One Came Home

by Amy Timberlake

  As we left, I saw Billy tuck a five-dollar printing plate under his arm. I was about to say, Don’t you think we should leave everything as we found it?

  But Billy slashed at the air with his torch. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  I ran past him and up the stairs.

  Up top, we buckled down: Billy kicked dirt on the fire. I picked up The Prairie Traveler and shoved it in my saddlebag. I gathered our kitchen supplies and food, folded up my bedroll, and went for Long Ears.

  Long Ears stamped his left hoof and turned away from me. When I realized he wasn’t having any of it, I fished out a sugar cube. His velvety lips scooped it off my palm, and his head didn’t turn quite so much as I tried to ease on his bridle. I gave him another.

  It became clear that Long Ears knew how to drive a bargain (and I didn’t have the time or patience to refuse him). With a sugar cube, I bridled him. With another, I took off his hobble. Sugar cube, put the saddle on his back and tightened the cinches; sugar cube, attached a saddlebag; sugar cube, led Long Ears by the bridle. When I’d finished, only one row of sugar cubes remained in the box.

  Storm didn’t give Billy the same kind of trouble, so by the time I’d mounted Long Ears, Billy’d swept the whole camp with a leafy branch to cover up our tracks, had found the trail for Old Line Road, and was waiting for me.

  Once again, Storm proved to be all the sweetness Long Ears required. Long Ears followed Storm without balking at all. I took no offense. I was glad we were going. I swore I could hear hooves behind us.

  The road was truly unused, so we were lucky to have some moonlight to navigate by. A few times it disappeared into undergrowth and Billy dismounted to find the trail on foot. We crossed a dozen or so downed trees and one tiny creek. About every other sound made me jump—branches catching, owls hoo-hooing, a raccoon hustling by.

  Even so, I was sapped of strength, and therefore my body went out like a lamp. My one open eyelid—the right—was the first thing to give, becoming leaden. As soon as it closed, the rest of me went limp. So I jerked awake, slept, jerked awake, and slept while riding Long Ears into the night. When I was awake, I’d mumble “Can we stop?” or “How far until we stop?” or “Billy, let’s stop.”

  Billy responded with something like “Try to stay awake, Fry. I know it’s been a long, long day …” My eye shut by “long, long day,” and if he said anything after that, I do not remember it.

  Time passed and the trail became a road. Old Miller Road? Possibly. Though I cannot declare it with all certainty because I slept. That is, until Billy guided Storm into the water of a large creek and proceeded to head up the center of it. I opened my right eye as Long Ears’ hooves splashed into the water, and woke up absolutely when Long Ears slipped on a moss-covered stone. I grabbed at the saddle horn. For as long as we stayed in that creek, I held on with two hands, wideawake. It felt like forever, and the change in the sky seemed to prove it. Morning light diluted the dark of night into a yellow pink, then light blue. When sunlight dappled the water, Billy stopped.

  I saw a clear patch of land. That’s all I remember. I got myself free of the saddle, hobbled Long Ears, and unfurled my bedroll.

  I do not remember lying down. I fell asleep that fast.

  Hot. It sounded hot. Ti ti zwee zirre zirre zeee zee, a bunting sang. High up, leaves brushed one another. The bunting sang again. A squirrel scrabbled up a tree trunk, paused, and gnawed loudly. Katydids and grasshoppers trilled in the grasses, and water trickled over rocks. Again the bunting sang.

  I tried to open my eyes. A flash of light. My left eye refused to open, but through my right I made out tree branches edged with sunlight. The sun burned behind the leaves like a white-hot coin. I let my head fall to one side and a pain raced up my neck. I ignored it and stared at a beetle clinging underneath a blade of coneflower. Fluff eddied in the air. Then I became aware of the pulsing heat blanketing my left eye.

  I had no idea where I lay. I barely knew my name. The sun’s position suggested it was noon or later. I touched my gummed-up left eye and felt hot skin that billowed from cheekbone to eye to nose. I swallowed. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Water.

  I sat up. Or tried to sit up. In succession, every sore muscle, every bruise, every scrape made itself (and its history) known: a tumble down the rocks at the nowhere place on Miller Road, the fall down pine steps into a cave. Riding all night on the back of a mule hadn’t helped things either.

