All I could think of was Gentleman Jack. The man might shoot Gentleman Jack!
I crept along the edge of the gorge, toward the coach. Horses shied and squealed. The air was all lightning bolts and pounding hooves. I had the dagger, though. I’d grab it, but only at the last minute. That was so the man couldn’t see me approaching, dagger in hand. That was so he couldn’t get ready to defend himself. I could snatch the dagger quick as quick. I’d practiced until I was almost as fast as Gentleman Jack.
A slicing motion at the neck. That was when you wanted to kill someone.
I crept up behind the shooter, who might kill Gentleman Jack. It was better to hurt, not kill. But not when Gentleman Jack was in danger.
A sticking motion in the eye. That was when you wanted to kill someone.
“Behind you!” shouted the Sheriff. He could see everything from the stagecoach roof.
The shooter had folded himself up so he could fit behind the door. He spun around but didn’t unfold. More gunshots, the sharp smell of gunpowder. The man grabbed my wrist. A bullet hit a rock beside us. It bounced off, then dove into the squish and drowned.
A horse screamed. A horse’s scream is different from a person’s scream. A horse’s scream is pure nightmare.
I couldn’t see the fight from this side of the road, from behind the stagecoach door. I saw only the man, folded like a piece of paper. I saw the man, and the road, and the man’s boots on the road. They were black boots, well polished, with silver stitching.
He jerked us against the coach because now the Gentlemen were running, strung in a messy line. They thudded past us, between the coach and the gorge. It took just a moment; I watched them pound downhill. But where was Gentleman Jack?
The Gentlemen raised no dust, it was too sticky for dust. They rounded a bend in the road and vanished. The world grew very small. I looked at the road, at the black boots with silver stitching. Beside them lay a hat with a scarlet feather.
It was Doubtful Mittie’s hat. Doubtful Mittie hadn’t passed us, had he? Gentleman Jack hadn’t passed us, had he?
The man unfolded himself, still holding my wrist. He unfolded and unfolded until he was impossibly tall. But he didn’t know I was quick. He didn’t know I was used to fighting. When you know how to fight, you take your opponent by surprise. You attack when he expects you to run.
I wasn’t tall, but I could jump. I sprang at the man. I wrapped my legs round his waist, I twined my arms round his neck. He wore side whiskers and a high collar. But there was still lots of exposed flesh. I sank my teeth into his cheek.
He slammed the stagecoach door and shook me off, all the while holding my wrist. My hat tumbled to the ground, but that didn’t matter, not now. I stood on the road, which stretched out in both directions. It had always stretched in both directions, but now, with the stagecoach door shut, I could see the uphill road. I didn’t want to see it; I didn’t want to see the things on the road, but my eyes kept getting stuck. They got stuck on the scarlet feather in Doubtful Mittie’s hat. They got stuck on a lump of a body wearing Doubtful Mittie’s jacket. They got stuck on Gentleman Jack’s boots. Gentleman Jack was standing in them. He was alive, but he’d been caught. My hat was lying in the road. My hair tumbled round my shoulders.
“A girl!” said the folding-paper man.
Gentleman Jack had been caught. I’d been caught.
The two of us, we’d been caught. What should I do? What could I do? I couldn’t call out to Gentleman Jack. It had been too long since anyone had spoken to me; my Affliction had me by the throat. Gentleman Jack was tall and the Sheriff was a mouse, but still, Gentleman Jack was the one in handcuffs. Gentleman Jack was the one with a revolver pressed to his back. Gentleman Jack was the one who had to listen to the Sheriff saying, “Jack Royal, we arrest you for the murder of Federal Marshal Starling. We arrest you in the name of the Blue Rose.”
“A girl dressed as a boy,” said the folding-paper man.
Gentleman Jack smiled and smiled. He smiled his best smile, the one that covered up his teeth. He looked just like his last name. He was Royal.
I glanced up at the length of the folding man, past the black creases of his body to the half-moon tooth marks on his cheek.
I saw too much. I saw the silver star on the Sheriff’s jacket. I saw the Sheriff force Gentleman Jack toward the stagecoach. Gentleman Jack saw me, but his smile didn’t change.
