Chapter 38
Boone
Goldie Eld don’t say yes.
That’s the trouble with it.
She don’t say no, neither.
She stands behind her desk with the notice laid flat under one jeweled hand, reading it over though she’s read it twice already. Maybe three times. The lamplight catches in her rings, sparks red and green and gold. Okee stands to my left, still as a fence post.
Outside, the street is growing louder.
Not roaring yet.
A mob ain’t born all at once. It gathers wind first.
“We told you what happened,” I say. “Every damn bit of it.”
Goldie lifts her eyes. “You told me a story.”
“It’s the truth.” I step forward. “So what move you fixin’ to make?”
Goldie looks at me then. Not like a woman studying an outlaw. Like a card player counting what’s left in my hand.
“I have not decided.”
My blood goes cold.
Okee makes a sound low in his throat. “You cannot mean to hand us over.”
“I mean to keep my house standing.”
Pearl lingers near the door, face pale beneath all that powder. She’s got one hand pressed to her stomach like she might be sick. The voices grow louder. Men’s voices. Women too. Some angry. Some praying. Some just wanting to be close to the madness.
I drag both hands through my hair.
Christ on a cracker.
They’re going to tear us limb from limb.
We should have run. Why didn’t we run?
I know why before the thought finishes. Because if we ran, what becomes of Lula?
Everett has her. Somewhere close by now, if his notice weren’t a bluff.
Sundown. Exchange. Us for her. That’s not the bargain he laid out in the paper, dressed in righteous ink and Christian duty.
But with Lula gone, it’s clear that this ain’t just about our surrender.
It’s a noose, sure as anything, but it’s the only rope leading back to her.
If we can just live long enough. If we can put hands on Lula again and run for whatever hell comes after.
Then the noise outside changes. A ripple moves through the street, the way wind moves through grass before rain.
Pearl turns toward the hall. “I think he’s here.”
Goldie closes a ledger on her desk. Big, black, worn at the corners, fat with names and numbers and whatever else a woman like Goldie Eld writes down when men think they are speaking in private.
She lifts it like a Bible.
“Well,” she says. “Let us greet our Christian neighbors.”
The Gemini has a balcony over the front porch, a narrow, iron-railed thing built more for looks than use.
I noticed it the first time we came in, though not for any practical reason.
Two painted columns frame the doors beneath it.
Gas lamps hang in a row, glass chimneys shivering in the damp.
A woman could stand up there in a bright dress and call men inside without dirtying her slippers.
Goldie Eld steps onto it like she was born above a crowd.
Me and Okee follow only as far as the shadow behind the upstairs doors. Pearl stays near the curtain with a pistol tucked in one hand.
Below, Fort Gibson has come to watch us die.
Men crowd the street, shoulder to shoulder. Laborers in muddy boots, mule drivers, gamblers, preachers, drunks, women in shawls, girls from the Gemini pressed behind parlor curtains and peeking through cracks. Somebody has brought a lantern pole. Somebody else a hymn book.
A cluster of women near the left side of the porch sing, low and shaking, “Nearer, my God, to Thee…” Their voices drift up.
A man shouts over them, “Bring out the killers!”
Another answers, “Let Verdigris be answered for!”
Then more shouting.
“Where’s the girl?”
“Where’s Lula Clay?”
“Shame on this house!”
Goldie lifts one hand.
Damned if half the street don’t quiet from that one gesture alone.
That woman’s power ain’t soft. Ain’t warm. It’s the sort that trains men without them noticing until their mouths shut when her fingers rise.
“Neighbors,” she calls, voice carrying bright and clear over the mud. “If you have come to break my windows, I ask you kindly to wait until after my remarks.”
A few nervous laughs twitch through the crowd. That helps.
Then a wagon rolls into view. The laughter dies.
It comes slow through the packed street, men parting before it. Canvas-covered. Guarded. Two mounted men ahead, one beside, a thin man with too-big clothes and a star that looks like it’s too heavy for the caved-in chest it’s pinned to sitting stiff on the rear bench with a rifle across his knees.
My heart kicks so hard my vision spots.
Inside the wagon, through a gap in the canvas, I see pale hair.
Lula.
I move without thinking.
Okee’s hand clamps around my forearm, hard enough to bruise.
Not yet? She’s there.
Ten yards. Maybe fifteen. Close enough that if the porch rail weren’t packed below with men eager to test rope, I could jump it and run. Close enough that I can see one little flash of her face through the flap.
Alive.
She sits straight-backed in that wagon like a queen being carted to trial, but even from here I can tell something’s wrong. Her mouth is too pale. Her eyes too wide. Her shawl is wrapped tight around her hands.
