Make Me No Grave

by Hayley Stone

  “I don’t think you’re thinking clearly.” I spoke quietly so Jed’s boys wouldn’t hear. I didn’t wanna humiliate the man, though I wasn’t above it either if that’s what it took.

  Jed turned to me suddenly, placing a hand on my chest. The deputies halted to stare at us. With a sharp, impatient gesture, Jed motioned for them to keep walking.

  “What’s gotten into you? You sweet on this woman, son? That it? Think she might show you a little friendly gratitude if you keep her from swinging?”

  “Hell, Jed. You should know me better than that.”

  He got into my face, cheek twitching beneath one eye. “And you should know better than to question my judgment. Stay out of my way, Apostle. I mean it. Don’t push against this.”

  He turned his back on me, walked away.

  “Jedediah!” I called to him.

  When he turned back, his shoulders slumped. I knew how I must look: coat pushed back, guns exposed to the glare of day.

  Ahead of us, the deputies fought Almena to get her into position. Judging by the way one of them was lying on the ground holding himself, seemed she’d managed to get a leg up. A few of the others were laughing at him, and jeering her. Town folk continued to hang back near the stores, pretending occupation with something else.

  I watched the sheriff, steady. “I’m not asking now. I’m telling you how it’s gonna be. Call off your boys.”

  “And if I refuse? What then? You planning on shooting me?”

  “This has gone plenty far, Jed. You put the fear of God into her. What more do you want?”

  “I want her dead. Thought I’d made that pretty clear.”

  I started towards him, real slow, the soles of my boots crunching grit. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  Although I tried to keep my focus on Jed, the activities of his deputies forced me to extend my attention to the area around me. My eyes kept veering to Almena, her red dress standing out against the white sky like a battlefield pennon. They’d secured her arms behind her, rebinding her wrists, but with actual rope this time. Same kind of rope the sheriff’s men were now tossing over the horizontal crossbeam.

  And just like that, the scaffold became a proper gallows.

  Someone I didn’t recognize as a deputy—probably an employee of the general store—rolled a barrel up to the foot of the structure. So that was how they were gonna do it. Crude, but it’d get the job done.

  “That’s close enough.” Jed held out one hand, his other settling around the grip of his revolver.

  “Hey, sheriff!” one of his boys shouted, oblivious to the growing quarrel. “You want that we should string her up now?”

  “There’s some things a man can’t come back from, Jed,” I warned.

  “I thought people could change,” he mocked.

  “Sheriff!” The deputy again.

  “Goes both ways,” I said.

  “I don’t expect you to understand, Apostle,” Jed said, “but you’re right. I do know you. I know you won’t pull on me, not so long as you value your badge. A judge’ll understand letting Guillory die a whole lot more than he’ll understand you shooting a fellow lawman.”

  Incredibly, he let his hand fall away from his piece and turned to face the gallows. Almena watched us, leaning away from the man who had his hands on her, the rope creeping into her neck. Faith drained from her eyes. She knows he’s not coming.

  “Sheriff!” I jogged forward. Tried to stop him.

  Tried.

  Jed cupped his mouth with his now-free hands, hollering back to his man:

  “String her up!”

  Guillory refused to be hefted onto the barrel and headbutted the luckless deputy who tried to force the issue. Another man came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her belly. His hand brushed her bare thigh. The man reeled away suddenly, as though he’d been smacked in the head. He windmilled before falling backwards, landing hard in the dirt. Almena spat on him.

  The remaining men pulled their firearms. Sheriff included.

  “Marshal’s service!” I shouted, finally drawing in the same fluid motion I’d used dozens of times before. I gained some looks, a few curious, others disgusted and impatient. Jed’s mouth went slack inside the cave of his beard. Almena glanced over at me with a feeling I’d never seen before in her scornful eyes: relief. She must’ve guessed I was all she was gonna get as far as allies went.

  “Let’s everybody be calm about this. Lower your weapons and step away from Guillory. She’s under the protection of the United States government. You touch her, and you’re in breach of federal law.”

