Retribution Rails

by Erin Bowman

  I don’t know what I intend to do. It is unlikely that anyone will listen to my word compared with everything the Territory believes to be true about the outlaw known as Reece Murphy, but I know I have to try.

  I make excellent time on the open plains, following the rail, but twilight is falling by the time I enter the city. My seat is numb from the saddle. The bandage on my burnt hand feels wet, too. I never bothered to grab gloves when leaving the Coltons’, and I would not be surprised to learn that my palm is now bleeding. I don’t stop to check. Riding directly to the sheriff’s office, I come upon a throng of people huddled out front, their incessant chatter punctuated by a striking hammer. At the rear of the group, a cameraman is breaking down a tripod stand.

  “What happened here?” I ask him.

  “Three Rose Riders are dead, Luther Rose and the Rose Kid among them.”

  My heart drops. “Are you sure?”

  “I better be! I just took the picture for the paper. They had the coffins propped up on the hitching post and everything.” He points for emphasis, and through the dispersing crowd I get my first unobstructed view of the sheriff’s office.

  Three coffins lie on the ground. Two are sealed shut, and a man is hunched over the third, putting the final nail in place.

  And that’s when I see it—​Reece’s pompous, broad-brimmed, Montana-pinched dark felt hat resting atop one of the coffins.

  “It can’t be,” I mutter.

  “You sound like half the town.” The photographer chuckles. “I reckon some folk believed those devils would never be in the ground, but the Law won today. About time, really.”

  He keeps prattling, but I’ve already turned away, unable to watch as the coffins are loaded onto a wagon.

  Reece died alone.

  I promised him I’d return, and then I was too late. It’s bad enough that he had to take his last breath with no one there to comfort him, but to be lugged off by the Law, too? To be made a spectacle of, even in death? He’ll end up a photo in the paper now, the subject of sensational headlines and stories that recount all his wretched misdeeds and wax lyrical about his demise. And he’ll share all that coverage with Luther Rose, the shadow he spent the last few years trying to escape.

  I should have been there to retrieve his body. He deserved a quiet burial. At least that much—​that little—​he’d earned.

  Not knowing what else to do, I go to Uncle Gerald’s house. Mother must have returned to Yuma at some point today, and Paul is either still at the mine or staying with a friend, because the house is silent. Too silent. I keep hearing my final words to Reece—​I’ll return with help, just hold on till I get back—​followed by his weak reply. All right, Charlotte Vaughn. If you say so.

  It’s getting late. The light is all but lost, and the ride will not be easy. But I can’t stay here tonight—​not alone—​and I’ve traveled this way after sunset before.

  Kate is up feeding the baby when I enter the clearing, and she rushes out to meet me. “Reece?” she asks from the front stoop.

  I shake my head.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “For what? You didn’t kill him.”

  “No, but it still hurts when we lose folk we care ’bout. For yer loss, I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t care for him in the way she’s implying. This gaping hole in my chest cannot possibly be for that reason. It’s simply that I envisioned a different ending. This is the wrong outcome, and yet it’s reality. The powerlessness that overwhelms me is frighteningly vast and seemingly endless, so much so that even tears seem pointless. I wonder if perhaps it was this very feeling that made Reece’s eyes appear so hollow.

  Kate says to come inside.

  Kate says it’s cold and very late and I should sleep.

  Kate says, “Charlotte, do you hear me, Charlotte? Please come in the house.”

  “All right,” I mutter. But I stand there a moment longer, staring at the trail, imagining I can see all the way to that desolate stretch of rail where Reece Murphy faced his demons.

  Maybe I cared for him after all. Maybe, with more time, I could have cared for him quite deeply. I guess I’ll never know.

  The evening is long and restless.

  The stable has more or less burned to the ground, so I secure Rebel to a shrub for the night, as Kate has done with Silver. I brought a second horse from Uncle’s, so I have the means of returning home tomorrow, and I tie her out for the night as well. Then I join the Coltons inside, where we’re all stuck in the second bedroom because no one’s had time to see to the soiled sheets in the first. The Coltons have the bed, and I have some blankets on the floor beside William’s cradle.

