Someplace I could carve out a space for myself and finally breathe.
And now that I have nearly reached my goal I have no intention of surrendering it to fear of the unknown. Maybe I would have, once. But not any longer.
I stand and stretch. “Carolina, I know you mean well. And I appreciate your concern, and your offer. But I assure you, I know what I am doing.”
I turn to leave, and Carolina’s parting words follow me out the hatch.
“I know you do, Katherine,” he says. “I just hope that you aren’t disappointed if it turns out you’re wrong.”
I pause only long enough to look over my shoulder. “Darling, disappointment is the only sure thing in this world.”
There is no shortage of hard men in the west, the kind of men who have escaped falling cities and bloody battlefields only to find themselves on the other side of the Deathless Divide. These men kill and rob their way across the unsettled territories, stopped by only two equally powerful forces: the marshal and the bounty hunter.
—Western Tales, Volume 23
—JANE—
Chapter 25
In Which a Dark Omen Appears
Near the docks in Monterey—just a few paces down from the receiving office where immigrants arriving in California are inspected like cattle—is a saloon. There ain’t any sort of sign to mark the doorway, nothing to set this building apart from the rest of the street, and the men who stumble in and out couldn’t tell you the name even as they were pouring themselves another dram of rotgut.
Places like this? They don’t need names.
The inside is dark, dreary. The wooden floorboards are warped, the air hangs heavy with the stink of unwashed bodies, and the few lanterns that burn inside do more to heighten the gloom than to dispel it. There’s a small hearth, but the fire there ain’t enough to chase away the chill that clings to the room like a shambler that’s latched on for a bite.
But folks mostly pretend not to notice any of that. This is the kind of place men go to forget who they once were. Gambling, drink, maybe the occasional murder for hire—this place has seen it all. One might think that in the end times there’d be no more use for such a den of iniquity, but the men within these four walls know better. They know that survival comes with a hefty price, and sometimes the only way is in the forgetting.
There ain’t no good-time girls in this place. Maybe once, long ago, when miners and gold-struck boys would come through, set on making their fortune in the Golden State. Drinking a nip, sharing a dream before cutting a bloody path east through the forest and the people, no price too high for the chance at a future. People in the West will tell you it’s the Indian you need to fear, but no Indian has ever been half so vicious as the white man. And the dead? Well, they took their cues from the best.
America had once been the land of opportunity, its possibilities endless for the chosen people who arrived on its shores. Now, it was a land rife with death, threats lying in wait around every corner, in each shadow, and in the eyes of the living left behind.
The saloon had adjusted its expectations accordingly.
I stride into the cantina with no expectation of service, or even a lukewarm greeting, and I ain’t disappointed. This ain’t any kind of place for a lady. But then again, I ain’t no lady. Even less so now than I might once have been. I stomp into the room, Salty on my heels. The terrier growls and snaps at anyone we pass near, but I don’t move to restrain him. The dog is a penance, not a gift, and there is only one reason why I’m here.
In the back corner of the room, furthest away from the door, sits my quarry: William Jefferson Perry, raconteur and ne’er-do-well. Callie and I have been chasing him for nigh on a week, and it had been sheer luck he’d decided to dash into California instead of skulking about Nevada. I’d had quite enough of Carson City, and getting word that he’d headed south was like hearing Gabriel blow his heavenly horn.
Perry’s bowler is tilted low, long legs sprawled under the table. His pale skin ain’t remarkable in this part of town, but the pistols he wears are. They’re too fine, too well-made. Perry was a dandy before he was a murderer and a thief, and once a man has a taste for a certain style of living, it ain’t easy to break. This is a hardscrabble sort of town, the kind in which a badly scarred Negro girl might be able to blend in. A well-to-do white man, though—less so. It’s true, a number of people had frowned and shaken their heads when I described him: a white man with blond hair and blue eyes Ella May Barnhart had said were “like a mountain lake on a summer’s day” in her journal. No one could tell me definitively whether they’d seen Ella May’s secret lover. But the guns? Everyone had taken note of those six-shooters.
Now that I’m finally laying eyes on them myself, they look to me more decorative than lethal. There is something delicate about both the man and his weaponry—something Ella May, and many other women besides, mistook for softness. But there ain’t nothing soft about Perry. The deputy in Carson City had started crying while the sheriff described the crime scene: the body of poor Ella May was so badly mutilated that the only way they’d been able to identify her was by a length of her hair, the fiery red unlike any other. It had matched the man’s modus operandi: find a rich woman, earn her trust, carve her up, steal her money.
And now, after weeks of pursuit, here he sits, giving me a smile that is one part charm and six parts slime.
“Well, if it isn’t Jane McKeene,” the man says, his voice low and sultry. “Fierceness ne’er looked so beautiful, nor beauty so fierce.”
If Perry thinks he can charm me, he’s got another think coming. I’m not exactly partial to men and their wiles these days. I draw my pistol and calmly level it at his head. Most of the people in the room get up and make their way out, self-defense or plausible deniability, who knows. A moment later, the only ones left in the saloon besides the two of us are a few sots scattered amongst the tables, their heads down, too far gone to notice what’s happening.
“William Jefferson Perry, you’re coming with me.”
He sighs, resetting the bowler back on top of his head. “What took you so long, I wonder?”
“No one crosses the Donner Pass in the winter. I had to go south through Death Valley.”
He takes a drink from his glass, slow and deliberate, like I ain’t got a gun pointed at him. “I’ve heard the desert comes by its name honestly enough,” he says finally. “And yet, you survived.”
“I’m resourceful.”
He laughs, like we’re just two people making conversation, and I want to put a bullet in his brain. “They told me that no matter where I ran you’d find me. There isn’t any escape from the Devil’s Bi—” He spits on the floor and gives me another look, this one less smoldering. “Well, I’m sure you heard the nickname. I won’t be so crass as to swear in front of you, respecting the lady you once were. So, they say you’ve never lost a bounty.”
“Who’s this ‘they’ you’re talking about? You got a mouse in your pocket?”
“You’d be surprised, the people that got their eye on you, Jane McKeene.”