  Sometime during that ride, one day had turned into another.

  We had been running. Counterfeiters—the lawless—following.

  That got me to my feet. I found my canteen in my saddlebag. I unscrewed the top, guzzled water, and looked about me.

  Billy slept about twenty feet away under a white pine. His arms were wrapped around his saddle, which he’d used as a pillow. I could hear his breathing, a near snore, coming from under his worn hat. Seemed like he didn’t have a care in this world. He’s right, I told myself. Hadn’t we ridden all night long? What people (or person) would follow a man and girl this far?

  I remembered I had planned to go back to the Garrows’ to ask about that ribbon.

  I couldn’t do that now. Not if bad men were coming. It would be foolish to even go toward Dog Hollow.

  Was I sure they were coming for us? Yes. Or I thought so. I thought I had heard cracks, pops in the night.

  We were in a grove of trees near a large meadow. Several clumps of boulders rose out of the meadow, like the backbone of a sea serpent swimming through the grasses. Long Ears and Storm stood at a far end. They grazed a little, moved a bit, then grazed some more.

  The road lay somewhere behind me. We’d ridden up that creek, so we had to be at least an hour’s ride off the road. It seemed unlikely that they’d be able to find us.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were coming.

  Think about something else, I thought.

  Predictably, I thought about how I’d told Mr. Olmstead, and how that made me the rock that started the landslide.

  I would not stew in my thoughts! I needed an escape, a diversion, something to do until Billy woke up and we got moving again. Billy’s rifle, the Spencer repeater, lay on the ground next to him. I stared at it for a moment. There might be some amusement in shooting a repeater.

  I remembered the bumpy rows of frozen field under my feet, the ice-laced snow shining, the February blue sky. I remembered how, at the edge of the field under a stretch of black oaks, I had seen a band of pigeons. They looked like … What had I thought then? Yes—a blue-sky day alighting on earth. The big male had spotted me, twitching his head to see. I had lifted my rifle. I found my target. And everything dropped away, leaving only the big male and me alive together in the world. He saw me. I saw him. We were connected, linked, a wire strung tight between the two of us. What? What? What? he thought.

  I desperately wanted to go somewhere from before: before counterfeiters’ caves; before nowhere places; before cougars; before a boxed body that weighed less than two cats. I hadn’t appreciated before when I’d been there. But now before was where I wanted to be, before was where I wanted to live.

  I laid my hands on Billy’s repeating rifle and replaced it with my Springfield single-shot. Then I dug in Billy’s saddlebag for cartridges, grabbed a handful, and decided to follow that creek upstream.

  After walking several minutes, I stopped to load the cartridges into the repeater’s buttstock, and thought about how guns are easier to understand than people. Every part in a gun has its place and purpose. I took a long look at that Spencer and liked what I saw. Looped below the trigger was a lever. By pushing this lever forward between shots, I’d accomplish three things: First, the used cartridge would fall out of the rifle. Second, a fresh cartridge would be forced into place. And third, the hammer would be cocked. It was a nice mechanism. By my saying this, don’t think I preferred a Spencer repeater to my Springfield single-shot. But I can appreciate genuine ingenuity when I see it.

  I h
oped to utilize that ingenuity too. Three animals lined up—bang, bang, bang—would be just the thing.

  But fifteen minutes into my walk I’d seen nothing, not one creature—not a rabbit, not a squirrel. I’d heard birdsong, but I never did figure out the position of those singers. It was midday, and everybody knows the world lies a little quieter when the sun beats down. Perhaps I’d made too much noise. I’d been thinking more about not thinking than about being silent. But all I wanted was a brute creature to concentrate on and shoot so that I could remember what I’d been like before all of this had happened.

  Is that too much to ask?

  It was a loud thought. If I’m honest, the thought was directed toward heaven too. Did that make it a prayer? I hadn’t prayed once through all of this. Or if I had, it was by accident, mostly in panic. Now I was petitioning for—no, demanding—animals to kill. It didn’t seem right, somehow. Not even then.

  Anyway, here’s the thing I have never forgotten: right after that loud thought-prayer, I heard gunshot. More gunshot. A mule brayed. I knew that bray.

