7
In the morning, they walked the highway under gray clouds. Brooke could see her breath. They had finished Holly’s oatmeal concoction and the last of their water. The girls whined: they were hungry; they were cold; they were sick of walking. Rather than trying to cheer or distract them, today Milo was in a sour mood, complaining of weeping blisters on his feet and a pinch in his back that sent flashes of pain down his leg every few steps.
Only Cawley was quiet, limping feebly along, looking sick.
Toward midday, clearing a low rise, they saw a sprawl of buildings, bleakly still under the dull sky. It had probably held a few thousand people at its peak. The edges were decaying now in patchy lots of brush. Brooke had heard Buffalo Cross called unfriendly, but there was no fence or obvious patrol, as Buxton had. She wondered if people here were beyond caring, or so well defended that they didn’t need to show it; either possibility was cause for concern.
Brooke instructed Milo to add a second rope to Cawley’s ankle and hold it himself, so that Cawley was doubly tethered and could be pulled to the ground at need. Milo took the rope from his pack and attached it to Cawley’s leg with the knots Brooke had shown him. When it was done, Brooke looked up to realize that Holly and Sal had not waited for them and were already coming even with the first houses.
Brooke shouted after them, and Holly turned to look over her shoulder as Sal ran ahead.
“Damn it,” Brooke cursed, waving at Milo to hurry.
“Hold up,” Cawley said as he skipped after Milo, trying not to be pulled down by the rope on his leg.
Sal had disappeared around the corner of the nearest house, where woodsmoke hovered over the roof.
“I told her to stay,” Holly muttered as Brooke and Milo caught up with her in the road.
Sal was squatting in the front yard of a house, next to a woman in a plastic chair. The woman was fifty or so, tall and strong, and looked healthy enough; sober, anyway. She was shelling pole beans into a bucket. Sal had gathered a handful of the empty pods from the ground and was trying to stack them, lining up the bulging depressions left by the plucked beans. The toughness of the late-season plants made them rigid and uncooperative, and the pile kept toppling.
“Sal, get over here,” Brooke said.
Sal didn’t look up, her brow wrinkled in concentration.
“It’s all right, Mom,” the woman said. “Nothing to fear. Your kid was just curious.”
“Is this Buffalo Cross?” Brooke asked. “I heard you have a sheriff.”
“Which one’s Dad?” the woman asked with wry amusement. “The one tied up or the one holding the rope?”
“That’s my dad,” Sal said, looking up from her stack and pointing.
Brooke watched the woman’s gaze pass over Milo, taking in his complexion, his sharp features. Her expression was unreadable.
“And the other one?” The woman shifted her gaze to Cawley.
“He’s a criminal,” Sal said, acting nonchalant. “On drugs.”
The woman raised her eyebrows and kept shelling. “What do you want the sheriff for?”
“We need a phone,” Brooke said. “We’re trying to reach the federal marshals.”
“You want to bring the feds here? I don’t think so. Even if there was a phone, which there isn’t.”
“Like I said, we need the sheriff. You know where I can find him?”
“I’m him. Lynn Maxwell. Pleased to meet you. I think I can ask a few questions, seeing as you’re in my town with a so-called criminal, and who knows what else.” Her eyes flicked back to Milo.
“I need to speak to you privately, Sheriff,” Brooke said.
“Private how?” The beans continued to fall into the bucket with a soft tapping sound.
“Is there somewhere safe the kids can wait?”
“This whole town’s safe.”
“Somewhere separate, then.”
“You girls run on down to that house,” the sheriff said. Brooke could hear it now, the casual authority in her voice. “The last one before the bend. With the brown truck in the yard. You ask Lorne to come back here with you. He’s my deputy.”
“Don’t go inside,” Brooke warned Holly. “Stay where I can see you. And keep—”
“I know. Keep Sal with me.”
“I can’t right now,” Sal said, intent on her stack of shells. “I’m busy.”
“Go on,” Maxwell said, handing her a full bean. “You can take this.”
Sal got up and followed Holly slowly, twisting the ends of the long reddish bean, trying to open it.
