Skin folk ain’t kin folk, my father had always said. But in that moment I had no other choice.

  She squinted at me. “Alright. Come here.”

  She took my arm and dragged me into a little building behind the saloon.

  It was more of a shack, really, but a cozy one. The faces of two small children peeped out from under an old blanket on the floor. One of those children was lighter than the other, and had very green eyes.

  “Git to bed!” she hissed at them. Giggling, they ducked under the blanket.

  “I just stepped out for a second,” she said. “Was deliverin’ these peaches to my momma. She’ll be expectin’ me.”

  “Your momma? You mean Maureen?”

  “Yeah.”

  She folded her arms. “Now who would you be?”

  “Ada Bell,” I said. “It’s a very long story, but some white man in there is tryin’ to sell me out. I came into town with some cowboys- they hung one today- and I ran into this man I knew from out East. He started claimin’ I was a runaway. Wanted me to sport to make him some money. I got him drunk and ran away.”

  “Alright.”

  “And you are?”

  “Bluesy,” she said. “Those chil’ren there are my girls. Sadie and Thelma.”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Bluesy.”

  She nodded. “I hear your story, Ma’am, but I can’t be hidin’ you out here for long.”

  “Just for the night,” I begged.

  She bit her lip.

  “I’ll slip out in the mornin’,” I promised.

  I would have said or done anything at that point to keep from being sent back into that tavern. But Bluesy was a better woman than her mother. She set me up in the rocking chair and went back out with her basket of peaches.

  The minutes stretched on and on. I felt I might go mad in the close air of the cabin. A part of me feared that Bluesy might have gone to her mother’s and ratted me out. But an hour later she returned, without the basket, her face drawn grimly.

  “You got to leave,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. There’s some cowboys bustin’ up Momma’s shop lookin’ for you. They’re talkin’ about searchin’ the town.”

  “What did they look like?”

  Bluesy thought. “Big. One had yellow hair. He was with an Indian-”

  Cowboys. Cal! It had to be.

  “Are they still there?”

  “I think so.”

  I made for her door. She barred my way. “Where d’you think you’re goin’?”

  “They’re my friends,” I said. “I got to go to ‘em.”

  “These men ain’t friendly!” she squawked.

  “I know them,” I insisted. I pulled my arm from her grasp and hurried out the door. My heart surged. Cal had come back for me. I knew he would.

  The rowdiness of Maureen’s tavern had drawn folks from the street. They crowded outside, babbling. I should have paid attention. Instead I pushed through the throng and squeezed my way in.

  The smell of spilled liquor assaulted my nose. Spilled liquor and thick tobacco smoke. Maureen cowered behind her bar amidst a fall of broken glass. The candles on the wall bobbed and dipped like servants. In the middle of the disrupted furniture stood an enormous Cowboy.

  “Cal!” I cried.

  He turned.

  “There she is!” shrieked Maureen, pointing a finger at me. The cowboy turned.

  “Mama!” said Bluesy, shoving into the room after me.

  He was tall, yes he had yellow hair. And he was handsome. He looked exactly like Cal. They might have been twins, to a less trained eye. The slope of his jaw arrowed into a handsome point. The high-lifting eyebrows moved easily between sarcasm and seriousness. In this light you couldn’t see them, but I knew if I stepped close I could count the constellation of freckles sprinkled across his face. The difference was so small, if you didn’t know any better. Sam Twist had blue eyes. Cal Sampson’s were green.

  “Well,” said Sam Twist. “There she is.”

  His Comanche rider grabbed my arm and twisted. I dropped to my knees.

  “What’s going on?” I squeaked. “Where’s Cal?”

  “You tell me.”

  He nudged a smashed-up chair leg with his foot. I tried not to compare the two in my mind. Where Cal always had to be coerced into smiling, Sam Twist’s sarcastic little grin never seemed to leave his face.

  “I been tearin’ this place up tryin’ to find him,” he said. “And then you come stumblin’ right in here. Even better.”

  “Someone’s gone for the Sheriff!” Bluesy exclaimed. She pressed a hand to her breasts.

  Sam’s liquid eyes turned to her. “I shot the Sheriff on the way in here.”

  “That’s her!” David slurred from the corner. I hadn’t even noticed him. He crouched in the wreckage of a bar stool. One hand cupped his nose, which made a red fountain down the front of his shirt. “That’s the one you want!”

  “Good,” said Cal. “Bring her here, Crow.”

  The Comanche pulled me up by the hair and dragged me over to Sam. His pistol dug into the small of my back. One shot and he’d kill me or leave me a cripple for life. And these old guns misfired all the time.

  Think, Ada!

  “I don’t have anythin’ of yours,” I told him. My mind scrabbled for an idea. Anything.

  “Come again?”

