Chapter Text
The first part of their plan - Faraday’s idea - was to raid the nearby mine Bogue owned. The goal was threefold: get rid of Bogue’s men, secure ammunition or explosives, and see if any of the miners might be willing to help defend the town.
Maybe some of them could even shoot.
Before they went to see about taking the mine, however, they had stopped at the top of the rise outside the town. Harry thought they were all hoping inspiration would strike, because at the moment they were facing some very long odds.
“So this is our trap,” Goodnight mused.
“It might work,” Harry tried to sound positive. “Pin ‘em in there.”
“Well, it might, if we can teach more than half of these townsfolk to hit the broad side of a barn at ten paces,” Goodnight retorted.
Rocks suggested, “Come up with a few surprises.”
“We’ll need more than a few,” was Chisolm’s contribution.
“It’s a box of death,” Goodnight finally said what they’d all been trying not to think.
“So melt the elements, with fervent heat!” Horne chimed in. “Like Sodom and Gomorrah.”
There was a bewildered silence as they all turned to look at the large man. That was not the reference Harry would have gone for, even in a biblical sense.
Harry noted the look exchanged between Goodnight and Rocks and decided to draw attention away from the pair. The last thing they needed was Horne deciding to actually reenact Sodom and Gomorrah if he happened to notice them. Subtle they were not, at least not to anyone who knew what to look for. And while most wouldn’t bother about it, plenty of men took comfort in one another when there were no women around, and bachelor marriages weren’t too terribly uncommon with so few women in the West, after all - who knew with a man as devout and insane as Horne?
He turned to Faraday and asked the unusually quiet man, “What do you think?”
“Reminds me of this fella I used to know,” Faraday said. “Fell off a five-story building. Passed each floor on the way down. People inside heard him say, ‘So far, so good!’ He’s dead now.”
Horne was chuckling as Chisolm scoffed, “Yeah.”
Faraday asked, out of the blue, “I make good on my horse yet, Sam?”
Chisolm smirked. “So far, so good.” They all laughed, both at the joke and the face Faraday pulled. “Let’s go get some ammo.”
“Cabrónes,” Harry muttered about the smart alecks he was keeping company with. He was still chuckling as he gently kicked Luna forward, getting them all moving instead of joshing. Behind him, the others moved out toward the mines as well.
It wasn’t far, only a thirty-minute ride, and they set up across the water from the mines. Far enough that no one would be able to see them, especially not since they’d managed to find a hill with enough brush on it that could serve as a blind for their sharpshooter and keep the rest of them out of sight.
It took Goodnight a while to go into the blind, since he seemed to be having a hard time settling. Harry could make out his hands shaking again, even as he took the last few deep drags on the cigarette Rocks had handed to him with a frown. Harry suspected it had more than just tobacco in it, probably opium or marijuana; but even with the added calming agent, Goodnight was visibly struggling. He finally took his rifle out and entered the blind after grinding the cigarette butt beneath his heel, still looking haunted.
Faraday had been growing more and more agitated as they waited for Goodnight to prepare himself. Harry had ended up grabbing the other man by his arm and tugging him away from the others. His upset wouldn’t help with Goodnight’s. Once they had a bit of privacy, he offered the man a cigarillo. Frown easing only slightly, Faraday took it from him and chewed on it for a moment before Harry placed his own cigarillo in his mouth and struck a match, using it to light first Faraday’s and then his own.
They smoked for a minute in silence before Faraday took out his ever-present bottle of whiskey to take a long drink. When he was done, he handed it to Harry, who also took a good-sized swig before handing it back.
“Better?” he asked after another minute of silence.
Faraday shrugged.
Harry hummed. “Want to share what bothers you so much about Goodnight, now?”
“No,” Faraday replied immediately. He took another drink from his flask, then muttered, “Yes. Have you… You ain’t been in a war, have you?”
Harry hummed. “No… but also yes.” At Faraday’s raised eyebrow, Harry gave a very simplified explanation, “The French invaded México at the same time as your country’s war. I was never officially a part of the military or the resistance during the war, but I did some fighting to help get rid of the invaders.”
More than some, to be honest, though he’d mostly tried to focus on hunting those who’d killed his family. He hadn’t always been able to, though. Guerilla warfare had suited his goals much better than traditional fighting did, though, and he’d become very, very good at ambushing and killing imperialists. If one of his targets was in the group he was ambushing, so much the better.
Faraday didn’t ask, thankfully. He just nodded, rocking back on his heels. “It changes you, war does,” he said in an oddly thoughtful tone that made Harry want to ask about his own experiences with war. Not that he would, of course. “After the War of the Rebellion, I seen men here completely broken. Others got mean. I know of some that became cowards after. Some even went mad. North, South, don’t matter none which side you fought for when the fighting was done on the same battlefield.”
“And Goodnight?”
“I’ve been watching, and I fear Goodnight might be one of the men who the war broke . Not sure how reliable he’ll be in this fight when he’s still half stuck in his last one. I fear his breaking made him,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “made him a coward unable to shoot no more.”
Harry hummed, considering this for a long moment. It was a lot, and there was even more he wanted to say in reply.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that yes, war breaks. It takes and takes and takes until a man breaks. All the things you say, that men became mad, or mean, or cowardly, this is all breaking. War, it has taken and taken from me. Maybe I broke long ago, maybe not yet, and this fight is the one, ay? I don’t know. But… Yes, war broke Goodnight, in its way. But… he is here, he is still fighting, even broken. That is not cowardice to me, güero. That is courage .”