  My heart jumped like a sparrow in a bush. Oh no. Billy was alone. I had his gun. I’d replaced it with my Springfield. Would he be able to use my single-shot effectively and at a second’s notice? Probably not. I ran toward Billy, Long Ears, and Storm.

  Bolting into a situation makes no sense, particularly with a rifle in hand. I’d end up dead. (I knew that much.) So I slowed to a creep and carefully made my way through the woods to the edge of that meadow.

  As I stepped behind a large tree trunk, I heard a deep voice coming from our camp: “Tie him up.” The voice sounded familiar. Then I heard: “Where’s the girl?”

  My heart skidded. They knew about me. It must be Mr. Garrow.

  Keep moving, I told myself. I went down on my knees and crawled one tree closer. I needed to see our camp so I could figure out what to do.

  While I crawled, I appraised my shooting skills. As I’d proved with the cougar, I was no quick draw. My best chance was to hide myself and wait for an opportunity to shoot. This tactic is known as hunting when animals are the target, but it has an altogether different name when man is the object—sharpshooting.

  I did not care for that murderous term (though it fit the act). The war with the South had tainted all sharpshooters as those too yellow-bellied to fight man-to-man. But this wasn’t a man-to-man fight; this was man-to-girl, and even with the advantage of a repeating rifle, I’d never shot at something that shot back.

  I heard Billy’s voice. He was speaking loudly. I assumed he did this purposely—in case I could hear him. “She’s run off. I couldn’t keep her with me.”

  “She’s here,” said the deep voice.

  Billy spoke again: “I tell you, she ran off in the middle of the night. There’s no fixed sense in a girl like that.”

  I crept to the next tree.

  Then I thought I heard a high, raspy voice say something. I couldn’t quite make it out. What I heard next was something hard impacting something soft. Billy grunted. My breath rose in my throat and caught like a moth fluttering against a windowpane.

  “I said tie him up,” came the deep voice. There was a pause. “She’s here. That’s her mule.”

  I remembered I’d grabbed a handful of cartridges and loaded them into the Spencer, but how many had I put in? Was it four? Or five? Or six? A Spencer could take seven cartridges. I knew I had not completely filled the repeater.

  I leaned around a tree trunk and, finally, got a glimpse of our camp. Billy now sat against the pine that he’d been sleeping under. I looked for the Springfield single-shot. I did not see it anywhere, though I’d left it right beside him. In front of Billy and to my right lay the wide, wide meadow with the line of boulders in the center of it.

  I watched as a man I’d never seen, a thin man topped with a bowler hat, jerked Billy so he sat closer to the pine, pulled his arms back around the tree trunk, and lashed his wrists together. Then Bowler Hat bound up Billy’s legs. The man’s bony shoulder blades worked back and forth. When the man finished, Billy looked trussed up like a turkey ready for roasting. Billy hurt too. I couldn’t see any blood—at least not at this distance—but I saw him wince with every breath.

  I leaned back against the tree. What had I gotten into? I did not want to be here.

  Bang!

  I knew that sound.

  I leaned around the edge of the tree for a second time and saw the Springfield—Grandfather Bolte’s rifle, my rifle—in Bowler Hat’s hands. “Should have seen your face. Thought you were dead,” he crowed.

  Billy hunched lower against the tree trunk.

  Bowler Hat strolled up and slapped Billy’s face. Billy went white.

  “Want to live? Say it. Say you want to live.”

  Bowler Hat stepped back and waited.

  For the joy of it, that man might kill Billy. There had been no one to help Agatha. This time, I was here. I had a gun.

  “I want to live,” Billy said. I heard fear in his voice.

  That settled things. I would do what I could. My conscience would never rest if I left Billy without trying to help.

  Then Mr. Garrow—yes, it was indeed him—walked into my sight line. I saw the revolver holstered on his hip and knew I’d only have one shot before I’d be engaged in a shoot-out. As I’ve mentioned before, I am no quick draw. Once they started shooting, I could not expect to fare well.

  Suddenly it became easy to perceive how my sister had ended up shot. Mr. Garrow—the man who could be so neighborly up at his farm (offering water, tin cups, and generous grins)—kept company with Bowler Hat, a man with ice in his veins.

