“We’re done.” She held my gaze. Her posture composed, her bearing decided, skin tight across her collarbone. “You hear?”
I opened my mouth. But I didn’t know what to say.
“My family has been in danger because of your lies.” Her eyes tightened at the corners, a vein spasming on her lower eyelid. “You risked our lives this week. It’s like we don’t matter.”
“Olive, I—”
She lifted a hand, halting me. “That first day planting potatoes you told me you didn’t want friendship, that you wanted an isolated life—well, that’s what you got.” She stepped off my porch and walked away.
I thought I’d built something rare out on the frontier. But I’d only been looking out for myself. All these seasons, and I hadn’t learned much of anything. I’d failed, once again.
A discordant rattle thumped. A long, rectangular shadow eclipsed the pasture. Someone hollered, the words indistinct through my hazy thoughts. I hefted my Winchester, chambered a round, and ran after Olive.
A horse galloped across the prairie, rider bent low over a dark-brown mane, a white blaze striking down the horse’s forehead. Olive dashed toward the uproar, gown snapping in the wind, clover-dotted hemline smudged with sodden, ashy dirt. I fixed the rider in my rifle’s sights. But it was Olive’s son Thad. He pulled up on his reins, his mare’s hooves squelching in the slush.
“We need you now,” Thad hollered. “Vigilantes set fire to our barn.”
The Browns’ homestead crackled with ember and coal and remnant flares. I sank the pointed toes of my black boots deep into the burn, heat rising from the earth, the land still exhaling devastation. All through the night we’d battled: stomping out cinders, shoveling snow onto the heat, passing buckets of water from well to blaze, smothering sparks with damp cloth, Stot hauling off enflamed boards to toss into the snowdrifts, the gleam an echo in the bleak of night. Somehow, at the edge of dawn, we’d thwarted the cataclysm from spreading and devouring the entire countryside, thesnow-damp meadows soaking up flame. But the fire had obliterated half the Browns’ barn.
Yesterday, Asa had heard a clamor of horses dissolving into the forest. Doubtlessly vigilantes or outlaws had started the blaze. Now, in the light of daybreak, we combed through the debris, searching for what could be salvaged. Burning scented the air, a reddish steam added dimension to the shadows, and I burrowed my shovel into the burn, tossing rubble aside. Stot hauled a charred board to the pile of refuse, smoke smeared across his wrist and up his forearms. Diaphanous ashen cloth floated beyond the cracked windows like ghosts dispersing, the edges of the fabric smoldering with embers. The air was brittle with winter but also swamped with lingering fever, a frenzied mixture of temperatures. At the edge of the burn, where cinders glinted beside a swoop of snow, Olive wiped her apron on a chunk of glass, her bearing weary. And yet her distinct strength hadn’t faltered: her cheeks damp with sweat, the angle of her brow tilted skyward, the tension in her hands at ease.
We’d spoken in the middle of the night while passing buckets toward the blaze, the glow of flame soaking the curve of my face. “I am sorry, Olive.”
She inhaled through her nose, handed me a pail.
“You matter to me. Of course you do.” I grabbed the steel handle, passed the bucket to Poppy. “Your family matters to me. I see now, how my choices put your family’s safety in harm’s way.”
“Honey, you gotta decide what friendship means to you.” She ran a hand over her braid, soot wedged in the folds. “Because this? It’s not working for me.”
Now, in the fuzzy glow of morning, Olive hummed an old spiritual, one my ma often sang,My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the thunder.Her voice was accompanied by the sizzle and snap of embers, the scrape and smush of wood dragged across earth. As I shoveled, I slid back into a long ago memory, one hazy and almost lost, that shifted between dreams and truth. As a child, I’d crushed an oil lantern and framed Magnolia, myma humminggreen trees are bendingoff yonder. Pa crouched beside me, frustration in his eyes, but his voice calm. “Minnie, you’ve gotta choose.” Pa rubbed his jaw, sending his beard into disarray. “When stuck between protecting yourself and the truth, the truth is always the brave choice. You understand that?”
I nodded, though I didn’t understand. Distantly, my ma sang,He calls me by the lightning, the trumpet sounds within my soul. Pa lifted me up, rubbed my back. “Just keep on being brave, and you’ll be alright.”
“She bashed the lantern, promise,” I argued. “Just threw it off the hayloft to watch it fly.”
He chuckled, not believing my story in the slightest, and held me tight against his chest. “We always love you, sweetheart,” he said, “no matter how muddled things become.”
On the Browns’ homestead, the resonance of Olive humminggreen trees are bendingroamed through the burn. A breeze hurried across the meadow and tossed embers up round my hem. Whatever I was, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t weak. I wouldn’t let someone else carry the consequences of my past.
After all was summed up, it didn’t matter whether outlaws or vigilantes had struck the match—this chaos erupting across my community must cease. I’d been so lost, trying to find a wiggle out of my situation. When, in the end, there was no way out but the bare, vulnerable truth. Tonight, after all was settled, I’d dash across the countryside to Duke’s Saloon, the known haunt of the Wild Bunch. I’d confront the outlaws, confess to the marshal—anything to keep my friends safe. I might lose my homestead. I might be assaulted by vigilantes. I might be shut up in some asylum or prison. I couldn’t imagine being cloistered behind walls, isolated away from the wide spaces of my prairie—but I must take the risk. I would face the untamed judgment of this land with audacity.
Wild survived wild, here in No Man’s Land.
Chapter Forty
Istrode across the saloon planks, wood creaking beneath my boots. Dusty farmers crowded the bar, hollering about who knows what, broken firelight catching on the jagged edges of shot-out lanterns. In the gloom, Marshal Canton held court, patting his double-breasted tweed vest. Beyond two quarreling cowboys, one grasping another’s black suspenders, the Wild Bunch outlaws lounged in a shadowy alcove. Bitter Creek, Tulsa Jack, Quiet Bill, a few others, and their ladies. I thought that might be Rose of Cimarron perched behind Bitter Creek, one black glove resting on his wide, angular shoulders, her jade-green gown with black lace striking against her freckles. Marshal Canton sighted me—I angled toward the Wild Bunch, my pulse jackhammering my throat, hoping I wouldn’t disintegrate right there.
Bitter Creek tracked me as I came closer, eyes narrowing when I touched the chairback across the table from him. I drug out the seat, wooden legs screeching. Every gaze in the saloon snapped to me. Noise was sucked outta the bar real quick.
“Mind if I join you fellers,” I said and sat.
Quiet Bill’s brows rose beneath his brim, and Bitter Creek’s jaw paused its rhythmic chewing of tobacco. “Beg pardon?”
Tulsa Jack gripped his revolvers. Sure enough, each member of the Bunch was just about ready to shoot me for speaking. I could walk away. I could say I was mistaken.
And yet I must tell the truth. Though I couldn’t ensure my future—myself probably picked off by gunshots by nightfall—I mustexonerate Stot and the Browns. My stomach clenched as I leaned toward Bitter Creek. “I’ve information about your missing men.”
Bitter Creek rubbed his black mustache, then spit tobacco on the floor. Someone in another room played a shuddery piano melody, and smoke filled the open spaces. No one spoke.
