Chapter Thirty-One Oklahoma Territory—February 7, 1893
Chapter Thirty-One
two weeks later
Iwhacked my hammer against a rusted nail.
Beyond the fence’s pale wood, colorless oat grasses and wild rye matted together.
Their feathered ends still, unchanging as midwinter dragged on.
All season long, my prairie had been moody and sworling.
Almost as if she was caught somewhere between fury and heartbreak.
Weather in Oklahoma lands was primal and brutal—that feral unpredictability of No Man’s Land.
One day soaked in sunshine, a blizzard whirling on in the next.
The air could snap in a moment and remind us winter was long from over.
Today the sky was blanched. A daytime moon perched above the wooded hills. A haphazard, imperfect circle, that last off-centered oblong before tomorrow’s full moon. Everything felt unfinished.
I’d removed a pocketful of nails and some boards from a bashed-up buggy I’d found in the wallows, the materials perfect for a fence.
Fencing my quarter section was long, slow work, but I savored the weighted feel of swinging my arm through the air.
Willie was off yonder, his crooning echoing about the lowland.
He’d brought over some laundry, but I hadn’t minded overmuch, as he’d set to work oiling my plow.
The morning after the barn raising, Stot had upbraided him something fierce.
Bedraggled and terrified of the outlaw, Willie had sat quiet, for once without excuses, his lanky shoulders hunched over my breakfast table.
I’d pushed out my door, milk pail in hand, and a while later the two of them had exited my shack, Stot’s arm looped across Willie’s shoulder, Willie promising to do better, them all a’sudden the best friends this side of the Mississippi.
I wasn’t ready to trust that Willie would change, but maybe he’d finally looked at the dark parts of himself.
I lined up a nail, my bootheels wobbling on overturned mud, struggling to find the earth below the crispy wild oat stalks.
I’d been off balance these past weeks, overfull of wonderings and worry.
I longed to talk with my steady, insightful sister.
After these seasons away from her, I was no longer outraged—just heartbroken.
There was a gap where she’d once been. I couldn’t imagine how we could reconcile.
As time stretched on, the ache didn’t ease, but deepened, craggy and festering.
I didn’t know anymore how to piece my memories into order again.
I wiped dust from a nailhead, pressed the point against wood.
And Lark. I missed what once was, the friendships I’d had the width of my life.
I recognized now that I hadn’t been in love with Lark.
We’d had something simple and untested. We hadn’t known how to walk through dark truths together.
It was spring meadows and lanky summer ponds.
Boundary walls and safe harbors. Not love in the rough hews of this broken world.
Lark was from another age, different memories, from a Minnie who didn’t exist anymore.
I slammed my hammer against a nail, a bullfrog rumbling off beyond and some starlings rustling in the brush.
The day full of prairie sounds. Yesterday I’d visited Niabi.
We’d studied the groundcover and wind currents to gauge how the surroundings would affect a bullet.
She’d tucked her hair behind her ears, gripped her pistol, and loosed her shot—with both eyes open, practicing as I’d shown her.
I aligned the next board, and it was then that I heard hoofbeats along the edge of my land.
I studied the horizon, not recognizing the paint horse, a russet tobiano mare.
A star was golden on the rider’s vest placket.
Sakes alive, it was Frank Canton, the deputy marshal, come calling.
I balanced the dangling board against my fence, then removed Pa’s push dagger from my boot and slipped it in a pocket.
I straightened my apron over my blade and walked toward the marshal through the high grass, my heart a’rattling against my bones.
“Afternoon,” I hollered.
“Good day, ma’am.” He pulled up on his reins and dismounted. “Is it Miss Hoopes?”
I nodded, and he introduced himself. “Care for an afternoon tea?” I gestured toward my homestead, Willie hidden on the other side of my shack.
“You needn’t trouble yourself,” he said, his wide black mustache rigid over his cheeks.
“Ain’t no trouble.” I pulled a thistle off my shirtwaist, my other hand gripping the square handle of my dagger. His gaze flicked about my yard, then my clothing, as if he could see a hidden stain of blood on my hands. “How may I help you, Marshal?”
He spun his pocket watch, eyes shrewd. “Been to town this week?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Suppose word hasn’t roved down to you then, about them missing cowboys.” His palm adjusted on his pistol’s buffalo-horn grip.
“Those cowhands?” I cocked my head. “Who folks say headed off yonder, chasing gold?”
“I’d surmised that, too, but—” His gaze was tight on my face. “Their bodies were found.”
I stepped back. “What’s that now?”
