Outlawed

by Anna North

  “What he’s not saying,” said Lark, a wry smile on his face, “is that the sheriff in Fiddleback is as well known for his marksmanship as he is for his habit of dropping by the bank unannounced to chat with the clerks.”

  “No risk, no reward,” said Henry. “The tills at the Farmers’ and Merchants’ hold at least ten thousand gold eagles. Split five ways, that’s still enough to feed a man in high style for a year, or in moderate style for three. Adam, you interested?”

  “Oh no,” said News, “don’t get him involved in this. He’s just starting out. He needs to be making honest money, not thieving with you degenerates.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Henry said. “What he needs is another drink. I’ll get this round.”

  As Henry rose, a skinny, well-groomed man with a scowl on his face made his way to the bar, and broke out in a smile when he saw Agnes Rose. She stood to greet him, her manner different from what I’d seen at Hole in the Wall; here she was light and girlish in her movements, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet. The man set down a heavy-looking oxblood leather satchel and gave her a courtly kiss on the cheek. I looked at News and she gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

  “So why did you leave Dakota?” Lark asked me.

  My heart kicked. At first I was sure I’d been found out, that he worked for Sheriff Branch or my husband’s family, that he had tracked me all the way here. But when I glanced at News she didn’t look overly concerned, just arched an eyebrow at me, waiting for me to respond.

  “How do you know I’m from Dakota?” I asked, trying to sound like News—calm, comfortable, faintly teasing.

  “I can hear it in your voice,” he said. “I’m from Mobridge, on the Missouri.”

  I felt exposed. If he could hear Fairchild in my voice, what else could he hear? At the same time, the thought of him listening that closely to me, the intimacy of it, made me blush. I lifted my empty whiskey glass to my lips to hide my face and give myself time to think.

  “Why’d you leave Mobridge?” I asked.

  He was looking at me very directly, but I found I could only meet his gaze for a few seconds at a time before looking down into my whiskey again. I had not been like this with my husband, but then I’d known my husband all my life. When we began courting I was excited by the prospect of sex and romance between us, but as a person he was utterly familiar to me; I could tease him about the time Andy Nichols pulled his pants down in first form, or the time he hid from his baby brother just after the birth, because he was so afraid of the umbilical cord dangling from his belly like a tail. Sitting across from me was a man I knew nothing about.

  “It was time for me to marry,” he said, “and I didn’t want to. So the only thing I could think to do was leave.”

  At first I didn’t understand him. I had never asked myself whether I wanted to marry. I simply knew that it was what I had to do.

  “Why didn’t you want to get married?” I asked.

  News rotated away from us slightly in her chair just then, pretending to watch Henry try to get the bartender’s attention, but really watching Bixby and Agnes Rose. Either she hadn’t given him the laudanum yet or I had missed it. The latter wouldn’t be a bad thing; if I could see her spike Bixby’s drink from across the room, so could other people. But it would mean I’d have no way of knowing when to expect Bixby to start to falter, or when to step in if things went wrong.

  “I was in love with someone,” Lark said, and as he said it my attention snapped back to him even though I knew I should be watching the bar. “She was older, and she was married already, with four children. Her husband was an important man from a big family. I knew I could never have her. But once I’d fallen for her, I couldn’t bring myself to court any of the girls from town. They didn’t interest me. So I saved until I could buy a horse, and then I took off.”

  I tried to picture what it would be like to leave home because you wanted to, not because you had to—to be able to simply choose a different life. It was beyond my imagining. I felt the heat in my body cool toward Lark a little, a distance open up. At the bar, Agnes Rose was stroking Bixby’s arm, seductive as a mistress and tender as a mother. He looked quite drunk now, gesturing broadly with his free hand, drooping in close to Agnes and then straightening with a hiccup. Unless he had downed three whiskeys in a matter of minutes, the laudanum was starting to work.

  I looked back at Lark with more curiosity now, more control. I wanted to understand what it was like to be someone like him.

  “How did you know where to go?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I just headed southwest because I heard that’s where the big towns were. When I hit Medicine Bow, I thought I was in Telluride.”

