by Erin Bowman
“Say, yer name ain’t Thompson, is it?”
“It’s Colton,” she says. “Now talk, before I kill you outta boredom.”
She means it. She’ll pull that trigger if’n I don’t oblige. She ain’t gonna believe a word I say, but I’m outta options.
“I did work on the Lloyds’ farm,” I say reluctantly. “That bit of the story’s true. But the Rose Riders raided it one afternoon, and there weren’t a thing I could do to stop it. I were fourteen at the time, ’bout three months from a birthday. Mr. Lloyd had sold a herd of cattle just that morning, and they took the cash before stringing up the whole family. I don’t know if they got roses carved in ’em too. I was too busy trying to wrestle free of my own branding.”
“And why’d Rose stop his work on yer arm? Why ain’t you dead like the others?”
“He said he needed another man,” I say. Despite all my yammering, I don’t really wanna be shot, and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen if I mention the coin her husband gave me.
“That sounds like a lie. The Rose Riders don’t take on just anyone.”
“Well, they took on me, and at the time, I weren’t complaining. It sounded a heck of a lot better than hanging.”
“ ’Cus yer weak,” she says. “Rose knew he’d be able to bend you to his will. And he were right, seeing as yer what now—eighteen, nineteen?—and still ain’t made a break for it.”
“Look, are you gonna shoot me or ain’t ya? ’Cus I don’t particularly like getting lectured while bound and beaten. This ain’t what I wanted! You think I asked for this to be my life? I didn’t have a choice.”
“Were you followed?” she says, like I ain’t even had an outburst.
It ain’t worth mentioning how Crawford’d been on my tail. All it’ll do is put her on edge, make her trigger finger all the more eager to flex, and I’m sure I lost him in Prescott, besides.
“Not that I know of,” I say.
She scoffs, shaking her head. “I swear, them lawboys are worthless.”
“You sound like Vaughn.”
“Who the hell is Vaughn?”
I open my mouth to answer, and pause.
Any other soul’d be lugging me to the sheriff right now. Most of ’em would shoot me first and deliver a corpse later. They’d take the bounty and revel in the praise they’d get from townfolk, the story in the papers painting them a hero. But this woman don’t want none of it. ’Cus she don’t want to be named, don’t want to be known for her heroics.
Not when she hired a gunslinger to kill Waylan Rose and his boys. All this time I been thinking the cowboy would lead me to Waylan’s killer, but he prolly is the killer. The cowboy could be the gunslinger and the Colton woman coulda married him. Her surname’s changed with the exchange of wedding vows, but her past ain’t.
This is the end of the puzzle, no matter how I look at it.
I almost wish Boss were here so I could point a finger, say Her husband’s the one you want, and then walk away. But Boss ain’t here, and his boys ain’t neither, and I’d rather keep it that way. This is valuable information, worth bartering were they to catch up with me. But right now I need this woman to cut me loose. I need to take a horse and keep on running.
And Vaughn—God bless her—is the way.
So I look back at the Colton woman and say, calm as anything, “Vaughn’s a girl with ties in Prescott. She were hiding in the stagecoach I stole when fleeing Wickenburg.”
The woman’s face goes blank. “Where’s she at now?”
“In the city, I reckon. She ran, and I let her go.”
“And she knows you’re the Rose Kid?”
I nod. “She knew I were headed this way, too. Chances are she’s found a lawman by now. Hell, I’m half surprised they ain’t shown up inquiring after me yet.”
Panic flicks over the woman’s features as she considers her options. She’d be best off letting me go and when the Law come knocking, telling them she ain’t never seen me. It’s obvious she don’t wanna be the one to turn me in. She don’t want that printed in the paper. That she’s stayed hidden from Boss so long already is a small miracle.
“Why’d you keep the girl alive?” she asks. “You shoulda killed her. That’s what yer kind do to folk that get in the way.”
“Killing unarmed women ain’t really my fancy.”
