But my feet are already flying. Down our side of the bank, racing for the boulders lining the trickling stream. I’m almost to the biggest of the lot when a gunshot sounds and water splashes a few paces to my right.
I look up, but the fool’s still fleeing, his back to me. There were only two horses. Two horses and two men, unless— Another gunshot, and this time water dances right near my feet.
“Get down, Nate!” Jesse’s screaming. “Get the blazes down!”
I look over my shoulder and see Jesse racing toward me, drawing his pistols and aiming downriver at the same time. I follow his gaze, and that’s when I see the third horse and the rider sitting in the saddle, rifle aimed. The fleeing man alerted him. This is the backup plan, the last defense.
There’s two gunshots at once, and I ain’t sure which is Jesse’s and which is the Rose Rider’s, but I know which hits me.
I stumble, tripping, then toppling backwards, and strike my head on a rock. Hard. The world goes blurry. My shoulder’s flaming hotter than a poker, and I know how that feels, ’cus I was on the wrong side of one after running through the barn and tripping the day Pa branded our two cattle. I feel like I’m exploding and folding in on myself, and I ain’t certain, but the sky seems to be collapsing.
The world’s going white and it’s raging of gunshots.
When it quiets, Jesse’s shouting for Will, and then I feel hands lifting me.
“Watch his head,” Jesse says. “Is it split?”
“No, but he’s already got an egg. Where’s the shot?”
“Shoulder, I think, but I can’t see the damage.” I feel his hand at my elbow, the other touching my shoulder, cautious. “We gotta get the shirt off, put a bandage down and slow the bleeding.”
No, I want to say. Don’t.
But his fingers are already moving. The buttons are being undone.
I feel the fabric rip open.
Will swears.
“Jesus, Nate,” Jesse says. “Jesus Christ.”
It’s the last thing I hear before slipping into dark.
Hunched over our kitchen table, I’m rolling out dough for a pie. It’s Pa’s birthday. He said to surprise him, but I’m making apple. It’s his favorite and he’s a man of habit. He don’t like surprises, not no matter what he says. When we eat it later, the filling warm and sugared sweet, I’s still got flour coating my apron and speckled in my hair.
“You look like you got stuck in a snow dusting,” Pa says.
“You look like a hog gone rolling in mud.”
And he does. He were extending our irrigation line and brought half the creek bed home on his body.
“Well, this hog’s in heaven,” he says, eating his last bite of pie and slapping his gut. “Reckon I live in the prettiest pen, with the nicest hen, in all the southwest.”
“Yer just saying that ’cus yer loaded with sugar.”
“That don’t mean it ain’t true.”
I crack a smile. “Happy birthday, Pa.”
“Happy birthday indeed.”
A sharp movement causes my head to loll into my bad shoulder. Pain flares. The world’s pink and fleshy, but I ain’t got the energy to open my eyes. The Coltons are arguing ’bout something, voices clipped and hard.
Another jolt, a shift.
I think we’re moving.
I try to surface, but a fog pulls me under.
“It don’t matter why it’s important, it just is,” Pa says.
We’re sitting by the fireplace as winter winds blow outside and rattle the shutters.
“Say it back to me,” Pa says.
“Abe,” I says, but I’m more interested in my doll. I’m a few months past five, and Ma died a year and a half ago, but the doll tucked in the cradle reminds me of her. Trapped in bed. Never moving. Barely breathing. Pa always ordering me clear of the room so I couldn’t catch nothing. I gotta watch my doll. I gotta keep her warm and snug.
“Abe from where?” Pa says, not giving in.
“Wishenburg.”
“Wickenburg.”
“Yeah.”
“Kate,” he says stern. He don’t use that tone often, and I know I’m in trouble. “This ain’t a game.”
“But who is Abe?” I whine. “What’s gonna happen to you? You ain’t sick like Ma.”
“That don’t matter, and it ain’t the point.” He shoves another log in the fire. It crackles, sending sparks flying. “Just promise you’ll remember Abe from Wickenburg. If’n something happens to me, you go see Abe in Wickenburg. Say it again.”
“Abe in Wickenburg,” I says. “Wickenburg for Abe.”
“Good,” he says, setting down the poker. “Good.”
I’m hotter than hot, burning up. I got a blanket over my middle, and every time I try to push it off, someone stops me.
“It’ll break—the fever.”
“I don’t know, Jesse.”
“It’s just shock.”
“She needs a doctor.”
“And where’re we gonna get one of those?” Jesse says. “We ain’t exactly near civilization.”
“We gotta keep moving.”
“To Phoenix?” Jesse says.
“Yeah,” Will says. “To Phoenix.”
“With Nate’s fever as high as it is? We gotta wait for it to break.”
“I’m pretty sure her name ain’t Nate.”
“Shut it, Will. I ain’t got nothing else to call her.”
“And what if it don’t break? What do we do then?”
“Gimme a minute,” Jesse says. “I’m thinking.”
Blankets are high above my chin—itching, dry. I got what feels like mesquite thorns lining my throat, and I can barely breathe. Pa says it’s only a bad cold, but last I checked you can die from just ’bout anything left untreated.
It’s March, three months to the day I’ll turn eighteen, and I ain’t been outta this bed in weeks. I don’t know where I caught it. Worse than not knowing, though, is being so helpless in my own skin.
“I’m getting the doctor,” Pa says from the doorway.
“I’m fine.”
“You ain’t. Yer breaking out red now, like a rash. A scarlet one.”
I cough and shiver in one breath. I’m hot and cold, tired and restless.
“I thought scarlet fever liked kids.”
“You ain’t a kid, but you ain’t exactly ancient, neither. You hang there, Kate. I’ll get the doc.”
“With what money?” I says.
His frown gets so deep, it draws a line between his brows. “Don’t you worry ’bout that. I got my means.”
I hear him rummaging in his room before the front door shuts. The doc shows up later, like I’m the most prized possession this side of the Mississippi. He fawns over me and don’t leave the bedside. I get medicine I ain’t heard of. I start feeling better a few days later, and when the doctor stops in one last time to visit, I’m ripe enough to crack jokes.
“What the devil did he pay you in, gold ore?” I says.
“Precisely,” Doc answers. “Now you rest easy, young Kate. Don’t try to do too much too soon.”
I decide I like him. I ain’t never met a doctor with such a sharp sense of humor. Gold ore! If Pa still had funds from Wickenburg, we’d’ve spent ’em last summer in the drought, or the year before that, when the creek flooded come spring and ruined half our crop. If Pa had that kinda money, Ma would still be alive, ’cus he’d’ve done for her what he just did for me. He’d’ve saved her. Ha! Gold ore . . .
My eyes flicker open, revealing a ceiling that ain’t familiar. I press a hand down beside my hip. Unfamiliar sheets, too. A mattress. Mutt’s curled up at my feet.
I sit up so fast, the room goes blurry.