Heresy Read online

  Those first few days after the job, I made sure to let my displeasure with Garet be known. It wasn’t an act, either. Grace Trumbull couldn’t ride a damn horse, and she got a bad case of soroche. Mountain sickness. Everyone got it when they were new to the mountains. Headache, sick to your stomach, tired. Oh Lord, did it make you tired. That first night in camp, Grace fell asleep like that and slept like the dead. I threw pebbles at her, trying to wake her, and nothing doing. Garet chastised me, but she was smiling a bit, too. I could tell she regretted bringing the woman, but she never admitted it.

  “I expected Grace to want to have a lie-in the next morning, but when we woke her at dawn, she made ready to leave without question or complaint. Surprised the hell out of me, but she didn’t complain once. In fact, she wasn’t much for complaining in general. I figured she was holding back because she knew she was on thin ice with me. I’d done my level best to frighten her when we met, and I think I did. But the more I got to know her, the more I realized she wasn’t the complaining kind. She was a lot like Garet, and me, in that way. She saw something that needed to be done and she did it. I liked her more than I ever thought I would, but that was at the end. Right here in this part of the story, I didn’t trust her. That was well founded, as it turned out.

  “We made it back to the ranch with little trouble. You should have seen that Yankee get off her horse the last time. She could barely walk. I laughed and got a dirty look from Grace for my effort. I knew well enough what she thought of me and my kind by that time.

  “Garet had this habit of going off in the mountains by herself after we did a job. She always took a green horse to train ’em in mountain riding and came back with a deer or elk or something across the back of her pack horse to hang in the smokehouse. Usually I didn’t mind, but this time it meant I had to babysit Grace Trumbull. Wasn’t a problem for the first few days, what with her being rump sore and the mountain sickness still had her, so she spent most of the first week in bed. You shoulda seen her face when she was told Garet was gone and we didn’t know when she’d be back. Partly cause I had other fish to fry, I decided to let Stella take charge of her. Mostly I wanted to see how tough Grace Trumbull of Chicago really was.

  “I haven’t told you about Stella and Joan yet, have I? They were a couple of sisters from Nebraska. Jehu found them begging in Rock Springs, trying to get the money for a train to Frisco. Joan was about twelve, old enough that Jehu guessed some man would try to buy her, or not, which would be worse. Wouldn’t no man want to buy Stella. Oh, she wasn’t ugly—she was just a plain granger—but you could tell by the set of her mouth and the scar on her top lip that Stella wouldn’t be a compliant wife. She got that scar the first time her pa threw a leg over her. Didn’t lie down and take it like he expected. Stella was a fighter, and that’s a fact. Joan had some fight in her, too, especially at the end.

  “That happened then, miners, farmers, businessmen buying wives to do the housework and spread their legs when demanded, squeeze out some children to put to work and make miserable by and by. Pioneering was a hard life for women. They gloss over it in the movies. Make the sodbuster some handsome, good-hearted fella. Make the cowboy honorable. Those types of men were thin on the ground in the West, let me tell you. Jehu? He was different. Everyone loved Jehu. Luke Rhodes was a good man, too. In the end. Ought-Not. Jack and Domino. Guess we had more good men around us than we realized at the time.

  “But Jehu. He had the tenderest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. He couldn’t abide the idea of that little girl being sold off to some toothless, dirty miner. Course, he didn’t know Stella. Talk about a mama bear. Lawd, she would have slit anyone’s throat who suggested Joan for the skin trade.

  “Well, thinking on it, she did, but I think she used an ax to the back of his head. She wasn’t ever real clear on events, you see, and knowing Stella like I did, there was no telling what she did. She killed her older brother and father when they switched their attention from her to Joan. Not out of jealousy, mind you. I think she’d been harboring murderous feelings since her mom had died and she’d had to fill in for her, in every way. That’s how the sisters ended up in Rock Springs, with Jehu, and at Garet and Thomas’s ranch, oh, about ’71 I guess. I’d been there for a good three, four years by then. Thomas was laid up in bed, and Garet and I ran the ranch. We were a good team, Garet and I.

