One Came Home (18 page)

I saw a clear patch of land. That’s all I remember. I got myself free of the saddle, hobbled Long Ears, and unfurled my bedroll.

I do not remember lying down. I fell asleep that fast.

Hot. It sounded hot.
Ti ti zwee zirre zirre zeee zee
, a bunting sang. High up, leaves brushed one another. The bunting sang again. A squirrel scrabbled up a tree trunk, paused, and gnawed loudly. Katydids and grasshoppers trilled in the grasses, and water trickled over rocks. Again the bunting sang.

I tried to open my eyes. A flash of light. My left eye refused to open, but through my right I made out tree branches edged with sunlight. The sun burned behind the leaves like a white-hot coin. I let my head fall to one side and a pain raced up my neck. I ignored it and stared at a beetle clinging underneath a blade of coneflower. Fluff eddied in the air. Then I became aware of the pulsing heat blanketing my left eye.

I had no idea where I lay. I barely knew my name. The sun’s position suggested it was noon or later. I touched my gummed-up left eye and felt hot skin that billowed from cheekbone to eye to nose. I swallowed. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Water
.

I sat up. Or
tried
to sit up. In succession, every sore muscle, every bruise, every scrape made itself (and its history) known: a tumble down the rocks at the nowhere place on Miller Road, the fall down pine steps into a cave. Riding all night on the back of a mule hadn’t helped things either.

Sometime during that ride, one day had turned into another.

We had been running. Counterfeiters—the lawless—following.

That got me to my feet. I found my canteen in my saddlebag. I unscrewed the top, guzzled water, and looked about me.

Billy slept about twenty feet away under a white pine. His arms were wrapped around his saddle, which he’d used as a pillow. I could hear his breathing, a near snore, coming from under his worn hat. Seemed like he didn’t have a care in this world.
He’s right
, I told myself. Hadn’t we ridden all night long? What people (or person) would follow a man and girl this far?

I remembered I had planned to go back to the Garrows’ to ask about that ribbon.

I couldn’t do that now. Not if bad men were coming. It would be foolish to even go
toward
Dog Hollow.

Was I sure they were coming for us? Yes. Or I thought so. I
thought
I had heard cracks, pops in the night.

We were in a grove of trees near a large meadow. Several clumps of boulders rose out of the meadow, like the backbone of a sea serpent swimming through the grasses. Long Ears and Storm stood at a far end. They grazed a little, moved a bit, then grazed some more.

The road lay somewhere behind me. We’d ridden up that creek, so we had to be at least an hour’s ride off the road. It seemed unlikely that they’d be able to find us.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were coming.

Think about something else
, I thought.

Predictably, I thought about how I’d told Mr. Olmstead, and how that made me the rock that started the landslide.

I would not stew in my thoughts! I needed an escape, a diversion, something to do until Billy woke up and we got moving again. Billy’s rifle, the Spencer repeater, lay on the ground next to him. I stared at it for a moment. There might be some amusement in shooting a repeater.

I remembered the bumpy rows of frozen field under my feet, the ice-laced snow shining, the February blue sky. I remembered how, at the edge of the field under a stretch of black oaks, I had seen a band of pigeons. They looked like … What had I thought then? Yes—a blue-sky day alighting on earth. The big male had spotted me, twitching his head to see. I had lifted my rifle. I found my target. And everything dropped away, leaving only the big male and me alive together in the world. He saw me. I saw him. We were
connected, linked, a wire strung tight between the two of us.
What? What? What?
he thought.

I desperately wanted to go somewhere from
before:
before counterfeiters’ caves; before nowhere places; before cougars; before a boxed body that weighed less than two cats. I hadn’t appreciated
before
when I’d been there. But now
before
was where I wanted to be,
before
was where I wanted to live.

I laid my hands on Billy’s repeating rifle and replaced it with my Springfield single-shot. Then I dug in Billy’s saddlebag for cartridges, grabbed a handful, and decided to follow that creek upstream.