  I smiled. Even I knew Telluride was two weeks’ ride south of Medicine Bow and ten times as big.

  “What about you?” Lark asked. “You look like someone who’s far from home.”

  I saw News shift in her seat and followed her gaze. Bixby had gotten unsteadily to his feet. Agnes Rose was laughing and putting her arm around him, subtly supporting his weight. She led him away from the bar and through the door to the rooms upstairs.

  News took a battered pocket watch out of her dungarees.

  “We’d better get back soon, right Adam?”

  I thought about Bixby’s swaying walk and the number of drops Agnes Rose had given him, and tried to guess how long before he was sleeping.

  “In ten minutes,” I said. “No need to abandon your beer.”

  I turned back to Lark.

  “I’m on my way to Pagosa Springs,” I said. “I’m going to study with a famous doctor there. I’m just cowboying till I can afford the trip.”

  News gave me a warning look, but I didn’t care. I felt stronger than I had in weeks. Lark smiled with half his mouth. Then Henry came back with our drinks.

  “Veronica’s got lead in her veins today,” he said.

  He and News exchanged a glance.

  “Unfortunately, we have to be going,” News said.

  She took a slug of the beer Henry had bought.

  “Drinks on us the next time we meet,” she said. Then she lifted her glass: “To the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Fiddleback.”

  “To the Farmers’ and Merchants’,” Henry said. “May it make us rich, and you jealous.”

  Lark lifted his glass last.

  “To Pagosa Springs,” he said, looking me in the eye.

  At first the door to the bedroom was locked. I could see worry cross News’s face. The longer we stood in the hallway, the more we risked running into lovers taking rooms for the afternoon, who would wonder why two cowboys were loitering there instead of drinking in the bar below. And the longer the door stayed locked, the more likely it was that the laudanum hadn’t worked, Agnes Rose would have to sleep with Bixby and we’d all ride home in defeat.

  As I waited for News to tell me what to do, I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, rattling the dusty etchings of milkmaids and shepherdesses on the walls. News pointed down the hallway, and I ran to one of the other doors, pretending to fumble with the knob.

  “I’m not drunk,” I heard a man slur in a drunk voice. “I’m just going to lie down for five minutes, and then I’ll challenge any one of you—”

  He reached the top of the stairs, a tall man with a big belly and a red face. He passed News, still standing at Bixby and Agnes Rose’s door, then listed against the wall and dragged himself along it until he got to where I stood.

  “That’s my room,” the man bellowed into my face, his breath stinking of stale beer. “You trying to break into my room?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I must have gone to the wrong one.”

  I tried to get past him but he planted a meaty hand on each wall, blocking my path.

  “Everybody thinks they can just take advantage of me,” he said. “ ‘Oh, Porter’s drunk, you can steal his silver, you can flirt with his woman, you can lie down in his goddamn bed.’ I’m ont
o all of your tricks and your jokes—”

  “It was an honest mistake,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I’ll just go to my room, and I won’t bother you again.”

  Over his massive shoulder I saw the door at the end of the hallway open. News beckoned to me.

  “You’re all snakes,” the man shouted. “Ronnie! Ronnie! Come up here. There’s a snake in my room.”

  It was loud in the bar below, but only a matter of time before Veronica heard the drunk man shouting. Lo had taught me a little of how to fight a man, but nothing about how to handle one who was drunk and belligerent and standing in my way. I thought of the guard cradling the wagon driver in his arms. When I acted without knowledge, I knew, I was only too likely to do the wrong thing. I gave News a look full of panic and pleading. I saw her roll her eyes.

  “Good sir,” she called, coming down the hallway to meet us. “Why would my poor friend here try to break into your room? Look at you. You could beat him to a pulp. Everyone here is afraid of you.”

  “They should be,” he said. “They should be scared of me, but they think, they think—”

  “Trust me,” News said. “When we walked in here today, three different people told us to watch out for you. ‘That man there could kick you into the next county,’ they said, and I took one look at you and I knew they were right.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. I could take any man down there right now.”

