by Erin Bowman
The woman says something I can’t make out, but the sound of him striking her—skin on skin—is clear.
Three more paces to Hobbs. Two more. One.
He hears the whoosh of my arms, but not soon enough to do nothing ’bout it. Hands still bound, I loop the rope from my ankles up and over his head, then pull back, dragging him away from the porch.
He grabs at the rope beneath his chin, choking and sputtering. I pull back harder, landing in the dirt and taking him down with me. With his back to my chest, I use the weight of my body to keep the rope taut. Hobbs’s boots kick and dig in the dirt, searching for purchase, trying to roll us over. He’s stronger than me on a good day, but we both been riding hard for a while, and I got the element of surprise. I can feel the fight leaving him, the kicks weaker, and then he finally goes still. His hands fall away from the rope.
I scramble from underneath his dead weight. When his head lolls to the side, his lifeless eyes bore into me, staring at the killer he never saw.
I bend and retrieve his six-shooter, check the chambers.
You best holster that, son, Boss growls in my ear. You kill one of my men, and I might be able to forgive you. He were dumb to drop his guard like that, anyway. But you go killing a second, and I ain’t gonna be able to turn a blind eye. You’ll pay for it with yer own blood.
I cock the hammer, step onto the porch.
A board creaks beneath my weight, and Jones freezes. “Thank God, Murphy,” he says, his face bright with relief. “We were getting worried. Where’s Hobbs?”
The Colton woman stares. She’s figured it out, I can tell. She knows what I aim to do.
Her rifle’s resting on the table—put there by Jones prol-ly—and she’s sitting in a chair little more than an arm’s length away, her dog tied to the table’s leg and growling. Her hands ain’t bound, nor is she secured to the chair, but I know plain as day why she didn’t put up a fight. Even now, her palms are on her belly, like they alone can keep that second heart beating if’n hers stops.
Her cheek’s bleeding. Jones is still holding the knife he used to slice her open.
I don’t say a word, but Jones senses a shift in the air.
“Murphy?” he says, cautious.
He’s standing a few paces from the Colton woman. I could get him without endangering her. I could shoot him dead right now.
And even still, I hesitate.
It’s Jones. He’s only three years older than me, the closest thing to a brother I ever had. We’ve watched each other’s backs during jobs, joked in the saddle, talked ’bout what we’ll do when we retire from robbing trains. He’s the only guy who ever talked ’bout an after. I thought that meant we had something in common, that maybe he also dreamed of being a better person, that this was all just temporary, not the people we’re destined to be. But he’s got that knife in his hand, and the woman’s just sitting there holding her belly as her cheek bleeds on his account, and I know I don’t wanna share this with him. I don’t wanna have a single thing in common. Not nothing. Ever.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
This is what betrayal looks like. He knows what’s coming. God, he knows. It’s written in his wide eyes and slack-jawed mouth. Then his lips harden into a line, his brows come down.
He stares at me and I stare back, and it lasts what feels like an hour.
Suddenly, quick as a rattler, he draws his pistol.
I fire mine.
Clark Jones don’t even get a shot off. His head snaps back and he drops to the floor, the knife and pistol clattering from his hands. The Colton woman gapes at me like I’m a stranger. It’s her expression—caught between gratitude and shock, admiration and horror—that causes it all to crash into me.
I shot him. Holy hell, I blew away Jones and I strangled Hobbs. I murdered them both. I’m not just the vile Rose Kid, I’m the coward that turned on his own.
It’s fine, it’s all right, I tell myself. You had to do it. No one’s gotta know. Not Boss. Not the others. They’ll never find out.
“Jones, what the devil’re you shooting for?” a voice shouts from outside. Diaz. “He ain’t in the barn. She could be telling the truth, and we need to—”
Diaz goes silent, and I know he’s found Hobbs’s body. He musta gone looking for me. Only reason I can think that I didn’t cross his path is maybe he searched the rear of the house first, approached the barn from the rear too, and by the time he got there, I were already gone.