  “You don’t want to do this, son.” Jed stepped toward me. I pointed my piece at him, and it was like an invisible string between us pulled tight, stopping him cold.

  “You’re right about that,” I agreed sadly. “But you’re not giving me a choice.”

  Jed’s frown was so deep, I worried the rest of his face might fall into it. “You’d choose this criminal, this whore, over your own brothers-in-arms?”

  “It ain’t like that, and you know it. You’re breaking the law, Jed.”

  “She broke the law!” he spat, pointing at Almena. “Her! I’m the one trying to set things right!”

  “By lynching an unarmed woman?”

  Jed raked his beard with an agitated hand. “You still can’t see it, can you? A woman—she ain’t no woman. She’s a devil, Apostle. And you’re playing right into her hands. What’s to say she won’t escape before you get her to Abilene? What’s to stop her from killing again?”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “You’d stop her?”

  “Already have.”

  Movement continued in my periphery; one of the men tied a cloth around Almena’s mouth to prevent her from spitting on them again. Another adjusted the noose around her neck, tightening it. She made a vain effort to kick one of them and missed. Her shoe went flying to the dirt.

  “Are you boys stubborn or just plain stupid?” I asked the deputies, pulling my second gun in the time it took them to blink. The white ivory handles glinted in the sun. “I said step away. Go on now.”

  Only two, the youngest members of the posse by the looks of it, obeyed. The rest held their positions, heads cranking back and forth between us, waiting for confirmation from the sheriff.

  The crowd stirred behind me with growing restlessness. Some of the men disappeared, which worried me. I suspected they were going to fetch their guns.

  “You told me yourself. She was caught resisting arrest,” the sheriff said.

  “To be fair, I wasn’t being too gentle neither,” I replied, continuing to split my attention between Jed and his boys. I didn’t know how, but they’d gotten her up on that damn barrel. I guess I had the answer to my earlier question. Just stupid then.

  “Be a shame if she tried anything else.”

  “Last warning. Tell your boys to stand down.”

  “Men!” Jed barked without looking behind him, without seeing the baleful outline of the L-shaped hangman’s scaffold against the empty Kansas countryside. He hesitated, the man I’d never known to be anything but decisive. The man I expected to be better than whatever personal vendetta curdled in his heart. I considered myself a fair judge of character, but in that moment, I knew I’d judged Jedediah Strickland wrong.

  “You know what needs doing!” he roared.

  My first bullet punched through the foot of the man who attempted to kick over the barrel, penetrating flesh and wood with a meaty sound. My second caught his compatriot in the neck as he started to pull Almena off the barrel by her legs. His dark blood sprayed across the front of her dress. She stood on her tiptoes, half-dancing, eyes wide with panic, desperately trying to keep her balancing act.

  A more enterprising deputy returned fire, taking out a few hapless weeds at my feet. Rather than stepping back, I moved forward, advancing slowly but surely, firing several more shots. The remaining men dove for cover behind the wooden scaffolding. Unfortunat
ely, one of the youngsters made the unfortunate decision to crouch behind Almena’s barrel. Kid was starting to tip it over, intentionally or otherwise.

  “Hold your fire!” Jed was shouting. Least, I think that’s what he was saying. I kept losing his voice amidst the loud percussion of gunfire, but he had his hands out, gesturing wildly to his men. “Hold your fire, goddammit!”

  I watched the boy behind the barrel—and I watched Almena, leaning at a sharp angle, her situation growing more precarious. With the rope choking her, I worried she’d black out before I could cut her down. I needed to make a quick end of this, but I couldn’t see a way to do that that didn’t result in more bloodshed.

  Making matters worse, the crowd of onlookers was growing in number behind me, men drawn by the sound of gunfire. They held Sharps rifles across their chest, and one woman even whipped out what looked like a Derringer—but no one seemed to know who to aim at. The rest of the ladies had wisely scattered, most ducking inside whatever storefront they’d been standing outside of, alleviating some of my concern for civilian casualties.

