I didn’t realize until later how silent the ride back had been. I was too wrapped up in my own problems to think about the family drama brewing with every step we took toward the Heresy Ranch.
Salter is here, in Timberline. He is as dangerous and menacing as I’ve always heard. I have three choices. I could go to Salter, tell him who I am, and coordinate our cases. Hope he doesn’t betray me to Hattie and Garet. Of course, he would. He’s survived in the West for over a decade, done some truly horrible things, and yet walks free precisely because he is ruthless. It was evident from a five-minute conversation the amount of respect he would give me if we worked together.
Second option: remain silent and rely on the remoteness of Timberline to protect me. This is my best choice, though there is no way for me to keep tabs on Salter. He could ride out of town tonight and be back with a posse of Pinkertons in two weeks.
Third option: tell Rhodes that Salter is a Pinkerton, here to capture Garet. That’s ridiculous; I would have to say how I know who Salter is, and I have no good explanation.
When we arrived at the ranch house, Stella lit into Joan, telling her in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t to leave the ranch and that she wasn’t to go near Jed Spooner.
“I’m a grown woman. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I can, and I will.”
“How exactly do you expect to keep me here, huh?”
Stella put her hand on her knife and stepped forward. Garet moved between the sisters.
“Everyone calm down. Joan, Stella is right. You need to stay away from Spooner. You’re too young and inexperienced.”
“You’re just jealous because he …”
“You might want to be careful what you say there, Joan,” Hattie said. “Tough to take back cruel words once they’re said.”
“The only reason that bastard is sniffing around you is because you ain’t never been with a man,” Stella said. “He’ll take that from you and throw you away, mark my words. Or he may use you to death. He ain’t gonna marry you, that’s for goddamn sure.”
“If I want Spooner and he wants me, there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Any of you.”
Stella stared at her sister long and hard. Finally she nodded. “You’re right, and you’re sneaky enough to do it. That’s our fault. We’ve petted you for too long, you being the baby.” She stepped forward and put her finger in Joan’s face. I could tell it took something for the girl to stand toe-to-toe with Stella. “When it all goes south, and it will, don’t come running to me to save you. Again.”
She slammed the door on her way out to the barn. Joan stood in the middle of the room, looking from Hattie to Garet to me as if wanting us to console her, be on her side. None of us did. She stomped off into her and Stella’s room. Garet turned and went to her room and closed the door with a solid thud. Hattie chuckled, said, “Isn’t family grand?,” and bid me good night.
Sunday, July 1, 1877
Ten days ago, Jehu, Hattie, Stella, and five hired cowboys left to rustle mustangs for not more than a fortnight. It’s a short roundup, to meet the timeline Hattie and Garet have set for the heist. Garet hired Ought-Not, Domino, Sly Jack, and Salter to help us out on the ranch and do the more physical labor. She, Joan, and I work from sunup to sundown. Any downtime we have, Garet spends teaching me to ride and to be comfortable with horses. I am sore in places I didn’t know I could be sore in, and by the time we we’re finished at night, I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone organize my thoughts well enough to interview Garet on how she ended up an outlaw. I’ve given up trying to think my way out of the Salter situation. I was alarmed when Garet hired him but decided it was the best option in a bundle of bad ones. I can keep an eye on him and feed him misinformation while not being tricked into revealing anything about myself. Seeing his swarthy, smirking face every day has motivated me more than anything to bring them in, and Spooner, too, just to prove to him a woman can perform more than three roles in life.
There is one solution that solves every problem: killing him. I just don’t have it in me.
Today is a Sunday, which means we did only the bare minimum of chores, and we took the afternoon off and went to picnic by the river.
We rode, of course, but Garet took the day off from correcting me about my riding. The optimistic part of me hopes it is because I am improving. I don’t have the courage to ask her.
