Make Me No Grave

by Hayley Stone

  He pursued me a few more steps away from the church. “You’re not the least bit worried she’ll run?”

  “No. I imagine that’s exactly what she’ll do.” I read the doubt on his face, and removed my hat briefly, agitating my hair. “If you’re worried about it, and feel so compelled, stay back and watch her. Just—don’t let her touch you.” I knew enough about bruising to recognize that physical touch had its role. “You’ve seen what she can do, and I reckon you’ve heard what else she’s capable of.”

  “No.” Dempsey shook his head. “I’m coming with you.”

  “All right then. Let’s get on.”

  Together, we hastened for the main street.

  “Apostle. You don’t… like the woman, do you?” Dempsey was watching me carefully.

  This time, I didn’t bother to slow my pace as I addressed him. “Honestly, I don’t know what to make of her. She is an outlaw, make no mistake. But she saved my life once. I’d like to see her get a fair trial. She deserves that, at least.”

  “She saved you? When? How?”

  I held up a hand, stopping his flow of questions. “Long story. No time for it now. When we come up on the posse, keep your hands away from your leather. We don’t want to spook them. Leave the talking to me. If we’re lucky, they’ll listen to reason, turn around, and ride right back the way they came.”

  “And if we’re unlucky? If it comes down to a gunfight?”

  “Then we do our best not to place second,” I replied drily.

  Coffeyville wasn’t always here. At least, a town called Coffeyville wasn’t. The original settlement was closer to Indian Territory and farther from the cool relief of the river, but about as rowdy a place as you’d find today. I visited “Old” Coffeyville once, shortly after war’s end, and once was plenty. Situated smack dab on the southern cattle trail, Old Coffeyville had attracted all kinds—people and trouble alike. The usual culprits were cowpunchers, many of them honest men just looking to blow off steam after working tirelessly in the heat all day, and who found willing accomplices in the saloons. Drink and a restless frontier spirit proved, as it almost always did, the recipe for disaster. At some point, crime got so bad in the town, they started calling its main thoroughfare the “Red Hot Street” on account of all the murder.

  That nickname floated back to me as Dempsey and I came upon the scene, the air already smelling warm and ashy. Unfortunately, the layout of the town made it impossible for us to hide our arrival. The main thoroughfare was a wide avenue of dirt to allow herds of cattle to pass through, flanked on either side by wooden buildings and a few plank sidewalks. The false fronts on the buildings made them look taller and more grand than they actually were. Most were squat single-story affairs. Signposts jutted out toward the street, declaring the goods available at each store in bold capital lettering—groceries, belts, tinware, and of course, liquor. I counted three liquor signs for every one of anything else. There were at least three other buildings in various states of completion, each wearing banners that announced, COMING SOON, but failed to say what that something was.

  I eyed a few alleys squeezed between the buildings as we passed them, but none appeared to lead anywhere interesting, and anyone with experience would tell you an alley’s a bad place to be in a gunfight anyhow. No room to maneuver. I always avoided alleys when I could.

  Ahead, I recognized some of the posse—Chuck Fletcher and the balding Leonard, as well as the man who’d lost his wife in the bank—but there were a dozen others with them whose names I didn’t know. They were saddled on brown horses: towering, shadowless figures, displaying pistols or holding rifles against their shoulders. A few used their horses to bully the men who’d just come stumbling out of the saloons, herding them around like cattle. While some of the Coffeyville variety appeared bleary-eyed and annoyed, others looked abundantly sober and furious as they fumbled for their own weapons.

  I also recognized the dark-haired bandit leader who’d attacked us. He shambled behind Leonard’s horse, hands bound at the wrist and a rope around his neck. A line of blood ran down the side of his face. Had he been grazed by a bullet? Or merely knocked around a bit? Either way, the man looked exhausted. Each time the horse jerked him forward, I expected him to lose his balance and accidentally strangle himself. He came very near to choking several times.

  “Go and ask that fella there what’s going on,” I said to Dempsey, indicating one of the posse members I didn’t recognize. An older gentleman with a dark goatee that stopped halfway up the sides of his face.

