Grace and the Guiltless

by Erin Johnson

  “Pretty Boy already done set the place on fire,” he said.

  Hale spun and spat. “Grab some of the horses first.”

  Relief coursed through Grace when Hale changed direction and strode quickly toward the paddock, but her body still trembled uncontrollably. She could make out curls of smoke beginning to rise from the far corner of the cabin.

  Zeke!

  If her baby brother was still safe, she had to find a way to get to him. Her eyes darted furtively left and right, watching for an opportunity. Graying twilight silhouetted the men as they ran toward the stable.

  Chaos whirled above her hiding place — horses whinnying, men swearing, hooves stamping. The slaps of saddles being thrown on horseback, reins jangling as horses were being yanked viciously into a group.

  “Let them wild ones go!” the man with the drooping mustache shouted. “They’s nothing but trouble.”

  The freed mustangs bolted from the barn, heading for the hills, and Grace choked on the clouds of dust kicked up by their hooves as they stampeded past the cracked cellar door. All her father’s work . . . for nothing. As two of the men tossed tack and equipment into a heap by the stable, the ache in her chest grew.

  One whinny stood out from the rest of the bedlam.

  Bullet! Please don’t let them take Bullet . . .

  Keeping the hatch lid steady, Grace squatted lower to keep an eye on the horse, swallowing hard as Hale opened the paddock gate. He lunged at Bullet, grabbing for the halter, and the stallion pulled back his lips, revealing his teeth. He snapped at Hale, who stepped back to avoid the horse’s chomping jaws. Grace cheered silently as Hale was unable to get close.

  He stormed away and vaulted the fence. Mounting his own horse, Hale galloped back to the paddock gate. “Toss me a lead,” he shouted to the nearest man, who was loaded down with tack.

  The man threw him a rope, and Hale caught it in one hand, then charged toward Bullet. Bringing his pinto alongside, Hale leaned out from his saddle and grabbed for Bullet’s halter again, but the palomino screamed and reared, his hoof clipping Hale in the face. He tumbled from his horse and landed in a heap as Bullet flew toward the open gate. Hale sat up quickly, clutching his cheek. Blood trickled through his fingers, and Grace felt her lips twist into a bitter smile.

  “Stop that horse!” he snarled.

  “Leave it.” The woman’s voice came from somewhere above Grace’s head again. She must have already mounted her Appaloosa — Grace could see its hooves stamping impatiently right outside the root cellar’s hatch. An icy chill slithered down her spine. They were so close to her — what if Hale remembered his intention to search the cellar?

  “We need to go.” The woman’s voice was strained. The Appaloosa edged past the opening.

  Hale staggered to his feet and went for his gun.

  Bullet rounded the stable at a gallop and, before Hale could aim properly, wove back and forth between the saguaro, heading for the mountains. Grace clenched her teeth and willed Bullet to go faster.

  At least one of us should get away from here . . .

  * * *

  After an unbearable delay, the Guiltless Gang finally galloped off in a clatter of hooves, neighs, and churning sand.

  Grace carefully peered out from her hiding place, staring into the gathering night as the gang fanned out in different directions like spokes on a wagon wheel. Within moments, they had disappeared into the blackness.

  As soon as the hoof beats faded, Grace burst from the root cellar.

  Zeke . . .

  Tongues of flame were already licking the night sky behind the cabin, and smoke rose from the back corner. The gang had set the woodpile on fire, but the cabin’s heavy logs chinked with adobe caught more slowly. On shaky limbs, Grace stumbled toward the door.

  Her stomach lurched. Furniture pushed over. Chairs flung in a jumbled heap against the log walls, legs snapped off. Bedding slashed. Crockery smashed on the floor. And the upended cradle splintered against the stone hearth.

  “Z-Zeke . . . ?” Grace said hoarsely.

  Burning wood spit and crackled like gunshots, and a second later, the straw mattress in the back corner of the cabin burst into flames. She dropped to her knees, panic clawing at her insides as she bunched up her skirt and crawled across the floor, searching desperately among the broken furniture. She ducked low to stay beneath the billowing smoke, dodging the shooting sparks. She had to find Zeke.