While Garet and I tended the livestock this morning, Joan made our lunch: fried chicken and whole roasted potatoes, with fried blackberry pies for dessert. She is an excellent little cook, and she enjoys it. She doesn’t like working outside, and everyone else hates inside work, especially Stella and Hattie.
Newt met us at the river with a fishing pole and a promise of catching dinner. We washed our lunch down with a bottle of beer each. Joan brought Newt a jar of lemonade, and he was so grateful and calf-eyed I was embarrassed for him. The beer spread a pleasant warmth through my aching muscles. Joan, smaller, younger, and less used to alcohol, fell asleep almost immediately after. Robbed of the chance to impress Joan, Newt took his pole, a spade to dig worms, and a pail and went down the river to fish.
Garet and I lounged on the blanket and stared up at the clouds. My heart swelled with appreciation for the beauty around me, and I forgot about my Salter worries for a while.
“I never realized how beautiful nature could be.”
“They didn’t have clouds in Chicago?”
“There were beautiful days, of course, and there were times when the skies over the lake could take your breath away. But there was also smoke and dirt and masses of people. No, I much prefer Colorado.”
“Even this remoteness?”
“I might require a little more civilization.”
“I’m offended.”
I could tell from her voice she was teasing me.
“How did you come to be in Colorado, Garet?”
“I came to America on my honeymoon, and we decided to stay.”
I propped myself on my arm and looked down on her. “I can’t decide if you’re being intentionally vague because you don’t trust me, or you want me have the room to embellish your story with my imagination.”
“Do you have a good imagination, Grace?”
“I like to think so.”
“I’m keeping a journal now. You inspired me.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. I kept one in my youth, of course. It was full of horse talk and observations about training and riding, breeding.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“The most interesting entry was the one after I saw a stud mount a mare for the first time. What a shock for a twelve-year-old. It was horrifying, mesmerizing, and”—she looked out of the corners of her eyes at me—“erotic, though I didn’t understand that at the time. I knew that tingling meant something, but not what. All of my entries tended that way for quite a few weeks. It was breeding season, after all. Honestly, I can’t believe my grandfather let me watch. I don’t think he saw me as a girl, or at least not one turning into a woman. My mother found the journal, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you it was quite a scene.”
I hated that I was blushing, so I lifted my face to the sun and closed my eyes, as if this were any other story, and any other day.
Garet touched my arm. “Don’t worry, there are no such entries in this journal. In it I intend to tell you all about my past. In detail. But today is too beautiful to waste on talk. I have a better idea.”
“What?”
She stood and toed off her boots. “A swim.”
“In the river?”
“Yes, goose. In the river.”
“But the current?”
“It deepens here and slows the current down. Besides, I won’t let you get washed down the river.” She undressed and I looked around in a panic. “Newt is serious about his fishing. We will be out before he gets back,” Garet said. She shed her pants and her shirt, and her undergarments, and I looked away. “You can kee
p your clothes on, if you like. But there’s nothing more invigorating than jumping naked into a cold river.” She ran to the bank and, with a shout, leaped in. When she emerged she shouted again. “Oh my God that’s cold!”
“I don’t like bathing in cold water.”
“You’ll get used to it. I already am.”
“Your teeth are chattering.”
“I thought you were a risk taker, Grace.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
She mimicked my voice. “‘Take me with you!’”
“I do not sound like that.”
“Now you’re avoiding the question. Are you going to get in, or will I have to get out and throw you in?”
“You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.”
Garet spit an arc of water in my direction. “I will and I can. Come, Grace. I’ll let you feel my tumor.”
“Hardly an enticement.” I turned my back and started to disrobe. I heard Garet splashing around behind me, laughing. “It doesn’t sound like you need me.”
“Find fun where and while you can, Grace.”
