The Burden of Souls (Hawker's Drift Book 1) Read online

  He watched her stomp across the square towards the saloon before turning to one of the stable hands, “What’s her problem?”

  “Her husband mislaid a couple of mules… and some dynamite.”

  Amos stared at him blankly.

  The young man shrugged, “It’s that kinda town…”

  After he’d satisfied himself that his horse was being well looked after he arranged another week’s keep for the animal.

  “You sticking around, huh?” The stable lad asked, making a note in a tatty little pocket book.

  “For a while.”

  “Folks usually find it hard to leave here.” He flashed a goofy smile before wandering off to shovel out more horse dung.

  Amos made his way back out onto the square, the day was bright and the sky mostly cloudless; the sun had yet to dry out the thick mud that was still being churned by horses and wagons into a cloying rancid glue.

  The better weather had encouraged more locals out, and while the town could hardly be described as crowded, it didn’t feel like the half abandoned ghost town it had when he’d arrived during the previous day’s rainstorm.

  He sauntered back to the saloon where he had taken a room, it had been as noisy as the gunsmith had warned, but the bed was passable and vastly more comfortable than a blanket on the ground. He’d managed to fall asleep despite the rhythmic creaking from the room above.

  He recognised several of the barflies, mostly slumped on the same stools as the day before, as well as the foul-tempered red head from the stables. She already had an empty whiskey glass in front of her.

  He stared at her long red hair and tried hard not to remember. He usually avoided women, if he could, but he found his feet took him to stand next to her despite himself. He knew why and hated himself for it. As if the world wasn’t torture enough.

  “I’ll have a beer,” he said to the bartender, at least managing to keep his eyes away from her.

  “But whiskey is-”

  “Yes, yes, I get it! I’ll take a whiskey too.”

  Once the drinks were poured he slid the whiskey over to the woman next to him, “You look like you need this more than me.”

  She raised her eyes from the bar and looked sideways at him. “Hope you’re not looking to get laid…” she said, before downing the whiskey in one, “…I’m in mourning.”

  Amos cocked his head, recognising the woman. “I saw you yesterday, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. Guess I look a bit different without the veil and the large wooden box.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks… you must be new here?”

  “Just arrived.”

  “Take my advice, saddle up and get out. Quickly.”

  Amos raised an eyebrow, “Doesn’t seem too bad a town.”

  She snorted and tapped her empty glass on the counter for a refill, “Yeah, it’d be a great place if it wasn’t for the collection of screwed up, inbred lunatics who live here.”

  She swivelled on her stool and raised her latest drink in the direction of two men in long coats sitting nearby, before downing it in one.

  Neither man had a drink before him and they were openly staring at the woman; both wore metal stars pinned to their lapels. The younger of the two men looked mildly discomforted for a moment. His companion was a little older and his face was quite expressionless as he watched them intently with cold muddy eyes.

  He’s dangerous.

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Not exactly. They’re just making sure I don’t skip town. I think…” the words drifted off with a shrug.

  “Why?”

  “You don’t want to get involved.”

  “Why?” Amos repeated, knowing she was right but unable to stop himself.

  She sighed, “Tom, my fool of a husband, got himself into something stupid. Again. Then he died, fell off his horse they said… but…” she shrugged again and hunched back over the bar.

  “You don’t think it was an accident?”

  “You drink real slow.”

  “I was planning on still being conscious for dinner,” Amos replied, sipping his beer, “Why didn’t you think it was an accident?”

  “I’m a natural pessimist. Just a glass half empty kinda gal, or, in this case, completely empty...”

  The bartender jumped in with another shot.

  “Why don’t you just leave the bottle?” Amos said to the bartender.

  “Whiskey ain’t free,” he replied, looking slightly confused.

  “Leave it Sonny; I’ll make it easy for you to keep track of what I’ve had. I’ll finish the bottle.”

  Sonny the bartender thought about it for a second, shrugged his shoulders and placed the bottle in front of her, “Your funeral.”

  “Not the best choice of words,” she muttered, helping herself as Sonny wandered off to attend the other barflies.

  “I’m Amos, by the way.”

  She looked at him squarely; her eyes were a vivid sparkling green and only slightly bloodshot. “Molly,” she eventually replied, “or the Widow McCrea if you prefer.”

  “Molly has a better ring.”

  “I told you I’m still in mourning didn’t I?”

  “I’m not trying to get laid.”

  “Weirdo.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Why not? I’m emotionally vulnerable and getting drunker by the minute. Most men would.”

  “I’m not most men.”

  “Sure…”

  She was scared and lonely, which he supposed wasn’t entirely unusual for someone recently widowed, and even more so if she actually was being followed around by the town’s deputies. She was trying hard to hide it behind a quick mouth and quicker drinking. Not entirely successfully, though few people could hide things from him anyway.

  “Hey, you haven’t seen a big crate of dynamite lying around town have you?”

  “No…”

  “Pity, I need to give it back to the asshole who sold it to my idiot husband.”

  “Why did he need a crate of dynamite?”

