“I ain’t one to interfere,” scoffed my uncle. “A body’s got to make their own decisions. Look at your Mama, my sister. If she listened to any of us she wouldn’t have taken up with that white man. She’d have come home and minded us like she was supposed to.”

  I was trapped at their house, alone, no money. My father thousands of miles away.

  “Didn’t think he’d kill the beast,” said my uncle, eyeing the horse’s corpse. “It wasn’t much use, but a horse is a horse. Expensive. Never thought John had the guts. But even a worm will turn.”

  That night I caught John alone.

  “Look,” I said. “Marrying you was a mistake. We won’t make a good match. I don’t want to go to Boston. So let’s go to the preacher and tell him it wasn’t consummated, and we can go off our separate ways.”

  John Miller looked at me like I was crazy. “You think it’s that easy?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We haven’t slept together. And what’s the problem? You could have any better-looking girl than me on your arm if you snapped your fingers.”

  “I don’t want another girl,” he said. “I want you. You said in front of God that you would be my wife. Don’t think you can change your mind now.”

  “Why me?” I snapped. “I got nothin’ to offer you.”

  “Your Pa said,” said John smoothly, “He was giving three hundred dollars for marryin’ you.”

  I stared at him. “Papa would never. I’m not a prize cow.”

  I got his note right in here,” said John, patting the Bible. “And I aim to collect as soon as he gets back from the drive.”

  And wait that long? No way in hell.

  I had made my decision. For a week, avoiding John’s advances, I ran through different escape scenarios. I couldn’t just switch into town and ask any stray cowboy for an escort. I could try to smuggle a letter to Mama, of course, but that would take another week to reach her. Perhaps two. And then another week for her to send help. If she could help at all.

  If I stole a horse, I’d for sure be caught and hanged.

  I had no money for a train.

  Back and forth I went. And then, Mama’s next letter arrived.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dear Minnie,

  I haven’t heard from you in so long I wonder if you’re doing alright. I write you this in much Distress. Received word that your Pa met up with some Trouble out in Virginia City. Don’t ask me what he was doing there. It seems he got on the wrong side of the law. One of his boys picked a fight and they all got to shooting. Somebody said your Pa fired off and the bullet hit the Sherrif’s son and killed him. A couple of Pa’s men were hurt bad, I’m told. Pa’s been in jail about three weeks now, probably four by the time you get this letter. Sugar I am so distressed I just don’t know what to do. The bail is a thousand dollars. The bank here is giving me trouble to take out that much money without Pa’s “Permission”- I suppose you can figure why. I guess I could put something up to pay the sum, sell some land for cash maybe, but I know your Pa would be fit to spit. Only ones who could afford that are Beck and Henley. You know how he felt about them.

  But even if I could get the money, I can’t see a way to get it out there anyhow. I can’t leave the property and ride out alone. None of Pa’s friends in town will help me. They think he’s done for and it’s just a matter of time before I got to sell the land and pack myself up out of here. You know what they think about us. For that reason I wish you would come home. Just for a little while, to hold things down while I see to Pa.

  I sure would love to hear from you soon Minnie, I wonder why it’s taking you so long to write. Have you decided to marry John? I wrote your aunt and told her not to pressure you, said I would rather if we waited. But I don’t know if she got my letter. It seems responses are slow from your end.

  Please write back soon. Maybe I’ll find someone who can take you back here and we can find out just what we’ll do about Pa.

  Love Always,

  Mama

  My aunt read the letter aloud with relish.

  “I can’t see a way out of that one,” she said. “You better prepare for the worst, Minnie.”

  I sat quietly at the table. John tugged his ear. My uncle scratched his leg. My aunt folded up the letter and slid it across to me. Her eyes were shining.

  “What about my money?” said John bitterly. “He said he’d give me three hundred for the marriage.”

  I got up from the table slowly. My aunt, chuckling, folded her hands across her stomach.

  “See why you ought to be grateful to John? You about to be penniless, girl. And your Mama too. I suspect she’ll be writin’ soon to take advantage of our charity.”

  “Mama knows better than that,” I heard myself saying.

  My uncle snorted. “Always knew she’d come to no good, carryin’ on with that white man.”

  “You have to let me go back,” I said.

  “Why?” snorted my aunt.

  “Mama needs me. She said so.”

  “No one here can take you back,” said my aunt, her eyes darting quickly to John. “It’s too risky. There’s highwaymen and Indians.”

  My Uncle only chuckled.

  That night John tried again to break into my room. I stood outside the door and bawled bloody murder. It damn near woke every soul in the house, including the colored folks sleeping in the barn for free.

  “She got the devil in her!” my aunt shouted.

