He pulled my arm. Pulled me back down on top of him. The wound in my shoulder smarted, but I was too upset to really feel it.

  “Don’t run off,” he said. “I’m not done talkin’ to you.”

  “I’ll go where I want.”

  “I love you, Ada. That’s it. I love you but it ain’t right.”

  “Why not?” I said. I thumped him on the chest. “Is that what you’re so scared to tell me?” I moved to leave again.

  “Yes,” he said. “No, come back here. You’re gonna sit and listen.”

  “I’m tired of listenin’ to you!”

  I tried to wrench my arm from his, but he held it fast. With all my strength I couldn’t break away from him. So I sat down.

  “So you love me,” I said, tossing my head. “So what? Let go of me, Cal.”

  “Then sit here and don’t go stormin’ off.”

  “Fine.”

  “Yes, I love you,” he said.

  He rubbed his eyes. I hadn’t noticed them before. Dark circles nested under them, bringing out the green in a strange, sickly way. Indeed, Cal’s expression had hardly shifted from that bleak look he’d been wearing the day of my rescue. He was tired.

  “So what?” I repeated softly.

  “So I don’t know.” He clenched his hat in both hands now, so hard I thought he might rip the thing in two. “Fuckin’ Christ. I do know. I’ve been knowin’ since we first lay together that I had some...uncommon feelin’s. I had an eye for you before then.”

  He paused. “But that night I couldn’t help myself. I turned into a damned animal for you. I wanted you so bad some nights I couldn’t sleep. Just lookin’ at you now-”

  “I feel the same.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know it. But there’s so many things, Ada, I got to take into account. I can’t marry you. I can’t be with you. I got nothin’ for you in the whole world. I don’t got a pot to piss in. It don’t make sense to keep pushin’ myself on you.”

  “I don’t know if you noticed,” I said thickly, “But I ain’t exactly the Queen of Sheba myself.”

  He looked at me ruefully. “Still. There’s expectations on a man, to provide.”

  “You provided plenty for me, Cal. And I never asked you for more. Not once.”

  “Maybe you shoulda asked.”

  “Maybe. But all I wanted was you. I wasn’t thinkin’ about the future. I just wanted you. And you decided all on your own that wasn’t good enough to give.”

  “Don’t cry,” he said.

  “I’m not cryin’!” I said angrily. “Do I look like I’m cryin’?”

  He gave me a look. And there was the old Cal- the Cal that had taught me how to shoot, how to tie a jimmy knot, how to dive deep under a river’s current, how to shoe a horse and ride without a saddle, who had stayed up long into the night with jokes and stories. A laugh bubbled out of me.

  “Goose,” he said. “You’re the only woman I know who looks pretty when she cries.”

  “I wasn’t cryin’.”

  “There it is. There’s that smile.”

  He took his thumbs to my cheeks and wiped the wetness away. The action brought him a hands breadth away from me. I could have crossed the gap between us in a moment and found his lips. But I hovered at the edge. If I kissed Cal, something in our relationship would change forever. Would it be for the better?

  “I won’t leave again, alright?” he said.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise on my grave. Cross my heart, Ada, I won’t leave.”

  I flung my arms around his shoulder. He held me close, close, close enough to feel the thundering of his heart. His hair ran like gold silk under my fingers. I threaded through his curls, close to his scalp. Who else but Cal could light up those feelings in my heart? Who else but Cal did I trust with everything I had?

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for lyin’ to you. I’m not a dishonest woman.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “I’m not dishonest.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  Was it alright? I suppose it was. It would have to be.

  “I don’t think you’re dishonest.”

  “What do you think of me?”

  “I think you’re beautiful.”

  His hands touched the bandage on my shoulder. The bullet had grazed me just enough to save my life. A few inches to the left, and I’d be lying there in the dust with Sam Twist and all the others.

  “I think you’re brave,” he continued. “And you’ve got a head on your shoulders and a tongue like a bowie. I think you must sharpen it every day.”

  “Every night,” I sniffed, “Before I go to bed.”

  He grinned. The old Cal broke out like the sun from a cloud. He said, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  We were friends again, I thought. But he bent his head to mine and no, we weren’t. His hands cupped my jaw. I tasted him, all dust and whiskey and sage. His lips brushed my forehead, eyelids, cheek, finding my mouth to tease and play with me some more. He wanted me to know.

  You’re still mine, he seemed to say.

  And it didn’t matter what we did today, or yesterday, or what we would do a hundred years from now. Somehow Cal had become a part of me. Somehow I had become a part of him.

  I melted into his kiss. He held me very tightly as if I’d vanish into thin air. Maybe I would.

