Retribution Rails

by Erin Bowman

  “What family? Yer husband ain’t even here!”

  “Leaving you to run is a risk I can’t take!” she shouts back. “So you will get in the wagon of yer own volition or I’ll escort you aboard with a rifle to yer back. You hear me?”

  She turns and heads for the barn, making her way down the slope with a speed and confidence that prove she’s walked this path many a time, that even poor lighting is no obstacle.

  The Rose Kid moves to follow her.

  “Unbelievable,” I mutter at his back. “No one’s safe from you. Not even your own kind.”

  He looks over his shoulder. “If it makes any difference, one of ’em was the guy who shot the lawman you rode beside on the train.”

  “You didn’t kill him because he murdered that lawman,” I spit out. “And you didn’t do it because he’s wretched and vile and wicked. You killed him to protect yourself.”

  “It were a little of both. Plus, Kate was . . .” He makes a gesture at his stomach, illustrating the pregnancy. “Forget it.”

  He turns and follows the woman—​Kate—​toward the barn. I hate that his revelation does make a difference. I hate that I’m glad the bastard who shot that lawman is dead. I hate that it was at the Rose Kid’s hands that he was avenged, not the Law’s. But perhaps above all, I hate that all the Kid’s told me is starting to seem possible.

  He must be trying to escape the gang, or he wouldn’t have shot two of his own crew. It’s possible he has some semblance of a conscience after all, or it wouldn’t have mattered to him that Kate had been in danger. Still, this is the Rose Kid, an outlaw twisted enough to have killed two of his own simply to earn another’s trust. This could all be part of a greater plan, a calculated maneuver to lower Kate’s guard. He is after the same thing I am, and though Kate will not divulge the gunslinger’s name at present, she may, in due time, to someone she trusts.

  There’s a creak in the distance, and Kate’s wagon rolls into view. She’s got a lantern hanging from the driver’s box, and in its soft orange glow I can make out her form at the reins, two horses leading the way. The Rose Kid sits in the back of the wagon. It isn’t loaded up much. Either she’s not going far or she’s heading to a friend’s. Maybe both.

  Kate draws rein, bringing the wagon to a halt.

  “Are you really in a bad place?” she asks me. “Sometimes folk think they need a gunslinger when really they just need time to find peace with what’s happened. Revenge ain’t always the answer.”

  “This isn’t revenge for the sake of spilling blood. This is a necessary retribution for greed, and a bullet would only be the final resort. My uncle is a crooked businessman, and he’s trying to seize my father’s fortune by forcing my mother’s hand in marriage. And if not her hand, it will be mine. And if one of us does not oblige, the other will be killed in order—”

  “All right, all right, I don’t need the whole damn epic.”

  “Why don’t you just run to the Law, Vaughn?” the Rose Kid says from the back of the wagon. He’s leaning against the side rail, looking all too pleased about the turn of events: him, riding cozy. Me, out here, spooked, my world crumbling. “That’s what you do best.”

  “He already has folk in his pocket, and I can’t risk trusting the wrong person. I need a gunslinger. I need someone who can scare him honest, and if that doesn’t work, shoot and not miss.”

  “Ain’t it interesting,” he goes on, “how when the Law fails people, they always turn to the outlaws.”

  “A lone gunslinger isn’t the same as a pillaging gang of thieves.”

  “Enough!” Kate barks. “Get in the wagon, girl. I’ll tell you ’bout the gunslinger while we ride.”

  “What?” the Rose Kid and I say at the same time.

  “You coming or ain’t ya? I’m not asking twice.”

  I can’t go home without endangering Mother or myself, and I have only days—​weeks, at best—​to relieve Uncle Gerald of his grip on our family. If Kate will only reveal the gunslinger’s name while in the wagon, I don’t have a choice.

  I will have to travel with the Rose Kid again. At least this time I’m in possession of a pistol.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  * * *

  Charlotte

  Before we leave, Kate takes the reins of the horses that must have belonged to the Rose Kid and the two men he shot and positions the steeds facing Prescott. Then she gives them each a swat on the rump. Two spring off, and the third trudges on, weary, but it’s likely they’ll all make it back to town.

