Chapter 17 #2
Then the cabin appears. Horse snorting, stamping, at the smell of smoke and life. I try to swing down, but my legs ain’t doing what I told them.
I hit the snow belly first, hard enough to knock the breath out of me.
For a second, I just lay there, cheek pressed to the cold, and think, so this is how it ends. Slipping off a damn horse a stone’s throw from safety.
Then the door flies open.
Light spills out, a fiery glow, and with it the sound of boots on boards and Lula’s voice going shrill.
“Boone?”
Okee’s voice hits right after. “Boone!”
I try to stand and the world rolls. I get one knee under me and black crawls in at the edges.
I hear Lula swear. Then hands are on me. Okee’s hands first, under my ribs, hauling me up like I weigh nothing. Lula’s hands at my coat, searching for the wound.
“Inside,” Okee says. “Now.”
“I—” I start, because I need to say it before my tongue goes useless. “Bounty.”
“What?” Lula asks.
“In my coat,” I rasp.
Okee don’t let go. He drags me over the threshold, and Lula slams the door with her foot, locking out the whole white world like it didn’t just try to kill me.
Once the heat hits me, I nearly cry like a child.
They got me down by the fire. The room spins. Lula’s face hovers close—blonde hair coming loose from its pins, eyes bright and hard.
“Stay with me,” she orders.
Then the pain rolls in hard and honest, and everything after that is fire and hands and the taste of metal and Okee’s voice in my ear telling me to breathe.
The blur of voices and frantic hands fades to nothing and then—
The pain has me in its fist.
It could have been a moment. A blink. The heat and cold both seep in slow.
Gauze is wrapped tight around my shoulder now, and an ache sits in my bones.
The medicine stings my nostrils, whatever remedy she’d worked on me.
Pain is still sharp enough, though dulled from when it first ripped through me.
I lie on my side on the pallet near the hearth, an inch from going black again.
Lula’s herbs sting, burning the evil out by force. I remember now how her fingers pressed and searched, packed and tied. How Okee’s hold squeezed around me like a vise on my ribs. The panic in him.
The thought of him spreads like warmth coming back. Life returning.
Across the room, Lula and Okee bend over the canvas sack I brought, the cloth slumped on the table. Okee stands beside her, broad shoulders braced. He’s been up all night, checking if my breath is steady, if my skin still has color, if I’m drifting too far.
Lula rolls her sleeves up. She looks like she’s been born for a crisis—chin high and daring, mouth set in that line that says the world could go to hell.
“You were lucky,” she says. “Clean shot. No splintering. I drew the bullet out, rinsed the wound in salt water and wrapped it tight. Most of your troubles were from the cold and blood loss, but as long as you’re breathing, you’ll make more. I think you’ll live.”
Lula reaches into the sack. “Let’s see what Mr. Maddox brought us, shall we?”
She pulls things out one by one, lining them up for inspection. “Coffee,” she says, setting the tin down on the table. “Lard.”
Okee grunts with approval.
“Salt,” she continues, drawing a small bag out from the sack of plunder. “Beans.”
“Good,” Okee says, crossing his arms.
Lula continues, turning the labels outward. “Tomatoes. Sardines. Something called—” She squints. “Fine canned oysters,” she reads, incredulous, setting down a squat tin like it was suspicious. “In spiced tomato sauce.”
I let out a cough that hurts. “I weren’t lookin’ all right? I threw in whatever I could grab.”
Lula digs in again, cooing. “Whiskey,” she says at last, lifting the bottle by the neck.
The sack’s near empty now, sagging in on itself. Lula digs her hand to the bottom, fingers searching. “And—” She pulls out a handful of coins. “He emptied the till.”
“Didn’t do it for sport,” I mutter. “I already killed the man. Figured I’d at least get somethin’ out of the trip besides a bullet.”
Lula sets the coins down carefully.
Okee studies the reward flyer. “They have the gall to fund this. I’d bet those men thought everyone on the expedition was lost. Could work to our advantage.”
“How’d you mean?” I ask.
“Hollister wouldn’t attach his name to this tragedy if he thought he’d left a credible witness alive. Someone to vouch for two drifters who were easy enough to blame and take for killers.”
Pain blooms as I pull myself up on my elbows with a long groan. “A witness,” I say, tasting the word like it’s rotten. “You mean Lula.”