She frowns, glances at her rifle, frowns deeper. Finally she says, “You coulda picked any godforsaken claim ’long this creek, but you picked mine, and now I got myself tangled in some Rose Rider mischief whether I asked for it or not. There’ll be consequences if’n I turn you in. Same goes for if the Law comes investigating and finds you here.”
“So why don’t you just shoot me and get rid of my body?”
“’Cus I got a notion you ain’t the monster yer pretending. I don’t think yer good, neither, but I wouldn’t feel right ’bout shooting you no more. Not after what I’s learned.”
Her eyes are fixed on my scarred forearm. Well, I’ll be damned. She’s got a nurturing bone after all.
“Then let me go,” I offer.
“That would require me to trust you. And I don’t. Plus, it ain’t just me I gotta think on no more”—her hand moves to her belly—“so I’m gonna wait for Jesse to get home. We’ll decide what to do together.”
“Jesse. That yer husband?”
Her lips pinch tight. She’s said more than she meant to.
She’s right not to trust me. I got the name that will buy me freedom now. If’n I get outta this barn and Boss still somehow catches me, I’ll gladly hand over the name Jesse Colton and the place he calls home, so I can walk free. Boss is a man of his word, and so long as he swears he won’t lay a hand on the woman or her babe, the devil in me’ll give her husband up.
It’s like she said. I ain’t a monster. But I ain’t all that good neither.
Back up at the house, her dog starts barking, and not in a friendly way. This is a guttural growl, capped with sharp yips like the ones he threw at me earlier.
“What the—” The woman grabs her rifle.
It could just be the sheriff, come calling on account of Vaughn’s babbling, but I fear it might be worse.
Crawford.
I’d left my horse out front of the woman’s house. The mare’s prolly still standing there, seeing as she ain’t with me in this barn. If’n Crawford carried on through Prescott, he could be stopping at every claim ’long this creek, searching high heaven for a sign of me.
“Wait!” I shout as the woman waddles outside. “It ain’t safe.”
It’s dark now, the best sun lost till morning.
The dog goes on yapping.
“Yer gonna need me!”
But she keeps walking and don’t look back.
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
Charlotte
I stand with my ear to the bedroom door Uncle has deemed my new cage. When I hear him enter the neighboring room and begin talking to Mother, I sneak out and pad for his office.
It’s locked, but that’s never stopped me from forcing my way into Father’s office when I desired to read his correspondences with Uncle Gerald regarding one of my pieces for the Courier. I fish a pin from my hair and go to work on the lock. It clicks open a second later.
I rush to the desk only to find that Uncle has taken the will and contract with him, or perhaps stored them in the safe. He is not that dimwitted to leave them in the open, but ledgers are spread across the desk in plain view. I can’t help but scan the earnings—those of the Gulf Mine in one ledger, then Uncle’s personal finances in another. The numbers seem off. I run through the columns again, certain I’ve read things incorrectly in my haste. But no, the amount of copper that came in each week at the Gulch Mine in December is higher than the amount he’s been shipping to Yuma, which in turn is sent to buyers by steamer. The difference is finding its way directly into Uncle’s personal bank account. And it is no small sum.
I check the co
lumns a third time, unable to believe it. When I flip back and check previous months, they all show the same trend.
Uncle has been stealing from Father—from our family. Stealing also from the buyers Father worked so hard to forge relationships with in California and along the Gulf. Stealing from the miners, even, to whom Father promised small bonuses on particularly profitable months. According to the ledgers, there were two months in the past six alone that should have yielded those miners extra earnings, but the profit went into Uncle’s pocket instead.
I flip back to a year ago. This is where the trend starts, at least at an easily recognizable rate. Father’s illness had grown exceptionally grave then. He was unable to have any involvement in the mine, and Uncle did his worst as Mother and I were distracted at Father’s bedside and waiting for the inevitable.
I tear out the sheets from both ledgers for November and December of last year, knowing they’re old and Uncle won’t miss them. Folding the papers up, I tuck them into my journal and arrange the ledgers as I’d found them. Then I dart back to my room. When I hear Uncle leaving Mother’s, I throw open the closet door and begin to plan.
