Ride On

by Gwen Cole

  I pull my eyes off the fire. “So what are you going to do now?”

  Seph acts like he doesn’t hear me—still staring at the dirt in front of him.

  “Seph.”

  He blinks and looks at me. “Sorry, what?”

  “What will you do now?”

  “We’ll probably keep going like we were.”

  “To where?”

  “Southeast.”

  “Anything in particular?” He shakes his head and tosses a pebble into the fire. “I heard that settlement is to the south,” I tell him, nodding to his wrist. “Maybe you can see if the rumors are true.”

  Seph offers a half smile and shakes his head. “They’ve already caused me enough trouble.” He ends the conversation by returning to his side of the fire, leaving me a bit cold on my right side. When I look into the fire again, I realize how heavy my eyes are. I make sure the stones are in place between me and the flames and unroll my thin bedroll, using my saddle as a pillow. The coat Margaret gave me is long enough to serve as a blanket.

  Seph hasn’t moved from his place, and I’m not sure if he’s going to.

  The horses shift somewhere in the dark and I close my eyes to the sound of a fire and ask myself if I should trust Seph enough to sleep near him.

  17.

  Seph

  I hear them coming at the same time the horses do.

  I’m off the ground and my gun is out by the time Avery opens her eyes. Once she does, she’s as awake as I am.

  “What is it?” she asks, voice rough from sleep.

  “Riders.” I listen closer. “No, just one.”

  “It might be Margaret,” she says, coming to a stand. “She’s the only one who knows I’m here.”

  I glance over. “You want to bet your life on that?”

  It doesn’t take long for her to grab the shotgun leaning against her saddle, and for some reason, I do a double take—her dark braid coming over her shoulder with the gun propped up in her steady hands. It’s the second time I’m reminded she knows how to handle a gun.

  I almost don’t want to look away, but I have to, and I shake my head doing it.

  We’re ready when the rider comes through the gap in the rocks. I raise my revolver, but Avery holds out her hand to me. “It’s okay, it’s Margaret.”

  I holster my pistol and come up beside her, where the rider dismounts. The woman is older than us but not enough to have gray in her hair. She wears a wide hat and has a pistol strapped to her thigh—she knows what’s out here.

  “Avery …” She takes a quick glance at me. “I didn’t think you’d have company.”

  “This is Seph. He’s—” Avery hesitates, long enough for only me to catch it, “—a friend from Stonewall.”

  I breathe easier when she doesn’t give me away. The smallest of words can reach the wrong ears, and I’m supposed to be a long ways from here by now.

  Margaret nods to me. “It’s nice to meet another friend of Avery’s. I think I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting Axel.” Thankfully she doesn’t linger on me, so I don’t have to come up with a response. I don’t even know who Axel is, let alone know if it’s a person and not an animal. Cade comes up behind me as she turns back to Avery, her smiling disappearing. “Avery—”

  “It’s nothing good, is it?” she asks, barely breathing.

  “I’m afraid not. They’ve decided to move a large number of prisoners to the rock quarries down in Blackthorn. Finn is one of them.”

  Something deflates in Avery, but she manages to stay standing.

  I take a step toward her without knowing why.

  “When are they leaving?” Avery asks.

  Margaret hesitates. “They already have.” Avery backs away and sits on her rock, her skin pale. “But that’s why I wanted to come myself. I think there’s still a chance you can get him back.”

  Avery looks up. “What do you mean?”

  “The Lawmen aren’t going straight to Blackthorn. They have stops to make first, picking up more prisoners from different towns.” Margaret kneels and draws in the dirt with her finger, making a circle. “Here’s Kev, and these are the stops they have to make.” She draws a line going east, then south, then southwest where it ends at Blackthorn. “If you travel directly south of here, you’ll come across the set of railroad tracks. It’ll take the train five days and you only need four to get there.”

  Margaret looks up at Avery. “I know I’m not giving you much hope at this point, but if there’s a chance you can get him from them, this is where it’ll happen. You can intercept them before they make it to Blackthorn.”

  “Four days,” Avery murmurs to herself.

  Margaret says, “I’m sorry I can’t give you more than information.”

  “And I can’t thank you enough for that,” she says, still sounding numb.

  “Do you have enough supplies to last?”

  Avery nods.

  “I need to be getting back, but if you find yourself in need of anything, don’t hesitate to come to me, you hear?”

  After Avery stands and gives her a quick embrace, whispering something in her ear, Margaret rides away from the campsite. I watch as the dust settles after her, and when I turn back, Avery is saddling Jack. Her face is stone, set in a determined type of way.

  Cade watches me, waiting to see if I’ll do the same. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The ocean is closer to the southeast, not south.

  “Do you even know what you’re going to do?” I ask.

  “Right now, I don’t need to,” she says, tightening the cinch, her voice tightening with it. “I just need to get there in time. I’ll figure it out on the way.”

  I give a low whistle to Cade, and he trots over to where his saddle lies. Either way, I’m leaving—I need to put distance between us and Kev, and it might as well be now.

  We pack in silence, each of us gathering our things from around the campfire and holstering our guns. Cade won’t stay still; he knows we’re about to be off again after being still for so long. He’s as eager as I am.