  He mimed throwing a punch and lurched against the right wall, freeing up half the hallway. Immediately I slid past him.

  “Hey,” he called, “I’m talking to you!”

  But News and I dashed down the hall and in through Agnes Rose’s door.

  Bixby lay on top of the gingham bedspread, eyes closed, mouth open, shirt partly unbuttoned to reveal sparse black chest hair. His satchel sat next to the bed.

  Agnes Rose was trying to open the window.

  “That guy out there is going to have Veronica up here any second,” I said, whispering so as not to wake Bixby.

  “All right,” said News. “Get ready.”

  News lifted the maple-wood chair from the side of the bed and, in a single motion, smashed out the bottom pane of the window. Agnes Rose grabbed the satchel with one hand, wrapped her coat around the other, punched out the remaining spikes of broken glass, and crawled through the empty window frame onto the roof outside.

  “It’s not such a bad drop,” she said.

  Then her head disappeared from view.

  “You go next,” News said. “I don’t want you chickening out.”

  Despite what Agnes Rose had done, the window frame still glistened with tiny shards of glass. The roof beyond it slanted precipitously toward the ground below—I couldn’t tell how far down, but certainly farther than I wanted to jump. I looked for a drainpipe, something Agnes Rose might have used to ease her descent, but I saw only wooden shingles, cracked and bleached by wind, sun, and snow.

  “Hurry up,” hissed News behind me.

  I felt a wave of dizziness wash over me. I took a breath, bent through the window, and managed to get my hand and my right foot planted on the roof. When I tried to swing my left foot out, though, I lost purchase with my right, and then I was rolling, then falling, then landing on my back in a pile of horse-feed sacks.

  “Get up,” said Agnes Rose, extending a hand. “You’re fine.”

  We rode until near sundown just to make sure no one was trailing us. I was breathless, sore, excited by what we had done. News and Agnes Rose seemed excited, too, and we talked and laughed as soon as we were out of earshot in empty red-rock country.

  “Where did you find the feed sacks?” I asked Agnes Rose.

  “Just lying around by the horse troughs,” she said. “Ronnie’s stable boy is sloppy. But you would’ve been all right without them. You saw the ceiling in there—that drop wasn’t more than six feet.”

  The evening was clear and unseasonably warm. In the distance a pair of mottled hawks were hunting prairie dogs, the whole colony squealing in distress as the birds circled and dove.

  “I’ll miss Ronnie’s,” Agnes Rose said. “I was starting to like it there.”

  “I wasn’t,” News said. “Doc made a friend, though.”

  I blushed, caught off guard. Of course, I realized, News had been paying attention to me and Lark even when she was watching Agnes Rose and Bixby.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘a friend,’ ” I said.

  “Maybe more than a friend,” News said, teasing.

  I rolled my eyes, still blushing,

  “I doubt I’ll be charming many men dressed as a cowboy,” I said.

  News and Agnes looked at each other like I’d said something funny.

  “That’s the best way to charm some men,” Agnes said. “Do you like men, Doc?”

  I had not given the question any thought. Watching Cassie and Elzy had made me wonder if I might at some point come to like a woman, but since I felt no stirrings of attraction toward any of the women at Hole in the Wall—and understood that they would not be welcomed if I did—I had spent only a small amount of time considering the matter. Whether or not I liked men seemed unworthy even of that small consideration, since not liking men had never been presented to me as an option.

  Still, I could remember craving my husband at the beginning of our marriage; I could remember wanting him so badly I felt a pain between my legs. And I could remember boys in school—and, if I was honest, Lark too—from whom I could not look away, whose faces or backs or muscled legs I saw when I closed my eyes.

  “I suppose so,” I said, staring at Amity’s back.

  “It’s too bad,” News said. “Girls are much safer.”

  The sky was purpling at its edges and the scrub thickening around the horses’ hooves. A jackrabbit startled from our path, leggy but sleek from eating summer grass.

