The Prairie Thief

by Melissa Wiley

  The brownie stroked his beard and gave a satisfied chuckle. “Indeed ye are. It’s a first in the history o’ the world, I believe, so I hope it’s grateful ye are.”

  “I . . . but . . . how . . . ,” Louisa sputtered.

  “It’s the fastest thing I ever saw,” breathed Jessamine. “You’ll get to town in no time.”

  “But—”

  “Whisht with your ‘buts’!” scolded the brownie. “Hold still, now. Mind what I said about no sudden moves.”

  The pronghorn slowed as it entered the barnyard. Walking, it seemed a clumsy, ungainly thing, head bobbing low, giving little nervous snorts. It kept some distance between itself and the girls, its brown eyes rolling warily.

  “’Tis good o’ ye to come,” said the brownie softly, very slowly spreading his hands wide in a welcoming sort of gesture. “The lass is aware of the immense honor.”

  Louisa wanted to nod, but she was afraid of startling the animal. The brownie’s warnings had been so emphatic. She had the sense that the pronghorn might turn and bolt at the slightest provocation.

  How on earth was she supposed to ride it?

  “He can cover sixty miles in an hour, unencumbered,” said the brownie. “He’ll go slower with a great goose aboard. Mind ye hold on tight, now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A First in the History o’ the World

  ONCE, ON ONE OF THE FEW TRIPS TO FLETCHER Louisa had ever made, she and Pa had stopped to watch a train pulling out of the station. Louisa had never seen a train before. It was bigger and longer than she had imagined possible: the great curving wall of locomotive, like a house made of metal, and half a dozen more houses lined up behind it. It had inched forward slowly at first, the black steam billowing out of a fat stovepipe, slow, slow, then faster, faster, picking up speed, whistle screaming, then as fast as wild ponies, racing away from the town at top speed.

  That was what riding the pronghorn was like. The brownie had directed her to place the milking stool beside the animal’s back—slowly, slowly!—to boost herself up. She slid her leg across its back, afraid to breathe, afraid of pulling its hair or hurting it with her knee, afraid of kicking over the stool or doing anything wrong that might startle it and crush her one chance to make it to town in time for Pa’s trial.

  Such slow, creeping work, getting herself astride the creature—and then whoosh! She was racing out of the barnyard like that train. Faster than the train. Bouncing, jangling—oh, it was terrible. Her teeth knocked against each other, and she couldn’t catch her breath. The pronghorn’s back was ridged with bony knobs. She would be black and blue before they got to the boundary of Pa’s land—if she could even manage to hold on for that long.

  Jessamine yelled something after her; she couldn’t tell what. The pronghorn rolled its eyes back, peering at Louisa, but she was bouncing so hard, she couldn’t focus. She felt herself sliding back toward its rump and clamped her legs together in panic. Suppose she flew right off the back end?

  With her legs squeezing tight against the pronghorn’s sides, riding was suddenly easier. The tighter she squeezed, the less she bounced. She hoped she wasn’t squeezing too tight, but then it occurred to her that being squeezed was probably less annoying to the pronghorn than having something heavy bouncing on its back over and over. She leaned forward, holding tight to its muscular neck, feeling the coarse fur against her face. Her hair was everywhere, and so were her skirts. Flapping fabric could startle a horse, but there was no way she was letting go to tuck anything in.

  The pronghorn seemed to know which way it was going. Louisa hoped it did; she certainly wasn’t about to try to steer it. Across the ruffled prairie she could see the green ribbon of trees that marked the creekline all the way to Fletcher. If she’d been hiking on foot, she’d have cut to the creek first and followed its muddy path to town. But the pronghorn kept to the open plain, loping roughly parallel to the creek but not venturing near it. Perhaps the terrain was too rough there.

  She had no sense of how rapidly they were traveling. Faster than she had ever moved before, even on a galloping horse, that was sure. The pronghorn moved so differently: the movement of its legs was at once stiff and smooth, like two sets of pendulums swinging together, then apart, in unison. Louisa stopped trying to think of what it was like and just let herself ride and feel. Two kinds of wind: hot prairie breeze and cool rush of air from the speed. Prickly fur. An earthy, rank smell, like Evangeline but weedier, greener. Sun on her arms, sun hot on her hair. An ache in her leg muscles. She was glad of the ache, the exertion required to keep her seat. It eased the knot inside her.

