Untitled by Kim Yunsub. Image courtesy of the ArtChowk Gallery.
It was late when Silje Rash rode into Reno. A waning sliver of moon hung in the gangrenous sky above her, destined to relent into darkness over the coming nights. Only the false dawn of electric street lamps kept the shadows at bay.
She slipped her gnarled hands free of their mittens and tried to rub them back into use. The chill autumnal wind had taken its toll on her worsening rheumatism over the half-day journey from Virginia City.
As her stalwart blue roan Morgan, Jenny, rocked beneath her along the rails of the new streetcar line, a cry pierced the charnel night.
Rash reached for her worn Colt pistol out of habit, but stopped short of drawing it. Reno was a respectable place—a proper town, with electricity and sewers and running water. It was a place for a crippled old gunslinger to domesticate herself and wait for the end, not for shootouts and vigilantism. They’d even outlawed outdoor privies.
Out from the haze in front of her emerged the new bridge that spanned the Truckee. The old iron-arched workhorse that had graced the river banks for decades had finally given way to the modernity of concrete. On the other side of the bridge, Rash knew, stood Mrs. Tolliver’s Boarding House for Aged Ladies. Her destination. Her gallows.
A second shout off to her right gave Rash an excuse to put off Mrs. Tolliver for a spell, so she brought Jenny up to a trot, stopping at the mouth of a poorly lit side street. There, at the fading edge of the nearest street lamp, stood a huge walrus of a man with one one enormous hand wrapped around the collar of a young Coolie girl and the other poking at the chest of a shrinking codger.
The fat man’s eyes darted to Rash, sizing up her breasts and silver hair and immediately dismissing them. His attention returned to the codger.
“No more excuses, Peasy,” he said, jerking the girl against his stained shirt. “I’m collecting on what you owe me.”
“Please,” the old man said, dropping to his knees. “She’s my niece.”
Rash shook her head. She could only see the codger’s back from her position, but his weakness sickened her. Pleading words might bend ears, but fists could break both faces and resolve.
“She don’t much resemble you,” the big man said, caressing the girl’s tender cheek with a rough and calloused hand. “But, niece or no, she’ll fetch a nice price in San Francisco with them pretty green eyes.”
Rash winced. Whatever this was, it was none of her concern. She glanced toward the bridge. The boarding house had expected her hours ago.
As Rash debated her next move, the girl screeched in defiance and drove her flimsy knee into the big man’s nethers with a quick twist of her body.
He bent in half at the waist with a grunt, but kept a firm grip on her collar. Scarcely had the air left his throat when the sound rolled into a deep belly laugh.
“You punch like a girl,” he said, then swung his fist into her little belly.
“No!” the codger screamed as the girl dropped in a heap to the swirling dirt.
Rash mouthed a fresh handful of cloves from her pocket to calm her aching teeth and slipped from the saddle.
“Is that any way to treat a perfectly fine girl?” she asked.
The fat man turned to her with fire in his eyes. “She ain’t a girl. She’s a Chinkie whore. Or will be soon enough.”
Rash caressed her horse’s shoulder. “Jenny here may have four hooves and a tail, but that don’t give me cause to abuse her.”
“Who asked you for your opinion, you old crone? Go back to your sewing circle.”
She smiled and felt the trail fatigue lift from her shoulders. “I go where I please, when I please it.”
“Then you’ll be pleasing to move on,” he replied, opening his coat to show off one of those new cartridge pistols.
Rash freed her Colt and trained it on his fat face. “I’m inclined to disagree,” she said.
His scowl became a grin as he forgot about the kid and the codger and took a step toward her, accepting her challenge.
The Colt wavered in Rash’s grip, her troubled joints acting up after the long ride.
“Know how to use that thing, grandma?” he asked.
“Take another step and find out.”
The man hesitated, troubled by her words. Then he laughed.
“I don’t think you’ve gotten the full measure of who you’re tangling with here,” he said.
“Then you better get gone before I measure out nine tangled yards from that voluminous paunch of yours.”
He laughed again and took a step toward her. Cemeteries were full of those who’d died for less.
She slipped her finger onto the trigger.
Or rather, she tried.
For the first time in her life, her trigger finger let her down. Pain she could handle—she had laudanum for that—but this was different; her finger plum refused to move.
Like some summertime greenhorn, her eyes darted to the pistol, as if the problem rested with it instead of her failing body.
That was all it took.
In a flash, the big man fell upon her. His hand was hard as granite as it cracked across her face. She collapsed much like the girl had, a silly old woman overstaying her welcome in a young man’s world.
When she regained her faculties, she chanced a glance upward. The man towered above her, inspecting the Colt he had stripped from her hand as she fell.
“What museum did you lift this piece of shit from?” he asked.
Before she could answer, he turned his back on her and walked over to the crumpled form of the kid.
“No,” the codger said, still on his knees. “Please…”
The big man smiled and tossed the Colt to the dirt in front him.
“Do something about it,” he said, then wound the girl’s black hair around his fist twice and dragged her toward Jenny and the main thoroughfare.
Rash glared at the old man, her cheek hot and sore for refusing to turn the other one.
“Shoot him,” she whispered.
Tears streamed down from the codger’s pained, impotent eyes. Rash followed his gaze to his hands — which were conspicuously absent, taken with his arms above the elbow. He was more useless than she was.
Rash sighed, though whether in exasperation or relief, she couldn’t quite tell. She was going to have to take the big man out herself. Truth be told, she preferred it that way.
Using a knee for support, she worked her way to her feet. Once there, she glanced from the Colt resting at the old man’s feet to her own unreliable hands and instead reached for the sheath strapped to the thigh of her blue denim XX’s.
With practiced ease, she withdrew her Confederate side knife, wrapping her fingers around its rheumatism-friendly D guard. The big man was oblivious to her presence right up to the moment she seized his shoulder with one hand and thrust the lengthy blade into his spine with the other.
He dropped to his dead and useless legs at once, but Rash stopped him from falling onto his face with a firm grip on the back of his long, greasy locks. Then, without hesitation, she yanked the knife from his back and drew it across his throat, leaving him to fade into a puddle of bloody mud.
“Thirty-one,” she whispered.
Scarcely had she sheathed her blade when the old man was at her side, struggling in vain to lift the girl.
“We’ve got to make ourselves scarce,” he said. “Nobody can know we were here.”
“But this is a respectable town,” Rash replied, helping him drag the girl to her unsteady feet. “The Sheriff will understand. And I’d wager a man this mean’s bound to have some paper on him. Claim the bounty for yourselves. Maybe it’ll extricate you from whatever straits brought him after you in the first place.”
“An estimable plan, no doubt,” the old man said. “I just see one flaw.”
“What?”
He glanced at the gluttonous corpse gurgling its last at their feet.
“That’s the Sheriff right there. Don’t think he’ll be understanding much of anything until Lucifer shows up to drag him toward hellfire and perdition.”
Rash chuckled. Maybe Reno wasn’t quite so respectable after all.
Leaving the kid and the old man to find their own way home, Rash mounted Jenny and urged her toward the new bridge. When she reached it, however, she hesitated, peering down between the swaying cottonwood trees into the rushing waters of the Truckee.
The last time she’d crossed them had been in the womb, sixty years earlier, on the way to Mr. Sutter’s New Helvetia. There hadn’t even been a bridge then. Or a ferry. Or a Reno. Her parents had forded the river hereabouts, at what was then called Big Meadows in the Mexican province of Alta California.
Times had changed since then.
She glanced across the modern concrete bridge, along the streetcar rails, to the new and sprawling Masonic Lodge. A left turn just beyond the Lodge would bring her to the ornate Victorian lines of Mrs. Tolliver’s boarding house—lines that she’d only ever seen on the handbill that had convinced her to fork out for ten years in advance and retire, owing to her declining health. But now, on the cusp of making that change a reality, she felt herself wavering.
A glance over her shoulder picked out the old man and the kid, struggling their crippled way in the opposite direction.
Tolliver could wait one more day.
Rash turned Jenny around and chased down the sorry duo stumbling through the dust behind her.
