Karen Memory

Chapter Ten

We knocked off work a little after two, it being early in the week, and Miss Francina and I both separately pled tiredness and headed upstairs. I changed myself into plain clothes and no stays and no crinolines. Remembering what Marshal Reeves had called me, I’d taken a few minutes to tack up the hem of my sturdiest navy broadcloth day dress almost to the tops of my boots — just like Annie Oakley wore. I envied Priya her trousers and might almost have borrowed a pair, but they’d never stretch over my hips and anyways, she’d want to know what I planned on using them for.

I slipped the Marshal’s Morgan dollar back into my boot top, though. For luck.

When I sneaked back down and met Miss Francina out by the dustbins, I could hardly credit my eyes. I mean, standing there gave me a shiver, like that poor dead girl’s half-flayed corpse was still cooling on the stones. But the real shiver was because of the tallish, slender man with his blond hair slicked back in a plait and dropped down the back of his collar. He looked so familiar … and yet so strange. He had narrow, aristocratic features — the sort you’d expect from a Bostonian, maybe. Or an Englishman. The eyes were deep set and drowsy, gray under a pronounced curve of bone. The nose was long and elegant.

He wore workman’s togs, though — dungarees and a check shirt with a dingy red bandanna for a cravat — and hard boots laced to the mid-calf. And when he talked, he talked like me, or any of the girls who ain’t yet learnt all Miss Bethel has to teach ’em.

It was like meeting a good friend’s hitherto-unexpected kin. It gave me a good hard unsettle, that I don’t mind reporting.

“Do I pass?” Miss Francina asked me. And then she smiled, and it was her again, just dressed up in men’s kit.

“I’d not have recognized you on the street,” I admitted. Then I said, “Your teeth and your skin are too good to be visiting Bantle’s girls.”

“Some like rough trade that can afford better,” Miss Francina said sourly. “And some like a girl who’d like to fight back, but can’t afford to.”

“Gah,” I said, though of course I knowed it. “How are we going to find you, once you’re in?”

She dug in her big coat pocket. “I borrowed this from Lizzie.” When she held out her hand, there was something like a miniature wireless telegraph set in it, except it had some dials set in the front and two antennas. I tapped on a dial with my fingertip; the needle stayed pointed right at Miss Francina. The other needle seemed to be pointing at the first dial.

“Slip that in your reticule,” she said.

“What is it?”

She flipped her coat open and showed me a brooch pinned to the lining. “It tracks this,” she said. “The left needle points toward the brooch. The right needle swings toward the left needle depending on how close the brooch is. And the brooch has a switch in it so if you click it the right way, it’ll make a light light up on the dingus. Merry Lee will be waiting for your signal. So when I have Aashini, I’ll click the switch. You wave Merry in to take the girl. I’ll get her up to the roof.”

I felt my forehead crinkle right up like a ruched skirt when you draw the strings. “That’s genius.”

“That’s Lizzie,” she replied.

* * *

I don’t mind saying I were on pins and tenterhooks and broken glass the whole way down to the Lion’s Den. It ain’t a nice saloon, by any means, and when I walked in on Miss Francina — I mean, Alias Zach Murphy’s arm, a lot of heads turned to see the lady. Nobody commented on my tacked-up dress, though, even though there weren’t a lot of other sets of skirts in there.

Merry Lee was nowhere in sight, which was probably wise. Some of these men might get the wrong idea about a Chinese girl walking in here, and that would end badly for everyone. But Bass Reeves was elbowed up to the bar. He had a shot of whiskey on the plank before him, black enough that I wondered if it was wood alcohol darkened up with some coal tar. I might of warned the Marshal, except he didn’t seem to have any intention of drinking that stuff.

A real western saloon ain’t the kind of dusty tavern with swinging doors they write about in the dime novels. I mean, sure, there’s some barrelhouses ain’t got more than a plank laid over sawhorses to serve on, but the balance of ’em have got carved mahogany back bars — ours ain’t even the nicest I’ve seen — mirrors, Oriental carpeting. Glass windows, some of ’em have.

Except for this place, apparently. There was nothing on the bare splintered floor but sawdust and eyeballs. The bartender’s stock was on a couple of plank shelves against the back wall, none of it looking too appetizing. Sawhorses would of been a step up: the plank bar balanced on empty barrels, and the clientele apparently used ’em as spittoons.

