Outlawed

by Anna North

  “You think God has forsaken you, Ada, is that it?” the Kid asked.

  “If there is a God,” I said, “then yes, I do.”

  “Poor thing. We all felt this way when we first arrived. Elzy, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t believe in anything when I came here,” Elzy said.

  “Even I sometimes succumbed to despair,” the Kid said. “But then I realized: we were told a lie about God and what He wants from us.”

  “What does He want from us?” I asked.

  The Kid bent close to me then, until our foreheads were touching.

  “He will make you father of many nations, Ada,” the Kid said. “Watch and see.”

  We came to Sutton’s Gulch a few hours after nightfall and camped at the bottom, watering the horses at the stream that trickled there. I was tired from the climb and the long ride but I slept badly, dreaming and waking, dreaming and waking. Every time I woke I saw that the Kid was awake too, reading the Bible or drinking whiskey or simply walking in a circle round the dead coals of our fire.

  Morning came cool and cloudy. Elzy was heating beans with chunks of pemmican on a skillet over the fire.

  “Where’s the Kid?” I asked.

  “Watching the road,” Elzy said. “If News is right, the wagon should be along around midmorning. But we don’t want to miss it if they’re early.”

  She dipped a tin cup into the mixture and handed it to me.

  “No forks,” she said. “Let it cool a little and slurp it down.”

  Elzy and I sat in silence, blowing into our cups. I remembered the way she’d looked at the Kid the day before, the love and respect in her eyes. I wanted to feel what she felt, or at least to understand it.

  “Do you believe baby Jesus promised this land to us?” I asked her.

  Elzy shrugged. “I didn’t grow up on baby Jesus, or God, or any of that. My daddy didn’t go in for it. I believe in the Kid.”

  “But if you don’t believe what the Kid’s saying, about God and everything, then what’s left?” I asked. “Isn’t it all just words?”

  Elzy put down her cup. She looked offended now.

  “I didn’t say I don’t believe it,” she said. “I just don’t always take it literally. Like when the Kid talks about building our nation, do I think we’re going to re-create the United States of America? No, of course not. I wouldn’t want to even if we could.”

  “Then what does it mean?” I asked.

  “It’s a way of holding us up,” Elzy said. “It’s how the Kid reminds us who we are.”

  “And who are we?”

  We heard hoofbeats in the distance.

  The Kid appeared at the lip of the gulch then, nose and mouth already covered by a scarf of purple silk. Elzy smiled at me, then removed a checked bandanna from her pocket.

  “Didn’t you hear?” she asked. “We’re kings.”

  A few minutes’ ride to the south was an overlook from which we could see several miles of road. At first I saw nothing—then, in the distance, a spot.

  As we waited, the spot grew, and when we could see two men seated in a wagon, one with a rifle as long as my arm, we drove our horses fast down the face of the overlook to the roadway. I registered things I would remember later: two pronghorns springing away as we rode past, a sunbeam cutting through the clouds to the northeast, the driver saying something to the guard, the guard laughing.

  Then we had them in our sights and the Kid said, “Sir, kindly drop the rifle,” and the robbery began.

  The guard was middle-aged, broad and short, curly hair flecked with gray under his hat. He climbed down from the wagon seat and laid his rifle in the dirt, then nodded to the driver, who was younger, a little taller, handsome, with black hair curling into his eyes. The Kid took the guard’s rifle and handed it to me; my job was to go around to the back of the wagon and look for the money. Elzy and the Kid covered the two men.

  From behind the wagon I stole a glance at the pair. Both had their hands up. The driver was frozen to the spot. But the older man, the guard, was angry and antic, shifting from foot to foot, kicking the dirt.

  “How do you live with yourselves,” he asked, looking at the Kid and me, “stealing from honest Christians who never did a thing to you? You’re filthy parasites is what you are.”

  Elzy and the Kid did not seem to react. I couldn’t read their eyes. In the back of the wagon were burlap bags, neatly stacked and labeled in blue ink with the name of a ranch, the N Bar G. Each was so heavy I could barely lift it. I began loading up the horses.

