Chapter 9
Lula
“Miss Thock-oh, oh Miss Thock-oh—” Boone sings from the wagon bench, Okee beside him, reins in his hands. I rest in the back, any regret I feel for tricking those poor people dissolving as soon as I see the world disappear behind us while lying curled under a blanket.
“Her hooves clip-clop, oh, Miss Thock-oh,” he goes on.
“What on earth are you singing?” I shout from behind him. He turns and peeks at me over his shoulder and only answers me with a demure smile.
“He made up a song about the horse,” Okee says flatly.
The thought tickles me. I do enjoy whatever is wrong with this goose of a man. At least he’s somewhat entertaining. Not like the grump he travels with.
“How do you know her name?” I ask.
“I don’t,” Boone says.
“He’s saying rakko,” Okee says, matter-of-fact. “Means ‘horse’ in Mvskoke.”
I cannot help but laugh. “You speak Muscogee?”
“I know a few words,” Boone says with a bashful shrug and a warm glint in his eye. He leans against Okee a beat, oddly affectionate, then says something low I don’t understand.
Okee shoots him a serious look, then shoves him off with his shoulder.
“What does that mean?”
“Just a little joke ’tween the two of us,” Boone says with a dumb grin.
We make one stop before sunset at an outpost of rough boards and barrels where everything smells of salt pork brine.
Boone keeps his hat low as he hushes our barter.
We leave with bales of hay, a sack of salt, coffee, jerky, flour, onions, potatoes, three bottles of whiskey, and a tin of lamp oil.
Enough for now, but not an entire winter.
The cabin emerges between the pines just as the sun is starting to flirt with the tree line, half covered in slush. The men secure the horse to the lean-to before we head inside.
“Cabin’s my father’s,” Okee explains, carrying my suitcase through the doorway. “It’s not much.”
From the outside it’s a plain block of logs: a narrow front porch, the brick chimney shouldering up along one wall.
A lean-to off the side half shelters our mare and small stolen wagon.
Inside, thick beams span the ceiling, and everything feels sturdy and lived-in.
The walls are hung with Native-woven fabrics, antlers, and proud old deer heads.
One with a wide rack is mounted just above the heavy crossbeams supporting a small loft. A ladder leans against the logs.
“Do you wish to take the loft?” Okee offers. “It offers the most privacy. Boone and I can keep watch down here.”
“Thank you.” It’s kind of him, thinking of my comfort.
“I’ll chop some wood,” Boone says, already stepping back out the door.
Okee looks at me once we’re alone, a glance that says here we are again.
“If you’d like,” Okee says, “once the fire’s going, I can heat some water. There’s a washroom in the back. You could warm up in a bath.”
The thought of disrobing unsettles me—but truth be told, these men have had more than enough opportunity to harm me. They turned on their own. Faced down bullets. Carried me through snow. And now they’re on the run, same as me.
My clothes are still damp with snow, and I’m half frozen through.
“That would be lovely.”
Okee brings out a blanket from the closet and wraps it around me once I’ve settled into a chair by the cold hearth. The weight of it feels like a hug.
Perhaps I have misjudged him. His gruff exterior may have been simply necessary for survival.
“You two are too kind to be outlaws,” I offer.
“Outlaws.” Okee lifts an eyebrow like he’s tasting the word. He turns it over a few moments, then says, “I suppose in the strictest legal sense, one could argue that we are outlaws.”
“You steal horses,” I say. “You kill men for pay.”
The door bangs open, and Boone stomps in with a bundle of wood and a pot of snow balanced on one arm, meltwater dripping from his shoulders.
I glance up and catch, not for the first time, the rough irregularity of his face—long, sleepy-eyed, a little crooked in a way that only makes him more arresting.
Okee’s mouth curves, not quite a smile. “With respect, Mrs. Clay, we killed plenty for pay under the flag of the United States. Forgive me if I don’t see a clean difference. At least now we choose our own work.”
Boone scoffs. “His daddy’s a government man.” He says it as if he’s spitting out a bad taste. “Don’t know what tale he’s sellin’ you, ma’am, but we took that job for pay. Ain’t a lick of virtue in it.”
Okee exhales through his nose. “Just because it was for pay doesn’t make our motives immoral.”
“Our motive was pay,” Boone shoots back, setting the pot by the hearth. “And eatin’ through winter,” he adds, turning to me like a lawyer smoothing over his client’s sins. “He just likes to win arguments.”
Okee’s gaze slides to him, flat and warning.
