Vengeance Road (8 page)

When I get back, the boys are outta the pool and mostly clothed. Jesse's using his shirt to dry his hair, and the motion is making muscles twitch in his arms and torso. I don't mean to stare, but it were just me and Pa at the farm, and the only man round my age I ever spoke with often was Morris. I wonder if he looks like this under his shirt too.

I turn away and focus on starting a fire 'cus I don't care what Jesse looks like. Or Will or Morris or any boy for that matter. I ain't here to splash round in stupid mountain pools and waste time staring at something I don't want to begin with. I got a job to do, and the sooner we get back on the move, the sooner I can split ways and carry on alone. Track down Rose. Pull my trigger like I mean to.

Just me and Silver, no distractions.

Just me and revenge.

Once I get the fire roaring, I'm feeling more like myself. I grab my last bit of flour and open my final can of milk, adding a pinch of salt to the batter 'cus I want at least a little flavor tonight. When I's finished making the biscuits and have dished 'em out with more jerky, we all eat. Will makes a joke 'bout how I should be cook henceforth 'cus the biscuits ain't burned and rock hard like when Jesse made 'em.

I wonder if Will'd still make that joke knowing I'm a girl. Actually, if they knew, Jesse would prolly escort me back to Sarah straightaway.

I can't tell 'em. Not ever. They can't find out.

The horses wander round our makeshift camp as we eat, pausing to sip from the pool or nibble the grass tufts growing between boulders. The biscuits we don't finish, I wrap up in paper and stow back with my gear. They'll be stale in no time, but I ain't eating nothing but jerky for the next week.

Later, as I'm rolling out my bed, I catch Jesse staring at my hips. I go dead still, thinking I's been found out, that he knows somehow.

“That nickel plated?” he says.

“Huh?”

“Yer pistol. That's a mighty fine-looking six-shooter.”

My hands go to the Colt on my hip. “Oh,” I says, relieved. “Yeah, it is. It were part of a matching set—both my pa's—but he gave me this one after I mastered the rifle.”

“How's a Prescott farmer afford a twin pair of nickel-plated Colts?”

With gold from a Superstitions cache,
I think. But I stay quiet and just eye his guns.

“My Remingtons are just steel. No fancy work like yers,” he says, “but they shoot straight and reload fast. Heck, I's even heard the Remington's preferred to yer Colt model when it comes to defense.”

“I count on my rifle for defense.”

“You do what?” he says.

“My Winchester. I count on—”

“No, no, I heard you. What I'm saying is, rifles are big and require room. What happens when the guy sitting next to you in a saloon turns murderous? How 'bout if someone pulls their pistol on you on the street?”

“I ain't had much experience with neither back in Prescott,” I says. Tom from Walnut Grove comes to mind, though, how he nearly got the jump on me even with my pistol already drawn. I might be able to shoot bottles from a fence with my rifle when I kneel and squint and take my time aiming, but that ain't gonna do much good by way of quick draws.

“So how good are you with that Colt?” Jesse asks.

“Good enough,” I says. I killed that Rose Rider in the outhouse, after all. And Tom. Poor Tom. I still can't get his wide eyes outta my mind, can't quit wishing there'd been another way.

“Good enough ain't never good enough,” Jesse counters. “You gotta be quicker than quick, ace high, the
best.
”

“And who are you—the Territory's authority on shots?”

Jesse frowns. “Nate, yer tracking down a gang of ruthless men for reasons you ain't shared in full, and you saw what they did back on those plains.”

I also saw what they did to my own father, but I don't say nothing.

“You need to be able to fire yer pistol as easy as breathing,” Jesse adds, “with aim sharper than an eagle's eye. I can help you as we ride. We can practice draws on cactuses and such.”

The look he's giving me makes me want to kick a damn cactus. It's pity—pity all over his features. Like I can't be trusted to do nothing on my own. Like I'm a kid of eight, not eighteen.

“Will's right,” I says low. “You think you gotta help everybody, but I'm fine, Jesse. I didn't ask for no lesson or chiding or even yer blasted opinion.”