“I’ll take the girl home,” she said when she reached them, massaging her stiff and aching knuckles.
The old man frowned. “What about me?”
Rash glanced at his useless stumps. Without hands, he was nothing but an effete, dependent coward and she hated him for it.
“You can walk.”
He snuck a peek at the large knife strapped to her thigh, still stained in Sheriff’s blood.
“All right,” he said.
After they’d hefted the kid in front of Rash in the saddle, the old man held out his stump.
“The name’s Dandridge K Peasy, but everyone calls me Dandy,” he said. “And that’s my niece, Lila.”
Rash didn’t know what to do with the useless limb, so she let it hang.
“Which way’s home?” she asked.
He pointed Southwest and she took off, leaving him to bring up the rear.
Eventually, the buildings thinned and then vanished completely, leaving Rash and her ailing cargo in the dark and biting outskirts. Several rough roads twisted in various directions before them. There was nothing for it but to idle among the bitterbrush and hopsage of the arid steppe and await further instructions.
Lila stirred in front of her. “My belly hurts.”
Rash peeked over her shoulder. Dandy trailed them by a dusty furlong.
“We’ll get you home, kid,” she said, nudging Lila’s elbow. “You’ll be safe tonight.”
When the old man finally caught up to them, Rash let him navigate the labyrinth of diverging paths. After a spell, he slowed to Jenny’s side.
“Where you from?” he asked, glancing up at Rash.
“Mexico.” It was true enough.
He squinted, inspecting her face in the slight moonlight.
“You don’t look like no Mexican I ever seen.”
Rash spat out a mouthful of spent cloves, forcing Dandy into a patch of awn-riddled squirreltail in order to avoid it.
“I’m from Illinois, myself,” he said after he’d returned to her side, picking the prickly awns from the seat of his pants. “Did my bit for the Union and then moved out West with Mrs. Peasy. Never looked back.”
Lila groaned again. She needed tending.
“Is Mrs. Peasy waiting for you two at home?” Rash asked.
Dandy dropped his head. “Ingeborg’s with God now. And he’s lucky to have her.”
“What about Lila’s people?”
“You’re looking at him. Her mother, Inge’s niece, was a troubled girl. Came out West to stay with us in ’92, but couldn’t take the quiet and moved to San Francisco shortly thereafter. She loved the city, but it didn’t love her back. First she got pregnant, then she got consumption. They gave her a pneumothorax for treatment, but it didn’t take, so I brought her and Lila out of that damn fog and straight to Reno for some clean air.”
“Did it work?”
“No. She died shortly thereafter.”
Glimpses of Rash’s own mother sprang to mind. Hair the color of the Forty Mile Desert. Eyes as deep and blue as Tahoe.
“Consumption is a devil,” she said.
“Oh, it weren’t consumption that did her in. Poor thing didn’t even have the ailment. Turned out it were syphilis the whole time. Only had time for one inunction of mercurous chloride before the Lord came a callin’. What do you think of that?”
Rash picked a bit of clove husk from her teeth. “I think laying with a man is a losing proposition.”
“Reckon it’s the same way with women,” Dandy said. “But it’s an itch needs scratching.”
“Not for me. I ain’t never laid with no man and I ain’t got no itches to scratch because of it.”
“Never? But what about love?”
“I’ve got enough liabilities,” she said, brushing at the dust on her boot. “Why would I invite one more?”
Dandy led them through the dark, chill night until they had climbed free of the steppe and into rocky foothills of juniper and mountain mahogany. Eventually, they reached a wide and weathered pinyon pine at the head of a gentle draw and he would go no further.
“What’s wrong?” Rash asked.
“We’re here.”
She stared into the darkness at the bottom of the draw. “I don’t see nothing.”
“Believe me. It’s there.”
“Then take us home, old man.”
Dandy stiffened. “No how,” he said. “Could be anything down there waiting for us.”
“Like what?”
“The Sheriff.”
“That problem is solved, I’d reckon,” she said, slapping the hilt of her side knife.
“That man you killed was called Carney, a Sheriff in name only. Big and mean, surely, but slow of wit. The smarts of the outfit lie with his chief deputy, Fouch. He’s the one you ought be worried about.”
“I ain’t worried. I’m tired. And cold. You can hide up here all night if you want, but I aim to find this kid a bed.”
Not waiting for a response, she urged Jenny to the bottom of the draw, where the rough outline of a leaning cottage emerged.
“Hey, Fouch!” she shouted at it. “I killed your man Carney. You gonna stand for that?”
Other than a grumbled curse at the head of the draw from Dandy, her goading was met by silence.
“Ain’t nobody here, old man,” she called up to the pinyon.
Again, silence.
“He ran off,” Lila’s delicate voice mumbled in front of her. “He does that sometimes.”
Rash shook her head and led them through the brisk quietude, bypassing several dilapidated outbuildings before alighting at the cottage. After tying Jenny off on the porch rail and easing Lila from the saddle, she pushed her way through the front door.
The entry room, Rash discovered after Lila directed her to a kerosene lamp, shared its space with a kitchen along the rear wall. To the left and right were doors that led to a pair of bedrooms on one side and a three-season porch on the other.
Rash helped Lila into one of the bedrooms, then out of her fraying dress and into bed. When she returned to the kitchen, a figure stood in the open front doorway.
She snapped her Colt from its holster, ready to put down the intruder, when it screamed like a resident of Mrs. Tolliver’s upon a rodent sighting.
“Welcome back, Dandy,” she said, lowering her pistol, relieved she wouldn’t have to put her trigger finger to the test again.
“Want something to drink?” he asked, his face peeking out from the other side of the doorjamb.
Rash dropped into a chair at the oversized table. “Please.”
She watched as he ambled into the kitchen and opened the pantry door, slipping one of his stumps through a hide loop on its handle. He withdrew two shot glasses, one at a time, and transferred them to the table between the ends of his foreshortened arms. Then he returned to the pantry for a dusty bottle of spirits.
“You got aquavit in Mexico?” he asked, his tongue dodging out the corner of his mouth in concentration as he guided the carefully balanced bottle to the table. “This is a special kind. Line aquavit. Ever heard of it?”
Rash knew the stuff, of course, as any Norwegian would. Linje akevitt had a unique taste—one that could only be achieved through lengthy hardship at sea. Oak barrels of the stuff were sent out on ships to be tossed and weatherbeaten before finally becoming hardened to their circumstances and emerging a very different beast than what had left port. She could relate.
“You’ll have to pour,” Dandy said, sitting opposite her.
Rash poured herself a shot.
“SkÃ¥l,” she said, then downed it.
Licorice and caraway burned her throat, giving way to a lingering herbal essence.
“Don’t you mean ‘Salud’?” Dandy asked.
“Yeah,” she said, tossing another shot down her throat. “Salud.”
Dandy glanced at his empty glass. “What about me?”
“I don’t drink with cowards,” she said, pouring herself a third.
His face fell. “But it’s my liquor!”
“Call it a partial payment for saving your niece.” She slammed the third shot. Why waste the laudanum if the akevitt was free? “Now go put up my horse. You got a barn, right?”
“Yes, but…” he said, extending his stumps.
“You got toes, ain’t you?”
Dandy’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
Rash stood up way too fast. “Fine,” she said, steadying her wobbling legs with a hand on the table edge. “But you’ll have to lead me.”
“No how,” he replied. “Fouch might be out there, lying in wait.”
“Ain’t nobody out there.”
“Easy for you to say,” he said. “You’re armed to the teeth.”
Rash unsheathed her knife and held it out to him. “Here you go.”
His face reddened. “You bitch!” he shouted. “You know I can’t do nothing with that.”
Rash just laughed, replacing her blade. “Least I know there’s a little fire left in your belly. You sure you won’t join me?”
“Ain’t no way I’m going outside until sunup,” he said.
She laughed again. “Sunup just makes it easier for them to get a bead on you. I would’ve figured a coward like you would prefer to slink about in the night.”
“I don’t have to take this in my own home!” he screeched. Then, calmer, “I’m going to bed.”
