I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead. “Drag ’em into those north woods. There are wolves, right?”
He bent and grabbed a body. Was that an agreement to step beyond the law? He was a notorious bandit—surely he wouldn’t snitch. But I didn’t want to be indebted to anyone, let alone a renegade. “Wait.” I lowered my Peacemaker. “No.”
He gripped the drunk’s shirt.
“I’m obliged to no one,” I said.
He released the cowboy and crossed his arms, bootheels firm against the ground. He swept his gaze the length of my body. The attention of an outlaw should’ve made me uneasy, but his inspection felt scientific and well mannered. It was as if he cataloged me, recognized another lawless soul. For that was what I was now—an outlaw.
I crossed my arms, mirroring him. “I don’t trust you.”
“No one said anything about trust, darling.”
He bent, hefted up the drunk’s body, tossed it cross a horse.
“I said no.” I followed him. “Do you listen?”
His brows lifted—course outlaws didn’t listen to a two-penny woman. I shoved my pistol in my holster and strode toward the other body, clasped my hand round his wrist, tugged. The Lawman didn’t offer to help, just went about tying the cowboys’ horses together and binding the drunk to a saddle. I yanked and dragged the lifeless form through layers of ash until I was before his horse. I hauled him up with a grunt, his back pressed to my chest, arms hanging limp. The Lawman took his feet and tossed the body across the horse.
I met the Lawman’s gaze. Then a wolf dog spit from the switchgrass—I jolted. The hound sat beside the Lawman and pawed at his muzzle.
“What is that thing?”
“My dog,” he said, his tone implying an addedyou imbecile.
He looped rope around a body and tightened the knots. “Surviving the frontier will be brutal.”
I shot forward, gripped his tie, the cotton flecked with silver ash. The hound leapt up and snarled, but the Lawman clicked low in his throat and the wolf dog eased.
“Preach to another choir, Lawman. No one hurts me.”
“You actually think you’ll survive winter?” he said. “You’ve tangled yourself in a few quagmires already.”
“Don’t belittle me. I will—” I scanned his bearing, the shape of his face. His irises were chips of peridot, vibrant in the brume. “I will slaughter you in your sleep.”
“Alright, Minnie. Calm yourself a smidge.”
He’d noted when Ezra said my name. And remembered. But he couldn’t use my alias—in my new life, it was crucial that no one drew close.
“Amelia,” I snapped. “No, wait. Miss Hoopes.”
“Really?” He squinted at me, as if dumbfounded by my sudden grasp at propriety.
“And I’m calm.” I let go of his knot and lowered my heels to the earth.
“You sure about that?”
“Well.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not sure I valuecalm.”
“Alright.” He straightened his vest placket and swung onto his horse.
I took the rope lead from him, then led the cowboys’ horses to Cricket. Like a charcoal sketch, scraggly bushes sprouted here and there, the plants now only a layering of ash. They’d crumple in the next gust of prairie wind. Cricket’s eyes were glassy and fixed on the burning. A tremble quaked across his barrel. I grasped his bridle, looked into his eyes. “Hush now, old buddy,” I murmured, then mounted.
I kicked my heels and pummeled toward the forest, the elms and sycamores and vines a black swarm of unknown. The wood looked haunted and alive, like it could swallow my secrets whole. The other horses jostled over the furrows, unsteady and creaky, therope abrading my palm. Beside me, the Lawman leaned into the wind, atop his inky-black mustang, galloping fast enough to keep up with me, his wolf racing beside him. We pummeled through the trees, the branches clawing my skin through my overblouse, until we stumbled into a slight clearing. I swung off Cricket, tied the horses to a cedar, and yanked my shovel from its ties. I needed to rid myself of the bodies and dash to the land office—somehow the race went on.
A sumac tree winged before the glade, the leaves evolving from summer’s green to autumn’s flame red. I wobbled on a shard of shale, and a briar grasped my skirts. As my bootheel sank beneath the topsoil, an illusion soaked across the copse, of a woman burrowing through hawthorn briars, bramble snagging in her long dark hair, evergreen thorns slicing her thighs. The dappled sumac leaves melted backward in time to the scarlet flowers of springtime. The mirage flickered, then slipped away.
I heard a scrape and a rasp. The Lawman dug into the earth below the expansive roots of a water oak, his shirt rolled up over his forearms. I blinked, disoriented. Then I freed my sooty, floral skirt from the thorns and stepped deeper into the woods.
