Chapter 4
Okee
By nightfall, it’s quiet but for the sound of a dozen horses clomping slowly through the forest, and a sharp breeze sifting through the leaves. Iron and ice lace the air, sharp and earthy.
“A storm’s coming,” I say. Boone rides even with me, his reins slack.
“Mhm. Quiet, ain’t it?”
I nod. The stillness sinks heavy in my gut. The hair on my neck stands up, and I can’t say if it’s the job ahead or the weather turning but every inch of me is coiled tight as a firing pin.
Up ahead, the foreman turns in his saddle, voice hushed.
“Scout says the surveyors are a mile out. No violence unless it’s called for. But if it is—no witnesses. Understood?”
A few men mutter their assent. Most stay quiet.
We keep riding. The moon is high and bright, lighting patches of the forest floor. The sky is so clear the pins of light above feel closer than usual. Clear enough to see where a line of clouds moves fast beyond the horizon.
The trees grow close, gnarled and bare.
After another hundred yards, the scout slinks back through the dark. A wiry sharpshooter the foreman called Jessup, hair slick with sweat, eyes wide.
“Found ’em,” he whispers, breathless. “Ain’t more than five or six, most like, and they’re women. Least three of ’em. Dressed proper. Don’t look like settlers. But don’t look like no damn government team neither.”
A silence settles over the group.
Someone behind me lets out a low whistle. Another laughs, quiet and mean.
“Hell,” one man says. “Guess we’re in for a different kind of work tonight.”
A few men chuckle.
Boone doesn’t laugh. Neither do I.
The foreman raises a hand to settle them down, but there’s no surprise on his face. No protest. Just a shrug.
“Orders said clear the camp. Didn’t say who was in it.”
My stomach turns, slow and sour. It’s one thing to kill a man who has accepted the risk of his choices—soldiers in a war or government men forcing their laws in a lawless territory should expect resistance, no doubt. But innocent women?
We may be lawless men, but we are not godless.
Boone mutters low, just for me, “Lord have mercy.”
The foreman swings back into the saddle, like it’s just another task. “We move in ten. Clean, quiet. Same rules apply.”
He rides off without waiting.
“I ain’t killin’ no women minding their own business,” Boone mutters, spurring his horse to catch up to the foreman.
“Boone,” I hiss, but it’s of no use. He’s too far to hear my warning.
I ride up just in time to overhear the foreman tell Boone, “Orders are orders.”
“Fuck orders,” Boone snaps, not minding his tone, and others turn their heads. “Ain’t no reason you can’t ask them to clear out peaceful.”
The foreman fixes him with a warning scowl. “We’ll be peaceful, long as they do as they’re told.”
I tighten my grip on the reins as he rides ahead. The cold seeps deeper through the leather of my wool-lined coat the further we go, as the wind blows any warmth clean off. Whatever’s coming is coming fast.
We ride single file through the dark until the trees thin enough for lantern light to slip between the branches. Jessup raises a hand, slowing us. Ahead, maybe forty yards, a faint glow pulses through the timber. A small campfire, flickering steady as a heartbeat.
The foreman dismounts and motions for quiet.
We slip from our saddles one by one, boots sinking into damp earth. The only sounds are the creak of leather and the hush of the wind.
I edge forward until I can see them.
Women, just like Jessup said. Four at least, maybe five. All gathered around the fire, shawls pulled tight, notebooks open on their laps. One’s pointing at the sky, maybe tracing a constellation with her finger while the others tilt their heads back to follow.
Laughing soft, sweet. A knot tightens in my gut at the melodic sound of it.
These are not surveyors. They certainly do not pose a threat warranting a dozen men on horseback.
Boone exhales beside me, whispering, “I got a bad feeling.”
A man at the campfire leans back and plays a jaw harp—twangy and thin, half lost in the rising wind.
The ground darkens. I glance up again where the moon’s partially concealed behind dense cloud cover. A hush rolls through the trees, like the forest itself is bracing for something. Then comes a low groan overhead. Wind through bare limbs. The scent of damp.
The man playing the harp freezes.
He sees something.
Sees us.
He runs straight for one of the tents, vanishing inside in a rustle of canvas. Boone’s hand goes to his pistol.
Then the man reappears with a rifle.
“Announce yourself!” he shouts.
The women sit up, gathering close to each other as the foreman emerges first, hands up in feigned surrender. “Good evening, ladies.”
The rifle holds still. If the man is frightened, his countenance does not betray it. There’s steel in his eyes. He’s prepared to fire.