I followed Murphy as “he” cut through the crowd to the bar, bellied up, and in a raspy monotone told the bartender, “Kill me quick!” “He” laid a shiny silver trime on the counter; it was quickly superseded by a shot as black and tarry as the one in front of the Marshal we were pretending not to know.

“Anything for the lady?” the barman said, looking at me dubiously.

“No, thank you.” Under my breath to Murphy, I said, “You know they call it that for a reason.”

“He” nudged his shot of “kill me quick” with a thumbnail, then picked it up and downed it. The grimace that followed was as elegant as “his” voice when he rasped out, “Turpentine,” quietly enough that only the Marshal on “his” right and me on “his” left might hear “him.”

“Well,” I answered. “My guess was coal tar. Have you gone blind?”

“No, more’s the pity.” Murphy gestured to the piss-stained sawdust on the floor. “He” called for another shot of the coffin varnish and let this one sit, much to my relievedness.

After a bit, I edged in between Murphy and the Marshal and we engaged in a bit of business with money changing hands. I left with Marshal Reeves. The plan was for Murphy to come out after us and proceed on to Peter Bantle’s cribhouse. Marshal Reeves and me would stay with the horses, since I’d allowed as I could ride. We were Miss Francina’s way out. And the distraction, and the backup plan. We hoped we could hand Aashini off to Tomoatooah and Merry Lee, who should already be in place on a nearby rooftop. They would whisk her away, and the Marshal, Miss Francina, and I would be able to lose our pursuit in the rat’s nest of alleys down by the docks, or in the shantytowns that washed away whenever the summer storms got bad.

Merry still wasn’t in any shape for daring escapades, and I was passionately worried about her. She’d not been willing to tell us where her safe house was, though, and so she was in whether we wanted her to be or not.

I would just have to count on Tomoatooah to defend her. Given the fearsome reputation of the Comanche, I didn’t expect him to disappoint me. But I was still worried. For him, too, of course. For Marshal Reeves and me. But chiefly for Miss Francina — I mean Murphy. And for Merry Lee.

It was overcast, and that was our friend. But it was starting to rain — lightly, but enough to render roof tiles and cobblestones slick as ice. That might be our friend … but it was just as likely to be our enemy.

I hoped Aashini could climb and run. I hoped she was as tough and smart and stubborn as her sister.

I was worrying about that and a dozen other things when the Marshal and I made it back to the horses. He’d paid a pair of small Negro boys to watch them, and I waited in the shadows until he’d given them each a pinky-nail-sized flake of gold — for urchins, the very large wealth of a dollar. The urchins (children with homes to go to weren’t running wild in the streets at three in the morning) vanished into the same shadows I emerged from.

There were four horses, a gelding and three mares — Bass Reeves’ and Tomoatooah’s mounts and remounts. They looked mighty fine to my eye, all four of ’em, and it filled my mouth with sick water just catching wind of their warm, horsy scent. I wanted to go run and throw my arms around their necks, I’d missed horses so damned much. And I wanted to go punch each of ’em in the throat for what had happened to my da.

I knowed that was stupid, and my hands shook with not trusting myself not to take out on ’em what wasn’t their fault — and what wasn’t even the dumb animal fault of the colt that killed Da.

Da would always say you don’t blame an animal for being an animal. Not when we’re men and God gave us reason and made us custodians. And then he’d usually mutter something uncomplimentary about folk who didn’t use that God-given gift, and who still thought they had the right to boss around God’s other creatures.

Every time I started to get killing mad at that colt, I tried to remember him saying that. It helped, mostly. The colt lived past me, anyway.

But it occurs to me now that maybe I was being a bit two-faced when I said earlier that I didn’t understand coveting after revenge. I guess in honesty it’s more that Mama and Da raised me to think things through before I did ’em, mostly. And mostly, I do.

So I bit my lip and made myself look over the horses without flinching or making faces.

The gelding and one of the mares were big for my taste, but Bass Reeves is a big man. They both carried good muscle. The gray — the gelding — had a neck that made me sad he was gelded, and if he was a bit straight behind he had the muscle to make up for the lack of leverage. The sorrel shoved a soft nose at me as soon as she saw me, and nibbled around my pockets for a treat. I pretended like I’d forgotten to bring any, and looked at her shoulders, which were strong and sloped just right.

I thought the gray was probably a pretty light-colored horse, in his own right, but judging by the streaks he was starting to show from the raindrops, Marshal Reeves had blacked him up a bit with soot so he wouldn’t show so much in the darkness.