  “We weren’t the only vagrants Jehu brought home, but they’d all eventually go their own way until it was only the five of us—Garet, Jehu, Joan, Stella, and me. And then Margaret went and brought Grace Trumbull. Stella didn’t like her—Stella didn’t like anyone much—and I knew she wouldn’t give Grace any quarter. Grace was a tough old bitch, I’ll give her that, and a fast learner. Made Stella right angry, let me tell you. She expected that Yankee to fold in a day. Instead, by the time Garet blazed back into the ranch, Grace was on her way to becoming a good hand. I’d even started working with her on riding.

  “I didn’t just give Grace over to Stella to torture her, though that was an enticement, but I knew that with Garet gone, Grace would need a shoulder, and I wanted to offer it. I still didn’t like her, and trusted her even less, but I wanted her to trust me, to confide in me. I knew I could never earn her trust on my own. She wasn’t going to warm to me unless she had no other ally. Stella, God bless her, played Grace right into my hands. I figured if Grace was against us, she’d eventually slip up.

  “Why did I think she was against us? Well, I’ll tell you. Since we’d started outlawing I’d thought long and hard about what our enemies were doing. I didn’t believe for one second they were letting us get away with what we did. Oh, sure, they didn’t want the world knowing they were being bested by women. I imagined Connolly had a time of keeping it out of the papers. There’s nothing a newspaperman likes more than a sensational story he can make even grander with lies. And sure enough. Years later, when most people who were there were dead and gone, what did I discover but that a big chunk of the Connolly empire is newspapers? That mystery was solved when Dorcas sold to Hearst at the turn of the century. Oh, I’ll get to her. She’s a big part of the story later on. You better believe Connolly Industries is still around. Bought and sold and changed names, but the colonel’s legacy lives on.

  “Anyways. I knew that they were after us, and that their plans and strategy would be just as cunning and devious and secret as our plans were. There weren’t no bounties on our head, none that were public anyways, so we weren’t being chased by those scoundrels. Which left the Pinkertons. But I thought, “What would I do to catch us?” A female gang wouldn’t trust a man who tried to get in with them, but they might a woman. And that was the first thing that ran through my mind when I saw Grace riding double with Garet.

  “I eventually told Garet my suspicions, but I wanted some time to watch Grace, to win her trust. I knew Grace didn’t think of me as her equal, or that I was smarter than her. I might have let her believe it. Might’ve let her think I was all into voodoo, just to mess with her. Hell, if she was going to write a story about us, might as well make it more interesting than the truth, which was that Garet and I neither had much use for the Lord back then.

  “Things were changing in the Hole. More people were coming in, strangers, all up to no good. Apparently word had gotten out about Timberline and how accommodating we were with bandits. There were strangers and threats everywhere. When Garet got back from her walkabout with news that Spooner and his gang were back in town, we were surrounded on all sides by enemies. By the time we realized it, it was too late.”

  8

  Margaret Parker’s Journal

  Friday, June 15, 1877

  Heresy Ranch

  Timberline, Colorado

  Damn Jed Spooner. Damn Luke Rhodes. Damn all men.

  9

  Margaret Parker’s Journal

  Saturday, June 16, 1877

  Heresy Ranch

  Timberline, Colorado

  Thank the Lord, Jehu has returned. I can always fi
nd an ally in Jehu. As much as I love Hattie, she’s not one to condole with. Her shoulder is hard and bony and she has this irritating habit of telling it to me straight, especially when I don’t want to hear it. Her gruff advice is always sound, goddammit.

  Jehu rolled in about midday today, his wagon filled to the gills with supplies for the town. Usually we’d all ride into Timberline with him, but since we’d all just made a spectacle of ourselves the night before, we said no. Except Grace. I think she’s finding our company a little taxing. Not sure I blame her.

  First, though, Jehu went straight to Hattie, got in her face, and cussed her out good for the knife in his crotch at the robbery. She didn’t flinch, or show any sort of remorse, which just made Jehu angrier. He’s not one to take and hold a grudge, but it’s been nearly three weeks since the holdup and I’ve never seen him so angry. She asked him if he was done with the tongue-lashing, he said he suspected he was, and Hattie took his hand and led him to their bedroom. They were in there for quite a while, making up.