The sheriff gestured at Brooke’s rifle.
“You carrying any firearms besides the .22, Mom? Any alcohol or drugs?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve got a right to ask.”
“We don’t have anything.”
“And what’s the story with your criminal friend here?”
The girls were halfway to the brown truck, gawking at everything they passed.
“He killed an agent,” Brooke said. “There was a marshal in Buxton with the warrant.”
“So you have it on hearsay.” Maxwell let a handful of beans fall through her fingers into the bucket.
“He’s a Cawley,” Brooke said coolly, staring at the fallen stack of bean shells Sal had abandoned. “Stephen Cawley.”
“Oh?” Maxwell shucked the last bean and stood up, looking closer at the captive. “That’d be something. Cawleys in Buxton? What, did they run out of kids to bleed in Shaw County?”
“Fuck you, fat-ass,” Cawley grumbled. “This bitch is no better, you know. She came at me with an axe.”
“I just need to reach the outpost at Shaw Station,” Brooke spoke over Cawley. “If you don’t have a phone, then loan us horses, or that truck, if it works. And we need food and water.”
“Quite the list,” Maxwell said, sitting back down. “You should have taken him to Buxton, if that’s where they’re after him. They’ve got phones, and they don’t like chalkheads any more than I do. Though maybe that’s changed, if they’re letting marshals in. Feds and chalk never seem to be far apart, somehow.”
“Are you going to help us or not, Sheriff?”
“No, thanks. I don’t want anything to do with those animals, Cawleys, Hollands, whatever. You’re mixed up with gang shit, you can move right on through. This town’s dry. We don’t let drugs in and we don’t tolerate people who deal in them.”
“We’re not involved,” Milo said. “We’re just doing a public service.”
Holly and Sal were returning now. With them was a young man in a plaid fleece jacket.
“Lorne,” Maxwell called out as the man stepped into the yard, trailed by the girls. He was younger than Maxwell, equally tall. He wore a revolver in a low-slung hip holster, like a movie cowboy.
“Hi, folks.” He nodded to Brooke and Milo, took in the roped figure between them.
“This man in the ropes is supposedly a Cawley out of Shaw County,” Maxwell said. “Mom and Dad want to get him to the fed outpost down there, but they don’t have any way to move him.”
“Could be,” Lorne said, looking Cawley over. “There’s bound to be some of them still creeping around.”
Brooke watched Cawley’s face harden under the scrutiny. She knew the impulse he would be feeling, how gladly he would have wiped that disparaging leer off the deputy’s face.
“Mom here says there’s a warrant,” Maxwell said.
“Any bounty on it?”
“Five thousand dollars,” Milo said before Brooke could stop him.
Lorne whistled. “That’s a nice payday for you folks. I’d bring him in for that.”
“Except you don’t work for the feds,” Maxwell said sharply. “You work for me.”
“We’re not asking you to take him,” Brooke said.
“No,” Maxwell said. “You’re just asking for a phone and a truck, and food for the lot of you.”
“Five grand, though—” Lorne began.
&nb
sp; The sheriff exhaled noisily. “This one could be a Cawley herself, for all we know. I’ve got no proof he did anything. What if he’s the marshal? You want to ride him into the outpost on those terms?”
“We’re not giving him over,” Brooke said, louder.
“Brooke,” Milo broke in. “If they’ll take him, we should let them.”
“I thought they would have killed each other off by now,” Lorne said to Maxwell.
“Who?” Sal whispered to Holly.
“Well, Sheriff?” Brooke broke in.
“Fact is, Mom,” Maxwell said, “you’ve got no witness, I haven’t seen this warrant, and I don’t know you. You’ve restrained a man, who may or may not be a chalk dealer, and you’re asking me to help you convey him to a federal outpost, where I could just as easily be accused of kidnapping and unlawful confinement if what you’ve told me isn’t true. I don’t live out here so I can get tangled up in chalk wars or fed shit. I could untie him now and let you sort your differences out your own selves—”
“I told you, he’s—” Brooke cut in.