The other two mares were Indian ponies, and some people use that to mean scrub horses, but those people is just plumb ignorant. Mustangs was what the Pony Express used, and nobody — not the fanciest eastern racehorse farmer or the canniest western cutting-horse rancher — knows more about breeding than the horse tribes do. When Indians don’t have good horses, it’s because their good horses was killed by the army or taken away when the Indians was moved on. Their ponies are smart and strong and though they’re little, nothing makes a better cutting horse. My da used to itch to get his hands on Indian ponies.

He would of traded his eyeteeth and his last pan of biscuits for these. One was a sturdy-looking paint, a black tobiano with one brown eye and one china blue. She had the smartest ears I’d ever seen, perked up and touched almost tip to tip, and a dished face that made her look like a Barb. She might be, partways. There’s Barb blood in those Indian ponies, because they come from the Conquistadores’ horses and those come from when the Moors conquered Spain. She also had a big chest, for a mare, and clean, straight forelegs. All four of her hooves was dark. I don’t hold with the idea that a white-footed horse is necessarily worse than one with dark hooves, though I know some do. But I could see that her hoof edges was clean, though she’d never known shoes.

The other was a dun — the kind of dun the Indians get, with the stripe down her spine and the stripes on the lower part of the legs, like maybe her grandaddy was a zebra. It wasn’t the prettiest color I’d ever seen — dull in the gaslight and like somebody had rubbed red earth all through a gray horse’s hide — but she grinned at me like a mule when I came up to her. It might of been a mean expression, except her ears stayed up. I’ve knowed a few horses learned to smile back at people. They always seem to be the damned smart ones.

My Molly was a grinner.

I finally “found” the carrots and parsnips in my pockets and broke bits off for everyone. Until I felt the whiffle of whiskers across my palms, the nibble of soft lips, I didn’t realize how much I needed it. Something tightened up in my chest. But something bigger eased — a band cracked open. Like the iron straps that coop a barrel together, it split, and everything I’d been holding in came boiling up, trying to get out and splash all over. Like that beer flood over in London you’ve heard of, near on forty years before I was born, where all the people drowned in cellars when the brewery’s vats exploded.

It would of been about that much of a mess, too. I could feel my lip quivering, my eyes starting to burn. I was going to collapse in the mud in a second and be no use to Priya or Miss Francina or Aashini or Marshal Reeves or anyone. And it was all down to that warm snuffle on my palm, such as I hadn’t felt since I had to sell off my father’s stock. And give up Molly. I still can’t help but feel like I betrayed her, though I found her the best home I could and it was better for her than starving with me would of been.

That stock money didn’t go near as far as I expected, in a place like Rapid City. And weren’t many willing to hire a girl of fifteen to break horses for ’em or even as a stable hand.

And that’s how I wound up seamstressing for Madame Damnable.

“Miss?” Marshal Reeves said behind me. His hand on my shoulder was warm and solid, and somehow I used its weight to pull myself together instead of crumpling completely. It were a near thing, though. “Miss Memery? Second thoughts?”

I couldn’t bear to have him think me a coward. I jerked my head up as if I could toss the tears back into my eyes, sniffed hard — hoping it sounded like disdain — and said, “No sir.”

I wanted to tell him that my da had horses. That I grew up in the saddle. But if I’d been going to tell him that the time to mention it would of been when I’d told him I could ride.

I hadn’t said a word about how I hadn’t touched a pony in more than a year. It wouldn’t do anything for his confidence in me to bring it up now.

“What’s her name?” I asked, of the piebald mare.

“That’s Scout,” he said. “The dun is Adobe. The sorrel’s Dusty, and this here gelding is Pongo. You’ll be on Scout.”

I nodded. I was glad she seemed friendly, and I could see from the condition of her lips and the easy bit she was wearing that she reined well — and that Tomoatooah had a gentle hand. “I’m looking forward to it,” I said, and it was half a lie and half the bitterest truth I ever mouthed. I scratched behind her ever-so-pointy ears and gave her another bite of parsnip. “Good horse.”

His teeth flashed in the dark. “You’ll have to give her back when you’re done with her.”

“How’re you going to catch me?” I asked, grinning back. I kicked my shortened skirt up and swung into the rig before I could think about it too much more. Scout stepped right once, then steadied. She was little — I was looking over her ears, not between them — but she didn’t so much as duck under my weight.

