Outlawed(58)

He held his own kerosene lamp as he spoke to us, illuminating the room with a flickering light. I could see the marks on the walls where other prisoners—probably now long dead—had scratched their names and prayers and curses with dirty fingernails.

“With all due respect, sir,” said Lark, “our marriage won’t be holy in the eyes of baby Jesus unless we consecrate it in a church.”

“And the trip to church will give you plenty of chances to give my guards the slip,” said the sheriff. “I know how your kind thinks. No, if you want to get married I won’t stop you. But you’ll be having the ceremony in here.”

“And afterward?” Lark asked.

“Afterward, what?”

Lark took my hand. Before I knew what I was doing, I squeezed his palm, and he squeezed back. The memory of the dance under the tent came back to me.

“I don’t mean to be indelicate,” he said, “but my bride and I will need somewhere private to consummate our marriage.”

The sheriff looked away from us with a prudish embarrassment that, under other circumstances, I might have found sweet.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “We’ll put you in the gentlemen’s quarters.”

The priest came the following morning—I knew it only because the night guard had come and gone and the young day guard had returned. By my figuring, we had another day left of Easter week, another day before we had to meet the judge.

The woman had shrugged when I asked what we should do now that we wouldn’t be going to church.

“I learned long ago not to get my hopes up,” she said. “At least you’ll get to spend an afternoon in the nice part of this place. Usually it’s only for folks who can pay.”

Lark and I decided our best move was to wait until the guard took us to the gentlemen’s quarters. Then Lark would try to knock the lamp out of his hand. While the guard scrambled to put out the flames, we’d try to make a run for it. It wasn’t a particularly good plan, but it was the only one we had. And first we had to get married.

The priest was middle-aged, with a handsome, strong-jawed face and black hair going gray. He walked with two canes; in the lamplight I saw that though his shoulders and chest were powerful, his legs were as short and slender as a child’s. He lowered himself onto the bench next to us, the guard shut the door behind him, and the dark, for the moment, erased us all.

“I’m Father Daniel,” the priest said. “Ordinarily, when I meet with couples before their wedding day, my purpose is to make sure they understand the gravity of the marriage sacrament, and to prepare them for their lives together. In this case, unfortunately, I have another task: to ensure that both of you enter into this marriage with godly intentions, and not merely as a way of delaying whatever justice is due for your crimes. It’s undignified, I’m sure you’ll agree, for a man of God to play the role of investigator, but that is the situation in which we find ourselves.”

At the convent, we had been instructed to show great deference to the priests who visited us occasionally to preach a sermon or conduct a special Mass. I had been unimpressed with them, as a general rule—old men who droned about the proper responsibilities of women. But this priest’s manner—weary but good-humored, as though the marriage of two convicts was by no means the most unusual or unpleasant task he’d had to perform that week—endeared him to me.

“Thank you for visiting us, Father,” I said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “Now, let’s begin with the groom. Why don’t you tell me how the two of you met?”

My whole body went tense. I did not know how the two of us would construct a love story that would satisfy this man, who was clearly no fool.

But Lark did not hesitate.

“It was in the town of Fiddleback, in Powder River country,” he said. “My friend and I were passing through on our way to Crooked Creek to do some cattle rustling. Ada came through with an associate of hers, a man we’d done business with in the past. She was dressed as a man then, and she looked very handsome—a fine young cowboy with a straight back and an intelligent eye. We spoke a little, and she told me she was bent on traveling to Colorado to practice medicine. I’m a suspicious sort ordinarily, but I found myself taken with her. She had—I’d call it a vehemence about her that made me want to know her more. A few months later—”

“That’s enough,” Father Daniel said. “Now it’s the bride’s turn. Young lady, you can tell me how you fell in love.”

The guard’s light passed across us. The sly smile on Lark’s face, and the empty-headed man moldering in the corner, and the probability of either my impending death or my slow, agonizing deterioration in this dark and airless room—all of these made me bold.

“The day we met,” I said, “I thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. I had no mind to marry or have anything to do with a man, but after we came back from Fiddleback, my thoughts kept returning to him. So imagine my happiness when I found out that my associates wanted his help stealing a wagon at the Easter Market so we could sell it on and reap the profits.

“My associates and I are careful thieves,” I went on. “We met with Lark many times before the market to plan and scheme. He and I found ourselves becoming fast friends. One night when Lark and I were sewing our disguises—the women’s clothes we’d wear to pass ourselves off as revelers on Easter Monday—I decided I couldn’t hide it anymore.