Badlands Read online

  CHAPTER

  5

  The toe of a boot nudged me awake.

  I opened my eyes and saw a carpetbag lying deep beneath the bed, a clean strip of floor amid a thin layer of dust leading to it. My head was thick and heavy, memories hard to recover, but the telltale feel of opiates flowed through my body. Slowly, I remembered tossing and turning, and finding solace in the glass of whisky on the dresser. There, memories ended. Why I didn’t get back in bed, I couldn’t know.

  Someone nudged me again. “Wake up.”

  I lifted my head and a string of saliva dripped from the corner of my lax, numb mouth. I wiped it, roughly, having trouble controlling my arms, and sat up. The blanket covering me fell from my shoulders, revealing the fact that I had slept in my clothes. A man wearing an open-necked blue striped shirt with a tin star pinned on his leather vest looked down on me with a disgusted expression. His boots were muddy but his black hat was pristine, as was his gray handlebar mustache.

  “You Laura Barclay?”

  “Who?”

  “It’s her, but you’re wasting your time, Sheriff,” Martha Mason said. “Look at her. She can’t hardly lift her hand, let alone a knife.”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “I …” I glanced around the empty room, lifted myself up higher, and checked the bed. Disheveled and vacant. I slumped down. “I don’t know. Why?” Using the footboard, I pulled myself to my feet and leaned heavily against the canopy pole.

  “You two had dinner with Cora Bayle last night,” the sheriff said.

  “We did.”

  “Things get a little heated?”

  “Heated?”

  “She’s no use to you, Sheriff Toomer,” Martha said.

  “Why are you asking about Cora?” I asked.

  “Someone killed that hatchet-faced redhead,” Martha said.

  My brain felt like it was covered with heavy brocade drapes. “I’ve never killed anyone with a hatchet.” My brows furrowed. A bounty hunter was killed with a hatchet, but I didn’t wield it. Did I?

  Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed and spoke with a thick voice. “You think I killed Cora with a hatchet?”

  “See, Sheriff? She don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Come on downstairs and we’ll find the sister.”

  The sheriff held up his hand to silence Martha. “Cora was murdered on the train platform sometime last night.”

  “How horrible. Poor thing.”

  “Heard you threatened to kill her last night,” the sheriff said.

  My mind sharpened and cleared in an instant. “I did no such thing. I would never threaten someone like that. Besides, do I look capable of killing anyone?” I hoped I looked as poorly as I felt. If Sheriff Toomer’s evaluation of me was any indication, I did. Relief surged through me like a drink of cold water. “How did she die?”

  “Stabbed,” Toomer said. “In the throat.”

  “A messy business.” I held out my arms. My hands and sleeves were clean.

  “How do you know?” Toomer said.

  “I am …” A doctor. I smiled thinly. “I was a nurse in the war. I know how neck wounds bleed.”

  “What side?” Toomer’s ice-blue eyes bored into me. He was still fighting the war.

  “Confederacy.”

  He nodded slowly, suspecting my lie, no doubt, but not able to prove it. Rosemond breezed through the door. I sat on the bed, exhausted from trying to be strong.

  Rosemond wore my laundered dress, her bosom straining against the bodice.

  “Laura? What’s going on?” She noted the tin star pinned on the man’s vest. “Sheriff?”

  “You Rosemond Barclay?”

  “Yes.”

  “She your sister?”

  “Yes. What’s the meaning of this?”

  “You two were the last people to talk to Cora Bayle last night. After she left you she was murdered on the train platform. Stabbed in the neck.”

  “I suppose we weren’t the last to talk to her.” Sheriff Toomer furrowed his brows. “Her murderer would have been,” Rosemond clarified. “What kind of town is this? I heard a whore was killed last week as well, correct?”

  Toomer’s eyes narrowed. “How did you hear that?”

  “The town is talking of little else. Frankly, I’m glad to be leaving. Grand Island, Nebraska, doesn’t seem safe for a woman, does it?” A train whistle sounded in the distance. “Is that the east train or the west?”

  “East. The westbound train is readying to leave.”

  “We should hurry, sister.” Rosemond held out her hand to me.

