Outlawed(25)

“If we ride tomorrow morning we can hide out near Sutton’s Gulch and jump them when they come past,” News said. “Shouldn’t take more than three of us—Tex, Elzy, and I can go.”

“You and Texas deserve a rest,” the Kid said. “I’ll command this one—who else feels like stretching her legs a little?”

“I’ll go,” I said.

Everyone turned to look at me.

“What do you think, Lo?” asked the Kid, amused. “Is the good doctor ready?

“If it were up to me, I’d wait a few more weeks,” Lo said. “But she understands the fundamentals.”

“I think she’s ready,” Texas said.

I saw how the others heeded her, because she spoke up so rarely.

“Stand up,” the Kid said. “Let me look at you.”

I stood. Again all their eyes were on me, and I wondered what they saw: an interloper, a greenhorn, a little girl, and maybe, in at least one case, someone with enough wisdom to make something of herself. I lifted my chin and met the Kid’s eyes. The Kid smiled.

“Agnes,” the Kid said, “she’ll need a trim before we go.”

A few mornings later, Agnes Rose cut my hair. She sat on the top step to the bunkhouse and I sat on the bottom one, leaning against her knees. Her touch reminded me of my sisters, the way I used to let them pin my hair into ridiculous styles, ribbons every which way, giggling as their little fingers tickled my scalp.

The memory opened a pit of fear in my stomach. I told myself, again, that as long as Sheriff Branch was looking for me, my family would probably be safe. But I knew, too, that he might not search forever. And the longer I made myself hard to find, the more likely he would be to seek another outlet for my neighbors’ anger. I felt my back muscles harden against Agnes Rose’s legs.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” she asked.

She unwound my hair from its braid and began to snip. The hair fell in skeins, light brown in the red dirt.

“A little,” I said.

The truth was I could not imagine what I was about to do. I knew what I wanted—to return to Hole in the Wall with the same triumph in my heart that I’d seen on the faces of News and Texas as they rode among the cattle. But of what it would take to hold up a wagon at gunpoint, I did not understand enough to be afraid.

“I suppose I don’t know what to expect,” I added.

“I didn’t either, the first time,” Agnes Rose said.

I felt my hair at my shoulders now, a strange new lightness at my back where the braid was missing.

“What was it like,” I asked, “your first job?”

I felt her fingers at my ear and then the breeze at my neck where she’d cut the hair away.

“It was a disaster,” she said. “I was intended to steal a horse. We were going to sell him on to a trader I know, make enough money to provision ourselves for the winter.

“The stable hand was a drunk, News said I could walk right in and take the stallion, easy as shaking hands. I put on a cowboy hat and a binder and I set out. ‘Simple,’ News said. ‘A child could do it.’

“I was actually excited. I thought I’d make us a boatload of money, and the Kid and everybody else would praise me.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

Another snip, and the back of my neck was bare.

“The stable hand took a temperance pledge,” Agnes Rose said. “When I got there he was sitting out front of the barn with a shotgun, bloodshot eyes the size of dinner plates. I had to shoot him.”

Snip. Meadow air on both ears, goosebumps on my neck.

“The rancher heard the shot,” she went on. “He came out in his nightcap with a poker in his fist.”

Agnes Rose was cutting close to my head now. I could feel the scissor blades on my scalp.

“The horse spooked and threw me off. The rancher was on me before I knew it. He wrestled me to the ground and knocked the gun out of my hand.”

I clenched my jaw. I could only imagine what would happen to a woman alone, dressed in men’s clothing, caught trying to steal a horse from someone else’s ranch.

“How did you get away?” I asked.

I heard a smile in her voice.

“A trick I learned at Miss Meacham’s, for when the men got fresh,” she said. “You bite the inside of your lip until you taste blood, then you cough it into your hand. This time I smeared it right on the rancher’s nightshirt. I wheezed and sputtered and I told him I was only stealing horses to pay for a sanitorium.”

“That worked?” I asked. “He let you go?”

The smile disappeared.

“Of course not,” she said. “But he lost his bearings for a minute. Long enough for me to find my gun and shoot him in the gut.”

“Mother Mary,” I said quietly.

“She wasn’t there,” Agnes Rose said, “I can tell you that. Two days later I staggered back into Hole in the Wall empty-handed. Cassie wanted to get rid of me. I think she still does.”

“But you’re here,” I said.

“The Kid knows how to spot the usefulness in people, even if it doesn’t present itself immediately. Maybe especially if it doesn’t. After that job I never tried to steal a horse again. Now I focus on subtler work. I’ve made enough money for us to buy a dozen horses, with some left over for saddles.”