“Jones?” Diaz calls out. “You all right, partner?”
He moves into view cautiously, framed by the open farmhouse door. He’s in the saddle, wearing Crawford’s jacket, red side out. It’s been him on my tail. Course it has. Diaz is our best tracker, knows which wheel ruts to follow on any stretch of overrun plain, can tell where a lead turned where all others went straight, leaves no stone unturned. Crawford’s prolly still hurt and hanging back. He’d’ve lent Diaz the jacket as a sign, a signal that help was coming, that the plume of dust in my shadows was friend, not foe.
Diaz’s shock that I’ve done those very friends in is etched on his face. He can’t process it: the image of me standing over Jones’s dead body, Hobbs strangled out in the frozen dirt. Me, alive. The woman, breathing. But two Rose Riders dead.
The Colton woman grabs her rifle from the table and sends a shot out the door, clipping Diaz in the arm. The blast jolts me to action, and I send my own shot after him, but he’s already spurred the horse to life. He goes streaking into the dark evening, firing a couple times over his shoulder. He can’t get away. He can’t.
I lurch onto the porch, and the Colton woman joins me. We unload shot after shot, the dog snapping and snarling behind us till we finally click empty and there ain’t no point reloading. Diaz is cloaked by darkness, near impossible to sight and slipping outta range. I lose the shape of him long before the pounding of hooves fades to the south.
He’ll be back. When and with how many ain’t certain, but he’ll be back. The boys’ll want justice, and there ain’t no way I can talk myself outta this one.
I’m done for.
Boss is gonna kill me. Not even the name Jesse Colton’s gonna save me no more. Boss’ll take it if I offer it up, sure. He’ll go avenge his brother’s death, but he’ll also finish the rose on my forearm and kill me in the most vicious manner he can dream up.
You’ll pay for it with yer own blood.
“Why’d you lie for me?” I ask the Colton woman. She wipes the blood from her cheek.
“Why’d you kill yer own men?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You did,” she said. “We always got choices, and yers say you ain’t one of ’em. Which is what I suspected the moment I saw the scar on your arm, mind you. That you didn’t kill the Vaughn girl that got in your way confirmed it. So I made the choice to not hand you over to men yer clearly running from.”
“Thank y—”
“Don’t go saying that. I woulda given you up if I had to.” She’s holding her belly again. A thin line of red appears on her cheek. She grabs the corner of her apron and brings it to the cut, applying pressure.
“They’ll be back,” I say, glancing the way Diaz rode.
“And I need to not be here when that happens.”
I think of the half-finished cradle and the wall of books and the husband that ain’t even home.
“Mrs. Col—”
“Kate,” she says. “Call me Kate.”
“I’m sorry I brought this to yer door. Truly.”
“Life don’t care ’bout sorrys, kid. So make yerself useful and help me feed these bodies to the hogs.”
We lug the men round the back side of the barn, where there’s a sty for the pigs. Kate removes the rope from my wrists and hands me an ax, telling me that if she grows to distrust my motives even for a second, she will not hesitate to blow me away.
Then she picks up an ax of her own and goes to dismantling one of the corpses by the light of a lante
rn.
“Don’t you wanna get the sheriff?” I ask, trying not to watch. “They’ll take care of the bodies.”
“They’ll talk, and even if these boys’ deaths ain’t printed in the paper, word’ll get ’round. It ain’t gonna be nothing but a waste of time, besides. I want the bodies gone—want no evidence that they were ever here—and then I’m gonna get gone myself.”
“And yer husband?”
“He ain’t yer concern.”
“Seeing as I got you into this mess, I kinda feel like he is.”
She stops cold, the ax hanging from her hand. “We got by just fine before you brought the devil’s army onto our claim. Now you gonna help or ain’t ya?”
The boys don’t deserve a proper burial, same as I don’t. Hell, the fate she’s giving ’em is kinder than being left for buzzards. Still, it makes me sick. I am weak, just like she said back in the barn.
