Outlawed(45)

The bookseller looked nervous, as always. Over the winter he had grown a sandy-colored mustache, and he took quick careful sips of whiskey from beneath it, eyes darting over the room. Ten or twelve men sat with us at the long wooden table, once handsome, now riven with cracks from its abandoned years and stained with liquor and tallow from its renaissance. At least ten more men drank standing up, leaning against the walls. This was an older, harder clientele than at Veronica’s—trappers and traders, men from forest country who went weeks at a time without seeing another human being. Now brought together, some were silent still as though they’d forgotten how to speak, or perhaps ordered their lives specifically to avoid it. But a few had been released from solitude into jolliness or belligerence, and they were loud enough to make up for everyone else, to cover our voices as we talked.

“I have what you need,” the bookseller said. “The field manual of the St. Louis Militia. Has everything you need to know about homemade explosives, plus combat drills, camouflage, and how to survive in the wilderness for up to thirty days with no food or fresh water. I can give it to you for fifty silver liberties.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Come on,” I said. “You think I’ve forgotten what books cost? We’ll give you a box of good bullets, and I think Agnes Rose has some jewelry she can throw in.”

Agnes Rose opened her leather travel pouch to show him the brooches and earrings we were selling.

“All of that plus the pouch it comes in,” the bookseller said. “And I’ll have to give you the cheaper copy, without the diagrams.”

I looked at Agnes Rose. She nodded.

“We don’t need diagrams,” I said, raising my glass. “Deal.”

The bookseller clinked his glass with mine, avoiding eye contact, then finished his warm drink and pushed back his chair.

“Before you go,” I said, trying to get myself ready for the answer, “have you heard any news of Sheriff Branch recently?”

He shook his head.

“I knew you were lying to me. I should charge you more just for putting me in danger. If he’d found me with you in my wagon—”

“But he didn’t,” I said. “Look, he doesn’t know where I am now, I’m sure of that.” (I was sure of no such thing.) “I’m only curious if he’s still on the lookout.”

“There’s still a price on your head, if that’s what you mean,” said the bookseller. “I’ve had two different bounty hunters ask me about you this year. Apparently you’re wanted in Fairchild for deceiving a young man into marriage, as well as for the stillbirth of a neighbor’s baby and for giving another baby a cleft lip by sharing a bottle of wine with the mother.”

Agnes Rose pushed her drink away. “You don’t believe that kind of garbage, do you?” she asked. “An educated man like you?”

The bookseller shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I believe. But I’ll tell you this.” He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “I met Branch a couple of months ago. In Rapid City, before the winter. He was out there helping a family with their cattle drive, because the father was taken ill. He was a kind man, intelligent. It made me think, probably this Ada person could have reasoned with him. Probably if they just sat down together, they could have come to an understanding. And sitting here with you now, talking about explosives—sometimes I think you women up in the valley like making trouble, that’s all.”

I saw Agnes Rose reach for the false pocket in her dress that led to her gun. I reached for mine, too, holstered on my belt.

“Don’t worry,” the bookseller went on. “I didn’t tell him anything. I’ve known the Kid for years, and you were right, the money’s good. But maybe you should try breaking bread with people from time to time instead of fighting them. It’s a good deal safer.”

Ten minutes later, as the bookseller searched in his wagon for the un-illustrated version of the St. Louis Militia field manual, Agnes Rose whispered that we should kill him.

“I don’t know how we can trust him now,” she said.

“Everyone here saw us with him,” I whispered back. “If we kill him here, they’ll know it was us.”

“Maybe we can ask him to give us a lift somewhere,” Agnes said. “Pretend our horse lost a shoe.”

“Both of our horses?” I asked. “He’ll see through it.”

The truth was, I didn’t want to kill the bookseller in cold blood. I still saw the face of the young wagon driver when I tried to sleep at night. And he had been a total stranger to me. I’d spent days with the bookseller—I knew the way he hummed a tuneless song to himself when he thought no one was listening, the way he chewed his cuticles down to blood, the left hand and then the right. I did not like him, and Agnes was right, I did not trust him, but I was not sure I could bring myself to end his life.

“I have another idea,” I said.

I raised my voice just loud enough for the bookseller to hear inside the wagon.

“We’ll have to test it first,” I said. “We don’t want to get all the way to Casper with dud explosives.”

“Casper?” asked Agnes Rose.

I gave her a look, and she caught on.

“We should buy whatever we need down south and test it at Badger Hollow,” Agnes said. “That way, we won’t have to ride all the way from the valley to Casper with explosives in our saddlebags.”