by John Larison
“Show him what?”
“Show him that being boss is always knowing your true size.”
* * *
—
We rolled into the dawn and come to stop before Pearlsville’s limits, having earned no sleep and feeling in hard need of it. The city lay beneath matted smoke. The morning was uncommon still, without no breeze at all. Snow clouds loomed high overhead, and sound carried for miles. A door swung shut with a slam. A far-off dog barked.
I was worried Annette might hear the wild beat of my heart. I will admit I was scared to be back in this place where Greenie or Drummond or Tuss might be waiting around the next corner. This dress couldn’t fool them.
“I need a drink,” Annette said. “I need to stretch my goddamn legs and give my arse a rest. I’ll take twenty days in a saddle to one in a wagon, tell you what. Where’s the nearest whiskey anyhow?”
At the saloon Annette ordered a pair to even us out. The barkeep looked on us suspect and I tugged Annette’s sleeve and said, “Ain’t you gonna order nothing for me?” She had forgotten she was ordering for a lady.
Annette pointed her thumb at me. “And two of whatever you give mouthy women.”
“Any grub?” the barkeep asked.
Annette said, “Give us two platters of bacon and fry some eggs in the grease.”
We retired to a proper table before the window and watched as the city come alive with the day. When the barkeep turned his back we clanked whiskies and put them down quick. I held the lady’s honey gin for a sniff.
“How is it?” Annette asked.
“Sweet,” I said, cringing. “In a sorry way.”
Annette took down the spare. She flinched. “They sure make women some rusty concoctions.”
The liquor settled me and I could then feel my hunger.
We ate every scrap of meat and eggs and we left with all the whiskey he’d sell us, two crates. Annette paid gold though I could tell she wasn’t comfortable paying for nothing. She heaved the first crate and kicked open the bat-wing doors. The bottles rattled when she set the crate at the back of the wagon.
“Should’ve stole it proper,” Annette said. “Feel a mite foolish trading money.”
“Paying bought us the luxury to dally.”
Annette shrugged. “It just feels wasteful is all to give gold for what you can steal.”
She looked about and stiffened. I saw why.
Men was watching. Men riding by and their heads swiveling to study us. Men nodding at their buddy and both of them turning to look. There was a shortage of women in that country and here was one in a pink dress standing beside a darker man.
Annette put her arm about me. “Let’s get.”
* * *
—
We hit the mercantile and I read the shopkeep our list while his son and Annette loaded our wagon to capacity. We paid gold, and the man said, “Nobody has paid me in gold in near on fifteen years.”
Annette’s eyes went hard. “Gold a problem?”
“No, sir. Just peculiar is all. I prefer gold in fact. Just wondering how an Indian came to have such a supply.”
Annette’s lips narrowed. “You asking?”
“No, sir,” the shopkeep said. “Ain’t none of my business at all in fact. We do appreciate you coming by.” He called his boy over and with a nod of his head sent him inside and away from us.
Annette helped me into the wagon.
“Bye, now,” the shopkeep said with a wave. As we rode on, he stood on the porch and watched which way we went.
In the street dogs was growling over a bloody bone. A herd of children chased a loose piglet. Out come buckets of wash and worse and they splattered before us. The streets was foul with mud and flies.
We was halfway through a block when out come a whistle from the shade. I turned to it and saw a wide man spat. “You charging for rides, little lady?”
Annette reined the wagon to a stop. The whiskey rattle ceased. “What’d you say?”
“I asked if she was charging for rides, but now with a closer look I see she ought to pay me. Not even pink can make that pretty.”
The man was big. When I say “big” I do not convey the size of this man. His britches cling so tight to his legs there wasn’t no mistaking his member plumped off to the side. He tucked his thumb in his belt, about all he could fit.
I tapped Annette’s knee. “Let’s keep about our business, husband.”
But Annette only handed me the reins.
The man said, “What you going to do about it, Redskin?”
She leapt down and come around the wagon and stepped onto the boardwalk with the fat man. Her guns was still hidden in the wagon. This man was wearing his own, though it looked tiny as toy on his huge hip. Annette was a good foot shorter than him and only a third his weight. Maybe a quarter. That man could’ve had a triumphant career as a circus giant.
He looked down on Annette and said, “Ain’t you fancy, all dressed like a white man and—”
She spat on his knee.
The fat man leaned to look.
The motion come so fast I didn’t see it so much as hear it. His teeth broke with the sound of gravel. Annette had driven the butt end of her knife upward into the man’s chin. He fell to his knees, and as he did, Annette swung around behind him and pulled back his chin and put the blade against the tender flesh of his neck. A bead of blood let loose, just one.
Someone shouted, “There’s about to be a killing!” A crowd began forming all at once in the street and on the boardwalk.
Annette growled in his ear, “Tell her how beautiful she is.”
Blood was bubbling from his lips. The man stuttered. There was crazed fear in his eyes now.
