“I ain’t telling you nothing, cowboy.” The squirrel turns his back, forages through the scrub for the food. I reckon he ain’t going to cooperate no more, so I scope around for a branch thick and sturdy enough to bash the unholy creature back to Hell. But he starts talking again, his high voice gone even squeakier in imitation of Lola Mae, staying my hand.
“You gots to do something for me, cricket.” The squirrel stops, stuffs a chunk of apple into his face, thinks about what Lola Mae said next. I imagine the girl talking to Lilah—it must’ve been Lilah, what with Jaybird already gone—and try to glean the meaning behind her instructions. “Stop squirming; this won’t take a minute. Hush, child. It don’t hurt: I done this a million times. Just stay calm and be good for the cowboy when you see him, you hear? Jaybird’ll meet you there. Ain’t you keen on seeing him again?”
“She’s sending the young’uns where?”
“I told you,” the squirrel says in his own voice. “She ain’t sent nobody; she gone with them. With it. The key what used to be the little blonde girl. She braids that child’s hair, whispering and whispering the whole time. Psssh-psssh-pssssh, hissing like wind. Lots of fine plaits snake out the kid’s head by the time Lola Mae is finished. Then she leads her outside, sits her down next to a grapevine basket.”
Again, the falsetto: “Them wolfboys what ran shift with daddy is wanting to bust him from gaol near as much as we do, Lola Mae says. But there’s five keyholes and they only gots one key. So. She pushes a sumac-leaf band through all them braids she wound, talks like the trees again, and the little sister vanishes. Lola Mae bends over, lifts something small but oh-so-heavy into the basket. Good thing we gots magics to help.”
“A likely story,” I say, my stomach dropping.
Them double-crossing fucks.
Trick ain’t never partnered with no one, so the cowboys she’s talking of is gots to be them no-good, wolf-turned Plantain Marshals. I can’t hardly wait to find out how they convinced Lola Mae they was working with Trick ’stead of against him when he were took down. “She knows Trick sells to all sorts of mix breeds and shifties—must’ve reckoned them cowboys ain’t looked no worse than the rest of them folk her daddy uses.”
“Don’t know if that’s true or ain’t it.” The squirrel sat back, rubbed his full belly, which were starting to split at the seams. “All I knows is Lola Mae leaves the lady with the eyelashes behind. Leaves them other two girls and the babby boy. Takes up the basket, hoists it onto her hip, then hauls it up to her shoulder. And just as she were about to trek deeper into the forest, one of them cowboys steps out of the shadders to meet her.”
The squirrel burps and pulls at his collar. “I ain’t seen where they gone after that—this goddamn string’s too short. Besides, right about then I were getting so so so so hungry. Couldn’t do nothing else without some grub.”
“Well, now you got it, ain’t you?” The critter looks up at me, and I swear he’s smiling. “All right,” I say, standing up. “Guess I’ll be seeing you.”
I creep up to the path, steering clear of Annie’s window, and leave the little begger to deal with untying the cord hisself.
Lola Mae’s walking through the thickest part of the woods, right where anyone could snatch her. Every so often, a steam train blows its top in the distance, but otherwise the woods is quiet. Few jaybirds gossip overhead; ain’t much chickadee-dee-deeing neither. Just the whoosh of the wind, and the creaking of the big basket Lola Mae sometimes carries, sometimes drags behind her.
The journey seems to be taxing her heavily considering her parcel looks to be empty. No sign of Lilah anywheres: squirrel was right about that much. But where’s the cowboy? I step careful through the trees, using them for cover any time Lola Mae stops for a breather. Like now. She wipes sweat from her forehead with the hem of her capelet, lowers the hood ’til it’s a flaccid peak on her back. She flips her long hair out the neckline, fans her cheeks to cool down. A sunbeam breaks through the canopy, picks her out the surrounding gloom.
A lamb, ripe for the plucking.
I gots to get to her to the station quick. I can’t help but grin: it’s less than a quarter hour’s walk from here. I could have her in front of Trick before supper.
My pulse races, but Lola Mae don’t look the least bit afraid. Her posture is straight; she’s alert but not skittish. Looking around, she keeps her brown eyes peeled. I tread slow-like in her direction: heel, ball, toe, heel, ball, toe. Avoiding dry branches and crackling leaves.
