Under a Painted Sky (25 page)

“DON'T SEE WHY HIS FOLKS DIDN'T SHOOT HIM
themselves. Woulda been kinder,” says Andy as we sit around our fire.

We spent the day traversing the foothills of a vast mountain range that stretches to the north. Tonight, we nest in a valley of pink granite rock shot through with black veins. The rocks crop out in odd formations like giant knobs of ginger.

“Could you do that to your daddy?” asks Cay.

West stares at nothing. “I could.”

“Me, too,” says Andy. “If it meant he didn't have to wait there and suffer in the sun like that. Just downright cruel.”

I hug my knees tight to stop my hands from wringing themselves dry.

“In my religion, you go to hell for doing that,” says Peety.

“Which? Leaving him or shooting him?” I ask.

“Murder is a mortal sin. Still, mercy killing probably okay.”

“Speaking of murder, I got an interesting bit of news for you,” says Cay, squinting at me as he pulls something from his pocket. I go still as a forest animal hearing a twig snap. He unfolds a piece of newspaper. The firelight allows me to see through it and read, backward: WANTED.

My stomach clenches. He knows.

Cay zeroes in on me again. “One of the pioneers at Independence Rock gave me this Wanted Bulletin. It's kinda interesting. Guess who's on it?”

I put my head between my knees, not wanting to guess. Andy grabs the paper. She does not read much, but she scans the pictures. She gasps and the paper crinkles in her tight grip.

“It's the Broken Hand Gang,” says Cay, reaching for the paper again. His hand hangs in the air for a moment before Andy realizes it's there. She hands the paper back, then clasps her hands together so tightly her fingernails blanch. Her wide eyes hop to mine.

“They finally drew a good picture of them,” says Cay, turning around the paper and holding it up for all of us to see. “Three of them, at least.”

The top of the page reads:
BROKEN HAND,
$
200 EA, DOA.
He points to the first man, who has a broad forehead and hawkish eyes. I put him around twenty years old. “This one's the leader, which makes him the index finger.” He taps the next picture, a boy who couldn't be more than twelve, with a long face and a nose like a miniature butternut squash. “This one's the pinkie, 'cause he's the wee one.”

Cay taps his finger over the third picture of an older man. “This one's the thumb, all wrinkly, the kind of man who always gets the odd jobs. You know, like opening pickle jars.”

The fourth and fifth ones are blank squares.

“Just read the caption, dummy,” says West.

Cay turns the paper back toward himself and reads: “‘Wanted for murder of two innocents: Amelia Dearborn, a baby, and Cedric Dearborn, 37 y.o.; AND, seven counts of aggravated assault and robbery. Last seen at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Armed and dangerous.'”

“Could I see that?” I ask. He hands me the paper and I study the pictures up close. A series of smaller photographs checker the rest of the page accompanied by one-line captions. My eyes hastily sweep the pictures, but I don't recognize any other face. Then the last entry. There's a photo of a Chinese woman.

I don't hear the rest of the conversation as I read silently: “Young San-Li: wanted for MURDER in the first degree of Mr. Ty Yorkshire of St. Joe, Missouri, and THEFT of a slave. 15–25 y.o., Chinese, long black hair, black eyes, dangerous. Reward:
$
500.”

I'm gasping in air now, and I put my head between my knees again to calm myself. The only saving grace is that my “picture” is not my picture at all. It seems no one had a picture of me to print so they pulled one of some Chinese woman in her twenties smoking a cigarette. She poses in a clingy dress with a slit, a cheongsam.

Picture or not, they're after me. Now, thousands of pioneers and Argonauts know to be on the lookout for a Chinese girl. Mercenaries will be clamoring for a shot at the prize, which is easily enough to sustain a living for the next few years. I won't be able to go to the Parting. It's too risky. Mr. Trask will be lost to me, and so will Mother's bracelet.

Father, I was so close. I held the butterfly in my hand, but a gale swept it away.

Andy nudges her knee against mine. West, on my other side, takes the paper from me. I don't want him to see it, but I cannot protest without making things worse.

“That a friend of yours?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“No?” West starts laying out his rope. “Well, sleep with your irons cocked.”

After the boys fall asleep, Andy and I head to a sluggish brook for a minute-bath. Afterward, we huddle together on a thick pile of pine needles, teeth chattering. The moon is an ivory sliver that barely emits light, so high and out of reach. I want to unhook it from the sky and hold it in my hand, where it might do some good.

“That picture didn't look like you.”

“Chinese is Chinese.”

“So what'd it say?” she asks.

“Wanted for murder and theft of a slave. Five hundred dollars if you can catch me.”

She stares into space and her lips start moving. Then she tilts her face toward me and licks her dry lips. “You's almost worth the same as three of the Broken Hand Gang.”

“Isn't that a comfort. Three for the price of one,” I mutter. “We can't continue on the trail. We'll go straight to the falls. No one will find us there.”

My head pounds so I pinch my left hand below the web of my thumb and index finger, the way my father taught me to take the edge off headaches.

Andy rests her chin on her knees. “I think we should separate.”

“What?”

“The boys would help you. You could go with them to the Parting. They'd keep you safe. After you find Mr. Trask, you keep on with him to California, and then you's home free.”

“He'd be harboring a fugitive. So would the boys.”