“Tell her!”
Through broken teeth he said, “You is hard fancy to gander at, ma’am. I was mistaken to say otherwise.”
Annette cleared her knife and booted the man in the back and he hit the boardwalk with a smack that shook the whole building. Annette pulled his billfold from his pocket, drew out his bills, and threw the rest back upon him.
She took her seat in the wagon and flicked the reins and we rolled on without a glance back. I looked at her with wide eyes.
“Come here.”
I scooted closer and she put her arm around me.
The road took us by the sheriff’s office. We didn’t dare stop but we slowed and I looked careful at the wanted posters. There I was, a man. They had my name as Samuel A. Spartan. They said I might also go by Straight or Landcaster, but they didn’t list Harney or Rowhine. I didn’t see myself none in the drawing but I saw my marks. There was no mistaking my marks.
All at once my face went hot, and I looked about. How was it these men didn’t peg me at once? I was but five yards from them and branded, and their eyes worked at me, at parts of me, parts I didn’t much have—how did they not see me?
But I knew. Men looked on me and saw only a pink dress.
“You was up there,” I muttered to Annette. “The Moonshine Kid.”
“What’d the words say?”
“They call you his sidekick.”
She scoffed. “Figures.”
* * *
—
Before we left Pearlsville we passed within sight of the Governor’s great white estate.
Men was on ladders painting the building. Before the gate stood three guards in dusters and black hats and not a one was a familiar face. Near the white columns of the house stood yet more men dressed in uniform, and upon the roof I saw three where there was usually one.
I could not tell if Greenie was among them.
In all truth, I missed Greenie. In my imaginings I saw him and Tuss and Drum playing cards and drinking whiskey and I wondered if Greenie loathed me now, if he said cruel things about me, if he wanted me dead. Did he believe I’d
played him those nights when it was just the two of us? I was on his side them nights. I was on his side now, his and Noah’s. I know it don’t make no sense on paper, but I believe a soul can be on both sides.
In the far field I saw Constance’s mare looking off toward the east. Her ears pointed forward and her tail did not flick. She was watching something in the sage.
Annette said, “Powerful critter. Like to ride that one.”
“Too headstrong for easy working.”
“My kind of mount.”
As we passed nearest I saw what had Enterprise’s attention. A man was sitting in the sage. Only his head was visible above the gray matter. He was black and aged, and as I studied him he turned to me. Our distance was sixty-five yards, but there wasn’t no mistaking who this man was. Charles, the butler. Our eyes met and then I looked away and hid my face on Annette’s shoulder.
“You know that one,” she said.
“I do.”
“He’s still looking at you. He a problem?”
“No. He ain’t no problem.”
* * *
—
We rolled until we was took in by the shade of the pines and then reined to a stop near some green grass to rest our hard-driven stock and find some sleep before the long travel ahead.
Annette and I took our pistols up toward some rocks off the meadow, a place we could defend if trouble come, and there we laid out in the pine needles. She tipped her hat over her eyes. “Just five minutes slumber and I’ll be born new.”
I laid down nearby. “I can’t hardly see. My eyes going fuzzy, I’m so wore out.”
“Flatter over here,” she muttered.
I crawled nearer and tossed a few pinecones aside and then collapsed. I laid my face against the fold of her arm and at once I fell out the bottom of this world, asleep on the arm of my darling.
* * *
—
Some hours later we awoke at the same nothing, and both sat up. Around us there wasn’t a bird, not even a chickadee. In the meadow, the horses stood rigid, their eyes on some point off in the trees.
I looked to Annette. She put a finger to her lips.
Just then a pine squirrel got to hollering on the far side of the meadow and we both went for our guns.
We dropped off the back side of the ridge without a word. I followed Annette at a run now. We kept the land between us and the meadow, and when we hit the road we followed it back at a creep, pistols at the ready.
We saw the tracks in the dust, a big horse, and beside them the crisp prints of rounded city shoes. They had walked until they saw our tracks leave the road, and then they had reversed. So whoever it was, was hunting us.
Annette nodded and that said enough. We split and cut through the pines at a stalk. That squirrel was still blowing his warning, and so we knew where this lawman or bounty hunter or Pinkerton had to be. I reckon we both assumed him to be prone over a rifle, waiting to dry-gulch us as we went for our mounts.
I saw him first by a patch of gray fabric, and put a big tree between us while I got in close. I picked my steps with tender care, clearing the earth with my toe before laying my foot into something that might crackle. I drew back the hammer on the Peacemaker with my off hand over top so the click wouldn’t carry.
I swung around the tree and leveled the pistol.
The man was laid out watching our stock all right, but he didn’t have no rifle. It was Charles. “What you doing?”
“Don’t shoot!” he begged, his hands out. “Please!”
I lowered the hammer. Annette was still hidden in the timber. I knew her to now be checking to see that he had indeed come alone and was not followed.
