“What family? Yer husband ain’t even here!”
“Leaving you to run is a risk I can’t take!” she shouts back. “So you will get in the wagon of yer own volition or I’ll escort you aboard with a rifle to yer back. You hear me?”
She turns and heads for the barn, making her way down the slope with a speed and confidence that prove she’s walked this path many a time, that even poor lighting is no obstacle.
The Rose Kid moves to follow her.
“Unbelievable,” I mutter at his back. “No one’s safe from you. Not even your own kind.”
He looks over his shoulder. “If it makes any difference, one of ’em was the guy who shot the lawman you rode beside on the train.”
“You didn’t kill him because he murdered that lawman,” I spit out. “And you didn’t do it because he’s wretched and vile and wicked. You killed him to protect yourself.”
“It were a little of both. Plus, Kate was . . .” He makes a gesture at his stomach, illustrating the pregnancy. “Forget it.”
He turns and follows the woman—Kate—toward the barn. I hate that his revelation does make a difference. I hate that I’m glad the bastard who shot that lawman is dead. I hate that it was at the Rose Kid’s hands that he was avenged, not the Law’s. But perhaps above all, I hate that all the Kid’s told me is starting to seem possible.
He must be trying to escape the gang, or he wouldn’t have shot two of his own crew. It’s possible he has some semblance of a conscience after all, or it wouldn’t have mattered to him that Kate had been in danger. Still, this is the Rose Kid, an outlaw twisted enough to have killed two of his own simply to earn another’s trust. This could all be part of a greater plan, a calculated maneuver to lower Kate’s guard. He is after the same thing I am, and though Kate will not divulge the gunslinger’s name at present, she may, in due time, to someone she trusts.
There’s a creak in the distance, and Kate’s wagon rolls into view. She’s got a lantern hanging from the driver’s box, and in its soft orange glow I can make out her form at the reins, two horses leading the way. The Rose Kid sits in the back of the wagon. It isn’t loaded up much. Either she’s not going far or she’s heading to a friend’s. Maybe both.
Kate draws rein, bringing the wagon to a halt.
“Are you really in a bad place?” she asks me. “Sometimes folk think they need a gunslinger when really they just need time to find peace with what’s happened. Revenge ain’t always the answer.”
“This isn’t revenge for the sake of spilling blood. This is a necessary retribution for greed, and a bullet would only be the final resort. My uncle is a crooked businessman, and he’s trying to seize my father’s fortune by forcing my mother’s hand in marriage. And if not her hand, it will be mine. And if one of us does not oblige, the other will be killed in order—”
“All right, all right, I don’t need the whole damn epic.”
“Why don’t you just run to the Law, Vaughn?” the Rose Kid says from the back of the wagon. He’s leaning against the side rail, looking all too pleased about the turn of events: him, riding cozy. Me, out here, spooked, my world crumbling. “That’s what you do best.”
“He already has folk in his pocket, and I can’t risk trusting the wrong person. I need a gunslinger. I need someone who can scare him honest, and if that doesn’t work, shoot and not miss.”
“Ain’t it interesting,” he goes on, “how when the Law fails people, they always turn to the outlaws.”
“A lone gunslinger isn’t the same as a pillaging gang of thieves.”
“Enough!” Kate barks. “Get in the wagon, girl. I’ll tell you ’bout the gunslinger while we ride.”
“What?” the Rose Kid and I say at the same time.
“You coming or ain’t ya? I’m not asking twice.”
I can’t go home without endangering Mother or myself, and I have only days—weeks, at best—to relieve Uncle Gerald of his grip on our family. If Kate will only reveal the gunslinger’s name while in the wagon, I don’t have a choice.
I will have to travel with the Rose Kid again. At least this time I’m in possession of a pistol.
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
Charlotte
Before we leave, Kate takes the reins of the horses that must have belonged to the Rose Kid and the two men he shot and positions the steeds facing Prescott. Then she gives them each a swat on the rump. Two spring off, and the third trudges on, weary, but it’s likely they’ll all make it back to town.
I tether Uncle Gerald’s horse to the rear of the wagon while Kate heads to the mesquite to hang a noose. I must look worried, because she says, “Don’t put wrinkles in yer forehead. It ain’t nothing but a signal. My husband’ll know where I’s gone once he sees it.”
It’s the grimmest signal I can think of. Why not hang a colorful scarf from the tree? A blanket? Leave a note? But maybe the point is to have something that doesn’t look terribly out of place but is still visible from afar.
I climb into the wagon. The Rose Kid is sitting near the rear, so I move all the way up to the front, as close to the driver’s box as possible.
“I ain’t gonna bite, you know,” he says.
“You haven’t proven yourself terribly trustworthy, so I’ll take precautions, thank you.”
He lets out a small laugh, then mutters “Goddamn mess, this is” before leaning back to rest his head on the sideboard. The stars twinkle off his dark eyes. I search his waist, but where he’d previously kept Father’s pistol tucked into his pants, an unfamiliar weapon is now stowed.
“Where’s my Colt? I’ll take it back now.”
He ignores me.
“I’m willing to make a fair trade.” I hold up the revolver I found on the farmhouse floor, dropped by one of his men.
“I don’t got the Colt,” he says finally. “Kate busted my nose and took it, plus my knife, when I first showed up. You gotta talk to her.”
The thought of her cracking his nose gives me some glib satisfaction. It’s quiet a moment, him staring at the stars with a peacefulness about him that seems wrong, given that he’s just killed two of his own men. No one should feel so indifferent to such a crime—not even if that someone is trying to escape a bad situation and might be more innocent than the papers claim.
“I won’t let you have it—the name of the gunslinger,” I tell him.
He makes no response.
“That’s what you’re after, and surely you don’t have it, else you’d have simply given it to your boys earlier rather than gun them down.”
“Maybe I gunned ’em down ’cus it’s like I told you: I’m getting out. I’m leaving my past behind.”
“I don’t think it works like that. Our pasts define us.”
“Horseshit.”
“You mean to say our pasts have no bearing on our present, who we are now?”
“I’m saying just ’cus someone makes a mistake in their past don’t mean they’re always gonna go on making that same mistake forever and ever. Folks can change.”
“Change, sure. But you’re running. You can’t do certain things and then pretend they never happened.”