It is not until twilight that I have a chance to speak with Mother alone.
I squeak my bedroom door open, tiptoe down the hall to hers. I knock. Her door opens a crack. “Charlotte,” she breathes, and ushers me quickly inside before locking the door behind me.
“We have to leave,” I say, swinging a makeshift bag onto the bed. It is actually more of a sack, thanks to the sheet I stripped from the mattress and the curtain ties I used to secure it. I stuffed it with anything from my bedroom that I deemed remotely useful: two candles and their gilded holders, matches, a wool blanket, a wooden bowl that had been holding potpourri, a steak knife I stole during dinner, and a bit of bread, also swiped from the table, wrapped in a napkin. My journal and the stolen ledger pages are tucked inside as well.
“And go where?” Mother asks. “We’ve no money, certainly no appropriate attire.” Her eyes fall on the plain brown work dress I’m now wearing. It surely belonged to Aunt Martha before her passing and is too large for my frame, but it was the only woman’s dress in my room’s closet and much cleaner than my stained and sweaty mourning dress. I’ve an apron wrapped around my middle—for added warmth—and a robe over my shoulders, as any winter coats are sure to be in the hall closet and I won’t be able to grab one and mosey out the door while waving to Uncle Gerald. Perhaps most important, I have shoes again—a pair of boots. Like the dress, they are a bit too large and sure to give me blisters, but I do not mention it. I need Mother agreeable, not armed with excuses for staying put.
“That doesn’t matter. We have to go. Now, before things get worse. We could head to the mine, get help from the workers. He’s been pocketing some of the profits,” I explain, telling her quickly about the falsified ledgers. The shock that paints her expression informs me that this is a surprise to her too, that even though we’ve always known Uncle Gerald to be greedy and manipulative, she never once expected him capable of such flagrant fraud. “The miners will be up in arms,” I continue. “They’ll help us! Or we can write to your sister in Pittsburgh, Cousin Eliza. Write to an attorney in Yuma. Anything.”
“To what end, Charlotte? We cannot send any word until first light, and our chances of freezing with no place to stay during the night are too high.”
“I didn’t freeze in the Rose Kid’s coach.”
“A stagecoach still offers more protection than the streets.”
There’s a knock on the door. “Lillian?” calls Uncle Gerald.
I grab Mother’s hands, desperate. “If we stay together, just get outside town, we can sell the candlesticks and purchase passage south. We only have to make it back to Yuma, and this will all be over.”
The doorknob jiggles. “Lillian, unlock this door.”
Mother thrusts open the window. “You go,” she whispers, dragging me near it.
“But he’ll kill you. He said as much.”
“He wants the mine, which he’ll only get by marrying me. Mr. Douglas is ignoring the will, but the words written within it are still true. A wedding ensures that the transfer of ownership of the mine won’t look suspicious—not even to people your uncle hasn’t bought.”
“But after.”
“I’ll delay as long as possible then,” she says. “Just go get help. People in town may be in his pocket, same goes for folk at the mine. There’s no guarantee he hasn’t paid off some of the employees for their silence. After all, look at what happened with Mr. Douglas. Find someone impartial, an outsider.”
“Lillian!” Uncle Gerald roars from the hall, his fist pounding on the door.
“Go,” Mother urges. “Please. I’ll stall him, discuss wedding plans, whatever it takes to keep him from your room and give you time to disappear.”
She grabs my sack and shoves it out the window. It drops to the ground with a heavy thunk. I glance at the door, which is trembling under Uncle’s fist, and then at Mother, her eyes pleading with me.
I don’t like it. Leaving without her was never part of my plan. But she does have a point. How far will we get, truly, if we flee together? Uncle will notice our absence the moment he breaks down her bedroom door, and then he’ll start combing the streets, enlist the help of townsfolk and the Law. But if Mother can stall him, if I have time to slip off unbeknownst, I might have a shot.