  ᢇ

  Raised voices woke me up the next morning. I rolled from Cal’s blanket, confused. We’d fallen asleep together, my head on his chest. But Cal and his chest were nowhere to be found now.

  “Wuzzgoin’on?” I asked Joseph- only Joseph wasn’t there either.

  Somehow, overnight, more Indians had appeared in our midst. Not just Joseph’s braves- there were women too. The hulking shapes of wickiups met my vision. I could smell roasting vegetables and tangy-sweet pemmican.

  “Cal?” I croaked.

  A shadow cast over the sky. I found myself staring at the beaded fringe of a woman’s moccasins.

  “Wake up,” she said, in English.

  “Who are you?”

  “Joseph wife.”

  I’d slept well into the noon. I got to my feet unsteadily. Joseph’s wife eyed me.

  “I have work to do,” she said.

  “Eh?”

  “Come.”

  She grabbed my wrist- hard- and pulled me off to the side.

  A gaggle of women pounced on me. I remembered Iron Eye’s band, and the gentle, giggling women who had taken me to the river and gifted me the Spanish skirt. I glanced down at that particular object.

  The skirt could have used some repairs, to be honest.

  Luckily the woman had a solution. She knelt in front of me and yanked it right down over my knees.

  “Hey!” I screeched. There were men right there, in full view! She’d just invited them to stare at my bare ass over their morning coffee.

  My voice startled her; I learned later that the Kickapoo didn’t like shouting at all. She was up like buckshot, waving her arms in my face. The other women absorbed me and took the clothes off my body. They carefully avoided my bandaged shoulder. In no time they had replacements.

  I got another skirt, made of buckskin. They tied this with a rawhide belt. Over my breasts they rolled a faded calico shirt that must have belonged to a very small man. The women then dumped my old clothes in the central fire, which annoyed the men- but there was no time to sit and argue. They whisked me away about a mile from camp, near the river. I had the clothes removed again and they plunged me into the water.

  “Where is Cal?” I asked Joseph’s wife. I learned later that her name was Sings-Too-Much.

  “Away,” she said shortly.

  “Whose clothes are these?”

  “Husband.”

  “Even the skirt?”

  She paused, startled. Then her mouth creaked open in a smile. Yes, she had a sense of humor.

  “No,” she said. “He like dresses better.”

  After my bath we went on back to camp. Unlike my Spanish skirt, my new clothes had no pockets. There’d be no hiding anything anymore.

  In these last few months I’d gone from having precious little in the world to nothing at all. I owned nothing here, except the literal clothes on my back. Even those were borrowed. Watching the Kickapoo women talk and joke with each other in their language tugged a string in my heart. They had little- no fine jewels, no spinning wheels, no chests of silk. But they had each other. I had not even that- no one, except Cal.

  We reached the camp. Sings-Too-Much put a hand over her eyes against the sun’s glare. “Oh, there he is.”

  “Where?”

  “See? He is coming.”

  Cal’s horse approached in the distance. Two more riders tailed him.

  “Who is with him?”

  “Husband and priest.”

  I thought I had misheard. “Priest?”

  They dismounted and strode right into camp. Sure enough Cal had dug up some terrified minister. The man was shorter than the shortest Indian, and he trembled like an angry cat.

  “Where’s Ada?” said Cal.

  “Right here,” said I, stepping forward. “What’s goin’ on?”

  Cal eyed my new clothes approvingly. But at the sight of me the priest grew even paler. He shook his head violently. “No! No, no, no!”

  To my horror, Cal delivered him a swift swipe to the back of the head. The man’s black hat went tumbling off.

  “No!” he squeaked again. He looked fearfully at me, then Cal. “I can’t!”

  “You got no choice,” said Cal, calmly. “I don’t got to tell you what these Indians do to folks that piss ‘em off.”

  “It’s against the law,” moaned the priest.

  “Call, just what in the blue hell is goin’ on?”

  The priest went bug-eyed at my language. Then he started shaking his head again. “Sir, it ain’t right,” he muttered.

  “Why?” demanded Cal. “Because Ada’s a negro?”

  “Cal,” I repeated. “Just what the-”

  “Folks would hang me if they knew,” said the man. “And I only do weddin’s on Sundays.”

  “Weddings?”

  “Just be quiet, Ada,” snapped Cal. He grabbed the man by the scruff of his neck. Bending nearly in half, he leaned into the minister’s face.

  “You got ten minutes. Now open that damn bible and get to it.”

  But the holy man, to Cal’s surprise, was made of stronger stuff than given credit. I guess he’d been dealing with these roughslip cowboy types for decades. The man planted his foot and put a shivering nose in the air. “No, sir. I won’t do it.”