  Fire ate along the back wall, consuming the chairs. Ma’s overturned soup pot had doused the embers in the fireplace, and broth had soaked into the dirt by the hearth. Pieces of vegetables lay scattered on the dirt floor. She thought of Ma stirring the soup for the dinner they would never have.

  Tears stung Grace’s eyes. Don’t think about it. Find Zeke. Now.

  Grace dug furiously through the broken cradle slats, flinging them behind her. Trapped under the shattered cradle, she came across the tintype photograph Ma kept on the hearth — it must have fallen to the ground in the confusion. Grace snatched up the only picture of her family and quickly tucked it inside her bodice before returning to her task, tearing at the cracked headboard of her brother’s crib. The pointed iron edges of the tintype scratched her skin, but she hardly noticed.

  She finally moved the last of the wood away and sucked down the sob that rose in her throat as she saw what she had exposed.

  Zeke lay on the floor.

  Grace rocked back onto her heels, and acrid smoke choked her as she stared at Zeke’s motionless body.

  She started suddenly as the back corner of the roof caved in, and smoke quickly swirled toward them. She didn’t have time now to check if he was alive or dead. Scooping her brother up, she tucked him against her with one arm. Crouching low, she arched her upper body over Zeke to protect him from falling debris as the smoke curled lower, and then she crawled one-armed toward the door. Her lungs burned with each breath. Grit and ash filled her mouth, scratching her throat, and she slapped at sparks on her dress and skin.

  By the time she reached the porch, the knees of her leggings were shredded. Gasping with relief at getting outside, Grace gulped ragged breaths into her air-starved lungs and then, gripping her brother, stood up and raced from the cabin toward open pasture a safe distance from the caving timbers. She collapsed into a sitting position against the rough wood of a fence post, coughing and panting hard. The darkness of the evening was illuminated by the roaring fire, shedding flickering light on the nightmare all around them.

  Finally, reluctantly, Grace looked down at her little brother’s limp body, reaching out a tentative hand and placing it on Zeke’s chest. For one moment, she thought her hand rose with his breath, and her heart expanded until her own chest ached.

  He’s alive?

  She was filled with hope for a brief instant, but the crackle of flames, imploding walls, and plumes of smoke rising into the night sky brought reality hurtling back. She closed her eyes, and the fire’s heat seared her eyelids as terrifying visions danced in her mind. The rest of her family lay scattered around her in the smoke-filled yard. Grace hugged the baby fiercely to her chest. “It’s going to be all right, Zeke. It’s going to be all right . . .”

  Maybe someone had seen the smoke. Maybe the law would be coming soon. Maybe she and Zeke would be fine. She struggled to draw more air into her tortured lungs, choking and coughing in the drifting haze. She had to get up, move farther away from the fire, but her muscles were rubbery, useless. She had no strength, no energy, no willpower.

  And, as she looked down again at Zeke, she realized he remained unmoving, his eyes still closed.

  “No! No. No. No . . .” she whispered, her voice just a croak. She laid her ear against his chest. Not a whisper of breath. Not a faint heartbeat.

  He hadn’t made it.

  Numbness crept through her. Nobody was coming to save them. Grace slumped agains
t the fence with Zeke lying in her lap, staring into the distance as his body grew stiff and cold, and the cabin crumbled into ash. Her will to live drained away, leaving behind only a soulless, empty shell.

  * * *

  A coyote howled nearby, echoing around her like the wail of a ghost.

  With Zeke’s body still clasped in her arms, Grace sprang to her feet, as if it were a call to action. Her family. She had to bury them — now, before the animals circled for them. She could at least give them that.

  Setting Zeke gently on the ground, Grace ran a hand over his curls and then reached into her bodice to pull out the tintype, so its sharp iron edges wouldn’t poke her as she worked. She placed it beside her baby brother, then she began to dig like a dog, shooting the sand behind her — but two feet down, she struck hard-baked clay.

