“You’ll tidy this mess?” Ezra asked.
I turned slowly. “Were you to pay me for evaluating her?”
“You’re not a veterinarian.”
I buckled my belt across my hips. Along the sides of the barn, the wind moaned, uneasy. “And yet you asked me to come round.”
“So she’s fine?”
I sighed, grabbed a rag off a peg. “Frailty’s fine.” I dried my hands. “Wind’s probably bothering her.”
Ezra nodded, his coarse hair slicked back with pomade. “Not the foal?”
“Foal’s fine. You know the signs to look for?”
An ugly frown tugged at his lips. “You’ll come by every day.”
I slipped on my cape, pressed the top button through the keyhole. “I can’t ride over every day. I have my own claim.” I explained again what to do, to give her space and watch for odd behavior. “Frailty’s your mare. You can keep her safe.”
He struck the wood slats of the barn, and the stall shivered. Surly energy buzzed from his shoulders. I led Cricket into the carriage room. Gloom drifted in wide puddles from the deep hollows of the barn, while glow seeped from cracks between boards.
“That outlaw of yours?” He ran his fingers over his mustache, the tone of his voice grating. “Stay away from him this week.”
I yanked on my gloves and slid open the barn door. “He’s notmyoutlaw.”
Ezra straightened his bowler hat, the brim casting an ugly gloom on the rim of his cheekbones. “No?”
“Why would he be?”
“He’s by, an awful lot.”
“We’re neighbors.” I led Cricket beyond the doorway. “And it’s not like you’re going to help me improve my homestead.”
Ezra grasped my wrist, yanked me back into the shadows. He leaned close, his spit spraying my face. “Do not say I don’t provide for my own.”
I lifted my brows. “Why, of course not.”
His fingers bruised my wrist through the leather, the button on my glove incising my skin. I shook my hand free and walked outside. It was odd, him cautioning me away from Stot. “Why avoid him? Something stirring?”
“You don’t need to know,” Ezra said as he followed.
“Thought you protected your own.”
His nostrils flared cavernous and oblong. “Ain’t no matter: Nothing a lady can do about it anyhow. Them hooligan band just out west.” He knocked his head toward the salt plains, the hideaway of the Wild Bunch. “They’re taking care of him.”
My blood iced, terror quick and visceral. I tugged at the high collar of my dress, my heartbeat a clear thump against my throat. “Why do you suppose such a thing?”
Ezra kicked at some gum balls strewn about the grass. “Other day, at the saloon, I’m drinking blackstrap, minding my own business. The Lawman’s glowering from a shady corner, listening to talk about the murders like some emperor. Folks supposing the Browns must’ve slayed those outlaws. The Lawman clanks down his decanter, saunters over, demands the Browns be removed from speculation, that everyone get their heads out of the sand and suppose what’s more sensible—that the Browns, amiable, middle-aged homesteaders, had killed two vicious outlaws? Or that perhaps it would’ve taken a faster draw to take them down. He glared at the crowd, hands gripped tight to his pistols, essentially confessing thathe’dslaughtered the outlaws. He hulked there, glowering, until everyone closed back up their gaping mouths and aggressively nodded in agreement.” Ezra grimaced, the barrel of his chest pressing at the seams of his tweed waistcoat.
My hands gripped the wooden slats of the fence. That foolhardy man. Sakes alive, I couldn’t let him take my fall. I asked Ezra why he supposed the outlaws were coming for Stot, and he told that after the Lawman left the saloon, Bitter Creek had asked after his hideout. “I never approved of that criminal taking land from honest folk.” Ezra pulled on a wiry eyebrow. “But either way, sure enough, one of your neighbors killed them.”
“The Lawman didn’t murder those outlaws, and the Browns would never hurt anyone. Ezra, tell me you don’t support vigilante hogwash.”
“There’s only so much land.”
“You weak-bellied bigot.”
He struck me across the face. The landscape blurred a stripe of textures.