  I mount and follow Avery out of camp, neither of us looking or speaking to each other. Never before have I minded the silence. My whole life I’ve been comfortable with it, even when around people … maybe especially around people. But right now, all I want to know is what’s on her mind and what she plans to do.

  At the bottom of the mountain, where Avery will go south and I’ll go southeast, she reins Jack to a stop and waits for me to come up beside her. She scarcely looks at me—just glances at me quick enough for me to get a glimpse of what is going through her head.

  Her thoughts are on nothing but her brother.

  Staring at the reins, she says, “Wherever you’re headed, I hope you don’t run into any more trouble along the way.”

  “The same with you,” I tell her, really meaning it.

  Avery looks like she wants to say something, but in the end, she only nods and signals Jack forward. I watch them ride away.

  Cade throws his head, wanting to follow them, but I turn him southeast. After days of dreaming about this moment, and having it finally here, I don’t feel the way I thought I would. Instead, I feel like maybe I shouldn’t leave her, which is strange, because since Dad died, I haven’t desired company, never felt the pull of another person.

  I should be happy to be free again, and I am—picking up where I left off before Durk decided to chase me into the Wild. But right now, it feels like a lifetime ago. A time I’m not sure I can go back to.

  Cade stops after a quarter mile and turns his head to look at me. Sometimes I think he knows me better than I know myself.

  To the south, Avery rides steady, a trail of dust following her—her mind made up the way I wish mine was.

  I don’t know why, but I can’t let this one go.

  I turn my ball cap around and nudge Cade with my heels.

  “Let’s go get ’em.”

  He starts off fast, his back hooves digging deep into the ground. W
hen I give him his head, I realize how much I’ve missed him. I bend low over his neck, spreading my fingers into his mane and coat underneath, urging him to go as fast as he can. The ride only lasts long enough for me to crave more.

  We come up beside them and Avery reins to a stop. “What are you doing?”

  “Going south,” I say, “You?”

  She gives me and Cade a long look before nodding. “South.”

  “Then we’d best be off.”

  Avery flashes me a weird smile and rides off, leaving me to decide to follow her once again.

  I don’t think I’ve ever made an easier decision.

  18.

  Avery

  We ride the entire day without saying a word, side by side and covering more miles than I could hope for. The farther south we go, the drier it gets. Dust spits up behind us and we pass towns long abandoned. We end up wearing our bandanas and goggles, but only slow down when it gets too bad for the horses to run in.

  We stop at rivers to water the animals and eat while in our saddles when our stomachs growl. But mostly we just ride. Jack’s hooves pound the earth beneath me, and every moment I silently thank him for his strength to take me where I can’t go myself.

  We pass old roads edged with the hoods of rusty cars—bones of the past, being buried with the wind. Most of the roads have already been covered, and the ones that are left won’t be for much longer. Everything is giving in to a new world I’m only now starting to discover.

  Leaving everything I’ve ever known is like waking up. I see the world as it is and not how I thought it was.

  On one flat stretch of ground, we slow down with the horses’ heads bent away from the dust. It blows sideways across us, stinging our exposed cheeks and arms.

  When Seph shouts, I stop and look over at him. But he’s looking up, and when I follow his gaze, a giant sign looms over us. The words are faded and cracked, but I can make out the shape of a person on it, holding something I don’t recognize.

  We steer the horses around the sign, passing more relics of civilization.

  Minutes later when the dust clears, we stop in our tracks. Ruins of a city lie below us, stretching for miles and bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. Only the stone and concrete buildings are left, parts of them still crumbling away with every passing day. They’re jagged and rough now, every much a part of this world as the one before.

  Big cities like this one can never be erased, just made into something else.

  Beside me, Seph pulls down his goggles and bandana in one motion, holding the reins in his free hand. Pieces of dusty hair poke out of the hole of his backwards cap, and his white shirt is no longer so white. Cade won’t stay still—arching his neck and stomping the ground—while Seph doesn’t move. His eyes are on the city, hard and calculating. I’m struck with how much he belongs out here.

  My braid is a dusty mess and my legs and back already ache from the day’s ride. In one day, I’ve come out of my world and into his.

  “I’ve never seen such a big city before,” I say, also freeing my nose and mouth, glad to breathe air again without inhaling dust.

  Seph doesn’t say anything. I don’t realize I’m staring at him until he says, “We should go around.”

  The words don’t make sense at first. And when they do—“We can’t.” My heart finally kicks in and tells him he’s wrong. “We’re already short on time, and going around the city will take the rest of the day.” I shake my head, trying to calm myself. “I won’t do it.”

  I have no idea what I plan to do at the end of these four days, but right now all I need to do is get there, and some city isn’t going to stop me.

  “It’ll be a risk—”

  “Then you don’t have to follow me,” I say. I kick Jack forward and we start down the old road. Cade comes up fast and they cut in front of us, blocking our path.

  “You don’t understand,” Seph says, facing us, his back to the city. “People in there won’t let you make it through alive.” The way Seph’s eyes change when he says this makes me think of Levi’s cabin. The food he gave me and how he looked at me. “You have to trust me on this one.”