“Uncovered the bodies of those missing outlaws in them north woods, just beyond your quarter section.” He flipped open his pocket watch, closed it, tracked my hand clenched in my pocket.
“Shot up by a Peacemaker. Buried quite a bit underground, but that preacher by the name of Poor, his hound found them. Guess the foxhound was digging in the roots of a water oak.”
“Well, by nation.” I shook my head, blinked, allowed myself to look shocked. “They surely have passed on?”
“As no one’s seen hide of them since the race, I suppose that’s when someone dropped them.
” He studied the hammer sticking out of my apron pocket.
“Now, Miss Hoopes, your claim being just beyond, it would’ve been natural for you to have heard the shots, to have perhaps even witnessed their murders. ”
I fluttered my hands to my heart, widened my eyes. “Course that day was lawless and smoky and full of all sorts of sounds—but I did not witness any murders.”
He shifted his weight from one boot to the other.
The faint tenor of Willie’s singing slipped between the wild rye.
The marshal questioned me about the race, what time I supposed I staked claim, about the fire on my homestead.
Then he looked eastward toward the Browns’ homestead.
“Hear tell that you’re friendly with the Browns.
” His gaze curved along the creek, then northward toward Stot’s claim.
He grimaced. “You sure found yourself with grum pickings for neighbors. If you’re fixing to survive winter, you’ll have to rely on all and sundry, sure enough—I just wouldn’t want you to get tangled up with some bad bugs. ”
I unclenched my fingers, swept my hand down my apron. “The Browns are my friends. They’re honest, kind folk.”
He flipped open his watch, closed it. “Now, I mustn’t share information about the investigation, but—I’d be wary, Miss Hoopes.
As I’ve traveled about the county, I’ve heard grumblings.
Of course, I’d prefer this matter solved within the law.
” He shrugged, gave a hearty, good-natured laugh.
“But, unfortunately, vigilante rule reigns out here in the Wild West.” He slipped his watch into his waistcoat pocket.
“So, I tell you truth, if you had witnessed anything, you wouldn’t be in trouble, see. You needn’t protect anybody.”
“I’m not protecting anyone, Mr. Canton. I didn’t witness any murders.”
His mare stepped about in the bluestem and bumped his shoulder. “Alright then.” The marshal patted his vest and flashed his teeth, cream beneath his dark mustache. “How about some of that tea then? Got any pie?”
We crossed the field and came round the shack. From his crouch beside my plow, Willie halted his whistling. He stood and wiped his hands on an oil rag. “Well howdy, Marshal.”
The three of us walked inside, and in scant moments Willie had Marshal Canton wheezing for air, his guffaws blustering through one story or another.
Willie’s gaze stuttered across my posture, and he caught my eye, lifted a brow.
He registered something was off. Of all the times, this wasn’t the one for him to pay attention.
But I supposed it was time my big brother saw the world beyond himself.
We suffered through the niceties of tea, my heart thumping my chest, my push dagger a weight in my pocket.
But there was nothing to worry. The marshal seemingly believed my tale.
Instead, it appeared he suspected my neighbors.
I felt altogether sick. All winter, Olive and Stot had supposed someone would be framed for the murders, while I’d foolishly believed the story would stay buried.
And now my closest friends were under investigation, with vigilante bloodlust brewing and vicious outlaws roaming the countryside.
Confessing to the marshal seemed to be the swiftest way to get locked up or meet a violent end—but I also couldn’t let another take the fall.
“You hear tale about that town of women, just east aways? Bethsheba?” Willie straightened the lapel of his raspberry jacquard, double-breasted waistcoat. “No men.”
I pressed against the wooden spindles of my chair. “Only women?”
“That’s the rumor.” Willie sipped whiskey, offered his flask to Marshal Canton. “Heard this one account of a male reporter come calling, and the lady mayor and lady police chief fired off their Winchesters until he fled.”
“Well, that’s nonsense if I ever done heard it.” The marshal dug at his teeth with a toothpick, other hand resting on his stomach. “Lord, women always making up stories. Well,” Marshal Canton continued, “it won’t last.”
I wanted to snap at him—but he wasn’t wrong.
Out on the frontier, communities were fragile.
Townsites evolved and vanished along the horizon: Just like mirages, an image sparking, then dissipating, leaving only that uncanny feeling of something misremembered.
Settlements like Bethsheba just one poor choice from becoming ghost towns.
As afternoon crept on toward evening, Willie started in about other news spread across our county. And then the marshal was gone, along with Willie, the sun sliding down to simmer along the blackjacks, and I had no idea whatever to do.