by Hayley Stone
I suspected Almena felt the same. She presided over her little court without the pomp I’d come to expect from her. There was no theater, nothing speaking to her reputation as a killer or a thief. She appeared simply as a woman, although not like one of those reluctant creatures spun out of their family’s good intentions, all lace and loveliness. She looked like Eve must have to Adam when he first woke: a fearsome thing, made from bone instead of dust. A beautiful alien.
I could imagine Almena’s response to my romanticizing. You remember how that story ends, don’t you, Marshal?
It ended in death. But all stories do if you follow them long enough.
Almena stood in front of the first injured Osage man, arms resting at her sides, breath nice and regular. She might’ve looked a little bored even, except for her eyes, silver bullets alive with purpose. A peek inside some people’s heads wasn’t worth the imaginary penny you’d spend on the expression, but increasingly, I found myself wishing to know what Almena was thinking. What made her tick.
“She has a gift, you know,” James said from his seat on the pew beside me. Up close, I could better see the age in his face: the tops of his cheeks where his greying red beard didn’t reach were darkly freckled by the sun, and he had severe crow’s feet around his eyes, which I found strange, given the man’s prickly disposition. He didn’t seem one for laughter and merry-making, but maybe they were relics from another time. A time before the war. Maybe he’d lost a lot more than just his leg in the fighting.
“That’s a generous way of putting it,” I said, feeling the jury was still out. Almena called what she did bruising, so I hesitated to name it a good thing, but I couldn’t deny that it’d given me a second chance at life. “Can’t imagine most men in your position would see it that way. But then, most men also wouldn’t risk their hide for a couple of natives, so I’m not sure what to make of you, Preacher.”
James snorted, a sound that reminded me of a bull in a pen. “World’s a changing place, son.” He adjusted what remained of his leg, cut off just above the knee.
I stood, trying to get a better angle on Almena’s activity. After one of the Osage women removed a bandage drenched in blood, Almena placed a hand on the injury—a diagonal cut, thin and neat, probably from a saber—and pressed her fingers into the red mouth of the wound, as if she would pull it from his flesh altogether. I grimaced instinctively, recalling the cold pinch of metal tweezers the local doc had used to pick out every piece of buckshot from my shoulder back in the day. This looked worse.
“Did you fight in the war, Mister Richardson?” James asked me.
“No, sir. Not directly.”
“What’s that mean, not directly?”
Almena’s face changed, becoming tight. She swayed, causing one of the other women to grab her by the shoulders. She shrugged the woman’s hands off, shaking her head, and adjusted her footing. I watched, incredulous, as the man’s wound began to disappear before my eyes—quickly, almost in flashes, the meaty inside repairing itself first, and the skin finally stitching closed over the top. It happened in a matter of seconds. I was so busy watching the miracle on his body, it took me a full minute to notice the dark spread across Almena’s chest.
Meanwhile, nearby, Fairly sat complaining about his shoulder, but his warden wasn’t listening. Dempsey looked visibly enamored by the Osage, eyeing their buckskin tunics, buffalo robes, and hair pipe beads with interest. He sat so far forward on one of the pews, he might as well have been standing. I suspected he didn’t want to appear nosy, but he was doing a poor job of pretending otherwise.
“I dealt with the consequences of the war in a different capacity,” I answered the preacher. “I was in Missouri for most of it. There was some trouble there with citizen soldiers, men loyal to the idea of secession, and determined to bring the state into the Confederacy. You hear of Quantrill’s Raiders? The Lawrence Massacre?” James nodded. “That’s the war I fought. Weren’t no Gettysburg or Sharpsburg, but it meant something at the time.”
James stared straight ahead. “You fought for the North, then?”
I gripped the back of the pew in front of me and looked down, as if the past could be found somewhere on the dusty floor of the church. “At the time, I confess I never gave much mind to North or South, Union or Confederacy. For me, it was only about keeping the peace. I wasn’t fighting for anybody or anything; I was fighting against men like Bloody Bill Anderson and William Quantrill. Men who were making the state bleed, and needed to be stopped.”
Almena moved on to another bad cut close to the Osage man’s neck, where the flesh looked raw and angry. Her patient suddenly groaned, half-wailing, tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. He swung helplessly at his perceived attacker, connecting with her arm.
I expected Almena to swat him, but instead, she caught his hand and held it a moment. Keeping silent, she let him bluster weakly at her in his native tongue. If she understood what he was saying, her face didn’t show a response, though she didn’t look unsympathetic. Her mouth moved for a brief instant, but I couldn’t hear what she said, and I was no good at reading lips. After another moment, he finally calmed, and she lowered his arm back down to his side, gently. His female companion received his hand like a gift, cradling it to her cheek.
“But you sound like you’re from the South,” James said.
“North Carolina,” I agreed.
“Virginia,” he said for himself. “And you had no opinion about what was happening to your home?”
“Well,” I said, backtracking some. “Not exactly none. I was young, about twenty when the war broke out. I was full of opinions—about everything. My state, the war, slavery. And I’m sure most of them were stupid.”