  “Because I’m a negro?” I said.

  “That’s right,” sniffed the man. “It’s against the law for you to marry a white man.”

  “Just say I’m half Mexican,” said Cal. “Put that down in your little book. They don’t care about what the Mexicans do.”

  “I-”

  “But Cal,” I said dumbly, still a beat behind everything. “I thought your folks was from England.”

  He ignored me, and shook the little man again. “Write it. Cal Sampson, Mexican. Do hereby wherefore what-the-fuck somethin’-somethin’ hand in marriage. Write that down.”

  “We’re gettin’ married?” I said, the rest of my brain catching up. “Hang on, Cal.”

  “We better be,” said Cal, but this was directed towards the priest, who looked like we’d just asked him to swallow tacks.

  The Kickapoo band showed little interest in this affair, but Joseph and his wife came to watch. After a minute of writing, the minister straightened and asked us for our names.

  “Calvin Richard Sampson,” said Cal promptly.

  “Cal,” I said. “This is crazy.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not. It’s only right. We been sharin’ a bed for weeks and weeks-”

  “Cal!” I squeaked, looking at the minister. He’d gone a milky white.

  “What?” snapped Cal. “It ain’t the worst he’s heard.”

  “No,” agreed the minister tersely. “Though I’m startin’ to reconsider.”

  “Your name, Ada,” said Cal.

  He was serious. He meant to see this through. Shaking, I said, “Adeline Bell.”

  The minister wrote that down.

  “H-here is the certificate,” said the minister. He peeled a scrap of paper from between the pages of his bible. On reflex he moved to hand it to me- then reconsidered.

  “Yes,” I said coldly. “I know how to read.”

  “Er- well, sign on that line. You too, sir.”

  The paper was signed in no time. Cal’s hand shook with excitement. I didn’t know what to feel. Shocked? Happy?

  The words were read. I repeated the vows after Cal. Then the minister placed our hands over one another’s, and made some little prayer I didn’t pay attention to. After that he cleared his throat and stepped back. It was done.

  “Well,” said Cal. “That settles it.”

  “No ring?” said the minister.

  “Not yet,” said Cal, glaring at him.

  The minister handed him the bible. “For your family record,” he sneered. “Or your own reading. If it does you any good.”

  “Thank you,” said Cal. “Your services are no longer needed.”

  “And my horse?” said the minister.

  “Over there.”

  Cal gestured vaguely at the herd. I myself had gone dumb as a post. The little man went tottering away after his horse, shooing off the curious Kickapoo as if they were troublesome flies. Joseph got up and said something to his wife. She went off towards the cooking fires in a hurry.

  “Well,” said Cal eventually. “It’s done.”

  And a sudden rage rose in me. I turned to him and thumped him on the chest. Hard.

  “Hey!” he cried.

  “Just what the blue hell was that?”

  “Our wedding.”

  “Cal- Cal! You ain’t serious.”

  “What, you change your mind?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “No,” he said. “Now, it’s legal.”

  I stared at the paper in my hands. Our names, written together there for eternity. I supposed he’d ride into the first town we came across and register the certificate there. I was now Ada Sampson. Cal’s wife. Forever and ever amen. Somehow I just couldn’t get up the happiness I knew I should be feeling. The spidery black writing seemed like a death certificate.

  “What’s the matter?” said Cal in a different tone of voice.

  “This ain’t right.”

  “Why?”

  I controlled my swelling emotions.Where did this sudden dread come from? Why couldn’t I be happy?

  My hand reached for Cal’s, and he took it. He turned it over and kissed me on the soft part of my wrist.

  “Ada,” he said softly. “Speak your mind.”

  “I’m afraid to,” I said. “I don’t trust my own thoughts.”

  “Ain’t you happy? I promised to never leave you. I don’t mean to.”

  “I didn’t think you meant to marry me.”

  “I aimed to show you I was serious. This was the way I knew how.”

  I tore my gaze from the certificate and looked at Cal. Earnestness showed all over his face. No. This was not a man who would make pretenses with me. This was a man who would defend his word to his dying breath.

  He hadn’t done this only because he loved me. I knew that. He had done it for my sake- for my honor. He had taken my maidenhead, and then he’d taken my heart. Here he was now giving back to me in his own way.

  A man like that was rarer than a green mule.

  “Aw, hell,” I said.

  He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. His lips nuzzled the soft skin under my ear.

  “You don’t get to be mad for too long.”

  “No?” I whispered. “And why’s that?”

  “‘Cause in a few hours I’m gonna take you under that wickiup.”