Outlawed(43)

“Maybe I was wrong,” Elzy said. “Maybe the Kid was always serious and I just wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe something’s different now. I don’t know.”

Elzy shook her head and went back to oiling a barrel. “But you know, I was right about one thing. It did hold us together for a long time, all that high-flown talk. That dream about who we could be. Even if we didn’t believe it.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Well, now it might get us killed.”

After a day and a half I had a good idea of where most of the gang stood: Agnes Rose and News in favor of the plan despite their reservations; Cassie, Elzy, and Lo against. Texas was the only one I wasn’t sure about. When she rode out the day before the vote to gather birch bark, I volunteered to go along.

The day was overcast, white on white. The land was muffled. We crossed the grasslands where pronghorn jumped and meadowlarks sang in the summertime; now our horses were the only things that moved.

We found a stand of birch and tied up Faith and Amity. Texas approached a trunk and plunged her knife in deep, past the outer layer of bark to the pale starch beneath that we could chew to sate our hunger. Then, with the deftness of an expert, she sliced away a footlong narrow strip, rolled it up, and put it in the pocket of her parka.

“Did you learn this on the farm?” I asked her.

She looked at me like I was very stupid.

“My daddy was the biggest horse breeder between Abilene and Cheyenne country. We never had to live on birchbark.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wondered how you learned to harvest it so well.”

“I was on my own for a winter before I found the convent,” Texas said. “I wasn’t used to fending for myself, but I had to learn real quick.”

I stabbed the nearest tree and tried to slice away a strip, but I was clumsy with my gloves and soon dropped the knife into the deep snow.

“Do you think Cassie’s right?” I asked as I searched.

“That the Kid’s gone wrong in the head? I don’t know,” Texas said, “but it doesn’t matter. Wrong or right, the Kid’s dreaming bigger than this place now, and it’s going to end in war.”

“So you’re voting no?” I asked. I found the knife and lifted it to the tree, then dropped it again.

“I’m voting yes,” she said.

I had not figured Texas for someone with a death wish.

“Why?” I asked.

She pulled free another slick strip of bark, her third in the time I’d been trying to cut one.

“The sheriff who hanged my family—” she said, “I promised myself one day I’d come back and kill him. But I can’t do it alone. I need someone to ride down to Amarillo with me and keep lookout, back me up if anything goes wrong.”

Texas reached into the snow, fished out my knife, and put it in her pocket. I looked at my boots, chastened.

“I told the Kid I’d back the Fiddleback plan. If it works, the Kid will help me with the sheriff.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“I’ll try something else.”

She sounded utterly calm.

“Elzy thinks we’ll all get killed,” I said.

“Well, I don’t plan to get killed,” she said. “But if I do, so be it. At least I’ll have done my best.”

The next day a warm chinook wind came up from the south, and the temperature climbed—it might have been twenty-five degrees, but it felt like spring to us after so many days at zero or below, and we forgot even our hunger, piling outside to play like puppies in the snowdrifts. The Kid joined in for a while, making an angel in the smooth snow in front of the bunkhouse, but then peeled off toward the horse pasture, hands in pockets. I followed.

“We’re out of valerian,” the Kid said, turning around.

I was caught off guard.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We can get some more as soon as the pass is open.”

“Is there anything else that works the same?”

“Chamomile,” I said. “It’s not as good, but it’s something. I think Cassie has some dried in the kitchen cabin.”

The Kid nodded, then turned away from me, looking out across the pasture at the red wall now white with snow.

“The man your Mama treated,” the Kid said after a moment, “the one who couldn’t sleep. Was he troubled by terrors?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

The Kid sounded impatient. “Did he have night terrors? Fears he couldn’t name? Did he see shapes out of the corner of his eye, phantoms that disappeared when he turned to look at them?”

“No,” I said. “He never described anything like that.”

The Kid began walking away from me across the pasture. Even in the warm wind it looked desolate—horseless and trackless, flat snow sweeping down to the fences and then beyond into the valley. So recently a confident leader, the Kid was a lonely figure now, shoulders tensed up to the ears, eyes on the ground. I thought again of what Elzy had said, but it was too late now—I’d made my decision. I caught up with the Kid.

“There’s something else,” I said. “The laudanum I used on Bixby. I still have some left in the trunk under my bed. A single drop will help you sleep. More is dangerous. And you should only take a drop if you really need it—too many nights in a row and you’ll start to need more and more. You’ll—a person can become dependent.”