Faraday was silent for a long minute, gazing into the distance, obviously mulling over what Harry had said. Before he could find his words, the nearby crack of a rifle sounded at nearly the exact same time as the distant boom of explosives. A second shot and boom, followed by three cracks of a rifle without explosives.
Harry exhaled slowly. Whatever doubts Faraday had, clearly Goodnight’s aim was still true.
Harry watched Faraday’s expression grow thoughtful as he looked over toward the blind. It firmed up soon after, and he clapped Harry on the shoulder before moving to join the others as they mounted their horses to cross the water to the mines. Harry followed.
The condition of the miners was horrifying. It made Harry’s stomach churn in sympathy. This place was nothing but misery; even without the gallows on prominent display with the noose swaying in the breeze, open and waiting for a neck. The cemetery was nearby, far too full for a thing that should not even exist with a town and church so close.
Harry had never liked executions. He especially disliked the treatment of a man’s death as a show for people to gather at, like it was a theater troupe’s performance or something. His distaste for capital punishment had only increased since he’d gotten a bounty placed on his own head.
He paused, looking up at the swaying noose, and swallowed heavily. How many miners had Bogue’s men strung up for no good reason?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“You know the phrase ‘gallows humor’?” Faraday asked him, reining his crazy horse, the aptly named Wild Jack, to a stop beside Luna as he, too, looked at the noose. Harry grimaced and nodded. Faraday continued, saying darkly, “Yeah, I never much found hangings amusing, either.”
Harry exchanged a dark look with the Irishman, neither saying anything else. There wasn’t much to say.
Instead, they both turned to listen as Chisolm informed the miners, “This mine is now closed. You men are free to go. Or you can stay and fight.”
Harry eyed the men, who looked as though they’d lost all the hope and life in them. Most were injured, some severely so, and all were filthy and looked ill. They needed help more than they needed a fight.
A flask of whiskey was tossed toward a boy, probably not a day over sixteen, who was holding up a slightly older man whose face was swathed in bloody bandages. Probably a relative, based on both young men’s appearance. The elder had likely lost an eye by the way the bandages were tied on, and recently, too. Harry looked over to see Faraday giving the boy an understanding look, and wondered again just what the other man’s life had been like. Not easy, that was for sure.
They moved through the camp set up outside the mines, the more personable of them (namely Chisolm and Goodnight, who had Rocks standing silently at his side) speaking with various miners. Horne seemed to have a bit of a following, too, after his name was recognized. Faraday was quiet - probably too quiet - as he eyed the mines, while Red Harvest was staring off into the distance, keeping watch. Harry didn’t know what to say, so he stayed by Faraday and Red Harvest, remaining just as silent as they were.
After a bit, Chisolm called them over to join him at a heavily locked and barricaded building. “Found the dynamite,” he said, eyeing the multiple locks on the doors, “just got to open it up.”
There was a pause, and then Rocks stepped forward and kicked the door in with a single move. Harry gave the man’s back an impressed look before he caught sight of the many, many explosives inside, while Goodnight let out an impressed whistle. Rocks said, “This will help.”
Harry smirked at the joke, which turned into laughter when Faraday exclaimed with boyish glee, “I’ve always wanted to blow something up.”
In the end, only thirty-eight of the more than one hundred miners went back to Rose Creek with them. Almost all of them had been willing, but, unfortunately, the rest were either too sick, too injured, or too broken from their captivity to be able to help. Most of those decided that they’d head toward San Francisco to get proper medical attention and contact their families, even if it was further than Sacramento, since Bogue didn’t have offices there. Rose Creek only had a midwife and a druggist with some basic medical training to aid them, and though the pair had done their best, most of the miners were in too poor a condition for them to help properly. Luckily, most of the miners able and willing to fight had fought in the war, and at least knew which way to hold a gun.
And Harry, as badly as he felt for the men and as guilty as it made him if any didn’t survive, wasn’t going to waste his last few pieces of healing food he’d brought all the way from Encanto. Nor would he give them the healing potions and salves he planned to work on late into the coming nights. Not when he’d be going into a battle against an overwhelming force in just a week.
He was glad the men were at least going to get to stay in real beds while in town, even if it was mostly in the brothel that had been emptied of women. It was a pity; if any men deserved a good time with a soiled dove, it was these.
About fifteen of the miners were not staying in the brothel. Some, those already known in town, had been offered lodging by their friends who had the room to spare. A handful were being put up in one of the homes emptied due to their owners’ leaving town. Two were staying in what had been Horne’s room in the saloon, as the madman had decided he’d rather stay in a tent outside than in an actual bed - a bed that was mostly bug-free, even!
By the time the miners made it into town, were seen to by the town’s medical folks, and the explosives and ammo had all been moved into the downstairs parlor of the brothel, it was past time for supper. The meal was once again served in the saloon, and they ate eagerly. Even Red Harvest managed to find the day’s pork stew tolerable enough.
They did a bit of planning and threw some ideas around before they all went to bed early that night. It had been a long day, and tomorrow promised to be even longer: they’d be up before dawn in order to start determining and finalizing how they’d be setting their trap for Bogue and his men.