by Erin Bowman
I grapple for his pistol, forgotten somewhere near my head.
“How?”
I ain’t even gasping no more, I’m plain out of air. My lips form shapes ’round nothing. This is how I’m gonna die. Jesse will be all right, at least. That is, till he returns to the house and finds whatever remains of Kate and Charlotte and the baby. God, the baby.
I’m gonna die right here with Barrera’s hands on my neck and the deep blue sky framing his angry, murderous face. Maybe this is exactly what I deserve.
There’s a gunshot, and Barrera falls away, relinquishing his grip on me. I cough and sputter, sit up. Barrera’s unblinking eyes stare up at the heavens. Jesse stands at the other end of the car, pistol smoking. He just saved me. I’m trying to figure how he appeared outta nowhere like an angel, when I remember he boarded the very car we’re now standing atop. He was supposed to be making his way back to the cargo car, but he coulda heard the struggle, maybe even saw my boots dangling outside the window.
“What the hell happened?” he shouts.
“Rose lied ’bout—”
There’s movement behind Jesse. A hand coming into view, clinging to the top of the ladder. Then a face—Crawford—and his pistol.
“Jesse, duck!”
He does—just barely in the nick of time—and Crawford’s shot sails over his head. I fire back, and that’s when Crawford puts it together. I ain’t on their side. I’ve joined with the enemy, and he’s outnumbered on this roof. He slides down the ladder.
“Get off the train!” I yell to Jesse, and I dart past him and follow Crawford. “Get off the train and go back to Kate!”
“What?”
“Just do it, Jesse. They’re in trouble.”
I throw a leg over the edge of the car, grappling for the ladder. Crawford’s already transferred to the ladder of the next car—a boxcar—and is climbing to safety. I can’t let him get away, not when he’s seen Jesse and has a description he can give Rose.
I stow my pistol and leap to the boxcar’s ladder. I connect with it hard, nearly missing my grip. I slide a rung or two. When I grab tight, my shoulder flares with heat and my bruises ache, the rails flying by below. I pull myself against the rungs and draw one quick breath before scrambling to the top of the car.
Unlike the passenger cars, the boxcar roof is flatter than an open plain. This is like running across the floor of a barn, and I gain on Crawford, who’s still limping from his injury in Wickenburg.
He jumps to the following boxcar, the wind snatching his hat as he goes. It floats over Chino Valley and I lose sight of it as I jump to follow him. This second boxcar’s got its side door open, and Crawford swings over the edge, propelling himself through the doorway.
I don’t got a notion where he thinks he’ll go next. There ain’t nothing but two flatcars left to the train. He’s as good as trapped.
I do as he did, grabbing the lip of the boxcar above the open door and swinging myself down and inside.
My feet hit the floor of the strangest boxcar I’ve ever seen. Half the bed’s been converted into what can only be described as a portable hog ranch. The place stinks of pigs and rotten food, and the beasts are mulling about in an honest-to-god pen, built right here in what otherwise looks like a work car. A maintenance foreman’s tools fill the rest of the bed, hanging on the walls and lying atop cargo crates.
Crawford’s standing barely two paces away, a sledgehammer in his hands.
He knew what he’d find in these tight quarters. Him and the boys got on the train way up north, had plenty of time to case every last car. It ain’t him that’s trapped. It’s me.
He swings the sledgehammer, and I dive to the side, rolling past Crawford and deeper into the crowded car. The hammer collides with the door frame. Wood goes flying. I go for my pistol, but before I can draw, the sledgehammer’s coming at me again. I dive a second time, losing my hat, grappling like mad for a weapon of any kind as I regain my footing. There’s a crate of rail ties. My hand closes over one of the iron spikes, and I barely got time to yank my hand clear of Crawford’s next blow. He swings again, and the sledgehammer crushes the wooden crate. Spikes go spilling free.
“I told him you weren’t worth it the very first day!” he screams. “But God does he love you. Yer the worst out of any of us, and still he cares for you most.”
I dodge another blow, find my back up ’gainst the far wall of the train.
