Outlawed(78)

“That’s right,” the woman said. “I didn’t mind reading scripture, but I couldn’t put aside my anger. Or maybe I could, but I don’t want to. The Mother said I wasn’t suited to be a nun. She said if I came here, maybe I’d find what I was suited for.”

The night after that, I went to visit Texas in the barn. When I arrived she was leaning close to Prudence, combing her mane and singing to her in a low voice.

“Aren’t you worried about giving her lice?” I asked.

“Horses can’t get human lice,” she said. “I’m thinking of bringing my cot out here till the cold weather comes in. It’s quiet, it’s clean, and nobody asks questions.”

I laughed.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Too late,” said Texas. “What do you want?”

“Are you still going to Amarillo?”

“Yes,” Texas said, giving Prudence’s mane another brush. “One day. When I’m finished here.”

“And when will that be?”

“Hard to say. We have more people now, we need more horses. More horses need more care.”

“Someone else could care for them,” I said.

Texas moved on to Temperance’s stall. The bay horse gave a whinny of recognition and nuzzled her nose against Texas’s hand.

“Not as well as me,” Texas said.

The following night I found the Kid walking the pasture. I hoped the Kid’s heart was lighter than it had been; mine was heavy. I would miss my cot on the upper level of the bunkhouse, overlooking the woodstove. But it was as clear to me now as it had ever been: I was not a sharpshooter, a con artist, or a horsewoman. My mastery, when it came, would be of a different sort.

“Keep up the turpentine for another three days,” I said. “And make sure Agnes checks everyone over for a week. Lice are tricky.”

“I’ll pass along your prescription,” said the Kid. “Take News and Texas with you to Colorado country, if they’re willing. And Amity, of course. She won’t let anyone else ride her.”

It was September when News, Texas, and I set out for Pagosa Springs. We traveled as itinerant cowboys, heavily disguised with false beards and hats pulled low over our eyes. The story of the Hole in the Wall Gang had preceded us: everywhere we stayed, we heard of our own exploits, already twisted and magnified into legend. The Hole in the Wall Gang had reduced an entire town to rubble. The Hole in the Wall Gang could make rain fall from a clear sky. The Hole in the Wall Gang roasted babies on a spit. The members of the Hole in the Wall Gang were male and female both, with breasts and a penis, and could make themselves pregnant at will. The stories both amused and frightened us—we saw how large a target we made now, how attractive for someone with the ambition to bring down a villain. But as we traveled, even among the posters bearing our likenesses, no one recognized us, because Lo had trained us well to disappear into new suits of clothes so that someone could look right at us and see only the ordinary men we wanted them to see.

After ten days on the road we began to climb through Rocky Mountain country. The air took on a new quality, clean and coniferous, and when I woke in the mornings I thought of Lark and the plans we’d made on our wedding day, no less sweet and sad in my mind for being part of a charade. We climbed up past the tree line where all life was low to the ground, the lichens drinking cloudwater, the marmots and pika scuttling from rock to rock. Only the birds there seemed still to have their freedom—the bluebirds singing brightly in the autumn sun, the falcons hurtling fast as bullets between the mountain peaks.

When we reached the other side of the mountain range, and the trees began to grow again and the forests quicken with deer and moose, I knew we must be close. On the fifteenth day of our journey, I smelled something different on the wind, a mineral scent like liquid rock. The springs themselves ran underground along the road for miles before the town appeared; when we stopped to rest the horses we could hear them, like the whispers of ghosts. Where they bubbled up, finally, in pools and falls, bathers gathered singly and in groups, floating up to the neck in the water, anointing their faces with it, soaking feet and hands, dipping children and babies, wheeling the old and sick down in chairs and cradling their bodies in its warmth.

There was no roadhouse in Pagosa Springs, only a bathhouse with rooms arranged around a central pool. News and Texas and I could not remove our clothes, so we sat in the sunroom, where men and women could sit together on folding chairs and drink tonics made with the town’s waters. A young woman, chubby, with very healthy-looking skin, brought us foul-smelling drinks in heavy glasses.

“We’re looking for Mrs. Alice Schaeffer,” I told her.

The woman shook her head.

“Never heard of anyone by that name,” she said.

“Who runs the surgery here?” I asked.

“There’s no surgery,” she said. “We don’t need it. The waters cure everything that ails you.”

As she left I sipped my tonic; it tasted like saltwater.

“There was a surgery,” said the woman next to me.

She was impossibly ancient, so old she was young again, her skin soft-looking as a baby’s, her hair like dandelion fluff. Her eyes, staring blindly into space, were the very lightest blue.

“What happened to it?” News asked.

“It closed down three years ago now. Maybe more. The midwife had to leave town very suddenly.”