“Yeah, I reckon Will
is
right,” Jesse says, nodding sullen. “You might be the deafest man I ever crossed.”

Then he turns and slinks to his bedroll, not once showing me anything but his back again. I kick a bit of rubble into the fire and it hisses.

“You know,” Will says, “you keep poking a bull like that and one day he'll turn round and charge.”

I sit beside him and he offers me some dip. Like yesterday, I shake my head. “You saying I should be afraid of Jesse?”

“I'm saying you jaw like yer made of steel, and some men won't turn away—not no matter how tough you act. Some men think everything's a challenge and that backing down means yer weak.”

“Don't it?” I says.

“I reckon it depends on the battle.”

Will spits dip at a beetle climbing rocks 'longside the fire. I peer through the flames to where Jesse's lying. Mutt's curled into him like a baby, and for some reason that makes me angrier.

“It's just . . . I can take care of myself,” I says to Will low. “I don't need nobody coddling me.”

“And that's fine,” he says. “Don't have him train ya. Be a lone wolf. But just try to act a sliver less ornery, huh? Jesse promised our pa he'd watch over me and Sarah when he were gone, and you, once you showed up at the ranch. This is more than a job for Jesse, and he's already let people down.”

Whether he's aiming for it to or not, that piques my interest.

“Like who?”

“Our ma,” Will says.

“I thought she were lost to Apache.”

“She was.”

I wait a long while, and Will don't say nothing. He spits at the fire and then glances at me. “Is this patient, heavenly silence a sign you want the story?”

“If yer willing to tell it.”

He smiles. He's got the same grin as Jesse—tightlipped, with the corners pulling down. Then right as he opens his mouth to begin, the expression goes stormy.

“When Wickenburg himself first struck gold in late sixty-three, Jesse were almost six, and Sarah and I were eight and three. Even though it were a bit of a haul from our ranch, Pa started going into town almost every day of the week, hoping he'd also strike lucky. Meanwhile, Ma was left with us three kids and a heapful of chores.

“Just a short year later, the town were booming with people. A businessman had bought the claim to what's now Vulture Mine, and men were working the earth for wages, swiping gold when they thought they might not be caught.” Will shakes his head like those men were crazy. I remember the hanging tree and I think the same.

“Pa worked at the mine too—this was before we got into the ranching business—and Ma were pregnant again, 'bout six months large. One day she started getting terrible pains—so crippling, she could barely move. She thought it might be the labor come early. Pa were down at the mine, and Jesse were smart enough to know Ma needed the doctor but couldn't get there herself. So he put one of the horses to the cart, told Sarah to watch me, and rode Ma into town.

“The Apache raided that afternoon. Attacks were common in general back then, what with a war raging back east and so many of our soldiers off to fight. I think the tribes were starting to feel threatened by Wickenburg—how people were settling rather than moving through, digging round in their mountains. Or maybe they thought they were winning. We'd murdered and pillaged their kind plenty, and when the federal troops went east to repel the Confederates invading New Mexico, I bet it looked like a surrender. Like we'd given up and it were time for revenge. Whatever the reason, the Apache rode through town and destroyed everything they could that day.”

Will pauses to spit and I shift on my mat, knowing right well what comes next but still scared to hear it.

“The way Jesse tells it, the cart turned in the panic and he got pinned to the street. I think the only reason he didn't die, or even break a bone, was 'cus he were so small. But he was trapped there, and he watched Ma get dragged off, watched her pull her derringer from her dress and shoot herself in the mouth.”

Will's features go dark, his brows dipping. It's like he's reciting a story he's memorized, rather than feeling his own words. I wonder if that's the only way he can get them out.

“Even after it were all over with Ma, Jesse had to lie there and keep watching. Silent, afraid them Indians might hear him if he cried out. He watched 'em scour and kill. Watched 'em drag women off. Watched 'em disappear toward the horizon. Once they were gone, he still didn't call out for help, not even when survivors started combing the streets. I think his voice got scared straight outta him that day. He just lay there under the cart, rigid, staring at the blazing sun.