  “Martha said Miss Bayle received a note during dinner?” the sheriff said.

  “She did. Looked like a masculine hand. From her killer, no doubt. I don’t suppose you found the note on her person?”

  Toomer’s ice-blue eyes fell on me. There was more than one note on Cora’s person. He knew who I was from the letter I’d given Cora.

  I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and inhaled, at peace. It was over. No more running. No more being manipulated by people like Rosemond, or used as a pawn by men like Cotter Black. No more looking over my shoulder and worrying if the man walking behind me was a Pinkerton, finally come to track me down. I was going home. Back to New York, to face whatever might come. I thought of Kindle. Maybe if I cooperated, I could convince the sheriff to take me to him, to say good-bye.

  “We found nothing on her at all,” Toomer said. I opened my eyes, which went automatically to the bed, underneath which sat a carpetbag. Cora Bayle’s.

  “I told you you were wasting your time here,” Martha said. “You oughta be talking to Bullock. He gave me the note.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Sheriff Toomer said.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “You must excuse us, Sheriff, or we’ll miss our train,” Rosemond said.

  “Thank you, ladies,” the sheriff said, touching his hat.

  Martha shut the door behind him. Rosemond dropped to her knees and pulled the carpetbag from beneath the bed. She pulled my mother’s necklace from it and held it out to Martha, whose eyes lit up.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, standing.

  Rosemond glared at me but didn’t answer. She kept hold of the necklace. “What did you do with the dress?”

  “Burned it in the stove.”

  “You sure it’s gone?”

  “It’s ashes. I made sure.”

  “This is worth the reward for my sister, at least. You get out of town. East, far away from us and Grand Island.” Rosemond released the necklace.

  “With pleasure.” Martha left, but instead of heading to the main stairs, she turned toward the back stairs and was gone.

  Rosemond picked up Cora’s carpetbag. “Let’s go.”

  “You killed Cora,” I whispered. “Why?”

  “She was a threat to us.” She shoved her free hand into my chest. I looked down and saw the letter I gave Cora twisted in Rosemond’s fist and streaked with dried blood. “What were you thinking, giving her this letter? Did it not occur to you she would read it?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t know she recognized me when I gave it to her. Anyway, you said she wasn’t the type to turn me in.”

  “I lied. Everyone’s the type to fucking turn you in. Don’t you get that yet?” She shoved me away and went to the dresser. She lit the oil lamp and set the letter on fire. It curled and smoked, destroying my grand idea to contact Mary Kindle. A grand idea that had left an innocent woman dead.

  Rosemond dropped the letter into the ceramic water basin and said, “I went to meet Cora last night to give her the necklace and buy her silence. Imagine my surprise when she waved the letter in my face and refused. Without the letter, we could have argued you’re not the same person because you do look like hell, Laura. But, thanks to you, that option was gone.”

  “I thought you’d kidnapped me. You hadn’t bothered to tell me where we were going or anything at all.”

  “You’v
e been high as a kite. Hell, you could barely talk a day ago, let alone lift a fork to your mouth.” Rosemond stuck her finger in my face. “No more dope. If you hadn’t called out for Kindle on the street, Cora would be alive and we’d have your mother’s necklace, and don’t you forget it. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “You don’t care if I die. You just want to use me for your own means.”

  “You’re goddamn right I do. Don’t you ever go behind my back again or I guarantee you will never see William Kindle again.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  Rosemond’s mood worsened as we traveled west.

  The journey alone would have been enough to put a traveler in a bad mood. The landscape outside the window was barren and flat, a featureless plain that I thought I’d grown accustomed to traveling across Texas and Indian Territory. However, seeing it slide past hour after hour was a tax on the mind. This was what the US government wanted to steal from the Indians? Let them have it, I said. Living here would drive the sanest person to madness.

  Having to leave Grand Island in a rush, we paid the fare and boarded the early-morning train, the emigrant train—overcrowded, sweltering, and slow; I suspected it was what pushed Rosemond’s mood into the terrifying territory in which it currently resided. Though, to give her the benefit of the doubt, the weight of murdering an innocent woman might have started to weigh down her conscience. The constant reminder of Cora Bayle’s carpetbag sitting on the bench between us didn’t help.