I’m no more than ten feet away. I can smell the vanilla scent of her hair. I step closer and hear the cadence of her breathing. Another step: almost near enough to suck the sweat from her upper lip. Another step.
Across the path, saplings shiver. Winter-bare limbs bend as a rough paw pushes them aside.
I spin on my heel, press my back against the rough bark of a sugar maple. Sink to the ground soon as I catch a flash of the cowboy’s red vaquero shirt. My heart’s pounding so hard, I’m afeared they’s going to hear it. But Lola Mae don’t pay me no mind as she steps lightly toward the Marshal, leaving the basket behind her. I force myself to calm, take deep breaths in and out. Then, edging ever so slightly ’round the trunk, I take a gander at what lies inside it. Sitting on top a gingham handkerchief is a picayune key, just like squirrel said. Its shank and pin is copper; the bow and bits made of blonde hairs and ten-year-old bones.
“Where’s the rest of them?” The cowboy slurs the question, his wolfish lips still not fit for shaping human words. “Dwayne reckons you gots all the keys we—your daddy—needs. Why can’t you bring more’n one at a time?”
’Cause she can’t carry four young’uns all at once, I think. She ain’t quite got the knack of spreading their weight across the atmosphere yet. Four’s too heavy to lug without breaking her back.
But Trick learned his girl good about using deception to cover weakness; ain’t no way Lola Mae’s going to own up to her failings. She looks the Marshal straight in the eye, and lies. “You know Potpie: always worrying about the young’uns. Always fussing about wolves and such.” She smiles, takes a step closer, glances up at him through her thick lashes. “Wonder how such ideas get into that muddled ol’ head of hers?”
The wolf snorts. “Best get a move on, girl. Sheriff’ll be back soon.”
“I know,” Lola Mae says. “Ain’t saving none repeating yerself.” She points to the basket. “Key’s in there. Be gentle, mind. Lilah’s a shy one and bruises easy. Don’t be dropping her or shoving her in a pocket or nothing.”
I hold my breath as the Marshal collects the key. Close my eyes, as though me not seeing him means he won’t see me. He grunts as he bends over. His claws scritch on the dried grapevine as he reaches into the basket. A series of pops runs up his back as he straightens. As he heads back to Lola Mae, I swear I hear him lick his chops.
Steady on, cowboy, I think. That filly ain’t yours for the taking.
“Won’t do us no good getting cotched ’cause we ain’t gots the timing figured. Reckon?” Lola Mae nods. “Japeth’ll meet you by the footbridge in two sweeps of the dial. And enough fucken around already: bring the rest of them kids—them keys —when you come. It’s the only way we’ll get to your Pa.”
“All right, Willie,” Lola Mae says, a dimple curving her cheek. She curtseys, tilting forward and dipping just low enough to let a touchable expanse of her tits balloon up the front of her dress. The Marshal were in such a hurry to be gone, he only took a quick glance at her wares before melting into the dense woods.
Lola Mae gathers her basket, much lighter now without Lilah weighing it down, and skips away humming a old-time tune. My pulse slows as she pulls out of sight. Give her a minute, Doo, I tell myself. Buy yerself a bit of breathing room.
So I wait for her trills to drop away. Wait for her boot heels to scuff out of earshot. A scrawny brown hare leaps from the scrub to my left, and I
nearly jump out my skin. He pads over my foot then bounds toward the patch of light Lola Mae were standing in earlier. “Damn fool,” I mutter—and shut my piehole as I catch the sound of a footstep crunching on gravel.
It’s soft, but loud enough to scare off the rabbit.
I peek around the tree trunks and see Lola Mae, basket slung like a rucksack on one shoulder, inching her way back up the path.
Girl’s got Trick’s devilish eyes on: squinting and focused. Weaver’s shiny bright may be ignorant, but she ain’t stupid. Seems she trusts them foreign cowboys less than I does. She raises her dun-coloured hood, blends into the bush. Bracelets two torches on her wrists, she twists and knots her hair, shifts her body to slip between, over, under any branch or stone or damn-fool critter what might give away her position. Tugging at her cuffs to cover the glare, she follows the trail Willie left as he ploughed his way into the forest’s heart. Aims for the station.