“You’ll do,” he answered, forking his own rig — the one the sorrel wore. “Come on. I got our stakeout all selected. There’s some cover, and it’s even out of the wind.”

I followed on the clopping of the hooves leading me toward the pier. Adobe’s rein was looped on Scout’s saddle biscuit, and he trouped along with his nose on her shoulder like they did this daily. That seemed likely, actually.

My da wouldn’t of approved of that name — Adobe. He’d say you couldn’t yell it well enough, and every horse, dog, and child should have a name you could holler clearly through a hurricane. But it suited the horse and she wasn’t my horse, so I weren’t in any hurry to rename her.

Marshal Reeves pulled up, and I saw he hadn’t oversold his hidy-hole. But he hadn’t much undersold it, either. It was a nook, was all. A bit of alley with a bend at the back and no gas lamps. And nothing to stop the sky dripping on us, neither, though he was right in that it was more or less out of the wind.

We hunched under our hats, angling our heads so the rain didn’t drip off the brims down our backs. We stayed mounted, and I imagined we was both anonymous and shapeless in our oilcloth capes. He smoked under his hat, cursing occasionally when the rain put his cigarette out. The horses didn’t waste their energy shaking or stamping. They just stood, ears only a tetch droopier than their heads, and occasionally heaved great horsy sighs profound enough to make Marshal Reeves’ spurs jingle.

We waited.

And waited — long enough for the butterflies in my stomach to start tying knots to pass the time, long enough that I started at every sound, expecting shouts or gunshots. Much, much longer than I had hoped or expected — or so I guessed. I had a little watch on a chain that had been my mother’s. I didn’t dare pull it out and check the time for fear of it being ruined by the rain — and it was too damned dark to see it anyway. I was trying to keep from checking Miss Lizzie’s tracker, too, other than glances under the cape to see if its light had come on, since I didn’t know how that would respond to being doused, either.

Even less cheerfully than the horses did, that was my supposition.

I did look at it once, shielding the whole thing with my oilcloth, but I had to edge over close to the gas lamp to see it at all, and while I kept the gadget dry, I got rain all down my back in the process. As near as I could figure through the dark and the rain stinging my eyes, Miss Francina was off in the direction of the cribs and some distance away. Right there where she was supposed to be, in other words.

I gave up on the gadget. Might as well save its juice for if she got kidnapped and we had to chase her down and save her.

Despite my being on edge and my checking over my shoulder approximately every thirteen seconds, I still would of screamed and fallen off Scout’s saddle when Tomoatooah appeared if it hadn’t been for Scout giving him away in advance. But by her pricked ears and turned head I knowed somebody was approaching, and by her pleased expression I knowed it was someone as she knowed and liked. The Marshal, of course, wasn’t taken by surprise at all.

I already had Adobe’s reins unlooped from my biscuit and extended when Tomoatooah came up on us. He weren’t running, though, and he didn’t reach for ’em, so I dropped ’em back over the horn and waited to see what happened next.

We both knowed something was wrong. The Marshal didn’t bother asking, just turned his head and looked down at Tomoatooah from the height of his saddle.

Whatever the question was, it must of been contained in their prolonged association. Because Tomoatooah nodded. He started to say something in what might of been Comanche, then glanced at me, pitched his voice lower, and replied, “There were men with rifles on the rooftops. Who would post sentries over a cribhouse?”

“Somebody who had more in there than starved, beat whores,” Marshal Reeves said. Then he glanced at me. “Begging your pardon, Miss Memery.”

“Wait,” I said. We were all talking — not in whispers, because whispers carry. But in low conversational tones. “There were men with rifles?”

Despite the dark, I made out Tomoatooah’s modest shrug, and wondered if he’d ever be getting around to naming some young cousin Kills on Rooftop. The chill that gripped my spine had nothing to do with the drip of rain.

Then he grinned and said, “I imagine they’ll get out eventually. Wet rawhide stretches, and I used my second-best knots.”

The Marshal’s posture eased a little; in the dark, I couldn’t see his face. But he sounded relieved when he said, “Counting coup on Bantle’s men is a dangerous pastime, Sky.”

“That’s the point of coup,” Tomoatooah said. “Killing is easy. There’s no face in it. Any sign yet of our friends?”

The men exchanged another look I couldn’t read — couldn’t barely detect, in the rain and the gloom. Then — I thought for my benefit — the Marshal said, “Five more minutes and we leave the ponies with Miss Memery and go in after them.”

