“This is ridiculous,” Will says. “You two are both outta yer minds. That guy out there’s dead. And all those folks at the poker game. Those lives are on us.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I erupt. I can’t stay quiet no more, can’t sit here letting ’em go on and on like I ain’t even in the room. “I feel so awful, I can’t even find the right word for it. But there are lives that ain’t on my conscience neither—my father, that family in the coach. Those souls deserve justice, and there’s only gonna be more like ’em if I don’t go after Rose.”
“Yer deaf all right,” Will says. “Deaf and dumb.”
“Say that again,” I says.
“I said yer dumb.”
I lunge at him. Jesse hauls me away, but not before I manage to get in one good shove. When Will moves to retaliate, Jesse pushes him back.
“Cool off, Will. Sleep and try to get yer head straight. If’n you still think running cattle with Benny is the best thing we can do for the family come dawn, I won’t stop you from riding south.”
Will curses God and kicks at one of the failing chairs. Then he glares between us before settling onto the floor.
I look over at Jesse. “Thank y—”
“Don’t,” he snaps. “You ain’t got the slightest . . . This whole thing is so . . .” He bites his lip and turns away from me. “Just don’t talk.” He snatches up his rifle and moves to the other window.
For a good long while, we keep watch in silence, the only sound in the shanty Will’s snores. Moonlight winks off the Salt. Shrubs sway in the summer breeze. The mob’s camp is still and there’s no sign of the Rose Riders. No sign of nothing, not even the coyotes wailing somewhere in the distance.
It gives me too much time to think. ’Bout those poor souls who died in the Tiger. ’Bout Evelyn and if she’s safe. ’Bout that wide-eyed Apache girl and if she ever made it outta the alley.
I shift my weight and roll my bad ankle in circles. It’s tight and achy, but hopefully it won’t swell much if I keep it moving.
“Quit with the racket,” Jesse whispers from his window.
“My rustling clothes is a racket?”
“And creaking floorboards. How’s we supposed to hear someone approaching if yer covering their noise?”
I sigh heavy and gaze back out the cross port. Plain’s still as calm as ever, river still rippling only on account of the current.
“Why do you hate me, Jesse? We were getting on well enough before our deal . . . when you still thought I were Nate.”
He grunts. “I don’t hate you.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“I don’t even know you,” he says.
“I told you plenty—’bout my pa and his twin Colts and Prescott and how I like my rifle over a six-shooter.”
“See, anything said by a person pretending to be someone else is kinda hard to believe.” He shifts his footing, and it causes just as much a “racket” as I did. “Just shut pan and keep watch,” he adds. “All right?”
Pa’s journal in the waistband of my pants feels heavy suddenly—like a chestful of deception I been lugging round. If’n I’m perfectly honest, I know what Jesse’s driving at. It’s the very reason I can’t think on Pa the same no more. Once I learned all the lies he kept, even the truthful, happy moments seemed tainted.
“I never went to school in Prescott,” I tell Jesse. “The schoolhouse weren’t built till I were twelve, but Pa taught me good. My letters ain’t bad, and I can read just fine. Whole books and everything. He bought me Little Women when the first copies made it to our bookstore.
“It were a gorgeous book, prettiest I ever seen—leather bound and thick. I always wondered how Pa parted with the money for something so . . . useless. Libby needed a new saddle that year, and we were always running low on salt or flour, and yet he went and bought a book for my birthday. Now I know right well his finances were fine. It were all a show: the struggling, the act that we were barely getting by. That or he just didn’t like spending the gold too often—was worried someone would talk and his demons would catch up with him just like they did. Still, I’m glad he splurged. It’s the best damn story I ever read, Jesse. I swear. When I were sick with scarlet fever earlier this year, I just kept thinking, Beth survived it and you can too. Course, she heals pretty weak and ends up dying young, but I reckon I’m more like Jo than Beth anyway. And Jo does herself just fine.”
I realize I been talking to my feet this whole time, and I look up. Jesse’s staring out the cross port and I ain’t even sure he’s been listening. But then, without so much as altering his gaze, he asks, “What’s it about?”
“Little Women? Life. Sisters. Ordinary days, but there were something magic ’bout that. My copy burned in the fire. Couldn’t even find a single page when I dug through the house.”
Jesse finally glances my way. Moonlight shines through the shutter, painting a brilliant cross over his heart.
“What?” I says.
He shakes his head. “Yer just so violent and vexed half the time. I’m having trouble picturing you nose-deep in a book, reading all calm-like.”
“Maybe if I had that ten-pound dress on again, looked more like a civilized lady?”
“Nah,” he says. “I like you better like this.” He nods at my flannel. “You didn’t look like you in that dress.”
“What’s that mean?” I says, defensive.
Jesse frowns. “Means it’s time for you to wake Will and take yer turn sleeping.”
I shake my head and push off the wall. “Fine,” I says. “Yer the boss.”
I know my tone ain’t nice and that I’m getting short with him like Will did, but how damn hard is it to just say what you mean? Evelyn’s dress ain’t got nothing to do with changing shifts. Halfway to Will, Jesse calls after me.
“Thanks, though,” he says. “For sharing something true.”
“Like I said, the other stuff were true too.”
“You know what I mean.”
And I do. Pa and I can’t start over. He can’t prove hisself to me again, rebuild the trust that were shattered when I read that letter in Wickenburg. But I can rebuild things with Jesse if I want, and as I shake Will awake I realize that, ’gainst all odds, I want to be a person Jesse Colton trusts. I really do. Whatever the devil that means.
Chapter Fifteen