  I tether Uncle Gerald’s horse to the rear of the wagon while Kate heads to the mesquite to hang a noose. I must look worried, because she says, “Don’t put wrinkles in yer forehead. It ain’t nothing but a signal. My husband’ll know where I’s gone once he sees it.”

  It’s the grimmest signal I can think of. Why not hang a colorful scarf from the tree? A blanket? Leave a note? But maybe the point is to have something that doesn’t look terribly out of place but is still visible from afar.

  I climb into the wagon. The Rose Kid is sitting near the rear, so I move all the way up to the front, as close to the driver’s box as possible.

  “I ain’t gonna bite, you know,” he says.

  “You haven’t proven yourself terribly trustworthy, so I’ll take precautions, thank you.”

  He lets out a small laugh, then mutters “Goddamn mess, this is” before leaning back to rest his head on the sideboard. The stars twinkle off his dark eyes. I search his waist, but where he’d previously kept Father’s pistol tucked into his pants, an unfamiliar weapon is now stowed.

  “Where’s my Colt? I’ll take it back now.”

  He ignores me.

  “I’m willing to make a fair trade.” I hold up the revolver I found on the farmhouse floor, dropped by one of his men.

  “I don’t got the Colt,” he says finally. “Kate busted my nose and took it, plus my knife, when I first showed up. You gotta talk to her.”

  The thought of her cracking his nose gives me some glib satisfaction. It’s quiet a moment, him staring at the stars with a peacefulness about him that seems wrong, given that he’s just killed two of his own men. No one should feel so indifferent to such a crime—​not even if that someone is trying to escape a bad situation and might be more innocent than the papers claim.

  “I won’t let you have it—​the name of the gunslinger,” I tell him.

  He makes no response.

  “That’s what you’re after, and surely you don’t have it, else you’d have simply given it to your boys earlier rather than gun them down.”

  “Maybe I gunned ’em down ’cus it’s like I told you: I’m getting out. I’m leaving my past behind.”

  “I don’t think it works like that. Our pasts define us.”

  “Horseshit.”

  “You mean to say our pasts have no bearing on our present, who we are now?”

  “I’m saying just ’cus someone makes a mistake in their past don’t mean they’re always gonna go on making that same mistake forever and ever. Folks can change.”

  “Change, sure. But you’re running. You can’t do certain things and then pretend they never happened.”

  “I can try.”

  And this is why I find it so hard to buy the stories he’s telling. He runs and runs, not caring who he hurts in the process or how those around him are affected as he achieves his end. That does not strike me as someone innocent. It only strikes me as cowardice.

  The dog—​which Kate called Mutt—​leaps into the back of the wagon and curls up beside the Kid. Kate climbs into the driver’s box next, which is no easy ascent with that belly. Truly, one of us should be driving, but she’s refused to say where we’re going or even in which direction we’ll head.

  The bed of the wagon is filled with her gear, from the half-finished cradle to crates of chickens. Three pigs and one cow will follow on foot. She better hope the Rose Riders are nowhere nearby, because this caravan of ours will stick out like a s
ore thumb, and make poor time, too.

  “Blindfold yerselves,” she says, tossing a pair of handkerchiefs at me and the Kid.

  “You ain’t serious,” he says.

  Kate cocks the hammer of her pistol and stares impatiently.

  “All right, all right.” The Rose Kid holds up his hands. He must be used to being threatened, or perhaps this doesn’t feel like much of a threat to him at all, because he puts the blindfold on without any additional fuss.

  Reluctantly, I do the same, tying the kerchief off behind my head.

  “Good,” Kate grunts. “Take ’em off before I tell you, and you’ll find yerself dumped from the wagon and left to starve.”

  The reins snap, and the hitched horses surge forward.

  The Rose Kid falls asleep almost immediately. Or at least I think he does. His breathing seems to change—​grow shallower—​but the creaking of the wagon makes it difficult to be sure.

  I wait a while longer and then lean toward Kate. “Is he asleep?”

  There’s a creak from the driver’s box and then her response. “Looks like it.”