  Each time the baby wakes—​hollering and wailing—​Kate feeds him, and I check on Jesse, changing his bandages as necessary. I get little sleep, but being busy distracts me from all the things I’d rather not think about. It’s the quiet moments between interruptions from William when the nightmares creep in . . .

  Parker. Uncle Gerald. That Rose Rider in the red jacket. His fingers scraping my thighs. The throbbing of my burnt palm. How my shoulder still feels exposed.

  And then Reece.

  Reece speaking through the pain.

  Reece telling me to leave.

  Reece squeezing my hand before I left him there to die.

  I cry for the first time, my back to the Coltons’ bed. They are not loud tears, nor many, but I thought unleashing them might lift a sense of burden from my shoulders. Instead, I just feel weaker.

  Come morning, Jesse manages to surface from his ebbing state of oblivion and ask after Reece. Kate tells him the unfortunate news, and his mouth pulls into a conflicted grimace. But then she lifts William from the cradle and sets the baby in his arms, and any ache Jesse was feeling immediately vanishes. His face lights up. He holds the baby as if the child is made of glass. He stares while the baby gapes back, and Kate watches both of them, glowing. Everything about the image is warm and bright and promising.

  Kate lifts the covers and slides into the bed. Jesse presses a kiss to her temple. From the doorway, I feel as if I am witnessing a private affair, a moment made only for the three of them. I have overstayed my welcome.

  I am saddling the borrowed horse when Kate catches up to me.

  “Say, Charlotte? Yer gonna be some bigtime journalist, right?”

  “One can only hope.”

  “If’n you ever write ’bout the gang or Reece, can you do us a favor and not never mention me or Jesse by name? And don’t bring up our fortune neither, or how Rose was after it. Gold makes monsters of men, and folk’ll stop at nothing to get their hands on it. Weave a few false yarns, if you can. Print the truth, but not every last drop. Fair?”

  Just two weeks earlier I would have rejected this plea, turned my nose up at the entire argument. I would have rebutted that a journalist aims to report fact and that nothing is more sacred than the truth. In some instances I still believe this. But in others . . . Well, the truth people want and the truth they need to hear can be two different things.

  “I’ll leave you out of any story,” I tell her. “You have my word.”

  “We owe you, Charlotte. I mean that. We ain’t got much to offer, but if you ever need a favor in return, you just write.”

  “Write even if you don’t need a favor!” Jesse calls. He’s appeared in the doorway, leaning on the jamb for support with William tucked into the crook of his uninjured arm. “Kate likes letters nearly as much as her books.”

  “Will you return to Prescott?” I ask.

  “I ain’t so fond of people,” Kate says, “but this clearing ain’t no place to raise a child. Too isolated. Isolation breeds ignorance. I reckon we’ll head home once Jesse’s healed up.”

  “Then I’ll send any letters there.”

  “Safe travels,” Kate says as I step into the saddle.

  I give the Coltons a parting wave and ride from the clearing for the final time.

  Heading for the stage stop
around noon, I pass the Courier office. A boy on the street holds a stack of newspapers, shouting, “Luther Rose, killed by the Law! The infamous Rose Kid, dead!”

  Having found a bit of money beneath Uncle’s mattress after dropping off the horse, I hurry to pay for a paper. There’s the photo of the open coffins propped up outside the sheriff’s office, and the lawmen stand around the deceased, gripping their suspenders proudly. Luther Rose is front and center, his arms folded over his chest. The coffin to his left reveals a man I do not recognize, but the third coffin—​Reece’s—​is sealed shut. His hat rests on the hitching post nearby.

