Chapter Six
Aman charged over the rise, his shoulders leaning into the charcoal vapors.
A shudder clawed up my body as I gazed down the barrel of my Peacemaker.
My hands shook, palms slippery, calves tight and watery.
I rubbed my handkerchief on my skin, wiping off ash and sweat and viscera.
A dingy vermilion smear shadowed the hollow of my palm.
It wouldn’t erase. My throat felt stuffed, as if my body held back a scream.
I didn’t know how I’d ever move on, let alone face this next calamity. But I must. There was no other choice.
Wind shattered across the plain, saltgrass tossed in disarray, the cowboy dashing over the smoldering prairie, the world moving too fast, while I felt frozen in time.
Soot clouded before me—I swatted away fragments and thought of a moment from long ago.
I’d been perhaps nine, out in the south pasture, Magnolia off aways gathering dewberries, when a man had crept from between a strand of bitternut hickories.
I’d reached for the rifle slung across my back, ill ease weaving up my neck.
I’d screamed, the shrill rasp of my voice snapping across our farmland.
The man had scrambled away, his stride tilted, his expression peculiar.
In moments, Pa had swept up on his tobiano mare.
Sweetheart, what’s wrong? After I’d told him, he hadn’t made me feel foolish, instead had reminded me to always trust my gut. Today Pa was faraway.
The gunslinger cut through the fog, only a few rods before me. He sharpened into focus, and I faltered backward. The Lawman.
“This is my land,” I said, determined to sound strong and in control.
The Lawman glanced at the cowboys. The wind whipped, funneling onyx fragments around his form. His gaze slid to mine. “Clearly.”
“I will kill you.”
He swung from his mustang, boots echoing along the lowland.
I cocked my gun, fingers wooden. The Lawman pressed his fingertips against the drunk’s pallid wrist, his gaze snagging on the cowboy’s loose britches.
His scowl deepened. Unbothered by the pistol I trained on his body, the Lawman strode through the haze to check the other man.
He didn’t seem surprised or rattled by the carnage, his preternatural ease chilling.
I should shoot. Coal-black and fog-white remains dusted my hands; cardamom and ruby smeared across my fist. The Lawman hadn’t threatened me. Killing him would be murder, plain as day.
He turned, palms raised, and slowly advanced toward me. “You okay?” His voice, low and thick, like clogged honey or sarsaparilla syrup.
I sank my teeth into my lip, kept the barrel trained on him. The Lawman took off his hat, scraped his fingers through his hair. It was a warm black, as if the sunlight had been only brave enough to barely brush the strands. His hair waved and tufted around the bones of his face.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He looked northward, squinted, the muscles on his neck taut. “I claimed the one-sixty just north.”
The hell-fired gunfighter was my neighbor? Well, damn.
“I informed you this creek is mine,” I said.
“Don’t think you can claim the all of it.”
“Maybe,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
He flexed his fingers, as if trying to appear less intimidating. He didn’t realize: I’d learned, long ago, to trust no one. Folks would either fail you—or betray you. That was just the way the world spun.
The Lawman pressed on his hat, adjusting its position by the crown. “Heard the shots.”
All nature, of course others would’ve heard. Wouldn’t be long until someone else galloped up. I scanned the smoky horizons. I must dispose of the bodies, straightaway.
“What will you do now?” the Lawman asked.
I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead. “Drag ’em into those north woods. There are wolves, right?”
He bent and grabbed a body. Was that an agreement to step beyond the law? He was a notorious bandit—surely he wouldn’t snitch. But I didn’t want to be indebted to anyone, let alone a renegade. “Wait.” I lowered my Peacemaker. “No.”
He gripped the drunk’s shirt.
“I’m obliged to no one,” I said.
He released the cowboy and crossed his arms, bootheels firm against the ground.
He swept his gaze the length of my body.
The attention of an outlaw should’ve made me uneasy, but his inspection felt scientific and well mannered.
It was as if he cataloged me, recognized another lawless soul. For that was what I was now—an outlaw.
I crossed my arms, mirroring him. “I don’t trust you.”
“No one said anything about trust, darling.”
He bent, hefted up the drunk’s body, tossed it cross a horse.
“I said no.” I followed him. “Do you listen?”
His brows lifted—course outlaws didn’t listen to a two-penny woman.
I shoved my pistol in my holster and strode toward the other body, clasped my hand round his wrist, tugged.
The Lawman didn’t offer to help, just went about tying the cowboys’ horses together and binding the drunk to a saddle.
