Retribution Rails

by Erin Bowman

  “What’n the hell are you doing?”

  Her gaze jerks up, and she tries to hide the bindings behind her back like I ain’t already seen them. “Nothing!” she insists.

  I move away from the window like I’m satisfied, but when I hear her return to her work, I peer through the window again. She’s holding the cloth in front of her chin, sizing up its length.

  There’s a coldness to her expression, a vicious angle to her brows. It don’t matter that her wrists are still tied or that I got the gun or that there’s no way she’ll be able to overpower me. I know what she’s doing. She’s making a rope that she aims to loop over my head and beneath my chin first chance she gets, pulling back as hard as she can muster.

  I shoulda tied her damn hands behind her back.

  She tightens another knot, unaware that I’m still watching. I could haul open the door and snatch the cloth away. I could shred it to pieces before her eyes. I could do so many things, but I do nothing. She can go on sinking her hope into something impossible ’cus it’s keeping her quiet. And right now, I need her quiet.

  I climb back into my seat and eat a bit of prickly pear with the blanket draped over my shoulders, thinking ’bout how Charlotte’s gonna get me caught. Or killed. Or leaking a trail plain enough for Boss and the others to come and get me. And then—​for my ma’s sake as much as my own—​I’ll have to cook up some story ’bout why I were racing north ’stead of trying to find ’em. So long as I’m alive, Luther Rose ain’t gonna let me ride off into the sunset. Not till I’ve pointed a finger at that cowboy and Boss can hound some new bastard ’bout his brother’s fate, working his way toward whoever done killed him.

  Or whatever killed him.

  Diaz claims it were a ghost.

  I’d nearly laughed when he first told me such. We’d been at a saloon in Contention, celebrating a recent heist. I figured Diaz’d had one too many drinks, that his details weren’t straight, but he swore it. Hobbs chimed in too, explaining that ’bout a decade back, Waylan Rose sent Boss and half the gang west to scout out the Southern Pacific’s setup in Yuma. Trains were just starting to creep into the Territory back then, and Waylan knew it could serve the gang well. But while Luther were studying the rails, Waylan went chasing gold in the cursed depths of the Superstition Mountains, where him and his men got outmatched.

  When his brother missed the rendezvous, Boss spent months chasing empty leads ’round Phoenix, then hit every hideout the gang had ever used—​from a mountain pass up in southern Utah to the cabin in New Mexico where the gang originally formed. It weren’t till nearly a year later that he returned to robbing and pillaging ’long the rails. It’s all we been doing so long as I’ve been riding with ’em, and no one mentions Waylan’s name if’n they can help it. No one mentions the coin neither, ’cept for Boss himself. He told me it were his brother’s good-luck charm, that it never left his saddlebags. The cowboy done gave it to me either killed Waylan and took the coin as a prize or the coin’s trail through owners will lead Boss to his brother’s killer.

  I used to think that only that coin would lead me to freedom, but if I play my cards right, if I run fast enough, I can cut free now.

  After letting the horses graze a little, I hitch ’em up for the night. While climbing into the driver’s box, I spot a fire in the distance, sparking and dancing, plus a flash of color. My heart kicks. It’s that red coat again. I ain’t been imagining it. The only reason I can think the lining’s still facing out is ’cus Crawford don’t know I’m running. He’s likely trying to signal to me. Hey Murphy, hold tight. It’s just me, Crawford. See my coat? I ain’t the Law. Slow up, partner.

  Like hell. Once the horses have a decent rest, I’m cracking the reins.

  I settle in to sleep, but it ain’t the restful kind. Sometime in the deepest part of the evening I wake outta discomfort. My left leg’s fallen asleep and my neck’s gone stiff, so I climb from the box to stretch. The fire ain’t in the distance no more—​it’s gone out or been purposely smothered. The desert is quiet as can be, ’cept for Charlotte’s fierce shivering.

  When I peer into the coach, I find her curled up between the benches, her eyes pinched shut in a vain attempt to find sleep while her teeth knock. Each exhale leaves her lips as a visible puff of air.

