He topped the plateau. A bone-searching wind rattled the scorpion weeds. The other two caught up. Their sheets were now more blood than white. Micah gussied his horse alongside Minerva and checked to see that she was still alive. Her breath came thin and raspy.
“We must sleep together,” said Micah. “Any other way, we freeze to death.”
They led their horses to a dip in the earth bulwarked by a flat-topped chunk of shale. The limbs of a cottonwood tree fanned overhead to provide cover. Micah dismounted and corralled Minerva’s horse. He popped her feet from the stirrups and braced her across his shoulders.
“…goddamn hands to yourself,” she mumbled. She was in a dream state, trapped someplace between waking and sleeping, alive and dead.
Micah lashed the horses to a nearby tree. They nickered unhappily, hungry after the long ride. The three escapees bedded down on the hard ground. Micah wrapped his arms around Minerva. Her spine touched his chest. He twined his thick legs with hers. There was nothing sexual in this—they were too exhausted for carnalities. Micah did not find her comely in any case; he preferred a woman with breasts and hips, some brisket on her bones. The Englishman curled up behind Micah; an oily, carbolic smell leached out of his skin from the powerful narcotics he had been given.
The wind shivered empty seedpods. It churned up dust devils that spun through the gloom like mad tops. If the woman made it through the coming hours, it would count as some manner of miracle. The Englishman was a mess, too; Micah felt the blood trickling from Ebenezer’s wounds and soaking his own sheet.
If they died, he would not bury them. He had no shovel, and no time for the observance. If one of their horses was superior to his own, he would take it. He would hide out a few weeks, recuperate, then resume his pursuit of Seaborn Appleton.
He closed his eye and fell into a dreamless sleep.
10
MICAH AWOKE to spy the woman on her knees, hefting a rock the size of a stag’s head, readying to bring it down on the Englishman’s skull.
It was dawn. New sunlight ribboned through the trees. Minerva was a vision straight out of helclass="underline" her face a mask of dried blood. Her eyes bulged, wide and full of hate. Her arms quivered with the weight of the huge stone she bore above her head.
Micah rolled away, believing the blow was destined for him. He reached inside his sheet and came up with the deputy’s pistol. He pointed it at Minerva, then looked at the Englishman. The sand under his head was soaked with blood, leading Micah to the false conclusion that she’d brained him already; a closer inspection made it clear that he was merely unconscious.
Neither Micah nor Minerva spoke. Her arms trembled under the weight of the rock. Micah gestured with the gun that she should drop it. She hesitated. He then leveled the barrel dead between her eyes. She set it down softly.
Micah shook his head—his skull was quite literally buzzing. He probed inside his ruined socket with his thumb; a winged insect clambered out of it and flew away before he could identify the damned thing.
Micah flicked the gun barrel toward a stand of pines and mouthed, Move. Minerva managed to stand. Her sheet crackled with blood. The bottom of it was heavy with caked crimson and dust. She walked resolutely to the trees. Micah followed.
“That marks the second time in three days you have tried to kill the Englishman,” he said.
Minerva held a hand to her side. Blood sponged through the sheet and leaked over her fingers. She frowned as though it were coming from a spigot she’d forgotten to shut off. There was something to be admired about a person who could bleed with such a total lack of concern.
“I cannot travel with anyone who wishes to crush a sleeping man’s skull with a stone,” said Micah. “Tell me why.”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“It does now. Until you are dead, or him.”
“It could be him that’s dead,” she pleaded. “Let me make it him.”
“No.”
“Why do you care?”
“If I am given good reason, I may be inclined to take your side in this.”
Minerva scrutinized him with hooded eyes. Her stare was calculating. The odds must have toted in his favor, because, at a breathless clip, she told him everything.
11
IT HAPPENED in the springtime. Minerva Atwater was eleven years old at the time. She lived in Grass Valley, California, with her father, Charles, and younger brother, Cortland. Their mother had died in labor with Cort, whose skull was evidently too wide for her birthing chute. The loss destroyed Minerva’s father, yet he continued on for the sake of his children, finding work in the silver mines.
They lived in an isolated shotgun shack skirting the Yuba Reservoir. In the summer months, Minerva and Cort explored the grasslands while their father toiled underground.
The day it happened was much like any other. Cort and Minny—as her father and brother called her back then—romped through the tall grass to a sandy wash, where the water rolled out blue and clean in the afternoon light. Cort was six. He was thin, his hair prone to cowlicks, and he wore wire-rimmed spectacles patched with cellulose tape. He wanted to hold Minny’s hand while they walked—sometimes she refused, finding it babyish, but Cort’s bottom lip would tremble as his eyes brimmed behind his thick glasses. He adored his big sister and was hurt when she denied him these small kindnesses. So she would take his hand, which was often sticky and moist the way only small boys’ hands can be. They would wade into the water with their trousers rolled to the knees to catch mudskippers and narrow-mouth toads.
In the late afternoon, they made their way closer to home; their father would arrive soon and call them in for supper. They lazed under the trees in a shady grove, sunlight hitting the leaves and giving their bare skin a faint green tint.
“Minny?”
“Yes, Cort, what is it?”
“Why can’t we have nice things?”
“What do you mean?”
Cort sucked on his knuckle. He’d skinned it scaling a rock.
“The Safeway has Granny Smith apples. I never seen a green like them. Different than grass green or leaf green or…”
“Or grasshopper green?”
Cort smiled. “They’s so perfectly green. But we never get none. We hafta eat the crab apples that grow around here. They give my tummy the crummies.”
“Apples are apples,” said Minny. “Don’t grumble.”
“And buttons, too. Minny, my shirt’s got two bust buttons, and Dad never gets new buttons to sew on.”
Cort held his shirt out as proof. Minny knew about Cort’s buttons. Her shirts were missing buttons, too, and her big toes had worn through her socks.
“We eat potatoes every night,” said Cort. “Boiled and baked and mashed without butter. I believe my tongue will fall off if I have one more bite of spuds.”
Charles Atwater was a fine father and a hard worker, but his one failing was at the card table. He was a gambler, and a poor one. And so, his children’s clothes had busted buttons. And so, his children ate potatoes and crab apples.
“We will eat high-class apples one day,” said Minny.
“Promise?”
“Of course.”
There came a rustling from the feather grass. Minny faced it, ears pricked. An arrow-shaped head appeared. It was green, too. Different from the grass green or leaf green or the green of a Granny Smith apple.
The green of a snake’s head. The largest snake Minny had ever seen.
She had dealings with snakes, as did any child growing up in the wilds. Harmless blackneck garters were most common, but she had startled coachwhips and Chihuhuan hognoses, even an old massasauga rattler coiled in placid contentment under the porch. But she had never seen the likes of this one.