Adrenaline surges through me ’til my balls is aching. I gots to catch her up. Gots to run; cut her off at the pass; stop her going in there without me. But she moves so much quicker than I do, so much quieter. My soul’s hollering, Go! Get her! but I gots to be measured. Sweat trickles into my eyes, and I blink her in and out of view ’til I nearly lose her. Swiping my arm across my forehead, I cross the path. Plunge into the woods.
Never has a ten-minute walk to the station house felt so goddamn long before. I circle around to Lola Mae’s right, wait for her to move forward. She keeps low. I keep lower. She takes ten steps. I take eight. My body don’t know what it wants to do: run or fuck, or both. She’s smaller and fourteen years younger’n me, but she gots the bearing of a lifelong hunter. Poised, stalking the joint one graceful step at a time. Reckon her thighs ain’t shaking like a nanny goat’s; bet they ain’t burning like Japeth’s firewater. I gots to brace myself against a tree, try to catch my breath. Feel my belly turn to water.
Lola Mae might wear her daddy’s looks, but she gots Annie’s stamina.
My balls clench.
I take a step closer, then two. Four. The station peers out between the boles of knotty pines and blue spruce. Part log cabin, part cave, it’s the strongest lockup we gots for folk like Trick—never mind it looks a regular shanty from the outside. Out front, them walls is older than the sky and twice as weathered; half the crooks ’round here reckon it wouldn’t take but a fart to blow a hole clean through them. Of course, only blind men and little girls gather all their knowings from the face of things. Each log supporting that granddaddy shack gots a flint skeleton, and indoors the gaps is all chinked with paper, gunpowder and coal. Any fool tries to shoot his way out of that joint, he’ll be blown from yesterday to the sweet hereafter before catching even a whiff of outlaw air. And ain’t no chance for posses to bust cowboys out the cells neither. Back in the way back, the station’s arse-end got shifted, joined to the rock behind it. A few plate-sized windows half-sunk in the ground let a bit of light and air into the rock caverns, but ain’t no way a man’s getting in or out that way. Forget bars and steel: even Trick ain’t gots magics enough to move half a limestone mountain, which is where Two Squaw lawmen has always gaoled swine like him. Ain’t nowheres else for ten counties strong enough to hold his like.
Lola Mae stops just shy of the clearing. She scans the horses hitched to the porch rails. I can practically see her counting them, doing the sums. Only three dappled rides, and there ain’t no stable. Five keyholes in Trick’s cell needing five keys; four lawmen and one daughter to turn them all together, to break the spell keeping her daddy bound. A line darts up between her eyebrows. Four Marshals should mean four horses, not three. Ain’t no Marshal going to ride double ’round these parts.
Takes all my energy not to giggle. Not even a nose as perfect as hers can smell this setup.
The station door opens and wolf-faced Willie comes out. He lights his smoke and goes to double-check the contents of his steed’s saddlebags. Cigarillo dangling from one corner of his snout, he fastens the leather buckles with one hand and cradles the Lilah-key in the crook of his other arm. Seeing that everything is in order, he heads back inside. Beside the front door, Willie drops his smoke to the ground, snuffs it beneath his boot heel. His tongue lolls out, pink and grey gums stretched in the curve of his grin.
I turn to gauge Lola Mae’s reaction, but she’s gone.
Fucken Christ, I think. That girl can creep like an injun when she wants to. I ease forward a few paces, stepping careful in case she’s only moved to get a better vantage—but after a minute I gots to admit the bird is slipped away without me noticing.
“Goddamn,” I say, straightening up. “Goddamn!”
I near-about knock the station house door off its hinges as I slam my way inside. Japeth jumps up from the table, sending his chair clattering across the floor. He snatches the pistol he were in the process of polishing, even though we all know it ain’t safe to shoot in here. “What the hell, Doo?” he barks. Doyle blocks the passageway leading back to the cells, guard up as though this here were his home station. Such nerve. He yips and snaps lest anyone tries rushing him to get to Trick. Willie startles, drops the key he had half-lifted to his gaping mouth. All three Plantain Marshals’ ears and tails sag when they see it’s me. Their gruff voices grow gruffer to mask embarrassment. “Move like that’s liable to get you bit,” Willie snarls, bending to pick the key off the packed dirt floor.