“And I’m supposed to put up my own horse and watch over you two while you’re sleeping for no pay but room and boring conversation?”
Dandy frowned. “Take the aquavit. Goes for five dollars a bottle. Plus you’ve already drank half of it.”
“It’s three dollars a bottle, but that’ll do for the night. I’ll be expecting a nice breakfast in the morning for my troubles, though.”
“You can eat trail dust on your way out of my sight come morning,” he said. “The gall on you, thinking you can talk to a man the way you do. Why, if I had hands on me, I’d beat you into the kitchen to make me a nice breakfast like a proper woman should.”
Rash’s face turned to stone. “You never asked me my name,” she said.
“I don’t give a—”
“Ever heard of Silje Rash?” she asked.
Dandy paled. “The Headhunter? Ain’t she dead?”
She snapped her gun from its holster and clapped it atop the table. “Not dead. Just old.”
Dandy raised his stumps in surrender, realizing his mistake. “I meant no offense, Miss Rash,” he said. “I offer my heartfelt apologies. I’m a bit sensitive to my condition is all.”
“Go to bed, Dandy.”
Dandy stood up and, without further protest, closed himself up in the vacant bedroom. Through the thin walls, Rash could hear him grumbling to himself, “I knew she weren’t no Mexican.”
Rash hobbled outside on exhausted legs and led Jenny toward Dandy’s barn in the dark night. Halfway there, as the wind picked up, she paused and let it blow its chill breath across her chapped face.
The skin on the back of her neck stiffened and a powerful feeling of possibility and potential overcame her, along with something else that was harder to explain. An arrival perhaps, or a sense of completion, as if she had reached a pinnacle. Or passed one.
She stood in the cold, desolate depression of Dandy’s little sink, holding on to the present moment and willing herself to remain in it forever. If only she could. If only moments weren’t fleeting, destined to recede. She knew that this one would take with it any hope of a dignified future. Tolliver awaited her. Perhaps if she gritted her teeth and forced her gnarled hands into fists against her thighs, she could stay here, alone with Jenny, independent, strong.
But her joints ached and her teeth hurt and her thoughts were muddled and slow. Life was a cocksucker, sharing its highs only as a tease to heighten its later humiliations. If her younger self had run into this old lady she’d become, she wouldn’t even have noticed. Old ladies were irrelevant, trains on a different track, weak.
So Rash left her moment behind and brought Jenny into the barn. No other animals remained, but she found a stack of fresh-smelling hay in a clean enough stall and set the old nag up for the night in it. She left the heavy saddlebags there, carrying with her only the necessities: laudanum and her powder flask and the loose cloves in her pockets.
On the way back to the house, Rash again stopped, trying to reconnect with her fleeting moment. But it was gone, replaced with bitter cold and emptiness, like a pall might find six feet down on a day of saturating rain.
The kerosene lamp was still burning in the kitchen when she returned, so she snuffed it out and made her careful way into Lila’s bedroom. After stripping down to her longjohns, she slipped under the covers beside a matted mass of black hair that wheezed softly as it slept.
She didn’t much mind sharing a bed with a Coolie like some might. Truth be told, she felt more camaraderie then contempt as she lay beside Lila. Perhaps even a burgeoning affection.
Rash frowned. As old age hardened her joints, it also seemed to be softening her heart.
The akevitt proved inadequate to induce sleep, but three drops of laudanum mixed finally put her down for the night.
Rash awoke to the stench of smoke and charred bodies. Raging flames blinded her with their searing light as she struggled to get her bearings. Her hand searched out her Colt beneath the pillow, where she always kept it, but came up empty. They would be waiting outside, whoever lit this fire, ready to shoot her down when she bumbled out. She needed to find her gun.
“Breakfast is ready,” a small, sweet voice said from the doorway.
Rash stopped, confused. When the room stopped spinning, she fought through a shaft of bright sunlight and spotted a pallid, wax-faced Coolie girl wearing an austere apron and a toothy smile stained by the tinge of fresh blood.
“I burned the bacon,” Lila said, “but that’s the way Dandy likes it.”
When Rash finally made it out to the table, dressed once again in her range clothes and holstered Colt, she felt pretty good. The wear-and-tear of yesterday’s journey had caught up to her the moment she rose out of bed, of course, but a few more drops of laudanum and a swig of akevitt had improved her disposition considerably.
Dandy, clad in a tattered silk housecoat, was already at the table and focused on cinching an apparatus of buckled leather straps capped by a metal spoon to his right stump with his teeth.
“Do you drink coffee?” Lila asked her, taking a break from filling a dented metal cup with the stuff to cough a smear of crimson into a dingy handkerchief. Carney had sure done a number on her.
“Yeah,” Rash replied, watching as the girl added four scoops of powdered milk and three of sugar to the cup and then set it in front of Dandy, who didn’t so much as nod in appreciation.
She brought Rash a similar cup of coffee, then returned with a paper straw and two aspirin for each of them. She slipped Dandy’s pills in his mouth, which he downed with the coffee, but Rash simply pocketed hers. No sense in making it any easier for her enemies to bleed her.
As Lila cut up a few burnt rashers and hot slapjacks and dumped them into a bowl under a deluge of thinned molasses, Rash took a sip of her coffee, then inspected it to make sure she wasn’t drinking out of the spittoon.
The girl prepared two more bowls of food and placed them before Dandy and Rash, keeping the first one for herself next to the cook stove, where she remained.
“Sit down with us, honey,” Dandy said to her. “Rash don’t mind.” He glanced at Rash. “Do you?”
Rash shook her head and Lila hobbled to the table, sitting down with a ruddy grin.
“Lila’s father was an Oriental, but I don’t blame her for it,” he explained, dropping to the table to scoop up a spoonful of food with his apparatus. “When people ask about her funny eyes, I just tell them it’s a birth defect and the good Lord don’t mind ’cause it ain’t really a lie.”
Rash scraped as much of the molasses as she could to one side and took a bite of her food, trying to distract her desire to punch the old man in the face. Then, as she winced from the painful sweetness, a rapping came at the front door.
Dandy froze, the color draining from his cheeks. Rash stood up and reached for her holster.
“Stay here,” Dandy told her.
He walked to the door and bent down to push on the lever with a stump to open it. Before he could do that, however, the door swung into his face amid a hail of laughter.
“Sorry,” a man said on the other side of him, blocked from Rash’s view. “Didn’t see you there. It’s almost as if you aren’t a whole man or something.”
“That’s right, Mr. Fouch,” Dandy said. “I apologize. You’re absolutely right.”
Rash stiffened, then began warming up her trigger finger.
“It’s Sheriff Fouch now. We found Carney dead in the streets this morning, his head nearly cut clean off. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“No way, no how, Sheriff Fouch. I didn’t lay a finger on him.”
“Of course you didn’t, Peasy. You don’t have any fingers to lay. But you won’t mind if I take a look inside all the same, would you my friend?”
Fouch pushed past the old cripple and stopped when he spotted Rash.
He was tall, with wide-set, shallow blue eyes and a split chin gouged deeper than a Comstock bonanza. His bearing aped that of a Sierra porcupine, slow and deliberate, at least until he spotted the piece strapped to Rash’s hip. Then he showed his quills, drawing on her in an instant.
He was fast. Much faster than she was. But speed wasn’t everything.
Fouch took a few steps toward her, inspecting her holstered Colt as he moved. Then he laughed and sheathed his weapon.
“For a second, I thought Long John Silverware here finally hired a crew,” he said. “Nice costume, by the way. Is the DAR putting on a show or something?”
Rash smiled, contorting her face into something she hoped approximated innocence. “Something like that.”
She’d take being underestimated over being quick any day of the week for sheer lethality. It had served her well over the years, even more so now that she was gray and wrinkled.
“Would you like to see the pistol, son?” she asked, testing her trigger finger. It felt fairly limber.
“Surely. Does it still fire?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Maybe you can tell me.”
As she drew her Colt, ready to give Fouch the last surprise of his life, two more shooters slipped through the front door next to Dandy.
