On reflex, I take it, holding it up so that my eyes can quickly scan the print.
“It’s a good stagecoach company. I know them well,” he says reassuringly. “They’ll get you back to Boston in no time. Under a month if they’re really moving.”
He winks at me and I stare at him in return, then at the ticket. “I don’t want— Thank you, but no.”
He lets out an aggrieved sigh. “Come now, I know you don’t really have the money for a bounty hunter.” He glances quickly over his shoulder, either to remind me or himself that there are people out on the street. “I know you know it, too.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I assure him, meeting the challenge in his tone even as my anxiety spikes. “I said I would get the money together, and I will. I have a job here and—”
“And you’re sleeping in a stable.”
“That’s—” I start to say, reeling back and doing a poor job of concealing that he’s surprised me. “What makes you—”
“You’ve been here months.” Zeke gives me a look laced with pity. “You’re not staying with anyone from town, so there’s only so many other places you could be. People talk. They…” He sighs again. “I’m sorry about your father, I really am, but this has gone on long enough. I can’t— Do you really think he would want you living like this?”
“I couldn’t say, Deputy,” I reply, shortly. “I’ll be sure to ask him next time I visit his grave.”
Zeke is the one to look surprised now. “You’re still visiting the farm?”
Not feeling inclined to divulge more about my life than he already seems to know, I ignore his question as I hold out the ticket. “Thank you, Mr. Mathews. I appreciate your offer, but I have no intention of returning to Boston. Beyond you finding me a bounty hunter, I do not require your assistance. Or your charity.”
He shakes his head again, but he doesn’t take the ticket, only turns toward the stairs. “There’s a coach that leaves tomorrow. You should be on it.”
“I won’t be.”
He glances back, and gives me another long look before replacing his hat on his head. “I sincerely hope you change your mind. Before it’s too late.”
My guest never reappears that day. Neither does Mrs. Jensen.
Hoping that at least one of them would, I had waited until well past nightfall before giving everything one last tidy and leaving, walking back to the stable as the dark took hold of the world around me.
Tonight, I don’t mind. Feels easier to hide that way.
Ever since my earlier conversation with Zeke, I can’t seem to settle myself, unable to sit still with the knowledge that the only one I have been deceiving in this town is myself.
It’s not as if it should really be that astonishing. I already knew they believed me to be penniless and alone in this world, but I’d also taken comfort in the idea that they hadn’t known the depths of it. That to an outside observer, I may not have been making it well, but Iwasmaking it. Now, it’s hard not to realize they have known the truth all along. That they hadn’t bothered asking my name simply because it’s not a requirement for an unmarked grave.
When I arrive back at the stable, the black stallion and buckskin mustang are nowhere to be found, and my mood sinks further as I bring in Tess and move through my chores…right alongside my increasing unease. It only keeps building once I’m back up in the hayloft, and I hadn’t fully realized how much I’d come to think of it as a small refuge until the curtain had been pulled back. Now, I find myself pacing over the hay-littered floorboards until midnight. Unable to stop moving, let alone to close my eyes to try and sleep.
I still have the ticket. I’d tucked it out of sight into the waistband of my dress when Zeke had refused to take it back, resisting the urge to cast it away when there was a chance I could exchange it for money, but now I can’t help almost reaching for it over and over.Before it’s too late.
Too late. It’s the second time he’s warned me. And what if it already is? Too late to go back to Boston even if I wished to. Too late to ever catch the man who killed my father. Too late for me to find a different life even if one was waiting for me.
For the first time since that day up on the hill, I can’t stop the tears when they start to fall, my heart racing with the urge to run again. My throat aching with the urge to scream. Rather than give in to either, I grab my gun from its hiding place, and for once, holding it makes me feel a little less afraid. The weight of it in my hand very close to reassuring as I drop through the hatch and walk straight out the open back doors of the stable.
This late at night, the lanterns out here provide only enough light for me to see a few yards out into the endless desert, but I remember well enough where the bottle targets had been placed the day before. I walk up and down in a straight line, raising my weapon over and over, holding it out in front of me until my hand stops shaking so much.
Truthfully, I had only planned to use it as a means to distract myself, to get more familiar with handling it, or to even try toconvince myself again that I am okay. That I can make it. That I’llsurvive.
What I hadn’t planned to do was fire it.
“How about this?” a voice drawls from the darkness. “She came down all on her own.”
As it was when Zeke appeared at the boarding house earlier, there’s a fleeting moment where I hope it’s someone else that’s come for me, and I’m already looking for his quick sure steps and large frame before I see Elliot lurch into view.
“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” His speech is slightly slurred as he moves, a half-empty bottle in his hand. “She’s quick though. Always ducking me.”
A laugh breaks out from behind him, another figure emerging even as the shadows keep his features cloaked. “Everyone is quick when it comes to you, fuckin’ dolt. But she is pretty enough, I’ll grant you that.”