I looked down at my naked body and cringed at my prominent hipbones, my small breasts, the dark thatch of hair where my legs met, my gloved hands. It seemed ridiculous to leave that part of me obscured when nothing else was, but wearing the gloves had become a habit. At first I wore them because I didn’t want to be reminded of what happened, of why it happened. Later the idea of showing my scars to others, seeing the pity in their eyes, the questions, filled me with terror. There was no one alive who knew of my scars, who had seen them, who knew the story behind them. The gloves had become my armor, protecting me from others, from being hurt.
With shaking hands I removed them. When I turned, Garet was floating faceup in the water, her eyes closed. At that distance I could see the abnormal bump in her abdomen. My stomach clenched with grief. How long did she really have? How did she live with the pain? I rarely saw it flit across her expression, and she never seemed to show the effects of laudanum, either. Margaret Parker was an enigma, one that I wanted to solve.
I approached the river cautiously and dipped my foot into it. “You can’t be serious. That isn’t cold, it’s frigid.”
“Jump in. Makes it easier.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh my God.”
Garet stood up and waded through the river. I tried to concentrate on her face instead of the water streaming down her body, and almost succeeded. I tucked my hands under my arms, covering my scars and my breasts. Garet noticed the movement and held out her hand. “There’s no need to be shy with me, Grace.” Droplets of water ran down her face, one hanging on the tip of her nose. I found myself removing one hand and putting it in hers. She looked down at it for a long moment before tracing the iron-shaped scar gently with a finger. Her eyes met mine. “Both?”
I nodded and gave her my other hand, showing the less defined scars. “I knew what was coming with this hand, you see.”
“Who did it?”
“My mother. She’s dead.”
“I hope by your hand.”
I looked away to tell the lie more easily. “No, God’s. She died in the fire of ’71. Burned to death. So you see, God does have a sense of justice.”
“So does man. Although it is unevenly meted out.”
“How so?”
“Outlaws when they’re caught go to prison. If they’re caught. Other men protect them more often than not. If a man kills, he will hang most of the time. But everybody out here is stealing something from someone. Some of it’s legal, some of it isn’t. Seems the legal side is weighted to the rich men and their business. People who are struggling, trying to get by, are treated more harshly. Didn’t you find that in Chicago, too?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think would happen if we were caught? Four women, getting the best of men?”
“You’d go to jail.”
“Assuredly, but not before they thoroughly humiliated us. Made a spectacle of us to discourage other women from following suit. The loudest and angriest voices against us would be women’s, because we threaten their idea of their selves, their lives. There is no telling what they would do to Hattie, but it would be many degrees worse than what they do to me.”
When I’d thought of the spectacle, I’d been focused on the glory I would receive as the woman who brought them to justice. Whatever consequences they suffered they deserved. But “consequences” had always been a vague idea. Humiliation in the papers, jail time since they’ve never hurt anyone. My imagination amounted to slaps on the wrists, which is, I see now, completely ridiculous. They would be made examples. Dorcas would probably make sure of that. I’d never considered that Hattie’s consequences might be different, harsher. Outside the law.
“Is that justice?”
I shook my head, my throat clogged with shame and fear. Fear that I’d put in motion something I wasn’t sure I could stop.
“I don’t know much about you, Grace. Only impressions, a gut feeling. I suspect you feel the injustice of your place in the world, the limitations placed on you, as keenly as I do.” Her gaze bored into me, seeing me in a way few others have. My breath caught. “Am I right?”
I could barely find my voice. Her words, the low tenor she spoke them in, opened up the tender areas in my soul I thought I’d long hardened against this grief, this longing not to feel imperfect and wanting in the world. “Yes.”
“My hope is this job, this telling of our story, will set us both free from what limits us. Me from ignominy. You from whatever it is that haunts you.”
“Haunts me? Nothing …”
She put her fingers to my lips. “That will be my parting gift to you.”
“Please don’t talk of dying.”
“Everyone dies, and I will die on my own terms. Will you live on your own terms?”
“I … um …”
“Promise me, Grace.”
