He’s kept me alive, fed me, given me his coat. And yet he won’t grant me the decency of relieving myself outside my cage.
“I can’t feel my fingers or toes, and I’m also bleeding from my stays. I need to stand, lessen the pressure. Please.”
To my surprise, the reins are tugged and the door yanked open. The Rose Kid snatches the undergarment rope I wasn’t smart enough to hide from my lap, then grabs the leather at my wrists and pulls me forward. I spill from the carriage, the stay stabbing at me again, and his jacket falls from my shoulders. The Rose Kid unties my ankles before threading the makeshift rope between my bound wrists and tying it off tight.
“Come on,” he says, tugging at the short leash.
My legs ache with relief. I haven’t stood in more than a day, and it feels glorious. The pain in my side subsides too, the boning of the stays no longer prying as aggressively into my flesh while upright. I spin, taking in the desolate land, and my heart careens.
The frozen dirt trail we are following descends into Prescott.
The city is a familiar and beautiful sight, with its broad streets stretching around the central plaza. Since we moved to Yuma, the ponderosas in the plaza have been cut and a regal Victorian-style courthouse has been built. I can see its fine peak from here, bare elms at the edges of the fenced courtyard, and the businesses and homes lining the surrounding streets.
I don’t know what the devil the Rose Kid expects to find in the capital besides a jail cell or a noose, but the sight of the city wakes a flurry of hope in my chest. The rail gala is this morning, and if I can only get into town, everything will be fine. Mother will be there, and my cousin Paul. Even Uncle Gerald would be a fair sight given my circumstances.
“Behind that rock,” the Rose Kid says, letting go of the leash. He jerks his chin at a crop of boulders beyond the rutted trail. “Go quick and then get yer ass back in the coach. I see you move a toe in a suspicious direction and I’ll be forced to draw.”
I do as he says, feeling his eyes on me as I move. The rock is not terribly large, but my bladder has reached a point where it’s hard to care about decency. It’s either this or soil the only bit of clothing I have.
When I’m through, I make my way back.
“Hurry up,” he mutters as he gathers up the leash-rope.
“Just let me go!” I wail, struggling to keep his pace as he leads me toward the stagecoach. “I can walk into town. Just leave me here and run.”
“Like you won’t talk when you get there? Like you won’t tell them I came through this way ahead of you. I can’t have that. I can’t have ’em knowing where I’m at.”
He looks back at the trail when he says the last bit, not ahead. Almost as if he fears the Wickenburg lawmen more than those in Prescott.
His nose is raw and caked up, same as mine feels. Frozen moisture coats his stubbled jaw, and it glints in the early-morning light as he regards the trail we’ve already traveled. Maybe someone is chasing him. Deputy Montgomery, perhaps.
The Rose Kid plucks his coat from the dirt, shrugs it back on. “Can you ride bareback?”
“I’ve never tried.”
“Then that’s a no,” he says, and I immediately regret my honesty. Had he been offering to unhitch the team and give me a steed?
“I can manage. I’ll figure it out,” I insist.
“Figuring it out ain’t gonna result in a fast ride, Charlotte.”
I freeze. He knows my name, likely overheard Deputy Montgomery saying it.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Call you what?”
“By my name.”
“What am I supposed to call you?” he scoffs. “Miss Vaughn?”
“Call me nothing. Or call me miss, for all I care. Just don’t act as though you know me, or as if you’re not using me for your own means.”
His eyes flash. “Listen, things would be a hell of a lot easier if you hadn’t picked this damn coach as yer hiding place. But it is what it is, and now we’re both in a bad place.”
“We’re in a bad place? I’m the one held hostage.”
“I ain’t got time for this, Char—Vaughn. We gotta keep moving.”
“No, you have to keep moving. I’ll stay right here, thank you very much. Tie me to a tree.” I tug at the ropes, walking for the nearest stubby shrub. “You can get a good, long lead and I can’t run to alert anyone. I’ll hitch a ride with whomever you’re running from when they pass through.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why the blazes not?” I can hear my voice going high and panicked, feel the tears coming on. I’m being more than fair. There’s no reason why he can’t leave me. None. The first tear breaks free, smacks the frozen ground near my feet.
“Dammit, don’t cry. Just . . . Come on, get in the coach.”
“Just leave me!”
I’m sobbing now, completely against my will, everything that’s transpired in the past two days catching up to me.
“I can’t leave you ’cus it’s them coming. The Rose Riders.”
He’s running from his own people, and he almost sounds afraid of them. I can’t help it; a small laugh escapes my lips. My amusement only angers him further.
“You see this scar?” the Rose Kid snaps, rolling up his right sleeve and showing me his forearm. Half of a rose is carved into his skin. “Luther Rose did that. I been his prisoner same way you’ve been mine. Sometimes folk use others ’cus they need to, not ’cus they want to.”
“You expect me to believe that Luther Rose has been using you?” I stare him straight in his rotten eyes. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’ve read about you, Reece Murphy. You worked as a farmhand to get close to that family. Then you relieved them of their fortune, hung them from the rafters of the barn they let you sleep in, and joined the Rose Riders because no one else would have you. The papers say you are more vicious than Billy the Kid, that you earned your nickname at just fifteen.”
“It ain’t true,” he says.
“You’re not known as the Rose Kid? You didn’t join the most vicious gang in the Territory after the slaughter of the Lloyds in eighty-three? You haven’t been robbing trains since?”
“The details ain’t right, though,” he insists. “What happened at the Lloyds’—I didn’t do that. Boss and his men did.”
“And yet you still ride with them.”
“I don’t!” he shouts. “I’m here, ain’t I?”
“With a girl bound and often gagged. You’ve changed your ways so.”
“You ain’t dead!”
“No,” I murmur. “But you will be. You won’t get away with this.”
I have no way to see through the threat, no way to get out of my bindings. But they feel right, those words. I mean them.