Chapter Thirty-Nine
Pardon?” Olive’s satchel fell from her shoulder.
I told Olive that the outlaws had set fire to my quarter section, that I’d been the one to shoot them, to bury them in the wildwood. She fiddled with the silver barrette clasped over her bun, her expression perplexed.
“I don’t understand.” She stood, tugged her strap over her shoulder. “You’re saying—” She shook her head. “You murdered them, Minnie? You’ve lied, this whole time?”
I reached for her hand. “I didn’t mean to endanger your family.”
She stepped back. “No.” Her expression snapped from kindness into one I knew well: someone betrayed. But I hadn’t meant, I hadn’t—
Olive pushed out my door, her hand fussing with the chapbooks jumbled in her satchel. She stopped. Pulled the dime novels from her bag, pinched the covers between two fingers, and dropped them into the snowmelt.
I stood in the doorway, my fingers worrying a button on my blouse. “Olive—”
“We’re done.” She held my gaze. Her posture composed, her bearing decided, skin tight across her collarbone. “You hear?”
I opened my mouth. But I didn’t know what to say.
“My family has been in danger because of your lies.” Her eyes tightened at the corners, a vein spasming on her lower eyelid. “You risked our lives this week. It’s like we don’t matter.”
“Olive, I—”
She lifted a hand, halting me. “That first day planting potatoes you told me you didn’t want friendship, that you wanted an isolated life—well, that’s what you got.” She stepped off my porch and walked away.
I thought I’d built something rare out on the frontier. But I’d only been looking out for myself. All these seasons, and I hadn’t learned much of anything. I’d failed, once again.
A discordant rattle thumped. A long, rectangular shadow eclipsed the pasture. Someone hollered, the words indistinct through my hazy thoughts. I hefted my Winchester, chambered a round, and ran after Olive.
A horse galloped across the prairie, rider bent low over a dark-brown mane, a white blaze striking down the horse’s forehead.
Olive dashed toward the uproar, gown snapping in the wind, clover-dotted hemline smudged with sodden, ashy dirt.
I fixed the rider in my rifle’s sights. But it was Olive’s son Thad.
He pulled up on his reins, his mare’s hooves squelching in the slush.
“We need you now,” Thad hollered. “Vigilantes set fire to our barn.”
The Browns’ homestead crackled with ember and coal and remnant flares.
I sank the pointed toes of my black boots deep into the burn, heat rising from the earth, the land still exhaling devastation.
All through the night we’d battled: stomping out cinders, shoveling snow onto the heat, passing buckets of water from well to blaze, smothering sparks with damp cloth, Stot hauling off enflamed boards to toss into the snowdrifts, the gleam an echo in the bleak of night.
Somehow, at the edge of dawn, we’d thwarted the cataclysm from spreading and devouring the entire countryside, the snow-damp meadows soaking up flame.
But the fire had obliterated half the Browns’ barn.
Yesterday, Asa had heard a clamor of horses dissolving into the forest. Doubtlessly vigilantes or outlaws had started the blaze.
Now, in the light of daybreak, we combed through the debris, searching for what could be salvaged.
Burning scented the air, a reddish steam added dimension to the shadows, and I burrowed my shovel into the burn, tossing rubble aside.
Stot hauled a charred board to the pile of refuse, smoke smeared across his wrist and up his forearms. Diaphanous ashen cloth floated beyond the cracked windows like ghosts dispersing, the edges of the fabric smoldering with embers.
The air was brittle with winter but also swamped with lingering fever, a frenzied mixture of temperatures.
At the edge of the burn, where cinders glinted beside a swoop of snow, Olive wiped her apron on a chunk of glass, her bearing weary.
And yet her distinct strength hadn’t faltered: her cheeks damp with sweat, the angle of her brow tilted skyward, the tension in her hands at ease.
We’d spoken in the middle of the night while passing buckets toward the blaze, the glow of flame soaking the curve of my face. “I am sorry, Olive.”
She inhaled through her nose, handed me a pail.
“You matter to me. Of course you do.” I grabbed the steel handle, passed the bucket to Poppy. “Your family matters to me. I see now, how my choices put your family’s safety in harm’s way.”
“Honey, you gotta decide what friendship means to you.” She ran a hand over her braid, soot wedged in the folds. “Because this? It’s not working for me.”
Now, in the fuzzy glow of morning, Olive hummed an old spiritual, one my ma often sang, My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the thunder.
Her voice was accompanied by the sizzle and snap of embers, the scrape and smush of wood dragged across earth.
As I shoveled, I slid back into a long ago memory, one hazy and almost lost, that shifted between dreams and truth.
As a child, I’d crushed an oil lantern and framed Magnolia, my ma humming green trees are bending off yonder.
Pa crouched beside me, frustration in his eyes, but his voice calm.
“Minnie, you’ve gotta choose.” Pa rubbed his jaw, sending his beard into disarray.
“When stuck between protecting yourself and the truth, the truth is always the brave choice. You understand that?”
I nodded, though I didn’t understand. Distantly, my ma sang, He calls me by the lightning, the trumpet sounds within my soul. Pa lifted me up, rubbed my back. “Just keep on being brave, and you’ll be alright.”
“She bashed the lantern, promise,” I argued. “Just threw it off the hayloft to watch it fly.”
He chuckled, not believing my story in the slightest, and held me tight against his chest. “We always love you, sweetheart,” he said, “no matter how muddled things become.”
On the Browns’ homestead, the resonance of Olive humming green trees are bending roamed through the burn. A breeze hurried across the meadow and tossed embers up round my hem. Whatever I was, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t weak. I wouldn’t let someone else carry the consequences of my past.
After all was summed up, it didn’t matter whether outlaws or vigilantes had struck the match—this chaos erupting across my community must cease.
I’d been so lost, trying to find a wiggle out of my situation.
When, in the end, there was no way out but the bare, vulnerable truth.
Tonight, after all was settled, I’d dash across the countryside to Duke’s Saloon, the known haunt of the Wild Bunch.
I’d confront the outlaws, confess to the marshal—anything to keep my friends safe.
I might lose my homestead. I might be assaulted by vigilantes.
I might be shut up in some asylum or prison.
I couldn’t imagine being cloistered behind walls, isolated away from the wide spaces of my prairie—but I must take the risk.
I would face the untamed judgment of this land with audacity.
Wild survived wild, here in No Man’s Land.