  “I don’t have anythin’ of yours. I don’t know what you want with me.”

  “Really,” said Sam. “That’s mighty interestin’ to hear. Isn’t it, Harmin?”

  David blubbered something.

  “Now,” said Sam. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, girl. Just answer me true and I’ll let you free.”

  “Or else what?” I said.

  “Or else I’ll take you back to the men I got camped outside this shit hole town. And I’m sure you can imagine what they do to fine women like yourself when there ain’t no law to contain them..”

  Oh, I could imagine.

  He nodded at my silence. “Good. Now can you tell me why this man thinks you know the location of my missin’ gold?”

  “I don’t-”

  “Careful now,” said Sam. His eyes glowed. “You just be careful.”

  I licked my lips. There was no way out of it. I knew exactly where I’d put the bar of gold. I also knew that giving that information up to Sam Twist would kill my chances of getting out of here and making it to California.

  “I saw the pieces in the wagon,” I said slowly. “I didn’t know it was yours.”

  “Oh, but you were there when I told Cal,” said Sam. “You knew good and well after that, didn’t you? But you hung on to it.”

  “I took nothing else.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “And just what would you have done?” I rasped.

  Sam leaned forward and met my eye. The resemblance shook me. They could have been carved from the same solid marble. He even sounded like Cal, when he spoke low and fast- as he did now.

  “The same thing,” he said softly. “If I was you, I’d be lyin’ like the devil right now. So you’re lucky, Miss Ada, that I’m in a forgivin’ mood. You just tell me where that gold is and I’ll let you free.”

  “In his pocket,” I said immediately. “Upstairs.”

  “You don’t say,” said Sam. He turned to David furiously. “You little shit-stain. You were hidin’ it, huh?”

  “I never touched a piece!” David roared.

  “He took it from me,” I said. “He said he was gonna run off to California with it.”

  The Comanche turned me against the wall and plunged his hand in my skirts. I didn’t try to shove him off. He turned the pockets out empty.

  “Upstairs, you say?” said Sam, considering me. I pushed the Indian off.

  “In his jacket,” I whispered. “It’s on the chair.”

  “What room?”

  “First on the left.”

  Sam nodded to the Comanche.

  The Indian released me. He crossed over to the staircase. We heard him moving above our heads. I remembered too late that I’d left the Mill Town Sheriff in there. Hopefully he’d passed out.

  Sam pulled out his own pistol. He loaded it.

  “One of y’all is gettin’ shot tonight,” he said calmly.

  “Please,” David begged.

  “Shut your trap,” snapped Sam.

  “Don’t shoot him,” I said, suddenly afraid. I had lied to save myself, but had no intention of seeing David punished. My heart went a million miles a minute. I thought I might be sick.

  The report of a pistol sounded upstairs. Maureen screamed and flung her apron over her head. Bluesy grabbed me and pulled me back against the wall.

  “I won’t let him shoot you,” she said. “You done nothin’ wrong.”

  “How do you know?” I gasped.

  A silence fell after the gunfire, broken only by David’s sobs. At last the Comanche came downstairs. He shook David’s jacket at Sam.

  “Found it,” said Crow.

  “Look in the pockets.”

  With my lie I had saved my life. I had also sealed the fate of David and Mr. Hollister. The gaudy jacket looked pathetic and flashy in the dingy room. We all waited with bated breath.The gold bar fell out in the Indian’s hand. The nicest thing to ever cross the threshold of this place. Sam Twist turned it over in his palm.

  “No!” shouted David. “I don’t know how-”

  Sam pocketed the gold bar. Then he turned and shot David Harmin in the forehead.

  It was my turn to scream; David’s cries choked off horribly, and Maureen and Bluesy picked them up. A chorus of screaming, and it went on and on into infinity.

  “Let’s go,” said Sam.

  “Don’t take her!” shrieked Bluesy. Sam raised his hand threateningly. She released me.

  They dragged me into the street. A gang of their men had ridden in to hold the Branson mob at bay. Rifles bristled everywhere I looked. Sam yanked me over the side of his horse. His Comanche brother leaped atop a red pony.

  Once we were secure they rode out of Mill Town at full gallop. I had no time to think. No time to plan. The prairie wind dried the tears on my face.

  8

  The days stretched on into a week, and the week made two weeks. With no cattle to drive, Sam and his men scorched the miles behind them. The grass gave way to deserts of red sand, drier than what I’d seen in Texas. The endless sameness of the prairie vanished. In its place spiraling red rock sprouted as if planted there. Sometimes there came little bands of Indians, and Sam always stopped to talk to them, trade the horses, or ask about the way. Or he avoided them altogether.

  But most times, we went days without seeing a single soul. I wondered at how the world could be so empty. After a while my vision went dim. I only saw in reds and yellows, with the occasional browns and blues of Indian clothing.