I saw Doubtful Mittie’s jacket, wrapped around something that was no longer Doubtful Mittie. He wasn’t breathing anymore, so it didn’t matter that he was lying facedown in the muck. Still, I wished someone would turn him over.
Doubtful Mittie had flung out his hands, maybe to catch himself. They were the color of raw liver. I smelled them, even from here. They stank of rotting meat. That was his Affliction for having killed a child.
Or children, maybe. Doubtful Mittie might have killed more than one child.
His hat lay in the mud. Doubtful Mittie wouldn’t have liked that. He took good care of that hat. I remembered how happy he’d been when Gentleman Jack said he could keep it. Doubtful Mittie had tucked the scarlet feather in the hatband to disguise it. The hat had belonged to the Federal Marshal, and the Federal Marshal was famous, but still, no one would recognize his hat, not with the feather. Gentleman Jack liked it that way. He said the hat was hiding in plain sight.
The folding man dropped my wrist. He no longer needed to hold on. There was nowhere I could go. No one I could save. All I could do was pick up the hat. Doubtful Mittie didn’t care about it anymore, but I did.
“Why do you want that?” said the folding man.
“It’s Gentleman Jack’s,” I said. If one of the Gentlemen died, everything he owned belonged to Gentleman Jack.
“I’ll give it to him,” said the folding man, but I shook my head. I clutched the hat and watched Gentleman Jack. He was going to make a move, I could tell. Yes, there he went!—whirling round, slamming his shoulder into the Sheriff’s jaw. But the Sheriff was alert, and smart. He knew the trick of jerking his prisoner’s arms, forcing the prisoner to turn to the front or else risk his arms being wrenched from his shoulders.
That was very painful. I knew from personal experience.
The Sheriff and Gentleman Jack disappeared around the far side of the stagecoach. I couldn’t see Gentleman Jack, so I’d have to think of him instead. I’d never stop thinking of him. I’d already rescued the hat; I’d give it to him. What if I could rescue the gold on the coach—the five bricks of gold—and give it to him? What if I could rescue Gentleman Jack and—and what?
I’d give Gentleman Jack back to himself.
I buttoned Doubtful Mittie’s hat into my coat. Gentleman Jack was just a shadow through the stagecoach window, sitting on the far side of the Sheriff. I hoped he could see me better than I could see him, see me rescuing his property. Obeying the rules, as I always did. I looked over the lump the hat made in my middle; I looked down to my boots. Looking at my boots was better than looking at Doubtful Mittie, looking at his face in the mud, looking at his grasping raw-liver hands.
It was better than looking at the pinto.
But I couldn’t ignore the yellow ribbons fluttering from the pinto’s mane. Like Doubtful Mittie, the pinto lay in the road. Unlike Doubtful Mittie, he thrashed his legs and struggled his shoulders from the mud.
“What do you think, Sheriff?” said the folded-paper man.
“The pony will never get up,” said the Sheriff from inside the coach.
The pinto groaned. He churned the mud with his forelegs; he was lathered with foam. The yellow ribbons fluttered. The pinto’s eyes were white. The sky was white. The pinto writhed, but the sky was blank and blind. The pinto couldn’t churn himself out of the muck.
The folded-paper man strode toward the pinto. He didn’t even look behind to make sure I wasn’t slipping away. How could I, with the driver right there?
I closed my eyes. I jumped at the gunshot, even though I knew it was coming. I
tasted the gunshot. It left an acid spit in the air.
Now the yellow ribbons lay still. Now the folding-paper man walked back to the coach.
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t get sick here, in front of everyone. But the revolver spit made me want to be sick. It would be better if I could be in the coach with Gentleman Jack. I reached for the handle, even though Gentleman Jack was on the far side. But the man pulled me back.
They wouldn’t let me ride with Gentleman Jack. That was the Sheriff’s job, to ride in the coach and make sure Gentleman Jack didn’t escape. It was the folded man’s job to make sure I didn’t escape. His fingers were long and hard.
“Keep an eye on her, Judge,” said the driver.
“Never fear,” said the Judge. He held me tight. He was a folded-paper man, but he was also a judge. Gentleman Jack and I had been caught by a sheriff and a judge. They would take us to jail.