  “Hey,” I say at a whisper.

  She curls away from me, hugging herself tight.

  I should let her freeze to death. It would make everything simpler.

  Do it, Boss tells me.

  And ’cus he says to, I don’t.

  I shrug outta my coat and shove it through the window, drop my last bit of prickly pear—​my breakfast—​on the bench, too. Then I return to the driver’s box and hunker down beneath the wool blanket.

  Charlotte’s teeth go on chattering another minute or so. Then there’s some shuffling and the sound of her eating like a heathen.

  Last thing I wanted were to hang, and now here I am, actively keeping alive the thing that’s sure to deliver my neck straight to a noose. I must be the world’s worst outlaw or the Territory’s biggest fool. Prolly both.

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  Charlotte

  The year of our Lord 1887 begins with a brilliant sunrise, a sharp bite to the air, and a stabbing in my side. Having slept at an awkward angle, one of my stays has popped through its lining and is now digging into my flesh. The pain is excruciating. I can feel the moisture just below my right breast, a warmth that is surely blood. The rest of my body is cramped with cold despite having the Rose Kid’s jacket draped over my shoulders. I don’t know why he gave it to me, why he hasn’t shot me dead or left me along the side of the trail to rot.

  I wiggle my fingers, trying to get feeling back into them, and my bladder tightens with every jolt of the coach.

  “I need to use the necessary,” I call out the window.

  “Go in the coach,” he says back.

  “I’m not an animal.”

  “And I ain’t a magician. There’s no necessary for miles.”

  He’s kept me alive, fed me, given me his coat. And yet he won’t grant me the decency of relieving myself outside my cage.

  “I can’t feel my fingers or toes, and I’m also bleeding from my stays. I need to stand, lessen the pressure. Please.”

  To my surprise, the reins are tugged and the door yanked open. The Rose Kid snatches the undergarment rope I wasn’t smart enough to hide from my lap, then grabs the leather at my wrists and pulls me forward. I spill from the carriage, the stay stabbing at me again, and his jacket falls from my shoulders. The Rose Kid unties my ankles before threading the makeshift rope between my bound wrists and tying it off tight.

  “Come on,” he says, tugging at the short leash.

  My legs ache with relief. I haven’t stood in more than a day, and it feels glorious. The pain in my side subsides too, the boning of the stays no longer prying as aggressively into my flesh while upright. I spin, taking in the desolate land, and my heart careens.

  The frozen dirt trail we are following descends into Prescott.

  The city is a familiar and beautiful sight, with its broad streets stretching around the central plaza. Since we moved to Yuma, the ponderosas in the plaza have been cut and a regal Victorian-style courthouse has been built. I can see its fine peak from here, bare elms at the edges of the fenced courtyard, and the businesses and homes lining the surrounding streets.

  I don’t know what the devil the Rose Kid expects to find in the capital besides a jail cell or a noose, but the sight of the city wakes a flurry of hope in my chest. The rail gala is this morning, and if I can only get into town, everything will be fine. Mother will be there, and my cousin Paul. Even Uncle Gerald would be a fair sight given my circumstances.

  “Behind that rock,” the Rose Kid says, letting go of the leash. He jerks his chin at a crop of boulders beyond the rutted trail. “Go quick and then get yer ass back in the coach. I see you move a toe in a suspicious direction and
I’ll be forced to draw.”

  I do as he says, feeling his eyes on me as I move. The rock is not terribly large, but my bladder has reached a point where it’s hard to care about decency. It’s either this or soil the only bit of clothing I have.

  When I’m through, I make my way back.

  “Hurry up,” he mutters as he gathers up the leash-rope.

  “Just let me go!” I wail, struggling to keep his pace as he leads me toward the stagecoach. “I can walk into town. Just leave me here and run.”

  “Like you won’t talk when you get there? Like you won’t tell them I came through this way ahead of you. I can’t have that. I can’t have ’em knowing where I’m at.”

  He looks back at the trail when he says the last bit, not ahead. Almost as if he fears the Wickenburg lawmen more than those in Prescott.

