by Erin Bowman
Best to wait it out a few days. I got Ma to think on, after all, and I know Boss won’t kill her so long as I’m free. That threat only worked to keep me reined in, loyal to the gang. But if he gets me back . . .
“I’ll help with the dusting,” Vaughn says.
“You’ll help with the animals,” Kate counters.
“I will not help him”—she glances my way—“with anything.”
“You will, ’cus you got things to discuss, plus someone’s gotta keep an eye on him.”
Vaughn actually laughs. “You can’t keep an eye on a Rose Rider, least of all the Rose Kid. Accompanying him to the stable is the most foolish thing I could possibly do. He could shoot—”
“I’m not gonna—”
“No shooting!” Kate snaps, cutting us both off. “Not now, not so long as we’re here. It’s too easy for gunfire to carry off them mountains.”
“So civilization’s near after all,” I say, hopeful.
“Just ’cus a place ain’t easy to find, don’t mean it’s invisible. Nor that yer boss ain’t gonna find us if we go ’bout firing bullets like men cleaning house at poker. We trap and snare for food. Nothing gets shot. If’n I hear a bullet go off, it better mean we’s been found out and yer firing at the enemy.”
“So we’re just expected to get along?” Vaughn asks, motioning at herself and me. “You want me to pretend like he isn’t the killer we know he is? I’m not doing anything with him!”
“You will, ’cus you ain’t got another option. It’s this or I shoot you both right now.”
“I thought there weren’t to be shooting,” I say.
No one smiles. Shame. It were a decent joke.
“Let me clarify,” Kate says, slow, glowering at both of us. “There’ll be no shooting unless we’re found out or ’cus I’m shooting yous.”
Vaughn looks terrified, but I see it for the bluff it is. Kate wouldn’t’ve saved my hide yesterday only to blow me away today.
“I’m not comfortable with this,” Vaughn says.
“I ain’t gonna touch you,” I tell her. “Hell, I won’t even look at you, if that makes it better.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Aw, the hell with this,” I say. “I don’t need it. I’ll deal with the animals alone.”
I turn ’round and shove out the door.
I see what Kate’s doing. She hopes I’ll take Vaughn’s offer. She wants to send us both out on horseback to see to Vaughn’s uncle in town, then not be able to find our way back. Or maybe we get lost in the mountains and starve to death. Either way, she’s free from the Rose Riders and safe at her hideaway, only our fate won’t rot her conscience too much ’cus she did her best to give us a fair shake at things.
Well, I ain’t falling for it.
This ain’t a bad setup—the house and the stable and the reservoir tank. I could hole up here a few months, carry on once the Riders’ve quit searching for me and the papers believe me to be dead.
I unhitch the wagon from the two quarters that pulled it. The bay is agreeable, but the palomino nips at me like I ain’t doing things quick enough, her silver mane flouncing. Figures Kate’d have a horse as ornery as herself.
I grab the leads and walk the horses in a wide arc, turning for the stable. Vaughn’s standing but a few paces off, blocking my way. Jones’s pistol is clutched in her hand.
“I don’t care what Kate says about firing bullets. If you lay a finger on me, I will shoot you.”
“Fair enough,” I say.
Vaughn frowns. I don’t think she expected that answer. I know what she anticipates from a person like me, but it ain’t like I’m gonna hurt her. Not now or ever. There’s some lines I just ain’t gonna cross, and if I don’t stay honest to ’em, then I really am gonna end up just like Boss and the boys.
Vaughn don’t seem to believe any of it, not no matter what I say, so maybe this is the way I start trying to communicate. Maybe ’stead of telling her the truth, I just let her discover it.
“I’m gonna walk in front of you now,” I say, nodding toward the stable. “That all right?”
She nods.
“You could bring the other horse.”
She glances at her sorrel, tethered to the rear of the wagon.
“Or you can just follow with the pistol. Don’t matter much to me.”