“I’ll move the bits,” I say finally, grabbing a shovel.
I expect her to roll her eyes or give me cheek. Instead, she just says, “I reckon yer in a strange place, and I won’t deny you a moment of remorse. It’s the folk that don’t feel the hard stuff—regret or guilt or doubt—that you’s got to watch out for. They’re the real demons. You remember that.”
I don’t know what she’s playing at. Maybe she thinks I can be saved. Maybe she thinks I’m more good than bad ’cus I saved her. I got a feeling she would’ve grabbed her rifle and sent Jones and Hobbs to hell when the opportunity presented itself, with or without my aid. Still, she can go on thinking whatever. I owe her this much—moving the bodies and dealing with the pigs—but soon as it’s finished, I’m taking one of the boys’ saddled horses and riding off. I’m done. I bring bad fortune and loss wherever I go, curse whatever lives mine touch. I need to ride outta here and hole up somewhere no soul’s gonna find me.
Just as we’re finishing with the pigs, Kate’s dog starts growling again. “What now?” she grumbles, and grabs the lantern. We hurry up the rise. As the house comes into view, so does a new mare, standing riderless just beyond the front stoop.
“Yer third?” she whispers to me.
“Don’t think so. He were riding a buckskin, and he’d’ve returned with backup.”
Still, I creep forward, cautious, Hobbs’s pistol held out. Kate puts a finger to her lips as we step onto the porch. I motion to the door, touch my chest. It should be me. I should go first.
She nods.
The door’s already open, a lantern Kate left in the kitchen illuminating the muddy stain on the floorboards where Jones bled out. I step forward, cross the threshold. And a pistol touches my temple.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
Charlotte
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do it,” I say.
“Put the gun down,” the Rose Kid says calmly, as though I can’t see the red stain on the floor.
I never should have made a deal with him, dragged innocent folk into the matter. The Thompson girl is dead because of me. I gave the Rose Kid her name, and he came straight here. He got the name Luther Rose seeks and then killed her for good measure. That’s her blood on the floor. This is her pistol in my hand, swiped from where she dropped it.
My trigger finger trembles. This wouldn’t be in self-defense, like on the train. This would be me doing God’s will, picking and choosing who dies, acting as judge and executioner. No soul should have so much power. Even if the bastard on the other end of the barrel is deserving of such a fate.
And he’s so deserving.
No one would have to know.
No one but me.
“You don’t got it in you, Vaughn,” he says. “And that’s a good thing. Don’t do this. It ain’t a line you wanna walk.”
“You know nothing about me!” I shout, pushing the barrel into his skin. “How could you? You killed her.”
“He didn’t kill no one but the men that had it coming,” says a voice from out on the porch. “Now put the damn pistol down. I ain’t had the greatest night, and I don’t got time to dispose of another body.”
I lower the weapon as a woman pushes past the Rose Kid, bringing a lantern and rifle with her.
It’s her—the Thompson girl.
She hasn’t aged, which is impossible, so perhaps it is more that I have aged too, that the woman simply looks as she always has: a dozen or so years older than I am. Her dark hair is pinned back, showing the whole of her face, which is a map of seriousness. A fresh cut marks one of her cheeks, the dark pink line a contrast to her tawny beige skin. I once heard Mother say that women glow when pregnant, radiating warmth, but the Thompson girl—woman—is the opposite. From her stern eyes to her proud chin, she strikes me as someone not to be trifled with. Her expression is cold, her posture resolute. Perhaps the only soft thing about her is the swelling curve of her belly.
I look at the pistol in my hand. If what she says is true, it is not her gun, but that of a “man who had it coming.” A man the Rose Kid apparently shot.
“I need to pack,” the woman says, turning her back on me.
“Pack? No. I need to talk to you. I need to know where I can find the gunslinger you hired to avenge your father’s death.”