“What happened, Murphy? Did ya find their gold and think you could take it all for yerself? Or maybe you started fancying that city girl. Diaz is gonna gut her, you know that?”
He raises the hammer again, but it’s growing heavy, and I can see his aim. I sidestep it quickly, and when the hammer strikes the wall of the car, it lodges in the wood. He yanks, trying to retrieve it. I drive the iron spike into the back of his hand. As he roars in pain, I kick him in the gut. The force is enough to yank the hammer free of the wall, but his grip slips from the handle. The sledgehammer clatters to the floor of the car as Crawford topples backwards, colliding with the hogs’ pen.
Finally, I got time to go for my pistol, but so does Crawford. We both pause, fingers frozen beside our holsters.
“You might fool Boss,” Crawford snarls, “but you ain’t fooling me. Yer as sinful as the rest of us, Murphy, maybe more so.”
“Yer right,” I tell him. “I’m a killer. I’ll prolly burn in hell with the rest of y’all. But I’m gonna go out doing the right thing.”
I draw my weapon, same time as him.
I can immediately see he’s got me beat, and I dive to the side, squeezing my trigger even though I know my aim’s off. But he counters my move, trying to sight me as I lunge away, and he leans into the line of my shot. His bullet flies wide, and mine catches him in the neck.
Eyes flashing, Crawford falls against the wooden pen. It creaks under his weight, then buckles completely, and the mob of hungry pigs closes in. It’s the same burial as Hobbs’s and Jones’s, and while Crawford mighta deserved it, that don’t make it any easier to watch.
I holster my pistol and turn away. The open doors of the boxcar are reinforced with slats of wood that create a giant X, and using ’em as foot- and handholds, I’m able to work my way back toward the car’s roof. When I pull myself up, I find myself face to face with Jesse.
“Yer still here?”
“What?” he shouts.
“I told you to go back!”
“Back where? I couldn’t hear you over the wind.”
I grab him at the arm and tug him toward the rear of the car. “Climb down!”
He tries to protest, and I shove him hard. He obliges.
On the flatbed, we’re sheltered from the worst of the wind. I peer ’round the boxcar. Prescott waits to the south, still hidden from view, but we’re coming up on the stretch of trail that leads to the hideaway.
“You gotta jump,” I say to Jesse. “Rose sent two men to the house.”
The color blows clear outta Jesse’s face. It’s like he’s been shot in the gut. “You said you weren’t followed.”
“I didn’t think I were, but he tricked me, Jesse. That’s what he does. I shoulda seen it coming. I’m sorry. But you gotta go now. Jump, and you can make it to the horse easy, ride back.”
“Not in time, though,” he says. “Not if he sent ’em this morning.”
“So you ain’t gonna try?”
His Remington is in his hand faster than I can blink. “Is this a double cross?” He holds the weapon in close to his chest, barrel pointed at mine. “You send me into a trap while you waltz off with Rose?”
“What? No! Crawford’s dead in that boxcar, I swear it.”
A wrinkle forms on his brow—there just a second and gone. He’s putting it together. I got no reason to lie. If it were a trap, I’d have shot him already or walked him straight to the enemy.
“And you’ll . . .” His gaze drifts toward the boxcar, toward wherever Luther Rose is prowling.
&nbs
p; I nod. “I promise I’m telling the truth, Jesse. I promise it on my mother’s life. On yer unborn child’s.”
He stuffs the pistol away and claps the side of my face with a palm. “You done good, kid.” For the briefest moment I feel like I’ve found the father I always wished for. The kind that challenged me, but in ways that make me better, not in ways that beat me down.
But then there’s the gunshot.
And the blood that flies from Jesse’s shoulder.
And his hand falling away from my cheek as he falls.
I whip ’round to see Rose standing on the boxcar roof. “Murphy—son!” he shouts over the wind. “You draw your pistol and shoot that bastard in the head.”
I crouch low beside Jesse. He’s exhaling in short bursts through the pain, but it ain’t a fatal blow, not if he gets to help.
Do it, Murphy, I hear. Do it right now, and all will be forgiven.
I can feel Rose’s weapon aimed at my back.