  The next morning bright and early, I put on my hat and dress and new shoes and left the house. Mama needed me. Mama needed me.

  I walked, without knowing why or where I was going. I walked and walked to the top of the road that led to town. Minnie Sampson, you are useless.

  The road seemed shorter than I had remembered. This time John didn’t come after me. The thought of him made me walk faster.

  But as I got to the edge of town, thoughts drove themselves around in circles in my head, until they became a white blur of nothing. I didn’t dwell on what I saw. Figures and shapes passed in front of me like a window. A window to nothing. The town was small, noisy, but clean. In all the weeks I’d lived with my aunt and uncle I had never been.

  The people of Floyd made their money off tin mining. Gritty, hard and disgusting labor that shortened lives and polluted the air and fouled the rivers. The few black folks in the area had been placed downwind of the soot stacks. No men about; their work, after all, was done underground. I would not be headed there.

  I drew some stares. A colored girl in neat clothes. A day ago being looked at would have frightened me up bad. But it was only women who looked, white women, and they were almost like children without their men.

  I saw a black woman outside beating a rug. I hurried up the street.

  “Good mornin’.”

  “Mornin’,” she said suspiciously.

  “I’m lookin’ for work.”

  “Work?”

  “I need work. Wages. Money.”

  “Ain’t no work here.”

  She attacked the rug. Black dust billowed from it. It would be dirty again tomorrow.

  “Who do you work for?” I asked.

  She sucked her teeth. “You don’t wanna work for them. Go home.”

  “I can’t.”

  The woman put down the stick and straightened. She ran a forearm across her brow.

  She said: “Where you come from?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You from these up-the-hill folks, ain’t you? With that yallow woman with the curls.”

  “That’s my aunt,” I said. Paused. “She’s a first-class bitch.”

  “You speak bad of your own kin?”

  “Have you met her?”

  The woman chuckled. “Look, girl. You want money so bad, there’s one place you can always get it. But don’t tell ‘em it was me who sent you.”

  “I’m not a whore,” I said stiffly.

  “Didn’t say you was,” the woman said sagely. “But there’s some new men in town, come from the East. They’re stayin’ at the Red Rooster. Maybe they lookin’ for someone to show ‘em a good time.”

  “I’m not-”

  “You lookin’ for money, I told you where to get some. Now scram.”

  I walked away. Naturally the only jobs for a black woman were field work or housekeeping. I had little experience with either. And those came with their own troubles.

  Feeling sick, I wandered around town. Eventually I’d have to go back up the hill to my uncle’s house, and admit my failure. The thought of Papa languishing in some rotten prison cell made me faint. I couldn’t accept that he might hang. And Mama, stuck on the ranch with no one to turn to...

  It was my fault. I should have stayed home. I should have made sure Mama was getting my letters. I shouldn’t have kissed Jake McCoy. I shouldn’t have married John Miller. At the end of the hour I was choked with dust and my own tears. Somehow, in the middle of it, my feet had carried me to the Red Rooster.

  Laughter came from inside, low and guttural and male. It scared me bad. The old woman’s words repeated in my head. There sure was a quick way to make money, and I kept it right between my legs.

  My breath trembled. I could get a lot of money quick. I could pay someone to take me across to Mama. For what? Less than an hour. All I’d have to do...

  My hand hesitated on the door. Reality kicked me in the stomach. Was I crazy? I’d get a nasty disease. I’d get a baby. Maybe he’d kill me. Maybe he’d refuse to pay, maybe he’d stink, put his mouth on It. Maybe he would want me to put my mouth on It.

  I backed away. No. No no no. I’d take ten John Millers over any seedy cowboy behind that door.

  The door swung open, and for a moment the smell of stale beer, spitting tobacco and unwashed bodies roared out into the world. The laughter inside raised in pitch. I felt the ground swinging upward; my eyes fixed on the scuffed brown boots of the man stepping out to take a smoke.

  “Hell and shit,” swore Jake McCoy.

  *

  He had a sun-beaten face. His black hair, stiff with road dirt, was scooped back behind his ears. A week’s worth of beard stubble graced his chin. The clothes he wore were the same, a little more road-worn. He flicked the cigarette to the ground. He looked about ten years older than he had the last time I’d seen him.

  “It is you,” he said. “Don’t that beat all.”

  He looked quickly over his shoulder and shut the door. “What are you doin’ here?”

  The tears exploded out of me like a dam breaking. I would have collapsed against him, had the wall of the Red Rooster not caught me first. Jake hurried forward and took my arms.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Oh- Jake! P-p-pa. He’s gone.”

  His brow smoothed. “You heard, then?” he said. “Pete rode ahead to tell your Ma. I’m awful sorry.”