After walking several minutes, I stopped to load the cartridges into the repeater’s buttstock, and thought about how guns are easier to understand than people. Every part in a gun has its place and purpose. I took a long look at that Spencer and liked what I saw. Looped below the trigger was a lever. By pushing this lever forward between shots, I’d accomplish three things: First, the used cartridge would fall out of the rifle. Second, a fresh cartridge would be forced into place. And third, the hammer would be cocked. It was a nice mechanism. By my saying this, don’t think I preferred a Spencer repeater to my Springfield single-shot. But I can appreciate genuine ingenuity when I see it.

I hoped to utilize that ingenuity too. Three animals lined up—bang, bang, bang—would be just the thing.

But fifteen minutes into my walk I’d seen nothing, not one creature—not a rabbit, not a squirrel. I’d heard birdsong,
but I never did figure out the position of those singers. It
was
midday, and everybody knows the world lies a little quieter when the sun beats down. Perhaps I’d made too much noise. I’d been thinking more about
not
thinking than about being silent. But all I wanted was a brute creature to concentrate on and shoot so that I could remember what I’d been like before all of this had happened.

Is that too much to ask?

It was a loud thought. If I’m honest, the thought was directed toward heaven too. Did that make it a prayer? I hadn’t prayed once through all of this. Or if I had, it was by accident, mostly in panic. Now I was petitioning for—no, demanding—animals to kill. It didn’t seem right, somehow. Not even then.

Anyway, here’s the thing I have never forgotten: right after that loud thought-prayer, I heard gunshot. More gunshot. A mule brayed. I
knew
that bray.

My heart jumped like a sparrow in a bush.
Oh no
. Billy was alone. I had his gun. I’d replaced it with my Springfield. Would he be able to use my single-shot effectively and at a second’s notice? Probably not. I ran toward Billy, Long Ears, and Storm.

Bolting into a situation makes no sense, particularly with a rifle in hand. I’d end up dead. (I knew that much.) So I slowed to a creep and carefully made my way through the woods to the edge of that meadow.

As I stepped behind a large tree trunk, I heard a deep voice coming from our camp: “Tie him up.” The voice sounded familiar. Then I heard: “Where’s the girl?”

My heart skidded. They knew about me. It
must
be Mr. Garrow.

Keep moving
, I told myself. I went down on my knees and crawled one tree closer. I needed to see our camp so I could figure out what to do.

While I crawled, I appraised my shooting skills. As I’d proved with the cougar, I was no quick draw. My best chance was to hide myself and wait for an opportunity to shoot. This tactic is known as hunting when animals are the target, but it has an altogether different name when man is the object—sharpshooting.

I did not care for that murderous term (though it fit the act). The war with the South had tainted all sharpshooters as those too yellow-bellied to fight man-to-man. But this wasn’t a man-to-man fight; this was man-to-girl, and even with the advantage of a repeating rifle, I’d never shot at something that shot back.

I heard Billy’s voice. He was speaking loudly. I assumed he did this purposely—in case I could hear him. “She’s run off. I couldn’t keep her with me.”

“She’s here,” said the deep voice.

Billy spoke again: “I tell you, she ran off in the middle of the night. There’s no fixed sense in a girl like that.”

I crept to the next tree.

Then I thought I heard a high, raspy voice say something. I couldn’t quite make it out. What I heard next was something hard impacting something soft. Billy grunted. My breath rose in my throat and caught like a moth fluttering against a windowpane.

“I said tie him up,” came the deep voice. There was a pause. “She’s here. That’s her mule.”

I remembered I’d grabbed a handful of cartridges and loaded them into the Spencer, but how many had I put in? Was it four? Or five? Or six? A Spencer could take seven cartridges. I knew I had
not
completely filled the repeater.