She stands there as I walk past, staring like I done shucked my clothing and started dancing naked in the snow.
Chapter Twenty-Four
* * *
Charlotte
Despite his promises and the I-mean-you-no-harm act, I’m not comfortable being alone with the Rose Kid. But seeing as Kate all but chased me from the house, I’m left with no choice but to help with the animals. I try rounding up the pigs, but they’ll have none of it. They find the mud most inviting, and after I slip in the freezing muck on account of my too-big boots, I give up on the creatures and head to the wagon instead. Seeing to the sorrel will bring me near the Kid, but the chickens . . . I lug three crates from the wagon bed and bring them to the coop.
As I set them free, the chickens squawk and ruffle their feathers. I imagine Kate intends to gather their eggs, but depending on how long she remains in these mountains, a couple of the birds will likely become food, too. I hope I’m long gone before it comes to that. I’ve wasted too much time already, on account of Kate’s trickery, and I suppose it would be foolish to not even consider the role the Rose Kid could play in liberating our family from Uncle Gerald’s grasp.
I grab the pistol from where I left it on a fence post. It was used to do unspeakable things, and I hate the way it feels in my hand, but until I’m able to speak to Kate and request a trade for Father’s Colt, I refuse to approach the Rose Kid unarmed.
I find him at the stable, moving the palomino into the final stall.
“What in the hell happened to you?” he asks, gaze locked on the muddied state of my dress.
“I fell.”
He raises his brows. His lips don’t curl into a smile, but I can spot the amusement in his eyes.
“Trying to get the pigs to the sty,” I explain, not sure why I’m defending myself. I could not care less what he thinks.
“Them hogs don’t need to be penned up till later. Let ’em have their mud bath.”
“I did. They’re still down at . . . Never mind that, I have a proposition for you.”
“Ain’t interested.” He turns his attention to the horse.
“But I didn’t even make it yet!”
“Don’t care.” He picks up a brush and begins grooming the palomino’s coat. “Still ain’t interested.”
“Allow me to propose it, at least.”
“It’s yer breath to waste.”
“All right. My uncle is a bad man, and my mother and I will not live freely until he is relieved of his position.”
“All the fancy speech in the world don’t make the deed less vile,” he says as he moves the brush in long, smooth strokes.
“How is it vile? I simply need someone to scare him honest, convince him to abandon his cause or face disastrous consequences.”
“And if he don’t listen, what might those consequences be, exactly? A bullet?” He glances at me over his shoulder. “That’s a thing yer comfortable with, admit it. You’d be fine with someone murdering yer uncle.”
“That’s not true! I only want—”
He gives me a look so condescending that the words die in my mouth.
I cross my arms. “Will you or won’t you take the job?”
“So you can turn me in before his body’s even cold? No, thanks.”
“I wouldn’t turn you in.”
“If you say so, Vaughn.”
All I hear is, You’re a bad liar, Vaughn.
The Rose Kid continues to tend to the horse’s coat. He’s good with the animal, deliberate with his strokes. When he spreads a blanket over the steed’s back, he calls her girl and runs a palm down her neck several times. It is almost
as if he has forgotten my presence.
“Look, you’re the Rose Kid. For what reason would you not do this? I can pay you, once it’s done.”
“I got no reason to do this for you, coin or not.”
“Then what do you aim to do instead, live here forever? You think Kate’s going to provide a permanent room for you once her baby arrives? Or her husband returns? You can’t run from your past. Do this, and I’ll tell your story, let the Territory know how you changed your ways.”
He turns to face me. “If the world does not believe my own words, why would they believe yers?”
“For one, because I am not an outlaw. Second, because I am a reporter with the Morning Courier.”
“In the coach, you said you were aspiring.”
“I haven’t had my big break yet.” A truth. “But I can print your tale.”
“Right.” He scoffs. “’Cus all printed word is true. ’Cus the tales they wrote ’bout me years earlier and’ve been telling ever since can be washed away with a single article.”