  She wondered where the pronghorn would put her down. On the one hand, it would be rather exciting to be carried right into town this way—the only human ever to ride a pronghorn, the brownie had said! Imagine the look on Mrs. Smirch’s face!

  On the other hand, it was hard to imagine any creature as skittish as the brownie had cautioned her this one was, daring to trot boldly up the main street of a human township. She felt rather shy about doing such a thing herself, come to think of it. I must be a sight, she thought. Hair like a tumbleweed, and streaks of dirt on my dress. She began to hope fervently that the pronghorn would drop her on the edge of town, where she might at least wash her face in the creek and braid her hair before she entered the town in search of the courthouse.

  In all the excitement of the brownie’s tale and the pronghorn’s arrival, she had clean forgotten to grab her bundle of clothes and food.

  But it was still early in the day, and the sky was hot and clear. Perhaps, if she could get the pronghorn to stop on the outskirts of town, she could rinse out her dress in the creek and let it dry before nightfall. The trial wasn’t to start until the morrow. There was time. Even if her clothes didn’t dry all the way, a clean, damp dress would be better than a filthy, dry one.

  She leaned forward, holding tight to its muscular neck, feeling the coarse fur against her face.

  Of course, figuring out a sensible plan was a far cry from communicating that plan to a wild animal, Louisa thought. She wished the brownie had come with her; his ability to converse with the pronghorn would have been worth putting up with his grousing and insults. And if only there were some way he could explain to the judge and the Smirches and everyone else about taking all those things and putting them in the dugout . . . but no. Louisa knew what she had told Jessamine was correct. The brownie would be in even greater danger than Pa was. Probably.

  Your pa’s gonna hang.

  It couldn’t be true, could it? Did they really hang people for stealing? Horse thieves, yes—she knew they were sent to the gallows. Stealing horses was a serious crime. But a doll, a clock, a hatchet? Were those thefts enough to land a death sentence? Not that Pa had stolen anything at all, but Louisa had to admit that, from the point of view of someone who didn’t know anything about the brownie, the case against her father looked pretty grim.

  The stabbing thoughts tumbled and churned inside her. She had to save Pa. Had to. But it would be wrong, wouldn’t it, to sacrifice the brownie’s freedom in order to secure Pa’s?

  The brownie ought to make the sacrifice himself, she thought. That would be the right thing to do. But it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t a human; he didn’t live by human laws. He didn’t even seem to understand that what he’d done—stealing things from Louisa and the Smirches—was wrong. He seemed to feel entitled to help himself to payment for his services: looking after Pa’s livestock, tending the Smirches’ hazel grove.

  Whatever happened to Pa, Louisa realized, the brownie’s part in it was over. He would go on watching over the hens and the chicks, chatting with the owl, grumbling at the earthworms, no matter what fate met a couple of Big Folk who hadn’t even known enough to leave out a dish of cream now and then.

  It felt hopeless. But I’m riding a pronghorn antelope, Louisa told herself. If that can happen, anything can.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Three Mi
les from Town

  THE EMPTINESS OF THE PRAIRIE BEGAN TO FILL UP, barns and sod houses rising up out of the blowing grass. The pronghorn was no longer paralleling the creek; it cantered a zigzag path, skirting homesteads and wagon tracks. Louisa would have lost all sense of which direction held home if not for the great blue range of mountains hunkered against the sky: she knew they marked west. Fletcher was west of home. All the farms meant they were drawing near to Fletcher. The closer you got to town, she knew, the thicker the neighbors.

  She tried to flatten herself against the pronghorn’s back so that no one would see her atop it. She supposed it was one reason to be thankful for the sad state of her dress: all that dirt would help her blend in, from a distance. Despite the entertaining notion of prancing into town on the back of a wild animal, she was afraid that a curious onlooker might cry out and alarm the pronghorn. She wouldn’t like to be thrown off at this speed.