I heave a leg over the windowsill.
“One moment, Gerald!” Mother shouts. “I’m not decent.” She turns to me. “I love you, Charlotte.”
I drop down to the ground, glance up at Mother. If I ignore the panic in her eyes, she looks almost like an angel, with her hair spilling over her shoulders, the lanterns illuminating the room behind her.
She slides the window closed and turns for the door without a backward glance.
“I love you, too,” I whisper. Then I grab the sack, sling it over my shoulder, and run for the stable.
I steal one of Uncle’s sorrels. No, I borrow it. I’ll bring it back when I return with help.
I’m glad to have the cover of night in my favor. If someone were to recognize Uncle’s mare, if I were to be deemed a horse thief . . . Men have hung for such crimes.
Is that all it takes? One misfortune in your life, one act done out of desperation, and suddenly you’re a criminal?
I push the thought away and focus on the saddle. When the sorrel is ready, I scramble into the seat, not caring that my skirt is hiked up around my waist, that my bloomers are showing, or that the cold winter night is blowing straight through them. I urge the sorrel out of the stable, along the edge of Uncle’s property, and into the street.
No more than two blocks from the house, I realize I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m doing. Where am I supposed to go? I don’t have the supplies to make a trip to Wickenburg, where I have an ally in Deputy Montgomery, or even to a neighboring mining community. And like Mother said, I can’t trust anyone in Prescott.
I glance to the north. There’s the Thompson girl’s residence, but a few miles off. She lost her father to criminals. Surely she understands what it’s like to be left powerless and alone, and she will not turn me in. And if she gives me the name of the man she hired . . .
That’s the solution, I realize.
I need a gunslinger. Not to kill Uncle, but to scare him honest. I need someone dark and dangerous enough to make him listen. Someone Uncle believes will come back and finish the deed, as only a gunslinger can, if he reneges on his word.
I turn the sorrel north and flick the reins.
Chapter Twenty
* * *
Reece
I wrestle ’gainst the ropes till I manage to kick off a boot. My bowie knife ain’t inside. The Colton woman musta found it before securing me.
Every curse I know comes tumbling from my mouth as I go on struggling. I kick off my other boot, hoping in vain that I remembered wrong, that maybe I stashed the blade in the
other shoe after cutting all those bindings from the coach curtain. But nothing. I’m bound, weaponless, helpless. This must be how Vaughn felt in the coach. It’s goddamn awful.
I knock my boots aside in anger. Then pause.
The ropes ’round my ankles ain’t nearly as tight without footwear. I wriggle, flexing my feet till I can slip free, then grab my boots and stuff my feet back in. The bindings on my wrists I can deal with later. Snatching up the rope I just freed from my feet, I tear outta the barn.
As I close in on the farmhouse, I can see the horse I rode bareback from Prescott still waiting out front. Two additional horses stand beside it. The lighting’s too poor to make out their coats and identify them as belonging to the boys, so I creep closer, praying they belong to a pair of lawmen. That’s when I catch sight of a figure standing at the foot of the porch. His back’s to me, his focus keen on something in the house. His uneven hunch is immediately recognizable, one shoulder slouching more than the other. Hobbs.
He musta been on my tail, too, traveling with Crawford.
The Colton woman lets out a sharp cry from the house, and for a second, all I can envision is my ma pleading for mercy as well. The first and only time I tried to run from the gang, Boss sent Diaz to pay her a visit, and he took a finger from her like it were nothing but a coin. This is how Boss keeps me in line. It’s how the Rose Riders keep everyone in line—threats and violence and fear. It’s how they’ll get whatever they want outta the Colton woman, and there ain’t no denying that I’m the blasted reason these men are at her door.
I glance at the horses, the dark expanse of land to the north. If I run now, her blood will be on my hands.
I creep toward Hobbs, stealthy and painfully slow.
Inside, the dog’s still growling, but not so loud that I ain’t able to hear a second voice—Jones. “If he ain’t here, why you got a problem with us searching yer place?”