I leaned around a tree trunk and, finally, got a glimpse of our camp. Billy now sat against the pine that he’d been sleeping under. I looked for the Springfield single-shot. I did not see it anywhere, though I’d left it right beside him. In front of Billy and to my right lay the wide, wide meadow with the line of boulders in the center of it.

I watched as a man I’d never seen, a thin man topped with a bowler hat, jerked Billy so he sat closer to the pine, pulled his arms back around the tree trunk, and lashed his wrists together. Then Bowler Hat bound up Billy’s legs. The man’s bony shoulder blades worked back and forth. When the man finished, Billy looked trussed up like a turkey ready for roasting. Billy hurt too. I couldn’t see any blood—at least not at this distance—but I saw him wince with every breath.

I leaned back against the tree. What had I gotten into? I did not want to be here.

Bang!

I
knew
that sound.

I leaned around the edge of the tree for a second time and saw the Springfield—Grandfather Bolte’s rifle,
my
rifle—in Bowler Hat’s hands. “Should have seen your face. Thought you were dead,” he crowed.

Billy hunched lower against the tree trunk.

Bowler Hat strolled up and slapped Billy’s face. Billy went white.

“Want to live? Say it. Say you want to live.”

Bowler Hat stepped back and waited.

For the joy of it, that man might kill Billy. There had been no one to help Agatha. This time, I was here. I had a gun.

“I want to live,” Billy said. I heard fear in his voice.

That settled things. I would do what I could. My conscience would never rest if I left Billy without trying to help.

Then Mr. Garrow—yes, it was indeed him—walked into my sight line. I saw the revolver holstered on his hip and knew I’d only have one shot before I’d be engaged in a shoot-out. As I’ve mentioned before, I am no quick draw. Once they started shooting, I could not expect to fare well.

Suddenly it became easy to perceive how my sister had ended up shot. Mr. Garrow—the man who could be so neighborly up at his farm (offering water, tin cups, and generous grins)—kept company with Bowler Hat, a man with ice in his veins.

Mr. Garrow was responsible for my sister’s untimely demise. I recited the facts that made it so: The pigeoners had come this way. There was the ribbon in the tiny girl’s coppery hair. And most damning? Mr. Garrow and Bowler Hat were the
type
. I’d seen everything I needed to see.

They had killed my sister. They were hurting Billy. They’d probably kill Billy too. They
deserved
to die.

Mr. Garrow put a hand on Bowler Hat’s shoulder. I heard the word “girl” and realized Mr. Garrow was telling Bowler Hat to find me. I breathed a sigh of relief when Mr. Garrow pointed in a direction well away from where I hid. Bowler Hat left.

I knew if they found me, they would hurt me—like Billy. Or they’d do worse. Like Agatha.

I would shoot before they shot Billy. Or me.

Given the way I’ve previously described shooting, you may think magic happened here: that the focus came on strong, the world dropping away, and that I knew exactly what to do. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, what happened next was motivated by hate. I report it to you with shame. But so it was. Ugly? Yes. If Mr. Garrow was vile, I had become equally so. And it was through hate’s cool dispassion that I evaluated the situation.

Storm and Long Ears had moved to the farthest point in the meadow.
Good
, I thought. At that distance, Long Ears would not come up and nuzzle for sugar cubes. And I saw
where I could hide: I would wriggle into that meadow with the line of boulders in the middle. The first set of boulders would serve me well. Billy would be sitting in front of me tied to the pine.

I heard my chance—brass buckles chattering. When I snuck a look, I saw Mr. Garrow had his back to me and was shaking our kitchen pack empty. Pots, pans, cups, and utensils clanked onto the ground. I got on my knees, slipped into the tall grasses of the meadow, and slithered to those boulders. My bruised body felt every inch of that crawl, but I made it.

I was pleased with the location. One of the boulders had cracked open and fallen apart, leaving a wide V that provided an ample view of our camp and plenty of room to move a rifle. But there was a problem: the sunlight would glint off the rifle barrel and give away my location.