I buffed my wall, and beside me, Olive placed the dime novels I’d gathered for Poppy in her satchel. Olive and I had spun the dilemma ofthe slain outlaws round and round, unable to find a solution. Rumors spread along the network of homestead gatherings, accusations flung at box socials and taffy pulls, anger and fear simmering, vigilante law coiling tighter and tighter, something terrible imminent.
Olive spoke with tentative hope of their springtime plans. Her resilience was astonishing. She told of the cattle drive Thad was set to join come the summer roundup: He felt prepared after a winter training with Stot and me. I swept away a layer of frost, clawed at the smoky grime. The stain wouldn’t budge.
Olive buttoned her cape at her neck. “Have you thought more of teaching, come autumn?”
I picked at some burnt newsprint that wallpapered the corner. “What?” I swiped my forehead, squinted up at Olive. “I hardly think I’m the sort of woman to teach kids.”
“You’re the exact woman I want to educate my children.”
I buffed the charred floor.
“Minnie. The floor is fine.”
It wasn’t; black smudge was everywhere. But I stood, wiped my hands on my apron, and said, “I slept with Stot.”
Her eyes widened before she muted her expression. “And his brother’s widow?”
“Heading on northward to propose to her in a week or so, I suppose,” I said. “Stot’s too duty bound for anything else.”
Snow puffed in through cracks in the walls and floated to coat my table. “Anyway,” I said, “I’m clearly not the sort to guide your children.”
She pressed her hands along her skirt’s waistband. She seemingly itched to ask questions. “I don’t think the rest of us see you as you see yourself,” she said. “No one’s judging your choices as harshly as you judge yourself.”
It was heartbreaking to have such grace when I didn’t deserve it. She didn’t know the secrets I kept from her about the outlaws. Of the guilt that racked me, that her family was being targeted and not me. I pushed open my door, spilled out into the thin sunshine of winter’s end.
Warmth wandered the breezes, the snow oozing and melting, icicles stretching from the eaves. Olive placed a woolen shawl on my shoulders. She took my pot off the outdoor stove, the creek water boiled away to leave granules of salt settled in a long-handled spoon. My door rattled in the wind. I booted my craggy salt crystal doorstop over to hold my door shut, the stone the shade of white shadow, browned at the edges. I swept sepia-brown slush off my porch, my boots scratchy and strident on the wooden planks, and a woman said from somewhere beyond time,Minnie, I’m rewriting memory.
I paused, allowed such an idea to settle over me. She spoke again, words creaking between the crackle of ice.Longago, when I was young.Her voice faded, then returned.The prairie was quiet and I was alone.
I dropped my broom. It clattered against the slats, the handle smushing into a snowdrift. Olive glanced at me, and I lifted the handle from the snow, my arms trembling. Those words reminded me of the folktale Niabi had shared, of a woman named Prairie Rose. The Native woman I saw—burrowing through briars and collapsing beneath a whorling, shadow-stained windstorm—could she be Prairie Rose? Not only a legend but a historical woman, lost away in time. And the ancient voice was the earth.
I wrought my hands in my apron, knuckles raw and singed in the chill. I’d begun to recognize the different women who spoke, to glimpse fragments of their stories. Beside me, the impressionist landscape I’d been painting these past weeks waited on my oak easel. The foreground was rough smudges of yellow and green, grass tossing in the wind, the meadow dotted with wildflowers and shadowed with cobalt and periwinkle blue, the bowed outline of my barn in the distance. And now the form of a woman took shape, hair unbound, white gown snapping, the single black ribbon round her waist tugged on by some wind. I didn’t know who she was, this woman I painted on my land. It wasn’t me, wasn’t Prairie Rose, wasn’t the homesteader, wasn’t the voice of the earth. Perhaps she was all my ancestors, all those woven into a communal narrative with me. In my loneliest moments, they had called out to me. In the deepest quiet of my homestead, I’d never been alone.
I brushed snow off the handle of my broom. I felt myself ease as I untangled mysteries of the wilderness. And yet—I wasn’t finished. I was still exploring friendships, still searching for home, still lost and adrift. Not quite sure how to be a friend, a lover, a woman. The earth spoke of loneliness, of friendship, encouraging me once again to trust others. She was right: Community was survival in these lands. I needed friends who understood hard choices and deep pains. Friends who could know of my darknesses and not crumble. Olive bent to pick up a granule of salt, the atmosphere crisp with the briny scent of salt. Olive approached each day with hope. To hope, after encountering the bleakness of the world, I wasn’t sure there was a greater bravery.
I was grateful for such a friend as Olive. After the snow melted, when the mud rivers rushed again, something must be done about the bodies. Gossip just wouldn’t fade—someone would soon fall. I supposed it was high time I told Olive of the murders.
“Come inside a moment,” I said into the hush.
Olive rubbed her eyebrow, then set down my salt pot and followed me inside. My feet sounded hollow on the planks. Gusts whipped through the doorway and tossed my cupboard curtain aside. My potpourri jar glowed pink and sapphire in the veil of winter-blue light. I took the potpourri from the shelf, uncapped the jar, and suddenly it smelt of sunshine. Of springtime and lilacs and the gentle sugar of rose vervain. I poured some meadowflower petals on a dish and placed it with a clack on the table. Olive touched the potpourri, her posture relaxed against my sofa.
I sat and kicked out my legs, boots squeaking across the floor. “I killed them missing cowboys.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Pardon?” Olive’s satchel fell from her shoulder.
I told Olive that the outlaws had set fire to my quarter section, that I’d been the one to shoot them, to bury them in the wildwood. She fiddled with the silver barrette clasped over her bun, her expression perplexed.
“I don’t understand.” She stood, tugged her strap over her shoulder. “You’re saying—” She shook her head. “Youmurdered them, Minnie? You’ve lied, this whole time?”
I reached for her hand. “I didn’t mean to endanger your family.”
She stepped back. “No.” Her expression snapped from kindness into one I knew well: someone betrayed. But I hadn’t meant, I hadn’t—
Olive pushed out my door, her hand fussing with the chapbooks jumbled in her satchel. She stopped. Pulled the dime novels from her bag, pinched the covers between two fingers, and dropped them into the snowmelt.
I stood in the doorway, my fingers worrying a button on my blouse. “Olive—”