  “Some damn fool get rich quick scheme I guess. Tom was always brilliant at thinking up get rich quick schemes. Shame they were all so fucking useless… now he’s left me with one god awful mess. I really shouldn’t be surprised.” She flashed a small, pained smile at him and shook her head before sliding off her stool, “You staying here, in the saloon?”

  Amos nodded.

  “Guess I’ll be seeing you again then. I intend to be spending every cent I have in this place over the next three months.” She spread a row of coins on the bar before scooping up the whiskey bottle and turning for the door, “I wasn’t joking about getting out of here while you still can…”

  Amos watched her cross the bar in a dead straight line. The door hadn’t swung shut before the two deputies rose and followed her out…

  *

  “Well, I’ll be…”

  Amos lowered the rifle and stared at the spot where the old can had sat a moment before.

  “Dead bang on eh?” John X Smith grinned and looked pleased with himself, “even after you’ve been drinking.”

  “One beer.”

  “Devil’s brew.”

  “You abstain then?”

  “Damn right, that stuff will just rot your guts and your brains,” the gunsmith warned, before pulling a hip flask from his jacket and offering Amos a slug, “I stick to brandy myself.”

  Amos didn’t usually drink spirits, but took a swig in the hope of masking the smell of corruption that hung on the air. The hip flask was old and dented. The brandy was smooth and expensive.

  “I am a man of some refinement,” John X grinned as Amos nodded appreciatively, “just don’t tell anyone. I got my reputation to think of.”

  They stood on the edge of a large refuse tip, about a mile downwind of town. For a small place it sure produced a lot of shit. Smith had explained firing guns in Hawker’s Drift tended to make the local law enforcement twitchy, so he came o
ut here to test his weapons. The stench of rotting food and excrement ensured he was left in peace.

  “Kicks less too huh?”

  Amos nodded, he was impressed.

  “Got better rifles back at the shop, but I know a man can get attached to his gun despite its faults; much the same as with his woman in that respect.”

  “So do you fix woman too?”

  John X laughed, “What would be the point of that? Faults is what makes em interesting in the first place. A perfect gun is a thing of beauty. A perfect woman… well, that would just be downright dull.”

  “You married?”

  “I got too much love for just one woman my friend,” he grinned.

  “That must be interesting in a small town?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised just how many faults there are here to enjoy.”

  A rat scurried out of a pile of rotting vegetables, but Amos ignored it. As a rule, he only bothered killing the two-legged variety.

  “How’d you end up here?”

  John X shrugged, “Much the same as most of the others, got washed up and found myself marooned.”

  “You make it sound like you’re trapped?”

  “Trapped? No, Hawker’s Drift is just a hard place to leave.”

  “So people keep telling me.”

  “Like?”

  “You know Molly McCrea?”

  “Not as well as I’d like; fine looking woman.”

  “Recently widowed too.”

  John X nodded, “Husband was a fool. Not a bad man underneath, but a fool with a hot head all the same.”

  “He bought a load of dynamite before he died apparently.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Anything worth blowing up around here?”

  “Can think of a few people who’d benefit from a stick of the stuff up their behind… but otherwise no.”

  “She thinks a couple of the deputies are following her.”

  “She’s got a vivid imagination.”

  “Is she…”

  “Mad? No… grief can do things to your mind though.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You ever known grief?”

  Amos looked off towards the sun, which was slipping behind a sheath of cloud hugging the western horizon.

  “Yeah...”

  “Then you know what it can do.”

  Amos thought of all the years he’d spent in the saddle, searching for a man he’d never find.

  “It can consume you…”

  “Best to let it go. Move on. Start again.”

  “Probably is,” Amos agreed, without asking what do you do when you have nothing else.

  The two men began to walk back towards the town, the sun had slipped behind the clouds and dusk had started to fall.

  “Why did nobody go to the funeral?” Amos asked after a while.

  “Did you see the weather?”

  “Apart from that?”

  “Tom McCrea had a short temper, upset a lot of folk, not an easy man to like sometimes.”

  “Must have been a helluva temper?”

  Smith looked at his boots and skirted a large muddy puddle on the road, “Word has it he’d crossed the Mayor, which ain’t a smart thing to do. People like to keep on his good side here”

  “Is that why his widow is afraid?”

  “You’d need to ask her that… but if you want my advice, it’s best not to get involved.”

  Amos looked at him enquiringly.

  John X glanced around, the road was deserted and other than the town on the slopes of the hill ahead of them, there was nothing to see but grass, swaying slightly on the breath of a warm and gentle evening breeze.

  “Life can be good here, but… it’s best to know who is in charge and keep to your own business. I don’t know what Tom McCrea did, and I don’t want to know, but he did something to piss off the Mayor and that was a real dumb thing to do.”

  And then he died?”

  “And then he died,” John X agreed, avoiding Amos’ eye.

  “How?”

  “Riding accident, horse threw him, out here amongst the grass, cracked his head open on a rock and spilt whatever passed for his brains over the dirt. Horse was spooked by a snake or some other critter probably.”

  “A two-legged critter maybe?”

  “Nobody is saying that, save maybe Mrs McCrea,” John X looked across at him, before adding, “hope you ain’t one of them heroic types that gets all het up when they think there’s a damsel in distress?”