  “He has children, you know,” the guard said, pointing to the driver. “Two little boys and a girl, three, five, and nine. You want to explain to them why their daddy didn’t get paid this month? Why he lost his job?”

  “Easy,” said the driver.

  The guard ignored him. He took a step closer to Elzy and the Kid. Sweat sprouted under my arms. The guard did not seem afraid of them, and I did not know what he would do. My job was to handle the gold and silver, nothing more—the Kid had been clear on that point. But the Kid had not told me what to do if the others were in danger. I tried to listen to my gut, but my gut had no training for such a situation, and was silent.

  “If your mothers could see you right now, I bet they’d weep from shame,” the guard said. “I bet they’d curse the day they birthed you.”

  “Come on, easy,” the driver said, pleading now. Something was between them, something that gave the guard all the power.

  I had given two of the horses all they could carry and was working on Amity. The guard took another step toward Elzy. The Kid stood perfectly still, watching. My heart was pounding, my mouth was tinder-dry.

  “Stay back,” Elzy said.

  The guard laughed.

  “Stay back,” he said in a high and mocking voice. “Or what? You’ll shoot me, gelding? That I’d like to see.”

  “Don’t test us, old man,” the Kid said. I thought the Kid looked at me then, but I wasn’t sure.

  “Two geldings,” the guard said. “I’m pissing in my pants! I’m shivering in my shoes!”

  The guard was just a few yards from Elzy now. I was not a fast shot. If he rushed her now, he might be able to get her gun before I could aim and fire. If only I’d had another day, I kept thinking—another day or two of training with Lo, then I would understand what to do now, whether to stand silent and calm or shout back or fire my gun right into the old man’s back and end the standoff now.

  I did none of those things.

  “Back up,” I said. Even I heard the fear in my voice.

  The guard wheeled around to look at me. I panicked. I squeezed the trigger and shot him in the thigh.

  What happened next happened fast, but I’ve played it so many times in my mind that the memory is slow, like dancing. The driver reached into his boot and drew a six-shooter none of us had seen. He fired a single shot. Then Elzy shot him square in the chest. I saw his face as he fell: pure shock, he could not believe his life would end this way. The guard howled, a high chilling cry like storm wind, I will never forget it. He crouched over the driver. Their two heads pressed together, I saw now—perhaps had seen before—that they were father and son. We mounted the horses. We rode.

  We were less than a mile away when Elzy began to list in the saddle.

  “I’m fine,” she told the Kid, but when my horse came up close to hers I saw the dark blood leaking down her sleeve.

  She was limp as a doll as we lifted her onto the Kid’s horse, and the Kid had to hold her upright all the way back to Hole in the Wall.

  It was long past midnight when we got back, but the sound of the horses roused the others. The moon was bright and full and I could see their faces as they came out of the bunkhouse: News and Lo and Texas and Agnes Rose, all happy and hopeful and then afraid. Cassie came out last of all. News had helped the Kid lift Elzy down from the horse; Cassie went straight to her and pressed her forehead to Elzy’s forehead, whispered something I couldn’t hear. Then,
to me, “What did you do?”

  I couldn’t even bring myself to say I was sorry, it seemed so worthless. Cassie turned to the Kid.

  “I told you this would happen. You take in strays, and now—”

  Elzy’s knees gave out. News tried to hold her up but her head flopped forward, her whole body limp. Blood dripped from her sleeve into the dirt.

  I thought of the worst wound I’d seen with Mama, a gash in Luella Mason’s left thigh ten inches long, where a saw had slipped and bitten into her flesh. I remembered all the supplies I’d gathered from Mama’s storeroom then, how I’d packed them carefully so the bottles didn’t break.

  “We need some iodine,” I said, “and at least three feet of thin, clean cotton. And some tweezers, for the bullet.”

  “We don’t have iodine,” Texas said. “And we definitely don’t have tweezers.”

  “Whiskey then, or whatever strong drink you have, and clean water, and something to mix them in, and the smallest knife you have.”