  Grace was shocked to see Jehu drive up. We’d never mentioned him in front of her because of Hattie’s distrust. I guess Grace and Hattie came to an understanding during my days in the mountains. They aren’t quite thick as thieves (ha), but Grace does look to Hattie for answers instead of me. I’m a little put out by it, if you want to know the truth.

  I wish Grace could have seen the expression on her own face when Hattie led Jehu into the house and they started with their enthusiastic and noisy making up.

  I asked her if it was the sin she minded or the color of their skin.

  —It’s against the law.

  —Yes, we are especially concerned with not breaking the law around here.

  Grace turned bright red realizing how ridiculous she sounded, but I could tell her opinion against them being together hadn’t changed.

  It’s uncomfortable when you know what people are doing behind closed doors, so Grace and I went for a ride. She’s made amazing progress since she jumped on back of Old Blue. (I need to ride back to Horace’s and save Old Blue from that ignorant miner. No telling what he’s putting my horse through.) She and Rebel have bonded, and I’ve caught her giving him sugar cubes and talking sweet to him when she grooms him. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat animals, and Pinkerton or not (that’s Hattie’s suspicion), Grace isn’t a cruel person. We’d barely gotten out of sight of the ranch when Grace asked if I was serious about Spooner’s challenge.

  I admit, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind last night to head to the saloon and see Spooner for the first time in two years. I was hurting because I’d completely run out of hashish and laudanum, I was trying to keep my pain from everyone, and I was angry at Luke for following me up the mountain and not letting my refusal stand as a final answer. Of course, that was after he’d seduced me to lay with him one more time, goddammit. No reason we can’t keep enjoying each other, he said, and I believed him. All he wanted was to try to get my guard down so I would fall into his arms and accept his proposal. I’m not sure what makes me angriest about the whole thing, but I’m pretty sure it’s the fact that he thinks I’m weak willed enough to fall for it.

  Take a deep breath, Garet. Finish your story. You can stew later. Maybe do some target practice and pretend the cans are Luke’s bald head.

  Grace and Joan were the only ones of us in a fine fettle to see the boys, not that we had any idea who “the boys” would be by now. Men drop in and out of the gang, some by their own desire, some at Spooner’s urging, and some by being propped up in a casket in front of a sheriff’s office. Who the hell knew what Jed and his boys had been up to in Mexico for the last two years, or why he’d finally decided to come back, or if he intended to stay and take back up his Lord Bountiful routine? Stella, Hattie, and I knew that if he did, we’d be out of the outlaw line whether we liked it or not. Everyone would expect us to go back to a woman’s place.

  The thought of it gets my blood up. I want out, but I want out on my terms, not terms set by a man. So when Grace asked me if I was taking the challenge, I said hell yes I am.

  Grace was especially anxious to meet a “true outlaw gang.” That earned her a glare from Stella and Hattie, but she was too busy adjusting her fancy traveling clothes to make them more festive to notice or care.

  I knew everyone in town would be at the Blue Diamond. Being small and remote, Timberline doesn’t much truck with the notion of women not being welcome in the saloon. There is little enough social distraction in the Hole, no one sees any point in keeping the women from enjoying Opal’s accordion playing. Though I imagine if the Hole ever gets civilized, we’ll be shoved back into parlors to play bridge. Eli keeps a bottle of sherry behind the bar for just such occasions, but it was dusty from disuse. We all drank whisky or beer, depending on what our mood was. Last night, I was in a whisky mood.

  We got to the Blue Diamond after dusk, and the party was already well on its way to being rambunctious, and Stella tried to take Joan back to the ranch. Joan ignored her sister and sashayed through the door as if she’d walked into a saloon a hundred times. Stella needs to understand that Joan is a woman now and can’t be treated like a defenseless little girl. All the same, I kept my eye on her, and I’ll continue to. She’s green in the ways of men, that’ll happen when you’re surrounded by women all the time, and these men use, abuse, and toss aside women like her on the regular.

