“But he . . . Yer working with . . . ? How can you help him?” I practically shout.
“I hired him,” she says plain. “Waylan and his boys have been after the gold in my mountains for ages, but my rifle usually fends ’em off and keeps ’em at a distance. It were only this past winter, when my cache ran dry, that I thought he could be useful ’stead of a nuisance.” She keeps spinning Jesse’s pistols. She looks like a completely different person now. Not desperate or weak, but wild.
“There are three caches and one mine, see? I used to have maps marking the location of ’em all, but someone stole the journal from me. I searched for six straight seasons and managed to locate only one of the caches—the one farthest from here, and it sustained me a good long while ’cus it were already stocked with gold. But early this winter I showed myself to Waylan ’stead of running him off. Told him a man by the name of Ross Henry Tompkins had a journal mapping the way to the mine and that I suspected he’d gone north out of Tucson. I told Waylan if’n he could get me the journal, he could take all he could carry once we located the gold.”
“And he didn’t shoot you right then and there?” Jesse scoffs.
“I showed myself from the mountains,” she sneers. “With them in my sights and plenty of distance between us. Plus a good bit of dynamite buried right where they were standing. They stayed nice and still and listened to my offer.
“But Waylan left and the months passed. I figured he’d failed, or abandoned the matter. I went back to my search, combing this land inch by inch, not leaving a single stone unturned. Imagine my shock when I discovered Waylan back in the canyons and heard one of his men ranting ’bout gold—how they got the journal, and the ore could be theirs if only they killed that damn Tompkins. So I did what any respectable woman would do. I shot the bastard in the head, and as many of the others as I could get in my sights.”
“It was you firing from the ridge,” I says. That day I thought it were me Hank wanted to kill, but it were her he wanted dead: the ghost shooter in the mountains, the woman who’d get most of the gold if they stuck to their deal. “You nearly killed me!”
“If I’d known you were my own flesh and blood, I’d’ve aimed different. But, sweet, yer dressing an awful lot like a boy these days.”
And right then it dawns on me why Rose changed the details of our trade, why he wanted me in exchange for Jesse. I were to be a bartering tool. Once he learned I was Henry’s kid, he knew I were also Maria’s. He planned to use me ’gainst her as he just used her ’gainst me: hold a gun to my temple till she dropped her weapon, giving him the opportunity to shoot her dead and clear out the mine. Why bother sharing the gold when he could have it all to himself?
It explains why he killed off his last man in that cache. Why he only shot my hat that day at the trade for Jesse ’stead of dropping me cold. Why he appeared to hesitate in the Tiger, when I confirmed who I were. He’s been planning this since that very moment.
Maria scratches her scalp with the gun’s barrel and turns to Rose. “Lucky I missed you that day, Waylan, don’t you say? Only got yer hat. And then you brought that journal to me like a well-trained dog.” She whistles low. “How was it you said you found it again?”
“We were in Casa Grande when we got word a man done spent a suspicious amount of solid gold ore on a doctor for his kin. We traced the tale to Prescott, then his homestead on the Granite Creek.”
The doc who came when I had scarlet fever . . . That joke he made ’bout gold pay that weren’t really a joke at all.
Maria smiles. “It were Ross’s—Henry’s—only slip in all those years, and it were dire.”
“I can’t believe you,” I says through my teeth. “You hired Waylan Rose, a notorious outlaw and bloodthirsty criminal, to get back a journal? He killed my father. He hanged him from our mesquite tree!”
“It were a regrettable but necessary action.”
“Necessary? He was yer husband once!”
“And he stole you from me,” she snarls. “He took you in the middle of the night and left. It were me who spent months on end in these mountains, gathering ore from the cache and lugging it home. Me who kept us rich and living in comfort. And how did he thank me? He took you, a heap of gold, and the maps, then disappeared. And how dare he rename you! I give you a beautiful name like Sierra, and he changes it to something as boring as Kate.”
“If you knew me at all, you’d see it fits me better. But that ain’t no shock, hearing you were outta sorts with reality. Pa said it weren’t safe in Tucson no more, that folks were threatening yous. He said leaving were the only option.”
“Yer father was a coward and a yellow-bellied weakling,” she snaps.
“If you were even half the person my father were, you’d’ve had the courage to show up in Prescott and hang him yerself.”
She strikes me ’cross the cheek with Jesse’s pistol, and my vision streaks white.
“You watch yer tongue. Think hard ’bout who’s the villain here. I ain’t gonna coddle you like Ross mighta, but at least I ain’t lied to you. How honest has yer father been, truly? From what Waylan tells me, there’s a grave marker beneath that mesquite tree bearing my name. If’n yer pa’s fabricated half yer life, ain’t it possible he’s the vile one? Everything I did in those early years, I did for our family. And all he did was leave.”
“I think a lust for gold drove you mad,” I says through a snarl. “If you can’t live in peace—if yer fearing yer own neighbors in the night—what’s the point of being rich? Gold don’t keep you safe.”
“But it sure can buy happiness.”
What sort of happiness? As far as I can tell, she ain’t left these mountains in years. She’s prolly been living in that sad stone house we saw, likely trades with Apache for whatever supplies she can’t get herself, keeping her quest for gold quiet. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the dynamite she mentioned came from a deal with Waltz.
Watching her go on like this, crazed and unsound . . . It causes something to splinter in my chest. Pa lied to me, yes. He spun yarns and told half truths and kept secrets most of his life. But he did all of it to keep me safe, to shelter me, to spare me from knowing the monster standing before me now.
I were supposed to think she were dead. I weren’t to know ’bout the gold and the way it destroyed our family. If’n his past came to catch him, I were to go to Abe’s and stay there and move on with my life. But I’m too reckless and wild and angry. I had to keep digging, had to avenge his blood. And it makes me wonder if all the bad in me—all those men I’s shot and killed—is part of this stranger, this woman twirling Jesse’s guns. Is there more of her in my veins than Pa? Am I more bad than good, more revenge than forgiveness?
I couldn’t move on. Like her, hunting down the journal, I couldn’t just bury Pa beneath that tree and move on.