  Amos shook his head, “Nope… I’ve been called plenty of things, but never heroic.”

  “Good,” the gunsmith replied firmly, “this sure ain’t a place for heroes.”

  The two men walked on in silence, the town of Hawker’s Drift looming over them in the twilight.

  *

  Amos had offered to buy the gunsmith a drink when they got back to town, but he’d just said he had plans and gave him a theatrical wink before sauntering off back to his shop.

  He’d been in Hawker’s Drift for a day, and John X Smith was the only black man he’d seen in the town; however, he’d already spotted two women out and about with children with coffee coloured skin and tight wiry hair, so he had a fair idea what the man’s plans might involve.

  He returned to his room above the saloon and, after laying his rifle by his bags and kicking off his boots, he laid back on the bed with his hands behind his head, enjoying the rare comfort of having a ceiling to stare at and not having to keep one eye open for things that might want to kill him. For the moment at least.

  He hadn’t looked for work yet, and he didn’t seriously need to. He still had most of the money he’d earned for killing two men out beyond the grass plain, in what had once been a mining town, but was now little more than a nest of outlaws and degenerates.

  The money on offer had been good, and it was the kind of desperate hole Severn might have ended up in. He hadn’t been there of course and nobody had heard of him, so he killed the two men, which had been easy as they were both stupid and drunk, and got out of town, which hadn’t as they’d been popular and their friends came after him.

  It had taken days to shake them, but his horse was strong and young. He’d collected his money and headed out onto the plains, searching for a man who was probably dead without appreciating how vast and empty this place was.

  He’d never heard of Hawker’s Drift and hadn’t planned to end up here; much the same as John X he supposed. He’d been adrift for many years before he’d ever ventured on to these plains. The town was just a tiny rock people clung to, like all the other little broken pockets of humanity he came across on his endless journey. He would rest a little, replenish his supplies and sleep on a feather mattress until, one day, he realised his butt missed the hard leather of his saddle and the possibility that Severn might just be beyond the horizon became too insistent to ignore, even if out here that horizon seemed impossibly faraway.

  He dozed a little, but never succumbed to sleep as he was serenaded by the buzz of voices from the saloon below, and guttural cries from the rooms above.

  Hunger began to gnaw at him after a while. It was fully dark now, and the night had crept into the room. He felt half inclined to roll over and go to sleep, being hungry wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to him, but it seemed pointless when there was food available in the saloon below. He’d long been used to not taking his next meal for granted and eating whenever he could. He’d had to flee more than one town at short notice without provisions, and there was little easy food to be had out on the grass.

  As he left his room, a half-naked man with long unkempt white hair and an overgrown face ricocheted past him, rapidly followed by a shoe, which whistled past the man’s head and dislodged a faded brown painting of a vase of flowers on the wall.

  “I don’t care how much you’re willing to pay,” a woman screeched, “don’t ever try to do that again!”

  The white-haired man grabbed his shoe and added it to the bundle o
f clothes he was clutching to the soiled grey vest that covered his scrawny chest.

  “Don’t ya just love em fiery?” He cackled, before ducking out of the way of his second shoe and scurrying down the staircase to get out of missile range.

  Amos glanced up the stairs; a dark haired young woman dressed only in a red and black stripped corset and stockings was standing with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.

  “Men!” She shouted in exasperation, before noticing Amos and adding in a softer voice, “Hi honey, wanna come up?”

  Part of him wanted to go up to her, wanted to know what she felt like beneath that tight fitting corset, wanted to know what she smelt like and tasted like, but that would be a torture too terrible for even him to endure, so he shook his head and mumbled an apology before hurrying down the stairs.

  “Suit yourself,” he heard her say, but didn’t trust himself to look back.

  The Preacher

  A woman’s laughter cut across Pioneer Square, raucous and drunk. It was a warm night and the upstairs windows in Jack’s were mostly open; the girls didn’t seem to care who heard them work. They probably considered it advertising.

  William Eustace Stone, who was just Preacher Stone to the vast majority of Hawker’s Drift’s inhabitants, stood on the steps of his white clapperboard church and stared across the square towards Jack’s Saloon.

  Jack’s Saloon, Casino and Whorehouse would be a more accurate title, though the cost of the extra signage would discourage a more honest description of the place from an old skinflint like Monty Jack.

  Right across from his church, a veritable den of wanton drunkenness, gambling and fornication that was enjoyed by most of the men of the town and the surrounding farms, ranches and homesteads, even the ones that dutifully plodded through the door of his church every Sunday, some of them still smelling of whiskey and perfume.

  “Lucky bastards…” Preacher Stone muttered, eyes following the ghostly diffused shadows moving back and forth behind the saloon’s towering frosted windows.

  A long time ago he would have held nothing but contempt for the saloon and its patrons; sinners and wasters one and all, but it had been a long time since he’d enjoyed a young man’s convictions. Now he was old, his guts hurt most of the time, and his congregation thought he was a mean spirited old goat with little time for anybody but himself and God, which wasn’t entirely fair. He didn’t actually have much time for himself anymore either. He knew he wasn’t popular in the town, but he was too old to care.