Outlawed(35)

She took a slug of the beer Henry had bought.

“Drinks on us the next time we meet,” she said. Then she lifted her glass: “To the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Fiddleback.”

“To the Farmers’ and Merchants’,” Henry said. “May it make us rich, and you jealous.”

Lark lifted his glass last.

“To Pagosa Springs,” he said, looking me in the eye.

At first the door to the bedroom was locked. I could see worry cross News’s face. The longer we stood in the hallway, the more we risked running into lovers taking rooms for the afternoon, who would wonder why two cowboys were loitering there instead of drinking in the bar below. And the longer the door stayed locked, the more likely it was that the laudanum hadn’t worked, Agnes Rose would have to sleep with Bixby and we’d all ride home in defeat.

As I waited for News to tell me what to do, I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, rattling the dusty etchings of milkmaids and shepherdesses on the walls. News pointed down the hallway, and I ran to one of the other doors, pretending to fumble with the knob.

“I’m not drunk,” I heard a man slur in a drunk voice. “I’m just going to lie down for five minutes, and then I’ll challenge any one of you—”

He reached the top of the stairs, a tall man with a big belly and a red face. He passed News, still standing at Bixby and Agnes Rose’s door, then listed against the wall and dragged himself along it until he got to where I stood.

“That’s my room,” the man bellowed into my face, his breath stinking of stale beer. “You trying to break into my room?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I must have gone to the wrong one.”

I tried to get past him but he planted a meaty hand on each wall, blocking my path.

“Everybody thinks they can just take advantage of me,” he said. “ ‘Oh, Porter’s drunk, you can steal his silver, you can flirt with his woman, you can lie down in his goddamn bed.’ I’m onto all of your tricks and your jokes—”

“It was an honest mistake,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I’ll just go to my room, and I won’t bother you again.”

Over his massive shoulder I saw the door at the end of the hallway open. News beckoned to me.

“You’re all snakes,” the man shouted. “Ronnie! Ronnie! Come up here. There’s a snake in my room.”

It was loud in the bar below, but only a matter of time before Veronica heard the drunk man shouting. Lo had taught me a little of how to fight a man, but nothing about how to handle one who was drunk and belligerent and standing in my way. I thought of the guard cradling the wagon driver in his arms. When I acted without knowledge, I knew, I was only too likely to do the wrong thing. I gave News a look full of panic and pleading. I saw her roll her eyes.

“Good sir,” she called, coming down the hallway to meet us. “Why would my poor friend here try to break into your room? Look at you. You could beat him to a pulp. Everyone here is afraid of you.”

“They should be,” he said. “They should be scared of me, but they think, they think—”

“Trust me,” News said. “When we walked in here today, three different people told us to watch out for you. ‘That man there could kick you into the next county,’ they said, and I took one look at you and I knew they were right.”

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. I could take any man down there right now.”

He mimed throwing a punch and lurched against the right wall, freeing up half the hallway. Immediately I slid past him.

“Hey,” he called, “I’m talking to you!”

But News and I dashed down the hall and in through Agnes Rose’s door.

Bixby lay on top of the gingham bedspread, eyes closed, mouth open, shirt partly unbuttoned to reveal sparse black chest hair. His satchel sat next to the bed.

Agnes Rose was trying to open the window.

“That guy out there is going to have Veronica up here any second,” I said, whispering so as not to wake Bixby.

“All right,” said News. “Get ready.”

News lifted the maple-wood chair from the side of the bed and, in a single motion, smashed out the bottom pane of the window. Agnes Rose grabbed the satchel with one hand, wrapped her coat around the other, punched out the remaining spikes of broken glass, and crawled through the empty window frame onto the roof outside.

“It’s not such a bad drop,” she said.

Then her head disappeared from view.

“You go next,” News said. “I don’t want you chickening out.”

Despite what Agnes Rose had done, the window frame still glistened with tiny shards of glass. The roof beyond it slanted precipitously toward the ground below—I couldn’t tell how far down, but certainly farther than I wanted to jump. I looked for a drainpipe, something Agnes Rose might have used to ease her descent, but I saw only wooden shingles, cracked and bleached by wind, sun, and snow.

“Hurry up,” hissed News behind me.

I felt a wave of dizziness wash over me. I took a breath, bent through the window, and managed to get my hand and my right foot planted on the roof. When I tried to swing my left foot out, though, I lost purchase with my right, and then I was rolling, then falling, then landing on my back in a pile of horse-feed sacks.