Chapter 17
Boone
The road to town is raw as a skinned knee. Sharp winds whip and lash against my face, numb by the time the last crest rises. The sun rides high at my back as the camp shows itself like a smudge of smoke and timber hunkered in the fog.
Heads turn when I ride in. Stranger. Alone. Winter. What trouble looks like. I keep my face blank and my hand loose near my hip, ready to move.
The general store slaps me with heat the moment I step inside—stove-warm and sour with kerosene. Coffee. Cured meat. Leather. Too many stinks for a small room to rightly hold, and it hits my stomach sharp.
The owner looks me over a spell. Stout in the middle with age on him. Hair worn thin. Friendly eyes—maybe. “You ain’t from ’round here,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I ain’t.”
He studies me another beat, then nods like he files me away. I start picking through what I can haul. He disappears into the back and returns with a bottle he sets on the counter. “Nice bottle of whiskey to keep you warm,” he says, inching it toward me. “What’s your name, son?”
I hesitate. Don’t know why, but I’ve been riding hard, my stomach pulls with hunger, and my limbs are heavy. I keep my mouth shut, picking over some canned goods. We got meat and fat covered for now but there’s no saying what can happen when the cold really takes hold.
Salt. Make the meat last. A pound might do it. Maybe two.
“You a soldier?”
Christ. Old man ain’t got nobody else to talk to in this settlement?
“Yeah, I was,” I say, eyeing a can of peaches. Lula’d probably like something sweet.
She’s got a way about her—soft in the right places, strong where it counts.
Smells like wild honeysuckle after rain.
Makes a man notice things he shouldn’t: the way her skirt brushes her ankles when she walks, how her lips part just a touch when she’s thinking.
The way her breasts rise and fall when she’s breathing quick after lifting something heavy, or how her hips shift when she bends to tend the fire—round and full and made for a man’s hands to grip while he’s buried deep.
Damn if she don’t make a body ache just looking.
But I seen the way Okee got all lathered up over her.
Ain’t no good can come of courting trouble.
“Boone Maddox,” the man says. I jerk my head, the sound of my name a surprise.
“Huh?”
The moment the sound leaves my mouth, the world snaps sideways. A gun comes up—derringer—so close I see the dark hollow of the barrel and the small tremor in his hand.
“Thought you looked familiar,” he says. No warmth now. His voice turns dark with something mean. “You’re one of the bastards that killed all them women.”
Half a heartbeat and I’m plumb lost. Mind wipes clean, white and blank.
Women?
“You and that Indian. Pair of aces, huh?”
Damn that Colonel Shit-Heel. I’m sick to death of that fool name. None of this makes any damn sense. My hand drops for my iron on instinct and—
CRACK.
His shot snaps through the air. White pain blooms in my shoulder, and the force drives me backward into a shelf. Tins of fish clatter and roll. Glass shatters. The air fills with sharp metal and spilled brine. “Stay where you are, you murdering son of a bitch!” the shopkeep shouts.
I draw and fire without aiming proper—close enough. Recoil hammers my whole arm and sends lightning down my side, but I see his head snap back like a tin cup jerked by a string. He folds behind the counter and goes still.
Silence suffocates me.
The kind that makes your ears ring and your skin prickle.
The bastard shot me. The goddamn shopkeep.
I swallow copper.
How in hellfire did he know my name?
My sleeve is already dark to the elbow in the thin sunlight cracking through the windows.
Blood runs warm at first, then turns slick and cold where it meets the air.
It pulses down my forearm in slow, stubborn surges.
I clamp my left hand over the wound and press hard—hard enough to turn my stomach.
When I lift my fingers to check, they’re near black and shining.
“Damnation,” I breathe.
I tear my glove off with my teeth, yank my coat open one-handed, and fumble for my bandanna.
The moment my shoulder shifts, pain flashes so bright it washes the room white.
I ride it, jaw locked, and wrap the cloth tight around my upper arm, winding it until my fingers go clumsy and the fabric bites into flesh.
I tie it with my teeth, because my right hand won’t do anything but tremble.
The bleeding slows enough.
Behind the counter, the owner lies half under the shelving like a broken marionette—mouth open, eyes open, looking at nothing. One hand stays curled in the shape of the last reach he made toward me.
Outside, winter frosts the glass.
If anyone heard them shots—if anyone is already coming—
My gut turns sick.
I freeze and listen.
Can’t hear shit but a high-pitched ringing.
I lean my forehead against the rough plank and breathe through my teeth while pain tries to drag me under.
Move, I tell myself. Move, you damn fool.