I can see the doubt in his eyes, but also the hope: that I could really offer such a solution. Wipe his slate clean. Give him a fresh horizon.
“You really write for the paper?” he prods. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and I can make out that half-finished rose scar on his arm.
If everything he’s told me is true, his predicament is far from favorable. But the Rose Kid has also done horrid things to save himself, to secure a future, so I cannot be faulted for telling a small lie for the same reasons. To save Mother, to secure our future . . .
“Yes,” I answer before I lose my nerve. “I write for the paper.”
A pause.
“Let me think on it,” he says finally.
I don’t have the luxury of time, but I know better than to push my luck.
Father always said a person can fight only one battle at a time, and though I wish to see all the Rose Riders hung for their crimes, my largest quarrel is with Uncle. I could live with watching the Rose Kid ride for the horizon if he takes my deal. Because as wicked as he may be, I do believe him when he says he wants to start again.
If I write anything on his actions, I surely will not paint him a hero. He just needs to believe I will. So if the Rose Kid threatens Uncle Gerald, convinces him to see reason, then I will do him this one decency: I will not have the Law there, waiting to arrest him. I will let him keep running from his past. He best hope he can run faster than his demons.
The day is long and fruitless.
I help Kate finish up the dusting; then we inventory the root cellar, Mutt rubbing against our legs as we count jars. Kate is stocked well enough to eat comfortably through the winter.
Here in the mountains, shadows begin to stretch earlier than I am used to. As the sun sinks from view, Kate scrubs potatoes in the dry sink and passes them to me. I quarter them for boiling, trying to ignore the pain in my heels, where the boots have rubbed and chafed.
“I’d like my pistol back,” I tell her as I add newly cut pieces to the pot. “The Colt—the weapon you took off the Rose Kid.”
“That’s yers? Big gun for a little lady.” She gives me a sly smile, as if perhaps this isn’t a bad thing.
“It belonged to my father.”
She nods as though she understands, when she can’t, not truly. She lost her father too, but years ago, and suddenly. She didn’t see the suffering drawn out, didn’t watch him change from a vibrant, energetic man to a weakened, frail thing that couldn’t leave his bed. The sweaty brow. The heavy eyelids. The blood-soaked handkerchief that constantly remained in his grip. He wasn’t himself by the end. My father died long before he took his last breath, and that was the hardest thing to witness.
I think maybe I should tell Kate this. I haven’t said it to anyone, and maybe it would be good to get it out, to throw the words into the open instead of letting them fester inside. But when I raise my head to say something, Kate has disappeared into her bedroom.
She returns with Father’s pistol and lays it on the table. Seeing it makes me feel better and worse. Better, because it’s as if I’ve been reunited with a piece of him. Worse, because it reminds me of all the things I was forced to leave behind in that Wickenburg boarding house.
“A trade?” I put the pistol I found on the floor of her Prescott home down beside Father’s.
“Keep it,” she says. “I got a pair of twin Colts myself, and I ain’t been able to carry ’em proper in months.”
She’s too big for a belt, and even if she managed to fasten one below her belly, I imagine its lowered position would change her draw. Her rifle, however, has barely left her side since I’ve met her. During the wagon ride here, it sat in the driver’s box. Now it’s propped against the kitchen table, even though there are pegs for it above the door.
“How much longer?” I ask, nodding at her belly.
“A week or so, according to the midwife, and hopefully not a day longer. I’m ready. Lord, am I ready.”
“My mother said she cried with joy the first time she looked down and could see her feet again after my birth.”
Kate barks out a laugh. It’s the most unladylike laugh my ears have ever witnessed, but she does not seem embarrassed by it. It makes me want to live so freely, to throw my head back rather than merely smiling, to guffaw instead of giggle.
“What will you do if your husband is not back before the baby comes?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no midwife here.”