The preacher smiled for the first time. It was a thing to see, like the sun coming out in the middle of a hard winter. I noticed he had very small teeth—an odd detail, but one of the things I still remember about him.
Not sure what provoked it, but I found myself telling the man things I’d never told another living soul. Thoughts I’d never given voice to suddenly stumbled free.
“My family never owned slaves, but that don’t mean I wasn’t complicit,” I admitted quietly. “That I didn’t benefit from the institution in ways unseen. Looking back now, I can see how much easier it was for me, moving through life without having to worry about someone putting me in chains and others insisting I deserved them.”
James nodded, looking thoughtful. He rubbed the stump at the end of his thigh and was silent for so long that when he did speak, it sounded like some long-awaited rock fall. “I fought for the South. Lost my leg trying to protect a way of life that I now know wasn’t worth saving. Be thankful you came to wisdom sooner than I did, and at less cost.”
Almena gathered several more injuries, holding them inside her body somehow. I still didn’t know all the particulars of her bruising, and I guessed I might never know, unless she had a change of heart and wanted to tell me. I watched minor cuts and bruises appear on her face and on her arms, only to blend into her skin moments later, almost as if the wounds were evaporating at her will. A hundred years ago, this sort of thing would’ve gotten her burned at the stake or put through one of those river ordeals to see if she would float. Today… well, I wasn’t sure the same couldn’t still be said. You get enough people together and show them something new, they’ll call it the devil’s work every time.
Dempsey leaned forward, resting his arms on the back of my pew. “How is she doing that? I mean, what is she doing?” Wonder livened his blue eyes, and his trademark frown was absent. The kid looked enchanted. “Is it some kind of Indian ritual? I’ve heard stories of their magic, but I never imagined…”
“Oh, it’s magic all right,” I agreed. “But hers, not theirs.”
He leaned in closer, speaking more quietly. “How are we going to take her when she can do—that?”
“I plan on asking nicely.”
Dempsey gave me a funny look.
I
rolled my eyes over to him, before dropping them to my holstered gun.
“Okay,” he said. “Just checking.”
One of the Osage women cried out, grabbing my attention like a whip. I shot to my feet, and saw the woman’s hands captured in Almena’s. What in blazes was she doing to make that poor woman scream?
“Guillory,” I said in warning.
Almena ignored me, eyes on the Osage woman. “You want to save your husband?” The woman nodded, lip quivering. “Good. You know the price. Now hold still and keep quiet. It’s not going to kill you.”
Footprints-in-the-woods, with a kind expression, placed a hand on her companion’s back, rubbing small circles between her shoulder blades. The woman’s lip stiffened.
“What’s going on?” Dempsey asked. “Is she hurting them?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered.
“Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Not just yet…”
The circle suddenly made sense as I watched each woman extend her hand to Almena. Dempsey wasn’t far off: it did look ritualistic. Almena was trading her pain to the other women, and they accepted the wounds with straight backs and staunch expressions, as though they were receiving high honors.
The second Osage man was worse off, having taken multiple shots to his front and back. It looked like someone had spent an entire wheel on him, keeping on even when he turned to flee—but whoever it was, they weren’t a very good shot. Depending on how long ago the attack took place, I thought it impressive he’d lived this long. Good physical shape couldn’t account for it, so it had to be will.
After a short but heated exchange with Footprints-in-the-woods, Almena turned to me. “Marshal, a word?”
A moment later we stood together at the front of the church, off to the side of the pulpit.
“He’s in bad shape, ain’t he?” I guessed. “That other fella there.”
“He’s going to die,” Almena told me. I noticed she was still wearing the worst of the previous man’s wounds—the saber cut across the chest. Her face was drawn, and I found it odd she wasn’t bothering to do anything about the pain.
“Nothing you can do?”
“Something. One thing. But you won’t like it. I don’t like it,” she added, glancing back and meeting the steady gaze of Footprints-in-the-woods. “We took out the bullets, but the shots weren’t clean. He’s taken with fever, and I can’t do anything about that. He might, might recover if I take the wounds, but… they’re already infected. It’ll kill whoever takes them on, me included. Even if I gave one gunshot to each of the women, it wouldn’t matter. It’d poison them each like it’s done him.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because she’s volunteered.” Almena indicated Footprints-in-the-woods. “That’s her little brother, The-traveling-star. She feels responsible for what happened to him. It was her idea to go out yesterday, and her whiskey operation.”
“Hell,” I muttered.
“That’s right, Marshal. Not always so black and white in my world, is it?”
I gave her a dark look. “Nothing grey about what you did in Baxter.”
She looked genuinely puzzled. “Baxter… Springs?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about, Marshal. I haven’t been to Baxter Springs in over a year.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Arms folded across my chest, I stared down the Grizzly Queen of the West, trying to get a read on her.
“Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “What’s happened in Baxter Springs?”
“A conversation for later. Let’s get back to the issue at hand.”
Almena rubbed her face, leaving streaks of red that looked like claw marks. “I’m only telling you this so you understand: when she dies, it’s not my fault.”