I yanked and dragged the lifeless form through layers of ash until I was before his horse.
I hauled him up with a grunt, his back pressed to my chest, arms hanging limp.
The Lawman took his feet and tossed the body across the horse.
I met the Lawman’s gaze. Then a wolf dog spit from the switchgrass—I jolted. The hound sat beside the Lawman and pawed at his muzzle.
“What is that thing?”
“My dog,” he said, his tone implying an added you imbecile.
He looped rope around a body and tightened the knots. “Surviving the frontier will be brutal.”
I shot forward, gripped his tie, the cotton flecked with silver ash. The hound leapt up and snarled, but the Lawman clicked low in his throat and the wolf dog eased.
“Preach to another choir, Lawman. No one hurts me.”
“You actually think you’ll survive winter?” he said. “You’ve tangled yourself in a few quagmires already.”
“Don’t belittle me. I will—” I scanned his bearing, the shape of his face. His irises were chips of peridot, vibrant in the brume. “I will slaughter you in your sleep.”
“Alright, Minnie. Calm yourself a smidge.”
He’d noted when Ezra said my name. And remembered. But he couldn’t use my alias—in my new life, it was crucial that no one drew close.
“Amelia,” I snapped. “No, wait. Miss Hoopes.”
“Really?” He squinted at me, as if dumbfounded by my sudden grasp at propriety.
“And I’m calm.” I let go of his knot and lowered my heels to the earth.
“You sure about that?”
“Well.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not sure I value calm.”
“Alright.” He straightened his vest placket and swung onto his horse.
I took the rope lead from him, then led the cowboys’ horses to Cricket.
Like a charcoal sketch, scraggly bushes sprouted here and there, the plants now only a layering of ash.
They’d crumple in the next gust of prairie wind.
Cricket’s eyes were glassy and fixed on the burning.
A tremble quaked across his barrel. I grasped his bridle, looked into his eyes.
“Hush now, old buddy,” I murmured, then mounted.
I kicked my heels and pummeled toward the forest, the elms and sycamores and vines a black swarm of unknown.
The wood looked haunted and alive, like it could swallow my secrets whole.
The other horses jostled over the furrows, unsteady and creaky, the rope abrading my palm.
Beside me, the Lawman leaned into the wind, atop his inky-black mustang, galloping fast enough to keep up with me, his wolf racing beside him.
We pummeled through the trees, the branches clawing my skin through my overblouse, until we stumbled into a slight clearing.
I swung off Cricket, tied the horses to a cedar, and yanked my shovel from its ties.
I needed to rid myself of the bodies and dash to the land office—somehow the race went on.
A sumac tree winged before the glade, the leaves evolving from summer’s green to autumn’s flame red.
I wobbled on a shard of shale, and a briar grasped my skirts.
As my bootheel sank beneath the topsoil, an illusion soaked across the copse, of a woman burrowing through hawthorn briars, bramble snagging in her long dark hair, evergreen thorns slicing her thighs.
The dappled sumac leaves melted backward in time to the scarlet flowers of springtime.
The mirage flickered, then slipped away.
I heard a scrape and a rasp. The Lawman dug into the earth below the expansive roots of a water oak, his shirt rolled up over his forearms. I blinked, disoriented. Then I freed my sooty, floral skirt from the thorns and stepped deeper into the woods.
The ground appeared to wobble, as if the earth wanted to remind me that she was alive.
I swiped my handkerchief across the back of my neck, the rhythm of the Lawman’s shoveling unbroken.
This day had depleted me of all sense. But as I slammed my blade into the parched dirt, I wondered what else was hidden in this wildwood, wondered who was buried deep in the earth.
Linking back through time, others had lived on this land.
Other lives, forgotten underground, their stories lost.
After tossing the cowboys’ bodies into the chasms we’d dug, I removed their gear and slapped their horses’ flanks, setting them free. From their bags, I looted some ammo and pots and a worn copy of Ivanhoe. I burnt the rest.
I thrust a pistol and a few saddle blankets against the Lawman’s charcoal vest.
“You’ll be alright?” he asked, straightening a cartridge bandolier across his chest.
“You do realize this is a race,” I said, tossing his words back at him as I vaulted onto Cricket. “Ride quick.”
And then I dashed westward toward the land office, the leftover blazes smoldering, a haunting sound calling out after me. A deep, primordial groan knotted in with the wind, the rhythm pulsing almost like words: Settle in, I have stories to tell.