  “He’s after the same name I am. You know that, right?”

  She grunts. “I been waiting for this moment a whole decade. It were only a matter of time before a Rider finally stumbled onto my claim.”

  I frown, confused.

  “So you wanna know ’bout that gunslinger I hired, huh?”

  “Please,” I say.

  “Went by Nate.”

  “Nate who?”

  “Never caught a last name.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “You can’t. Gunslinger died ’bout ten years ago, shortly after finishing my job.”

  “So what am I supposed to do now?” The only light I can make out through the blindfold is that of the lantern Kate has in the driver’s box. The wagon was facing east when I climbed into it, but I haven’t felt anything that suggests we’ve crossed the rail, and if we’d gone south, into Prescott, there’d be more light and sounds. We must be headed north or west, where there is nothing but mountains, but even if I leapt from the wagon this instant, pulled off my blindfold, and mounted the sorrel, I’d have no idea how to get home.

  “This was what you wanted,” I say, realizing far too late the con she’s pulled on me. “I’m nothing but a liability to you, and you didn’t want to leave me behind. What if I talked? I could put others on your trail. So you promised me a name, knowing it would do me no good, and then you gave it once you had me trapped.”

  “Let me assure you, while I hate extra fleas on my hide, I didn’t try to trap you nowhere. I’m doing you a favor. We women have to look out for each other. No one else will.”

  “But—”

  “But those devils’ll return to my farmhouse, end of story. You couldn’t stay there, and you couldn’t go home ’cus of yer uncle neither, so I said what I needed to get you in this wagon. The least you could do is thank me, seeing as I’m saving yer life.”

  “But not my mother’s. She’ll be dead as soon as my uncle marries her if I don’t do something.”

  “So figure something out,” she says. “Get Reece to do the job, like I suggested earlier. He’s good with a pistol and sure don’t seem to care ’bout killing folk.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t want to kill Uncle if I don’t have to, and besides, the Rose Kid is the last person I’d ever trust for help.”

  “If’n he’s so vile, just make sure the Law’s there to arrest him when it’s said and done.”

  I frown. “I thought he helped you, that you’re bringing him along because he saved your life and now you’re paying him back.”

  “I’m keeping him with me ’cus it’s best to have yer enemies under yer nose than frolicking ’round in valleys you can’t see. A Rose Rider is a Rose Rider is a Rose Rider. Soon as you drop yer guard, they tear yer damn throat out—​and whistle while doing it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  * * *

  Reece

  I hear every last word.

  They think I’m sleeping, but I woke when the wagon bucked over a rut in the trail. I’d nearly grumbled ’bout it, too, only the words leaving Kate’s mouth made me pause.

  Nate.

  I sit there, still as a statue, eyes still closed behind my blindfold because I don’t dare move. In order to hear each other over the creak of the axles and the plod of the steeds, the women ain’t able to whisper, and I can just barely make out the rest of the conversation.

  She never got a last name.

  She’s heard the gunslinger’s dead.

  Lies, all of it. She’s protecting her husband still, turning eyes away from her family. If I had any qualms ’bout the theory, they vanish as Kate keeps yammering.

  She ain’t helping me, she’s using me. She reckons I should be Vaughn’s hired gun and suggests turning me in when the deed’s finished. ’Parently only her family and Vaughn deserve happiness and safety.

  I told you ya can’t outrun this, Boss says. I told you yer stained black. You don’t deserve happiness. You don’t even deserve a quick and painless death.

  Well, I know one thing for certain. If Kate and Vaughn don’t got no regard for my well-being, I sure don’t got none for theirs. Once we get to wherever we’re going, I’m cutting free, slipping off when Kate’s not watching. And I know she’ll be watching. Keep yer enemies near, and all that.

  I’m used to double-crossing, backstabbing, dark-as-the-night bastards. This is my game the women are playing, the ploy I been training at for the past few years.

  I’ll get my way when the time comes.

  I settle back to sleep a bit more. I guess Kate’s right after all. A Rose Rider is a Rose Rider is a Rose Rider. I ain’t gonna lose at my own game.