  Mr. Garrow was responsible for my sister’s untimely demise. I recited the facts that made it so: The pigeoners had come this way. There was the ribbon in the tiny girl’s coppery hair. And most damning? Mr. Garrow and Bowler Hat were the type. I’d seen everything I needed to see.

  They had killed my sister. They were hurting Billy. They’d probably kill Billy too. They deserved to die.

  Mr. Garrow put a hand on Bowler Hat’s shoulder. I heard the word “girl” and realized Mr. Garrow was telling Bowler Hat to find me. I breathed a sigh of relief when Mr. Garrow pointed in a direction well away from where I hid. Bowler Hat left.

  I knew if they found me, they would hurt me—like Billy. Or they’d do worse. Like Agatha.

  I would shoot before they shot Billy. Or me.

  Given the way I’ve previously described shooting, you may think magic happened here: that the focus came on strong, the world dropping away, and that I knew exactly what to do. But nothing could be further from the truth.

  Instead, what happened next was motivated by hate. I report it to you with shame. But so it was. Ugly? Yes. If Mr. Garrow was vile, I had become equally so. And it was through hate’s cool dispassion that I evaluated the situation.

  Storm and Long Ears had moved to the farthest point in the meadow. Good, I thought. At that distance, Long Ears would not come up and nuzzle for sugar cubes. And I saw where I could hide: I would wriggle into that meadow with the line of boulders in the middle. The first set of boulders would serve me well. Billy would be sitting in front of me tied to the pine.

  I heard my chance—brass buckles chattering. When I snuck a look, I saw Mr. Garrow had his back to me and was shaking our kitchen pack empty. Pots, pans, cups, and utensils clanked onto the ground. I got on my knees, slipped into the tall grasses of the meadow, and slithered to those boulders. My bruised body felt every inch of that crawl, but I made it.

  I was pleased with the location. One of the boulders had cracked open and fallen apart, leaving a wide V that provided an ample view of our camp and plenty of room to move a rifle. But there was a problem: the sunlight would glint off the rifle barrel and give away my location.

  What to do? What to do? I needed something to pile on top of the V to shade it. Branches and leaves would be perfect, but I couldn’t afford the commotion that would be caused by gathering them. Then I s
aw my soiled, stiff dark green split skirt.

  You may be thinking, You did not! Yes I did. If you thought about it levelheadedly, you’d see that I’d wriggled through fresh green grass in a plaid blouse and skirt to get to this boulder. My clothes didn’t have grass stains; they had grass slicks. Then there was the bruise across the left side of my face, closing up my left eye. (I am sure that bruise had ripened in my sleep.) So I was torn and dirty and bannered with bruises. My hair was surely matted. I’d dispensed with decorum long ago. Wearing bloomers out in the open? If that concerns you, you’re splitting hairs.

  I pulled off that dark green split skirt and waited for my chance. When Mr. Garrow turned his back again, I slipped the split skirt across the gap in the rock. It left a shady, V-shaped blind with a view into our camp. I stuck the rifle barrel into that blind and snuggled the butt of the gun into my shoulder. I realized I’d had a little luck—I’d bruised my left eye and not my right.

  I would have shot Mr. Garrow then, but Bowler Hat made me nervous. The sound of a shot would bring Bowler Hat running from who knows where. If I wanted to survive this, I needed to have both Mr. Garrow and Bowler Hat in sight, so I held my fire.

  While I waited for Bowler Hat to return, I succumbed to trepidation. I imagined that Bowler Hat was somewhere behind me. He’d spy me with the rifle, consider me a menace, and shoot me from a distance, a bullet slicing some part of me meant to remain together.

  In the meantime, I watched Mr. Garrow methodically paw through our things. He’d finished with the kitchen pack and now shook one of my saddlebags. The Prairie Traveler slid out with a thud. Mr. Garrow picked it up, thumbed through it, and tossed it into the embers. The book burst into flame. I felt a jolt of sadness: Captain Randolph Marcy, his itineraries to the West, and my one good guide to journeying—gone. Even the best-laid plans …, I thought.

  But what best-laid plans covered this? Hadn’t I crossed the line where book knowledge helped? It was all me and my wits now.

  Mr. Garrow dug in one of Billy’s saddlebags. He paused, then slowly pulled out something bricklike—the five-dollar printing plate. Mr. Garrow let the saddlebag drop to the ground.