  Texas and Lo went to gather what I’d asked for. News and I carried Elzy into the bunkhouse; Cassie and the Kid followed behind. For a moment everyone followed my lead, and even I forgot that it was my fault that Elzy was hurt and the wagon driver was dead. The moment lasted until I unbuttoned Elzy’s shirt and saw the wound in her bicep, small but raw and welling black blood at the center.

  I was not afraid of blood. I had seen it enough times—blood from a cut, blood from a nose, blood from a birth, bloody sheets and towels, legs and vulvas, babies taking their first breaths, covered in blood. I was not afraid of pain—I’d been the one a woman clung to as she screamed her way into motherhood. I was not even afraid of death—I’d washed an old woman’s body on the night after her last night, I’d dressed a stillborn baby in his shroud. But now I was the cause of someone’s pain, and I was the only one who could stop it, and that made me afraid.

  Texas brought me a bottle of whiskey, a jug of water, a soup pot and a ladle. Lo brought me a white nightdress with pale blue flowers. I added half the bottle and the whole jug, stirred, then tore off a length of the nightdress, soaked it, and wiped my hands down. I did the same with the knife. It was the first thing Mama taught me when I started going to births with her: Everything that touches the patient has to be clean.

  Someone had lit all the kerosene lanterns in the bunkhouse, but I couldn’t see anything at the center of Elzy’s wound. I tore another handful of cloth and dunked it in the whiskey water. Then I gave Elzy a sip from the bottle.

  “This is going to sting,” I said, and began to wipe the old blood from the wound.

  Elzy cried out, high and loud, that animal sound that comes from hurting bodies, but the wound was clean and I could see the lead glinting in the flesh. I knew an artery ran from the shoulder down to the elbow; if the knife slid wrong I would cut it open and she would die. Slowly I pressed the very tip against the metal. I could feel the bullet begin to shift, but Elzy screamed again and jerked away, and the knife sliced a new cut across the flesh of her upper arm. I waited for a moment without breathing, but the cut only trickled blood; the artery was safe.

  “Hold her still,” I said to whoever would help me, and Agnes Rose stepped in to hold Elzy’s arm.

  I washed the wound again, and again tried to pry the bullet loose. Again Elzy screamed, but Agnes Rose held her fast. I felt the bullet give but not give way, and when I pressed harder, the knife point slid off into the flesh. I felt Elzy’s howl at the bottom of my gut.

  I handed the knife to Agnes Rose and wiped my hands again with whiskey water.

  “I’m going to try to get it out with my fingers,” I said more to myself than to anyone else.

  My hands were shaking. I knew I was almost as likely to kill Elzy as to save her. Then I would have two deaths on my conscience in a single day. I swallowed hard. I knew what Mama would have done.

  I imagined the wagon driver standing in front of me. I imagined a bloodstain at the center of his chest and his eyes still open, full of sorrow and fear. I nodded. Then I took hold of the bullet and began to pull.

  The bullet slid under my fingers. It slid and then it held. Elzy cried and her blood covered my hand.

  In my head I recited what Sister Rose had whispered every night before we slept: “Mother Mary, shelter us, love us more than we deserve.”

  I pulled again and now I felt a new movement, and then the flesh gave up the lead with a wet sound and new bright blood filled the wound. It pooled but did not pulse; vein blood. I washed it away.

  Elzy was still screaming, but with the bullet gone I felt a wave of power carrying me forward. Someone had already torn me a length of cotton. I washed the wound once more and wrapped it tight with many layers. Elzy’s face was wet with tears but I could feel relief buzzing in the room, almost like joy. It would last until I lay down in my bunk to sleep and remembered the way the driver’s father had cradled his body, just as he must have done the day he was born.

  CHAPTER 5

  After my failure at Sutton’s Gulch, the others were cold or outright hostile to me. At night, I heard Cassie trying to convince the Kid to send me away, but Elzy’s wound required my care. We were lucky—with daily applications of witch hazel and clean dressings the wound began to close, and the red border of infection I’d been anticipating with dread failed to materialize. Elzy wouldn’t look at me when I examined her, and only spoke if something hurt.

