“Put the gun down,” the Rose Kid says calmly, as though I can’t see the red stain on the floor.
I never should have made a deal with him, dragged innocent folk into the matter. The Thompson girl is dead because of me. I gave the Rose Kid her name, and he came straight here. He got the name Luther Rose seeks and then killed her for good measure. That’s her blood on the floor. This is her pistol in my hand, swiped from where she dropped it.
My trigger finger trembles. This wouldn’t be in self-defense, like on the train. This would be me doing God’s will, picking and choosing who dies, acting as judge and executioner. No soul should have so much power. Even if the bastard on the other end of the barrel is deserving of such a fate.
And he’s so deserving.
No one would have to know.
No one but me.
“You don’t got it in you, Vaughn,” he says. “And that’s a good thing. Don’t do this. It ain’t a line you wanna walk.”
“You know nothing about me!” I shout, pushing the barrel into his skin. “How could you? You killed her.”
“He didn’t kill no one but the men that had it coming,” says a voice from out on the porch. “Now put the damn pistol down. I ain’t had the greatest night, and I don’t got time to dispose of another body.”
I lower the weapon as a woman pushes past the Rose Kid, bringing a lantern and rifle with her.
It’s her—the Thompson girl.
She hasn’t aged, which is impossible, so perhaps it is more that I have aged too, that the woman simply looks as she always has: a dozen or so years older than I am. Her dark hair is pinned back, showing the whole of her face, which is a map of seriousness. A fresh cut marks one of her cheeks, the dark pink line a contrast to her tawny beige skin. I once heard Mother say that women glow when pregnant, radiating warmth, but the Thompson girl—woman—is the opposite. From her stern eyes to her proud chin, she strikes me as someone not to be trifled with. Her expression is cold, her posture resolute. Perhaps the only soft thing about her is the swelling curve of her belly.
I look at the pistol in my hand. If what she says is true, it is not her gun, but that of a “man who had it coming.” A man the Rose Kid apparently shot.
“I need to pack,” the woman says, turning her back on me.
“Pack? No. I need to talk to you. I need to know where I can find the gunslinger you hired to avenge your father’s death.”
The woman pauses, her hands on the kitchen table. For a brief moment the house is unnaturally quiet. Then the woman straightens and marches into the bedroom with such conviction, I’m convinced her pause was nothing but the baby kicking, a fleeting twinge of pain. There’s a small racket as she shuffles through things out of sight, but when she returns, it is not with the name written on a piece of paper for me. Nor is it a sketch or an address or anything of use.
She returns with a legless cradle in her arms, the bed filled with an assortment of oddities: a metal lunch pail, a bundle of clothes, what appears to be the grips of a pair of twin pistols. The woman plucks a single book from the bookshelf and tosses it in, along with a framed photo.
“Who did you hire?” I ask again.
“Can’t help you there,” she says plainly.
“But my life depends on it.”
“Then I reckon you oughta move on to someone who can help.”
This is not how I envisioned this conversation. I did not sneak out of Uncle Gerald’s house and travel these five miles by night for nothing. It was no easy ride. The darkness was constant, leaving me to fret over the horse and the possibility of a lamed ankle with one careless step. And when a lone rider came tearing down the slope, riding for Prescott with the speed of a vengeance, I thought maybe Uncle was already onto me, that men were searching me out. The shrub I chose to hide behind was just barely off the trail, and while it sheltered me completely, it did not fully obscure the stolen horse. Luckily, the rider had stronger priorities, because his focus did not shift from the city in the distance.
“But you’ve been in my shoes. You know what it feels like to need help.”
“I have made my own help, always,” she says, “and I suggest you do the same.”
I’m at a loss for words. I have yet to consider a situation where coming here does not yield the name of a hired gun. I imagined her handing it over quickly and letting me stay the night. What the devil am I going to do now?
“This one’s good with a pistol,” she continues, jerking her head at the Rose Kid. “Maybe he’ll help you.”
“Him?” I scoff. “He’s the Rose Kid. You do know that, I hope?”
She nods, as though I’ve merely introduced her to the local clergyman.
“The Rose Kid,” I say again. “Reece Murphy, murderer and thief, rides with Luther Rose and the band known as the Rose Riders. His head is worth five hundred dollars. He robbed a train I was riding three days ago and had me bound and gagged in a coach just earlier today.”
“That all true?” she asks, looking toward the Kid.
He doesn’t deny it.
“Mrs. Thompson, I beg of you—”
“There ain’t no Thompson here,” she says. “Now, I need to put the horses to the wagons and get moving.”
“In the dead of the night?”
“Yes. Yer friend here—”
“He is not my friend.”
“—only got two of his buddies. The third rode off, and he’ll be back. I reckon they’ll be just as keen to learn the name of that gunslinger yer after, and they’ll gut me to get it, so you’ll understand when I say I ain’t got time to dally.”
I gape at her, the situation gaining clarity. The blood on the floor. The man I saw racing for the city. Two “buddies” dead and a third riding for help. I glance at the Rose Kid.
He killed his own men. Why?
There was his story about the scar, his sincere fear when he mentioned that the Rose Riders were following our coach. Perhaps he truly is trying to make a run for it, only he’s come for the gunslinger’s name as insurance.
The woman sets her cradle on the front stoop and lumbers down the step. “Reece, help me with the horses, won’t you?”
“You want his help? But he’s the Rose Kid!”
“I ain’t deaf. I heard you the first time. Don’t change the fact that he’s coming with.”
“I am?” the Rose Kid says.
She looks him in the eye. “I’m grateful for what you did here, I am. But that don’t mean I trust you, nor that you won’t slink back to whoever can protect you best when the time comes.”
“I ain’t gonna slink to no one,” he counters. “I wanna disappear.”
“Wanting to disappear don’t mean folk won’t find you. So I can’t have you seeing which way I ride off.”
“I wouldn’t tell ’em.”
“I ain’t so sure that’s true.”
“I’ll help you with the horses,” he says to her, “but I ain’t coming with.”
She points a finger, her eyes ablaze. “They will kill you for what you did here, and they won’t do it kindly. If’n you survive the torture and die without giving me up, well, that’s a small victory for yer black soul. But if’n you let slip anything of use, my family ain’t in a good place.”