  “Why?” Dempsey asked.

  “Because we need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here. Why they’ve come, and what it’ll take for them to leave.”

  “No—I mean, why me? Why not ask him yourself?”

  I tried to be patient, despite feeling just the opposite. “Any number of them are likely to spot me as one of the marshals from the other day.”

  Dempsey looked at the man, then back at me, considering. “You don’t think he’ll recognize me?”

  “You remember seeing that man? Talk to him at all?”

  “No.”

  “There’s your answer.” Dempsey nodded, but anxiously adjusted the shoulder straps of his holster. I nearly reached out and grabbed him, feeling eyes on us. “What did I tell you about putting your hands near your leather?”

  “Sorry.”

  He let his arms drop, pouting in his usual way. He did it so often the effect had diminished. Still, I’d begun to wonder if he was even aware of his brooding. Back in Independence, I’d taken it for boredom: a talented man being forced to work as a grocer. But maybe it was something else entirely. I knew I’d have to watch him. Malcontents could breed all sorts of problems, especially if they were armed with a badge. I still believed Dempsey had a good head on his shoulders, but the truth was, I didn’t yet know his heart.

  I’ll just have to be cautious with him. All the kid needs is a steady hand, like I had. We still needed to talk about what happened back at the coach. But that’d have to wait until later.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Just do what I’ve asked.”

  Dempsey started, then stopped. “And what will you be doing?”

  I gave him the full weight of my stare. “I’m still deciding. Now—” I pointed my chin toward the man with the goatee, and Dempsey finally took the hint.

  “Listen up!” the widowed man said, gaining the attention of the crowd. “Two days ago, the bank in Baxter Springs was robbed. During the heist, my wife was brutally shot down in cold blood.” He struggled with the telling, just as before, the words crushed between his teeth. “Others were killed, too, including our sheriff and a boy of only nine years old.”

  I looked around. To my surprise, those in Coffeyville were actually listening. At least, their eyes were open and their mouths shut, which amounted to just about the same thing.

  “We caught one of them on the road on our way here.”

  Leonard gave a good hard yank on the rope, bringing the dark-haired outlaw forward. He went down on hands and knees. Leonard yanked again, and the outlaw made a strangled sound, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the noose. The widowed posse leader looked on, not exactly pleased, but not squeamish either.

  “Casella rides with Guillory now?” I heard someone ask, somewhere to my left.

  Someone else answered, “Don’t be stupid. Dante Casella rides for himself and no one else. Besides, the Grizzly Queen’d never put up with the likes of him.”

  The outlaw wheezed. “No… no! I wasn’t at Baxter Springs…”

  “Shut up,” Leonard said, cuffing him with the leftover tail of the rope. “Go on, Gil. Tell them the rest.”

  Gil. Short for Guilford or Gilbert, maybe? Without the distraction of the cigar, I was able to see the man better, noting his jowly face, partially covered by a yellow beard and a scowl. The wind swept all of his light blond hair to one side like an arrangement of grass, giving him a wild look. He wore simple clothes, the bottom butto
ns on his vest undone. Lots of black. Good clothes to die in, if’n he had a mind for it.

  The posse leader continued his spiel while Dante Casella struggled to breathe, making no effort to get back onto his feet. Wise, considering.

  “I have it on good authority from a deputy U.S. marshal that the person responsible for leading this gang of monsters is a woman by the name of Guillory.”

  I frowned. That wasn’t exactly how I remembered our conversation going.

  I stepped forward with every intention of setting the record straight, but someone grabbed me back. I turned, ready to draw down on the man who’d decided to come at me from the crowd like a coward.

  “Hold your horses.” Almena’s voice was in my ear. She glanced down. “You mind?”

  I lowered my piece from her stomach, quietly sliding the gun back into its holster. To avoid drawing attention, I went back to staring ahead, watching the posse, as if their quarry wasn’t standing right there beside me.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked, barely moving my lips.