She didn’t realize what she was asking. To live on my own terms, I needed to betray her, to bring her to justice as I originally intended. But the idea that had been niggling in the back of my mind since I’d heard she was dying came forth fully formed: What was the point of turning her in? Was I the type of woman who would sentence someone else to living their last days as a focus of ridicule and derision?
No, I wasn’t.
“I promise.”
Garet hugged me and, before I knew what was happening, launched us sideways into the frigid river. We plunged into the water, falling down to the bottom. I opened my eyes and saw Garet grinning at me. I pushed up and broke through the surface, wet hair covering my eyes, goose bumps popping up all over my body. Garet shot up next to me, laughing.
“Oh, you vile, tricky woman,” I said.
Her joy and mischievousness were infectious, and I started laughing, too. She flicked water into my face, and I returned the favor before turning and diving into the deep center of the river.
Garet had been right; we were packing up when Newt returned with a string of brown trout for dinner. We rode home, took care of the livestock, and ate Newt’s catch, which Joan sautéed in fresh butter. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a more wonderful meal.
Newt rode home, and the three of us spent a pleasant night around the fire. Garet read, I darned my traveling gloves, and Joan played on the floor with Buster, her retriever. It was the perfect ending to the most companionable day I’ve had since my days with Kate Warne at the agency. On the ride home, I’d asked myself what Kate would do, and hadn’t liked the answer.
Now it’s midnight, and I am in Jehu and Hattie’s room. The bed is soft, and there is a comforting lethargy to my limbs and a quietude in my mind that comes only from the assurance of my place in the world and the path I must take.
Thursday, July 19, 1877
Tomorrow Jehu takes me to Rock Springs to catch the train to Cheyenne, then on to Denver. Garet and Hattie will follow a couple of days later so there is no chance we will be seen together. Ove
r the last month I’ve grown attached to the ranch, the town, and the people. I’m loath to leave it, but it is time to put Garet’s plan into action.
Wednesday, August 1, 1877
Train to Cheyenne
I’m worried Garet isn’t going to make it to the day we have targeted for the heist, Monday, October first, the day of the large suffrage march through Denver, rallying for the amendment that will be voted on the next day. We will use the march as a distraction and cover for our escape. I’ve been watching her, probably too closely, and I can see the strain around her eyes. She told me that the doctor she saw in Cheyenne told her that he thought the tumor was too far along to operate on, but if she wanted to have it done, she would have to go to Chicago or St. Louis to find a doctor with skills enough to do it. Garet is a homebody and didn’t want to take the chance the trip might be one way. So she stayed and has tried to manage the pain with laudanum and hemp for the last three months.
Garet could tell I was worried she mightn’t make it to Denver, and she gently chided me when we were saying goodbye. “You’re not done with me yet. I will frustrate and irritate you many more times before I’m gone.”
I shook my head and looked down at my bare hands. No one had mentioned the scars. The shift in Hattie and Stella’s attitudes toward me had been slight, but I’d noticed. I suspected we were all of us scarred in one way or another, and it bonded us together as nothing else would.
Hattie had put a small jar of salve on the arm of my chair one night as I read by the fire. There was no comment or eye contact. I looked up and saw Garet watching with amusement. She lifted one shoulder and returned to her work. The salve smelled like camphor, and I could only assume it was for my scars. I applied a little on the back of each hand and smiled at the comforting coolness.
Jehu, of course, became even gentler with me. He stands out from the others because he is the most respectful of the bunch. With every question there is a please, with every action there is a thank-you. He answers my questions with “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am,” and covers his mouth when he laughs. His voice fluctuates between deep and not, as if he’s still going through puberty, which is probably why he talks so gently, and his tanned face has a softness Luke Rhodes’s hasn’t had since childhood, I’d wager. You couldn’t help but like Jehu, and within a very short time, he’s won me over completely. Without me ever learning a thing about him. I was excited to have a few hours alone with him while we traveled to Rock Springs.
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