  His nose is raw and caked up, same as mine feels. Frozen moisture coats his stubbled jaw, and it glints in the early-morning light as he regards the trail we’ve already traveled. Maybe someone is chasing him. Deputy Montgomery, perhaps.

  The Rose Kid plucks his coat from the dirt, shrugs it back on. “Can you ride bareback?”

  “I’ve never tried.”

  “Then that’s a no,” he says, and I immediately regret my honesty. Had he been offering to unhitch the team and give me a steed?

  “I can manage. I’ll figure it out,” I insist.

  “Figuring it out ain’t gonna result in a fast ride, Charlotte.”

  I freeze. He knows my name, likely overheard Deputy Montgomery saying it.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Call you what?”

  “By my name.”

  “What am I supposed to call you?” he scoffs. “Miss Vaughn?”

  “Call me nothing. Or call me miss, for all I care. Just don’t act as though you know me, or as if you’re not using me for your own means.”

  His eyes flash. “Listen, things would be a hell of a lot easier if you hadn’t picked this damn coach as yer hiding place. But it is what it is, and now we’re both in a bad place.”

  “We’re in a bad place? I’m the one held hostage.”

  “I ain’t got time for this, Char—​Vaughn. We gotta keep moving.”

  “No, you have to keep moving. I’ll stay right here, thank you very much. Tie me to a tree.” I tug at the ropes, walking for the nearest stubby shrub. “You can get a good, long lead and I can’t run to alert anyone. I’ll hitch a ride with whomever you’re running from when they pass through.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why the blazes not?” I can hear my voice going high and panicked, feel the tears coming on. I’m being more than fair. There’s no reason why he can’t leave me. None. The first tear breaks free, smacks the frozen ground near my feet.

  “Dammit, don’t cry. Just . . . Come on, get in the coach.”

  “Just leave me!”

  I’m sobbing now, completely against my will, everything that’s transpired in the past two days catching up to me.

  “I can’t leave you ’cus it’s them coming. The Rose Riders.”

  He’s running from his own people, and he almost sounds afraid of them. I can’t help it; a small laugh escapes my lips. My amusement only angers him further.

  “You see this scar?” the Rose Kid snaps, rolling up his right sleeve and showing me his forearm. Half of a rose is carved into his skin. “Luther Rose did that. I been his prisoner same way you’ve been mine. Sometimes folk use others ’cus they need to, not ’cus they want to.”

  “You expect me to believe that Luther Rose has been using you?” I stare him straight in his rotten eyes. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’ve read about you, Reece Murphy. You worked as a farmhand to get close to that family. Then you relieved them of their fortune, hung them from the rafters of the barn they let you sleep in, and joined the Rose Riders because no one else would have you. The papers say you are more vicious than Billy the Kid, that you earned your nickname at just fifteen.”

  “It ain’t true,” he says.

  “You’re not known as the Rose Kid? You didn’t join the most vicious gang in the Territory after the slaughter of the Lloyds in eighty-three? You haven’t been robbing trains since?”

  “The details ain’t right, though,” he insists. “What happened at the Lloyds’—​I didn’t do that. Boss and his men did.”

  “And yet you still ride with them.”

  “I don’t!” he shouts. “I’m here, ain’t I?”

  “With a girl bound and often gagged. You’ve changed your ways so.”

  “You ain’t dead!”

  “No,” I murmur. “But you will be. You won’t get away with this.”

  I have no way to see through the threat, no way to get out of my bindings. But they feel right, those words. I mean them.

  He yanks the rope, and I stumble forward, cringing as the frozen earth bites at my palms and the stays stab at my flesh. I wrap my fingers around a loose stone in the trail, and as I crawl to my feet, I keep the rock cupped tightly, hidden from view.

  “I got my reasons for doing what I do,” the Rose Kid snarls, his dead eyes locked with mine. “I don’t care if’n you understand, ’cus right now, alls you gotta know is one of Boss’s men is on my tail and he will gladly kill you before taking me back to Boss. I gotta run to where they’ll never find me, and if they do, I’m gonna need a damn compelling reason for why I’d done run.”

