“I’ll see to getting the horses back to the stable,” Tomoatooah said to Marshal Reeves, “if you want to take the ladies inside.”
The Marshal nodded. Miss Francina took my arm and guided me toward the ladder. Just looking at it made me bite my lip in anticipation, given that I was walking like somebody’d dropped red-hot iron wires down the inside of my bloomers. But I still heard Tomoatooah ask the Marshal if he wanted him to leave Dusty and the Marshal allowing as how she probably needed a hot mash and a rubdown more than another hour in the rain.
“I’ll walk,” he said, and even managed to sound cheery about it.
Somehow, we made it down the rain-slick ladder — I’m not too proud to admit I whimpered some — and into the kitchen door. Connie about dropped her spoon when she saw us, or in particular Miss Francina in her male clothes. But Connie gathered herself up fast enough and pretty soon we three was seated around her kitchen table with rags for our hair and with no questions asked, but plenty of hot coffee and hot biscuits and butter and honey being parceled out. Connie’s kitchen gadget scrubbed and sliced and stirred and scraped, its octopus arms going every which way, and Connie herself presided and tasted and spiced and tweaked the knobs. I’d have thunk the clattering would drive her mad, but she just kept on smiling and lifting pot lids to sniff.
I don’t know when Connie sleeps. Maybe she’s related to the Marshal.
Speaking of sleeping, I knowed I needed to go upstairs and wake Priya and tell her her sister was safe and with Merry Lee. But I just didn’t have the strength in my legs to walk up the stairs, or the strength in my heart to make myself do it anyway. Some coffee, and a biscuit or two, and a sit and I’d make myself get on up there. My legs would be screaming all the more when I got up again, I knowed. But maybe my moral fortitude would of regenerated. And if Priya was asleep, well, it weren’t hurting her any to wait.
I thought about Scout and sipped my coffee. I had nearly four hundred dollars in gold and silver saved. I figured I needed a thousand to be safe, to buy my ranch and stock it and keep it running. I didn’t think Tomoatooah would sell me Scout. But maybe someday he’d sell me one of her fillies.
I’d ridden a horse that night. And it hadn’t broken me wide open to do it.
That was as comfortable and comforting in my belly as the coffee was, and I clung to it so as not to start crying over having to give Scout back to Tomoatooah. I always did fall in love hard and quickly. Da used to worry about it so. I remember this one sickly orange kitten.…
But that’s a terrible story, and I don’t feel like telling it today. I’d rather think about Molly, and Priya, and Scout.
Connie was kneading loaves on the other end of the table — she could have had the gadget do it, but she swore the results weren’t as good. I watched her muscles play under medium-brown skin as she put her weight into it. Miss Francina was watching her own hands on the coffee mug, staring down her long nose like a hunter thinking over a jump. The Marshal was watching Connie, too, but from the faraway eyes and the little smile on his lips, I thought maybe he was thinking about another woman somewhere else. He’d said something about his wife … his Jennie. That was her name. His Jennie.
I wondered what it was like for her, being married to a man gone so often and so far away, dodging bullets and hunting bad men. I wondered how she trusted he’d come home or if she had plans laid in case he didn’t.
Miss Francina sighed but didn’t look up. The Marshal had one hand under the table, and I could see he was fingering the strap securing his pistol. He frowned and looked down, as if his reverie were broken. I wondered if he was feeling that same filthy grief I had, after I nearly grabbed the shotgun away from Effie.
I thought maybe I should manufacture some conversation.
“Why do you think the cribs was guarded like that?” I asked. It wasn’t what I had intended to say … but I wasn’t actually sure what I had intended to say and it was the easiest to talk about of all the things that was weighing on me.
“Not to keep in the girls,” Miss Francina said. “They got bars on the window for that.”
Connie could hear every word, of course. But she was Connie, and never a more trustworthy soul was hatched. She gave us a look, though, like she was thinking hard about what we said. In case she had some answers squirreled away somewhere, like the chocolate she could produce at any provocation.
“He’s hiding something,” the Marshal said. “Something … more than just the killer. He’s got an armed camp there, and those whores are just … camouflage. Moneymaking camouflage,” he amended.
“I hope,” I said softly, “that Aashini’s strong enough to make it.”
The Marshal frowned more deeply at his coffee. “You ever seen a three-legged dog? Most times they get around just fine.”
“I don’t follow,” Miss Francina said. But she looked interested.
The Marshal seemed to realize then what his hand was doing and resolutely plucked it up and reached for another biscuit. It steamed as he broke it open, which encouraged me to take a third myself. It was every bit as fluffy and fantastical as the first had been.
Connie, still working away, didn’t look up as I complimented her. But she did mutter a “thank you.”
She got the machine to do the biscuits, and I wondered what the difference was between them and the bread. I’d asked her once, and she’d said something about keeping the butter cold. Which made no sense to me, because weren’t it all going in the oven?
Marshal Reeves, one hand on the butter knife, resumed speaking. “So you’ve got a crack in you,” he said. “A scar. A spot where the light don’t shine. That’s all right. Creativity comes out of that. Endurance.”
“Don’t tell me I’m better off for being an orphan,” I scoffed.
His face was serious, though, and he didn’t take offense. “No more so than I’m better off for having been a slave.”
Whatever I’d been about to say died in my mouth, and it didn’t taste so good in there, either. Of course he was talking about himself. Or out of his experience, anyway — and his experience related to mine, and to Aashini’s … and to Miss Francina’s and to Connie’s, too, for all I knowed. At least, based on the um-hum noise Connie was just then making.
Marshal Reeves swirled his coffee in his mug. “My life’d be easier if I had my letters, sure. But I had to exercise my mind and learn ways around it. Now I got those ways, and they serve me.”
He put the mug to his lips and took three long swallows. He set it down again. Miss Francina topped it up while he continued, “The means you figure out to bridge your lacks, those’ll serve you, too, Miss Memery. And it’ll serve that poor little mite we half-drowned this night, as well.”
His voice trailed off. I heard what he heard — mayhap keener, as my ears was younger. The rising trill of constables’ whistles. An idea they’d gotten from London, England, so I heard tell.
Heavily, the Marshal stood. He settled his pistols in their holsters.
“They’re playing my tune, Miss Memery, Miss Wilde. Miss Connie,” he said, and sat his front-creased hat on his head with a courtly nod.
* * *
I made up a plate with some of those biscuits, wrapped up in a napkin to stay warm, and some butter and honey as well. With a pot of coffee and a mug clutched by the handles in my other hand, I climbed the stairs to Priya’s room. I’d been right about what the steps felt like. I had to rest every few, and I wished to bejesus I’d been smart enough to put the food on a tray so I could balance it on one hand and use the other to haul myself up the banister. At least I’d taken the back stair and at least the house was still abed, so no one noticed me.