Nothing.
He lets out his breath. “Broke.” His stance relaxes and the revolver droops to the ground. He snaps the trigger twice more, and then again, and a round blasts from the chamber with a sound and force greater than any of them has experienced before. The dirt kicks up a fist-sized crater beside his foot. The gunshot thunders. He whoops and drops the gun and runs a few paces from it before saying, “Shit! Fuck! Damn!”
Everyone ducks down, their hands clapped over their ears or eyes. Now their shocked expressions give way to laughter. The deep-bellied kind. When York dances over to Gawea and says, “What do you think of that? I shot the moon for you, baby!” even she smiles and brings her hands together twice in mock applause.
It feels strange, almost dangerous, for them to be laughing, and, as if in agreement, they all stop and look over their shoulders as if they might be punished for a moment of levity.
*
Gawea wonders if she will have to kill them.
She could do it without any trouble. One by one, a snake curled in a boot, a centipede coaxed into an ear, a few days or weeks between them so as not to arouse suspicion. Or all at once—slit their throats or call down the birds when they are sleeping—but that would be less than ideal. Lewis would know. He would hate her and distrust her and resist her. She has no doubt she could overcome him. He seems so frail, like a bundle of sticks, but it is easier to lead than to drag. She cannot understand why Burr wants him, cannot understand why he refers to Lewis as “the next.” But it is not her job to defy or question. It is her job to deliver, as if he were a parcel. She will deliver Lewis, and then Burr will make good on his promise. Everyone else is expendable.
It hurts to swallow. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to turn her neck one way but not the other. Sometimes she wakes up to a line of ants trundling up her shoulder to taste the wound. It feels like a hot stone is lodged there, as if she could nudge it loose with a cough or a finger. But if she does cough—if she sucks in a lungful of dust or woodsmoke—something bursts and blood or pus fills her hand.
If she really tried, if she kept her voice a whisper, she could probably talk. But she won’t. This way—with the doctor treating her for a slight fever and wrapping her scabbed-over wounds with bandages—she remains the victim instead of a threat. She is the one hurt, not the one who would hurt. They have so many questions, but her answers can only be few when scratched out on paper or in the sand, agonizingly slow.
Burr warned her. He said that Gawea might face resistance. He said that Lewis would not come alone. He said that others would want to chase what she promised—water, civilization—and she would do well to treat them not as an impediment but as a tool. They might slow her down, but so might they prove useful, offering protection and even camaraderie, neither of which she felt she needed. She can protect herself, and she prefers to be alone. She has always been alone, even in the company of others. She is alone now, though they do their best to engage her. It’s the questions that bother her, the constant questions. Some of them logistical: “How many people live in this town you mention, Astoria?” “How about in Oregon?” “In the Pacific Northwest, in the country?” “How does your money work?” “Does everyone speak the same language?” “Where will we live?” “What do people eat?” And some of them poetic: “Will you tell me about the mountains?” “What songs do people sing?” “What does the ocean smell like?” “What does fish taste like?”
And then there is the boy, York, always goofing for her, trying to catch her eye. He rode past her while doing a handstand on his saddle. He juggled three knives along with a chop carved from a javelina’s rump and by the time he finished, it was carved into bite-size pieces that fell neatly on a plate. Sometimes she can’t help herself. Sometimes she snorts a laugh. And when she does, he is only encouraged, saying, “Oh! Look, everyone! Of all the unknown wonders in this new America, I am most in awe of this: our girl actually smiled!”
They watch her. They are suspicious of her, she knows, but they are more suspicious of the world. She tries to keep as still and silent as possible, and then their attention is drawn to a groaning wind turbine, a dead forest, strange splay-toed tracks, a deer carcass opened up and scattered into a thirty-foot orbit.
And they are suspicious of each other, too. They seem wary of Lewis. And they seem worried about the doctor, whether she can keep up. And they seem disturbed by the fact that Reed is fucking Clark. Sometimes this happens quietly, deep in the night, with sighs, shifting fabric, the moist meeting of mouths, and sometimes more obviously, during the day, in an outbuilding within earshot of the group. They are not in love. That is clear. They don’t stare at each other fondly, hold hands, rub each other’s shoulders or feet. The sex seems almost accidentally cathartic, like someone picking up a stone to exercise with or stumbling across a flower to sniff. Clark constantly questions and belittles Reed, and he testily responds that he knows what he is doing and will she lay off already? But they are united, even if only physically, and that alignment makes people nervous. A joining of power, a sharing of secrets.
It could be Gawea won’t have to kill them. It could be they’ll be killed all on their own, maybe by each other.
*