  “I don’t have a choice. We don’t have time.”

  He studies me for a long moment, then pulls out the lever-action from his saddle holster and cocks a round into the chamber. He turns Cade around to face the city, the butt of the rifle against his hip and the barrel pointed to the sky.

  “If we’re going to do this, you have to do it my way,” he says.

  “And what’s your way?”

  “Fast.” He almost smiles. Almost. “We don’t want them to know we’re here until it’s too late. There’re a lot of miles from here to the other side, so you have to do exactly what I say or you’re going to find yourself lost or surrounded by people you don’t want to see. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.”

  Seph nods. “Then follow me.”

  For the first mile, we ride at a steady gallop. Within the ruins—some of them pressing in close—it feels like we’re flying down the roads with only the dust following us. After a little while, I realize Cade is navigating us with Seph watching everything else. The reins are loose in his hand, the gun tight in the other. His goggles and bandana bounce up and down around his throat.

  I’m glad to have him here, even if I don’t want to admit it. If Mom ever found out I’m riding along with an outlaw from the Wild, she’d grow red in the face and get that look in her eyes. But Seph isn’t like the few people I’ve met from the Wild.

  As we ride through, I try to find signs of people living here, I don’t see any. The buildings are motionless, the roofs bare. When old buildings are occupied, the windows are usually boarded up to ward off the elements, so if there are people here, they don’t care about that.

  With a glance back, I notice someone quickly ducking out of sight and behind a wall. It’s so fast, I might’ve imagined it.

  We turn the next corner, and the road up ahead is blocked by a long metal frame—something I have no name for. Seph pulls Cade to a stop and swings around, not even pausing to think. Jack comes up on his hind legs for a moment and takes off after them, his ears flicking behind us.

  The next road leading south is blocked, too, by odd pieces of furniture and broken doors, and we are forced to keep going east, causing an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

  After three more roadblocks, I yell out to Seph.

  He pulls to a stop, his eyes still looking everywhere at once. “What is it? Did you see something?”

  “No, but I don’t think these roadblocks are accidental.”

  He looks both ways down the road, nodding. “I was thinking the same but hoping I was wrong. We should go back, find a way through one of them. We don’t want to find out what’s at the end of this road.”

  Somewhere ahead of us, there’s a shout. Seph clicks his tongue to gain Cade’s attention and says, “Come on, Cade, find us a way out of here.”

  I turn Jack to follow them, forcing myself not to look behind. That shout was too close for comfort.

  We don’t even go a block before we see riders following our trail. They ride toward us quickly and Seph drops the reins, bringing the rifle to his shoulder as Cade comes to a halting stop. He pulls the trigger and one of the riders grabs their shoulder and falls from their horse. I know my own gun is still next to me, and yet my hands shake too much to grab for it.

  “Avery, this way!” His voice brings me back.

  We turn south, down the road with the broken furniture where it might be low enough for the horses to clear. The riders chase us, but don’t take shots, obviously wanting us alive. Jack knows what’s coming before I do—he puts distance between us and Seph, giving them enough room to jump. And all I can do is trust him. Cade clears by inches, and I feel Jack gathering himself under me and then we’re over before I can take a breath.

  I glance over my shoulder but the riders don’t follow. I bring up Jack so we’re riding next to t
hem. “We need to rest the horses,” I tell him. “They can’t keep going like this.”

  “They’re gonna have to a little while longer,” he yells over the wind. “I don’t like it as much as you do, but they’ll be tracking us through the city until nightfall. If we’re lucky, we’ll be out of here by then.”

  I know he’s right, so I keep my mouth shut and put my hand on Jack’s neck, more to reassure myself than him.

  19.

  Seph

  We don’t clear the ruins before nightfall.

  We’re forced to find shelter in one of the stone buildings with no roof, and I leave Cade with Avery to go back over our path.

  With the wind still blowing hard, our tracks will be covered within the hour. I move slowly from building to building, staying out of sight and keeping one hand on my gun. I’ll do anything to keep myself from becoming a prisoner or something worse. After being in Kev for those few days, I’m more protective over my freedom than ever before.

  I think that’s part of why I decided to come with her.

  Some piece of me wants to help Finn because I know exactly what he’s going through and it’s something nobody should. There’s just enough light left to see the scars around my wrists.

  Two of many I already have.

  The one on my forearm catches my eye—it’s only about two inches long but I remember how deep it was. The guy who gave it to me was old enough to have gray hair—something that’s rare these days—but he wore this ridiculous hat with a feather sticking out of it.

  He tried to gut me with his knife but he missed and sliced me in the arm, a wound that healed in a couple weeks.

  But his hat is the thing I remember most. Actually, everything he wore.

  A red vest, covered in patches. No shirt and a purple pair of pants.

  I remember thinking he had to get new boots because they had holes in them. Boots with holes are no good….

  I’m standing in the middle of an intersection but don’t remember how I got here. My wandering mind will get me killed one of these days. I turn and make my way back, climbing up the rubble and into the building where we’ve made camp. The horses stand in the back corner, their heads hanging low as they rest.