I might of protested. But somebody did have to stay with the ponies. And having just seen Tomoatooah move down the alley like a panther on greased ice, I couldn’t justify any argument I came up with to me, let alone the Marshal. Besides, I knowed I could handle the horses. I’d be a help here, and not an impediment.

The Marshal checked his revolvers — careful to keep them dry under the shelter of his hat — and I swear I heard him singing under his breath: “Two herring boxes without the tops on / Just made the sandals of Clementine.…”

Damnedest thing I ever witnessed, but I supposit we all got our ways of keeping the wolves amused if we can’t keep ’em at bay.

It didn’t take five minutes, though. I was counting one-Mississippi two-Mississippi for the third time and Marshal Reeves had just finished up with Clementine and was moving on to, “Fare thee well, Fare thee well, Fare thee well, my fairy fay,” when that shouting I’d been afraid of broke out. It was a ruckus that should of invited the squeal of police whistles except there weren’t nothing legal about the way Bantle kept his girls. The constables weren’t going to cross him and go in after any Indian or Chinese whore, I mean — but they weren’t going to help him get one back, neither.

Some of them constables had used to be slaves before the war, too, I heard tell.

Before I really knowed what was happening, Tomoatooah was up in Adobe’s saddle. He leaned way out, so one knee hooked the saddle bow, and lifted the reins off Scout’s pommel before I did more than start reaching to loose ’em.

The Marshal was already pushing Dusty into a canter. He tossed me Pongo’s reins as they passed — as if to make up in a weird sort of way for me losing Adobe. I grabbed those reins and held on: the gelding wanted to follow his stablemates, and Scout had to turn in a circle a time or two to convince him otherwise.

By the time me and the horses was sorted, the Marshal and his posseman had about vanished into the rain. They were just big, bulky black shapes in the gas lamps of Commercial Street, and as I nudged Scout up to the edge of the alley I could make out the grim dull lights of Bantle’s cribhouse at the end of the block.

A cribhouse, if you ain’t seen one, is sort of a stable for people. It’s one or more long buildings, a single story tall, not built to keep the weather out. And rather than having stalls that open on to a central corridor, it has cells that open out to the outside, built side by side and back to back.

Well, one of those cells was open and grimy lamplight spilled out on to the street. A tall figure, strangely lumpy on thin legs, was half-running and half-staggering toward Marshal Reeves and Tomoatooah, booted feet stomping big splashes out of puddles. Behind him, a hue and cry was swirling out into the street — half a dozen men at least, though some of them seemed the worse for drink from how they was staggering.

The horses’ hooves rang or thudded, as the state of their farriering dictated, and the foremost running figure hurled itself toward them. They charged past, and I realized suddenly that if that was Miss Francina, then the plan was changing and I needed to get Pongo up there tout suite, as Beatrice would say.

I gave Scout my heels — just a touch — and she responded like an angel. Like an avenging angel, jumping forward through suddenly heavy palls of rain. I hoped Merry Lee could hear the commotion, and had sense enough to take herself off.

And then we had other problems and I lost the leisure to worry about any of ’em.

Scout had the build of a good cutting horse, and it turned out she had the wits of one, too. She seemed to know what we were after better than I did, and shouldered the bigger Pongo to a halt just steps from running over Miss Francina. And it was Miss Francina — hat blown off, hair draggled and lank, rain dripping off the tip of her long nose. The strangely bulky appearance was on account of she had a girl bundled up in her arms.

A girl she hoisted up to me, straight armed. Now, I knowed Miss Francina was strong as hell, but seeing that I wasn’t surprised that the person I pulled onto Scout’s saddle behind me wasn’t much more than twine and broomstraws wrapped up in a wet cotton nightshirt and Miss Francina’s Alias Murphy coat.

Miss Francina thrashed up into Pongo’s saddle and I tossed her the reins, then stole a glance back at Tomoatooah and Marshal Reeves.

They’d reined in and now sat their horses two abreast across Commercial Street, blocking the way. The Marshal had his Winchester rifle out and his head bent over it. Tomoatooah had put a shotgun to his shoulder.

The Marshal called something to the men swarming out of the cribhouse. I couldn’t make the words, but the tone echoed with command. The men coming up on him and Tomoatooah stopped. One reached for a hip holster but then danced back, sparks flying from the wet stones by his feet. A split second later the sound of the gunshot reached my little party. Pongo and Scout both took it with equanimity, but the girl against my back, who was probably Aashini Swati, made up for it by startling enough for all of us.