“I ain’t paying y’all to run a game behind my back,” I say. “Deal was—”
“Deal was,” Willie says, “we keep our paws off the girl and take the young’uns as payment. And so we done: we ain’t broke no oaths.”
“But we was supposed to take them all at once—”
I don’t know what I were expecting, but there ain’t so much as a squeal when the Marshal crunches the key in half, chews, then pops the rest into his maw. “Be straight, Doo. Weren’t no reason to believe them magics would work like you said, if’n we ain’t tasted the goods early.”
Lilah’s fixings have an immediate effect: Willie sheds extra skin and hair like a leper soon as he swallows. He don’t spare me so much as a second glance. “Hightail it out of here once you ate your medicines, Deputy,” he says to Doyle. His snout shrinks with each word; lips retract, turn puffy and pink. His neck lengthens; ears slide down the sides of his head. As he speaks, his voice loses its growl. “Leave that fucker to Doolittle here or let him rot, for all I care. Meet me and Dwayne up near Chillins Bluff once ya’ll been righted. If y’all ain’t there by dusk, we’s heading back to Plaintain without you.”
“This ain’t what we arranged,” I says. “You was supposed to wait for my say-so before glutting yerselfs on Trick’s flesh and blood.”
“You’ll get yers,” Willie says, grabbing his Winchester and a satchel of grub. He brushes stray whiskers from his cheeks, runs a hand through his hair, sets the ten-gallon on his human noggin. “I done my bit. How you deal with Trick’s whelp after she’s done with Doyle and Japeth ain’t none of my never mind.” Hoisting his gear, Willie nods at his deputies. They grunt in reply. Finally, he looks me straight on.
“Much obliged for the tip,” he says, picking his teeth. “Feels mighty nice, wearing me own skin again.”
The Marshal lets daylight flood in as he leaves. I squint ’til the door swings shut behind him.
“Fuck you, Willie,” I says. Turning to the other wolfboys: “And fuck y’all too. You want to change plans? Fine. We change plans. From now on, ain’t nobody going to meet Lola Mae ’cept me.”
“Now hold right there, Doo,” Japeth says, still cleaning his pistol. “You was the one said she shouldn’t see us together, that she’d get—what was that five-dollar word again, Doyle?”
“Suspicious.”
“Yeah, you said she’d get suspicious. She gots to think we broke in here without your say-so, ain’t that right?”
“Right, but—”
> “And we’s stuck with you so far, ain’t we?”
“Only ’cause Dwayne and Willie ain’t as stupid as you two—”
“That ain’t right,” Doyle says, his voice a deep rumble in his wide barrel chest. He approaches, slow and steady, towering over me even from across the room. “We was waiting, like you said—even though, far as I reckon, we might’ve just ate up that precious girl of yers, left town without fucking Trick over the way you want to.” His breath is hot on the top of my head. It smells like hunger, like venom. “You can’t blame a man for protecting his interests. Ruin the girl, Doo: we won’t interfere. But in the meantime, we ain’t gots to trust you.”
I take a step back, but stare the wolf straight in his eye. “Lola Mae ain’t going to bring all them keys at once, you know. No matter what Willie says, she’ll drag this out long as it takes her to figure a way to screw you over.”
Doyle shrugs. “Ain’t no rush. Plantain ain’t going nowheres, even if Dwayne and Willie is.” He sneers, leans his muzzle close to my cheek ’til I’m near choking in the stench of his threat. “And you ain’t getting through to Trick while I still wear this face.”
“Nor me,” Japeth pipes, clicking bullet after bullet into his gun.
“Fine,” I say, my mind racing. Let the fuckers think they can out-man me on my own turf—I’m still the one running this racket. “Like I said, the girl will take her time with them keys you ordered.” I turn to the window, run my nails along the rows of gunpowder grouting the walls. Rubbing the smudge of black between my fingertips, I search the woods for any sign of Lola Mae. The powder is smooth as I imagine her skin to be; gritty as her spirit. “She’ll bring Mabel next, which leaves Twig and Hen back at the cabin. Unguarded.”
I look back at Doyle. “Anyone hears Annie shouting’s bound to reckon she’s had a bad hit of shift.”
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