The new concrete bridge on Virginia Street awaited her a few blocks north of the courthouse. When she reached it, she hesitated, much like the night before. As the scurrying gentry went about their daily errands around her, Rash shut her eyes, banishing everything save the rush of the Truckee and the titter of cottonwoods.
She had been born near this very spot, shortly after her parents had successfully forded the river sixty years earlier. For her, the Truckee was the border of life and oblivion. Beyond the far bank stood the nothingness that preceded life. To cross it again would be to accept the nothingness to follow. It was a surrender, an abdication, a period on a life sentence.
As she struggled with these thoughts, the wind parted beside her, accommodating a rumbling behemoth that blotted the sun’s heat and replaced the air with mass. Rash opened her eyes to a streetcar, watching as it rolled across the bridge, passed the Masons Hall, and turned the corner toward Sparks without concern.
Superstition. That’s all she was feeling. It had no place in this modern world. Neither did she.
She stepped onto the bridge.
A few minutes later, she arrived at Mrs. Tolliver’s Boarding House for Aged Ladies, a soaring Victorian mansion with two turrets, three stories, and one enormous front porch. Sitting in a rocking chair on the porch was one such aged lady, trapped in a flowing, ivory tea gown and struggling to stay awake through the latest by Ward or Wharton.
Rash climbed the interminable front steps with begrudging use of the railing. A warm breeze followed her through the open entry door to an ornate counter of dark chestnut wood. She laughed out loud at the choice — a recent blight had pushed the once mighty chestnut well on its way to extinction.
A young woman in an old woman’s dress sat impossibly erect on a tall stool behind the counter, hopelessly torn between Edward and Victoria. From the neck up, she was every bit the Gibson Girl, her copious brown hair casually stacked upon itself until it resembled an unraveling hat.
“How can I help you, ma’am?” she asked.
“I need to talk to Tolliver.”
The girl raised an eyebrow. “And you are?”
“Sally Rothschild,” Rash said, using the nom de guerre she had selected to wage the war of retirement.
The girl’s face brightened and she slipped from her seat. “Of course! We expected you last evening, Miss Rothschild, but your room is still made up. Come with me.”
Rash didn’t budge. “I want Tolliver.”
“But Mrs. Tolliver isn’t here. She’s in Verdi for the day on Eastern Star business. Allow me to be her delegate.”
“All right,” Rash said, crossing her arms. “I want a refund.”
The girl paled. “A refund?”
“That’s right.” She flopped her hand on the counter, palm up. “$8000. Now.”
“I don’t have access to that kind of money,” the girl said, her eyes darting back and forth in search of reinforcements.
“But Tolliver does. I sent her the balance two weeks ago. Any idea where it might be?”
“The safe, I should guess.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “Take me to the safe,” Rash said.
“No.”
Rash pulled her Colt and aimed it in the girl’s face. “Allow me to make a counter proposal.”
The girl screamed and ran for a gap between the chestnut counter and the wall behind it.
Rash holstered her useless pistol and whipped out her side knife with a curse. She cut off the girl, bringing the blade to her throat.
“The safe.”
Shaking beneath her blade, the girl led Rash down a hallway and into a well-lit office that faced the river. A dainty desk sat alone in the center of the room on a luxurious Wilton rug. The safe rested in a corner.
“Open it,” Rash commanded.
The girl swallowed hard. “I don’t know the combination,” she said, blood trickling to her jugular notch.
Rash cursed again and threw her to the ground. “Stay there,” she said, then ransacked the desk drawers. After a brief search, she found a billfold stuffed with eight crisp five dollar bills from the Farmers and Merchants National Bank of Reno, emblazoned with the crescent moon face of Benjamin Harrison. It wasn’t much of a refund, but it’d get her Jenny back at least.
She pocketed the bills and glanced at the girl, nursing her nicked throat on the floor.
“You got paper in here?”
The girl pointed to a drawer. Rash dug out a blank sheet and scrawled a note onto it with a fountain pen from the desktop.
“This ain’t a robbery. It’s my money,” she said, folding the note in half and handing it to the girl. “Give this to Tolliver. It’ll explain everything.”
The girl clutched the note, tears dripping onto it.
“Don’t cry,” Rash said. “You’ll smear the ink.”
When it became evident the blubbering would continue unabated, Rash helped the girl to her feet.
“Let’s get you back to your perch,” she said, leading her into the front room and onto her stool.
“Should I call the sheriff?” a tentative voice said from the open front door.
It was the woman in the ivory tea gown. She was about the same age as Rash, though frail and easily disregarded. A possible future, no doubt. Rash wondered how many readings of The House of Mirth it would take before she downed her own draught of chloral hydrate and ended it all like Lily Bart.
She fought the urge to throw the old woman down the stairs as she brushed past her onto the porch.
At the top step, Rash heard the girl snap out of her stupor and reply to the woman, “Calling the Sheriff wouldn’t do any good. He and his men rode out of town a few hours ago on the trail of some old gunman. A real Jesse James type, I heard. They still aren’t back.”
Rash stopped. Why would Fouch and his boys still be with the Peasys? Dandy would’ve told them that she wasn’t coming back.
As soon as she posited the question, she had her answer. Fouch knew Dandy was a coward as well as she did. If the old codger said that she’d left town, Fouch would assume he was lying to save himself and maintain his ambush for Rash’s return.
But she was clear of it. She didn’t have to go back. All she had to do was collect Jenny and her supplies and sneak out of town after Mrs. Tolliver doled out that refund. She’d have to find a new town, of course. Maybe a city. San Francisco was too cold, but Sacramento might work. It would be a homecoming of sorts. Sutter’s New Helvetia was now unrecognizable from the home of her youth, but an old woman could lose herself in a place like Sacramento.
Rash glanced back into the mansion. Deeply. Beyond the clerk and through the rear windows that opened onto the Truckee.
Could she cross those waters again? Return to the land of the living? Start fresh? Did she even want to? The only cure for old age was death, after all, and she didn’t relish a long abseil to it.
But what was the alternative? Killing herself? That was the coward’s way. That was her father’s way.
There was a real opportunity here. A way to avoid being spoon fed applesauce on some new boarding house porch after her teeth fell out. A way to escape an ignoble suicide by laudanum or Lily Bart’s chloral hydrate. A way to bypass the tightening iron grip of debilitation.
She could die fighting for the honor of a child. Today. Before it was too late.
Her mind made up, Rash returned to the clerk long enough to scrawl an addendum onto the note for Tolliver and then made her way toward the Impound warehouse. She didn’t have a dime for the streetcar, which she considered as a sort of final lark, but the vigor of anticipation now bursting through her veins made short work of the walk. Too short, perhaps.
Now that her time was winding down, the minutes rolled by as if seconds. The world came to life: sounds, smells, sights that she hadn’t considered for years accosted her. The very air itself became a tangible thing. There was nothing for life quite like the reaper’s cold breath. She’d known that once, but since forgotten.
Back at Impound, Capps tried to extort an extra five dollars out of her, but she managed to convince him that such an attempt was not in his best interests. She was short in the world, and he could no doubt sense it.
Minutes later, she was once again seated on Jenny’s back, reloading both of her Colts in the shadow of the Riverside Hotel. From there, she made her way back toward the Peasy place, Jenny’s canter sounding through the dust and wind as a harmony of dirge and bugle.