  I turned my head slightly and watched Rosemond. She stared straight ahead, her mouth set in a thin line, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders rigid. She looked less like a well-paid whore and more like a woman on the edge: tense and unsure of the future.

  The train slowed and stopped next to a platform backed by a few buildings. It was a nameless whistle stop with little to offer or recommend. Fellow passengers stood to stretch their legs but didn’t wander far from their seats out of fear of losing them.

  Rosemond looked at the platform with anticipation. It was empty, save the depot master and a man selling nuts and coffee from the back of a handcart. Or trying to. The passengers looked through the window at his wares, and down at their own meager provisions. Rosemond settled back into her seat, anger pulsing off her in waves of heat.

  “Dunk isn’t here?”

  She glared at me. “No, he isn’t fucking here. He’s in Cheyenne, waiting for us.”

  The woman sitting in front of us turned slightly in her seat but knew better than to comment. She’d tried to admonish Rosemond earlier but had gotten a salty earful for eavesdropping.

  I lowered my voice so we couldn’t be heard over the din of conversation in our overcrowded carriage. “So why do you keep looking for him at every stop?”

  Rosemond dropped her voice as well. “Because he’s not used to me not being around to tell him what to do. There’s no telling what he might get up to.”

  “He’s not a child, you know.”

  Rosemond glared at me. She opened her mouth to respond but closed it with a click. She pushed her shoulder nearest me forward, and shifted slightly on her seat to block the sight of me. She stared across the car and out the opposite window in silence, her jaw tense from the effort to keep her thoughts to herself. It was too much in the end. She faced me again.

  “He’ll be wiped out by the time we get there.”

  “He’s a poor gambler?”

  She closed her eyes. “He’s my responsibility.” She rubbed her forehead, made a fist, and pressed it to her lips.

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Since childhood.”

  I waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. With Rosemond’s lilting accent and her comportment, I suspected she’d grown up in a well-to-do Southern household. From there, it was easy enough to fill in the blanks. I knew she wouldn’t be inclined at the moment to tell me her life story, and part of me didn’t blame her.

  “Was he the man in your sketchbook?”

  “What?”

  “The man with scars on his back.”

  “Were you snooping?”

  “Yes. I was searching for money. You left it on the seat. You’re very good.”

  Rosemond inhaled deeply, covered her mouth, and coughed, at the stench of body odor surrounding us, most like. I’d taken to breathing shallowly, and through my mouth, but it did little to help. I was afraid a fair amount of the tang was coming from me. Rosemond’s hands couldn’t remain still, clutching and unclutching each other. “Thank you,” she finally said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I stared out the window longingly at the tea cart on the platform. I was hungry and I needed something to soothe my parched throat and to rid my mouth of the lingering taste of laudanum. We’d left the room so quickly we’d forgotten the bag of sandwiches on the dresser. “Would you like for me to buy us some coffee?” I offered. I sniffed and wiped my watering eyes.

  Rosemond dug into her purse and handed me a small handkerchief with RM monogrammed in royal blue in one corner. “With what?”

  “You mean—” I dabbed at my eyes.

  Rosemond’s voice was low. “I used the last of our coin on train passage.”

  “And you gave away my mother’s necklace to Martha Mason.” I couldn’t keep the anger and bitterness from my voice. I knew Rosemond had little choice, but I hated that the necklace had traveled so far to end up in the grubby hands of a pioneer woman eager to escape her life.

  “Which I wouldn’t have had to do if not for your mistakes.”

  I looked down and clasped my trembling hands together. I rubbed them in an effort to wipe off the layers upon layers of blood that had covered them for months. I leaned near Rosemond and spoke low enough that it couldn’t be overheard by our nosy neighbors. “You didn’t have to kill her.”

  “Didn’t I? She was a threat to you.”

  I scoffed. “Do not act like you did it solely for me, for my safety. Without me, you can’t start a new life.”

  She looked down her nose at me. “Can’t I?”

  Of course she could, and my actions were perilously close to losing me the only ally I had. The thought of being on my own was suddenly terrifying.

