Make Me No Grave

by Hayley Stone

  “Except I intend on killing them.”

  “Right. Except that.”

  “Don’t look at this as blackmail, Apostle. Look at it as an incentive.”

  “Incentive to do what exactly?”

  “Whatever I say. Most of the men I work with—have worked with in the past, money’s enough to make them behave. I wouldn’t insult you by offering to bribe you.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  “But I need insurance you won’t stab me in the back the first opportunity you get.”

  Is that what this was about? She was afraid of me? “Guess you were right before, when you said I didn’t have a choice.”

  Let her believe she’d licked me. Truth was, I’d already made my own choice. Whole reason I was out here wasn’t on account of some misplaced sense of debt; I didn’t feel I owed Almena anything for Asher or Coffeyville, not after what happened with Dempsey, which she undoubtedly orchestrated to condemn me in the eyes of my friends. I’d admit, Almena Guillory interested me on a personal level, but it went no further than that. I was focused on doing my job. While collaring the Grizzly Queen would have been a good start, it presented other problems. For one, with her men still at large, keeping her in prison would’ve required more money and manpower than I knew the state was willing to expense. They’d hang her simply to cut down on the cost, and that didn’t sit easy with me. Not to mention the trouble her boys would get up to on their own in the meantime. Tracking them down without a name or face would be damn near impossible—until they committed another act of thieving or violence, and then it’d be too late.

  I was sick of arriving after the fact. Sick of seeing faces pinched in grief, and the dead laid out shoulder-to-shoulder in the street like boardwalk planks. Even now, the familiar smell of dust mangled by the sharp, bodiless odor of blood wouldn’t leave my head.

  Why weren’t you here sooner? Miss Kingery had asked me in Baxter.

  It was a question I hoped never to have to answer again.

  So here I was, on the cusp of a new plan which relied upon Almena pulling her outfit back together, and me being there when she did it. After all, if going after her imposter was truly Almena’s intention, she’d need others to do it. When it came time for a showdown between the two gangs, if I couldn’t organize with law enforcement beforehand, I could always just… step back. Let them ventilate each other, and sweep whoever survived into a nice jail cell. With one confrontation, I could singlehandedly put an end to two of the worst threats in Kansas.

  “Past this point,” I said, not wanting to look too eager or complicit, “we might work together, and I’ll go along with your plans. But we ain’t friends.”

  Almena laughed. “Was there ever a chance we would be?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The following morning we finally reached Almena Guillory’s house.

  Almena told me to wipe off my boots before coming inside. I didn’t argue, obliging best I could by scraping my soles against the uneven lip of the front porch. When I looked up, prepared to offer the bottom of my boot for inspection, as I’d always done with my wife, Almena had already disappeared inside. Seemed we had a schedule to keep.

  I knocked my boots once more against the porch and went in.

  Unlike most Kansas residences, Almena’s house had two stories. It looked like a New England transplant, a simplified version of a Southern plantation home. The neat façade was polished in simple white paint, with four narrow columns supporting a second-floor balcony.

  I entered without removing my hat, making note of the open doorways along the hall. House had too many corners where anyone might be lying in wait, preparing to catch themselves a marshal unawares. I became more conscious of the way my gun belt sat low and heavy on my hips. It was powerful tempting, the desire to draw my weapon, but I resisted the urge. Pulling out my piece would come off badly. Like I didn’t trust my host.

  Which, of course, was true, but it didn’t help my plans none. Plus, way I saw it, weren’t no excuse for being rude in the lady’s own home.

  I instinctively pushed my coat behind my leather, leaving myself the option, and continued inside.

  “Just upstairs,” Almena hollered down.

  The staircase hugged the entryway’s right wall, its fat, bottom step only a little distance from an arcing scratch left by the front door swinging open and closed. Almena’s hat crowned the first post, homey in a way. Also a good reminder: I was in her domain here. Best not forget it.

  Without landings, the staircase provided a straight shot to the second floor where a two-shelved window gave some light, and dust motes swirled lazily. They turned into and away from some competing drafts, reminding me of partners in a Virginia reel. A pink body of sunlight fell crooked against the stairs, and I followed its trail up, ducking my head to protect my eyes inside the shadow of my hat.

  At the top of the stairs, I entered a room unoccupied except for furniture, including a large bed dressed in a thick diamond-patterned quilt with blue and purple blocks. A mahogany dresser with dark brass handles squatted low against the opposite wall, beside a table positioned halfway in front of a large window that opened onto the back of the house.

  I wondered whether this was Almena’s bedroom, but just as quickly decided it was none of my business. As I was about to leave, however, something on the dresser caught my attention.

  I nudged the door closed with my foot and walked back into the room. The dresser was back-boarded by a mirror whose edges were foggy from age. Along the top were an assortment of collected knick-knacks—a half-empty bottle of women’s perfume, a hairbrush with yellowing teeth, some kind of oriental mirror, and a wooden box I guessed was full of jewelry, earrings and necklaces, maybe, things I’d never seen the outlaw queen wear.

  But most interesting, and what had first caught my eye, were the portraits.