I grab the front of Jesse’s shirt, heave him to his feet.
I draw my pistol.
“Reece?” Jesse asks, his eyes as desperate as his voice is fearful.
“I’m sorry. This is gonna hurt.”
I shove him off the train.
Chapter Forty-Four
* * *
Charlotte
I stare down the barrel.
There is no way I am going to make this shot. He’s too far away, the bulk of him hidden behind the horse. Even if I had been given an opportunity to practice with bullets, I don’t think I’d stand a chance. At this distance, the Rose Rider’s head is smaller than the bucket I used during target practice.
But the horse . . . I could probably hit the horse.
I can’t hit the horse. The poor creature didn’t pick its rider. It didn’t choose to trot into this clearing, to serve as this outlaw’s shield. It’s just an innocent animal and—
The Rider fires his pistol.
A bullet slices through the shutter. I flinch, feeling the sting of wood splinters on my cheek.
“Charlotte?” Kate yells from the bedroom.
Another gunshot.
This one misses the shutter altogether and instead hits the section of wall between the window and the door. It lodges in the wood and doesn’t enter the kitchen.
“Charlotte!”
The baby is crying now too.
I bring the rifle barrel back up to my eye, hold the butt firm to my shoulder as Reece taught me. I sight the man.
Yer shooting the rifle, the rifle ain’t shooting you.
All that remains is the one step I’ve never practiced. I pull the trigger.
The rifle recoils, sending a jolt of pain through my shoulder.
The bullet bites into the dirt just shy of my target, but the horse goes wild, whinnying and rearing. Its hooves slide along the sloped bank of the reservoir until the creature loses purchase and topples onto its side, pinning the Rose Rider in place. His screams rattle the afternoon. The horse rocks there for momentum and, after finally regaining its footing, runs off and disappears behind the house.
Cursing, the outlaw fires blindly in my direction. I duck for cover. Three more shots hit the walls before he’s empty.
Then I’m back on my feet, scanning out the shutter. The man is crawling for the shelter of some shrubs, what’s sure to be a broken leg dragging behind him. I fire again, but the severity of the situation has finally caught up to me and my hands shake against my will. Though the Rider is moving as slow as molasses, it proves too difficult. The rifle is empty before I’ve had any success, and by the time I reload, the man has dragged himself behind the shrubs and fallen still. I watch a few seconds, but he doesn’t move. Perhaps he’s dead.
I pull the rifle back from the shutter and check on Kate. The afterbirth has come and the bed is a mess. William is crying in her arms, and she looks as though she’s seen the devil.
“They’re here?” she gasps out.
“One Rider. I think I got him.”
“Check.”
There is nothing I want more than to stay in this room with her, door bolted and curtains drawn.
“Charlotte—” she urges.
Outside, a horse whinnies. At first I believe it to be the outlaw’s steed, returning to find its rider. But then comes the crackling snap of fire, the horse’s cry again. It’s coming from the direction of the stable.
The man I shot is not nearly as injured as I first thought if he’s managed to start a fire.
“Maybe I should just tell him where the gold is,” I say to Kate. “That’s why he’s here.”
“Yer a fool if you think that’s all he’ll want. That he’ll take the gold and just ride out.”
“It’s worth trying.”
“It ain’t.”
The horse’s screams get more frantic. If’n the wind picks up or the flames get strong enough, the house’ll be at risk. I grab the rifle and leave Kate with the baby.
I toe the front door open, wait a moment, then step onto the porch cautiously. Pulse pounding, I scan the whole of the clearing, only to find that the man is no longer behind the shrubs. I never should have turned away from the window. I should have unloaded the rifle into the brush until he was most certainly, undeniably dead.
I home in on the stable, where flames continue to spread. Reece and Jesse took three mares with them this morning—Rebel, Uncle’s sorrel, and a bay quarter—but Kate’s horse, Silver, remains. Her stall is farthest from the house, and also farthest from the fire, but she can smell the smoke and hear the crackling flames, and it’s worked her into a frenzy. She prods the earth with her front hoof, throws her head.