The Judge bent toward me. I hadn’t quite seen his face until now. His quickness and tallness had gotten in the way. Now I saw that his quickness made him seem younger than he was. There were lines at his eyes, like chicken scratches, and creases running beside his nose and into his mustache. And very red on his cheek were the bright smiles of my teeth.
I would make myself look at the smiles. I’d keep the dagger hidden and remind myself of all the ways I knew how to hurt a person. I had my teeth; I had my fingers. You didn’t have to be big to poke your finger into someone’s eye.
I looked at the angles and hollows of his face, at his eagle nose, at his cliffside cheekbones. The Sheriff and the Judge must be taking us to jail. At least in jail I’d be with Gentleman Jack.
“What do you reckon to do with her, Judge?” said the driver.
The driver didn’t care that I was going to jail. He was too big and relaxed, the reins sliding through his fingers, the fringes of his white jacket blowing in the wind.
“This is exciting!” said the dagger.
“I’ll take her home,” said the Judge.
There came a silence, like a gulp. “Are you sure?” said the driver.
“No,” said the Judge. He paused, then said, “We’d better head out, before the snow.”
“It’s going to blow in hard,” said the driver.
I hated the Judge. Before, he had been all long arms and quickness. Before, he had been an unfolding into tallness. But now he stood still, a black paper shadow, blocking the sky. I hated the Judge, with his eagle-nest cheekbones and chicken-scratch eyes.
I hated the Sheriff, so little and scurrying. I hated the driver, so big and easy with himself. I wanted to go to jail with Gentleman Jack. But I couldn’t say so. It had been too long since anyone had talked to me. And Too Long was not very long at all. After someone spoke to me, I had to speak within the space of three breaths and a swallow; otherwise my Affliction would gobble up my words.
A wind blew up and with it came a flutter of ribbon. The ribbon was yellow, and if you could see revolver spit, it would be yellow. I swallowed and swallowed, but it was too late. I was sick all over the Judge’s boots.
For some reason, that made the men laugh. The Sheriff, the driver, even the Judge.
“They’ll clean,” said the Judge, and the driver said that, speaking of cleaning, he’d come back to dispose of the bodies. “Not a pretty sight,” said the driver, “especially with the hands on that fellow.”
He and the Judge exchanged a glance. They understood about Doubtful Mittie’s raw-liver hands. They knew it meant he’d killed a child. Or maybe children.
“I’ll take the girl on my horse,” said the Judge. “The stage is sick-making.”
It turned out that the Judge had brought a horse, tied to the back of the stagecoach. Why would the Judge have brought his horse? You don’t need a horse when you’re on a stagecoach carrying five gold bricks to the railroad station in Buffalo Bend. But here it was, and now we were mounted, with me sitting in front. I craned my neck to look up at him, surprised all over again by my tooth marks.
“What’s your name?” he said.
Now I could speak. “I have no name.” I hated the Judge. I hated my flat, clopping voice.
“No name?” said the Judge.
“No name.”
“We must call you something,” said the Judge. But why must he call me anything? And anyway, this wasn’t what I’d practiced with Gentleman Jack.
“Where do you come from?” he said.
“I come from nowhere,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to Blue Roses.”
I knew Blue Roses was the biggest town in the Indigo Heart. My mother was from Blue Roses, but she’d left me in the wilderness to die. Gentleman Jack found me and brought me back to life.
I had to speak before three breaths and a swallow went by. “What about the gold?” We were going uphill, deeper into the Indigo Heart, and so was the stagecoach. But I’d thought the stagecoach had to go the other way, to get the gold to the railroad, where it could be put on a train and sent out of the Territories.
“There never was any gold,” said the Judge.
Of course there’d been gold. Gentleman Jack had heard about it from his reliable source. He’d heard that the stagecoach today was carrying five bricks of solid gold. Together they were worth one hundred twenty-eight thousand dollars.
“There is gold, of course,” said the Judge. “The veins of the Indigo Heart run with gold. But there was no gold on the coach, not today.”
I couldn’t make myself understand. Day Zero was the day the coach was supposed to carry the five gold bricks. We were going to take the gold bricks to Grandmother, and they would make her happy.
