey with dust, scored every line deeper and cut the flesh from her bones, leaving harsh angles. She looked spent. She hadn't hexed them up any water. She hadn't hexed the poison out of his wound. And he wasn't entirely convinced the outrider at Small Stones hadn't just happened to fall off his horse by chance. The likelihood of her hexing Jim Bright out of hiding for them seemed ... slim.

Jenna held her hands before her eyes, long fingers interlaced in a web to view the world through. The witches looked at the world like that, like the spider in her web, connected by threads to the real lives of men and women, the dirty, complex, loud, and dangerous lives of the people they purported to serve and guide, all reduced to little tugs on the threads of their grand web.

"Nothing," she said.

"Nothing as in 'nothing is there', or nothing as in 'I got nothing'?" Mikeos regretted the words as they left him, despite the answer being life and death to them. He regretted doubting her, as if doubting her skill might collapse it entirely.

"I can't see his aura," Jenna said, without offense.

Mikeos drew his gun. "You go in, Hemar. I'll watch the left, Jenna the right."

"Couldn't we circle round, come over the hills?" Jenna asked.

"You might be able to. I'm done." Mikeos pointed ahead with his gun. "Straight ahead's all I've got left in me. Besides, would you circle round to the left, or the right?"

Hemar shrugged. "Jenna says he ain't here." And he walked on, nose high. "And there's nothing of him on the wind. But watch to the left anyhows. If he expected a domen he'll be hiding up there where his scent's less like to carry from."

Mikeos bit the inside of his cheek, letting the pain sharpen him up. He held his revolver two handed, the weapon trembling in the grip of his fever, aim point dancing along the ridges to the left. Hemar moved up the remaining track at the trot, either not caring whether he caught a bullet, or perhaps showing a faith in Jenna's judgment that shamed Mikeos's own.