This was no place for a shootout. Not with the kid sitting right beside her and certainly not with her newly unreliable hands.
With no decent alternative, she handed her Colt to Fouch. He glanced at it and whistled.
“You’ve got a real museum piece here,” he said. “1862 Colt Police, isn’t it?”
Rash opened her mouth to inform him that it was actually an 1862 Pocket Navy, but caught herself in time.
“Is it?” she asked instead.
“And fully loaded as well. You’re lucky we came along.” He turned to one of the two gunmen at the door, both quite young. “Briggs, empty this for the lady. For safety, of course.”
Rash cursed herself. Disarmed with nary a shot fired. Perhaps Mrs. Tolliver’s was indeed the right place for her now.
Briggs took the weapon and stared at it, scratching his head.
“Never seen nothing like this before,” he said.
Fouch sighed. “Then give it to Fremont.”
The other man took it. “Is it a flintlock?” he asked.
“No,” Fouch said. “It’s cap and ball.”
“Never heard of it.”
“What do you mean you never heard of it? It’s what Bill Hickok favored.”
“Who?” the young gunmen asked in unison.
“You mean to tell me you ain’t never heard of Bill Hickok? Wild Bill?”
They both shook their heads.
“What about Jack McCall?”
They shrugged.
“He’s the hombre what killed Bill Hickok,” Fouch said. “Walked up behind him at a card game and pistol shot him dead. Jack McCall’s one of my personal heroes.”
Briggs’s face dropped. “Why would you favor a man what shot another in the back?” he asked.
“Jack McCall was nothing but a run-of-the-mill drunk and two-bit gambler,” Fouch said. “Yet here he gunned down one of the most famous gunslingers around. Imagine it.”
“What happened to him?”
“Hanged. But that don’t take nothing away from his ideas. That’s why, when I was old enough, I tracked down his brother and killed him on the streets of Abilene.”
“Why?”
“Same reason Jack McCall had for his deed. Notoriety.”
“So his brother was a gunfighter?”
“No. A druggist. Didn’t matter. It got my name out there.” Fouch took the Colt back from Fremont and glanced at Rash. “Now, whenever I find me a famous shooter I add another trophy to my collection. I guess you could call it my hobby. Jim Younger and Dick Liddle might call it their epitaph. And it’s only getting easier nowadays, what with the real gunfighters getting older and all. Some say Bill Hickok only got killed because of his advanced age. He was nearly forty.”
With that, he pointed the Colt through the open door and emptied it into the distance.
“There,” he said, presenting the pistol back to Rash. “It’s safe for you to have now, sugar.”
Rash held her tongue as Fouch motioned to his men. “Search the place.”
Briggs and Fremont snaked through the house, turning it upside down.
“Ain’t nothing in here worth nothing,” they announced when the task was done.
Fouch ambled over to Lila, still seated in her chair, stopping directly behind her. Dark bags hung from her helpless eyes like lingering bruises, contrasting paraffin skin and pallid lips imbued with the faint blush of a strawberry heart.
“Well then,” he said, grinning at Dandy as he dropped his hands onto Lila’s cowed shoulders, his eyes betraying a deep malevolence. “You’ve got a day to come up with my money, otherwise I’ll be back for your little mandarin orange here. She may not be quite ripe just yet, but I know several buyers who prefer green fruit.”
Rash glanced at her pistol. Reloading cap and ball took time, which was the one thing she didn’t have. Killing three attentive men with her side knife didn’t strike her as particularly feasible either. She didn’t have a choice. She’d have to let them get away with their molestations. For now.
Fouch dragged his rough fingers up Lila’s shivering neck, lingering for a moment at her jaw line. Then he released her, blowing out the front door with his men.
The menace gone, silence descended on the house. Rash stood in place, infuriated by her impotence. Lila remained in her chair, frozen. Dandy moved first, walking to the table and taking a seat in front of his cold breakfast.
He tried to dip his spoon apparatus into his food as if nothing were wrong, but the shaking utensil betrayed his inner turmoil. He slammed his spoon against the tabletop. Once. Twice. Then he attacked the leather straps with his teeth, pulling and gnashing until he’d shed the apparatus.
His bowl was still in front of him. He swung at it with a stump, red-faced and furious, but missed. This only enraged him further. The next swing connected, knocking the sticky bowl to the floor. He pushed his way to his feet, staring around the room like a wild man in search of something to hit. Distracted, his foot slid through the spilled food, dropping him to his tailbone.
There he sat, wheezing for breath, snot running from his nose beneath glassy eyes, while Lila scrambled to clean up his mess. After a moment, he wiped his snotty nose with the sleeve of his ratty housecoat.
“I’m going back to bed,” he said.
As soon as he was gone, Rash moved to Lila’s side. Tears streamed down the kid’s flushed face, dripping onto the sticky pile of food she’d corralled with her hands.
“Stop crying,” Rash told her.
But she wouldn’t. She just sat there, shuddering—the eerie silence of it broken only by the occasional escaping whimper.
So Rash slapped her in the face.
The kid snapped to attention, glaring with wide, wild eyes.
“You cry when you’re safe,” Rash said. “Not when you’re still in danger. Come with me. We’re gonna learn you a thing or two.”
Rash led Lila to the front door and peeked outside. Fouch and his men were milling around near the barn, puffing on cigarettes. When all three had their backs to them, Rash and Lila slipped through the door and around the far side of the house. From there, they tromped through a narrow trail in the brush, eventually cresting a small rise and descending into a low box canyon.
“Where we going?” Lila asked.
“To the only school that matters.”
Halfway to the back wall of the canyon, Rash spotted a promising dead snag. Standing at the height of a well fed man, with broken branches on opposite sides, it looked the perfect target dummy. Rash balanced a fat pinecone scrounged from the nearby underbrush on top as a head and backed off five yards from it with Lila.
She pulled the Colt from its holster and held it off to one side, pointed at the dirt.
“There’s three hammer positions you gotta worry about,” Rash said, demonstrating. “This here’s safe, with the hammer forward. See how it’s pressing against that pin between the chambers of the cylinder? That’s how you want it. Always on a pin; never on a chamber.”
Lila stared at her. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the world don’t respect girls. Or Coolies. Or old women, for that matter. But it sure as hell respects guns, regardless of who is attached to them.”
The kid nodded. “Show me.”
Rash pulled the hammer back all the way. “Fully cocked means you’re ready to shoot. We ain’t, so I’m gonna take it back down to a half cock. There. See how the cylinder spins now? That’s for cleaning and loading and taking it apart. To go back to safe, you hold on to the hammer, pull the trigger, and then ease to hammer forward. Like this. Now you try it.”
She handed the pistol to Lila. After verifying she had it pointed in a safe direction, the kid pulled it into a half cock, spun the cylinder, and then eased it back onto a safety pin.
“Like you were born to it,” Rash said, smiling. Then she took back the pistol and instructed Lila on how to charge the chambers with powder, squeeze the lead balls into them with the loading plunger, and seal them in with a smear of grease.
“What’s the grease for?” Lila asked.
“Prevents flashover. Without it, all five chambers are liable to blow at once.”
“Okay. And now we’re done?”
“Nope. Still gotta fit the caps to the nipples. Then we’re done.”
Lila pursed her lips. “This is a lot of work. Why don’t you just get one of them new guns like Fouch has?”
“Because I’ve had Ulysses here for forty-four years and he’s never let me down. Plus, he fits my hand.”
“But what good does it do me learning how to use some old gun nobody uses no more?”
“If you can shoot cap and ball, you can shoot anything. Now watch.”
Rash showed her how to fit the caps, then yanked back the hammer all the way and aimed at the dead snag.
“See how my feet are as wide as my shoulders? I’ve got my knees bent a little, I’m leaning toward the target, and I’ve got two hands on my Colt. That’s what you want: stability.”
Lila frowned. “But that’s not how a real cowboy does it at all,” she said. “They do it like this.” She dropped her hands to her hips and then whipped them forward, modeling them into pistols and blasting at the snag.
