I rock like a babe in a cradle, my head heavy, my thoughts foggy and slow.
Forcing my eyes open, I find the sloped stagecoach roof overhead, and I remember . . .
I’d been awake, dressing for the trip to Prescott while people on the street shouted about fire. The devils were free of that tree. Just as I suspected, the plan was going south. As I grabbed my stockings, there’d been a gunshot in the foyer. Jake screaming.
I lunged for Father’s pistol and my journal on the nightstand, stockings and boots forgotten. Then I was scrambling out the window. One step on the freezing boards of the porch outside, and a splinter lodged in my heel. Four paces, and my toes were already numb with cold.
I stumbled onto the main street and collided with a man Father’s age. “They’re in the boarding house!” I told him. Smoke clogged my nostrils, and gunshots echoed in the night.
He simply turned me around and sent me back the way I’d come. “The street ain’t safe. Go this way. I’ll take care of ’em.” He cranked the lever on his rifle and squatted behind a barrel opposite my room. I ran on. Past the window I’d just climbed from, beyond the boarding house, over a low brick wall, until I found myself face to face with a plum-colored coach.
Dirt exploded near my feet, a bullet barely missing me. I dove forward, throwing the door open and scrambling inside. With a yank, the door was shut. With a tear, the leather curtains drawn tight. Putting the barrel of Father’s pistol to the curtain, I moved it aside to get a look at the alley. A figure prowled the roof, no longer concerned with me on account of gunfire back at the boarding house.
I scooted across the bench seat to the opposite side of the coach, peered out that window. The stage stop waited, quiet, no threats to be seen. But before I could make a run for it, someone scrambled into the driver’s box, rocking the coach. As I lunged for the door, the team lurched to life. I barely managed to get an arm out to brace against the frame and steady myself.
“Hey!” I shouted, banging on the roof. “Wait a minute!”
The coach turned sharply, and I flew toward the near side. My head struck the wooden frame of the window, and that’s when the world went blurry.
I’d blinked, groaned, my arm being pinned beneath me. Everything felt heavy and wrong, but the sway of the coach on its leather thorough braces had been so welcoming. It whispered me to sleep.
And now it has coaxed me back awake.
My mouth is parched, and fabric sticks to my tongue. A bandanna. I’m gagged. My hands are bound in my lap, strips of leather tied so tightly, my skin has turned red. I reach up, bringing my hands over my head, but I can’t unfasten the gag. It’s secured tightly, and my bound hands are useless, trembling against my will.
“Hey!” I shout. “Untie me! Let me out of here!” But the words are muffled with the gag, barely comprehensible, and the coach goes lumbering on, bucking and rocking over ruts in the trail. I lunge toward the window. The curtain has been shredded, the coolness of late-afternoon air blowing through. Outside, the terrain is rugged and steep—saguaro cacti and dry, low shrubs.
“Hey!” I try again.
No answer. No stall in the horses’ pace.
It dawns on me that whoever tied me may have sent the horses running, content to let them drag me into the mountains and to my death.
I scream louder. Pound on the coach innards with my elbow. Kick at the door. I continue yelling and hammering as loud as I can manage. It’s draining me fast, but a passing party might hear me, and I can’t miss such an opportunity.
Without warning, the horses suddenly stop. Weight lifts from the driver’s box, causing the carriage to sway. Someone has been driving this coach all along. With me inside it. Someone bound me and gagged me and left me in here unconscious. Bleeding. Freezing. Someone did this to me. Someone with nothing to lose. A wanted man. A Rose Rider.
I should have fired Father’s pistol as soon as the stagecoach lurched to life in Wickenburg. I should have aimed it at the driver’s box and fired until every last chamber emptied. I scramble for it now, searching the bench seats and floor, but the pistol is gone.
A shadow passes by the window. I lean onto my back, and as soon as the door begins to open, I use both bound feet to kick it as hard as I can muster. It goes flying outward, catching my captor in the jaw. He stumbles back, cursing.
“Son of a . . . !”
“Help!” I shout at the heavens, only it comes out Halp because of the gag. Halp, as I crawl for the door, then freeze as I find myself staring down the barrel of Father’s pistol. The devil has his Colt.
“Shut up!” he screams. I look beyond the barrel, into the eyes of the Rose Kid. His tan skin is red with rage, or maybe just windburnt with cold—narrow eyes, raw cheeks, mouth in a snarl. “I coulda shot you already, but I didn’t! You want me to change my mind?”
His empty eyes blaze with a fierceness I know shouldn’t be tested. He’s a fuse already lit, a fire already burning. He will pull that trigger if he needs to. He will shoot me dead.
The Rose Kid climbs onto the coach step, blocking out the light, filling the whole doorway. He’s twice my size. I scurry away, my back striking the far wall.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” I say through the gag.
But he reaches out anyway, hooks a finger behind the gag, and pulls it from my mouth.
As soon as the bandanna falls onto my chest, I spit at him. Or rather, I try to. My mouth is too dry to work up any saliva, but he still flinches in anticipation.
“Get away.” I mean to sound sure of myself, but my voice wavers. I’ve suddenly become as small as a mouse, prey cornered. I shake against my will.
The Rose Kid pulls a clean bandanna from his back pocket and moves to wipe my face. Like he’s the good guy. Like he isn’t the soulless monster who killed an entire family. Who hung two women. Who murdered a seven-year-old boy.
When his hand comes within range, I do all I can think of to keep him away—I snap at his fingers like a dog.
“Fine!” the Rose Kid snaps, snatching his hand back. “Ride with blood all over yerself. It don’t matter to me.” He steps from the coach without securing the gag. It hangs beneath my chin.
“Let me go!”
“I can’t,” he says.
“We’re in the middle of the desert. I’m unarmed. I can’t turn the Law on you. Just leave me and ride off.”
“No.”
I look at Father’s Colt, stuffed into the waistband of the Rose Kid’s pants. Like he owns it. Like it was always his. I think of my suitcase left behind in the Wickenburg boarding house. My pearl earrings and lined gloves and winter jacket. All things Father touched, all pieces of him, gone. And now his Colt, also lost to me. In the hands of this varmint.
“I want my pistol back,” I say, staring at the piece.
The Rose Kid grunts out a laugh. “So you can shoot me with it? Nohow.”
“Empty the chambers if you have to, but it’s not yours.”
“It’s with me and staying there.”