Everett steps down from the wagon.
Fine dark coat. Gloves. Silver at the temples.
Mustache trimmed neat. A man any church lady would trust to hand her down from a carriage.
He moves with that careful ease rich men get when the world has never once made them wait.
One hand grips the wagon side a touch too long.
His face is pale beneath the shave. Sweat shines faint at his upper lip, though the day is damp and cold.
The driver sets a crate near the wagon wheel. Everett steps up on it, then onto the wagon bench, making himself taller than the crowd. Not as high as Goldie on her balcony, but high enough to perform.
Of course.
Man brought his own pulpit.
“Good citizens of Fort Gibson,” he calls.
His voice is rich. Smooth. Damn him, it carries.
“I thank you for coming in the name of justice, decency, and remembrance. This morning, notices were posted asking this town to gather peaceably. I repeat that word now. Peaceably. For we are not animals. We are not savages. We are not men governed by appetite, violence, or lust.”
His gaze flicks toward the Gemini when he says lust.
The crowd hears it. A murmur rolls.
Goldie stands above him in red silk and black lace, one hand on the rail, the ledger tucked beneath her other arm. She gives no sign she’s been struck.
Everett turns slightly, presenting himself to both street and balcony.
“We are here because innocent souls were taken at Verdigris. A scientific party. Travelers under no flag of war. Women. A professor. Working men. Slaughtered.”
“But grief,” Everett continues, “must not make us reckless. The law demands proof. The law demands order. And proof, I am sorry to say, has led us here.”
He points toward the Gemini. Every face turns up. Heat crawls over my skin like flame.
“To this house. To two men known throughout the territory by a name once earned in war and now stained by butchery. Boone Maddox and Okee Collins. The Aces.”
A growl moves through the crowd.
Beside me, Okee’s hand tightens on my arm.
I whisper, “I could shoot him from here.”
“No.”
“I could.”
“That will only prove to the town that he was right.”
That shuts my mouth but don’t cool the blood.
Everett removes a folded paper from inside his coat. His hand trembles when he opens it.
“This testimony,” Everett says, “places these men with the Hollister clearing party sent to investigate trespass near the Verdigris.”
“Investigate,” I spit under my breath.
“Witnesses attest that Maddox and Collins turned their weapons upon their own company. That they left honest men dead in the snow. That they fled with the sole survivor, Mrs. Lula Clay, whose grief and distress have since been used as cover by those who would confuse the matter.”
Lula moves inside the wagon. Deputy Hepburn shifts, blocking her.
My teeth grind so hard my jaw aches.
“Ask yourselves,” Everett calls, voice swelling, “why these men did not go to the law if they were innocent. Ask yourselves why they hid in a woman’s house. Ask yourselves why Goldie Eld, whom I believe to be placed in an impossible position, has not yet surrendered them.”
Goldie’s mouth quirks.
Placed in an impossible position.
He’s still offering her the road.
Poor Goldie. Poor Lula. Poor women under outlaw menace.
I glance at Goldie, and for one sick second I think she might take it. Why wouldn’t she? All she has to do is step back and let us fall. Everett is giving her rope, soap, and a clean dress besides.
Okee sees it too. I know because his face goes empty.
The crowd starts shouting again.
“Bring ’em out!”
“Justice for Verdigris!”
“Let the law have ’em!”
A woman sobs through ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’.
Oh, I’m nearer all right. Nearer to pissing myself in public.
Everett lifts both hands. “Please. Please. We must not descend into mob judgment.” He says it while building a case against us, one brick at a time.
Damn him.
He’s good.
So good that for a terrible heartbeat I can see ourselves through their eyes. Bloody outlaws. Men who did ride with that posse. Men who did kill Hollister’s hired guns in the snow. Men hiding behind painted women in a house built on secrets.
Hell, I’d hang us too if I didn’t know better.
Goldie steps forward to the balcony rail.
The crowd hushes again, but not kindly this time.
“Mr. Everett,” she calls, sweet as pie.
Everett’s smile tightens. Sweat has gathered at his temple now. He dabs it with a handkerchief. “Miss Eld.”
Goldie rests the ledger on the balcony rail.
“I have listened to your account of the matter. And I must confess, you are correct on one point. This house does keep secrets.”
A low sound moves through the street.
Everett’s eyes sharpen. Goldie smooths one hand over the ledger’s cover.
“Men come to the Gemini for many reasons. Cards. Whiskey. Comfort. Conversation. Privacy.” Her smile widens, but there ain’t a lick of warmth in it. “Especially privacy.”
A big man by the butcher’s stall takes one step back.