  About that time—while I was yelling for the bystanders to get back inside, and Jed was screaming for his men to stop shooting—Almena slipped. Or the boy upset the barrel. Either way, she was swinging, the noose pulled up to her chin. Her body rotated like a fish on the end of a line as she panicked, fighting to get air.

  Well, shit.

  The drop had been gradual enough, hadn’t broken her neck, but that was a small mercy while she continued to dangle there, suffocating. The surviving deputies fumbled bullets into empty chambers, and I took the opportunity to move closer, firing an occasional warning shot whenever one of them peeked out from cover. I had only two more rounds before I’d have to reload, so I tried to fire sparingly.

  Almena’s lips were moving, but I was still too far away to hear what she was saying. I brought my gun up, intending to shoot through the rope.

  Pulled the trigger.

  And was promptly laid flat by someone else’s bullet.

  The world pounded and receded away from me in witless agony from a point close to my stomach. I couldn’t breathe, never mind move, though my hands still twitched uselessly for my gun somewhere nearby, fingers clawing at the hot dirt. The taste of copper burned my mouth.

  Jed hovered over me, a dark silhouette bleeding into the pale sky. All I could make out was his bushy black beard which shook when he spoke. “I’m sorry, son.” A prolonged sigh as he removed his hat, knelt down next to me. “Dammit. You just couldn’t let it lie, could you?”

  When I opened my mouth, tried to speak, blood drooled from the corner of my lips.

  “Guillory,” I choked. I needed to know if she was all right. Seemed a waste to die for nothing.

  Jed went real quiet and looked away from me, standing back up with a grunt of effort.

  “You missed,” he said.

  Chapter Four

  Hell looked an awful lot like a room in Dorothy’s hotel: same furniture and everything. The musty curtains were drawn, heat settling on me like a blanket, and the devil himself bore a striking resemblance to Almena Guillory.

  She sat across from me with her back to the wall, a pistol in her lap. My pistol. Instead of the saloon dress, she had on a plain white blouse too big for her judging by the deflated folds of fabric in the front, and a tanned-leather skirt covered her legs all the way down to her ankles. I wondered where she’d gotten the change of clothes.

  “—my dead?” My lips stuck together when I tried to speak, dryness rolling back into my throat like a tumbleweed.

  “You’ve got strange notions of heaven if you’re asking me that,” she said, but her voice lacked the same vitriol as before. Her entire expression was kinder, and to look at her now was like peeking around a mountain to the eroded side you never saw. I didn’t know what to make of the change.

  “Could’ve been the other place.” I rested my eyes a moment. “Seems rude to presume upon the Lord’s judgment.”

  “Well, you’re not dead. But the Lord’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “That so?” I found that if I put my mind to it, I could sort of struggle into a sitting position. “Do you know who shot me?” My heart broke to think it might’ve been Jed, but I needed to know, one way or another.

  “It was that young one, with brown hair. I don’t know how else to describe him.”

  “One hiding behind your barrel?”

  She nodded. This surprised me at first. When I gave it some more thought, however, the picture came together.

  I relaxed back against my pillow. “He must’ve thought I was aiming at him when I went to shoot you down.”

  Almena shrugged. Apparently, it didn’t matter to her.

  “How bad was it?” I asked, meaning the gunshot.

  She absently rubbed her side and took a moment to peek outside the window before answering. “Bad.”

  I nodded. “Most times is.”

  I’d yet to investigate my wound, but did so now, tentatively moving my hands beneath the covers. I’d been caught by friendly fire in the backwoods of Kentucky once, and I recalled the misery of walking back to civilization, listening to the wet brown dirt sucking my boots, taking one step after the other after the other. Couldn’t focus on much else but moving forward. When I finally got back to town, the bandana I’d borrowed and used to hold in my juices was drenched through. You could’ve twisted it and it would’ve rinsed like a laundered shirt.

  I knew something wasn’t right as soon as I began to probe my side. Instead of that instance of revolting pain, there was nothing. Throwing back the covers, I stared down at myself, stupidly wondering where my bullet hole had run off to. Some blood remained—dark, crusty. It’d dried in a crooked streak down my stomach, originating from a spot of solid, naked flesh.

