An Easy Death (Gunnie Rose #1) Read online

  I felt like a new woman as I patted myself dry with the scratchy hotel towel. I’d done the crying, and standing clean and whole and unburdened was simply great. Keeping back from the window, I turned in a circle, my arms held out, so the air could feel how clean I was. And then I staggered. I was weak with wanting sleep.

  I wrapped the damp towel around me, grabbed up my filthy clothes, and peeked out into the hall. It was empty, and I scooted into my room, unlocking the door, stepping in, and shutting it behind me in a few seconds. On second thought I threw the clothes out of the room and called down the stairs to Edna that they were there. She’d already left a meal in my room. The meat was awful hard to chew, made my head hurt to try, so I ate the potatoes and the early squash and the buttermilk pie. My stomach hadn’t been so happy in days. I put the tray outside the door, noting my clothes were already gone.

  Edna had been real fond of Martin. She’d known his mom. I figured that was how come I was getting this kind treatment, and I was grateful.

  I pulled back the chenille coverlet to climb between the clean sheets. Behind a locked door. Alone. Clean, full, and rid of responsibility.

  I slept instantly.

  But in the middle of the night, I woke up and cried for Tarken, and for Martin, and—maybe most of all—for Galilee. And then I slept again.

  When I woke up, the sun was hitting my face. I hadn’t drawn the curtains or pulled down the shade before I’d fallen onto the bed, and I could hear the sounds of the town below my window. Edna was scolding her maid for not scrubbing the dishes properly. The man across the street was talking about the new settlers who’d arrived yesterday, and wondering where they were going to live and if they had daughters of marrying age.

  Not for a few years, brother. Not since the death of the oldest girl. I saw her again with the hole in her back, sprawled on the dirt, and I fought back a wave of badness; misery, anger, guilt. I did not know how I could have protected them better, and if I’d never talked to the girl’s parents and her sister and her little brother, I would not have cared much about her fate. Because this was the kind of thing that just happened because times were hard and people were weak and bad.

  When I’d gotten myself back into a regular frame of mind, I went downstairs in my clean clothes. They’d been folded and left right outside my door. Even my boots had been cleaned. I didn’t think I’d left them out, but I was glad Edna had taken it on herself to come in and get them.

  Edna had put aside some biscuits and sausage for me, with butter and blueberry jelly. I drank a cup of coffee, which I don’t often get to do. It’s hard to find in Segundo Mexia.

  “This is real good,” I told the landlady.

  “Glad you like it. You need feeding up,” Edna said, brisk and plain.

  After I’d paid my bill, I accepted Edna’s quick, hard hug. I carried all my firearms and canteens up the street to the dry-goods store and bought a leather bag, long enough for a rifle. I lined it with a new blanket and bought some washrags as well. I wrapped every gun in its rag before I placed it inside. Wouldn’t do for one to snag on the other and fire. But unloaded, they were no good. I tossed in the spare canteens and filled two for the trip. I topped the bag with some dried fruit and meat and a loaf of bread before I closed it. I’d retrieved the sling from the bandit, and I’d wiped it off to remove his sweat, so I could wear Jackhammer across my back. And by a huge stroke of luck—I was due, I figured—there was a gun belt small enough for me, though it was very plain. Intended for a little boy, the shopkeeper said, but what did I care? I had the Colts where I could use ’em again.

  Now I was ready to leave Corbin.

  I circled behind the Main Street buildings so I wouldn’t run into any of the Beekins party on my way out of town. I did see Jael, from a distance. She was playing jacks with her strong hand. Looked like she was moving without much pain. I nodded to myself and began the walk back home.

  Now, alone, I had to be even more careful. No more eyes but mine. On the other hand, there wasn’t all that chatter to take my attention away from what was important.

  Only one man followed me out of Corbin, knowing I had money on me. I took care of him the afternoon of the first day.

  After that, it was an easy trip.

