Chapter 5
Lula
We were drawing flowers.
Admiring the stars.
Now the cold has sunk so deep into my bones I can hardly feel my fingers.
My teeth knock together. Wind whistles through every seam of the canvas, and the wagon might as well be made of paper for all the warmth it keeps.
I curl beneath the blanket, blade clutched tight against my chest. The warmth I trap lasts only a breath before the cold steals it.
The two men huddle on the far end of the wagon, a heap of my friends’ belongings between us—sketchbooks, shawls, the little tin of graphite sticks. All that’s left of them.
Sweet Mae. Dear God. How could this have happened?
The white man rummages through the pile, then pauses when he catches me staring. “I’m looking for something to keep warm. If that’s all right?”
His voice shakes from the cold, and though his words seek permission, his piercing stare suggests I’ve no choice and he’s at the end of his diplomacy.
“None of this is all right,” I manage, jaw trembling, unable to stop shivering.
He nods, eyes down, continuing to scavenge.
The other man speaks instead, and I am startled by how smooth his English is, with no trace of effort, as if it had always been his first language. “You have every reason to despise us, ma’am. But this wagon won’t hold heat. Storm like this, folks freeze sitting apart.”
He means warmth. Nothing more. But he’s asking for a kind of closeness I cannot afford to give. Not with strange men who rode in beside murderers.
I tighten the blanket around my shoulders. My pulse kicks hard, a trapped creature inside me. I don’t know what unsettles me more, the thought of them inching nearer in the dark, or the thought of freezing while they watch.
Absurdly, they’re both striking men. Handsome faces and broad through the chest. Evil should look evil. God must have a cruel sense of humor, giving good faces to men who keep company with monsters.
Well, I don’t care what they damn well look like. “Then I suppose it’s bad luck for all of us,” I say.
The white man sighs. “Suit yourself, ma’am. But cold don’t care what side you’re on.”
“I’m on the side of…s-s-sanity,” I say. My body shakes.
“Christ almighty,” the Indian man mutters, and unwraps himself from around the white man, tossing off the pile of coats and shawls. He crouches and closes the distance between us faster than I can realize he’s lumbering at me with shoulders a yard wide.
“Stay back!” I shout again, the knife useless in my grip.
I can’t feel my hands. And though I tremble, I can no longer feel the sting of the cold against my skin.
All the strength has left my body, and I am overwhelmed by the urge to close my eyes and drift to sleep. But I cannot. I must remain vigilant.
“Put it down,” he says, firm enough to be threatening, but with a soft kind of pity. “I’m not going to let you freeze as a matter of principle. Come,” he says, grabbing me around the middle, sending the knife clattering to the wagon floor.
“Unhand me!”
He sets me down and the other man takes me fast, pulling me against him. I’d scream if anyone would hear me, or kick if he weren’t so warm. The other one kneels, then presses against me, my head wedged between their chests, hips pinned to mine.
They work together without speaking, urgency sharpening every movement.
The white man shifts first, tugging at the buttons of his coat until it hangs open.
He wraps the loose flaps around me, pulling me against the heat of his chest trapped beneath them.
The other man mirrors him. He opens his coat just enough to pull me into the shelter of it, the heavy wool falling across my sides like a thick curtain. I’m engulfed.
Two coats overlap across my ribs and hips, sealing me in the narrow space between their bodies.
They don’t touch more than they have to. No hands on bare skin. No lingering.
Just the mechanical precision of men who know how to survive the cold.
Fabric presses in from every side. Their bodies radiate heat, slow and steady, creating a pocket of air that grows warmer by the second.
“Breathe slow,” the white man says, voice muffled against his coat. “It’s gonna hurt when the warmth hits, but that means it’s working.”
I don’t answer. My jaw’s locked tight, the cold still clinging to my bones.
But the heat starts to creep in anyway. Life returning in small, painful sparks.
The storm shrieks outside, rattling the wagon boards.
And inside the cocoon they’ve built around me—two dangerous men holding me alive by necessity, coats open, shoulders pressed tight, their warmth merging in the dark—my body begins, slowly, to thaw.
The pain comes all at once. It hits like someone striking my hands and feet with whips.
A sharp, electric agony races up my fingers, my toes, my legs.
I gasp, convulsing against them, every muscle clenching on instinct.
The white man tightens his arm around me.
It feels like fire. Like my bones are splintering from the inside.
A choked cry escapes me before I can swallow it down.
My legs jerk, heel catching the wagon board.
“You’re all right,” the Indian man says, voice cracking.
“N-no, I-I-I’m not,” I mutter against the other man’s chest. I want to weep, but all I can do is shake, straining with heartbreak.
“What’s your name?” the man asks.
I sob, tearless, my throat too tight for words. I don’t answer. I cannot. The truth of it all collapsing on me all at once.
“I’m Okee Collins. And this is Boone Maddox.”
I do not offer my name. Names are more than the moment requires. This is a clean exchange: warmth for warmth. No familiarity asked or offered, simply a matter of survival.
Drawing in a warm, damp breath I begin to calm. It’s a while before the pain subsides, but once it does and I still, the weeping still shudders in my chest.
But it’s not me. It’s Boone.
When I peek up, his eyes are red, wet, lip trembling. This man with blood dried black under his nails, who rode in with outlaws like beasts bred for nothing but the kill. The smell of gunpowder clings to their coats, large hands rough and calloused, yet Boone weeps, beside himself.
Am I in shock? Unable to yet feel my grief?
“What are you blubbing on about?” I bite, bitter.
He draws in a shaky breath with a sniff. His chest seizes as if holding it all in, but he doesn’t answer. Perhaps he can’t. For a moment, everything in our heat cocoon tightens—the arms braced around me, the breath against my neck, Boone’s chest shuddering under my cheek.
My blood burns hot. “You rode with a gang of cutthroats and killers.”
“Yes’m,” he whispers, clearing his throat and pulling himself together. “I did.”
His honesty stings worse than denial would have.
I don’t know what to do with men who admit fault instead of dodging it. It leaves me with nowhere to put my rage except back into myself. “What kind of an outlaw are you? An outlaw who cries after committing his crimes? You’re hired killers,” I say, seeking their confession.
“Not women killers,” Boone says.
“But killers all the same. Men who use guns to settle disagreements.”
Okee shifts behind me, drawing his coat tighter around us. “We don’t kill for pleasure. We kill because this lawless land requires free men to kill to remain free.”
“You do not fool me for one moment. You bully men. You steal their choice.”
“Nature can be an ugly thing, and survival takes on many kinds of meanings out here,” Okee says, his breath warming the shell of my ear as he speaks. “You get to say hard things. Just don’t spend all your heat on hating us. You’ll need some to live through the night.”