Abigail knew the moment it happened. She felt the covenant take root in her bones. Her breathing eased, the wound in her side knit closed, her heartbeat became strong and steady.
She thought to cry out, and perhaps she did, with only the scavengers and tricksters and the dead to hear her.
And that, too, was enough.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The sun crawled across the sky, and Abby faded in and out of consciousness. After a while, she felt something heavy and warm fall across her body. The smell of wool and smoke filled her nose, strong arms wrapped around her and lifted her up. They pressed her against warm skin, a wide chest. Her eyelids fluttered open. Deep brown eyes met hers, concern and relief battling in a lopsided grin. Mo’s face was blood-spattered. Her own? Or someone else’s?
“Now, aren’t you a blessed sight,” Abby murmured.
“Shhh,” Mo said, her voice as warm and soft as the blanket she had wrapped her in. “I came as fast as I could. I’m so sorry, Abby. I should have never left you.” Mo was breathing hard, fear etched in her face. Her hand hovered over the blood-soaked place on the front of Abby’s dress. “Are you hurt?”
“Nothing bad,” she lied. “Only grazed.”
“I better check the wound . . .”
“No!”
Abby calmed her voice. Mo’s hand hadn’t even moved. She wouldn’t touch her without her say-so. Such manners.
“It’s not necessary for you to fuss,” Abby said lightly. She knew even if Mo looked, she’d find no trace of the bullet that had rent Abby earlier. The wound was gone; that was a fact.
“I’m shook up, Mo, but I’m fine. Just take me home.”
“Of course,” Mo said, abashed at her delay.
Abby slipped her arm around Mo’s neck to pull close to her. “Is anyone else alive? Jolene? Francis? Rose and her sisters?”
Mo’s face was as bleak as the Rocky Mountains behind them. “They’re all dead.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry, Abby.” Her voice hitched. “It’s too lawless out here. We’ll have to move on. To somewhere with a lawman, a real town with a sheriff to protect us.”
“No. Lawmen won’t fix this. They cause more trouble than they cure, and you know that’s true. We’ve got to do this ourselves.”
Mo fell silent, as she always did when Abby got it in her head about the evils of white men. But Mo hadn’t seen that kind of ugliness firsthand like Abby had, hadn’t watched what a mob could do. Of course, there was more to it, this time.
There was Barton Smalls . . . and there was a promise.
She didn’t tell Mo of the pact she’d made with the desert. She knew Mo would disapprove of any truck with spirits. The nuns had done more of a brainwash on Mo than she cared to admit. Plus, any scheme that put Abby in danger would worry her. That was one of the things Abby liked best about Mo: her worry. And once Mo knew what she had planned for Barton Smalls, Mo would be worried plenty.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Take it,” Great-Aunt Mary had insisted the day Abby left the nun house where her auntie worked. “Take it and use it. This gun don’t miss.”
“All guns miss,” Abby scoffed.
“This one won’t,” Aunt Mary said, her voice made rough from whiskey and homemade cigars. “It’s special. Kept me alive against a pack of wolves.”
Abby laughed and adjusted her ladies’ hat. It was a fine piece, made all of lace and silk, and no other girl in the convent had anything like it. Certainly not her aunt, whom she loved dearly but whom Abby found a bit plain and uncouth. “Ladies don’t carry guns.”
“Take it, Abigail.” She thrust the revolver into her hands. “And when the wolves come for you, you’ll know what to do.”
Abby had taken it to be polite. After all, they were family. And perhaps she could sell the thing once she and Mo arrived in Pueblo Libre.
She’d put the gun in a box and put the box in her steamer trunk and forgotten about it, mostly. So when the predators did come for her, she hadn’t been ready.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Wake up, Abby,” Mo’s voice called excitedly from the other room.
The command was followed by a series of booms and bangs and a mild swear as something heavy struck the old pine floor. The dining room chair. Mo had a habit of knocking it over when she was excited.
“What in the world . . . ?” Abby murmured, sitting up in bed. It had been a month since Barton Smalls had razed the settlement of Pueblo Libre, killing all but two of its residents. In that month, Mo had begged her a dozen times to leave. To move north to Trinidad or all the way up to Denver, where the mines were bustling and there was work to be had in the laundries and saloons. But Abby had refused.
“How do you think they’ll treat us there?” Abby had asked. “Two young Black women on their own, and no proper male guardian? And not a dress in sight for you. They’ll figure us out lickety-split, and then what?”
“It’s safer there . . .”
“Safer for whom?” Abby asked, unrelenting, even though Mo was beginning to droop. “Not us, Mo.”
“But if we keep our heads down, don’t cause trouble.”
“No place is safer than right here,” she lied, thinking only of her covenant and the blood she owed the desert, “so we’re staying.”
“Abby, be reasonable.”
“You don’t like it, then you’re free to go!”
The words were an angry snarl, and Abby didn’t mean them. Lord, she’d like to die if Mo left her. But she had made promises that couldn’t be broken, and the reckoning was coming. She could feel it in the soles of her feet when she walked the open desert, in the cries of birds that circled the small graveyard where they had buried the dead, in the rush of wind through the door that Mo had left open in her haste. And when her palm cupped around her penny.
“Abby!” Mo called again as she burst into the bedroom. She had an envelope in her hand. Not too large, but not small either. Whatever was in there was making Mo dance with excitement like she had bees in her bonnet. Abby chuckled to herself. Mo in a bonnet? That would be a sight.
“What is it?”
“I got you a present. Well, us. I got us a present.” The girl was practically bouncing in place as she presented the packet to Abby. Abby grinned.
“What is it?”