  I lifted one from the top of the dresser, using the side of my fist to rub off the dust. It showed a young woman in a beautiful gown that closed around her throat, seated unsmiling. I almost didn’t recognize the woman as Almena, but the eyes were a dead giveaway, hauntingly bright in the silver image as they stared ahead. Not cool or proud, but rather soft and a little shy. Her hair was done up in a chignon like the ladies in Washington wore. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen when the portrait was done.

  I returned it with care and reached for the next one, positioned a little behind the first. This picture didn’t have the same air of formality to it. Instead, it showed an older woman with a wily, unreadable expression, seated in a large dark dress—perhaps in mourning?—while a little girl I guessed to be her daughter stood beside her somberly. The woman’s gloved hand held tight to the girl’s waist, the child’s poof of a dress squashed between them.

  Was this Almena and her mother?

  It was hard to imagine the plump little thing in the picture growing into the hard, lean creature I knew, the one bankers and honest folk had come to fear. But the older woman, apart from sharing Almena’s nose and jawline, also had the same formidable look about her. As if she could stomach a bayonet or shrug off a bullet. Then again, maybe she could’ve done. If Almena had inherited her mother’s steel, kind of made me wonder what else she’d inherited from her.

  There was one last frame I almost missed on account of it lying facedown on the dresser. This one had two pictures instead of one, locked in separate windows of glass. Partitioned by a hinge in the middle, it opened between my hands like a book. On the left, a lean crack fissured out over the frozen image of a young Union soldier—stoic, sitting tall, and holding a Springfield pointed at the ceiling. He was dressed in his blues, although I use the term loosely. The nature of the photograph meant there was no color, only outlines of silver when you moved it just right.

  I let my gaze trail to the next picture. That of the man’s regiment, I assumed, picking him out as the only smooth-faced man among the bunch.

  Hold a moment.

  I quickly looked back at th
e first picture, comparing them. Couldn’t be… but it was! The man weren’t no man at all, but Almena Guillory herself, wearing the attitude and fatigues as well as any man I ever saw. With her forage cap pushed toward the front, a shadow slumped over her forehead, making her eyes look beady and dark. She was younger here, much younger than she was now, and rounder, still carrying some of that childhood pudge in her face.

  Of course, I’d known she’d fought in the war. Jed told me as much, and Almena all but confirmed it. But it was different, actually seeing these past incarnations. Knowing she’d been someone else at one time. Someone other than the criminal she was today. Someone uncorrupted by the war, by disappointment, by—hell, whatever terrible thing it was that had converted her into a murderer.

  More than that, I felt like I’d stumbled into something intensely private. I rushed to put the frame back, but I must’ve set it down a little too hard because the back popped open.

  “Shit,” I muttered, the occasion warranting such language. My initial attempts to set it aright failed, and something previously hidden in the frame fell out and onto the floor. It looked like some kind of note or letter, folded over enough times to be housed together with the picture.

  Wish I could say I was decent enough to put it back without reading it. That would’ve been the right thing to do. But maybe I wasn’t so decent anymore. Almena made a good point earlier. I’d already crossed a line back in Coffeyville—and she would know, being the one who shoved me over it.

  And heck, I was curious.

  I carefully unfolded the note, smoothing it out. The paper was a mangle of creases, as though someone had repeatedly folded and unfolded it a dozen times. Maybe a hundred. Strong but spidery handwriting peered up at me. A smear here and there where the side of a hand had brushed against wet ink told me whoever the author was, he or she wasn’t used to sitting down and writing letters. Or else they were angry and didn’t care.

  The more I read, the more I realized the latter was likely the case.

  The letter began with a date—April 20, 1865—and a curt, anonymous address:

  Dear Madam,

  There are no words. I have searched long and hard for them, but nothing seems adequate to address the enormity of this loss. By now, the country should know how to mourn. I expect it will do a better job than me. But you are owed some consolation, some tendering of affection in this black time, however poor, and so I offer you this lonely sentiment from one grieving woman to another, should this letter ever find you amidst greater correspondences.

  I am sorry. Your husband never aspired to be a great man, only a good one, but in so doing became great. Of course, you already know this, having loved him longer than I. Having loved him longer than anyone in this ungrateful country, this arrogant collection of States. I expect that number will only grow with time as future generations learn of his enduring courage, his inimitable compassion. For my part, I considered him a friend, a very great friend, and I regret that in the end, I was not more worthy of the kindness and understanding he showed me.

  If a fault could be found in your husband, Madam, it would be this: his trust and belief in the inherent goodness of men. He believed in appealing to the better angels of our nature—but for there to be angels, there must also be demons. He placed his faith in the wrong woman. I am not an angel, except of death. Even then, I think most would agree I am more coward than fiend. I suspect I always have been, though it took this tragedy to show me the truth of it.

  I let him die—

  Here, she’d written those words a couple more times, the ink increasingly dark. She’d scratched them out, run lines through them so hard and with such desperation, I could feel the marks on the underside of the paper.