  “The safest way to meet a man,” Agnes Rose explained, “is to get dolled up and pretend to be a young lady with no family on the hunt for a husband. Couple times a year we usually go down to either Telluride or Casper. The bars down there are a little more congenial than Ronnie’s, and you can usually meet someone and have some fun.

  “Of course, News likes to live dangerously,” she added, guiding Prudence away from a dry streambed.

  “I just prefer not to play dress up,” News said. “And you should talk. When was the last time you put on a pair of dungarees?”

  Agnes Rose shook her head, smiling.

  “Plenty of cowboys like other cowboys,” News said. “But this is serious, Doc—if you let them know you’re really a girl, you don’t know what they’ll do. My advice: you do whatever you want to them, but your clothes stay on. And sometime while you’re drinking together, you mention a horrible accident you were in a while back. Gored by a bull, whatever. That explains anything they feel or don’t feel on your body.”

  “The good news is, most men are pretty stupid,” Agnes Rose said. “And pretty gullible. They want to believe what you tell them.”

  At sundown we camped in a gully with a trickle of water for the horses. Nightjars were calling overhead, and bats came out to feed, their bodies clumsy in the dusk. We got a fire going, and gathered round the satchel like it was a holy crèche.

  “Doc should do it,” Agnes said. “She’s the one who knocked Bixby out.”

  “I just measured the laudanum,” I said.

  But I reached for the satchel anyway. I was proud after weeks of shame—finally I had done something right. I remembered with gratitude the lessons my mother had given me with an eye dropper, the lists of dosages she had made me memorize.

  The leather was heavy in my hands and faintly sweet smelling; it made me think of expensive clothes and fine furnishings, of the mayor’s house in Fairchild or the back room at the bank where the rich ranchers made their deals. I opened the buckle.

  At first I thought the gold must be under the bottles. They were packed carefully, each wrapped in oilcloth, so
as not to shatter with hard riding. The whiskey inside the one I opened smelled rank and weak—Bixby, it appeared, had a sideline in delivery for a mediocre bootlegger. And he had been carrying no coin at all: I even turned the satchel upside down to make sure. All that fell out was a slim paper envelope, sealed with wax. I slid my finger under the seal.

  “ ‘On the twenty-first day of September, eighteen hundred and ninety-four,’ ” I read aloud, “ ‘two hundred golden eagles are added to the debt owed by Roger McBride of Fiddleback Ranch to the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Fiddleback. The total amount of the debt stands at fifty-six thousand eagles, or two hundred and twenty-four thousand in silver. The Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank continues to hold the deed to Fiddleback Ranch and its assets and surrounding properties as collateral on the debt, and reserves the right to sell at any time.’ ”

  For a moment we all sat frozen to our seats. Then Agnes Rose threw one of the whiskey bottles against the side of the gully, where it shattered into hundreds of pieces that reflected the firelight. The horses whinnied. The bats scattered. News looked up at the stars, then back at me.

  “I don’t know, Doc,” she said. “Maybe you’re a curse.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Winter hit us hard at Hole in the Wall. One day the afternoon wind was warm in the orchard, and the next the firepit was hidden under a foot-thick carpet of snow. We were out of money; the Kid and Cassie had been counting on the contents of Bixby’s satchel, and had spent much of what we’d stolen in the wagon raid on new shoes and saddles for the horses. So Cassie had to start us on strict rations—a ladleful of corn grits for breakfast, beans for dinner, and bacon fat only on Sundays. I thought about food constantly. When I couldn’t sleep, I lay in my cot picturing butter melting into bread.

  Worst of all, Elzy couldn’t shoot. I saw her in the frozen-over orchard one morning, firing at snowballs with her left hand and missing half the time. After that I watched her carefully—she ate and drank and brushed her horse with her left hand, and though she still gestured with her right when she talked, I saw how clumsily it gripped the leather when she pulled on her boots. I couldn’t bring myself to ask to examine her, but I could tell what had happened. I remembered one of the books I’d read in Sister Tom’s library, the diagrams of the nerves running through the body like threads. I knew the bullet had ripped through those fragile fibers, and now Elzy couldn’t feel her hand.