  “Came to see what all the excitement was about.”

  “The Grizzly Queen!” someone from the crowd shouted, causing both of us to damn near break our necks turning to look, though it appeared the man was only responding to Almena’s name being mentioned.

  “Apparently, it involves me,” she said with a wan smile. “Anything you’d like to share? Like where they got my name in association with Baxter Springs?”

  There was something chilly in her voice, almost angry. I don’t think she liked being related to the murder of innocents, especially a child.

  “Now ain’t the time,” I told her. “Get back to the church. This is the last place you should be right now.”

  “One could say the same for you.”

  “Whatever you call her,” Gil said, having to repeat himself twice in order to be heard, “she’s a murderer and I’ll see her answer for it. Her and the rest of her gang! Turn them over to us and we’ll leave. Simple as that.”

  “Don’t,” Almena said to me, guessing my intentions. She still had me by the arm. I recalled my earlier warning to Dempsey: don’t let her touch you. But while there was strength in her grip and no mistaking her decision to keep me right where I was, she wasn’t hurting me any.

  “Someone needs to do something.”

  “And of course, that someone always has to be you. That kind of attitude’s going to get you killed one of these days.”

  “Probably.”

  “Coffeyville’s already got a sheriff. It doesn’t need you, too.”

  “We’re awful sorry to hear about what happened at Baxter,” a pot-bellied man volunteered from the crowd. Gil watched him with a dark, apathetic look. His eyes shined. “But what makes you think Guillory and her crew have”—the gentleman paused, placing a fist against his chest to stifle either a belch or the urge to vomit—“taken up here?”

  “Your town’s a shit hole,” Leonard answered. “Ain’t that where outlaws like to crawl into and hide?”

  All sympathy went out of the pot-bellied man’s face. “What did you say?”

  I looked at Almena. “What was that about a sheriff?”

  She glanced down the street, chewing the bottom corner of her lip—something I hadn’t seen her do since Asher. “Give him a chance. The man’s put out worse fires than this. He’s probably just sleeping in one of the jail cells. James went to fetch him; he’ll be here soon.”

  “He’s coming,” I said to Almena. “Sound familiar?”

  Almena blanched as if I’d aimed to strike her. “This is different.”

  “My friend spoke out of turn,” Gil said, shooting Leonard an annoyed look. “What he meant was, Coffeyville’s not exactly what you’d call a friendly, law-abiding town.”

  The pot-bellied man’s eyes bugged, then narrowed. “Not like your precious Baxter Springs, you mean?”

  Gil held his gaze. “That’s right.”

  “So what you’re really saying is, we’re all criminals here, that it?”

  This comment cracked the peaceful truce between the posse and the Coffeyville crowd. Some saloon-goers began to shout insults at the men on the horses.

  I started forward again.

  “Apostle,” Almena hissed. Her fingers dug into my arm. “I’m not taking another bullet for you.”

  I looked at her, confused. “I’d never ask you to.” For whatever reason, this stunned her, and I was able to extricate myself. I pointed down the street. “Get back to the church and stay there until I come and get you.”

  “So you can arrest me.”

  “Better me than these kind folks here.”

  “We’ve got no quarrel with you,” Gil said, attempting to pacify the riled Coffeyville crowd. Beside him, his posse drew near on their horses, using the bulk of the animals as a defense against the men crowing threats and curses at them. Circling the wagons.

  “Oh, yeah? Might be we have a quarrel with you,” another man said, joining his indignant pal. He was quite a bit larger, being of a height with Gil’s horse, and his neck disappeared into a broad chest covered in a faded black vest. One shoulder was up higher than the other, making me think he might have some problem with his spine. “Coming into our town, all high and righteous, thinking you’re better than us. Accusing us of hiding murderers and what else. I think we do have a quarrel on our hands, boys. Indeed I do!”

  Almena followed behind me as I approached the conflict.

  “And if you get yourself killed being all noble?” she asked.

  “Then I guess you’ve no reason to worry either way.”

  “Marshal?” another voice cried out.