  According to the story, passengers aboard the train recognized Luther Rose when a fight erupted in the dining car. The Law surmised that there was a struggle among the Rose Riders, potentially one of the lower men—​maybe even Reece—​trying to take control of the gang. At the Prescott depot, one of the outlaws was found shot dead atop a passenger car, and Reece was discovered in a boxcar, his body mutilated almost beyond recognition. But being that his hat was one of a kind and found in the very same car, identifying the remains was easy. Meanwhile, a group of lawmen rode out along the tracks, following up on a passenger’s report that he saw someone jump from the train. It was along a barren stretch of Chino Valley where the Law engaged in a shootout with Luther Rose.

  This story is a bald-faced lie. I stood there and watched Reece shoot Rose without a soul in sight, yet here is this falsified story, printed right in the Morning Courier—​a story that lifts up the badge-wearing men who did nothing but collect dead outlaws. I cannot fault Mr. Marion too severely, as the posse likely gave him this tale, touting themselves as heroes and speaking of a thrilling gunfight. The editor took their word as fact, for who would expect a lawman to lie?

  Even still, it makes no sense. The details don’t add up.

  If the Law wanted to claim responsibility for killing Luther Rose, I could understand the doctored facts. But why not claim to have killed the “infamous Rose Kid,” too? Why not show his face for all the Territory to see? He wasn’t in the boxcar. He was just lying there on the plains, perfectly identifiable.

  Unless . . .

  The ground seems to shift beneath me.

  There was no sign of a struggle when I returned to the site of the shootout. Reece said he couldn’t sit, but what if he’d found the strength? What if he’d managed not only to sit, but to stand? To mount the horse that had followed me from the clearing earlier and lingered near Rose? What if he’d managed to disappear?

  The posse had stamped hooves all over that site. I could have easily missed a set of hooves riding in the opposite direction when I returned with Kate. If the Law was sloppy, overly excited at having found Luther Rose’s body, they might have missed them too. They could have assumed Rose died alone, succumbing to injuries sustained on the train, and misidentified Reece. A different Rose Rider could have met a grisly fate in that work car while Reece managed to slip away.

  Of course, if he’d managed to mount a horse, there’s no explanation for why he wouldn’t have ridden directly for the Coltons’. Their residence was the closest bit of help for miles. Perhaps he’d gotten lost, too delirious to steer the horse. Or maybe he heard the posse coming and hid in a panic, only to find he didn’t have the strength to continue on after they rode out.

  It is still quite likely that Reece is dead—​that he died alone, just not in the place I first imagined—​but if he’s alive . . .

  If there’s even the slightest chance he’s out there . . .

  I know what I have to do. I promised to do it, regardless.

  I’ve a story to write.

  I take a backbreaking stagecoach to Maricopa, then a westbound train to Yuma.

  In the passenger car, I delay because the task seems impossible. I stare out the window. I read the rest of the paper. There’s a story on Uncle Gerald’s suicide and reports of his illegal bookkeeping. Mother and I are referred to as perfectly sane and the victims of “slanderous character attacks by the late businessman.” There it is, in black and white. It is printed, and so it will be believed to be true.

  My pencil feels heavier than ever. Words have great power, unbelievable impact. I cannot abuse that.

  I open my journal and begin writing. The words come slowly at first because they are heavy and burdensome, and I’m not sure how to string them together. But when I keep at the page long enough and write from the heart, they begin to flow. Soon I can’t seem to write quickly enough.

  I try to capture the person I knew to be Reece Murphy. He was not a saint, but he was not evil. He was tortured by his past. He was forced to make difficult decisions, often between two equally poor choices, but when it mattered most, he made the right ones.

  Reece Murphy was a boy who became a man while riding with the devil.

  I write his story in a train car identical to the one in which our lives intersected, where the story, in many ways, began. And when I arrive in Yuma, the first thing I do after reconciling with my mother is visit the printing offices of the Inquirer.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  * * *

  Charlotte

  “The True Story of the Rose Kid” prints only a week after the initial reports of Reece’s death.

  Within days, the piece is all over the Territory, with reprinting requests coming to the Inquirer office by wire. Locals are abuzz. Many people reconsider what they know about the infamous Rose Kid. They question the validity of the Law’s identification of that mutilated body from the work car and speculate about Reece dying alone on the plains, ultimately redeemed. Some even whisper that he may still be alive.