I run before I lose my nerve. Straight to her stall. When I throw open the door, she bolts, nearly trampling me and causing me to drop the rifle as I dive aside.
That’s when a bullet hits the dirt near my hand.
My head snaps up, searching for the shooter.
The very thing that protects this little clearing is now protecting my assailant. He is hidden somewhere among the pines and rocks and shrubs, as good as invisible. And I’ve foolishly run into the center of the gauntlet, with nothing to protect me but a wooden structure already aflame.
As I reach for the rifle, a bullet battles me back again. I shuffle into the safety of the stall. It is thick with smoke, and flames from the neighboring stall are starting to lick their way in. I cough, feeling blindly through the smoke for the rifle. Instead, I find only a heavy blanket Silver uses in the evenings. I use it to bat at the attacking flames, but for each tongue of fire that I smother, another seems to spring to life in its place. My lungs are starting to protest the dirty air. If I don’t run for it now, I’ll be trapped in this stall not just by enemy bullets, but by flames.
I turn and see a figure pushing through the thick smoke.
It is not the outlaw I shot at from the house. It’s a second Rose Rider. There are two.
This one wears a blood-red jacket and a bandanna over his mouth and nose. Beneath the brim of his black hat, dark eyes smile at me.
I bolt to the right. He trips me with his rifle, and I crash to all fours. A hand closes on my ankle, and I kick out wildly, catching him in the chest or face. I don’t pause to look. I scramble for the house and get only one stall closer before his grip closes over my ankle a second time.
He pulls me nearer. Dirt and pebbles lodge beneath my nails as I attempt to grab hold of something—anything. My skirt gets caught beneath my weight, bunching up around my hips.
Hands flip me over, and I kick and scream, but he straddles me, pinning me easily in place. Flames from the stable dance behind him, around us. The heat is unbearable.
“Where’s the gold, girlie?”
“I don’t know.”
He grabs at my chin, angling my face so that I’m forced to look at him. “Where’s the gold?”
“They never told me.” He pinches my mouth so tightly I stumble on my own words. Tears stream down my cheeks. “P
lease,” I beg. “I don’t know where it is.”
He has a knife now, drawn somewhere along his waist. He brandishes it in front of me, touching it to my nose, lips, the underside of my chin. He slips it beneath the collar of my dress and then yanks wide. The fabric rips, exposing my shoulder.
“Last chance.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Please, I don’t know anything.”
His head cocks to the side, his eyes shining with amusement. “I remember you from the Jail Tree,” he says, and my blood goes cold. “Look who’s bound and jailed now. Look who’s begging for mercy.”
I flail wildly, searching for the rifle I know I won’t find, praying I might discover a rock in the dirt instead. My fingers graze something so hot, I recoil. A horseshoe, baking in the heat of the fire. He wrestles with my skirt, fingers scraping my thighs, and I grab the blistering steel. Swinging it up, I shove it into his face.
He screams, leaps back.
And then I’m on my feet, running, my burned palm throbbing in pain. Just beyond the stable, I find my only chance of a weapon—a pitchfork stuck in a bale of hay that’s set to go ablaze any moment.
The man is screaming threats at me, his footsteps pounding nearer.
I grab the pitchfork and spin. He doesn’t have time to stop. He was running too hard, intent on tackling me. I grip the handle with all my strength as he collides with the fork. My burned skin screaming in protest, I shove harder.
His eyes bulge, and his gaze drops to his chest, where his jacket is turning a deeper shade of red around each prong of the fork.
He grabs at the handle, tries to pull it out.
I stagger back, watching as he falls to his knees and then flops to the side, unmoving. I step nearer and nudge him with my boot. His body rocks from my prodding, but his eyes do not blink.
I stumble away. Fight the urge to be sick.
But I had to check, had to be sure. I couldn’t make the same mistake twice, not like with the first man.
The first man!
My gaze snaps up just in time to see the back of a gray jacket limping into the house.
I sprint for the rifle. It’s hot from sitting so near the fire, and the palm of my hand is blistering from the horseshoe. My thighs feel hot, too, in the places where the dead man’s fingers crawled at my underthings.