“That’s a good way to get yourself killed,” Rash said, chuckling. “Any fool can shoot like that if they’re touring with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, but it ain’t no trifle when your life’s on the line. While I’m taking my time, you’ll be shooting over my head right up to the point I plug you dead. That’s where you can find advantage. Stay cool and calm and patient and you’ll live a long time.”
Rash adjusted her grip, getting a feel for how her hands were working. They felt good, warm, much better than the day before. Her joints still hurt, of course, but they were compliant. She slipped her finger over the trigger and fired off all five shots, pummeling the snag with a tight spread between its arms. In an instant she felt her old self return. Strong. Confident. Capable.
She handed Lila the pistol and the reloading supplies. “Your turn.”
The kid got straight to work.
“So how did Dandy lose his hands?” Rash asked after a moment.
“Hold on,” Lila replied. “I’m concentrating.”
“I know. That’s why I’m asking. Gunfights don’t stop just so you can reload. You’ve got to be able to do two things at once.”
Lila squinted. “Okay. It was at Gettysburg. On Cemetery Ridge. He was there when that stubborn Pickett made his charge. All the other Union soldiers with him got killed, but he held the high ground, using the muskets of the dead so he didn’t have to stop to reload. Then, just as reinforcements showed up and helped him chase off that damn Pickett, a cannonball blew up and took his arms. He tried to chase after the General with a knife in his mouth, but the other soldiers wouldn’t let him.”
Rash stared at the kid. “That’s quite a story,” she said at last. She didn’t necessarily believe a word of it, but if it contained even a kernel of truth, perhaps she had underestimated Dandy.
“All done,” Lila said, handing the Colt to Rash.
After a quick inspection, she deemed it ready to fire and passed it back to the kid.
Lila spread her feet as wide as her shoulders, finding stability. Then she raised the pistol with both hands and slipped her finger over the trigger.
“Breathe out as you pull. But be careful. It’s going to kick a bit.”
The Colt exploded into action, firing a lead ball into the dirt several feet in front of the snag and spewing up a plume of dust.
“I thought that might happen,” Rash said. “You were expecting the kick, so you braced for it and fired into the dirt. Try not to do that. And lean forward, toward the target. Remember, you’re in command here.”
Lila took a deep breath and aimed again. Rash stepped behind her, peering down the sights.
“If you aim for the head, you’ll miss. It’s a small target. What you want to hit is the chest. Even if you’re off a bit, you’ll still strike something important.”
The muzzle dropped a bit.
“And if you want to hit the chest with this gun, you’ve got to aim low.”
“How low?” Lila asked.
Rash grinned. “I always aim for the nethers. Usually hits them in the ribs, but I find it quite satisfying.”
“But then why do they call you The Headhunter?”
“I may not drop them with a head shot, but I always finish them with one. Some shooters are stubborn about death. Never leave them twitching.”
Lila fired off another shot. It struck the snag true, if a little off to one side, and knocked the fat pinecone to the ground.
As it lolled back and forth in the dirt, Lila ambled over and blasted it with another lead ball.
Rash nodded her head in approval, unable to hide her smirk.
“I like your style, kid.”
After Lila finished off the last of Rash’s bullets, they made their way out of the dead end canyon.
“Can I have some of that?” Lila asked as Rash took another dip from her pocket.
“What? Cloves?”
Lila nodded and Rash passed her a good-sized wad, which she stuffed in her mouth and crunched down on. Seconds later, her eyes began to water. Then her confident grin dropped into a frown and she spat the little buds to the ground.
“They taste like pennies!” she said, licking her sleeve to get rid of the flavor. “Hot pennies. And they made my tongue go numb. Why do you eat those?”
Rash just laughed. “Come on,” she said.
“Where we going now?”
“To the barn. We’re out of ammo. Need to resupply from the bags I left with Jenny.”
“And then what?”
“Then you escape this place.”
Lila stopped. “Escape?”
“Hell yes, escape. You can’t stay here. Not with those wolves howling at your door.”
“What about Dandy?”
“Cut him loose. He’s dead weight dragging you to your death.”
“But I can’t leave him.”
“Of course you can.”
“I’m only twelve. And a girl. A half-breed girl. There’s no place for me without him.”
“Then make a place,” Rash said. “That’s what I did. Ain’t nobody gonna make one for you.”
“How?”
“First you make yourself scarce. Then fierce. I’ve got paper money and gold in my bags. It’s yours. I’ll even get you out of town, but then I never want to see you again.”
Lila crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving Dandy. I promised auntie Inge.”
“Look, girl,” Rash said, grabbing the kid’s hand and dragging her along the path. “I don’t think you quite apprehend the current state of affairs. Fouch and his boys are coming back tonight to take you by force. We have to get you out of here. Dandy can’t protect you.”
“But you can.”
“I’m old. And slow.”
“You told me slow was good and fast was bad…”
Rash glanced at her disfigured fingers. “Soon enough I’ll be as useless as Dandy.”
“Then I can take care of you both. We can all live together…”
“Shut up about that. I ain’t saddling you with two invalids. Besides, there’s still Fouch and his boys to worry about.”
“If you’ve got money,” Lila said, tugging against Rash’s hand, “why don’t you just use it to pay off Dandy’s debt?”
Rash scowled at her. “I don’t bail out cowards. And I certainly don’t pay off thugs like Fouch. Now shut up or I’ll do what I should’ve done in the first place and steer clear of your problems.”
They walked in silence the rest of the way to the barn. When they reached it, they found Dandy outside, kicking at the dirt by its doors.
Rash gutted the growing slurry of clove in her mouth. Getting Lila out of there peacefully just got a lot more difficult.
“Beautiful day, ain’t it Miss Rash?” he asked.
She followed his gaze toward the young sun, which already burned bright despite its tight grip on the horizon. Perspiration dotted her forehead and shaded the curling ends of her sodden silver locks. It was hot, and well out of character with autumnal expectations. She wondered briefly if this was what the hell would feel like.
“You know what they call weather like this?” she asked.
“Tell me.”
“Indian Summer. It ain’t real. Just a last gasp of heat before winter sets in.”
She made to enter the barn, but Dandy stepped into her path.
“Did I ever tell you about my military service?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, annoyed by his clumsy attempt to delay her. “But the kid says you lost your arms at Gettysburg.”
Dandy raised his eyebrows and glanced at a flushing Lila. “My niece is real fond of telling tales. Probably had me accepting Lee’s surrender at Appomattox personally. Did she mention she was born a Nipponese Princess?”
“She was?”
“Absolutely not,” he said with a nervous laugh. “She ain’t even Nipponese. Her mother was a full-blooded Norwegian that bedded a Chinaman for a night and spat out his seed nine months later. Never heard from him again.”
“So you didn’t lose your arms at Gettysburg?”
“No. Made it through the war with body intact. Never even got east of Tennessee, though Gettysburg may have been preferable to Stone River and Chickamauga. Wasn’t until the magazine went up at the Bodie Mine in ’79 that I lost my hands.”
“Interesting,” Rash said. “Now get out of the way so I can tend to my horse.”
Dandy refused to budge, so she grabbed him by the collar and threw him to the ground. Then she tore open the barn door. And froze.
Jenny was gone.
“What did you do with my horse?” Rash demanded, looming over a sprawled Dandy.
He shuddered, unable to look her in the eyes. “Fouch took it…”
“And how did Fouch know where to find her?”
“I… I told him.”
Since her Colt was empty, she drew her side knife.
“No!” Lila screamed.
Rash turned to her. “Why not? He’s got no purpose. Just makes life harder for you.”
“He’s my uncle!”
“Fine,” Rash said, sheathing her knife. Then she peeked into the barn again and frowned. “Where are my bags?”
The old cripple swallowed hard. “Fouch took everything. Said it bought me an extra month.”
“A month? There was fifty in paper and twice that in gold in there. Enough to clear your entire debt, no doubt.”
“I didn’t know.”
Rash sighed and stepped away from the barn.
“Where you going?” Lila asked.
“To get my horse back. And maybe wake a few snakes.”
“But you don’t got any bullets. You’ll get killed.”
“Maybe.”
