At the ranch, Sarah deteriorates at the news of Will. I could wallop Jesse for making me do this. He should be here, holding her hand and rubbing her back and promising her it’ll be all right. Him, not me. The coward, running off to Tucson under the ruse of tending to business.
I don’t let my anger show, though, ’cus that ain’t what Sarah needs. Her husband, Roy, stumbled home a few days after I first rode through, and according to Sarah he collapsed on the bed in a drunken stupor and hasn’t hardly moved since. I ain’t seen him up ’cept stumbling to pour another drink, so I do whatever needs doing round the ranch: milking cows and beating rugs and pulling weeds in the garden as Jake skips ’bout singing.
A telegram comes from Tucson on my fourth day. Jesse’s found poor Clara, who’s been stuck at a dingy hotel where she swears rats sleep in her hair every night. He’ll front her a stagecoach fare to Wickenburg, but then he’s working a job with Benny, seeing as he turned a blind eye on the last herd of cattle requiring moving and needs to make amends with the boss man.
He don’t mention me once in his entire correspondence.
The next day I pack my things and leave.
The first night home, I stay in the barn with Silver, a blanket that used to be Libby’s rolled up to serve as my pillow.
I don’t sleep much, and in a way it feels like I never left—that Pa just died and I’m still curled up with my horse, mourning.
I thought I’d feel better when it were all said and done. I thought I’d feel like the world had reset, like things made sense. But I’m still just as alone, just as mad Pa were taken from me, just as furious it can’t be changed.
The next morning I knock over the marker for Ma’s grave and throw it in the creek. Then I clean the barn, sweeping out dust and cobwebs that’ve congregated in my absence. The following morning I put Silver to the cart and ride into Prescott in search of lumber. Dallying at the post, I draft a letter to Sarah, asking on Jesse, but my pride gets the better of me and I tear it to shreds before I can send it off. I go buy lumber as intended, and Silver pulls it home. What she can’t move in one trip I arrange to have delivered.
The next day, I ride the two-mile stretch to see my closest neighbor, Joe Benton. Him and his son are tilling a section of their land, and they pause when they see me draw near.
“Kate,” Joe says, grinning. “What brings you this way?”
“I come asking a favor. The house burned and I’s looking for some help rebuilding.”
“Oh, Lord, I’m sorry. We’ll come join you and Henry first thing tomorrow. Fair?”
“Pa’s dead,” I says. “Got hanged by a gang.”
“Lord almighty, when?”
“Over three weeks ago, when you were visiting family in Hardyville.”
Joe’s head wobbles like a twitchy weathervane. “Aw, Kate. Why didn’t you say nothing when we got back?”
“I don’t know.” I can sense my throat getting scratchy, feel tears welling up. “I just . . . I’s been stupid. I know now it ain’t a fault to ask for help.”
“Course not,” Joe says. “And we’ll help with the house. Of course we will.”
We raise the frame over the next few days, then fill in the walls and put shutters to the windows in weeks that follow. I have it rebuilt exactly as it were before, with Pa’s room and everything. Only difference is, this time we lay boards for the floor. No more hard-packed dirt.
They don’t ask where I got the money for the lumber, and I’m grateful.
As the days pass I do some woodcrafting on my own. I could buy everything I need with the Superstition gold but figure it’s too risky. I don’t want people talking, asking questions, and word getting round. I don’t wanna be found out like Pa. So I build a kitchen table and put up a few shelves, make a new bed frame. None of it’s masterful work, but it’ll do. Other things don’t need replacing. The stone hearth is proud as ever, the kettle unmarred.
Joe brings over a spare mattress they ain’t been using since his eldest daughter married and moved out, plus a chest filled with sheets, a quilt, and a few spare articles of clothing. Still, Joe don’t stop there. He helps me see to Pa’s homestead claim. A will left the hundred-forty acres to me, but I’m an unmarried woman, unfit to own my own plot of land in the eyes of the law. Joe were listed as a second beneficiary, and even when the land becomes his after he signs the fitting papers, he promises to never sell it.
“So long as a Benton is yer neighbor, that acreage yer Pa secured belongs to you. And if and when you marry, I’ll sell it back to you for a single penny.”
I says thank you so many times, I sound like a warbler.
When the daughter of a businessman in Prescott marries a month later, I ride into town with the Bentons for the celebration. There’s to be dancing and merriment, and it sounds like a nice distraction. I wear one of the dresses from the chest Joe dropped off. A corset ’gainst my ribs and a skirt round my legs feels so foreign, I can’t bear putting my hair back. I let it hang plain at my chin.
I drink sweet tea. I tap my foot to the music. Morris asks me to dance.
He’s wearing a fitted vest and bowtie—much sharper than his typical Goldwaters attire—and he smells like tobacco smoke. Like mountains and spice. It reminds me of Jesse.
“You cut yer hair,” Morris says when the song ends.
“Yeah.”
“I like it. It looks nice.”
I smile. His cheeks flush. For some reason, this is the moment I know I’m gonna be all right; that the hurt might never fade, and my heart might always long for a stubborn cowboy with squinty eyes, but I’ll make do. Sure as the sun will rise.
I work the land best I can in the days that come, managing to save most of the season’s crop. I plant some flowers near Pa’s grave, and some more near the front stoop. The weather starts changing, daylight slipping from the sky sooner, a break of relief from the heat blowing in by late afternoon. On what woulda been Pa’s birthday, I bake a pie and eat till my stomach hurts.
I keep the bulk of the Superstition gold buried beneath the mesquite tree, and a small portion in Pa’s leather pouch, which rests safely beneath my mattress in his metal lunch box. The homestead claim sits in there too, ’long with the rest of my documents and the picture of him, me, and Ma. I almost tore her out when I first got home. Now I’m glad I didn’t. It might be the only whole thing left in my life.
It takes a while, but I’m eventually able to sleep easy through the night, though never without my Colts nearby.
Summer fades into fall, and on an unseasonably cool October morning, I look out the window to see a lone rider winding up the trail. He stops ’long the creek to let his horse drink, then turns onto my claim.
I snatch up my rifle and step onto the front stoop.
The figure draws nearer, but not in a hurry. He’s riding relaxed in the saddle, hips rocking back and forth as he leans easy in the stirrups. The shade of his horse’s dark coat comes into focus for me first. Then a swash of burgundy red at the rider’s neck.
I set my rifle aside and race forward.