Outlawed(75)

The air was eerily quiet, and for a moment I feared the worst: my friends all dead, or, more likely, captured and parceled out among the remaining sheriffs for hanging in their respective towns. But then I saw movement above me, in the shadowed notch where two rock faces met, the Hole in the Wall itself. I tied Amity up to an aspen and began to climb on foot. I rounded a switchback and came face to face with the barrel of a gun.

“Doc, Jesus,” said Texas, lowering the pistol. “I thought you were one of them.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“They’re dug in down by the sentries.”

Texas pointed to the tall outcroppings of rock to the south. There I saw men and horses. Sheriff Branch’s hat shone in the sunlight.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait,” said Texas.

Where she and I had sat, many months ago, now the others had set up camp. Elzy gave me bullets for my gun. Cassie gave me a stick of pemmican and a canteen of water. News touched my shoulder.

“We thought you were gone,” she said.

The afternoon aged. We watched the men at the foot of the wall as they paced back and forth among the sentry rocks with their guns. A mixture of boredom and fear got hold of me. The valley below me took on the quality of a painting, its greens and reds and golds all flattening out against the sky. Agnes Rose began to sing, very quietly, in her low, pretty voice,

Jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam,



Sunbeams were never made like me.



“Hush,” said Cassie. “They’re on the move.”

The men below were fanning out. One group of them had begun to scale the rocks just uphill from the sentries. Another was climbing south, and another made its way straight up the path to the hole. I could no longer see Sheriff Branch.

“Let them come,” said News. “We’ll pick them off as they get here.”

Cassie shook her head.

“They’re trying to surround us. We have to split up. Stay high, hide among the rocks and fire on them as they get close. News, Aggie, you go south. Doc, Texas, you take north. Elzy and I will stay here and face the ones coming up the trail.”

She paused. “If they take you, keep your head up. Don’t beg for your life. Don’t confess to any sin. If you die without shame, the shame is all theirs.”

I thought of the woman the sheriff of Casper had talked about, who had died in the stocks at Salida. I wondered if she had pleaded for release with her last breaths, or if she’d held firm until the end. To the people gathered round her, hurling stones and rotten fruit and feces, I wondered if it had mattered.

Texas and I climbed the flat rocks north of Hole in the Wall. They were laid atop each other layer on layer, carved and stacked long ago by some great disaster. Some layers were thin as pastry leaves, others thick as tree trunks. As we climbed across them, the valley floor grew hazy with distance. Below us, falcons were diving for their prey.

Near the crest of the wall we reached a notch, smaller than the hole, and just large enough for one person to shelter with a gun. We nodded to each other, Texas installed herself, and I walked on alone.

North of the notch, the layers of rock were stacked nearly flush on one another. I had to turn my body toward the face of the wall and scuttle sideways along a narrow lip, just wide enough for my boots. The wall smelled of old rainstorms, water turning into rock and washing rock away. I knew how fast a determined man could climb, and so every few steps I peeled my face away from the rock to look dizzily over my shoulder for anyone approaching from below.

But I was not prepared for gunshots from above. They shattered the lip of rock behind me, then before me, leaving me trapped on a ledge no longer than my own stride. I drew my gun and looked up to see Sheriff Branch lying belly-down on a layer of rock not ten yards above my head. The sun was dipping down behind him; his hat glittered like a crown.

“Drop your gun,” he shouted down the barrel of his own.

Instead I fired, but the sun ruined my aim and the shot sailed wide.

“If you do that again,” the sheriff called, “I’ll have to shoot you. And I think you know I’m not liable to miss.”

The sheriff was famous in Fairchild for his hunting skills; it was said he had once leaned out the jailhouse window and picked a dove off a branch at the end of the street. I holstered the gun and lifted my hands. Then I saw the sheriff had tears in his eyes.

“Ada,” he said, “little one, I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

“Then leave us alone,” I said.

The sheriff shook his head.

“Come back to Fairchild with me,” he said. “I promise you, the judge will show you mercy. You’ll live out your days in the town jail. You can see your sisters on Sundays.”

Behind me I heard shouts and gunshots, my friends and his allies at war with one another.

“I don’t believe you,” I shouted. “The sheriff of Casper wanted to put me in the stocks.”

“I never would have let that happen,” said Sheriff Branch. “I know you’re in pain. I know what it is not to have a child. It can make you do terrible things.”

I wanted to tell him I had done nothing terrible. That had been true when I left Fairchild, but it wasn’t true now.

“I never hurt Ulla,” I said instead. “I never cast a spell on anyone. It’s all gossip and nonsense.”