The kid scampered to her side and seized her hand. “I’m coming with you.”
“Like hell you are,” Rash said, wrenching free. “The time for that is done. Your deadbeat uncle saw to that.”
“What if you die? What’ll stop them from coming back and taking me?”
Rash picked out the foot of the draw up ahead and made her way toward it. “You’re a smart girl,” she said. “You got a month to figure it out. Least you can shoot now.”
Lila faltered. Rash could hear her tears, but didn’t bother turning around to see them. Soon enough, the kid ran off, back to the awkward embrace of her useless uncle. Less than useless. A liability. A burden.
Rash climbed up the draw and out of the arid little valley, leaving the Peasys to their fate like she should’ve done the night before. Had she done so, she’d be at Mrs. Tolliver’s now, eating good food and relaxing in a padded rocking chair. Instead, they’d ruined Reno for her. Thanks to them, she’d learned that it was nothing like the place she’d hoped for. Fouch was onto her. He’d soon figure out her identity and make a real stink of things.
But all that would come later. Right now, she had a single purpose. Find Jenny.
With her goal firmly in mind, Rash hiked back toward civilization with a new energy, stomping through low clumps of winterfat and sagebrush until the outskirts of town appeared in the distance.
At that point, the heat became too much to bear. She’d left her hat with the Peasys and was paying the price for it.
A lone juniper beckoned from the base of a small rise not far off the trail, inviting her to share in the mottled shade of its sparse boughs before she dragged herself inside the city limits. She wiped the sweat from the back of her neck and headed over.
As she rested, shielded from the relentless sun, she noticed for the first time the symphony of desperate insects surrounding her. They shrieked, chirped, pleaded, all in one final effort to pass on a bit of themselves before this last gasp of unseasonable warmth fell beneath the crushing grip of unassailable winter.
Then, of a sudden, they quieted, revealing the low rumble of approaching horses. A tail of spilled dust drifted above the far side of the rise. Rash found a good vantage point behind a concentration of rabbitbrush and waited, closing her bad eye to improve her long-distance vision.
She picked out Fouch’s telltale chin the instant the riders rounded into view. The group was thundering out of town at breakneck speed, no doubt straight to the Peasy place. They must’ve pieced together her identity from the contents of her saddlebags. Fouch would be gunning for another trophy.
Rash cradled the grip of her empty pistol, though she could do little but pay careful attention to their horses as the men galloped past.
Jenny was not with them.
Once they passed out of sight, Rash eased her way to her feet and made her way into town, braving the sun to continue her search. The Peasys would be all right, she reckoned. Dandy was a coward—he’d tell Fouch how she’d left their company forever at his earliest opportunity and that would be that.
Though the residents in the outskirts weren’t much to look at, the women in the heart of downtown were clad in stylish morning outfits of gored skirts and tailored blouses shaded by wide, elaborate hats. Those without hats tended toward stacked pompadours or tight, Marcelled curls. The civility of it all shocked Rash out of her growing disappointment in the realities of Reno.
Visions of having to hack through Fouch’s garrison of thugs in order to effect a rescue of Jenny evaporated. Despite the Sheriff’s best efforts, this wasn’t a place ruled by the gun. This was a respectable place, and respectable places had laws.
So Rash made her way to the courthouse, a two-story brick building with a balustraded portico and towering cupola dome situated next to the new Riverside Hotel. After grunting her way up the few short steps into the land of law and order, she spotted a clerk seated on a high stool at a hearty wooden table.
“Fouch stole my horse,” Rash told him, not one to mince words.
The clerk reddened and then smoothed out his complexion with a straightening of his lapels.
“‘Impounded,’ is the word I believe you’re looking for,” he said.
Rash crossed her arms. “No, I mean stolen.”
“Impound is around back. Talk to Capps.”
“I’ll talk to you. Fouch is a criminal and I’ll see him dealt with.”
The clerk flinched and glanced at a closed door over his shoulder.
“Don’t let the Judge hear you talking like that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Seems he only does two things anymore: preside over divorces and protect that horse thief of yours.”
Rash squeezed the handle of her knife. “Perhaps I can convince him otherwise,” she said.
A knowing smile crossed the clerk’s face. “I shouldn’t think so,” he said.
“Why not? I can be very persuasive. What’s this Judge’s name?”
“Fouch. Senior.”
Rash released her knife. So much for law and order.
Impound was another brick building, smaller than the courthouse, but no doubt built to match. Large barn doors hung open on its face, guarded by a sleeping man on a bed of compacted straw.
Rash slipped past the man and into the depths beyond. The air smelled of old books, leather, and livestock. Stacks of wooden crates commingled with racks of confiscated effects illuminated by the occasional sunbeam. Near the rear, the livestock odor peaked and Rash discerned a small pen populated by a veal calf and three caged hens. Just beyond them stood a quartet of horse stalls. The first sat empty, but she spotted a familiar shape in the second.
“Why the long face?” she asked, smiling.
Jenny emerged from the darkness, bringing her chin over the low stable door. Rash reached out to stroke her muzzle.
“Stop right there!” a gruff voice shouted.
Rash spun toward the voice, her hand dropping to her empty Colt. She was met by the business end of a shotgun, which quickly diverted to one side.
“Sorry ma’am,” the man who had been sleeping moments earlier said. “I thought you was someone dangerous. What can I do for you?”
Recognizing the equalizing power of a shotgun in an enclosed space, Rash opted to talk this one out.
“This is my horse,” she said.
“Actually, it’s the government’s horse.”
She crossed her arms. “How much is Fouch paying you to say that?”
He sized her up, then spat. “I think you better go,” he said, motioning with his weapon.
“You’re Capps, right? How about I give you five dollars to go back to sleep?”
That caught his interest. “Make it twenty.”
“Done.” She spotted her saddlebags on a nearby crate and headed over to them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“The cash is in my bags.”
“Stay there,” he said. “I’ll look.”
Keeping an eye on Rash, he rifled through her supplies.
“Don’t see no cash,” he said at last.
“What?” She pushed him aside, forgetting about the shotgun, and searched. She found her spare, empty Colt, along with sundry other things, but the paper money was gone. The gold too. “That thieving son of a bitch,” she mumbled to herself.
“No money, no horse,” Capps said. “And if it ain’t here, you best find some more quick. Fouch don’t like the expense of keeping livestock. A buyer for the lot should be showing up this afternoon.”
As he turned to see her out, Rash snatched her spare powder flask from the bag and scurried for the open doors. But she was old now, clumsy, and Capps caught the movement.
“Not so fast. Give me that back.”
“No. I need it.”
“Why? You planning on robbing a bank or something?”
“No,” Rash lied.
He ripped it from her hands.
In her younger years, she would’ve killed him for such an act, damn the repercussions, but she was too old now for the fugitive life. And if she could no longer defend herself to the death, it meant she could no longer demand respect by the gun. If that were the case, she may as well head straight to Mrs. Tolliver’s.
So that’s exactly what she did.
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.
Rash alighted from Jenny at the head of the draw that opened onto Dandy’s property. She didn’t plan on surviving the coming fight and would be damned if she took the old nag down with her. According to Tolliver’s handbill, bands of wild horses roamed the nearby foothills. Jenny’d find them. Hell, she’d probably be leading them in a week’s time.
After stripping the horse bare at the base of the rugged pinyon pine, Rash stuffed the backup Colt into her waistband and mouthed the last of her cloves, luxuriating in the spreading numbness. Then she made her unsteady way to the foot of the draw.
The dilapidated cottage stood a ways off, partially screened by a scattershot of unkempt outbuildings and workstations. There was no sign of Dandy or Lila. Just a lone man in a confident pose blocking the way beside a pile of lazily stacked firewood.
Briggs.
Holding a Winchester.
Rash approached him, testing her fickle hands as she walked. Killing her would be a simple matter with the rifle, but Briggs appeared disinclined to do so. At about fifteen yards, he tossed the Winchester aside and exposed his pistol with a shrug of his coat.
