“You’re a schoolteacher?”
“Was.” I’d schooled our county’s one-room for a season—I’d found satisfaction discussing science and literature and devising unexpected disciplines for the children, but I’d missed that feeling of contentment within my muscles after a long day of farming.
Olive clasped my hands. I itched to pull away but didn’t want to be unnecessarily rude. “Folks round here need a teacher,” she said. “You shan’t have to fuss with planning socials—just teach.”
I stepped back, untangled my hands from hers. “I don’t want to become involved. It’s just me, alone with my horses.”
Olive pressed flat the lace rounding her collar. “I’m not sure life is for living, alone.” She paused. “But I suppose there are many ways to live.”
“There are,” I said. “And this is mine.”
Olive nodded, but her eyes had a glint. If I read Olive right, this conversation wasn’t over. She picked up her basket, looped it on her forearm. “How are you faring, in truth? This is a grum hard life. We’re gonna need community some, to survive the winter.”
“I’m fine.” Besides the prairie fire and the assault, the murders and the apparitions. I coughed something like a laugh. “Course I’m not okay. It’s a dratted nightmare out here.”
“It’s wretched.” She smirked, almost wickedly. “But we’ll endure.”
“We will.”
I squinted at the sun moving too swift across the sky, noted the rhythm of Sophia humming, the trill of a wood thrush.
“I’ve not seen many others about on bordering homesteads,” Olive said. “No women.”
With the thicket bordering the creek to my south and west, the forest northward, and the rises to the east, I’d spotted no other homesteaders except for a few glimpses of the Lawman thrashing across his land on his mustang. Shark, he’d called him. A ridiculous name. And that wolf beast that followed him about—One Eye, even though he had two.
Olive rubbed her basket, fingers bumping over the weave of white oak, the ligaments of her wrist tense. “You hear about those missing men?” she asked.
“What?” My spine tugged taut, my body suddenly breathless. Round the other side of my tent, something skidded across the terrain, perhaps a tumbleweed.
“At a gathering in Enid a couple days past, some folks planning social societies and deciding where to build the church, a Wild Bunch outlaw made the rounds, asking questions.” Olive straightened the band of her apron. “Apparently two cowhands have been missing since the rush. They bragged about getting plots right here, nearby the curve inCrooked Creek. And some farmer saw them over yonder our way, a few hours into the race, looking into flames.”
Sweat pebbled on my chilled skin. I wiped the moisture with a rag. I’d thought it’d be months until enough order established for folks to pay attention to the countryside—and by then the cowboys I’d sent to their maker would’ve been lost in the disorder of the rush. But those cowboys just kept looming. Gossip needed to be buried, so no one looked my way.
“Suppose they wandered on.” My voice came out too thin.
“Perhaps.” Olive leaned forward, relishing the gossip. “But did you know that vicious outlaw, the one they call the Lawman, staked claim just north?”
“I met him.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that meddlesome gunslinger. Sometimes I’d wake at night, thinking of him—wondering whether he’d keep my secrets. I sure as starfire hoped he didn’t turn me in.
“Oh?” Olive looked eager and horrified at the same time.
I shuddered dramatically in response.
“That bad?”
“Oh, he’s awful. Arrogant,” I said. “But I think he’ll keep to himself. I’m not scared of him one bit.”
“Maybe you should be?” She kneaded her shoulders, scrunching the fabric’s green flora. “Heard he slaughtered four of them Dalton bandits in some battle or another.”
“Glad someone did.”
Olive laughed and refolded the cloth in her basket. “Well now, don’t be a stranger. I know how the days stretch long and quiet. You come find us when you’re ready for more pie.”
As Olive and her daughters walked home, the blaze of sunlight dampened, day falling into later afternoon. Time continued on and on, days on the frontier an endless trail winding forever into the distance. Those cowboys kept rising from the grave. Olive seemed to relish gossip—I hoped her eager chatter wouldn’t remake my secrets into something sensational.I’d seen it, many times before, how a story could gather and build into a cyclone.
Along my hem, I picked at the blotch of blood. Why wouldn’t it dissolve? I tried to reshape my thoughts into something calm, to shake out worry and find quiet in my mind. But horrors kept spiraling. I scratched at the dry skin on my collarbone, thought through the incident, considered whether any evidence might’ve been left behind. I released my skirt, the white fabric swelling like a low cloud—and walked on into the autumn-gold sunshine.