When the world bares its teeth at you, you can’t step back into it empty-handed.
I limp to the flour sacks, grab one with my left hand and shake it out.
Start where a man keeps what matters.
I empty the till into my pocket without counting. Coins. A few crumpled notes. Then my hand sweeps up matchboxes—two, three, four—small as nothing, worth more than gold in winter. I shove them inside my coat.
Coffee tin. A bag of salt off the back shelf.
My boot skids in spilled brine near the barrel. My balance goes. I catch myself on the bad side, and pain explodes so hard my knees nearly buckle. Stars burst behind my eyes. For a sick second I’m sure I’ll black out and wake up dead on his boards.
I ride it out with my forehead on the counter. Breathing. Breathing. Waiting for my body to calm. When I lift my head, the wood is smeared dark where my sleeve touched it.
I want to curse, want to scream, want to do anything but stand in that store bleeding into my coat while a dead man watches with empty eyes, but I grab what I can until my strength starts to falter.
Beans. Tinned peaches. Whatever my hand finds first.
The sack gets heavy fast. Cloth saws into my palm. The weight pulls even on my good side, and the bad side answers, washing my vision white.
I hoist the sack, bite back a groan, and step outside.
Wind hits hard—loud. Ain’t many folks out. Bitter cold keeps people inside unless they’ve got a reason to be stupid or desperate.
I keep my head down and move, boots crunching, sack dragging my shoulder.
My horse stands tied where I left him, steam rising off her flank.
I hook the sack to the mare and reach for the reins.
That’s when my eye catches a nailboard by the post, papers tacked there, fluttering, edges curled from weather.
Notices. Prices. Some church handbill. I pass it—almost—until the wind lifts one corner just right.
A face looks back at me in rough ink.
My face.
Jaw too square. Eyes too big. The artist gave me a meaner mouth than God did, but it’s close enough to make my insides sink.
HOLLISTER TIMBER OFFERS A REWARD.
Under it, another sketch. Okee’s profile, caught in three strokes: the set of his brow, the straight line of his nose, the broad sweep of his cheekbones. His likeness ain’t near as handsome as he is in the flesh.
Below the drawings, the words swim.
The undersigned offers two thousand dollars for the apprehension of—
My vision goes spotty. Enough to buy a farm. Enough to start a life.
—for the apprehension of Boone Maddox and Okee Collins, known as the Aces, for their suspected part in the Verdigris Massacre of November 10th, wherein a scientific party was slain along the river.
My blood goes colder than the air.
So that’s it. That’s what the shopkeeper saw.
My price.
I yank the paper free so hard the tack squeals, crumple it in my fist, then force myself to smooth it again. Blood smears where my glove brushes it.
I stuff the poster inside my coat—right against the wrapped arm, where it sticks for a second to the damp cloth—and swing up into the saddle one-handed. The movement tears a fresh line of fire through my shoulder. Black creeps in at the edges, but I stay upright.
Every jolt of the saddle sends a hot spear through my shoulder. The bandanna is stuck to me now, wet and tacky under the wrap. I don’t look at it.
The horse’s breath steams up around us, and the road becomes nothing but white and gray and the faint dark smear of timber. I angle into the trees when I can, away from the open line that’d leave a neat trail any fool could follow. Snow covers my tracks as fast as I make them.
A voice behind me. A shout.
I turn in the saddle so quick the pain flashes white and my vision swims, but it’s only wind making a fool of my ears. Only branches knocking.
“Keep goin’,” I mutter to the horse.
The ride stretches long. The more blood I lose, the more the cold gets inside me. A damp chill in my chest. I find myself thinking stupid thoughts.
Like Lula’s eyes when I held her.
Okee’s eyes when he’s scared, which ain’t often.
I picture the cabin. The loft. The hearth. Them two in there without me.
It hits like a kick to the gut.
Halfway back, my left hand starts going numb from holding the reins too tight. My right arm hangs useless, dead weight. Every breath pulls at the bandage and reminds me I’ve been shot.
Women, he’d said.
Killed all them women.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. Hollister had us painted as monsters and has done it well. Folks don’t need truth. They need a story that feels true.
And they’ve found one.
I suppose if I got to leave Okee alone in this world, there are worse places to be than in Lula’s hands. She’d see to him proper. Nurse him back to health when he falls ill. Hell, maybe he’d get to go home again. Finally have a partner to make his father proud.
By the time I see the rise that means I’m near, my vision tunnels. The world narrows down to the dark figures between pines.
Just get there.
Just see Okee’s face.