“Fancy an apple, Mr. Tharp?” Olive asked, gesturing to the sliced apples on the table. Stot nodded and picked up a piece.
I wrung my sticky hands in my apron. “Tharp?” That was his last name?
Olive sighed. “What are you two jabbering about all the time, and you don’t even know about his betrothed or his full name?” Olive wiped flour off the wood plank. “Ain’t proper to call him Stot, anyhow,” she muttered.
Stot’s eyes jolted to mine and his hand paused, his apple held static in the air.
“Well,” I said, “this ain’t the place for propriety.” I lifted my jar in something like a salute. “It’s the Wild West, darling.”
After we finished the pies, Olive carried utensils inside and I washed my forearms in a bucket. Stot strode over, palms resting on his gun belt. I gazed at his hands, nicked skin gripping sable leather. I didn’t know how to reconcile that he was an engaged man. He caught my gaze, his bearing almost tentative, and handed me the plans for the barn and a chunk of charcoal. “Wanted your thoughts on our design,” he said, dipping his canteen in the water barrel.
I placed the sheet on the wood slab. The plan was for a small, practical barn. I sketched some parallel boards below the dormers, then added swoops, the curve of the Browns’ land, a few flicks of sparse grasses, and lines for that unbreakable wind. I set the charcoal down, leaned back against the table. “It’ll suit.”
“The boards there, across the dormers, are a fine notion.” He touched the scuffs of grasses with his forefinger, lifted a brow in something like amusement.
The breeze rattled through barren willow limbs and screeched through the tongs of a rake. A homemade wind chime of copper spoons, leftover metal pipes, and chunks of sapwood hung from the rafters, thecopper twisting from a length of twine and clattering against a pipe. Olive came out the door, her heels scratching the dirt.
Stot spoke low. “About my brother’s widow—”
“We don’t have to talk about that.”
“When you asked, in your cabin—”
“When you were shot?” I flicked my hand, sending his concern away, as my body numbed beneath my rib cage. The wind chime rattled. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
A vein pulsed on his jaw, the hollows of his cheeks contracted. His gaze flicked between my eyes. “Alright.”
I picked up Olive’s folding knife, snapped it closed, then turned back to the table to brush leftover apple cores into a pile. After a pause, Stot strode off, down the hill, his spurs silver in the dust. I pressed my fist to my chest, something hollow blooming—as a lonesome murmur cracked across the landscape.
Time continues to turn, around and around I spin.
Within the clamor of sound—wind chime, birdsong, faraway laughter, heartbeat at my temples—the women spoke. Forgotten memories, lost stories. The coarse, winter-dead grass of the soddy prickled my forearms. I could almost, but not quite, catch fragments of conversation: the Native woman, the cattlehand, the ancient voice, and another woman, perhaps the homesteader, as if I’d slipped into a different story, someone else’s memories. The timbre of their voices something I almost recognized. In the bright spray of day, my boots firm against the present timeline, surrounded by Stot and the Browns, I recognized the insanity of listening for voices lost in another era.
The bristles of grass stirred in the breeze, and I cupped my neck, off balance. Whatever it was that called out to me—I didn’t feel threatened, almost as if the women hollered at me to hold on, just a little longer. I pressed off the wall, dirt creasing beneath my fingernails, and returned to the present moment. Down beside the woodpile, Stot hefted his axe, the sun slipping along his collarbone and glistening on the chain of his pocket watch. He caught my gaze from beneath the brim of his hat, theold-fashioned cattleman crease catching the deep shadows. My heart felt stretched and raw, distorted beyond its shape to rub against my chest.
Let alone his fiancée from back home, the notorious outlaw wouldn’t be attracted to a mud-smudged homesteader. I’d seen the fancy ladies who trailed outlaws, Rose of Cimarron with her waterfall curls blowing in the wind, Belle Starr with her elaborate velvet gowns and revolvers strapped about her waist, or spunky Little Britches with her quirky leather chaps. The women round outlaws were glamorous and arresting—absolutely nothing like me with my faded linsey shirtwaists and practical buns.
I grabbed an apple core and tossed it in the bucket. Sure enough, he was the most handsome man this side of the Mississippi. But goodness, why did any of this matter? I didn’t need to distance myself from him. He had unavailable written all over him like fire on dry prairie.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The twang of a banjo clipped a steady beat as I placed a pie on the sideboard. On the Browns’ homestead, the gathering simmered with energy, families from round our county arriving, the barn bee readying to begin.
Down by the wallows, morning light striking through the hardwoods, Stot and Asa hitched a wagon to an ox, the windows they’d crafted loaded onto the bed. During the long, dark evenings on my homestead these past days, I’d gnawed on this notion of Stot being engaged. As I’d washed my hands in a bucket, oil smeared along my palms and wedged beneath my fingernails, and as I’d scooped out the seeds from an acorn squash for supper, I’d considered whatever to do with Stot. I’d concluded: Nothing had changed. He could still function as my closest companion—there was nothing untoward in friendship. The only adjustment was that, before, I’dassumedhe wouldn’t pursue a romance with me. Now Iknewhe wouldn’t. He was too damn honorable. In a way, there was freedom in clear boundaries.
As the cart rumbled across the furrows, the windowpanes reflected sunglow. Stot led the ox, the distant sound of the creaking wagon wheels forlorn and aching. Twenty or so homesteaders swarmed the Browns’ homestead, everyone preparing to raise the sides of the barn. Women gossiped and served food, hair ribbons of every color snappingin the breeze. Men speculated, rocking back on their bootheels, hands in trouser pockets or patting waistcoats for some chew. A farmer beside me tugged on his suspenders, retold a tall tale of Davy Crockett, of how he could charm a grizzly bear and outhunt, outrace, outbuild, outgrin the lot of them.
Willie reclined against a stack of lumber, legs crossed at the ankles, tin of whiskey tipped to his lips. He winked at me, then added some ludicrous exaggeration to the folktale. Though I was thankful he’d shown up to support the Browns, a part of me splintered, realizing that I’d never been worth the effort. I supposed he just came for the liquor and celebration. Beside Willie, Ezra chopped wood, sweat wetting his brown button-down, the fabric ironed and pristine. And Ezra, he came because he wouldn’t dare lax on his duty.
Willie pressed his hands to his back, rocked on his bootheels, paisley shirt bunching under his waistcoat. “You hear about that stunning roan quarter horse from Enid?” Willie asked me. “Homesteader swapped the stallion for a hotel. Fine horse to breed with Whispering.”
“It’s Whistlejacket.” I grabbed some nails from a pail, slipped them in my pocket. “And you never came to help dig my well.”
“Aw now,” he said, tugging on his mustache, “don’t be cranky. We’ll—”
I held up my hand. “It’s been dug.”
Ezra lodged his axe in the stump and wiped his palms on a piece of cloth. He scraped a lucifer across his matchbox, the flame a spark of orange. “Who helped?”