The foreman steps closer with an easy grin. “Didn’t mean to startle you folks. We’re just passin’ through.” The foreman’s gaze slides over the women like he’s picking through stock. The wind picks up, and they tug at their shawls, stirring the fire. Snow flurries drift down in slow, fat flakes.
“Mighty fine group of ladies you got here,” he adds, voice turning slick.
One of the women flinches at a rumble of thunder. The man’s grip tightens on the rifle. “We’re scientists,” he says. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Won’t be no trouble long as you mind what we tell you.” The foreman rubs his hands like he’s cold, smile never reachin’ his eyes. “Storm’s comin’ in. My boys could use a little company to warm ’em up.”
A ripple of laughs and whistles rolls through the gang behind me.
“Back off,” the man says.
The foreman’s smile drops. “I don’t think you understand your situation, Professor.”
He nods, and that’s all it takes. Two of our boys move fast. One grabs a petite blonde woman by the arm, jerks her toward him hard enough she cries out. Another shoves a woman so she stumbles to her knees in the snow, scrabbling for balance. The rest start to fan out around the camp.
“Goddamn it,” Boone mutters under his breath. He looks to me for an answer.
The professor fires. The shot goes wide, cracking into the dark, but it snaps everything clean in two.
The blonde woman twists, trying to wrench free. The man holding her clamps an arm around her waist and drags her toward the shadows past the firelight. A man lunges for one of the other women, who swings at him with a tin cup, wild and terrified.
Boone doesn’t hesitate to rush into the chaos. Before I can blink, his Colt fires twice. The foreman jolts, staggers, and drops face-first into the snow-dusted earth.
I’m already raising my rifle, sights on the man hauling the blonde woman off her feet, and I squeeze the trigger.
He drops like a cut rope.
She falls too, hitting the ground hard, then scrambles on hands and knees for the nearest bit of cover.
Someone shouts, “No witnesses!”
The camp explodes into gunfire.
Flashes of light in the night and fast-falling snow.
Men shout and scream. A woman runs for the trees and is yanked back by her skirts.
Another tries to shield the notebooks with her body, like they’re worth protecting.
A shot takes the professor in the chest. He goes down clutching the front of his coat, eyes wide with shock.
“Burn ’em,” a man from the posse shouts. “Everett wants it all gone.”
Before I can wrap my head around it, glass shatters and one of the covered wagons ignites. Women scream, running from the flames and into gunfire.
I fire at the men we rode with fast as I can work the lever. One man goes down, then another. Boone tackles a thug off a woman, pistol-whips him. The storm slams down, snow coming sideways now, turning everything into a white blur lit by muzzle flashes.
One man screams, “Burn the notebooks!”
Christ.
I spin around slowly, counting three wagons consumed by flames, burned to skeletons.
To my left, a scream cuts off sharply. I look over just in time to see one of the women crumple in the snow, hands pressed to her stomach, red seeping between her fingers before the white swallows it. Another lies still by the fire, shawl blown back, eyes staring at nothing.
I keep firing.
At last, the shots thin out. My rifle clicks on an empty chamber. Boone’s gun does the same. We’re both breathing hard, hands shaking.
Two men are still on their feet—Jessup, bleeding from the arm, and that bastard guard from the hire line. They take one look at the coming storm, another at us.
Our horses linger nearby, out of reach.
“To hell with this,” the guard spits. In an instant, two cracks and flashes of light scatter through the rain of ice as they fire at our horses.
Our way out.
The sound of their cries as they fall against frozen ground shatters me, all the air forced from my lungs. My mouth opens as if to scream. It burns my throat and yet the sound is swallowed by the brittle air.
The men ride off and Boone tries a final, hopeless shot with his pistol but the bullet goes wild into the storm in vain.
Hoofbeats pound away into the white, then they’re gone. Silence drops in behind them, as if muffled by a wall of goose feathers.
Women lie scattered around the camp. Blackened red on white. None of them moving.
All but one of the wagons stand charred and hollow, their ribs burned black against the storm. Canvas hangs in smoking tatters. A wheel turns slow in the wind, creaking once, then stopping.
For a long second, all I can hear is the howl of weather through what’s left.
Boone swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Mercy,” he says, voice cracked clean through. “What the hell happened?”
Then—a sound. Not wind.
Something else.
Someone.
A small, strangled sob.
We both turn toward the wagon where the sounds escape the worn waxed canvas.
Lula
Eli. If this is your way of calling me home, I swear you will not be happy to see me. The screams and gunfire outside are deafening, close enough to make the wagon boards tremble under me. Every shot punches through the canvas like a fist.