“However, that seems to be what you’ve already done, and whether he’s guilty or not has nothing to do with my town, so I’ll respect your right to freedom of movement and let you pass through if you’re not going to make any trouble for people here.”
“What kind of law is that?”
“I don’t arrest folks on your say-so, Mom. You want a different kind of law, go live in the city.”
“What about food?” Milo asked. “The kids haven’t eaten since last night.”
Maxwell approached him. Brooke tightened her grip on the rifle. The sheriff reached over Milo’s shoulder to where yesterday’s knee socks were tied drying from the top strap of his pack. Unknotting one long gray sock, Maxwell returned to her lawn chair and filled the sock with beans from toe to heel.
“Fair’s fair,” she said, knotting the end and tossing it back to Milo. “Your kid helped shell. I’d recommend boiling them, though.”
CLOUDS WERE MASSING, darkening the landscape as Maxwell and the deputy led them along the main street through town, ostensibly to show them to the town’s central well, where they could fill their bottles. It was clear that Brooke and Milo would not be left unescorted as long as they were in Buffalo Cross. Maxwell walked a little ahead of them, carrying a medium-gauge shotgun she had retrieved from her house. Lorne kept to their other side, one hand resting on his revolver.
They saw no one else until they’d passed the yard with the brown truck—Brooke saw now that it didn’t have wheels, much less gas. There, they turned down a residential street where most of the houses looked occupied. A row of recycling bins lined up on the traffic median spilled wide green leaves and the papery golden blossoms of late-season pepper squash. At one house, a pair of children were pulling dead morning glories down from the porch trellis. Flowers grown for pleasure, children doing chores. Maxwell’s town was, if not thriving, at least functioning.
The street led to a public square. Two old women and one man were sitting on the raised concrete edge of an empty fountain basin in the middle of the square. Behind them was a Legion hall, a church, a boarded-up bank. In the churchyard stood a fifty-foot pole, still flying the sovereign flag.
“Help yourself,” Maxwell said. Brooke saw a tap in the center of the basin, mounted on the elevated pipe that had once fed a decorative fountain. Holly and Sal climbed over the basin’s edge with the water bottles while Brooke and Milo stood a short distance away, holding Cawley’s ropes.
“It’s safe?” Brooke asked, skeptical. Even Buxton had trouble keeping their water clean.
“Straight from a well.” Maxwell leaned against the concrete with the old people, making no move to introduce the visitors.
There was a stack of baskets next to one of the women, eggs in one, more pole beans in another.
“Do you think you could spare some of those eggs?” Milo asked, introducing himself to the old people.
“A dollar each,” the old woman said with a glance at Maxwell. “Or I’d trade for aspirin.”
“Arthritis bothering you, Ash?” Maxwell asked.
“In this weather,” the woman answered, gesturing up at the darkening sky.
“I’ve told you that’s nonsense,” Maxwell said. “Weather can’t make your bones hurt.”
“We’ll take a dozen, if that’s okay,” Milo said, not bothering to haggle. He dug his money out of the pack. “I’m sorry I don’t have any aspirin.”
The woman named Ash shrugged her assent. Milo handed over the coins and slipped the eggs one by one into the second sock from the pair on his top strap, twisting the wool between each of the eggs to create a cushion. The last three he had to add in with Maxwell’s beans.
“We’d buy bread, too, if you have it,” he said.
“The Legion might have leftover,” Ash said, counting out what Milo had given her. “You ought to think about staying there anyways, with the storm that’s coming.”
“These folks don’t want the Legion,” Maxwell said.
“That other lady who came up the highway, she’s staying,” Ash said, directing her words at Maxwell. “They ought to, Lynn. For the children, at least. I’ve seen hail this time of year, more than once.”
“It’d be up to Cliven,” Maxwell said. “I can’t say he’d want them.”
“What other lady?” Brooke asked. A cold breeze cut through the square, raising goosebumps under her coat.
“No one you’d like to meet.” Ash made a face of disgust. “Blond lady covered in burns.”
“She’s in there now?” Brooke willed her voice not to tremble. “Staying in one of the rooms?”