  But for every reader who has this hopeful, receptive reaction, another questions my sanity. I am called a liar and a sensationalist, a sympathizer of murderers and thieves. My motives are criticized. I receive threats, encouragements to quit, suggestions that I stick to writing fiction, not fact. But the story is bigger than I am, and after years of listening to Uncle Gerald tell me that a woman has no place in journalism, I am not persuaded to accept such nonsense because droves of men think just as he did.

  The print requests keep coming, and barely two weeks later the story’s been available in more places than I ever imagined. Cousin Eliza even writes to tell me that she saw my work in the Pittsburg Dispatch, which makes me think of Nellie Bly and nearly causes me to burst with pride.

  Then, about a month after the story is published, when the frenzy and fanfare surrounding the piece is finally dying down, an envelope arrives at the Inquirer office directed to me. I open it hesitantly, bracing for another hateful rant. On the sheet of paper within, there is just one line of writing.

  I liked the story. Thank you. —​RM

  I drop the note and fly to the window, throwing it open. In the distance, a locomotive exhales at the depot. Passengers climb aboard. Carts and carriages rattle by on the street below as folk go about their business. But of course he’s nowhere to be seen. Of course.

  I duck back inside, feeling foolish, hot.

  I knew that he harbored great demons and regret, that in many ways he thought himself unworthy of a normal life, even if it was all he ever dreamed of. But I thought clearing his name would help him move on, see past the image people had of him and the feelings of inadequacy he suffered as a result. Instead, he’s just remained in hiding. He’s still running from the past.

  It is perhaps unfair of me to expect anything different. If he needs time alone, he’s earned it. Besides, what am I hoping for, truly? That night before Kate went into labor, I returned to the Coltons’ because I admitted I had unfinished business with Reece Murphy. I owed him a farewell. That was all—​a proper goodbye, a parting of ways.

  He wanted a fresh slate, a new life.

  I wanted a safe family, a promising career.

  I cleared his name with my story, and my own name was cleared from the reports about Uncle and with a bit of help from the Coltons regarding my whereabouts the day Parker died. I still har
bor some guilt about that. I never intended to kill him, and yet it happened at my hands. Perhaps I will always be haunted by those events. Perhaps this is the same type of fog that continues to haunt Reece.

  But we both got our dreams, and this note is our goodbye. Justice has been served, and a deserving person earned a second chance. All is as it should be.

  I stow the letter in my desk drawer and do not read it again. But, against my better judgment, I start glancing over my shoulder, searching for his face among crowds.

  The wet season comes, and then the dry, endless stretch of summer.

  I write in the stuffy Inquirer offices, windows open, surrounded by Ruth Dodson and my new family of female journalists and typesetters, the noise of a whirring printer always within earshot.

  Mother holds on to the Gulch Mine but entrusts management of it to Paul. He reports weekly by wire and proves a fair and decent man, the type Uncle Gerald never was, which reminds me that family is fickle and blood alone does not define character. We vacation in Prescott come August, making sure to check in with Paul and his affairs. The rail has done good things for the mine, and the whole of the city, too. Prescott is bustling, and goods are shipped in at fairer costs. Numerous copper claims have been reopened now that materials can be transported with such ease. The P&AC seems plagued by delays, mudslides, and slipping rails, yet Father would be proud. Like him, the people seem to adore the inconsistent line, going so far as to call her Old Reliable. It brings new people to the capital, folks looking to settle and spread roots in the Territory.

  I search for Reece among these faces, but with less determination than before.

  As the weeks pass, multiple Territory papers begin theorizing that any surviving Rose Riders have fled Arizona or are, in fact, deceased. There have been no sightings of the outlaws in towns, nor train heists by men who match their descriptions. Still, mention of the gang makes people discuss Reece. In his disappearance, he becomes almost mythical, a legend I hear children whispering about on the streets. “I get to be the Rose Kid!” they argue as they reenact an epic shootout, thumbs cocking imaginary hammers.