Outlawed(34)

As Henry rose, a skinny, well-groomed man with a scowl on his face made his way to the bar, and broke out in a smile when he saw Agnes Rose. She stood to greet him, her manner different from what I’d seen at Hole in the Wall; here she was light and girlish in her movements, bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet. The man set down a heavy-looking oxblood leather satchel and gave her a courtly kiss on the cheek. I looked at News and she gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

“So why did you leave Dakota?” Lark asked me.

My heart kicked. At first I was sure I’d been found out, that he worked for Sheriff Branch or my husband’s family, that he had tracked me all the way here. But when I glanced at News she didn’t look overly concerned, just arched an eyebrow at me, waiting for me to respond.

“How do you know I’m from Dakota?” I asked, trying to sound like News—calm, comfortable, faintly teasing.

“I can hear it in your voice,” he said. “I’m from Mobridge, on the Missouri.”

I felt exposed. If he could hear Fairchild in my voice, what else could he hear? At the same time, the thought of him listening that closely to me, the intimacy of it, made me blush. I lifted my empty whiskey glass to my lips to hide my face and give myself time to think.

“Why’d you leave Mobridge?” I asked.

He was looking at me very directly, but I found I could only meet his gaze for a few seconds at a time before looking down into my whiskey again. I had not been like this with my husband, but then I’d known my husband all my life. When we began courting I was excited by the prospect of sex and romance between us, but as a person he was utterly familiar to me; I could tease him about the time Andy Nichols pulled his pants down in first form, or the time he hid from his baby brother just after the birth, because he was so afraid of the umbilical cord dangling from his belly like a tail. Sitting across from me was a man I knew nothing about.

“It was time for me to marry,” he said, “and I didn’t want to. So the only thing I could think to do was leave.”

At first I didn’t understand him. I had never asked myself whether I wanted to marry. I simply knew that it was what I had to do.

“Why didn’t you want to get married?” I asked.

News rotated away from us slightly in her chair just then, pretending to watch Henry try to get the bartender’s attention, but really watching Bixby and Agnes Rose. Either she hadn’t given him the laudanum yet or I had missed it. The latter wouldn’t be a bad thing; if I could see her spike Bixby’s drink from across the room, so could other people. But it would mean I’d have no way of knowing when to expect Bixby to start to falter, or when to step in if things went wrong.

“I was in love with someone,” Lark said, and as he said it my attention snapped back to him even though I knew I should be watching the bar. “She was older, and she was married already, with four children. Her husband was an important man from a big family. I knew I could never have her. But once I’d fallen for her, I couldn’t bring myself to court any of the girls from town. They didn’t interest me. So I saved until I could buy a horse, and then I took off.”

I tried to picture what it would be like to leave home because you wanted to, not because you had to—to be able to simply choose a different life. It was beyond my imagining. I felt the heat in my body cool toward Lark a little, a distance open up. At the bar, Agnes Rose was stroking Bixby’s arm, seductive as a mistress and tender as a mother. He looked quite drunk now, gesturing broadly with his free hand, drooping in close to Agnes and then straightening with a hiccup. Unless he had downed three whiskeys in a matter of minutes, the laudanum was starting to work.

I looked back at Lark with more curiosity now, more control. I wanted to understand what it was like to be someone like him.

“How did you know where to go?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I just headed southwest because I heard that’s where the big towns were. When I hit Medicine Bow, I thought I was in Telluride.”

I smiled. Even I knew Telluride was two weeks’ ride south of Medicine Bow and ten times as big.

“What about you?” Lark asked. “You look like someone who’s far from home.”

I saw News shift in her seat and followed her gaze. Bixby had gotten unsteadily to his feet. Agnes Rose was laughing and putting her arm around him, subtly supporting his weight. She led him away from the bar and through the door to the rooms upstairs.

News took a battered pocket watch out of her dungarees.

“We’d better get back soon, right Adam?”

I thought about Bixby’s swaying walk and the number of drops Agnes Rose had given him, and tried to guess how long before he was sleeping.

“In ten minutes,” I said. “No need to abandon your beer.”

I turned back to Lark.

“I’m on my way to Pagosa Springs,” I said. “I’m going to study with a famous doctor there. I’m just cowboying till I can afford the trip.”

News gave me a warning look, but I didn’t care. I felt stronger than I had in weeks. Lark smiled with half his mouth. Then Henry came back with our drinks.

“Veronica’s got lead in her veins today,” he said.

He and News exchanged a glance.

“Unfortunately, we have to be going,” News said.