She were so scared of me. I know that’s a good thing, that it’s what’s keeping her compliant, but I hate it. The way she stared at me with such despisal and how her bound hands went clutching at the hem of her dress.
It made the Lloyd farm flash before my eyes. Bonnie, a year older than me, doing the same on the porch as Crawford chased after her, laughing. I’d screamed for her to run, tried to push ’gainst Diaz, who were dragging me off the stoop, but I were just a scrawny kid then. No muscle or mass. I heard her the whole time Boss took his knife to my forearm. I still hear her, sometimes, in my sleep.
High-strung and jittery, I throw open the trunk on the coach’s boot and pull out the blanket. ’Cus I’m curious and can’t stand her silence no more, I peek at Charlotte through the slits in the carriage’s shredded curtains. She’s sitting on the bench, knotting strips of cloth together. It takes me a minute to realize they’re torn from the hem of her undergarments.
“What’n the hell are you doing?”
Her gaze jerks up, and she tries to hide the bindings behind her back like I ain’t already seen them. “Nothing!” she insists.
I move away from the window like I’m satisfied, but when I hear her return to her work, I peer through the window again. She’s holding the cloth in front of her chin, sizing up its length.
There’s a coldness to her expression, a vicious angle to her brows. It don’t matter that her wrists are still tied or that I got the gun or that there’s no way she’ll be able to overpower me. I know what she’s doing. She’s making a rope that she aims to loop over my head and beneath my chin first chance she gets, pulling back as hard as she can muster.
I shoulda tied her damn hands behind her back.
She tightens another knot, unaware that I’m still watching. I could haul open the door and snatch the cloth away. I could shred it to pieces before her eyes. I could do so many things, but I do nothing. She can go on sinking her hope into something impossible ’cus it’s keeping her quiet. And right now, I need her quiet.
I climb back into my seat and eat a bit of prickly pear with the blanket draped over my shoulders, thinking ’bout how Charlotte’s gonna get me caught. Or killed. Or leaking a trail plain enough for Boss and the others to come and get me. And then—for my ma’s sake as much as my own—I’ll have to cook up some story ’bout why I were racing north ’stead of trying to find ’em. So long as I’m alive, Luther Rose ain’t gonna let me ride off into the sunset. Not till I’ve pointed a finger at that cowboy and Boss can hound some new bastard ’bout his brother’s fate, working his way toward whoever done killed him.
Or whatever killed him.
Diaz claims it were a ghost.
I’d nearly laughed when he first told me such. We’d been at a saloon in Contention, celebrating a recent heist. I figured Diaz’d had one too many drinks, that his details weren’t straight, but he swore it. Hobbs chimed in too, explaining that ’bout a decade back, Waylan Rose sent Boss and half the gang west to scout out the Southern Pacific’s setup in Yuma. Trains were just starting to creep into the Territory back then, and Waylan knew it could serve the gang well. But while Luther were studying the rails, Waylan went chasing gold in the cursed depths of the Superstition Mountains, where him and his men got outmatched.
When his brother missed the rendezvous, Boss spent months chasing empty leads ’round Phoenix, then hit every hideout the gang had ever used—from a mountain pass up in southern Utah to the cabin in New Mexico where the gang originally formed. It weren’t till nearly a year later that he returned to robbing and pillaging ’long the rails. It’s all we been doing so long as I’ve been riding with ’em, and no one mentions Waylan’s name if’n they can help it. No one mentions the coin neither, ’cept for Boss himself. He told me it were his brother’s good-luck charm, that it never left his saddlebags. The cowboy done gave it to me either killed Waylan and took the coin as a prize or the coin’s trail through owners will lead Boss to his brother’s killer.
I used to think that only that coin would lead me to freedom, but if I play my cards right, if I run fast enough, I can cut free now.
After letting the horses graze a little, I hitch ’em up for the night. While climbing into the driver’s box, I spot a fire in the distance, sparking and dancing, plus a flash of color. My heart kicks. It’s that red coat again. I ain’t been imagining it. The only reason I can think the lining’s still facing out is ’cus Crawford don’t know I’m running. He’s likely trying to signal to me. Hey Murphy, hold tight. It’s just me, Crawford. See my coat? I ain’t the Law. Slow up, partner.
Like hell. Once the horses have a decent rest, I’m cracking the reins.
I settle in to sleep, but it ain’t the restful kind. Sometime in the deepest part of the evening I wake outta discomfort. My left leg’s fallen asleep and my neck’s gone stiff, so I climb from the box to stretch. The fire ain’t in the distance no more—it’s gone out or been purposely smothered. The desert is quiet as can be, ’cept for Charlotte’s fierce shivering.
When I peer into the coach, I find her curled up between the benches, her eyes pinched shut in a vain attempt to find sleep while her teeth knock. Each exhale leaves her lips as a visible puff of air.
“Hey,” I say at a whisper.
She curls away from me, hugging herself tight.
I should let her freeze to death. It would make everything simpler.
Do it, Boss tells me.
And ’cus he says to, I don’t.
I shrug outta my coat and shove it through the window, drop my last bit of prickly pear—my breakfast—on the bench, too. Then I return to the driver’s box and hunker down beneath the wool blanket.
Charlotte’s teeth go on chattering another minute or so. Then there’s some shuffling and the sound of her eating like a heathen.
Last thing I wanted were to hang, and now here I am, actively keeping alive the thing that’s sure to deliver my neck straight to a noose. I must be the world’s worst outlaw or the Territory’s biggest fool. Prolly both.
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
Charlotte
The year of our Lord 1887 begins with a brilliant sunrise, a sharp bite to the air, and a stabbing in my side. Having slept at an awkward angle, one of my stays has popped through its lining and is now digging into my flesh. The pain is excruciating. I can feel the moisture just below my right breast, a warmth that is surely blood. The rest of my body is cramped with cold despite having the Rose Kid’s jacket draped over my shoulders. I don’t know why he gave it to me, why he hasn’t shot me dead or left me along the side of the trail to rot.
I wiggle my fingers, trying to get feeling back into them, and my bladder tightens with every jolt of the coach.
“I need to use the necessary,” I call out the window.
“Go in the coach,” he says back.
“I’m not an animal.”
“And I ain’t a magician. There’s no necessary for miles.”