  Ruby sat on the arm of Jed’s chair. In one hand he held his poker cards, the other was up high on Ruby’s thigh. Ruby saw me come in before Jed did, and she look chagrined at draping herself over the man everyone thought was mine. (It’s amazing that no one besides Ruby has picked up on what Luke and I have been up to for the last year. Even Hattie and Jehu are ignorant of it, as far as I know.) Ruby took the empty whisky bottle and headed to the bar. Luke Rhodes leaned against the bar, watching the room.

  The stranger, Salter, looked up from the cards he held, lifted the corner of his mouth not occupied with a stubby cigar, and nodded at me in acknowledgment. I was glad to recognize some of Spooner’s men: Domino Jones, former riverboat dealer turned cardsharp; “Sly” Jack Fox, the best fingersmith in the territories; Scab Williams, powder monkey for the Union navy and a gold-mining company until Spooner offered him the same job in less dangerous circumstances and a bigger return; Hank “Ought-Not” Henry, peterman, whose constant entreaty that “we ought not to do that” kept the gang from being reckless; and I was glad that a couple weren’t there. Then “Dead-Eye” Deacon Dobbs walked in from the back, holding his Bible and wearing a priest’s collar. Hattie said what I was thinking.

  —Shit. When did that bastard hook up with Spooner?

  —I don’t know.

  Deacon Dobbs looked like an outlaw priest with his black suit and white collar, but he wasn’t a Catholic. He is a Methodist, or was, I should say. Spooner’d told me Dobbs had been run out of the church when he took too much of a liking to purifying wayward women through a violent ritual that was an amalgam of all the worst teachings and impulses of a variety of religions. Dobbs’s reasoning that what he did to the women was nothing he hadn’t done to himself to cleanse himself of sin only horrified his congregation more.

  Dobbs had come to the Poudre River Ranch with Angus King’s gang back in ’71 and, though a mite strange, had been quiet enough. He worked hard and said little, but he had a tendency to stare with a dead-eyed expression at Hattie especially. Hattie’d had plenty of experience giving men like Deacon Dobbs a wide berth, but the young woman staying with us, a young whore from Cheyenne, had not. Spooner, whose gang was lying low after a job, had caught Deacon at the beginning of his ritual, thank God, though not soon enough to keep the girl from having scars on her breasts for the rest of her life. We ran Deacon off the ranch, threatened to kill him if he ever came back. Spooner told Angus King he needed to find another hideout. The last couple of jobs that King had pulled had been violent, and Spooner didn’t truck with that at all.

  Which i
s why we were shocked to see Deacon with Spooner. I couldn’t imagine what a mean old rip like Dobbs was doing riding with him.

  Dead-Eye saw us and said,—Hello, Margaret. He ignored Hattie, which I knew was fine with her.

  —Deacon Dobbs. It’s been a long time. Is your evening self-flagellation over, or is that later?

  —Later. Would you like to borrow my whip for your own recrimination?

  —I have nothing to repent for, but thank you for the offer.

  Spooner looked up about then and spotted Joan. His eyes sparked with a look I knew very well, and I edged over next to the young woman. I didn’t care a whit about Spooner not noticing me—Luke Rhodes’s eyes were doing enough of that on their own, and Dead-Eye looked at me as though imagining my bare back being riven by the end of his whip—but I wanted Spooner to see that Joan was protected by not only her sister.

  Spooner’s entire expression lit up with pleasure when he saw me, and my vanity was pleased. I hadn’t bothered wearing a dress because I didn’t want to bed any of these men and wearing a dress into a saloon you might as well be waving a red flag, so Jed looking at me with appreciation helped smooth the feathers that Luke Rhodes had ruffled a few hours before.

  Spooner stepped out from the table, opened his arms wide and said,—Duchess!

  I was in a quandary. I didn’t want to hug Jed. I looked at him, and he looked well—brown faced and stout, as if he’d been working with his arms for a while—and I could tell that he expected to warm my bed that night. But I felt nothing for him. Not even a little spark. But Rhodes was watching, and I didn’t want to give him a hint of hope, so I waltzed right up to Jed Spooner and kissed him like he was my long-lost husband. He still tasted like the mint he likes to chew and the whisky he likes to drink, and I might have felt a little something just then.