Okee nods. “We can’t go back into town. We can’t go to the law.”
His mouth tightens. Lula rests her fingertips on her collarbone, staring into the fire.
“Why not? I can tell them the truth,” she says. “You saved me. You didn’t harm me.”
“You’d tell that to whom?” Okee asks.
“To the sheriff. I can prove I am who I claim to be.”
Okee doesn’t argue. He just lays the paper flat and presses it to the table. Then he slides it across to her gentle.
“Two thousand dollars for both of us. That,” Okee says softly, tapping a finger against the paper, “is what truth is worth in this territory.”
Lula’s hand hovers over the sum. “We can tell them who really did it. They can still hold someone accountable.”
“Hollister ain’t never gonna be held to count for nothin’,” I mutter.
Okee leans forward, closer to Lula, voice gentle. “You walk into the sheriff’s office and reveal that you’re alive, you are doing Hollister a favor. You are telling him where to find you.”
“The sheriff is an officer of the law,” she insists, but her tone has less conviction in it now.
“He’s a man,” Okee answers, quiet. “With a family. With debts. With a town that already likes the story it’s been told.” His mouth tightens. “Do you trust he won’t decide it’s easier to keep believing what everyone believes and take what that paper promises instead of what is honest?”
Lula swallows. “You think he’d—”
“I know what money does,” Okee says. His voice lowers. “Lula, who do you suppose hires men like us for ugly work?” He taps the paper. “Hollister isn’t governed by the same constraints as ordinary people. His money buys protection. It buys men willing to look the other way.”
Silence sits heavy a moment. The cabin pops with sap in the logs. I swallow and try to make my tongue work around the ache in my throat.
“So what do we do?”
Okee doesn’t answer right away. He looks at the door like he can see through it—past the timber, past the snow, to the long reach of the world. I watch him think.
“There is someone we can trust,” he says at last.
I wait.
“My father,” he says. “Mother says he’s in Okmulgee. He has political leverage there. If I can reach him, perhaps he can speak to a federal marshal who isn’t beholden to Hollister. With my father’s sponsorship we look like men bringing a case, not fugitives begging for mercy.”
“Yes,” Lula says. “Yes, let’s do that—”
“No,” I say. “We don’t need your pa’s help.”
Okee goes still, a muscle twitching at his jaw as he seems to bite his tongue, like he’s been expecting my protest since before the word father left his mouth.
“This is bigger than us, my love,” he says. “What happens when we leave this place? They could hang us both, but you know as well as I do they will never let Lula live after what she’s seen, all that she knows. She’ll remain in danger.”
He’s right, but there has to be another way. God, give me a few days for the sore shoulder to resolve, I’ll handle it my damn self.
“I ain’t beggin’ any man,” I say, rising to my feet. My throat feels tight and I cough. “Specially not one that already thinks I’m shit on your boot.”
The words come out hotter than they ought. My chest tightens. Jabbing my finger in his direction throws me off balance, and the room tips, just a little at first, like somebody moved the floor under me.
Okee’s expression tightens, and he lunges toward me as if to catch me. “Boone.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, my ass making an unsteady landing on the cot. The impact rocks me just enough that the world lurches from the pain. Firelight smears into orange ribbons spotted with black. My stomach rolls hard and sour. Sweat breaks out cold along my spine even with the hearth throwing heat.
I blink once. Twice. The dark doesn’t leave.
Lula is on me in an instant, palm flattening against my sternum like she can press calm back into my body. “Enough,” she snaps—at me, at Okee. “Both of you.”
“I—” Okee starts.
“No.” She doesn’t raise her voice. “He’s bled. He’s feverish. You can argue in the morning. Let him rest.”
I try to grit through it, but my throat gives a weak swallow and my vision tunnels. The room swims with each breath. Lula tucks the blanket up under my chin, and I go warm like when my momma used to tend me.
“Listen to me,” she says, leaning close enough that I can smell the soap on her hands. “There is nothing we will solve tonight.” Her eyes cut to Okee. “He needs rest.”
Okee’s jaw works, the fight still in him, but he nods once. Reluctant. Obedient.
Lula turns back to me. “And you,” she says, softer but not kinder, “are going to heal. You are going to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am.”