“Surely you’re not thinking—”
“I surely am,” she interrupted, perhaps more loudly than she intended. The Osage women looked over at us, and Almena lowered her voice. “It’s her brother. Her life. Her choice. If she wants to die for him, I’m going to let her.”
I was shaking my head, but I hadn’t yet come up with a good enough argument against it.
Almena moved closer, presumably so I would hear her next words. She smelled sharp and strong, of blood and flesh barbecued by the sun, and that odor made her feel wondrously real to me. She wasn’t some phantom I’d been hopelessly chasing since Asher. I hadn’t made her or her odd combination of vengeance and grace up. Felt damn foolish for even believing I had the kind of mind to invent a woman like her.
When she spoke, she looked more sincere than I’d ever seen her.
“Think about what her alternative is, Apostle. Watching someone she loves die a gruesome death, the whole time knowing she has the power to save him.” Almena hugged herself, looking away. With her arms crushed to her chest, I could see the saber cut peeking through the cleavage of her blouse, already starting to heal up. Another reminder this woman was accustomed to being broken. No wonder she was so dry and hard; the world had bled her. “She’ll be alive, but alive and living are two separate things. Every morning, she’ll wake to the reality of who she is: a woman who chooses herself over her brother.”
I looked at her tenderly. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
She went rabbit-still. “Don’t do that. Don’t try and be my friend.”
“I ain’t trying to be your friend…”
“Then why do you care?”
I frowned. “I strike you as the sort of man who doesn’t care about people?”
“No,” she admitted. “You strike me as the sort of man who cares too much about things he has no business caring for. A man just fool enough to believe he can make a difference in the world. That’s the sort of man you strike me as, Apostle Richardson, and I want none of that. None of you.”
“Who’d you let die, Miss Guillory?” I asked.
Her eyes widened, her pulse flicking inside the vein on her neck. I’d caught her off guard. “What does it matter now?”
“Just trying to get a sense of your history. It’s like you’ve always been here, but I know that’s not the case. There’s always a before. And before four years ago, no one had even heard of you.”
She smiled, but it was the grim smile a skeleton wears after the desert’s worn away its skin. “You think you’re going to find a good woman buried somewhere in my past?”
I paused a moment, trying to see past the layers of hostility, her forced persona. I suddenly felt sorry for her, though I didn’t know why. “Who was it, Almena?” I repeated, wearing a gentle expression.
“A decent man.” She took another step back. “A good man. Hell, the greatest man I ever knew.”
“Strange name for a man.”
She looked confused and then shook her head, a breathy chuckle bursting from her lips. “You are something, Marshal,” she said, her smile a little less skeletal.
Nothing more to say, Almena turned on her heels and fell back to where Footprints-in-the-woods and her brother were waiting.
Chapter Eleven
Almena asked James to bring Footprints-in-the-woods some of the communion wine for the pain, and to my surprise, the preacher obliged. I decided I liked the man. I’d known other pastors who would’ve held the wine hostage on the condition of conversion. But that just didn’t seem right to me; you don’t hold a man over a fire, then try and sell him water.
Fortified by the wine, Footprints-in-the-woods kept stoic for as long as she could, but around the second wound, she began to cry. At the third, her mouth broke open, releasing terrible screams, and by the fourth, her keening had turned to quiet, tortured sobs. Dempsey asked to step outside for some air, and I couldn’t blame him.
The-traveling-star still hadn’t come around yet. If he ever would.
Dempsey wasn’t outside more than two minutes before he popped back in and motioned for me, looking skittish as an unbroken
horse. I grabbed my hat and fitted it on my head as I got up to join him, sensing I was about to be dragged outside.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Posse just rode in,” he said in a rush. “Looks like some of the men from Baxter Springs.”
When it rains, it pours. “What are they up to?”
“About what you’d expect from a bunch of men who’ve just watched their friends and family mowed down by a gang of bloodthirsty outlaws.” He frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. “You were right before, Apostle. They’re angry and spoiling for a fight.”
“They’re not going to have much trouble finding one here.” I glanced at Almena. She looked up long enough to catch me staring, a question in her eyes. She looked grim and tired and in no condition to defend herself. I turned back to Dempsey. “Do they know she’s here?”
“I don’t know. But they have an outlaw with them, one from back on the trail—the man Wade missed. The leader.”
I pushed past Dempsey, nearly cursing. “Try leading with that next time.”
I jogged down the steps of the church.
“Why are we protecting her?” Dempsey asked after me.
“Because I don’t believe she’s responsible for what happened in Baxter.”
Dempsey joined me at the bottom of the stairs, flicking a wet fringe of hair from his eyes. It’d stopped raining, but the sky continued in a threatening shade of green. I worried she had a mind to lay down a tornado.
“Guillory did everything else she’s been accused of,” Dempsey said. “The robberies, the murders. She is an outlaw. Or isn’t that why we rode out here in the first place?”
From somewhere on the street behind me, the air popped with gunfire. High, panicked voices crowded the silence that followed each gunshot. I itched to check out the scene. Someone had to intercede before things got worse, and in the absence of a more qualified lawman, seemed I was left the honor.
“Whatever her crimes, that’s up to a judge to decide,” I said. “We just get them off the street.”