“I reckon what we got ourselves here is a—”
Rash snapped her Colt from its holster and pulled the trigger the second her aim met his groin. Twenty grains of powder threw a thirty-six caliber ball into the gunslinger’s rib cage and dropped him to the dirt. When she reached his groaning body, she quieted him with a second blast and took cover behind the wood pile.
“Thirty-two,” she mumbled to the wind.
A quick movement beyond the far side of the pile drew her Colt. It was Dandy, popping out from a parched horse waterer like a man in desperate need of an eighth hole. He still wore his ratty silk housecoat.
“They got Lila inside,” he shouted over. “There’s two of ’em.”
His eyes shifted to one side. Someone had a gun on him.
That meant three at the very least, she figured.
Rash sighed. This was it then. Oh well. Better to die in a thunderstorm of lead than shitting her pants in some forgotten rocking chair.
She cleared the powder remnants from her pistol with a heavy breath and loaded another two balls and caps as she surveyed her surroundings. Fifty paces ahead, the front door of the farmhouse hung an irresistible few inches ajar. She knew what would be waiting behind it: ambush. Dandy’s side of the wood pile didn’t look much better, bristling as it was with menacing blinds and a hidden gunman. If she wanted to save Lila, she’d have to brave both.
She drew the second Colt and stepped into the open.
To her surprise, no bullets awaited her exit. Whoever had the gun on Dandy appeared content to let her reach the house unimpeded.
Even so, she scrambled for the porch at speed, doing her best to split pistols between Dandy’s horse waterer and the front of the house, expecting the report of hungry gunfire at any moment. Halfway across and fully exposed, she spotted a pair of eyes peering from the bottom of one of two front windows. A single shot from her Colt sent them scurrying back to safety.
When she finally reached the first step, she pushed out a long, calming breath. The thirsty wood creaked beneath her. She knelt down, her knees duplicating the sound, and snuck a peek at Dandy. His chaperone remained hidden.
The wind swirled around her, kicking up devils from the buckling planks. Insects screamed. A blackbird called.
Then, battle.
Shadows flashed behind both front windows at once and she brought her guns to bear on them, forsaking Dandy’s horse waterer. Almost immediately, a cry over her shoulder drew her attention back to the old man.
To her surprise, Fouch had appeared at his side, grappling with him over control of a rifle. The armless codger had his stumps wrapped around the barrel, holding the length of it fast against his neck. It was a valiant effort, but it was over before Rash could have a say in the outcome.
In one quick motion, Fouch disarmed Dandy, stunned him with the butt of the rifle, and turned the weapon on her. She had no place to hide. She was done.
Dandy, however, was not. He regained his footing and threw himself against Fouch, knocking the Sheriff’s aim awry as he fired.
The round missed Rash, punching into the front door above her and kicking it open. Two volleys of gunfire responded from inside, one from either side of the door, as the waiting gunman no doubt assumed Rash was breaching their little fortress. Wood splintered, holes appeared, until finally the door fell from its hinges and the reports of the weapons diminished into distant echoes.
She could hear the shooters shuffling inside, but would have to take on faith that they had emptied their guns fully. It was now or never.
Without wasting a glance on Fouch and Dandy, she tried to rise to her feet, but her body refused to cooperate, as if all the strength had abandoned her legs. She cackled at the absurdity of it all and boosted her way to a standing position on the barrels of her pistols.
Two men she didn’t recognize, posted in opposing doorways and swept up in the process of reloading, greeted her as she entered the house. She put them down with two shots apiece.
There was no further movement, so she lowered her pistols to her sides, wondering if this brave new Dandy had been telling the truth about the number of targets inside.
While she pondered his veracity, Fremont stepped from behind the repositioned akevitt cabinet, leveled gun in one hand and Lila in the other, shielding his body.
“Howdy,” he said.
As Rash brought her Colts to bear on the bastard, his pistol fired. Then her barrels were up and pointed at Lila’s throat. She pulled their triggers, counting on the Pocket Navy’s tendency to shoot high.
Fremont fired again, then tumbled to the floor, taking Lila with him.
Rash hobbled over and rolled him off of the girl with the tip of her boot.
Lila glanced up at her, linen dress stained in dead man’s blood. She smiled. There were cloves in her teeth.
Rash checked herself for holes. Nothing. She’d survived.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“How’d he miss you?” Lila asked.
Rash shrugged. “Nerves. Bad aim. Don’t matter. He’s deader than Honest Abe.”
She put a bullet in each of the men’s heads, emptying her cylinders.
“Better to start clean.”
Lila cleared her throat.
“What?” Rash asked, charging one of the chambers of her cylinder with powder.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Rash furrowed her brow.
“Thirty-five,” the kid said with a smile.
Rash gave her an affectionate cuff on the cheek and finished reloading.
“Lila?” Dandy called out from the horse waterer. “You still with me, honey?”
“We’re here,” the kid shouted back. “Rash killed them all. You should’ve seen it. She came in and—”
“Glad to hear you two are okay,” Fouch’s voice interjected. “Everyone out here is still breathing as well.” A pause. “Well, maybe not Briggs, but he don’t matter. What kind of man ain’t heard of Bill Hickok?”
Rash slid up to the broken front window and peered out. “What do you want, Fouch?”
The Sheriff and his chin were still at the horse waterer, shielded from the wrath of Rash’s Colts by Dandy’s bloody face.
“A trade,” he replied. “You for them. A woman like you’s worth a cripple and a Coolie, I reckon.”
“You’ll let them live? Debt free?”
“Surely. It’s a cheap ante for a shot at your head.”
“Fine. Send him over.”
“I’ll send him halfway. Then you show yourself.”
“Well, stop talking and start doing.”
Fouch prompted Dandy with the rifle and the old cripple walked out from behind the horse waterer. Step by shuffled step, he made his way toward the porch.
“That’s far enough,” Fouch said when he’d reached the halfway point.
Dandy stopped. Fear gripped his sweaty, pale face. But there was something else too. Courage, perhaps. And not the heroic, hill-storming type either—just your basic, run-of-the-mill, pushing on through the terror variety. After all these years, Dandy had finally found his war face again.
Rash almost felt proud to be saving his life.
“All right,” Fouch shouted. “Your turn.”
Rash swallowed the last of her cheeked cloves and turned to Lila.
“When I pass through the doorway, I expect one of two outcomes,” she said. “Either Fouch dies or I do. Should it be the former, you won’t have nothing to worry about. And if it be the latter, we’ve got an ace up our sleeve: Fouch is a man. He won’t be able to resist gloating over my body. That’s when you shoot him. Aim at the waist. Just like I showed you. Got it?”
Lila nodded, but her eyes were glazed over, overwhelmed.
Rash passed one of her pistols into the kid’s shaking hands.
“Remember, the gun does all the work. It don’t care if you’re a kid or Samson of the Israelites. All it wants is a finger. You got a finger?”
Lila nodded again.
“Then use it.”
Rash stood up and squinted out the open door. Fouch was out there, chomping at the bit. On any other day, she’d wait him out inside. Men like Fouch weren’t known for their patience. He’d grow agitated and do something stupid, like bust in on her as had happened so many times before with so many different men. But a move like that would cost Dandy his life and perhaps Lila’s as well.
So she’d be doing the dumb thing today.
She hated the idea of going out at the hands of a man like Fouch, but she wouldn’t have to endure the notion for long. Any such pain would stop when her heart did.
She took what she expected might be one of her last breaths, preparing. Her nose crinkled. Vinegar. Something pickled must’ve gotten shot up in the kitchen. It wasn’t so bad; it took the edge off the stench of meat and blood and powder.
Then she loped out the door, Colt at the ready.
As she stepped onto the porch, she pivoted to the right to draw a bead on Fouch, but Dandy blocked her quarry completely.
Distracted by this complication, she lost focus for an instant and tripped on her own boots. A quick stumble and she was over the edge of the steps, tumbling to the dirt below. There was no time to curse her clumsiness, so she instead concentrated on making a better show of herself, using her momentum to roll onto her knees.
The new angle provided her a straight shot at Fouch, right past Dandy, but that meant the bastard had the same shot at her. And he was already primed to take it.