“Women pushed out babies in covered wagons bucking over the plains. I sure as hell can push one out in the comfort of a bed, with or without help around.”
Her confidence is endearing. I do not mention the stories Mother has told me, where complications keep the baby from coming, where the mother sometimes perishes with the child.
“Besides, what do I got to worry about?” Kate continues. “I got two extra sets of hands ’round now.”
I freeze up. “I’m no midwife. My mother is, and I know a little from her, but not enough to be truly helpful.”
“Blood bothers you?”
“Not during a birth. It’s more that . . . things can get complicated. I won’t know what to do in that instance.”
“We’ll get Reece to assist you.”
“He won’t know either,” I argue. “Besides, why do you trust him?”
“I don’t trust no one but Jesse,” she says. “Not fully, at least.”
“Why do you trust him partially, then?”
“Charlotte, no one’s all good or all bad. That ain’t how humans work. Hear me on this, and trust me when I say that Reece Murphy is as solid a mix as they come.”
Just last night she was arguing that a Rose Rider is a Rose Rider and that I should turn him over to the Law if he agreed to see to my uncle. How could someone deserving of a jail cell be a solid mixture of good and bad? I must appear confused because Kate adds, “He ran from the gang earlier this week. He shot two of his own just yesterday.”
That she is defending him makes me furious.
“What was he doing the past three years?” I argue. “Where were his principles then?”
“Ask me,” the Rose Kid says from the doorway. I don’t know how he appeared there so quietly, only that he’s heard everything.
“Go on, ask,” he says again.
I return my attention to the knife. I bring the blade down, halving a potato, then again, cutting it into quarters.
“Yeah, that’s right about what I figured,” the Rose Kid says, and moves to the dry sink to wash.
Before Kate can even propose sleeping arrangements for the evening, I demand to room with her.
“I’m not staying with him,” I say plainly, as if the Rose Kid is not even present, when in fact he’s sitting right there on the other side of the table. Full of food, his face and limbs clean from the quick wash he’d splashed on himself before dinner, he appears almost civilized. His hat hangs down his back, its string
pressed against his throat. If I look at him only from the chin up—chapped lips, freckles on his tawny nose, brownish-blond hair that curls behind his ears—he’s almost unrecognizable as the boy from the train. But he’s still wearing that blue shirt, stained with sweat, and the jacket I used as a blanket at night in the coach.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says. “I reckon I’ll get a little shuteye now.” He leaves his knife and pistol on the table before excusing himself.
When the door to the second bedroom clicks shut, I turn to Kate. “You should lock him in there for the night.”
“If he wanted us dead, he’d’ve seen to it already. Besides, he left his effects.” She pops a potato in her mouth and motions at the weapons with her fork.
“That doesn’t mean . . . What if . . .”
“Christ, Charlotte. I said I didn’t think he were all bad, not that I wouldn’t shoot him square between the eyes if he proves me a liar.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
* * *
Reece
For someone living on limited quantities of damn near everything, Kate Colton makes a strong coffee. Maybe she figures some things are worth having proper or not at all.
After a breakfast of grits and flapjacks, I offer to do a little hunting. “Snares and traps only, of course. I know you don’t want us firing shots.”
Vaughn glares at me like I intend to run off. She ain’t completely wrong. I aim to hike to a vantage point and have a decent look at our surroundings so that if I ever do get a chance to run, I know which direction I should head off in. Seems to me like instead of judging, Vaughn should be doing the same.
Ill-tempered as Kate may be, she’s got a soft spot for her animals, ’cus she agrees it makes sense to trap what we can before we resort to slaughtering the hogs. If’n she didn’t intend to eat the damn things, I don’t know why she had ’em make the trek. All they’ve done is lay down prints. Granted, it did manage to flurry again last night, which mighta helped fill in some of the tracks and wheel ruts. By the time Diaz comes back with Boss and the rest of the gang, there might not be much left to follow.