“When Pa came north from the mine and rode through Wickenburg, he found the madness, and then he found Jesse. He'd pissed himself, and he was still squinting—from the sun, or what he'd seen. Maybe both.” Will's gaze drifts to his brother. “Jesse weren't the same after that. It took him a while to talk again, and he started practicing with one of Pa's pistols till he could shoot the branch of a sapling in half from a proud distance. He was a shot I'd never want to cross by the time he were twelve. After that, he holstered the gun and it was like it never happened. He were a new person. He told jokes again. He smiled. I'm pretty sure half of it's an act. He never forgave Pa for choosing the mine over the family. It didn't matter that Pa eventually quit Vulture and converted our place to a ranch, started finding other means of income so he'd be near us kids; Jesse's always blamed him for Ma's death. He's struggled to be the man of the house since that day, and I reckon pretending he's made peace with the past helps him cope. But it still haunts him. I'm sure of it. Hell, he never really has quit squinting.”

Will spits again, and this time he nails the beetle so hard, it flips onto its back. The bug struggles, flailing, then scurries off once righted.

I glance at Jesse, asleep on the other side of the flames. I wonder what he saw earlier, looking at that overturned coach, if it reminded him of the cart, his ma's death, the bloodshed.

“I'm sorry,” I says soft, though I ain't sure to who.

“Life don't care 'bout sorry's,” Will says. “Bad things happen, and you can't let 'em harden you. Whatever happened to yer pa, it ain't yer fault, Nate, and you gotta let it go.”

“You sound like yer brother.”

“I ain't nothing like him. I wear everything on my sleeve and he hides half it. I's less of a pessimist too. Even after he lost Maggie last year, he still figured how to be some level of happy. He's a perfect example that living's what you make it. Or at least what you
pretend
to make it.”

“Maggie?” I says.

“Our closest neighbor. They woulda married if she hadn't died, I swear it, and all from a bee sting. Unfair, ain't it? That something so small can kill a person?”

“Life ain't fair, Will. That's one of the only things I know for certain. And that's why I can't stop chasing Rose. Maybe smiling and choosing peace and target shooting till he felt invincible worked for Jesse, but I ain't him, and this is gonna destroy me if I don't set things right.”

Will leans back, settling into his mat.

“Yer deaf all right,” he says. “But I like that. I'm deaf too. It's one of the reasons Jesse and I get on so well. He can't help but ride with stubborn asses who drive him crazy.”

The sky's just beginning to
lighten when I decide to abandon my watch. We'll be moving soon, and I gotta take advantage while the boys are still sleeping. I ease to my feet and pull a clean set of underthings from my pack, 'long with the fresh shirt I bought in Wickenburg. Then, with my blanket still slung over my shoulder, I creep for the pool.

Testing, I dip in a toe. It ain't very warm, but it could be worse.

I strip fast as possible, wade in, and drop to my knees. The water's like silk on my limbs. Sand and dirt float free. Where it's worked into the creases of my skin, I scrub at it with my knuckles. I lean back, dunking my head and running my fingers through my hair. Its shortness is still a shock, a length I ain't used to.

Once clean, I feel so smooth, it's like I'm a snake shed its skin. More than anything, though, my chest is singing with relief. I eye the wrap lying with my clothes. It were starting to chafe below my armpits after all the travel, and the thought of putting it back on sours everything.

'Cross camp, one of the boys' snores sputters.

I dunk one last time and scramble outta the pool, drying myself fast with the blanket. Cringing and damn near whimpering, I wind the wrap back in place—over my chest, under my arms, cinching it down tight like I'm a horse being saddled. Then I cram my legs back into my pants and throw on the clean flannel.

I'm working on the buttons when I hear earth crunch behind me.

I yank the shirt tight and twist round. Jesse.

“You scared me half to death,” I says.

“I thought something happened. You were supposed to be on watch.”

“I'm fine,” I says, turning away and finishing with the buttons. That was close.
Too
close. “I wanted a clean and figured I could watch camp just as easy from here as my bedroll.”

Jesse yawns, and it makes me yawn too.

“You want coffee?” he says. “I'll start a fire.”