“The gold was a trick to catch Gentleman Jack.” The Judge craned round to look at me. I saw the bite marks on his cheek, and I saw his coffee-bean eyes. You can’t tell what someone’s thinking when they have coffee-bean eyes.
Up the road we went, into the Indigo Heart, to Blue Roses. Cliffs rose to the left, and to the right, gullies and gorges fell into darkness.
“Gentleman Jack is a thief,” said the Judge, “and a murderer. He killed the Federal Marshal. You know he did.”
I had the Federal Marshal’s hat buttoned into my coat. Yes, Gentleman Jack had killed the Federal Marshal, and the Federal Marshal’s hat had killed Doubtful Mittie.
“There were folks who saw you,” said the Judge. “We know you were there.”
I’d been there, all right, and I understood why Gentleman Jack had to kill the Federal Marshal. The Marshal wouldn’t let Gentleman Jack take any gold from the Indigo Heart, even though he had as much right to the gold as anyone else. I didn’t like to remember the Federal Marshal being killed, but that didn’t matter. It served the Federal Marshal right to be dead.
We passed under a bluff of red earth; it pressed down on us. It made the air heavy. I couldn’t stop thinking about the flutter of yellow ribbon.
“The ribbon’s not important,” said the dagger. “Paying attention is important. Finding the hideout is important.”
I paid attention. I marked the places we passed—the bluff of red earth; a river, high and rushy despite the cold. “The Jordan River,” said the Judge. The pinto would have balked at the crossing, but the Judge’s horse was used to it. The water wet the Judge’s boots. That would clean off the sick.
We passed endless scrabbly indigo, growing almost horizontally from the cliffs. I would remember this, and I would remember the jagged mounds of earth and how the road would sometimes straighten out and let the world burst into view—hillsides dark with indigo giving way to cliffs of pink stone—then winding back into themselves again.
The gray stone of the hideout was in the ravine, which was at the bottom of the world. The pink stone of Blue Roses was at the top of the world.
I wasn’t supposed to be here, not at the top of the world. I was supposed to be with Gentleman Jack, riding across the Plains to Netherby Scar and to Grandmother. I’d counted down to Day Zero for so long, I couldn’t bel
ieve there never was any gold.
The number zero is just the way it looks. It’s a big hole filled with emptiness.
UP WE WENT, jolting and lurching; there was nothing but Up in this place. We rode through a valley of twilight and indigo; we rode to where the pink rocks shone with sunset. I hadn’t known you could see sunset and twilight at the same time. I looked for something I knew. But it was just the Judge, the horse, and me, and I didn’t know any of us.
Gentleman Jack had told me what the people in Blue Roses would say about him. Sometimes the people were called the Rosati, because they were crazy about roses.
The Rosati would say Gentleman Jack was bad. They’d say they had to rescue me from him. But it had been Gentleman Jack who’d rescued me from them.
Where was the jail? That’s where I could be with Gentleman Jack. I wished the Judge would say something, so I could tell him I wanted to go to the jail and be with Gentleman Jack. But three breaths and a swallow had passed, and the Judge remained silent.
The light faded. The pink stone had turned gray by the time we slid off the horse. The Judge handed the reins to a man who appeared from the shadows. We walked up steps carved into the rock. They were steep and juddery, sticking out in all the wrong places. Now up a twist of steps and around a bend, now toward a glint of glass. The glass was in a window, the window was in a cottage.
How did I know that word, Cottage?
“Hungry?” The Judge spoke at last.
“I want to go to jail.”
“Heavens, no,” said the Judge. “You can’t go to jail.”
“I can,” I said. “I’ve done lots of bad things. I want to be in the same jail as Gentleman Jack.” No, not the same jail. I wanted to be in the same cell as Gentleman Jack. A jail was a building full of cages, and a cell was one of those cages.
If I was in a cell with Gentleman Jack, I could escape with him. “There’s no jail that can hold me.” That’s what he always said. We’d be together; we’d make a plan and together we’d escape.
“You’re too young to go to jail,” said the Judge, “even if you’ve done bad things. How old are you? About ten?”
The Robber Girl Page 2