  He grabs me by the meaty part of my arms, pushes me toward the coach. My legs hit the step and I walk up it backwards, falling on my rump inside the carriage because I refuse to expose the rock in exchange for bracing my fall.

  “So unless you know who killed Luther’s brother,” the Rose Kid continues, towering in the doorway, “you are absolutely worthless to me. Be happy I’m bothering to keep you alive. It ain’t a kindness the rest of Boss’s men will allow.”

  There is sincere worry in his voice as he looks back the way we’ve traveled. I don’t believe that he is innocent of his crimes. What sort of man rides with men like those in Rose’s gang for more than three years if he doesn’t truly want to be there? Madmen. Monsters. Fools who wear a brand like cattle because maybe they don’t know how to think for themselves.

  But I do believe that the Rose Kid is running from them, to whatever end. He has indeed kept me breathing when others may have killed me or left me to freeze in the mountains, but only because I will serve as his armor. I will be his shield—​quite literally—​if folk confront him in Prescott. He will use my life to barter for his.

  And so I will use my words to barter for my own.

  I’ve heard enough rumors about Waylan Rose’s death to fill a novel, read enough speculation about his men’s demise ten years past to make up my own account. And if an old schoolyard rumor will buy my freedom, well, I don’t care quite so much about the facts.

  I won’t be a journalist today, I’ll be a writer of fiction. I’ll deal in whispers and sensations and legends.

  “I know who killed him!” I blurt out, and the Rose Kid freezes, a hand on the door he intends to swing shut. “I know who killed your boss’s brother.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  Reece

  I catch the door at the last second, keeping it from slamming shut.

  “You what?”

  “I know who killed Waylan Rose.”

  I reckon I must look shocked as all can be, ’cus she keeps on yammering.

  “I’ve read an awful lot of literature on the topic. I want to be a journalist, so I’ve devoured just about every newspaper I could get my hands on. And when Waylan died, everyone reported that the gang was disbanded, that the plains would be safer. When the first accounts of robberies at the hands of a man claiming to be Waylan’s half brother reached the paper, everyone panicked. Father was convinced the gang was back in full force, that they’d challenge his rail project in Prescott. There wasn’t a day I spent as a child not hearing him bem
oan and worry that—”

  “Just skip to the part ’bout who did it,” I snap.

  Charlotte—​no, I’m calling her Vaughn now—​ain’t dumb. After her stunt on the train and how she got us pinched in Wickenburg, that much is certain. But this is exactly what’s troubling. She’s smart enough to try to con me, and I ain’t got time to waste. Crawford’s on my tail. He must not’ve been hurt as bad as I thought, ’cus when I got the coach moving before dawn, there it were again—​that red coat, bobbing in the distance. He’s gaining on me. And while I could prolly manage the rest of the descent into Prescott bareback, Vaughn can’t, and I ain’t ’bout to leave her to a fate at Crawford’s hands.

  “Well, it’s more of a theory,” she says.

  “A theory? I don’t care ’bout theories. I care ’bout facts.”

  She shrugs. “Then I’ll just keep this to myself.”

  I glance the way we come, then toward Prescott. Chasing a theory is still gonna sound better to Boss than running.

  “Fine, what is it? Quickly.”

  “There was a Prescott homesteader who supposedly got himself killed by the Rose Riders. His daughter hired a gunslinger to get justice.”

  “What’s the gunslinger’s name?”

  “I don’t know. No one does.”

  It’s all too convenient, another could-be and might-have, a trail like all the others Boss chased over the years. Chances are he’s prolly even chased this one already.

  “I was only six when this all happened,” she continues, “but my father wasn’t good at whispering when he discussed things with my mother. And his theories matched what some of the children said at school. You don’t forget rumors like that.”

  “I think yer lying. About all of it.”

  “Suit yourself.” She shrugs. “But it seems to me that a man seeking the truth would follow a lead to its end. What harm can it do to find the daughter and ask her yourself? The gunslinger she hired is the man your boss wants.”