  Anyway, the pronghorn seemed to share her desire to escape notice. Just when Louisa was beginning to think she could make out the humped shapes of buildings ahead, a cluster of buildings too many in number to be some fellow’s farm, the pronghorn veered far to the south, keeping to uninhabited land. Louisa began to hope very hard that it would stop soon, or she might be forced to fall off on purpose. She couldn’t afford to stop too far outside town, and there was still her dress to wash.

  Suddenly the animal slowed to a walk. It was breathing hard; she supposed she was quite a burden for a beast unused to carrying anything heavier than the wind. It was approaching a copse of trees, and Louisa could see the jagged brown gash of a creek bank sliced into the scrubby plain. Was it Spitwhistle Creek, or some other waterway? Was this where she should get off?

  The animal’s sides heaved and quivered; Louisa realized it was trembling. It shook its head, snuffling, its eyes rolling white. It came to a stop. Am I supposed to get off now? Louisa wondered. Awkwardly she patted the pronghorn’s neck. It kept rearing its head back. She decided it was telling her to dismount, so she swung her leg over its back and slithered downward, feeling for the ground with her toes.

  As soon as she was planted on the ground, the pronghorn leaped away from her, turned tail, and ran. It was gone like a shot, its white rump patch the only thing left visible above the brown and gold grasses.

  “Well!” said Louisa aloud, feeling a little put out. The ride itself had been a great kindness, she knew, but she had not expected to be dumped in the middle of—where was she, anyway?—all alone, with nothing to guide her but the mountains and her wits. And those last felt positively scrambled after the jolting ride.

  She took a few halting steps toward the creek bank. Her legs felt weak and wobbly. She wondered how far a walk it would be into the heart of town from here. Surely the pronghorn wouldn’t have left her worse off than when she’d started.

  The first thing was to figure out where she was. The blue wall of mountains: west. Home was due east of town. The pronghorn had traveled west from her home, then veered to the left, south. That meant town was north, or northwest. If she put the mountains on her left . . .

  There. A sprawl of buildings. A curve of some hard-packed track. A grain silo.

  Town.

  Pa always said distances could be misleading out here on the prairie, but as best she could judge, she was no more than a mile or two from the closest buildings. Perhaps three miles from the center of town. An hour’s walk, no more. Plenty of time to wash her frock, let it dry a bit, and reach the jail by sundown. She was powerfully hungry, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that. Fool that she was, she’d left home without so much as a hunk of cornbread.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Best Worst Day

  LOUISA KNELT BY THE CREEK TO WASH HER HANDS and face. The windy ride had left her parched, and she was glad to slurp a drink of cool water out of her cupped hands. Then she looked around one last time to make sure she was really alone, here on the fringe of town. She would not like any strangers to see her in her shift while she was washing her dress.

  Everything was still and quiet, but she had the eeriest sense that someone was watching her. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. She turned in every direction, squinting hard at the empty grassland, the curve of creek, the smudge of buildings that meant town. The few trees that marked the creekline were gaunt, twisted things, blown half-sideways by the endless prairie wind. They wouldn’t provide cover even for a brownie.

  Don’t be a goose, she told herself sternly. There was no one there, nothing but fluting wind and crickets scraping and the whisper of the creek. The gold and brown grasses rippled like water, bright where the sun hit them and dully shadowed where clouds sailed overhead.

  Then one of the shadows rose up and unfolded itself into a lean, shaggy shape on four skinny legs.

  A wolf.

  Its mouth was open, the wet teeth glinting. Its eyes stared right into hers. Louisa’s fingers went cold. Far back in her mind, a little screaming rabbit voice was hollering Run! Run!, but she couldn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t move. It didn’t matter anyway; the wolf was too close. She couldn’t climb a tree this time. It could spring on her in half a second.

  Another wolf rose to its feet beside the first. Then another. Another. Five of them, forming a half circle around her. Louisa’s heart hammered. Perhaps they were behind her too, ringing her.

