“Wasn’t the Browns. They’d nothing to do with this. Honest folk.” I lifted my brows, held Bitter Creek’s gaze. “And we’re all intelligent, sensible folks here. No one’s stirring up any vigilante nonsense, right?” I shifted my scrutiny to a couple of sweaty, red-faced cowboys standing nearby.
I didn’t waver, and after a span, there were a few grunts and nods. “Alright.” Marshal Canton leaned back and spit out some chew. It splattered on the oak floor, beside my black lace-up boots. “But if you had help, you wouldn’t be telling, would ya?”
Through the lone window, the light shifted from citrine to gold, sundown swiftly rushing forward. “Look here, are folks chattering that I’m a darling on Sunday afternoons? I’m solitary. I don’t even keep with my brothers. Ask around,” I said. “The Browns aren’t mixed up in this. That’s truth, so leave ’em be. This is my past alone.”
Marshal Canton tapped his finger on his handkerchief, smashing an embroidered petal. I sipped my brandy, heat sweaty along my shoulders and up my neck.
“You’re courting an outlaw, right?” Bitter Creek asked. “The Lawman.”
I spit out my brandy sour, back into my glass. “Wherever you hear them horsefeathers?”
Bitter Creek sucked in a drag on his cigarette, exhaled.
“I myself,” Marshal Canton cleared his throat, “overheard such notions from the Lawman himself.”
Ah hell, they’d surely kill me now. I’d slain some of their own and was sparking with their enemy. I opened my mouth, didn’t know what to say. The nesters who’d loitered about crowded closer, gazes flickingamong themselves. I winced, realizing Bitter Creek probably recognized me from when I’dshotat them a few days past. “So was it you,” I said, “that I picked off in the snowstorm?”
The marshal slumped back in his chair. “What now?”
“Nah.” Bitter Creek smiled, teeth biting round his cigarette. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his thighs. “Your shots were wide enough.”
Quiet Bill groaned. “Ah hell, I thought you looked familiar.” He took off his hat and rubbed his short black hair. “I’d started to like you some.”
“Well.” I cleared my throat, my chest scratchy. “I’m notcourtingthe Lawman.”
“Darling.” An adventuress a few stools over smirked, popped an olive in her mouth. She leaned forward, a curve of black lace luminous against her porcelain skin, her fluttering sleeves sweeping the wood paneling of the bar. “Maybe you should,” she said.
I fanned my fingers across my breastbone. “Ain’t no matter.”
The moment stretched. A farmer just beyond spilled his whiskey, the scent piercing and sweet. “Fellers, I propose we believe her,” Marshal Canton said. “I reckon that’s truth, that she would’ve met a violent end. I say we let the law handle this matter here.”
There was a rumble as the crowd discussed, deciding among themselves what they thought justice might mean in such a matter. Bitter Creek’s lady caught my gaze, the feathers in her elaborate updo casting shadows across her cheeks. She nodded, as if saying she’d have done the same, as if she trusted me, as if she would’ve joined me in battle. I nodded back, one woman to another.
Bitter Creek rubbed his bronze coin between his fingers. He spoke, his voice carrying across the tavern. “If someone threatened to kill me, I know I’d shoot first.”
Marshal Canton nodded, and these seasons of worry began to weaken, like oncoming dawn hazing beyond the rim of the earth. There seemed a possibility where I’d walk from this saloon tonight. I neededto jump on this moment and take control—and then get the hell out of Dodge. “We’re sorted here?” I said to Bitter Creek.
Bitter Creek rubbed his eyebrows, sending the brittle strands wayward. The dark brows were heavy on his narrow, gaunt face. A beat, then he waved me away. “Just watch your back.”
I stood and gripped the chair’s oak spine, lifted my brows at the marshal. He fastened and unfastened his top vest button, still piecing together my story. “How ’bout you come by my office. You can sign a statement, and I’ll take the investigation from there.”
“Tomorrow.”
After a long moment, he nodded—any fool would agree it was plain dumb recklessness to wander town after dark, after such a confession. I nodded at the Wild Bunch and their ladies, then strode to the door. My boots clacked, my legs wobbly, the entire saloon watching me depart, everyone holding their breath to see if I’d be shot.
But then I was beyond the door, the cool dark smudging up the sky, stars flashing in the black. I yanked out my six-shooter, trained it on the batwing doors, stumbled backward to the elm trunk where I’d looped Cricket’s reins. I loosed a shuddery exhale—no one followed yet.
In the end, however this lawless frontier decided to hand out justice didn’t matter, not really. Challenges would always come. I may go to jail; I may lose my land. Or perhaps the marshal would shuffle my report below all the other lost crimes. Telling my tale at the saloon felt like an end to this season of winter. Perhaps by confessing, I entered a new era. I’d done what I must and felt free in a way I hadn’t been in a long while, perhaps freer than I’d ever been.
I vaulted onto Cricket and slipped sideaways, my bootheel missing the stirrup, my body all-overish fuzzy with drink. Come hell or highwater, drunk or not, I was riding straightaway to tell that renegade a thing or two about who I was and what we were and whyever would he say we’re courting—the presumptuous bastard, himself intent on marrying another woman.
Chapter Forty-One
Evening.” Stot brushed Shark’s flank. Light flickered gold and dotted from a kerosene lantern looped over a nail. “Heard you clatter on in.”
I slammed open the stable door. “What the hell?”
“Mmm.” He bent, brushed Shark’s legs. “She won’t bite,” he muttered to Shark. “Well, not unpleasantly.”