  My own heart went just as barren as the view. I’d given up on seeing Cal again. Even if he had wanted to find me, places like this didn’t make finding easy.

  I was on my way to god-knows-where, a prisoner of the most wanted man in the Southwest. My money was gone. I would never see Mary Harmin again, and never make it to California.

  “And what do you want to do with me?” I asked Sam Twist.

  He kicked me in the rump with a booted foot. “Shut your mouth.”

  The other men didn’t touch me. They were renegades, white and Indian and Mexican. They came from across the prairie. Maybe they had been neglected orphans. Maybe, like Saint, they had come from money and just given in to some deep tendency towards violence. They found life here on the great plains, with all its lawlessness and indignity, more freeing than any civilization they had left. Whatever it was, I could expect no help from them.

  I had expected Sam to throw me to them to be raped or beaten. But he did nothing. He just tied me up morning noon and night. The flesh touching the rawhide ropes turned pink and raw.

  “I can’t run anywhere,” I told him, for the hundredth time. “Just take these off.”

  He ignored me. He pulled out a piece of wood from his pocket and started whittling it. I was reminded horribly of Cal.

  One day they came back with an Indian girl. She must have been the same age as Brave Bird. She was an Osage. I watched the men take her off and do bad things to her. I won’t repeat it all. Her screams stayed with me for the whole night.

  “You should make them stop,” I told Sam. My voice shook. Out here I had no courage. He just had ways of reminding me I was at his mercy. He never had to say a word.

  “Why?” he said carelessly. He drove the knife into the wood, almost lovingly. A pile of little shavings lay in his lap.

  I said, “Because it’s not right. It’s cruel.”

  “Cruel?” he laughed. “You should see what her people did to my man.”

  “It’s not fair.” Tears jumped to my eyes. I brushed them away with my bound wrists. “She wasn’t responsible. You can’t punish an innocent woman-”

  “You sound like my brother,” he said. So I stopped talking. Any reminder of Cal was enough to send him into a rage. I’d learned that lesson well.

  Later that night they let the girl go. She stumbled out into the darkness, naked. I watched her until she became a little speck on the horizon.

  “See?” said Sam. “No harm done.”

  I hated him more than anything then. More than poor stupid David Harmin.

  Later that night they made a circle to play cards. One of them took out a busted old guitar and started playing. The Comanche laughed and clapped their hands over their ears mockingly.

  I curled up away from them, miserable.

  When it grew dark, the men too drunk and the embers of the fire dimmed, Sam left the circle and came over to my spot near his saddlebags. He sat next to me and put his hand on my breast.

  I froze.

  “Don’t,” I said. He lay next to me and pulled me on top of him.

  His lips were cold against my throat. He moved, grunted, and flopped about against me. But his hands never wandered below my skirts. When he grabbed my wrist and put my hand at the meeting of his legs I felt nothing beneath the fabric of his pants but softness. He was not aroused.

  I tried to catch his eye, confused. The weight of his body rested on top of me. Fully clothed, he thrusted against me once, twice. I smelled sour whiskey and boot leather. I wriggled like a worm to get him off. Maybe he took my movement for encouragement. He started thrusting against my hip harder. The breath hissed between his teeth. I stopped moving and let him finish. He rolled away on his own, panting hard.

  I lay there next to him. I hadn’t been violated. I had barely been touched.

  Sam rolled up to his feet, looking like a pathetic boy. The fall of his blonde hair hid his expression- but for a moment it peered through. It scared me; it looked like cold fury. Fury at what? At me?

  “Don’t think I wouldn’t,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Just- don’t think I wouldn’t do it.”

  He went back to the circle of outlaws.

  My mind reeled. I had wondered why he hadn’t thrown me to the men to be used for their sexual amusement. Now it made sense- or I thought it did. Sam desired me. But he couldn’t, for some reason, force himself on me. Maybe the thought of watching his men perform what he couldn’t hurt his pride. I could only guess.

  The next morning a rider came into the camp- a black man, with the biggest set of whiskers I’d ever seen. Buckskin adorned him from head to toe, and he wore a pair of moccasins that some woman had beaded along the cuffs. He was dark as my old buffalo robe, and burly enough to rival Sam.

  For a moment he made conversation with Sam and the others. Until his eyes fell on me.

  “What the hell is this woman doin’ here?” he demanded.

  “She’s our prisoner,” said Sam.

  “What you gonna do with her?”

  “That’s our concern, Shadrac.”

  The man- Shadrac- eyed me. “I don’t suppose that’s Ada Bell?”

  Sam dragged him off out of my earshot. I watched them argue for a few long minutes. It ended when Sam shoved the other man in the chest. Shadrac drew his pistol; one of Sam’s men intervened and stood between them. Insults flew back and forth.