It’s fine, it’s all right, I tell myself. You had to do it. No one’s gotta know. Not Boss. Not the others. They’ll never find out.
“Jones, what the devil’re you shooting for?” a voice shouts from outside. Diaz. “He ain’t in the barn. She could be telling the truth, and we need to—”
Diaz goes silent, and I know he’s found Hobbs’s body. He musta gone looking for me. Only reason I can think that I didn’t cross his path is maybe he searched the rear of the house first, approached the barn from the rear too, and by the time he got there, I were already gone.
“Jones?” Diaz calls out. “You all right, partner?”
He moves into view cautiously, framed by the open farmhouse door. He’s in the saddle, wearing Crawford’s jacket, red side out. It’s been him on my tail. Course it has. Diaz is our best tracker, knows which wheel ruts to follow on any stretch of overrun plain, can tell where a lead turned where all others went straight, leaves no stone unturned. Crawford’s prolly still hurt and hanging back. He’d’ve lent Diaz the jacket as a sign, a signal that help was coming, that the plume of dust in my shadows was friend, not foe.
Diaz’s shock that I’ve done those very friends in is etched on his face. He can’t process it: the image of me standing over Jones’s dead body, Hobbs strangled out in the frozen dirt. Me, alive. The woman, breathing. But two Rose Riders dead.
The Colton woman grabs her rifle from the table and sends a shot out the door, clipping Diaz in the arm. The blast jolts me to action, and I send my own shot after him, but he’s already spurred the horse to life. He goes streaking into the dark evening, firing a couple times over his shoulder. He can’t get away. He can’t.
I lurch onto the porch, and the Colton woman joins me. We unload shot after shot, the dog snapping and snarling behind us till we finally click empty and there ain’t no point reloading. Diaz is cloaked by darkness, near impossible to sight and slipping outta range. I lose the shape of him long before the pounding of hooves fades to the south.
He’ll be back. When and with how many ain’t certain, but he’ll be back. The boys’ll want justice, and there ain’t no way I can talk myself outta this one.
I’m done for.
Boss is gonna kill me. Not even the name Jesse Colton’s gonna save me no more. Boss’ll take it if I offer it up, sure. He’ll go avenge his brother’s death, but he’ll also finish the rose on my forearm and kill me in the most vicious manner he can dream up.
You’ll pay for it with yer own blood.
“Why’d you lie for me?” I ask the Colton woman. She wipes the blood from her cheek.
“Why’d you kill yer own men?”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You did,” she said. “We always got choices, and yers say you ain’t one of ’em. Which is what I suspected the moment I saw the scar on your arm, mind you. That you didn’t kill the Vaughn girl that got in your way confirmed it. So I made the choice to not hand you over to men yer clearly running from.”
“Thank y—”
“Don’t go saying that. I woulda given you up if I had to.” She’s holding her belly again. A thin line of red appears on her cheek. She grabs the corner of her apron and brings it to the cut, applying pressure.
“They’ll be back,” I say, glancing the way Diaz rode.
“And I need to not be here when that happens.”
I think of the half-finished cradle and the wall of books and the husband that ain’t even home.
“Mrs. Col—”
“Kate,” she says. “Call me Kate.”
“I’m sorry I brought this to yer door. Truly.”
“Life don’t care ’bout sorrys, kid. So make yerself useful and help me feed these bodies to the hogs.”
We lug the men round the back side of the barn, where there’s a sty for the pigs. Kate removes the rope from my wrists and hands me an ax, telling me that if she grows to distrust my motives even for a second, she will not hesitate to blow me away.
Then she picks up an ax of her own and goes to dismantling one of the corpses by the light of a lantern.
“Don’t you wanna get the sheriff?” I ask, trying not to watch. “They’ll take care of the bodies.”
“They’ll talk, and even if these boys’ deaths ain’t printed in the paper, word’ll get ’round. It ain’t gonna be nothing but a waste of time, besides. I want the bodies gone—want no evidence that they were ever here—and then I’m gonna get gone myself.”
“And yer husband?”
“He ain’t yer concern.”
“Seeing as I got you into this mess, I kinda feel like he is.”
She stops cold, the ax hanging from her hand. “We got by just fine before you brought the devil’s army onto our claim. Now you gonna help or ain’t ya?”
The boys don’t deserve a proper burial, same as I don’t. Hell, the fate she’s giving ’em is kinder than being left for buzzards. Still, it makes me sick. I am weak, just like she said back in the barn.
“I’ll move the bits,” I say finally, grabbing a shovel.
I expect her to roll her eyes or give me cheek. Instead, she just says, “I reckon yer in a strange place, and I won’t deny you a moment of remorse. It’s the folk that don’t feel the hard stuff—regret or guilt or doubt—that you’s got to watch out for. They’re the real demons. You remember that.”
I don’t know what she’s playing at. Maybe she thinks I can be saved. Maybe she thinks I’m more good than bad ’cus I saved her. I got a feeling she would’ve grabbed her rifle and sent Jones and Hobbs to hell when the opportunity presented itself, with or without my aid. Still, she can go on thinking whatever. I owe her this much—moving the bodies and dealing with the pigs—but soon as it’s finished, I’m taking one of the boys’ saddled horses and riding off. I’m done. I bring bad fortune and loss wherever I go, curse whatever lives mine touch. I need to ride outta here and hole up somewhere no soul’s gonna find me.
Just as we’re finishing with the pigs, Kate’s dog starts growling again. “What now?” she grumbles, and grabs the lantern. We hurry up the rise. As the house comes into view, so does a new mare, standing riderless just beyond the front stoop.
“Yer third?” she whispers to me.
“Don’t think so. He were riding a buckskin, and he’d’ve returned with backup.”
Still, I creep forward, cautious, Hobbs’s pistol held out. Kate puts a finger to her lips as we step onto the porch. I motion to the door, touch my chest. It should be me. I should go first.
She nods.
The door’s already open, a lantern Kate left in the kitchen illuminating the muddy stain on the floorboards where Jones bled out. I step forward, cross the threshold. And a pistol touches my temple.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
Charlotte
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t do it,” I say.