  A horse reined roughly in front of me, sudden enough to draw a whinnying complaint from the animal. I rested my hand on the butt of my gun, resisting the urge to pull; in a crowd like this, such an action could practically be counted as suicide. I wished in that moment I knew some of Dorothy’s tricks, that magic with the match. Disappearing sounded mighty fine right about then.

  The rider lifted their head. The shadow from their hat retracted over a strong jaw and blue-green eyes with a crown of thin lashes. Eyes I remembered well.

  “Miss Kingery?” I said, showing my surprise.

  With her hair trapped underneath a brown derby, and her wearing trousers and a loose-fitting duster clearly borrowed, I’d initially mistook her for a man. Like Almena, both women seemed to have an uncanny ability to blend in or go overlooked, when they wanted to.

  Before I could ask Miss Kingery what in the devil’s name had possessed her to ride along on a lynching, I caught snippets of a dangerous conversation starting up behind me:

  “Did he just call him a marshal?”

  “I think he’s a woman.”

  “Not the rider, you moron. The marshal.”

  “The woman’s a marshal? They have those now?”

  “I thought you were riding north,” Miss Kingery said, ignorant of the danger she’d just put me in. She must’ve spotted Almena nearby, because her eyes widened. “Is that her?”

  “Who?” I said, not bothering to look.

  “Lying’s a sin, Marshal.”

  “There!” said one of the men behind me. “She did it again! She called him a marshal!”

  “So’s taking the law into your own hands and killing a man. Or woman,” I said, moving past her with an instinctive tip of my hat. “Food for thought. Excuse me.”

  Dempsey was waving me over. Before I could reach him, some drunkard stumbled into a set of boxes.

  Startled, the Coffeyville crowd surged forward toward the posse, carrying me halfway into the street and nearly beneath the hooves of a startled horse. Above the hats and heads, the posse bobbed around on their mounts, trying to fend off the Coffeyville men with a lot of mean words and pistol waving. Someone forced me up against the flank of another horse, momentarily crushing the air from my lungs. Someone else fired a shot—don’t know if it were a warning shot or not, but it split the crowd like
Moses’s staff parting the Red Sea. Seconds later the crowd slammed back together, and all hell broke loose with both sides throwing down on one another.

  I saw the long-haired man drag Gil from his horse, and others repeated the action, laying hands on whoever they could get at. The riders either went down or stampeded over their attackers. Bones crunched, followed by mangled cries.

  As I raised my gun to the sky, intent on shutting this rodeo down, someone’s fist flew out of the confusion, catching me square on the jaw. White exploded behind my eyes, and I stumbled backwards, barely managing to keep my feet under me. I didn’t see who’d done it, and no one came at me for a second round. Given how inebriated some of the men were, I felt it likely the man who’d assaulted me didn’t even know he’d done it.

  I shook my head, blinking a couple times.

  The next man who came at me didn’t have the excuse of drunkenness. Nor did he have the benefit of catching me off guard. His eyes were focused, and he shoved another man out of the way on approach. Maybe he just didn’t like the look of me. I don’t know.

  I ducked beneath his first swing and came up under his arm, plowing into him and taking us both to the ground. We grappled for a few seconds before I was able to get my gun hand free, then I clobbered him upside the head. He went limp, but being heavy as all get out, I started sinking into the mud beneath him, suffocating under his bulk.

  In perfect timing, Dempsey appeared and helped move his prone body off me. We rolled him to my side, making sure to leave him facing up, rather than drowning in an inch of muck. Dempsey pulled me back onto my feet, then wiped his hands off on his trousers. I rubbed some blood from my mouth and spat.

  “Now what?” he asked as we drew back from the brawling center.

  I’d lost sight of Almena, but I saw Miss Kingery sitting pretty above the mess, swatting at a man who’d taken hold of her foot. I was about to go over and help her when she got the idea to kick him in the nose; he reeled back, bleeding like a stuck pig, and she took off on her horse—or the horse took off with her on it. I wasn’t quite sure which. At least she was out of danger for the time being.