  A shovel. She needed a shovel.

  Grace stood, a little unsure on her feet at first, and then rushed to the stable. She rooted through the jumbled pile the gang had left behind and found the manure shovel. Returning to the hole, she attacked the ground with a vengeance. Stomping on the edge of the blade, Grace sent the shovel deep into the resistant clay, twisting out chunks the way she wished she could twist a knife into the heart of every one of those murderers.

  The pit grew deeper, wider, but she didn’t stop. The moon rose higher in the sky. She kept digging. Her hands blistered. She kept digging. The blisters oozed clear liquid. Still she dug.

  Just before grayness edged over the horizon, Grace finally flung away the shovel. She had to finish this in the dark — she couldn’t bear it in the light. The pit was deep now, but it would never be deep enough to bury the horror of what had happened there.

  Her palms raw, she tugged at the bodies of her family, dragging them to the pit, one by one, to bury them all together. She placed Pa first. Then Ma, with Abby beside her. Tugging Daniel by the boots, she settled him beside their sister. Darkness obscured her family’s features, but their faces smiled at her from memory. Realizing that Daniel’s hat must have fallen off, Grace backtracked and found it. She leaned down into the pit to set the hat over his face.

  “There you go.”

  She choked back tears and pulled herself up. Only Zeke was left. Grace sank to the grass beside him, taking him into her arms and rocking him back and forth as deep sobs racked her body, flowing up from her shattered heart in tidal waves. Eventually, she nestled him into the curve of Ma’s arm.

  “Goodbye,” she whispered.

  Scoop and toss. Scoop and toss.

  Each shovelful a prayer. A vow. A promise for justice. She was burying her family, burying the only life she knew. Grace mounded the clay into a small hill, packing it down as a barrier against coyotes and other wild animals that might steal the bones. Bile rose again in her throat at the very thought.

  She needed a marker. A cross.

  Fragments of splintered wood lay on the ground near the cabin’s smoldering ruins. The pieces were crooked, with jagged edges. As she went over and picked up a shard, a splinter jabbed into her finger, but she barely felt it. She picked up Bullet’s lead rope, which still swung from the paddock fence. She wound it around the wooden arms to hold them together, tied it off, and then reached down to pick up the tintype she had laid aside.

  Grace climbed the mound with the cross in hand, and with the back of the shovel, she drove it into the hard-packed clay.

  Then she lay down next to the cross and clasped the picture of her family tightly in her hand — so tight that the iron edges bit into her raw and blistered skin. Shivers racked her body, waves of grief rippling from the inside out, and the cold froze her tears into an icy block in her chest, constricting her breathing.

  Why did I survive? Why am I still alive?

  Slivers of pink now streaked the horizon. The earth kept spinning, but the world she had known stopped in that moment forever.

  * * *

  Grace tucked the tintype back into her bodice and pressed it against her heart while she sat watching the sun rise, the emptiness in her chest deeper than the pit she had dug. She had no idea what to do now. The old Grace lay beneath the ground with the family she loved. She would never be the same again . . .

  Something cold and wet nudged her arm, and she jumped. A familiar huff followed.

  Bullet?

  She must be dreaming. The palomino snorted again and tossed his mane as she turned to face him. When she didn’t respond, Bullet moved closer and blew his breath into her face. Finally she leaped to her feet and threw her arms around his neck, her chest growing tight as she buried her face in his mane.

  Bullet had come back for her. She wasn’t alone.

  Pulling back from him, she gritted her teeth.

  “This isn’t over,” she murmured. Suddenly, she had a thought. “Wait here, boy.”

  Striding over to the barn, Grace dug through the debris the gang had left behind, fearing they’d taken what she was looking for. But then, hidden under piles of hay, she found the tin. Her father had hidden this old gun here in case of any rattlers or sudden Indian attacks. If only he’d had a chance to get to it before . . . she pushed the thought away.

