Archive of Our Own ^beta

The whole of Main Street was a morass of shattered glass and splintered wood, the smoke hanging thick and greasy in the air, coating everything with a thick layer of grime. The three riders reached the height where Rose Creek curved down towards the town, paused there silhouetted against the sinking sun for a moment before they were gone. Red Harvest was the last one to disappear, setting his heels to the bare sides of his white horse and then he was gone beyond the horizon.

In the silence left after the explosions and gunshots the small sounds stood out. The groans of pain of people getting back up on their feet, the ticking of cooling embers, the wind rustling over newly made ruins.

“I...I guess we stood and fought,” Teddy Q said, gazing at the horizon, where the remaining three had disappeared, his face lost and directionless. “But how we are going to afford to rebuild it all and stay the winter….I wonder if we won't lose it anyhow.”

Emma was also looking towards where the riders had disappeared but the cast of her jaw suggested that she was neither lost nor directionless. She walked past Teddy Q, taking her shotgun back from his unresisting hands and wiped her face with the back of her hand. When the smoke started sinking to the ground shapes of horses milling back and forth around the town could be discerned, trotting riderless or standing still, their saddles empty.

“I think I’ve got an idea about that,” Emma said.

*

The nearest town to Rose Creek was Creekland Flats. They’d not heard the shooting but they had heard the explosions and seen the pillar of smoke, and supposed it might be an accident with the mine.

And the flock of horses was pretty hard to miss too, 25 to 30 fine beasts with saddles, just as sudden as if they had sprung from the ground. They washed over the town like a wave and ate everything green not fenced in before they vanished again. It had started as a rumbling in the ground, a mysterious noise growing stronger and stronger before the herd had rushed through the settlement with a noise and a rush like judgement day and both the preacher and the local drunk had thought rapture was upon them. The excitement broke Mrs Edwards’ fine blue-and-white china bowl and caused all the milk to curdle. It was also an evil that young Mr Edwards had been trying out faces and grimaces to scare his sisters when the horses swept through, and the sheer astonishment caused his face to stick that way.

It was a cause for much head scratching and speculation but nothing clear could be made of it. The opinion carried in Creekland Flats was that instead of gold in the mine at Rose Creek they had misplaced the sticks of dynamite and happened to burst on a particularly rich seam of horses. Doc, who knew about these things, claimed that birds spend the winter sleeping in the mud of lakes so why not horses coming straight from the ground itself? However it might be relevant to mention in passing that “Doc” was only his nickname on account of how he used to get drunk in the bar next to the medical college back East.

*

Emma had heard about the plague of Locusts visited upon Egypt, but she suspected that had Moses really wanted to annoy the Pharao he would have haunted him with a plague of horses. Before this she had thought them beautiful with their proud heads and powerful necks, now she thought them long-faced spindly-legged creatures without the good sense god would have given a goat. In fact, she would take a good honest goat every day, at least when those fuckers got loose and ate everything in the vegetable bed you knew it was out of spite and malice.

“Uh, Emma?” Teddy Q said, nervously twirling his hat and unwilling to be the bearer of bad news. “We’ve found another 50 horses? Uh, actually, fifty and a half.”

“And a half?” Emma asked, in a tone of voice which suggested she was already regretting asking.

“Well, uh, one was stuck halfway out of the hayloft at the Brown’s homestead, we’re not quite sure how it managed to get all the way up there but Antony only tallied it as a half since he technically hadn't seen the whole horse,even if we are reasonably sure the rest of it is up there, and uh, all attached.”

“Reasonably sure?”

“We can hear it chewing, ma’m.”

Emma felt a headache coming on. Another goddamn fifty horses.

*

The bell in the repaired tower tolled forlornly as the sun beat down on the newly dug rows of graves, the mound of fresh soil still dark with the last clinging humidity from the ground. The preacher bent his head solemnly as the rough pine casket was lowered into the hole. He removed his black felt hat and as one the men around the grave took off theirs too. It was only the preacher and the gravediggers, too few of these men ever left somebody on the earth to mourn for their passing or pray for their souls. Preacher took this duty solemnly to send off these lonely souls into their everlasting rest with all respect and care. He lowered his eyes respectfully towards the ground.

“Our Father...” his voice rang clear and steady at the narrow grave over the growing racket of two horses running past in the background with three people chasing after them, one of them Leni Frankel with her skirts hoiked up to reveal the frilly ends of her pantaloons

. She had rope in one hand and a skillet in the other. “You bastard horse!” could be heard thinly but distinctly.

“...who art in heaven,” Preacher continued stoically as the horses ran past again, this time in the other direction. For some reason one of them now carried the frilly pantaloons in his mouth.

“Hallowed be thy name - ah lads,it's five in the afternoon and everyone else is gone, is this anyone we know?” he interrupted himself and nudged one of the gravediggers. The man looked up from where he held his hat respectfully clutched against his chest.

“Its Dan Johnson sir, Lived up on the ridge with his twin brother Stan Johnson. They were identical twins. We buried Stan last week, if you remember?”

“Very well. Thy Kingdom c --Now, if they were identical are we sure this is Dan and not the other one?

“Um yes, “ the man nodded, looking embarrassed. “Stan had a peg leg, sir.”

“Well in such case,” the preacher cleared his throat. “Thy will be done...” he carried on as in the background in a perplexing turn of events Mrs Frankel was now being chased by the two horses.

*

For a week every time you opened a shed door there was a fucking horse. Emma would not at all have been surprised if she found them in her sock drawer or kitchen cupboards. She did find two wedged into her lean-to, the one Mathew said was held together with spit and goodwill and large enough to store a harvest in a teacup. She came home tired to her bones only to find the two of them standing there, looking against their genetic inclination, sheepish, not being able to get either forwards or backwards. One of them nosed nonchalantly at his hooves as if he just happened to be there and could leave anytime he wanted, he just enjoyed being there while the other one had no such pretenses and stared at Emma with wild round eyes and his ears almost pasted flat against the head.

And that was before the fuckers started breeding.

Young Antony looked like he might start to cry when he proudly handed in his final tally of 135 only to realise that a large part of the mares started to look suspiciously round around the belly.

By accident Rose Creek became famous for its horses. It's literally a 200-horse town. Emma has had to get a buggy just to suit her matched pair. Leni Frankel’s adopted baby, the little tyke she picked up off the church ground on the day of the killings could ribe before it even walked, sitting bareback on a pony whth her dumpy little fists closed around the tufts of mane. The girls in the saloon have a four in hand of greys that take them the 25 yards to church every Sunday and they never miss a sermon now.Teddy Q has had to explain to several confused families moving in that four horses just comes with living in the area, it's the minimum requirement. These four horses are your horses now and good luck with them. The confused father of the family is trying to work out if it is some sort of complicated extortion racket and not just four horses he suddenly needs to take care of and feed.

“No, no, no” Emma said, tiredly the third time Teddy had brought a bedraggled family in a covered wagon with four confused horses following them. “You get a horse, you get a horse. And you get a horse. Everybody gets a horse.”

The family stared at her in incomprehension and Emma shrugged.They’d get there eventually.