  I was crying too loud. He took my elbow and steered me around the building. It was the smell of chicken shit, rather than his impatient mutters, that stopped my frantic howling. I sobbed the rest into my sleeve.

  “Ain’t you supposed to be with your aunt?” he said lowly. “Why you here alone?”

  “Why are youhere?” I sniffed.

  “I just got in with Shortie. We’re goin’ to the Meadows.”

  Home!

  “Take me with you!” I gasped.

  “Not so loud,” he hissed. “Christ, you’ll wake the dead. Dry your eyes.”

  He dabbed at my cheeks with his filthy sleeve. He smelled like horses, and the road, but I would have taken it over the rosy potpourri of my aunt’s house any day.

  “You don’t understand,” I managed. “They made me marry him. They took my letters to Mama. I’m a prisoner.”

  “Hang on,” said Jake. “You married? Already?”

  “No!” I gasped. A lie, but it didn’t feel like one. “I mean, yes, but not really. I wouldn’t let him bed me. It was a mistake. I didn’t want him. He tried to-”

  “Did he beat you?”

  I paused. The truth itself put me in a rather bad light. I told a man I would marry him, I married him, then changed my mind after the fact. Telling Jake I found my husband disgusting, cowardly and repulsive would not be enough. I should have had the sense to figure that out before I promised my hand.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Jake took a deep breath in. “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s true!” I stammered.

  “Your Pa wouldn’t marry you to a bully. He’d know better.”

  “Pa was gonna give him three hundred dollars to marry me. He played nice just to get the money.”

  Jake’s eyes about popped out of his head. “Three hundred dollars?”

  “To set us up,” I sniffed. “Maybe get some land. But John’s from Boston. He wanted to take me all the way back there.”

  “He’s your husband,” said Jake. “It’s his rights-”

  But no; I wouldn’t be told again what I “ought” to do. Husband and rules and society be damned.

  “I don’t care,” I said recklessly. “The only reason Pa wanted me married was because he knew I was foolin’ with you!”

  In fact, a sneaky suspicion had formed in my mind; maybe Jake, in a wave of guilt, had confessed our dealings to Papa.

  “I knew it,” said Jake angrily.

  “Knew what?” I cried.

  “You told your Pa. No wonder he was actin’ up. Every time I talked he looked like he would cut my gizzard out.”

  “You think I told him?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Of course I didn’t!”

  Jake rubbed his face. “Minnie. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “Take me with you,” I begged.

  “Oi,” someone called from the head of the alley. A man in plaid and blue slacks, his belly jutting through two suspenders. “We been waitin’ for you to take a turn, Jakey.”

  “You can wait a minute more,” snapped Jake. “I’m handlin’ business.”

  The man leered at me, then lurched away. I blinked up at Jake. He had spoken with authority, in the sharpest tone I’d ever heard him use. He talked like a man used to getting his way. Was this really Jake?

  “Right,” said Jake, turning back to me. He set his jaw. “Minnie, I can’t take you.”

  “Please,” I said. “Please, please. Jake I’ll only ever ask you for this once. Please, if you ever owed Papa anythin’-”

  “It’s only me and Shortie going. He’s mean as a viper. We don’t got the horses or the supplies for one more.”

  I tried to force tears, but had the feeling they wouldn’t work on him. They came anyway.

  “Please, Jake. Please.”

  “Dry them tears,” he snapped.

  “Please!”

  “Alright. Alright. For Christ’s sakes. For Christ’s sakes, Minnie.”

  He dried my eyes with his sleeve again. A shaky breath. Then, as if he couldn’t resist, he took me in his arms and kissed my forehead.

  “There,” he said, stepping back uncomfortably. “There. Now we can’t be doin’ what we was doin’ back- back a couple months ago, you hear? You’ll need to sleep somewhere tonight.”

  Oh, no. I wasn’t letting him out of my sight until we were on the road back to the Meadows.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll stay with you. Wherever you sleep, I sleep.”

  “Minnie.”

  “I mean it,” I said. I grabbed his arm. “I won’t get in your way. I won’t be a bother. Why don’t we go inside?”

  “The Red Rooster? You can’t go in there.”

  “I’ll go where I want!”

  He shook me. “No. These men ain’t friendly.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “Just get me back home. Please. Get me home and I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll sleep under bushes or in the saddle with mosquitoes eatin’ me alive. I’ll wash myself in ditches and eat burned rabbit stew and beans all the way. I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Just please get me home.”

  If only to shut me up, Jake took me around the building again and up a back staircase. He knocked three times on the door. A busty, smelly woman opened. She raised a plucked eyebrow.

  “Well, Jakey. Broadenin’ your taste, I see.”