“Awful steep risk you took sneaking up on us,” I said. “And I guess I just don’t see why.”
He rose from the ground and I could see he hadn’t been eating much these last weeks. His clothes wore dirt and sage and now pine needles. He had a split in one lip, and a swelling upon his brow. He said, “Is she safe?”
I nodded, and the relief was clear in his face.
* * *
—
Charles rode Enterprise. He had stolen her from the pasture by luring her near the willow where she couldn’t be seen by the distant guards and then prying loose the fence boards. He admitted he wasn’t much a horseman. He’d fallen hard, but damn if he was leaving that horse to the Governor.
Annette had brought the animal through the timber and tied her to a lodgepole. Charles was off behind us on a log. I told him to relax there while I explained these matters to my partner.
Annette offered me the tobacco.
“You sure the side he’s on?”
“I’m sure.”
She looked him over. She tapped the ash from her rollie. “Well, reckon Noah will want to know him.”
* * *
—
We tied Enterprise by a short lead to the rear of the wagon and made space for Charles on the bench with us. That meant I sat tight to Annette, her body along every inch of mine. When the sun set and the air grew dry with young ice, we spread the blanket upon our laps. We pushed hard to clear through that uncertain country.
If we’d rolled an hour faster or three slower, who knows how things might’ve gone different.
Charles was asking all the same questions as Constance about what come of Will. It was hard news I was giving him, but he only nodded.
“What did they do with his remains?”
“Put them on a train,” I told him.
“Which train? Which direction?”
“I don’t know. Must’ve been the eastbound, given the time.”
That is when he wept. His head tipped into his hands and he sobbed with a fury that scared me. Annette went stiff at the sound.
“I fled west for my son’s sake. He did not mature in the same world as I, but it is the same world that stole him nonetheless.”
* * *
—
Near the darkest hour of the night we heard voices up the trail. Annette reined the stock to a stop. Enterprise still wore the Governor’s brand, there’d be no explaining that. I readied my pistol under the quilt.
Charles whispered, “What are they?”
I put a finger to my lips.
Their voices grew, and we could hear the drink in them. Soon enough we come to see their lantern light through the pines and then we could see their faces. Three men within pistol range before they noticed us, that’s how deep they was in the drink. “Whoa, now,” their front man said.
The boss among them was some years my senior. His beard was grizzled and cut short, and his nose was red as coal. He hollered, “What business has you got passing this road at this hour?”
“I ask you the same,” Annette called. “Last I knew this road don’t belong to nobody in particular.”
The man shifted in his saddle. He drew his pistol and set its barrel upon the horn. His eyes didn’t look drunk no more. “Well, I done asked you first.”
“Just passing through is all,” I called in my sweetest little voice. “Why don’t you put that iron aside, mister, so I don’t got to worry none about my husband’s health and all.”
But the man heeled his horse into a trot and come along Annette. He held the lantern over her. His pistol was now eyeing her at near point-blank. The man squinted on Annette. “Hey, now, hold on. You look hard familiar.”
Blood busted from his chest and he went sliding backward off his mount. The echo was the first I heard of the shot. My bullet hit right where I was looking.
So there wasn’t no going back. I swung and dumped the man on my side, and Annette put three rounds into the one in back. It was done before they got their guns up.
Charles had fallen sideways off the seat. I thought he must’ve been hit. But he was fine, only covered in mud. His hands was shaking with i
ce-cold fear.
Annette held the lantern over the men one at a time. She rolled one with her boot and drew his billfold from his pocket.
Their horses was long gone already. They would ride home empty and then whoever was waiting would come looking.
“You know ’em?” I asked.
“This one here is Dizzy’s crew.”
“Could be he broke off when Dizzy left the county.”
She looked on me. I could see she was doubtful.
She tossed me the billfold of the man I shot. I caught it out the air, and studied it. But it wasn’t the billfold I was noticing. It was my hands. They was stone still. Queer as it sounds, I was calmer than I had been at any point since leaving the Rock in costume. There was something else too. The way the night looked, sounded. Like I’d finally come full awake.
I walked near Annette and looked her over. She had their guns in a pile and was dragging the bodies by the arms off the road. To Annette this was just another day of labor.
She stood and picked at some blood drying on her cheek. “They sure got cash like they still work for Dizzy.”
* * *
—
We hid the provisions where another wagon could come for them, and then rolled fast. We went on beyond our turn and all the way to a crossroads and down into a gully. There we cut free the horses and left the wagon out of sight and rode up the creek and then cross-country until we was back to our familiar path up the mountain.
Charles rode Enterprise, and I counseled him to control his heels, to keep straight, to tell her in a sweet voice he was taking her home. But his eyes kept lingering on my gun hand. He said, “The air come out of that man when your bullet hit him. Like he was hit with a board.”
“That is the idea.”
“I keep hearing the sound of it.”