  My blood turned cold at the realization. What had happened to me? Where had my independent, self-assured spirit gone? Was I no better than Cora Bayle, desperate for someone to take care of me?

  I thought of the months Kindle and I had spent at his sister’s orphanage outside Saint Louis. We had settled into a routine, which had been both satisfying and stifling. For the first time in my life, I’d felt like part of something bigger, a family, and a cause: teaching young women about medicine. I’d started to entertain the idea that teaching might be where my future lay: encouraging others’ success while subsuming my own. Now, traveling west, I felt an underlying excitement and freedom I couldn’t deny. It was the same excitement I felt when Maureen and I left Austin a year earlier. The thrill of the unknown, of possibilities. I realized it wasn’t being alone that frightened me, it was not having someone to share the adventure with. Until Kindle was free, why not Rosemond?

  “I did her a favor,” Rosemond said, not looking at me. “She would have had a hard, miserable life, married to a farmer or miner, and that was if she was lucky.”

  It was a moment or two before I shook off my own musings to realize who she was speaking of: Cora Bayle. “Rosemond,” I chastised. “What a horrible thing to say.”

  She glared at me from the side of her eye. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Laura. You know I’m right.”

  “Maybe so, but the difference is, I would never say it aloud.”

  Rosemond rolled her eyes and angled herself away from me again. “God, you can be insufferable,” she said over her shoulder.

  The train jerked forward and we were on our way again.

  I placed Cora Bayle’s bag on my lap and opened it.

  Rosemond grabbed the handles to keep it closed. “What are you doing?”r />
  “Seeing if she had any money.”

  Rosemond removed her hand and looked away, the corners of her eyes tightening, her hands twisting, fidgeting, and rubbing in a familiar way. I placed my hand over hers to quiet them. Her fidgeting stopped. I leaned close. “You’ve never killed anyone.”

  Her neck spasmed, as if swallowing something caught in her throat. “Of course not,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Why would I?”

  I wanted to tell her it would get easier, that she would forget, but I wasn’t sure she would. Cora Bayle was as close to an innocent as I’d met in this whole debacle of my life since I left New York City. There was a difference in killing a woman like her and killing an evil man like Cotter Black. The memory of putting a bullet in Black’s head assaulted me at the strangest moments, all these months later. I doubted I would ever be totally free of it, though I felt no guilt for his death. Cora Bayle was another matter.

  I took Rosemond’s hand and held it firmly. She stilled, and only her eyes moved to gaze at our joined hands. I placed my lips next to her ear and whispered, “I apologize. For getting off the train. For Cora.” Rosemond shuddered. I squeezed her hand and continued. “I’ll be more careful going forward.”

  She pulled her hand from mine, turned her head away, and wiped her eyes. I left well enough alone and turned my attention to the carpetbag.

  “A Bible, of course,” I murmured.

  The Bible was old and worn at the edges. Dates of births, deaths, and marriages were written in a scratchy hand on the inside cover; Cora’s name was the only one without a death date. I closed the book and put it on the seat between me and the wall of the train. A hairbrush and mirror, two pair of bloomers, a washcloth and soap, a jar of salve whose label promised relief from achy joints. I opened the jar and sniffed, and was assaulted by the scent of camphor. I dug out a teaspoon and rubbed it into my hands. I held them out in front of me and pulled them back quickly when I couldn’t control the trembling. Goose bumps popped up on my arms and I shivered. Rosemond watched me rub my arms from the corner of her eyes but didn’t comment.

  I closed the jar of salve and dropped it back in the bag. A small rectangular wooden box turned out to be a sewing kit with well-used pewter instruments: a thimble, bodkin, stiletto, needles of various sizes, and a spool of white and blue thread. My hands stilled at the sight of neatly folded lace-edged cloth at the bottom of the bag. I lifted it and stared at the top of a woman’s gown. Cora Bayle’s wedding trousseau. The material was soft, the lace fine, and I knew Cora had splurged on this, had poured all of her hopes and dreams of her future into this one item. With a sick stomach, I shoved the gown into the bottom of the bag. I felt around, found a small coin purse, pulled it out, and twisted the clasp open.