Outlawed(48)
Amid all this, Blunt apparently remained secretary of the militia, never ascending to the rank of captain or becoming mayor of Meeting of the Waters, which suggested to me that many of the triumphs he attributed to himself had in fact been achieved by other people, or perhaps not achieved at all. Still, his account was very detailed, down to the number of bullets, musket balls and other ammunition the militia kept in their stockpile, the time it took to build a town hall out of lumber salvaged from nearby abandoned homes, and the type of grain the militiamen and their families fed their horses. It was this last that caught my eye.
“The foals born in the spring of 1853 did not thrive as their elders had,” Blunt wrote, “suffering from broken bones and a number of other ailments. Andrew Langhorne, an experienced farmer who served as our farrier, speculated that since coming to Meeting of the Waters we had come to rely too heavily on oats and corn in the horse feed and not enough on pasture grass. Indeed, foals set to pasture the next spring and given oats and corn only as supplements were stronger, and this has been our practice ever since.”
At Hole in the Wall the horses ate pasture grass in the summer and dry alfalfa and hay in the winter; most had never even tasted oats or corn. Luckily such feed was not expensive, and I was able to get several bags from Nótkon in exchange for one of our older guns and some of the herbal tinctures I’d put up in the fall.
I was all but certain the experiment would be worthless, and so I didn’t even tell Texas what I was doing. I said I was supplementing Amity’s feed because she had seemed colicky lately, and when it came time to clean the barn I secretly stored her shit separately from the rest. When I had enough dried and bagged, I crept out of the bunkhouse early in the morning while everyone else slept, when the sky was just beginning to blue with sunlight.
As I lit the fuse I was thinking about what I would do next, how I would tell the Kid that I could not make us any bombs. The Kid had been sleeping when I left—upright in a chair with hat and boots still on, but sleeping nonetheless. The day before, I had checked the laudanum in the trunk, and while it had certainly dwindled, the Kid had clearly used it sparingly. Probably the Kid was doing better, I told myself. You had to be very strong, after all, to pull together a gang from nothing and lead it for years through danger and privation, keeping eight people together in the face of all that could pull them apart.
Without bombs, I knew, we’d have to get someone from the bank to open the vault for us. That would take time, in which the sheriff’s posse might arrive, or the rest of the bank employees might band together to rush us. The plan would become more dangerous—the Kid might need to call another vote, or at the very least convince Elzy and Cassie and Lo that the risks were not so great. Still, I told myself as the flame slid up the bootlace, the Kid could handle it. Surely the ability to make provisions for future sickness meant that the sickness was, at present, not so advanced.
I heard a sound behind me then, something moving in the tall grass. I turned, thinking snake, thinking mountain lion, and so when the bomb went off with the sound of earth tearing open, I was looking right into the eyes of the Kid, who had not been sleeping at all.
CHAPTER 8
The Easter Market in Casper was like nothing I’d ever seen. At the center of the town fairgrounds was a canvas tent big enough to hold everyone in Fairchild. Inside, women in white bonnets and yellow dresses were getting ready for the Sunday service, hanging tapestries of baby Jesus leaving the tomb in the arms of Mary Magdalene; baby Jesus appearing before the disciples; baby Jesus ascending to Heaven, flanked by angels. Around the tent, merchants and traders from up and down the Powder sold their wares from the backs of their wagons: hollowed-out duck and chicken eggs painted with flowers or resurrection scenes; Babies’ Tears made of gelatin and sugar and flavored with berry juices or brandy; beaded moccasins and bags trimmed with porcupine quills; flower crowns; sweet pies with rhubarb and savory pies with lamb; fine Mexican silver; and last-minute costumes for Mothering Monday, baggy bright dresses for men and hats and mustaches for women, along with gray wigs to turn children into old grannies.
At the center of the fairgrounds were the livestock stalls, loud with the complaints of animals and noisome with their mingled smells. There I saw a hog the size of a steer and a steer the size of the kitchen cabin at Hole in the Wall; I saw a snow-white chicken with a long feathered tail like the train of a wedding gown, and a tame black bear that stood on its hind legs and wore a hat like a man.
We met Henry and Lark among the horses. Henry was examining a beautiful roan mare, who held her head high as he walked around her stall, as though she knew her own worth. Lark was occupied with a smaller horse, dappled gray like river stones with wild, mistrustful eyes. He clucked to it softly with his tongue and it hesitated, then went to him and ate a sugar cube from his flat palm.
When News had suggested to the Kid that Henry and Lark could help us steal a wagon to the carry the gold away from Fiddleback, I’d been too embarrassed to endorse the idea. Cassie, predictably, didn’t like it—we’d never needed outside help with a job before, she said. But News pointed out that wasn’t quite true—Henry and Lark and many others had given her tips and information in the past. And in any case, the biggest thing we’d ever stolen in the past was a horse. Henry and Lark had done a wagon job before, and knew how to manage a hitch and a team of new, scared horses. The Kid had agreed quickly, and it made sense for me to go with News. I already knew the two men, and by now News and I worked together well enough to make up, largely, for my lack of experience. When we walked among the horses as Nate and Adam, I felt, if not comfortable in my man’s stride, then at least hidden by it—no one who looked at me would guess I was a barren woman, a discarded wife, an outlaw wanted for cursing women’s wombs even though I had helped coax dozens of babies into the world.