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.