33
“DON’T SEE WHY HIS FOLKS DIDN’T SHOOT HIM themselves. Woulda been kinder,” says Andy as we sit around our fire.
We spent the day traversing the foothills of a vast mountain range that stretches to the north. Tonight, we nest in a valley of pink granite rock shot through with black veins. The rocks crop out in odd formations like giant knobs of ginger.
“Could you do that to your daddy?” asks Cay.
West stares at nothing. “I could.”
“Me, too,” says Andy. “If it meant he didn’t have to wait there and suffer in the sun like that. Just downright cruel.”
I hug my knees tight to stop my hands from wringing themselves dry.
“In my religion, you go to hell for doing that,” says Peety.
“Which? Leaving him or shooting him?” I ask.
“Murder is a mortal sin. Still, mercy killing probably okay.”
“Speaking of murder, I got an interesting bit of news for you,” says Cay, squinting at me as he pulls something from his pocket. I go still as a forest animal hearing a twig snap. He unfolds a piece of newspaper. The firelight allows me to see through it and read, backward: WANTED.
My stomach clenches. He knows.
Cay zeroes in on me again. “One of the pioneers at Independence Rock gave me this Wanted Bulletin. It’s kinda interesting. Guess who’s on it?”
I put my head between my knees, not wanting to guess. Andy grabs the paper. She does not read much, but she scans the pictures. She gasps and the paper crinkles in her tight grip.
“It’s the Broken Hand Gang,” says Cay, reaching for the paper again. His hand hangs in the air for a moment before Andy realizes it’s there. She hands the paper back, then clasps her hands together so tightly her fingernails blanch. Her wide eyes hop to mine.
“They finally drew a good picture of them,” says Cay, turning around the paper and holding it up for all of us to see. “Three of them, at least.”
The top of the page reads: BROKEN HAND, $200 EA, DOA. He points to the first man, who has a broad forehead and hawkish eyes. I put him around twenty years old. “This one’s the leader, which makes him the index finger.” He taps the next picture, a boy who couldn’t be more than twelve, with a long face and a nose like a miniature butternut squash. “This one’s the pinkie, ’cause he’s the wee one.”
Cay taps his finger over the third picture of an older man. “This one’s the thumb, all wrinkly, the kind of man who always gets the odd jobs. You know, like opening pickle jars.”
The fourth and fifth ones are blank squares.
“Just read the caption, dummy,” says West.
Cay turns the paper back toward himself and reads: “‘Wanted for murder of two innocents: Amelia Dearborn, a baby, and Cedric Dearborn, 37 y.o.; AND, seven counts of aggravated assault and robbery. Last seen at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Armed and dangerous.’”
“Could I see that?” I ask. He hands me the paper and I study the pictures up close. A series of smaller photographs checker the rest of the page accompanied by one-line captions. My eyes hastily sweep the pictures, but I don’t recognize any other face. Then the last entry. There’s a photo of a Chinese woman.
I don’t hear the rest of the conversation as I read silently: “Young San-Li: wanted for MURDER in the first degree of Mr. Ty Yorkshire of St. Joe, Missouri, and THEFT of a slave. 15–25 y.o., Chinese, long black hair, black eyes, dangerous. Reward: $500.”
I’m gasping in air now, and I put my head between my knees again to calm myself. The only saving grace is that my “picture” is not my picture at all. It seems no one had a picture of me to print so they pulled one of some Chinese woman in her twenties smoking a cigarette. She poses in a clingy dress with a slit, a cheongsam.
Picture or not, they’re after me. Now, thousands of pioneers and Argonauts know to be on the lookout for a Chinese girl. Mercenaries will be clamoring for a shot at the prize, which is easily enough to sustain a living for the next few years. I won’t be able to go to the Parting. It’s too risky. Mr. Trask will be lost to me, and so will Mother’s bracelet.
Father, I was so close. I held the butterfly in my hand, but a gale swept it away.
Andy nudges her knee against mine. West, on my other side, takes the paper from me. I don’t want him to see it, but I cannot protest without making things worse.
“That a friend of yours?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“No?” West starts laying out his rope. “Well, sleep with your irons cocked.”
After the boys fall asleep, Andy and I head to a sluggish brook for a minute-bath. Afterward, we huddle together on a thick pile of pine needles, teeth chattering. The moon is an ivory sliver that barely emits light, so high and out of reach. I want to unhook it from the sky and hold it in my hand, where it might do some good.
“That picture didn’t look like you.”
“Chinese is Chinese.”
“So what’d it say?” she asks.
“Wanted for murder and theft of a slave. Five hundred dollars if you can catch me.”
She stares into space and her lips start moving. Then she tilts her face toward me and licks her dry lips. “You’s almost worth the same as three of the Broken Hand Gang.”
“Isn’t that a comfort. Three for the price of one,” I mutter. “We can’t continue on the trail. We’ll go straight to the falls. No one will find us there.”
My head pounds so I pinch my left hand below the web of my thumb and index finger, the way my father taught me to take the edge off headaches.
Andy rests her chin on her knees. “I think we should separate.”
“What?”
“The boys would help you. You could go with them to the Parting. They’d keep you safe. After you find Mr. Trask, you keep on with him to California, and then you’s home free.”
“He’d be harboring a fugitive. So would the boys.”
“They already been doing that before the Wanted Bulletin came out.”
“But now I’m being hunted in earnest. After all they’ve done for us, I can’t put them in such danger.”
She frowns as she fingers the Indian bead on her bracelet. Her bony elbow digs into my arm as she scoots closer to me. “When I was picking the fields back on Frogg Farm, the owner’s sons thought they’d have some fun with me. Stuck me in a corn maze with a pair of rabid bloodhounds.”
“Devils.”
“I’ve never been so scared in my life. I could hear the barking and knew the dogs was coming for me. I raced down a row of corn. Sometimes I saw spaces between the stalks like missing teeth, but I didn’t take ’em. Then my legs started shaking, and I fell. I saw a dog loping toward me, drooling ’n ’crazy.”
Her face tightens and she shudders. “Only thing I could do was duck into one of the spaces. And then another. Soon enough, I got out to find Tommy’s weeping face.”
She twists her body toward me. “You see, I was running so fast, I passed up the spaces even though they was the exit. You’s in that maze. You got spaces around you. You want to run until the dogs bite you dead?” She raises her voice, and I shush her.
“I am thankful the spaces saved you,” I say. “But spaces don’t have to worry about jail.”
“The spaces can think for themselves, when they ain’t making bad jokes. One space in particular would pick the seeds off a strawberry for you if he knew you’s a girl.”
I shake my head. “It could never work. Chinito should stick to Chinitas, remember?”
“Cay was the one said that.”
“But West agreed with him. And anyway, I can’t continue putting them in danger. Here’s what I think. Once we find the trail again, we’ll keep our eyes open for Calamity Cutoff. The night we find it, we’ll leave the boys a note, then double back.”
It’s the coward’s way to leave, but I don’t see any other choice.
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