“They already been doing that before the Wanted Bulletin came out.”

“But now I'm being hunted in earnest. After all they've done for us, I can't put them in such danger.”

She frowns as she fingers the Indian bead on her bracelet. Her bony elbow digs into my arm as she scoots closer to me. “When I was picking the fields back on Frogg Farm, the owner's sons thought they'd have some fun with me. Stuck me in a corn maze with a pair of rabid bloodhounds.”

“Devils.”

“I've never been so scared in my life. I could hear the barking and knew the dogs was coming for me. I raced down a row of corn. Sometimes I saw spaces between the stalks like missing teeth, but I didn't take 'em. Then my legs started shaking, and I fell. I saw a dog loping toward me, drooling 'n 'crazy.”

Her face tightens and she shudders. “Only thing I could do was duck into one of the spaces. And then another. Soon enough, I got out to find Tommy's weeping face.”

She twists her body toward me. “You see, I was running so fast, I passed up the spaces even though they was the exit. You's in that maze. You got spaces around you. You want to run until the dogs bite you dead?” She raises her voice, and I shush her.

“I am thankful the spaces saved you,” I say. “But spaces don't have to worry about jail.”

“The spaces can think for themselves, when they ain't making bad jokes. One space in particular would pick the seeds off a strawberry for you if he knew you's a girl.”

I shake my head. “It could never work. Chinito should stick to Chinitas, remember?”

“Cay was the one said that.”

“But West agreed with him. And anyway, I can't continue putting them in danger. Here's what I think. Once we find the trail again, we'll keep our eyes open for Calamity Cutoff. The night we find it, we'll leave the boys a note, then double back.”

It's the coward's way to leave, but I don't see any other choice.

• • •

The next day, we continue riding over the floor of granite. We have not seen a major trail since leaving the cholera man. My eyes keep flitting to Andy, walking beside me. We've hardly spoken all day. She burnt the breakfast for the first time this morning and singed her sleeve in her haste to lift the pan off the fire.

Now she's lost in her own world, not steering much, just letting Princesa drift where she wants to go. After last night's talk, I can't help feeling I need to keep an eye on her, as if she might disappear at any moment.

She senses me watching and gives me a brief smile that fails to reassure me.

When Cay turns us into a rocky incline, West protests. “We need to be going west. This ain't right.”

“I know,” says Cay, holding the map before him as we continue to march forward. “We're still on the shortcut. Have I ever led you wrong?”

Andy and I exchange worried glances. Tiger personalities can make hasty decisions and have trouble backing down. Father always blamed President Van Buren's Tiger nature for the Panic of 1837 when he wouldn't recant a decision not to interfere in the economy. Still, I remind myself that like all cats, Tigers do have a good sense of direction. I wiggle around in my saddle and try to relax.

We travel all day without seeing a single person, let alone the Oregon Trail. The mountain range that started off on our right now seems higher on the left side.

In the late afternoon, we reach a running stream full of fish. We follow it to a dumpling-shaped clearing hidden by dense foliage. Cay orders a shade-up and consults his map again. Then he refolds it.

“You sunk us, right?” asks West in a voice that doesn't sound surprised.

“There's a first time for everything,” says Cay, a little sheepishly. “Tomorrow we'll just turn around.”

“We should make you sing ‘Yankee Doodle,' hombre,” says Peety.

“That would be more of a punishment to us,” says West.

We release the horses to graze. I shake out my boots, one by one, and try not to take our wrong turn as a bad sign. Andy watches me as she glugs from her canteen. At least no one will find us up here. But what if we overshoot Calamity Cutoff? Though I've traced Cay's map into our journal, it won't help us if we don't know where we are.

Andy pinches me. “Go on, look. It's like the Garden of Eden.” She crouches to inspect a bush of yellow flowers.

I peruse our slice of the world and grudgingly agree. The trees grow high enough to shield us from view. Were it not for the storm in my mind, I might sleep well tonight, pillowed by a lawn of pink clover and lulled by the tinkling stream. I draw in the fresh air and detect the smoky scent of cedar.

“No fig leaves and lots of snakes.” Cay sniggers. “Wish we had us some hens for sinning.” He looks at Andy and me when he says this, so we both grunt in approval.

Cay goes to lie down by the stream. “I could use a nap. I'm dragged out.” He tilts his hat over his face.

The fact that we are lost does not concern the boys, skipping stones in the water, or the horses, happily chomping heads off the clover. I park my bottom in the shade of a solitary fir, the tallest tree in Eden. Father told me they use fir in railroad ties because it's so strong. I inhale its sweet piney scent and try to quiet the unrest in my mind.

Andy squats in front of me. “No one knows His plan but Him.”

• • •

In the morning, Cay does not want to wake up. I put my hand on his temple. He stirs at my touch. Hot as a pepper.

Andy and I are about to fetch water when Cay starts to heave. When he finishes, we help him to a spot by the stream, which will carry away his sick. I pour him a cup of water from my canteen and tilt it into his mouth.

Cay whispers something to Peety. Then Peety puts Cay's arm over his own broad shoulders and helps him over to a dense shrub dotted with white flowers, stretching as high as the horses. When they return, Peety is shaking his head.

“
Choro,
” Peety tells me, and when I don't understand, he translates “diarrhea.”