Only now I’m alone, honest and true, and Pa never got to see me off into something stable. I know he wanted better for me, but I ain’t never had a problem with our homestead. The thought of being confined to town—standing behind a grocer’s counter or waiting at home for a husband to return—is stifling. Every day the same. Marrying for security and nothing more. I can fire a rifle as good as any man. ’Parently I can kill another just as dead too. I don’t see why I should act like I can’t just ’cus it ruffles everyone else’s feathers.
I shove my hands in my pockets. The whiskey’s caught up with me now, and my feet don’t feel so steady as I cut up the aisle of flour and canned goods. Morris spots me easy and inclines his chin. When coming into town, I’m usually wearing one of my fitted blouses and nicer skirts, and my hair would be hanging below my hat, dark and silky and reaching almost to my waist. If Morris don’t even do a double take at my current state, it’s only a matter of time till another recognizes me—or, worse, places me as the “boy” trailing that bastard at the Quartz Rock.
I check over my shoulder and there ain’t no one left in the store but a little old lady examining a bag of flour with such care, I doubt she’s got good vision.
“Kate,” Morris says. “Yer looking . . .”—he eyes my flannel—“serious today.”
“Well, I’m here on serious business” is all I says back.
“That so?”
“Did anybody come in asking after my pa recently?”
“Just yesterday,” he says. “Someone were inquiring about an old friend by the name of Ross Henry Tompkins. I said, ‘Henry Thompson?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, that’s the one. Been a while.’ So I told him you two had a place ’long the creek, up past Fort Whipple.”
“Did he give his name?”
“No.”
“What’d he look like?”
Morris frowns. “Is something wrong?”
“What’d he look like, Morris?”
“Pretty rough. Trousers and chaps. A long black coat. Skin like he’d been working land or running cattle most of his life. Might’ve been in his late thirties or early forties. He had one heck of a scar below his right eye.”
“And he was alone?”
“No, there were a few others riding with him, all packing.” Morris pauses. “They weren’t friends of yer father’s, were they?”
The pistol’s humming at my hip again. Goddamn you, Morris. You as good as killed him.
“Kate?” Morris reaches ’cross the counter and touches my hand. “Did something happen?”
I pull away. I need to get outta here. I need to leave before I put a bullet between poor Morris’s eyes.
“Yer sure everything’s all right?” he prods.
I think of what he’ll say if I tell him the truth. Talk to Bowers. Report the raid to Fort Whipple. But Bowers, like the honest sheriff he is, left a few days back to track a horse thief who rode through town, and Whipple’s soldiers protect settlers ’gainst Apache raids, not attacks from their own kind. Not that I got the time for neither. The longer I stand here yapping, the farther south those bastards slip, riding to the devil knows where. I gotta go home and load up my horse. I gotta ride after ’em before the trail goes cold.
“Kate?” Morris says again. “Did something happen?”
“Nah, everything’s dandy.”
I even buy ammo and supplies just to make him shut pan.
In the last bit of remaining sunlight, I dig through what’s left of the house. Pockets of ash are still warm, and certain pieces of furniture fared better than others. Half my bed frame’s still standing. Our kitchen table ain’t nothing but coals, but the kettle’s sitting there atop the rubble, like a hen on eggs.
In what used to be Pa’s bedroom, I find what I’d run into the flames for originally: an old metal lunch box he kept stocked with valuables and tucked beneath his mattress. He’d also had a worn leather journal always stowed beside it, but there ain’t a sign of that left. Bet it made some mighty fine kindling.
I pluck out the lunch box and bang on it with the fire poker till the warped latch gives. Inside is a drawstring pouch holding a dusting of gold. Pa never liked to talk much ’bout the early days, but I know he spent some time prospecting down in Wickenburg before he and Ma came north and settled near Prescott. The meager funds he earned then helped raise our house ’long the creek, and I reckon nearly everything he had left got spent trying to save Ma from consumption. I were nearly four when she bit.
I shake the pouch, making the gold dance. Looks like there ain’t more than a few dozen dollars here, but that’s more than I’s ever called my own. I pocket it and find a picture of Pa, Ma, and me—still a bundle of a baby—beneath the pouch.
I touch Pa’s black-and-white face with my thumb. He’s standing all protective-like, one arm wrapped round Ma’s shoulder and the other touching the grip of his pistol. I’m a perfect blend of the both of ’em: dark hair from Ma, but extra inches in height gained from Pa. Skin that’s caught somewhere between his fair complexion and her golden bronze. She were Mexican, living in Tucson when Pa passed through running cattle years back. The way he told it, there weren’t a more beautiful woman in all the Territory. Truth be told, there still ain’t many women in Arizona, but Ma was pretty. I glance back at the photo. Piercing eyes and high cheeks and a sternness ’bout her that makes me proud.
In a way, it’s a blessing she died young. Prescott ain’t taking kindly to Mexicans lately. They’re run outta town or spat at on the streets. I been seeing less and less of ’em since I were a kid, and the cowardly part of me’s happy half my features are Pa’s. That I talk like him too.
The only thing left in the box is documents—a deed for our acreage, secured through the Homestead Act a few years ago; notes and ledgers tracking money Pa spent over the years; a small slip of paper folded in half.
I open it. Pa’s handwriting shines up at me.
Kate, if you’re reading this, stop. You know where you should be. Get on Silver and ride.
“Aw, Goddamn it!” I says.
Silver starts beyond the wrecked frame of the house, ears perking. I look back at the note, now crumpled in my fist.
If anything ever happens to me, you go see Abe in Wickenburg.
That’s what Pa always said when I were growing up. Abe in Wickenburg. Wickenburg for Abe. Over and over till my ears were practically bleeding. So many times I had the name and place memorized before I could even pronounce ’em proper.
“But what’s gonna happen to you?” I was always asking.
“That ain’t the point,” he’d say.
Now I’m sitting here wondering if maybe this was exactly what Pa feared—if someone were after him. For what and why I ain’t got the slightest. Heaven forbid he’d’ve explained anything to me.
I slam the box shut. The sun’s setting and I can’t do nothing ’bout the note till tomorrow. Only a fool would ride south through the mountains at night. You’d need a light, and fire’s nothing but a beacon for the Apache.
I grab Silver’s reins and lead her down to the barn, which the murderous bastards thankfully didn’t burn. Pa’s horse, Libby, is still standing there in front of the plow, half saddled and looking confused, and that’s when I break.
’Cus this is where they found him, right here. This was where Pa’s life began to end.
The saddle stand is on its side. There’s boot marks and gouges in the dirt, marking a struggle. A few drops of blood are now so dark, they mostly look like drying mud.