“Cliven’s got plenty of rooms,” Ash said. “Don’t worry. There’s the whole upstairs.”
“Mind if I take a look at the Legion, Sheriff?” Brooke asked. “I won’t be a minute.”
“Why?”
“Just like to see the rooms. If there’s weather coming, like she said.”
“Unload your rifle. And it’ll be up to the Legion owner if you can stay.”
Brooke handed Cawley’s lead rope to Milo and cracked the rifle, dropping the cartridges out and passing them to him to hold.
She approached the Legion, bypassing the front steps and instead climbing the fire escape that ran up the side of the building and around to the back of the second story. She glanced back to the square and saw Maxwell watching dubiously, her mouth pressed in a thin line.
At the back of the building, the fire escape looked down on a small parking lot. Through the open doors of an outbuilding, Brooke saw the hindquarters of a heavy draft horse, white or light gray.
Ahead of Brooke, a line of windows was set into the brick. She came even with the first and peeked in: a hallway. The second revealed a made-up room, empty. The third was boarded over.
At the fourth window, the curtains were half open. It took Brooke’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. Someone was asleep on the bed. A woman, turned on her side, facing away from Brooke, pale hair spilled across the pillow. Brooke’s stomach tightened. It was just as she’d feared. The woman on the bed was a bit thin, perhaps, but the right height. Delia. Traveling on horseback on the highway, she could easily have missed them at the farm and still gotten to Buffalo Cross first.
Brooke scoured the room for any identifying detail. Ash had said this woman was blond, with burn marks. Still, Brooke had to be sure. Of all their possible pursuers, Delia was the most terrifying.
The old sash window had been left slightly open. Careful not to make a sound, Brooke retrieved three spare bullets from an inner pocket of her coat and loaded them into the rifle. She reached a hand into the half-inch gap and lifted the window as slowly as she could manage, fearful of the dry wood squealing. It slid on its runners with a soft sigh. The woman on the bed didn’t stir. When Brooke had the window open eight inches, she bent to stick her leg through.
Behind her, the metal fire escape jangled. Brooke spun around, gun r
aised.
“What the hell?” Holly jumped back, watching her mother with alarm. “What are you doing?”
Brooke held a finger to her lips and stood back against the wall, out of view. No sound from the room. Holly was frozen, staring. Brooke chanced a peek through the window. Delia was still sleeping. She eased the window cautiously back down, thinking she was lucky that Holly had interrupted before terror had made her do something foolish. She could neither capture nor harm Delia here; Maxwell would certainly intervene, not to mention Milo and the girls, to whom she could offer no decent explanation.
They’d have to run.
“We can’t stay here,” Brooke whispered, inching along the fire escape to Holly.
THE HARDEST PART was getting the girls to leave quietly. Holly was already arguing before they got off the fire escape, and in the square, Sal started in with questions, shouting to be heard over her sister.
Milo was no help. During Brooke’s absence, he’d bought more food from the old people—heavy jars of beets and turnips that would be hell to carry—and he gazed longingly at the Legion. “The kids are tired,” he said. “I’m tired. You haven’t slept in two days. We should stay here tonight.”
“No.” Brooke knew passing up warmth and a dry bed was torment—her own stomach was empty and clenching, the rising wind was bitterly cold, her heels were raw in her boots—but Delia was here, the most vicious of all of them. There was no chance that word of their passage would escape her, none at all. Even if Delia slept clear through till tomorrow, they would have a half day’s head start at best.
“Daddy,” Sal whined, clinging to Milo. “It’s not fair. She said they would help.”
“What difference can one night make?” he pressed.
“It’s not safe,” Brooke said. “It’s more dangerous than you know, Milo. Please don’t make me explain right now.” She turned away before he could say anything else and crossed the square to where Maxwell stood watching with Lorne.
“Listen,” Brooke said. “If you do have a phone—I know what you said, but if you do—just call the marshals. Tell them we’re coming. Tell them we have children. And tell them—” She lowered her voice so that the others would not hear her. “Tell them someone’s following us.”
The Captive Page 9