  On the morning of the seventh day after I got Elzy shot, Agnes Rose came to visit me in the orchard. I’d taken to spending most of my time there since the others had made it clear I wasn’t welcome at the firepit, or in the bunkhouse, except to sleep or check on Elzy. When Agnes Rose came up the path I was rereading Mrs. Schaeffer’s book, the part about stillbirths and their possible causes.

  “What do you know about sleeping tonics?” Agnes Rose asked.

  The question made me nervous. I didn’t want to betray the Kid’s confidence.

  “Are you having trouble sleeping?” I asked.

  Agnes Rose rolled her eyes.

  “It’s for a job,” she said. “When you came here, you said you could mix something to put a man to sleep. Was that just talk?”

  The person who had spoken so confidently that night about her own abilities felt like a stranger to me now. But I still remembered what she knew.

  “I can do it,” I said. “I just need some laudanum.”

  The trading post was two days’ ride northwest of Hole in the Wall, on Lourdes Creek in the grasslands. Since it was Arapaho hunting ground there were no roadhouses, and when we stopped for the night near a small stream we saw the remains of other camps: eggshells, the charred leavings of a fire, human shit poorly covered in dirt.

  Agnes Rose did not wear men’s clothing—“It’s not for me,” she said—so we traveled as husband and wife, brass wedding rings greening our fingers. But she didn’t need the pretense with the trader, who seemed to know her well. She greeted him in Arapaho.

  “Your accent is improving,” he replied in English.

  “I know you’re lying, but thank you for flattering me,” she said. “News sends her regards, she’s sorry she couldn’t make it. But I’d like you to meet Doc, our newest recruit. She’s a trained midwife.”

  The trader looked at me with curiosity. He was slight, older than me but younger than Mama, with thick eyeglasses and a sky-blue bead in each ear. On walls and shelves around and behind him were valuables that people had brought to pawn or trade—a gold-plated pocketknife, a revolver, a buckskin war shirt with beads and fringe, a lady’s hat decorated with ostrich feathers, a mahogany grandfather clock with gilt numbers on its face. The head of a mountain lion, frozen in a roar.

  “What made you join up with these ne’er-do-wells?” the trader asked me, pointing at Agnes Rose. “I thought the Americans took good care of their midwives.”

  “Not barren ones,” I said.

  He shook his head and said something in Arapaho. Mrs. Spencer at school had said tha
t the Indians did not value children the way Christian people did. Thinking about it now, far from the schoolhouse, I realized it was likely Mrs. Spencer had never spoken to an Indian person. I myself had done so only a handful of times, when women came from Lakota country for my mother’s services. I did not know what they thought about barren women, or what the trader thought, but I realized now that he might not feel the same way as the Fairchild ladies did, that perhaps barren wives were not hanged for witches everywhere.

  “We’re looking to buy some laudanum,” Agnes Rose said. “How much do we need, Doc?”

  “A hundred drops should do it,” I said, “if it’s strong.”

  The trader raised an eyebrow at Agnes Rose.

  “And how are you paying for this, exactly?”

  From her handbag, Agnes Rose produced a small sack of what I assumed was gold.

  “We’ve had a good summer,” she said. “This should cover it.”

  The trader looked inside the sack and hefted it in his hand.

  “Agnes,” he asked, “do you know where laudanum comes from?”

  She looked at me, but I was no help. I knew laudanum was scarce and expensive—Mama got it from Dr. Carlisle, and only for very special cases, like cutting out a breast tumor or an ovarian cyst. I had no idea where Dr. Carlisle got it.

  “It comes from China,” the trader said. “The few merchants who still cross the Pacific sell it to traders in San Francisco or the Dalles, and they sell it on to traders who carry it across hundreds of miles of hard country until finally, weeks or months later, some of it makes its way to me. So while I’m prepared to give you a discount from my usual rate, Agnes—we’ve worked together a long time—I’m going to need about double what’s in here.”

  “Come on, Nótkon,” Agnes Rose said. “You and I both know it’s not worth that. I can throw in twenty silver liberties.”

  I could hear anxiety in her voice. She hadn’t been prepared for this. Nótkon shook his head.

  “I’d be losing money,” he said. “Now if you had some valuables from your last job to sweeten the deal—that necklace you brought last time paid for my son’s wedding.”