I don’t have the luxury of time, but I know better than to push my luck.
Father always said a person can fight only one battle at a time, and though I wish to see all the Rose Riders hung for their crimes, my largest quarrel is with Uncle. I could live with watching the Rose Kid ride for the horizon if he takes my deal. Because as wicked as he may be, I do believe him when he says he wants to start again.
If I write anything on his actions, I surely will not paint him a hero. He just needs to believe I will. So if the Rose Kid threatens Uncle Gerald, convinces him to see reason, then I will do him this one decency: I will not have the Law there, waiting to arrest him. I will let him keep running from his past. He best hope he can run faster than his demons.
The day is long and fruitless.
I help Kate finish up the dusting; then we inventory the root cellar, Mutt rubbing against our legs as we count jars. Kate is stocked well enough to eat comfortably through the winter.
Here in the mountains, shadows begin to stretch earlier than I am used to. As the sun sinks from view, Kate scrubs potatoes in the dry sink and passes them to me. I quarter them for boiling, trying to ignore the pain in my heels, where the boots have rubbed and chafed.
“I’d like my pistol back,” I tell her as I add newly cut pieces to the pot. “The Colt—the weapon you took off the Rose Kid.”
“That’s yers? Big gun for a little lady.” She gives me a sly smile, as if perhaps this isn’t a bad thing.
“It belonged to my father.”
She nods as though she understands, when she can’t, not truly. She lost her father too, but years ago, and suddenly. She didn’t see the suffering drawn out, didn’t watch him change from a vibrant, energetic man to a weakened, frail thing that couldn’t leave his bed. The sweaty brow. The heavy eyelids. The blood-soaked handkerchief that constantly remained in his grip. He wasn’t himself by the end. My father died long before he took his last breath, and that was the hardest thing to witness.
I think maybe I should tell Kate this. I haven’t said it to anyone, and maybe it would be good to get it out, to throw the words into the open instead of letting them fester inside. But when I raise my head to say something, Kate has disappeared into her bedroom.
She returns with Father’s pistol and lays it on the table. Seeing it makes me feel better and worse. Better, because it’s as if I’ve been reunited with a piece of him. Worse, because it reminds me of all the things I was forced to leave behind in that Wickenburg boarding house.
“A trade?” I put the pistol I found on the floor of her Prescott home down beside Father’s.
“Keep it,” she says. “I got a pair of twin Colts myself, and I ain’t been able to carry ’em proper in months.”
She’s too big for a belt, and even if she managed to fasten one below her belly, I imagine its lowered position would change her draw. Her rifle, however, has barely left her side since I’ve met her. During the wagon ride here, it sat in the driver’s box. Now it’s propped against the kitchen table, even though there are pegs for it above the door.
“How much longer?” I ask, nodding at her belly.
“A week or so, according to the midwife, and hopefully not a day longer. I’m ready. Lord, am I ready.”
“My mother said she cried with joy the first time she looked down and could see her feet again after my birth.”
Kate barks out a laugh. It’s the most unladylike laugh my ears have ever witnessed, but she does not seem embarrassed by it. It makes me want to live so freely, to throw my head back rather than merely smiling, to guffaw instead of giggle.
“What will you do if your husband is not back before the baby comes?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no midwife here.”
“Women pushed out babies in covered wagons bucking over the plains. I sure as hell can push one out in the comfort of a bed, with or without help around.”
Her confidence is endearing. I do not mention the stories Mother has told me, where complications keep the baby from coming, where the mother sometimes perishes with the child.
“Besides, what do I got to worry about?” Kate continues. “I got two extra sets of hands ’round now.”
I freeze up. “I’m no midwife. My mother is, and I know a little from her, but not enough to be truly helpful.”
“Blood bothers you?”
“Not during a birth. It’s more that . . . things can get complicated. I won’t know what to do in that instance.”
“We’ll get Reece to assist you.”
“He won’t know either,” I argue. “Besides, why do you trust him?”
“I don’t trust no one but Jesse,” she says. “Not fully, at least.”
“Why do you trust him partially, then?”
“Charlotte, no one’s all good or all bad. That ain’t how humans work. Hear me on this, and trust me when I say that Reece Murphy is as solid a mix as they come.”
Just last night she was arguing that a Rose Rider is a Rose Rider and that I should turn him over to the Law if he agreed to see to my uncle. How could someone deserving of a jail cell be a solid mixture of good and bad? I must appear confused because Kate adds, “He ran from the gang earlier this week. He shot two of his own just yesterday.”
That she is defending him makes me furious.
“What was he doing the past three years?” I argue. “Where were his principles then?”
“Ask me,” the Rose Kid says from the doorway. I don’t know how he appeared there so quietly, only that he’s heard everything.
“Go on, ask,” he says again.
I return my attention to the knife. I bring the blade down, halving a potato, then again, cutting it into quarters.
“Yeah, that’s right about what I figured,” the Rose Kid says, and moves to the dry sink to wash.
Before Kate can even propose sleeping arrangements for the evening, I demand to room with her.
“I’m not staying with him,” I say plainly, as if the Rose Kid is not even present, when in fact he’s sitting right there on the other side of the table. Full of food, his face and limbs clean from the quick wash he’d splashed on himself before dinner, he appears almost civilized. His hat hangs down his back, its string pressed against his throat. If I look at him only from the chin up—chapped lips, freckles on his tawny nose, brownish-blond hair that curls behind his ears—he’s almost unrecognizable as the boy from the train. But he’s still wearing that blue shirt, stained with sweat, and the jacket I used as a blanket at night in the coach.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says. “I reckon I’ll get a little shuteye now.” He leaves his knife and pistol on the table before excusing himself.
When the door to the second bedroom clicks shut, I turn to Kate. “You should lock him in there for the night.”
“If he wanted us dead, he’d’ve seen to it already. Besides, he left his effects.” She pops a potato in her mouth and motions at the weapons with her fork.
“That doesn’t mean . . . What if . . .”
“Christ, Charlotte. I said I didn’t think he were all bad, not that I wouldn’t shoot him square between the eyes if he proves me a liar.”