“Aashini,” I said over my shoulder to the shivering girl, “hold on tight. Your sister Priya sent us.”

Not exactly true. But close enough, and I needed to save on explanations. And from the way she clutched at me, she wanted to believe it.

“Karen honey,” Miss Francina said, “not to needle you, but we should be going.”

As we turned the horses, I called out to Miss Francina, “Why didn’t you use the gadget?”

She was wrestling the reins. Fortunately, Pongo knowed what he was doing. She yelled back, “I tried! It didn’t work, now, did it? And they must of twigged right off that something was up, because there were two men right outside the door. I knocked ’em down on the way out. But they seem to have got up again.”

We couldn’t run the horses on these wet cobbles — not and expect them and us to live. But Tomoatooah and the Marshal were buying us time. I let Scout have her head, trusting her to pick her own pace. She settled into a lope that was less pell-mell than I would of liked but inexpressibly safer.

I glanced back over my shoulder. I had a confused glimpse of somebody pulling some strange sort of helmet on — big goggles on it — and then crying out and pointing after Miss Francina on Pongo. “He can see in the dark!” I yelled. I got a sense that he was gesturing for the benefit of unseen watchers, and felt a great relief at Tomoatooah’s removal of those same.

The Winchester cracked again. I missed seeing it — I’d glanced back forward. But I felt a sudden, shocking tug as a bullet touched my collar. I gasped. Aashini huddled tighter under my oilcloth, making herself tiny against my back. I heard cursing behind me — the Marshal’s voice — and then the shotgun roared once. I hunched down as close to Scout’s neck as I could manage and urged her to pick up the pace, if she felt able.

When I glanced back again — under my armpit this time to keep from lifting my head — I saw something that chilled me. Peter Bantle was out in the street, standing under the gas lamp by his office door. I knowed him by his stature and his coat and because … because he had that glove on, and it snapped and sparked blue in the rain, but that didn’t seem to trouble him. He was making a beckoning gesture to the Marshal, and the Marshal reined toward him—

I should turn back. I should turn back and help Marshal Reeves. What kind of a pissant coward was I, riding off when that brave man needed me—

That brave man who had just shot at me?

My hands lifted the reins as if moving of their own volition. My seat bones shifted in the saddle. Willing, generous, Scout slowed and turned.

“Dammit, Karen!” Miss Francina yelled back at me. But I didn’t register it. Her words didn’t mean any more than the heavy plop of the rain. Nor did it mean anything to me that Aashini yelped and twisted, seeming to try to figure out if she could slide down out of the saddle without breaking a leg.

Marshal Reeves rocked back and forth in his saddle, first urging Dusty forward, then clutching at the reins. The mare was getting mad at him, too. She skittered and hopped and thought about a buck. Her manners held though, for now. He pushed her a step forward. I could see he’d dropped his rifle—

He was five steps from Bantle now, in among Bantle’s men. One — not the one with the bug-eyed helmet — stepped in to take his reins—

There was a bloodcurdling whoop, and in a flurry of hooves and streaming tail Adobe charged through the middle of the gang of men. I didn’t even see Tomoatooah on his back, stuck as he was like a bit of sticking plaster in her mane, but I saw the result. The gang of men scattered, shattered. Dusty reared, kicking out at the one who had been about to grab her rein. And Tomoatooah must of leaned out of the saddle and grabbed Peter Bantle by the coat collar, because suddenly he was flailing along beside the running dun — running! On these roads! — with his boot heels bouncing off the stones and his arms flailing this way and that.

Tomoatooah had grabbed him on the off side — with his right hand — facing the other way. So Bantle’s evil electric glove was on the side of his body away from Tomoatooah and Adobe, sending its sparks harmlessly into the air.

What am I doing? I thought suddenly — just as Tomoatooah let go of Bantle’s collar and Bantle fell heavily on the stones. What the hell am I doing here? The Marshal, sitting in his saddle with his head shaking back and forth as if dazed, seemed to be wondering a similar thing. I saw him reach for his Winchester and look down in surprise to find it not in its saddle holster.

“Marshal!” I yelled back at him. “Run!”

I didn’t stick around to see if he was listening but turned Scout back after Pongo and gave her a bounce to let her know I had returned to my senses and wanted to get gone.

What the hell were you waiting for? her ears said with a saucy flip.

I wished I had some kind of reasonable answer.