  I got to Segundo Mexia in three days, even though I was carrying a lot: six canteens, Jackhammer, my Colts, two rifles (one of them Galilee’s Krag), and three pistols—Martin’s, Tarken’s, Galilee’s. A fourth pistol would have to be cleaned before I even tried to sell it. It was a disgrace.

  I’d used my new blanket the night before, but it was warming up to be a nice spring day when I walked into town. I went directly to Trader Army. Army was behind the counter, restocking his shelves. When the bell over the door rang, he turned.

  “Aw, girl,” Army said when he recognized me. “I’m real sorry.” He looked as sad as his face would let him. Army had an old injury to his face, a white mass of scar tissue over his right eye. That side of his face didn’t move too much. The skirmishes of seven years before had taken their toll on him. “Thomas told me he’d found your crew on the Corbin road,” Army said. “Didn’t find you, so I figured where you were.”

  “Thomas buried ’em?” Martin’s brother, Thomas, was one of my least favorite men. I was glad they’d been buried, sorry that I would have to thank Thomas.

  “Yep.”

  “What about Galilee?”

  “Thomas told her son. He figured Freedom would want to take care of her.”

  I’d stopped by the site of the attack, early this morning. I’d been relieved the bodies had been removed—at least Tarken’s, Martin’s, and Galilee’s. (The bandits were well on the way to being picked clean.)

  “What did you bring me?” Army asked, wanting to get the look off my face.

  “I got a pistol and a rifle and four canteens,” I said, laying them out. I’d have to offer Galilee’s son her Krag or her pistol. I might keep the filthy bandit pistol, I wouldn’t know until I cleaned it up. I had to sell at least the extra rifle and two of the canteens. I was in for a dry spell.

  We haggled for a while, in a halfhearted kind of way. Ended up the way most haggling does: neither side totally satisfied, but on the whole feeling all right about the deal.

  “Anyone hiring?” I was ready to be on my way. But I needed to think about the future, and Army knew everything going on in the town.

  “Lavender needs someone,” Army said. His single eyebrow, about the size of three caterpillars, was hiked up, showing what he thought of that. “Her gunnie quit four weeks ago.”

  “I’d sooner work for Big Balls,” I said. Army laughed, his mouth going up at one corner. Big Balls was the pig owned by the butcher. Everyone was waiting for the day Frank Hacker put Big Balls down. That was one mean pig.

  “Lavender’s the only crew leader hiring.” Army, who’d been wiping off the water bottles with a rag, paused. “But there’s a kind of strange couple at the Antelope. They’ve been nosing around. They want someone.”

  “Not like people want the whores at Elsie’s?”

  Army laughed. “‘Capable’ was the word the woman used. But when I asked her, ‘Capable of what?’ she didn’t have no answer.”

  Army and I both knew that in Segundo Mexia you could find someone capable of anything you could imagine. And then some. Poor people can’t be real choosy.

  He looked to one side. The side where I wasn’t. “They look like people in the grigori business.”

  He knew how I’d feel about that.

  “I’ll wait for a while, see if something else turns up,” I said.

  “Can’t wait too long, Lizbeth.” That was nothing but the truth. Army turned to put his new items up on his shelves. “If they come in again, I’ll mention your name.”

  I started to tell him to keep his mouth shut, but suddenly I didn’t have the energy. It didn’t seem ha
rmful to talk to them, and maybe I’d learn something interesting. “Well, all right,” I said. I pocketed my money. “Tell Clarita I said hey.”

  “Will do. She’s coming in this afternoon. Says she can’t sit home no more.”

  Clarita, Army’s wife, had been delighted when the store began making enough money for her to stay home. But she hadn’t taken to being a homebody at all.

  “What are you going to do when she’s working?”

  “I don’t know. Go fishing, I reckon.”

  I laughed, trying to imagine Army sitting in a boat holding a fishing pole. He would get antsy within ten minutes. “Bye,” I said. All the miles I’d walked were suddenly pressing on my shoulders, and I wanted a bath. I had to make a quick stop at the grocery, and I had to let my mother see me.