  “A genuine miracle,” I breathed.

  “Not quite.”

  My head shot up, and my eyes immediately met Guillory’s. She shifted in her chair. My pistol slumped into the hammock made by her skirt when she spread her legs. She picked it up and set it on the nightstand beside her. Maybe it was a gesture of trust, or perhaps she was tired of having a loaded weapon in her lap. Her other hand still cradled her side. Had she been injured during the shoot-out?

  “What would you call it then?”

  “Probably a mistake,” she said quietly.

  “How’s that?”

  She stood, turning away. “You saved my life. I saved yours. We’re even now, Marshal.”

  “Wait—”

  Almena didn’t get far on her own power. Something inside her seemed to crack, like a tree limb overburdened by snow. Her legs buckled. I instinctively reached out to catch her, but of course, being that I was trapped in my bed, I was too far away to do any good. She lingered on her hands and knees long enough for me to break the sluggishness the blood loss had caused me. Not saying I was graceful any. I moved with all the elegance of a drunkard stumbling home after midnight, but I managed to get up and stagger over to her.

  Almena swatted my hands, but the action caused her to grimace, and she doubled over again, clutching her side.

  “Here, let me help you up.”

  She spat blood, gooey as a wad of chewing tobacco, and used her knuckles to wipe her mouth. “It’s fine,” she told me when I made another overture of helping her to her feet. “Don’t touch me.”

  “You’re hurt.”

  “You’ll be hurting in a second if you don’t get the hell away from me.”

  I gave her the space she wanted and went to look for my shirt instead. I’m not normally self-conscious, but I didn’t relish the thought of being found in such a compromising position with a known criminal. A known female criminal. Someone was bound to arrive at the wrong conclusions.

  “The woman took it,” Almena said. “Your shirt. That’s what you’re looking for, right? She said she was going to try and get the blood out before it set.”

  “Woman?”

  “The one
who runs this place. Dorothy?”

  My brows bounced up. “We’re still in Asher?”

  “Where else? I certainly wasn’t going to drag you halfway across the country on my back.”

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to defeat my rising headache. I went and collapsed into the chair Almena had previously occupied, sort of hoping she’d take the bed. She looked like she could use it more than me.

  “Maybe you ought to start from the beginning. What happened after I passed out? And where’s the sheriff now?”

  Almena felt her way to the bed, shaking. She curled up on top of the covers like a cat, tucking her arms in protectively around her abdomen. Rather than look at me, Almena focused on the curtains past my head, breathing as evenly as she could manage. Every exhalation sounded strained.

  “You sure there’s nothing I can do?”

  “You’ve done plenty.” Her tone was waspish.

  I pushed my fingers through sweaty hair. I was getting frustrated, but at the same time, felt I needed to keep calm. “Please, Almena,” I said gently, leaning forward, trying to capture her gaze. “I’m just trying to understand, and I could use your help making sense of all this.”

  “Don’t you get tired, Marshal?” she asked me.

  “Of what?”

  “Of being so damned polite all the time.”

  Her lips threatened a smile—a real one, not the arsenic-laced expression she’d tried on me before. It was a lucky man got to see a real smile from Almena Guillory. With that thought, my mind banked hard toward the Grizzly Queen’s consort, the nameless bandit who hid in the shade of her infamy. He hadn’t come after all. Wondered what Guillory made of that, but I was smart enough not to bring it up just then.

  “You want to know what happened,” Almena said after another moment.

  I exhaled. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  She barked out a laugh and shook her head. “You’ve been nothing but trouble for me since you showed up.”

  Almena sat up, brown hair tumbling onto her shoulders. Her fingers arched over the edge of the bed, digging into the mattress. The smile faded, replaced by—I don’t know what. Sadness, maybe? She wasn’t frowning, exactly, but something about her haunted look hit me hard. I knew the number of ghosts living inside me, knew them all by name. How many ghosts did Almena Guillory carry? What were their names?