  Then she regained herself:

  I could have saved him. I cannot tell you how. You would not believe me if I did, and as with the course of history, it does not matter now. Just know that I will bear this failure for the rest of my damnable life. I wasted my chance of Calvary. I am not a pious woman anymore, if I ever was, but I am on my hands and knees now praying that my suffering satisfies your grief.

  Compared to the regrets of princes and queens you will receive, I expect you will find this a poor, graceless communication, and the consolation I offer unintelligible. It will seem like the ravings of a madwoman. That is just as well. But take comfort in this knowledge: I will hunt down the man responsible for this crime, the man who murdered your husband.

  I will find John Wilkes Booth, and I will show him the demons of my nature.

  It was signed as a sincere friend, A. G.

  As I held the letter in my hands, an obvious revelation came to me.

  This letter. She’d never sent it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Clutching that letter felt like holding a gun for the first time: it came with a creeping understanding that this was a thing that could get me killed.

  I refolded the paper quick as a lick, returning it to the frame the way I’d found it. I hadn’t yet situated the frame facedown again when I heard the door creak open, a low, keening announcement of company.

  Instinctively, I ripped my hands away from the frame. The other items rattled as my hip bumped the side of the dresser. Thankfully, I still possessed enough presence of mind to force myself to slow down as I turned toward Almena, not wanting to look any more suspicious than my being here already was.

  Almena stood just inside the doorway, watching me. Her hair was mussed from some activity, loose ends of brown curling in toward her face. The effect made her look a touch out of sorts. I also noticed she’d worked the top buttons of her blouse open, showing a slight curve of breast, and smooth, unclouded skin. Appeared she’d recovered from Coffeyville already. At least physically.

  “What’re you doing?”

  It wasn’t asked with hostility, but still, it wasn’t a question I could safely answer.

  My eyes went to the hammer she was holding in her right hand.

  I cleared my throat. “At the moment? Kind of hoping I’m not about to be bludgeoned.”

  “The hammer’s not for you,” she said before casting her all-seeing gaze to the pictures on the dresser, crooking one eyebrow. “Although maybe it should be. Find what you were searching for?”

  “Is this your room?”

  Her eyes shown hard. “Sometimes.”

  I bit down on my curiosity. “I wasn’t searching for anything. Just poking around. No harm meant.”

  She walked over and slammed the picture of herself facedown on the dresser. I thought I heard the glass crack. “There’s always harm in dredging up the past. If you haven’t learned that by now…” She let her voice trail off as her eyes caught on the images of her own history. I wondered if it hurt Almena to see herself in those ways—as a daughter, a lady; loved, or hoping to be. How foreign it must’ve seemed now, on the other side of a river of blood. Almost like a life which belonged to someone else. When I’d seen ghosts in her eyes, back in Asher, I hadn’t realized a few of them were her.

  Before I could broach the subject of the war, of President Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth—I could scarcely think the names without wanting to shake my head with disbelief—Almena let out a harsh sigh, as explosive as if she’d been holding her breath. She shook her head. Waved the dresser off, dismissing her phantoms.

  “I don’t have time for this.” She started for the door.

  I followed behind. “You sure you don’t want to—”

  “I’m sure I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Prickly. “Then maybe we ought to talk about why we’re here in the first place. Aren’t you supposed to be putting your outfit back together?”

  She turned onto the stairs, and we started down. “It’s not as easy as that. The men I need don’t work for free, and this doesn’t have a lot in the way of a reward. Not like robbing a bank or a train. Unless my doppelgänger and her outfit are carrying some hard cash when we come upon them—unlikely—this is a high-risk operation w
ithout a return investment, if you catch my drift.”

  “And here I thought your reputation would have men jumping at the chance to ride with you.”

  “Oh, reputation will bring them out. In droves.” I heard the smile in her voice as she hopped off the last step. “But ask any general who’s ever recruited men for a war, and he’ll tell you the same thing: it’s not getting them to volunteer that’s the problem. It’s getting them to stay once they’ve seen what they’re in for. In my line of work, that means money.”

  Suddenly, the hammer made sense. “You keep your money here, in your house?” I lifted my foot to peek at the floorboard beneath me, wondering where she must’ve stashed it. During one of her finer heists, a rather daring train holdup, Guillory and her band of ruffians had made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Anyone would reckon that a lot of money, but there was a lot of house here, too. Plenty of places to squirrel it away.

  Almena laughed, a real honest-to-God laugh. “I rob banks for a living, Marshal! You really think I’m going to trust some simpering, pale-faced teller to guard my dollars?”

  I stepped over a coat she’d left lying in the middle of the floor, exactly where she’d taken it off earlier. I imagined her striding inside, shedding clothes, anxious to get free of her outlaw trappings at long last.

  “Guess I’m just having trouble picturing you stuffing bills into your mattress.”

  “Oh, no. I assure you, I use my mattress for other things.”

  This grabbed my attention from the floor. But Almena had already vanished around the corner, leaving me to suffer the limits of my own imagination. I shook my head, breathing out through my teeth, and followed the hard sound of her boots clicking against naked wood.

  Klump ker-klump ker-klump. A short pause, then it resumed. Ker-klump ker-klump. Even before I came into the sitting room, I guessed she was pacing.