  Opening the metal box, she reached inside and closed her hand around the smooth handle of her father’s old Colt revolver. She slid it out of its holster and stared at it, her finger testing the trigger. Pa had shown her how to use it, telling her how he had wrestled it away from a soldier. If it had been hidden down in the root cellar, maybe none of this would have happened. If only.

  Swallowing hard, Grace flipped open the cylinder. There were only three bullets inside, but no matter. She would find more if she had to. She attached the gun and holster to the waistband of her skirt and covered it with her bodice. Then she dug through the piles until she found a worn-out saddle, reins, scuffed saddlebags, and a hide water pouch that had been discarded in the commotion.

  Striding back to Bullet, she strapped them on and mounted.

  Why am I still alive?

  Now she knew the answer to that question: To see that justice was served.

  The Guiltless would hang.

  CHAPTER 3

  As the morning sun rose higher over the hills, Grace leaned into Bullet’s canter. The blisters on her palms, raw and oozing, stung in the whistling wind. Her father’s gun, hidden under her bodice, dug into her side. Bullet’s mane whipped in her face, but the warmth and closeness of her horse did not ease the hard knot of grief that was sitting deep in her gut. Every inch of her body felt numb, though the pounding of Bullet’s hooves jarred her body the way reality battered her heart.

  Each hoof beat was a denial. This isn’t real. It can’t be. It can’t be. The rhythm echoed in her brain.

  “Faster,” she whispered against Bullet’s neck. As if he understood her, the palomino picked up speed. Fury fueled her ride. She would make them pay. Every last one of them. She needed to find the sheriff.

  By the time they reached Allen Street, the main road in Tombstone, Bullet’s coat was lathered with sweat, and Grace’s throat was parched. She slowed him to a walk.

  Heads swiveled to follow her progress through the street, making her conscious of her ill-fitting, outgrown clothes. Bloody stains on the hem of her skirt. Torn leggings underneath. The red clay caking her boots. The ash and soot streaking her bodice and sweaty face. Her cheeks burned with shame.

  Grace funneled her embarrassment into her thirst for justice. Those murderers will hang, she vowed again silently.

  Before she reached his office, she spotted the sheriff, his badge glinting in the sunlight as he sauntered across the street and entered the Bird Cage Theater. Grace reined in and headed toward him.

  Every time she had come to town with her family, Pa had crossed the street to avoid the Bird Cage. Grace had been fascinated by the painted ladies in their revealing dresses, by the flouncing, colorful petticoats visible behind
the doors. Some of the bolder women grabbed at men’s arms to lead them inside the pink building. A few men shook off the ladies’ polished claws, but others smiled and accompanied the women inside. Now that she was older, Grace understood why Pa had shied away.

  Ignoring the stares of passersby, Grace slid from Bullet’s back. After looping the reins around a post at the edge of the wooden sidewalk, she stiffened her back and lifted her chin. The planks vibrated under her boots as she strode to the Bird Cage’s door. But with one hand on the ornate brass doorknob, she hesitated. No decent woman would enter such a place. Disheveled as she was, and in her too-small clothing, people might think . . .

  A host of terrible images flashed through her mind. Her mother’s lifeless body next to Abby’s. The gunshot. Pa’s body falling. Zeke’s limp, lifeless form.

  The open grave.

  A sob rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down.

  The sheriff was in there — she had to go inside. Justice for her family mattered more than her reputation.

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” she whispered. Then, taking a deep breath, Grace stepped inside.

  Clouds of smoke enveloped her. Unlike the black, acrid smoke from the burning cabin that still clung to her pores and clothes, it was sweetish cigar smoke and the sharper scent of burning tobacco from hand-rolled cigarettes. Raucous laughter, the tinkle of a piano, and the clink of glasses pulsed through the room. The infamous alcoves, or birdcages, some with their red velvet curtains drawn, perched overhead like rows of fancy packages.

  Her eyes stinging from the haze, Grace squinted to find the sheriff. So many black frock coats blurred into an indistinguishable mass.

  A deep voice purred behind her. “Looking for someone, darling?”

  She shook off the paw resting on her shoulder. “The sheriff.” Her voice came out clipped, curt.