Chapter 25 #2
Relief hits me so hard it damn near makes me dizzy. I nod once, slow.
“Thank you,” Lula says, setting the glass jar back in her valise and clasping it shut.
The young one looks like he’d like to argue, but the old man cuts him off with a look.
They step aside. Not friendly. Just wide enough.
I don’t wait on it. I climb back to the bench and set her forward, keeping the mare steady as we ease past. The wagon creaks behind me, that arrow still trembling in the board like a reminder.
I don’t look at them.
Only when the trees start to close in again do I let out a breath.
We roll on in silence for a stretch.
Then I say, “I can’t believe that fuckin’ worked.”
Lula doesn’t answer right off.
Okee does. “That was foolish. You’re lucky we weren’t killed. Next time, you let me do the talking.”
That sends me looking over my shoulder where Lula’s brow twists up something cantankerous. “I beg your pardon? Who made you my master?”
“You will not gamble with our lives,” he says, voice dropping to something dark. A tone I ain’t heard him take in a long while. “You pull a stunt like that again, and I cannot protect you from what follows. Do you understand?”
She jerks back as if slapped.
“Okee,” I scold, and my heart races. All this fussing to catch this canary and this fool just opened up the cage and dared her to fly.
She presses her lips together in anger and her nostrils flare. “I am only in this situation—”
“On our account,” Okee says, flat, cutting her off. “We know. Pity it was. But what’s done is done, and now you can choose to move on from it and obey our instructions or you can fend for yourself.”
“Hup, whoa!” I call, drawing back the reins.
Okee leans out from under the canvas cover. “What are you doing?”
Miss Rakko’s trot slows to nothing, the jingle of her traces settling until there’s only wind and the wagon’s soft creak. I turn to face them.
“We ain’t leavin’ her behind, and I don’t take kindly to using it like a threat.”
Okee’s judgment settles on me. “We were nearly shot out of our boots,” he says, low, “and you’re fretting over her tender feelings?”
“She got us through,” I snap.
“She gambled with our lives.”
“And won.”
“Through sheer luck.”
His voice don’t rise. That’s what gets under my skin. He ain’t arguing like a man trying to win. He’s calm, talking like a man already decided.
“What would you have done?” I ask. “Turn north? Add a day? Two? Put us out where anyone with a rifle and an eye for bounty can take a shot at us?”
“I would’ve kept us alive.”
“We are alive.”
“For now.”
“Please,” Lula says, voice wavering. “Let’s keep our heads. At least until Fort Gibson. Then if we must part ways, we can do so cleanly.”
The thought twists at me. “Don’t what I want matter a lick?”
Quiet falls hard. Okee’s mouth parts, but no answer comes. That’s answer enough.
“Boone,” Lula says, softer now. “We haven’t time to pause. Please.”
I want to yell at them both. Lula for putting that door in the room and Okee for damn near shoving her through it. But the road sits open around us, and every second stopped feels like a rifle sight finding my back.
So I swallow it down, turn on the bench, and set Miss Rakko east again.
We make camp before sundown, down in a shallow cut where the land dips and gathers itself.
Limestone rises up around us in pale, broken walls, not high enough to trap us but enough to turn the wind and hold what little heat the fire gives.
The ground’s hard underfoot, dusted with frost, and a dry run of crick bed cuts through the middle like a gash.
It’s a good place to hide. Not a good place to breathe.
Sound carries wrong in there. Every shift of boot, every crack of the fire, seems to hang a second longer than it ought.
Okee sits with his back half to the stone, staring into the fire with rigid shoulders, and I can't think of anything to say to him that won’t sound more forgiving than he deserves.
For a man concerned with gambling with the lives of others, he sure rolled the dice on mine.
“Were you even going to tell me your daddy would have me hang alone on this bounty?”
“He never said that,” he says. His mouth flattens into a displeased line. “Even if he had, I would never allow that to happen.”
Lula hugs her knees beside the flames. “How tragic to be burdened with the weight of all the world on your shoulders, Okee Collins. Speaking for us all. Protecting us from evil and making every decision,” Lula taunts, weary.
Okee shakes his head and looks at me like I’ve slapped him. “When have I ever set the course?” he bites. Then his voice bends into a mean little mountain drawl. “‘There’s a job in Fort Gibson, Okee.’ ‘How about the Rockies this winter?’”
“Thank you for gracing us with your pristine company, Mr. Collins. We are but simple mountain folk,” Lula snaps.
The sight of her sitting there, chin tipped up, taking up for me like she ain’t the same woman who looked at me once like I was something to be put down, makes me want to pull her close and kiss her silly.
My heart takes to hammering. She turns to me, fire catching the green in her eyes, that stubborn little mouth set like she’d bite before she’d beg. God help me, I want to test it.
Gazing at Lula, my mind travels down wicked trails so long and winding I blink once and turn to Okee, for a moment forgetting what he’d ever done to piss me off in the first place. But when I remember, it stings twice as bitter.
“Let me ask you and you better answer me true,” I start, looking at him hard until he nods to agree. “Would you really send our girl away into the Territory by herself on account of some hurt feelings?”
For a second it looks like Lula might protest, but I reckon curiosity wins out and I can tell she’s listening for his reply.
He forces a humorless laugh. “It is not a matter of hurt feelings.”
“What is it then?”
“You know as well as I do what happens when you ignore orders.”
“Are you my sergeant?” Lula asks, bewildered.
“I told you to get down,” he says, pointing at her with an accusing finger, each word sharper than the one before. “So you climb out and greet them as if you estimated you could charm your way out of having our heads blown off.”
“Well it worked, so she was right,” I say. “Ain’t like you and me don’t know about takin’ risks.”
He stiffens at that. “I cannot protect her if she will not do as she is told,” he says, and the echo shocks everyone silent for a spell.
Lula stiffens and drops her head. The fire cracks and pops, casting the basin around us in gold as the darkness settles around us, and Okee tightens his fists as if to chastise himself.