I watch them a beat longer than manners allow. The magnetism is there. But it’s not tense. It’s worn. Comfortable.
After, Boone hovers in the middle of the room, as if he has nowhere safe to put his hands. He watches Okee strike flint, then looks away fast, scanning for some other task.
I notice a small shelf tucked in the corner, lined with books. One spine catches my eye—herbal remedies—set high. I rise, but I’m a hand short.
Boone steps over and pulls it down without asking.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Glad to be of service,” he says, then adds with a playful grin, “barely knee-high as you are.”
“I’m five-one,” I tell him, taking the book.
“If you say so, Mrs. Clay.”
“Lula,” I remind him.
His grin doesn’t falter, but he pats his thigh as if he’s storing the boundary for later. Okee sets the first flames breathing, and the hearth begins to catch.
A scrabbling sound comes from the corner near the root cellar door.
Boone’s head snaps that way. “Damn mice. Bet the little bastards already chewed through whatever was left.”
Okee frowns. “We’ll need traps. Or poison.”
“No need.” The words come out before I’ve decided to speak. “They loathe certain scents. Peppermint. Catnip. I sewed sachets. Extras ought to be in my case.”
I cross to it and the memories surge. Cold mornings. Firelight. Mary’s soft laugh. I’d given her a sachet to keep rodents away from her tent. That poor, sweet woman.
My throat tightens. I linger too long over the straps, fingers tracing leather.
Cruel, cruel world. One that grows hemlock in thick bushels crowned with dainty lace-white flowers. One with men who ride in beneath the stars and kill innocent people stopped to admire them. My tongue goes heavy, rough and useless.
“Lula?” Boone’s voice is quieter now.
“I’m all right,” I say automatically.
I draw out the small linen sachets, still faintly perfumed with a life that had seemed ordinary once. I hold one up between two fingers. “May I place them by the cellar and the door?”
Okee’s mouth curves. “If you can persuade mice to vacate without bloodshed,” he says, “by all means.”
I crouch and tuck one sachet where the boards meet. When I stand, both men are watching—Boone restless, Okee with a steadier curiosity, as if he’s taking inventory of what I can do.
“Maybe I ought to see if I can catch us a meal ’fore dark,” Boone says suddenly, like he can’t bear the weight of stillness. He grabs his rifle and bolts out into the snow.
“Careful,” Okee says. “Wind is cutting north fast. Lead sky on the horizon. Another storm will be in soon. Don’t find yourself caught too far.”
Boone bows his head and mutters something before shutting the door behind him with a lonely creak.
Okee lets out a slow breath and looks at me beside the growing fire. He forces a tight-lipped smile.
Here we are again. Alone.
“So,” I say, because I refuse to let quiet swallow me, and Okee seems to be the kind of man who speaks only under duress, “what do you think Boone will bring back next?”
Okee eases into a chair. “A buck, most likely.”
“Truly? What makes you so sure?”
“Good time of year.”
“I’ve never been much for hunting,” I admit, hoping to pry more than a handful of words from him at a time. “I always wanted to try. My father-in-law called it improper. My husband agreed.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, mild as if it’s already decided. “We’ll put a rifle in your hands. See how you do.”
A laugh slips out of me—surprised, not mocking—at the thought of firing a gun. I suppose there’s no one left to forbid me now.
“That would be very kind of you to teach me.”
“It’s selfish. Best you know how to fend for yourself.”
Right. Of course.
As Okee predicted, Boone returns with a buck as the sky breaks open again, snow coming down thick and fast. Boone cuts a loin free, then goes back out to dress the rest. By the time he’s done, the carcass hangs under a limb where the cold can keep it and scavengers can’t.
In one way, it’s suffocating, watching the world white out around us. In another, it’s a kind of mercy—if we can’t get out, the men who are after us can’t get in.
As supper cooks slow over the fire and the cabin finally grows warm enough to remove the bite from the air, I take my bath.
Unbuttoning my skirt with stiff fingers, I let it fall to the floor before folding it neatly over a wooden chair inside the washroom, grateful beyond words for a door that latches shut.
When I lower myself into the tub, I nearly weep.
Heat seeps into my soul, loosening aches in my calves and feet.
It feels as though the icicles clinging to my insides begin at last to melt, warming me through, inside and out.
For a while there is nothing but the hush of the water, the wind beating at the cabin walls, and the muffled rhythm of Boone and Okee’s voices in the other room.
But still my mind will not rest.
Every time I close my eyes, I see it again—the burst of gunfire, the confusion, the blood on snow so white it looks unreal. Mary.