“Open it!”
Abby kept a small knife in her pocket, and she slid it out now to slice open the envelope. Mo’s joy was infectious, and Abby couldn’t help but grin along . . . until she saw what was inside.
“A ticket to Los Angeles?”
“Two tickets. One for me, and one for you.”
“Mo—”
“Now, don’t say no yet,” Mo rushed on. “I know you’re not keen on Colorado, but Los Angeles was founded by Black folks just like us. It’s a place we could be welcomed. And it’s right near the ocean. You told me you always wanted to see the ocean.”
“I do,” Abby admitted.
“See? And the new train tracks that the Santa Fe Railway built go right there. And it took some doing, but I got us tickets. We leave tomorrow. We can start over. Live how we want to live.” She grasped Abby by the arms. “Come with me, Abby. Say yes!”
Abby wanted to. So much her heart hurt just thinking about saying no. But “no” is what she had to say.
“Why not!?” Mo cried, throwing her hands up in frustration. “What is so special about staying here? What hold does this place have on you?”
Abby opened her mouth, but she didn’t have to answer. The desert answered for her, with a gale of hot wind on a winter’s day, the chorus of coyote song, a low rumble of thunder across the mountains.
Mo rubbed her arms, chilled despite the gust of heat, and looked out the window. “Is someone coming?” she whispered.
Abby didn’t have to answer that, either.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“A gun, Abby?” Mo cried.
“Not just any gun,” Abby countered, lifting the box that held the revolver from her steamer trunk, where it had lain since they’d come to Pueblo Libre. “A special gun.”
“All guns are the same.”
“This was a gift from my great-aunt Mary. She told me it couldn’t miss.”
“All guns miss.”
Abby grinned. “That’s what I told her, too.”
“Barton Smalls is an outlaw, and a sharpshooter by reputation. Plus, he won’t come alone, Abby. To face him and his men down with one gun? It’s suicide.”
“I’m not afraid of a little death.”
“There is a perfectly good train ticket to somewhere green and beautiful and safe lying on the kitchen table. Pick it up and claim it and come with me!”
Abby opened the chamber of the .38 revolver. “You know they call this gun the Lemon Squeezer,” she told Mo. “On account of the way you must squeeze the grip to pull the trigger.”
Mo stared at her. “Are you even listening to me?”
“I already told you—”
“I know. Your great-aunt Mary. She would have stayed and fought. But she ain’t here. And, besides, that’s a maybe. You don’t know. She might have gone to Los Angeles, too.”
Abby smiled, sadness warring with resignation.
The other girl deflated like somebody had let the air out of her. “Please come.”
“Maybe in the spring. After I’ve taken care of things here.”
“You can’t stay here alone. Who’s gonna keep you safe?”
Abby patted the box that held the revolver. “Aunt Mary.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The walk back from the train station was long and lonely. Tearful promises had been made. Not the kind a dying girl makes to the desert. The kind two girls in love make to each other. Hopeful, full of dreams.
I have forsaken love, Abby thought to herself, for a chance at revenge.
Soon, the desert whispered. And the desert never lied.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Barton Smalls was in her dreams. Not looking as he had when he rode into Pueblo Libre, but as he had back in Texas, when Abby still lived with her mama and hadn’t been sent to Aunt Mary’s and the nuns yet. Young, light-haired and dark-eyed, a handsome man, at least in her child’s eye.
He’d been one of the men who’d come for her daddy. Not screaming and ugly like the others, their voices screeching demands for blood, but he was there just the same, guilty just the same. Smalls had watched them take Daddy away, and when he’d seen her watching him, he’d flipped her a penny. A real copper penny. And laughed as it fell at her feet.
She’d never forgotten his face or that contemptuous penny . . . or the star he’d worn on his chest. And she’d never told Mo about any of it, how Smalls was the reason she knew lawmen couldn’t be trusted, that you couldn’t find safety in towns. That maybe there was no safety but the kind you made yourself, and even that had a way of failing sometimes. But then, maybe safety was overrated, and a girl had to embrace danger if she wanted to survive. And maybe survival itself was overrated, and a girl had not to fear death, and that’s the best she could do sometimes.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Abby awoke with a start. Bolted straight out of bed like the devil was on her heels, and maybe he was.
Barton Smalls was coming.
She fumbled the covers away, dressed hurriedly in trousers and a long coat. The Lemon Squeezer rested in its box, and she claimed it and the single bullet, chambering it before she left the house.
The sun was barely a glow of white on the horizon when she came to the road. She stood resolute in the very place he had left her to die. The earth knew her, recognized her by blood and bone, and welcomed her back. To finish what had been started.
Mo was wrong.
Barton Smalls came alone. Riding an alabaster mare and wearing a white church suit, a pale rider on a white horse.
His hair was unkempt and his eyes were wild. There were places on his face where he had scratched the skin clean off and sores ran yellow with pus. He was skeleton thin, and his hands trembled around reins that threatened to fall from loose fingers.
Abby paused. This was the man who had almost ended her life? Who had haunted her nightmares and kept her from her love? This was the thing she had feared since she was a child?
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, her voice carrying across the emptiness between them.
Barton didn’t answer, and at first she thought he didn’t hear her. But his brow lifted, his eyes turned in her direction, and the corners of his mouth tilted up.
“Don’t I know you?” he asked in a voice slurred from pain and drink and the business of dying.