Chapter 6
Boone
The snow comes down. Clouds have parted some, and I can see what’s left of the night and the stars through a sliver of ripped canvas.
A few snowflakes blow inside, melting fast on the wool blanket wrapped around the three of us.
One catches in her hair, pale against the gold, and I have to stop myself from brushing it away.
My eyes burn from lack of sleep, but I see them.
One orange and gold, one blue and white.
And I remember those nights after a year of Okee at my shoulder, how we’d lie in the dirt, rifles slung across our chests.
Me keeping watch for him and him for me.
After a stretch of bitter weather, the sky cleared and all the stars scattered across the heavens, but two big ones, one warm and one cold, shone bright, one right next to the other.
Anybody looking up right then would have known they belonged together. Just like Okee and me.
I never put it quite that plain out loud back then.
Men would have strung me up in the forest sharing such romantic ideas with a fellow soldier, but I knew Okee would understand.
“I reckon I’m the blue one,” I said. Okee chuckled to himself that night like he was too tired from a day of marching to tell me how stupid I was.
I pointed to the star beside it. “And you’re orange. ”
“That’s how it works?”
“I don’t rightly know. I don’t claim to be no star-man or soothsayer.”
Okee laughed at that and I smiled too. “You do have blue eyes,” he said.
“See? That’s why I’m telling’ you. That’s us up there. Shoulder to shoulder.”
“Go to sleep, fool,” he said, prodding my rib with his elbow.
“All right, but that don’t change nothin’. Tomorrow them stars gonna come back up, orange and blue, just like me and you gonna be here looking at ‘em together.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” he said, but I’ve been right ever since.
I helped him get work; he helped me with my book learning and taught me letters.
We hunt together. Fish together. Commit crimes worth hanging for together and huddle up with a pretty little woman between us to save from freezing to death.
And he don’t judge me when I weep about it, though he won’t let me go on too long.
Seems like this blonde woman ain’t got much of a tolerance for it, so I try my best to swallow it back. Lord knows if it was that easy I’d never let the tears come in the first place.
It’s quiet for a spell, the wind breezing through—not as harsh as before, but still strong enough to stay bundled.
After an amount of time I can’t rightly put to numbers, the woman falls into slumber, long eyelashes sweeping her cheekbones. Okee whispers to me after sunrise. “We’re not out of the woods. Hollister won’t take us turning on his men lightly.”
It ain’t like I didn’t know it soon as we turned our guns on them boys, but my stomach twists at the sound of Hollister’s name. I’d hoped a way out of this mess would show itself before sunrise, but it don’t.
Warm air from his mouth turns to smoke as Okee says, “Might even be on their way back here now. Could have turned back just as soon as the storm eased. If I were them I’d be wondering what I had left behind.”
Horseless. On foot. In snow.
Christ above.
“Should we wake her?” I ask.
A wrinkle forms in his brow, his smooth tawny skin stretched taut over his wide-set cheekbones, and I can see what he’s thinking.
“We ain’t leaving her here, Okee.”
He sighs, dark eyes moving as he thinks aloud, like he’s reading a note behind his face. “But taking her slows us down. Winter is already against us. She’s another mouth to feed. A body to slow for. Winter is difficult enough.”
“You really mean to leave her laying’ here?” The blame comes out sharp. This poor lady’s in danger because of us. Maybe not wholly, but some. “Come on. We’re better than that.”
She breathes softly, her nostrils twitching with each slow breath. Like the pup my baby sister found behind our barn, sleeping so deep it looked to be chasing bunnies. Poor thing. Hope whatever she’s dreaming is nice, because she’s fixing to wake up in a real flaming shit pile.
Okee nudges her. “Ma’am.” Then he shakes her shoulder. She inhales sharp, eyes flinging open. Our bodies are pressed so close, I can feel her heart startle, rattling fast. She shifts between us, seeing me and then Okee. Recognition—and the memory of the horrors—slowly returns.
Seeing her look at me like that—like I’m a wolf in a man’s coat—does something ugly to my stomach. I hate that I earned it.
“Ma’am,” Okee says again, firmer than what’s needsome. “We need to move. It’s not safe to stay.”
She shoots him a hostile glare. “Move where?”
“Cabin. Ten miles east, give or take. Deep in the woods. They won’t know to look for us there.”
It’s been such a long while since we been out that way, I’d almost forgotten it. Ain’t more than one room of rough-hewn logs and a stone hearth, a tiny loft with a ladder. But there’s plenty of wood for fire.
“That’s a right fine plan,” I say, sitting up, spreading out a bit now that the cold is less cruel. Okee loosens the flap and swings it open, letting in a shock of sunlight reflecting bright off the white plain. He crouches and creeps toward it to look outside.
The woman wipes her hair off her face, and I catch the line of her throat in the light. Clean, soft skin. I breathed it all night, that damn sweet smell of her. Kind of scent I reckon God made a living thing like her to get a soul’s attention on purpose.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says. “All of my things are in Fort Smith. I must return there.”
“It ain’t safe, ma’am,” I tell her. “Those boys’ll be lookin’ for you. For all of us.”
“But why? What could those men possibly want with me?”
“Can’t have witnesses living’ to tell a tale.”
She stiffens. “You mean to tell me that I’m in danger even now?”
Okee sits up and offers her a woeful nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
“But,” she says, voice cracking, “who have I wronged?”
“There is no cause to assign fault where there is none. You were simply caught in dangerous circumstances, I’m afraid.
” There’s an urgency in the hitch of his breath, the shift of his dark eyes around the wagon as if taking a mental note of each item to take on the way out.
“These men are on horseback. We’re already at a disadvantage—time is of the essence. ”
“No,” she whimpers, smoky green eyes glittering with tears. “There’s nothing left for me.”
“Ma’am, I promise, I—”
“Leave her,” Okee interrupts me, hard and final.
Okee sighs and jumps out of the wagon, muttering something about not begging her for the privilege of being inconvenienced.
“Ma’am,” I say soft, resting my hand over hers. “I know this is terrible. And we want you to get to feeling’ safe again soon as possible. But right now, if you don’t want nothin’ worse to happen, we ought to get goin’ quick.”
Her lip trembles, eyes tearing.
“Is there anything here I can help you carry? Anything you want to pack up ’fore we go?”
She blinks at me, slow. I see the fight drain out of her, not all at once, but like a flame in the wind, flickering, resisting, till it goes out. “My suitcase.”
I help her out slow, inches of snow concealing last night’s carnage, and she leads me to the back of the wagon where a rope ties a few leather cases. Our boots sink into the thick white. She fumbles at the knots with trembling hands, and I reach out to steady the suitcase.
“Here,” I say, and work the frozen strap loose. It takes effort, my fingers stiff and numb, but it comes free at last.
She lifts it like it’s fragile, not just from the weight, but from whatever’s inside. Her hands linger on the lid a second too long before she turns to face us again, suitcase clutched to her chest like a child.
“All right,” she says, softer now. “I’m ready now.”
Okee’s already scanning the tree line, anxious to move. I nod, and we start our march east, into the woods, into the unknown, her boots crunching beside mine in rhythm. She don’t look back. Neither do we.