Chapter Twenty-One
Acaustic thump rumbled into my dreamlife. I bolted awake and snatched the Winchester off my nightstand, knocking the novel Waverley to the floor.
My shack wobbled.
I aimed my rifle at the door. Something rubbed against my home.
It was dark. Quiet. No owls or crickets.
The dead of night, the dead of winter. I slipped my feet from the covers onto the cold floor, chambered a round in my Winchester, kicked about for my boots.
Keeping my barrel trained on the door, I bent and swept my palm along the oak planks beneath my bed, my fingers skipping over the cracks between the boards.
Dust and crumbs but no shoes. I crept to the doorway, bare toes frigid.
A moan sounded through the fissures of my home, low and guttural, and woven into that hoarse scratch were ancient sounds.
I couldn’t quite grasp words. Couldn’t fathom why she kept calling out to me.
The walls of my shack rocked again, and yet no one knocked.
If someone was here to rob or assault me, they would pound on my door.
From the back of the sofa, I grabbed my woolen shawl and looped it across my shoulders.
A ghost? Surely not, as I didn’t believe in specters. I didn’t, did I?
A whine crept into the stream of night. I placed my palm on the wall.
A herd of cows must’ve wandered onto my quarter section.
The uncanny light of a young moon streamed through my curtains, the lace flowers casting freckled shadows across the floor.
It was mighty quiet for a herd of wayward cows.
I stepped back and stumbled over my boots.
I yanked them on, then kicked open the door. Flattened against the wall.
No one shot at me. No noise at all.
I heard the drift of the wind and a yapping dog, way off. I muttered a ditty under my breath, forcing myself to wait. A shadow burst low through the doorway. I aimed, and a slant of moonshine gleamed on an animal’s smoky, tousled fur.
“One Eye?”
He padded over, pressed on my thigh, whined. I bent, scratched behind his ears, my gaze on the dark hollow of my doorway. “What is it, buddy?”
He nosed the back of my knee, pushing me into the night’s shadows.
“Alright, alright.” I swung my flannel-lined slicker over my white nightdress, grabbed my kerosene lantern and rifle, and followed One Eye out into the dark.
Starlight feathered through prairie grasses, the tottering oats casting a gnarled silhouette against the navy sky.
The air smelt warm and burnt, the smoke from surrounding homesteads downwind.
I followed One Eye on Cricket—he’d taken off westward from my home, away from Stot’s quarter section.
We splashed through the creek and continued on toward the salt plains and outlaw territory.
One Eye panted, his gaze frantic, as if a thunderstorm loomed.
A gale whipped against my chest and tangled my unbound hair.
Surely One Eye was guiding me to Stot—I just hoped he wasn’t dead.
Along the horizon, smoke coiled: a homestead, probably the hideout of the Wild Bunch.
God Almighty, what was Stot doing out here?
I wiped my handkerchief across the sweat bubbling along my collarbone.
It frothed, then iced in the cold. At the slope toward Wagon Creek—the boundary of the outlaws’ haunt—One Eye yelped.
I vaulted off Cricket and stumbled downhill.
Aways off, fuzzy yellow, rectangular windows glowed.
And in the tall river grasses, a body sprawled, rumpled and unmoving.
Black Stetson above white kerchief. Stot.
Moon rays slashed across him, as if his skin was painted with soot and ash.
I shook his shoulder, the fabric damp, but he didn’t wake.
I brushed my fingers across his neck, his skin slippery and warm.
He had a pulse. One Eye pawed his stomach, licked his face.
The metallic scent of blood prickled the thin winter atmosphere—he must be shot.
Stot’s saddlebag squashed in the mud, but I didn’t spot Shark.
I jostled his shoulder again, slapped him across the face.
Smelt his breath, my hair trailing into the silt.
He wasn’t drunk, just dying. My herbs and remedies were back home, but he was too large for me to heft onto Cricket.
I held my slicker tight round my shoulders, the bitter winter breeze seeping through my cotton nightdress.
Tugging on his boots, I dragged him into the gooey mud of the bank, the creek a shadowed blue in the ethereal light.
As One Eye paced the shoreline, I shoved Stot, and he rolled into the water.
He flopped onto his back, his head above the stream.
He lay there, passed out as the dead, liquid seeping round him, thankfully not sinking into quicksand. All wrath, he wasn’t waking.
I untied my boots, swung off my slicker, and laid my clothes before the shore.
Then I hefted up my gown in one fist and stepped into the creek.
I pushed his head below the frigid water—and, on a sudden, he started flailing, kicking about exasperated and wrathy.
I dropped him and scrambled away, but he slung an arm around my waist and flipped me onto my back, the air pounding from me as he crushed me into the bank, one hand holding my wrists against the mud, the other pressing a dagger to my throat.
“Stot!” I didn’t breathe. “Stop.”
He froze, eyes dazed, his drenched body smashing mine. “Minnie?” He withdrew the blade and ran a hand up my waist, his wide palm hot. He sank his hands into the mud beside my breasts.
He shivered. “Blazes, why am I wet?”
“You passed out. In the woods.”
“What?” His gaze dropped to my lips, hung a long moment.
He was hard and rangy, a long thigh pushed into the ground between my legs. I shoved his chest. “Off.”
He blinked. “Right.” He rolled off, studied the tree line, his body shaking. “Why are we outside?”
“You drunk?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Shot?”
I stood, swept dirt off my gown, my bare feet freezing as they squished into the sludge along the bank. “Why’re you out here—you up to some bandit nonsense?”
He touched his shoulder and lifted his hand away.
Blood smeared his fingertips. One Eye nuzzled him, and Stot absently rubbed behind the wolf dog’s ears.
He was shot—my wrists trembled with cold, with fear.
I felt around his body, the flush of adrenaline warming my face, my hands finding the slick, gooey place he was wounded.
I ripped off a length of my gown, tied the cloth around his wound.
“Don’t get mixed up in my mess.” His voice a quiet rumble. He burrowed into the bank and closed his eyes. “Just leave me.”
I finished lacing my boots and helped him into my slicker. “You’re bleeding. You’re on outlaw territory.” I led him up the bank. “The size of it: You’ll die if you don’t whip yourself together.”
With my grip looped around his waist, I tried to guide him onto Cricket. My hands slipped on his wet shirt, felt the shape of the muscles across his back. “Stop,” he said. “I can mount a damn horse.”
“Can you?” I taunted him, but my voice was threadbare.
Then he was up, and I swung behind him, his expansive body between my thighs. He looked over his shoulder, his gaze dark and heavy lidded, his palm holding the cloth against his wound.
“What?” I asked.
“I can ride. Climb before me.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Can you even grasp the reins, around me?” he asked.
I shifted my hips forward in the saddle, my thighs fitting against his. “I don’t need reins.”
He swallowed. “Just climb in front.”
I kept arguing, but he pulled me around, my body sliding along his. He settled me between his thighs. I shoved back against him, and he grunted. His hands smoothed along my legs to grab the reins, and his lips dropped to my ear. “Comfortable?”
“Just ride, you scallywag.”
He chuckled, and I felt the rumble of his stomach muscles along my back. This was altogether unnecessary. He freed my loose hair bunched between us, then clicked for Cricket to ride. That sound, low in his throat, caused a spiderweb of nerves to burst across my side.
We galloped over our moon-shadowed land, his muscular body behind mine, thighs hot against my gauzy nightgown, arm looped tight across my stomach, our bodies surging in rhythm, and I lost the ability to breathe.