As his fingers slid over the trigger of his pistol, Rash could see straight down the barrel. That is, until the hideous sight of a ratty silk housecoat got in the way. It was the dumbest possible move Dandy could’ve made, jumping into the line of fire. Dumb and courageous and redemptive. He’d hijacked her endgame.
The old cripple’s torso exploded into three strings of crimson as Fouch’s weapon reported. Rash stared into his wide eyes as he collapsed to the ground, nearly as bewildered as he at his sudden impulse toward selflessness.
She felt his gift in her gut, like a a punch to the belly from an invisible hand. Perhaps she’d been too hard on him.
Then she was on her back, staring up through inattentive eyes at a fading wisp of cloud. She felt sick, like she needed to vomit. Her face flushed and her fingertips tingled. She glanced down at the shirt beneath her coat. Redness crept over it like age had to her once-reliable body. It was wet and warm, like a fresh bath after a long trail run. There was no pain. Just the heat and the sick and a creeping numbness that spread from her core, as if she’d taken thirty grains of calming cloves straight to the solar plexus.
Even in bravery, Dandy couldn’t get out from under failure. He’d spent his life to spare an old lady itching to die, and she’d taken the hit anyway.
Approaching boots crunched in the dirt and she twisted to one side, grimacing against the draining nausea. Suddenly she was in the shade.
Fouch and his ridiculous chin loomed above her, grinning as he dropped the hot casings of his spent cartridges onto her face.
She shook them off and scowled at him.
“Now that’s not very ladylike,” he said. “You should smile more.”
She tried to speak, but only managed a rasp while he reloaded with deliberation.
“Looks like you’ve sprung a leak,” he said, motioning to her wound. “Ain’t that just like a woman to ruin a perfectly fine picnic with her filthy bleeding?”
After sliding six slugs into place, he snapped the cylinder shut. Then he dropped the muzzle to her face, cocking the hammer in the same motion.
“What a waste of life,” he said. “You should’ve stayed at home and made babies like you were meant to. They would’ve been ugly, of course, but at least your life would’ve had value. As it stands, no one will even miss you.”
For the first time in as long as she could remember, a witty rejoinder eluded her. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut, wondering if the shot would hurt. She’d seen all sorts of expressions on the faces of those she’d killed over the years.
But then she heard Fouch lower the hammer with a click and holster his weapon.
She opened her eyes to his smiling face.
“I have a better idea,” he said, easing the forgotten Colt from her hand. “What say I kill you with your own gun?”
A whimper in the doorway drew his attention and he snapped to it with Rash’s pistol at the ready. It was Lila, pants soaking wet and gun hanging at her side.
Fouch laughed. Not at the shaking mess in front of him, but at the gun in his hand.
“I don’t even know if I can shoot this thing,” he said, trying to get a secure grip on the diminutive weapon. “It’s like a toy.”
Lila appeared to snap out of her daze.
“Where’s my Dandy?” she asked him.
“Dead. At my hand. Like you if you don’t mind me.”
In a flash of movement, she raised her gun to his face.
No, Rash thought. Way too high.
But Fouch didn’t think at all, instead relying on the reflex that had kept him alive through years of violence. He slid his index finger for the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Fouch cursed. His fat finger wouldn’t fit behind the trigger guard.
Lila dropped her aim to his waist as he threw the pocket Navy to one side and reached for his own holstered weapon.
The Colt exploded in Lila’s hands, wrenching itself free with the recoil and dropping to her feet.
Fouch staggered to one side, his gun hand frozen against his hip. He coughed twice, fell to one knee, and then collapsed into a heap as they always did.
Not hesitating, Lila snatched up the Colt, walked up to his spasming husk, and blasted him between the eyes.
“One,” she said, her face stoic beneath salted cheeks.
Tears welled in Rash’s eyes, but she couldn’t tell if they were of pride or shame.
Lila knelt at her side.
“Are you gonna die too?” she asked.
Rash pursed her lips. “Won’t know until you lift up my shirt and tell me where I’m bleeding.”
Lila peeled up the fabric carefully, but Rash didn’t feel any pain for once. Not even in her teeth.
“See where I’m bleeding?” Rash asked.
Lila nodded. “Right beside your bellybutton.”
“Is it oozing or gushing?”
“Oozing.”
Gut shot. So much for dying quick and easy.
“What does it mean?” Lila asked.
“It means I’m a corpse with a heartbeat.”
“So you’re gonna die?”
“Fraid so, kid. Slowly. Painfully.”
“Ain’t nothing they can do for it?”
Rash shook her head. “I’ve got laudanum in my pants pocket. Get it for me.”
“What you gonna do with it?” Lila asked.
“I’m gonna end things.”
“No!” Lila shrieked. “You can’t leave me alone!”
“Can’t be helped. I’m leaving. You’d rather me die choking on my own shit in a few days then end things clean right here and now?”
Lila didn’t say anything.
“After I’m gone, I want you to head up to the pinyon. Jenny’ll be there somewhere. Ride her into town. There’s a boarding house for old ladies on Front Street. That’ll be your home until you come of age. It’s all arranged.”
“But I don’t want to live in no house for old ladies…”
“I don’t blame you,” Rash said, grimacing against the nausea. “But you ain’t long for choices. You got no people now. What you do got is five dead lawmen and Chinaman eyes. Worse, you’re a woman. And a young one at that. It’s a bum roll, but it’s what you got. Only thing that’ll stop the world from casting you aside or using you up is a good story. Reckon you got one, especially if you sprinkle it with some of that Dandy at Gettysburg magic. Use it right and the world may just leave you alone.”
“I don’t want the world to leave me alone. And I don’t want to hide behind no story. I want to be fierce. I want to be like you.”
“Well, you can’t be me. My life don’t even work for me no more and I’ve been at it for sixty years. Times have changed. Shoot one cat-caller nowadays and they’ll stick you in that electric chair of theirs.”
Rash winced. The pain was coming at last. “Now get me my laudanum.”
Lila reached into the front pocket of her denim XXs. She searched for a moment, then recoiled in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Rash asked while Lila sucked on a bloody finger.
“Bottle’s smashed.”
Rash sighed. Nothing was ever easy.
“Give me the Colt,” she said.
The kid hesitated.
“Now!”
Lila pressed the pistol into Rash’s hand and maneuvered her arthritic fingers into place.
When Rash tried to raise her gun hand to her head, her arm wouldn’t cooperate. She couldn’t even get it to her heart.
“Help me,” she said.
“What do I do?” Lila asked, tears streaming down her face.
“Bring it up to my head.”
Lila did as she bade, but when she released Rash’s hand, it sprung out of position.
“You have to hold it in place,” Rash said.
Lila brought her hand back up, pinning it in a position where the muzzle pressed against her temple.
“Goodbye, kid,” she said, then tried to pull the trigger.
Her finger wouldn’t move.
She sighed. Her body had finally let her down, and just when she needed it the most.
“You’re going to have to do it,” she told Lila.
“Me?”
“You wanted to be fierce, didn’t you? Here’s your chance.”
Lila wiped her tears away. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said.
“Want don’t enter into it. Just do.”
The kid stood up and cocked the Colt. “Where do you want it?” she asked, aiming at Rash’s forehead.
“Not there,” Rash said. “You’re liable to make me worse than when we started. Put it in my mouth, but aimed up a little. That’ll turn the lights out in a hurry.”
Lila slipped the muzzle into her mouth. She could feel the kid’s shaking hands through her teeth. She wondered if the lights really would turn out in a hurry.
Then the thunderclap came and she never wondered about anything ever again.
Not about Lila pocketing the billfolds of all the dead men surrounding her. Not about the kid loading Jenny heavy and then coming back for the pistols. And certainly not about her brief stop to pick up some dungarees on the way out of town.
South.
To Mexico, and a fresh roll of the dice.
Brian Koukol lives on the Central Coast of California, where he somehow finds time to write between soaking up rays and eating his weight in avocados. This story, like all of his fiction, is written with voice recognition software on account of his lifelong nemesis, muscular dystrophy. Visit his author website.