  A crow cawed from somewhere nearby, and she wanted to shriek to it, to tell it to go tell the brownie to send help, but her voice wouldn’t work. Nothing worked. She remembered how the pronghorn had been trembling when it let her off, how it had flashed away so quickly without so much as a glance in her direction. It must have scented the wolves and bolted for its life, never minding what the brownie had asked it to do.

  All the wolves were looking at her. Was it always like this? she wondered. Did they always frighten their prey by staring it down?

  The first wolf advanced toward her slowly, one step, two. It was still looking right into her eyes, its terrible muzzle parted into a ghastly wolf-smile. Well, she supposed it had a lot to smile about. She didn’t even have hooves to score a blow or two with before they devoured her. It took another step closer.

  And then the wolf did the strangest thing: it crouched low, its front legs outstretched, its rump high and the great sweeping tail wagging back and forth. The wolf shook its head playfully, its grin wider than ever. It was almost as if it were trying to make friends.

  That isn’t possible, thought Louisa. Wolves were the deadliest terror she could think of, next to wildfire—and wrongly accusing neighbors. Grown men were afraid to ride out anywhere alone without their guns. It was worse in winter, of course, when game was scarce and the wolves were starving, but Louisa knew darn well there was no good time to run into a wolf.

  It was still looking right into her eyes, its terrible muzzle parted into a ghastly wolf-smile.

  Another wolf trotted forward from the ring, its tail wagging to beat the band. This one came right up to Louisa’s feet, so close she could feel its breath on her bare legs, and dropped something out of its mouth into the grass.

  Louisa looked down. It was a hazelnut.

  “The brownie sent you!” she cried, and the wolves grinned as if they understood her words. Suddenly the whole pack was frisking around her—the five she’d counted and more besides; she’d guessed right about there being more wolves behind her. The first wolf nudged the hazelnut with his black nose, and she bent and picked it up. It was slimy with wolf-slobber, and she thought it was the nicest present anyone had ever given her.

  “Thank you,” she said to the wolf, and it grinned and nuzzled her hand. She found herself stroking its dusty, shaggy fur.

  “I’m petting a wolf,” she said out loud. I met a brownie, I rode a pronghorn, and now I’m petting a wolf.

  If her pa weren’t about to stand trial, this would have been, Louisa realized, the very best day of her entire life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Town
Jail

  SNUGGLED UNDER THE STARS IN THE MIDDLE OF the wolf pack, Louisa figured that she was probably the safest person for hundreds of miles around. She had washed her dress in the creek and dried it in the clean, grassy wind, and the wolves had shown her a thicket of blackberries on the far side of the creek. Berries didn’t exactly fill your belly like a nice bit of bread and cheese, but they had been fat and sweet, and she had gobbled them by the dozen. When the evening chill set in, the wolves had pressed close around her, a kind of living blanket. In the dark their eyes were like the stars above her, points of light in the blackness. Their breath panted like whispers all around.

  The wolves nuzzled her awake in the early dawn, when the sky was rose-colored cloth sprigged with gold. She brushed the wrinkles out of her dress as best she could, scrubbed her face well, and rebraided her hair into tight, neat plaits. The head wolf had let her hug him good-bye before she struck out toward the smudge of buildings that meant town, squeezing the gift hazelnut as tightly as ever Charlie had squeezed his beloved white stone.

  She followed the dusty track until it turned into a hard-packed path. The smudge of buildings became a cluster of frame houses and shops. A child hauling water from a front-yard well eyed her curiously. She followed the wagon-rutted road to Fletcher’s main street. Last night, she had worried that she wouldn’t be able to find the town jail in time. Now she realized that she needn’t have fretted: Fletcher wasn’t big enough to hide anything. There was the school, the church, the saloon, the bank. The general store, where she’d gone with Pa twice a year since Ma died. And beside it, a small drab building she didn’t remember ever having noticed before, marked JAIL.

  Next to the jail, an even tinier building bore the label COURTHOUSE. A crow perched on the courthouse roof, surveying the street with a lordly air. It fixed Louisa with a glittering black stare, then lifted its broad wings and flapped across a dusty yard to the porch of a neighboring house. The busybody manner with which it craned its neck to peer in the window made Louisa smile; it looked for all the world like it was spying on someone inside.