The woman pauses, her hands on the kitchen table. For a brief moment the house is unnaturally quiet. Then the woman straightens and marches into the bedroom with such conviction, I’m convinced her pause was nothing but the baby kicking, a fleeting twinge of pain. There’s a small racket as she shuffles through things out of sight, but when she returns, it is not with the name written on a piece of paper for me. Nor is it a sketch or an address or anything of use.
She returns with a legless cradle in her arms, the bed filled with an assortment of oddities: a metal lunch pail, a bundle of clothes, what appears to be the grips of a pair of twin pistols. The woman plucks a single book from the bookshelf and tosses it in, along with a framed photo.
“Who did you hire?” I ask again.
“Can’t help you there,” she says plainly.
“But my life depends on it.”
“Then I reckon you oughta move on to someone who can help.”
This is not how I envisioned this conversation. I did not sneak out of Uncle Gerald’s house and travel these five miles by night for nothing. It was no easy ride. The darkness was constant, leaving me to fret over the horse and the possibility of a lamed ankle with one careless step. And when a lone rider came tearing down the slope, riding for Prescott with the speed of a vengeance, I thought maybe Uncle was already onto me, that men were searching me out. The shrub I chose to hide behind was just barely off the trail, and while it sheltered me completely, it did not fully obscure the stolen horse. Luckily, the rider had stronger priorities, because his focus did not shift from the city in the distance.
“But you’ve been in my shoes. You know what it feels like to need help.”
“I have made my own help, always,” she says, “and I suggest you do the same.”
I’m at a loss for words. I have yet to consider a situation where coming here does not yield the name of a hired gun. I imagined her handing it over quickly and letting me stay the night. What the devil am I going to do now?
“This one’s good with a pistol,” she continues, jerking her head at the Rose Kid. “Maybe he’ll help you.”
“Him?” I scoff. “He’s the Rose Kid. You do know that, I hope?”
She nods, as though I’ve merely introduced her to the local clergyman.
“The Rose Kid,” I say again. “Reece Murphy, murderer and thief, rides with Luther Rose and the band known as the Rose Riders. His head is worth five hundred dollars. He robbed a train I was riding three days ago and had me bound and gagged in a coach just earlier today.”
“That all true?” she asks, looking toward the Kid.
He doesn’t deny it.
“Mrs. Thompson, I beg of you—”
“There ain’t no Thompson here,” she say
s. “Now, I need to put the horses to the wagons and get moving.”
“In the dead of the night?”
“Yes. Yer friend here—”
“He is not my friend.”
“—only got two of his buddies. The third rode off, and he’ll be back. I reckon they’ll be just as keen to learn the name of that gunslinger yer after, and they’ll gut me to get it, so you’ll understand when I say I ain’t got time to dally.”
I gape at her, the situation gaining clarity. The blood on the floor. The man I saw racing for the city. Two “buddies” dead and a third riding for help. I glance at the Rose Kid.
He killed his own men. Why?
There was his story about the scar, his sincere fear when he mentioned that the Rose Riders were following our coach. Perhaps he truly is trying to make a run for it, only he’s come for the gunslinger’s name as insurance.
The woman sets her cradle on the front stoop and lumbers down the step. “Reece, help me with the horses, won’t you?”
“You want his help? But he’s the Rose Kid!”
“I ain’t deaf. I heard you the first time. Don’t change the fact that he’s coming with.”
“I am?” the Rose Kid says.
She looks him in the eye. “I’m grateful for what you did here, I am. But that don’t mean I trust you, nor that you won’t slink back to whoever can protect you best when the time comes.”
“I ain’t gonna slink to no one,” he counters. “I wanna disappear.”
“Wanting to disappear don’t mean folk won’t find you. So I can’t have you seeing which way I ride off.”
“I wouldn’t tell ’em.”
“I ain’t so sure that’s true.”
“I’ll help you with the horses,” he says to her, “but I ain’t coming with.”
She points a finger, her eyes ablaze. “They will kill you for what you did here, and they won’t do it kindly. If’n you survive the torture and die without giving me up, well, that’s a small victory for yer black soul. But if’n you let slip anything of use, my family ain’t in a good place.”