  She stops the wagon sometime in the night.

  It don’t matter how well one knows a trail. Starlight, a weak moon, and a lone lantern ain’t much to go by. We sleep huddled under blankets.

  The next time I wake, it’s to Kate saying, “You can take those blindfolds off now.” I yank mine free and crane my neck ’round, trying to get a hold on my surroundings. We ain’t on the plains no more, and though the trees and brush seem to be cleared wide enough for the wagon, there ain’t any tracks in the thin layer of snow we’re crossing. This ain’t a well-traveled trail. Pines line it, and based on the low position of the early-morning light filtering between limbs and trunks, I figure we’re moving northwest. I turn to the south, hoping to spot Thumb Butte or some familiar landmark, and see only more forest. We coulda traveled five miles since leaving Kate’s place or three times that. I dozed too often, and Kate’s stopping the wagon in the middle of the night for a rest only confused me more.

  Vaughn said she grew up in these parts, but she don’t appear any more aware of our surroundings. Soon as her blindfold comes off, she’s gawking, head swiveling like an owl.

  We pass through a corridor of pines that lean in slightly, crowding the trail. Then, like a train shooting through a tunnel, the wagon emerges into a clearing. Kate pulls the reins and climbs from the driver’s box. I just stare.

  Here, in the middle of the mountains, somewhere outside Prescott, is a haven.

  The clearing is covered in a dusting of snow, with dry, brittle-brown grass poking through. At the rear of the clearing is a steep incline, and just before that is a house. It’s built in almost the exact likeness of the one we just left, from the paned windows and plain shutters with crosses cut in ’em to the weathered, unadorned wood siding. There ain’t a porch here, but the home overlooks a decent tank of water. Prolly there’s a dam somewhere on the small stream that feeds it, allowing the tank to hold water long after the stream quits running. The pigs go lumbering for it, slipping in the slush and flopping into the mud like it’s the finest goose-down bed in the Territory.

  Set on the far edge of the clearing is a stable that don’t look big enough to house all the livestock we got. Behind it—​just like behind the
house—​the land goes steep. It’s like the whole clearing is hugged from the rear, protected, its only point of entry being the trail we just took.

  “Well, don’t go sitting there all dumbstruck and wide-eyed,” Kate snaps. “Help with the unloading.”

  We start with the goods that need to get moved into the house: the half-finished cradle and the stuff it’s holding, the few blankets Kate brought with her. I’m wondering if she plans on wearing the clothes on her back for the rest of her life, when I step into the house and realize how grossly I’ve underestimated her.

  This ain’t just some building in a clearing. This is a hideout—​and a fully furnished one at that.

  The place is covered in a thin layer of dust, but the kitchen cabinets are stocked with cans of condensed milk and beans, bags of coffee, and strips of dried meat. There’s a root cellar, filled with pickled vegetables and jams and a small mountain of potatoes. I peek into the bedrooms—​two again, just like her place ’long the creek—​and find made beds, extra blankets, dressers stuffed with clothes. This is a second home, ready to be lived in, its contents looking new and untouched.

  It’s like Kate has been waiting for this moment her whole life, like she knew her deal with the gunslinger might return to haunt her, that someone might come riding onto her claim demanding vengeance. She built this place ages ago and has been prepared to run ever since.

  “How in the hell did you finance this?” I ask, setting the half-finished cradle on the kitchen table. “Hauling all the wood in, building here? There ain’t exactly conveniences nearby.”

  “There ain’t conveniences nearby for a reason,” she says, scowling, “and how I financed it ain’t yer business. Now I gotta beat some rugs and do an ungodly amount of dusting. See to the animals, will ya?”

  Her confidence that I won’t go running is damn infuriating, but I reckon it’s founded. Just ’cus I figure Prescott sits somewhere south of here don’t mean I’ll find it with ease. Hell, I’m just as likely to get lost among the pines than to saunter into the city. Plus, wearing that blindfold means I don’t got a clue if the trail splits or which way to travel if it does, and last thing I wanna do, even if I miraculously find my way outta the mountains, is run into Diaz or Boss.