  As I walked to my mom’s, now juggling the bag of guns with a sack of food, I was poking around my brain to think of a way to thank Martin’s brother, Thomas, that didn’t involve me lying on my back. That’s what Thomas really wanted. That kind of thank-you wasn’t going to happen. I’d feel too much like one of the girls and boys who lived at Elsie’s. Their job was fine for them, but not for me.

  I had to force myself to knock on my mom’s door. I knew she’d want to lay eyes on me. I had always felt lucky she loved me. The way she got me, a grigori came through, putting on a magic show for the kids. He had his own little magic show going afterward, and Candle, my mother, was pretty and flattered by his notice, and only a kid. He took away my mom’s will and had his way. Presto chango . . . nine months later, a baby appeared. There were lots of comments, and since Mom was a cut above most people in the education and brains and looks departments, most of the comments were mean.

  It’s not like girls didn’t get pregnant all the time. But my mom had so obviously been better than the normal run of girls . . . well, people are envious.

  Mom didn’t want anything to do with men for a long time, no big surprise. But she was still pretty, and she was honorable, and she was a hard worker. Men wanted plenty to do with her. Jackson Skidder won her over about the time I was twelve. It had seemed like a real unlikely match, but he had qualities that just suited my mom.

  Jackson was smart. Not book smart, though he might have been that, too. He was business smart. He dressed for work not for show. Jackson judged people pretty accurately. And he would kill to protect what he judged was his.

  No one would think of crossing Candle Rose after she became Candle Skidder.

  Not only does Jackson own the Antelope Hotel and a couple of other businesses, he looks like a bulldog and he’s twice as scary. But he’s gentle with Mom, and he’s always stood by me, which has been a surprise bonus.

  Jackson was at the house. He was the one who called to me to come in. I was glad to see him. We weren’t huggers, me and my stepfather. After he picked up his newspaper, he looked over his reading glasses at me and gave me a nod, which I returned.

  “Candle, you better turn and see who’s here,” Jackson said.

  My mom was busy making lunch. That meant it was the weekend; I’d lost track of where in the week we’d gotten to. On weekdays my mom still taught school, and left a lunch for her husband. When Mom saw me, her whole face lit up.

  “Lizbeth,” she said, and wrapped me in a hug, held me close and tight. “I am so glad to see you. I heard you had a bad time. I’m sorry about Tarken. And Galilee.” Mom held me away from her, looked into my eyes. She rued what I’d become.

  Mom had hoped I’d be a teacher, like her. I’d have as soon scrubbed toilets as been a teacher. I was glad to be a gunnie. I could shoot anyone who was mean to her now. For a second I rested my head on her shoulder.

  I had to notice Mom had left Martin off her list of sorrows—but she’d never been too fond of him. He’d recruited me for the crew.

  From behind the newspaper Jackson said, “The farmers all get to Corbin okay?” He was ready for the emotion to cool off.

  “’Cept one baby and one girl, who were already dead before I caught up,” I said. I was more like Jackson than I was like my mother, at least in my nature. I had wished he were my real dad when I was a kid.

  Jackson lowered his newspaper. Our eyes met. Jackson gave me a sharp nod, his way of saying he approved of my conduct. “Good on you,” he said. He added casually, “I gave Thomas a barrel of pickles.” He raised the Central Texoma News to cover his face.

  I felt a huge rush of relief. Now I didn’t owe Thomas anything for burying my crew. That was a big burden I was rid of. “I thank you,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

  He turned the page of his newspaper. That was Jackson.

  “What will you do now?” Mom said as she returned to the stove and flipped the chicken over. She gave her head a little toss, to make sure her hair was all behind her shoulder. Hers is black and thick and straight, down to her waist.

  I’m short, like her, and black headed, like her, but those are our only likenesses. All I had known about my father for a long time was that he’d escaped from godless Russia, like all the original grigoris. He had had an accent. I knew now that he had been a medium-tall man, and his hair had been golden and curly, and his eyes blue. I understood why Mom had been flattered by his interest. So my eyes are blue, and my skin is lots lighter than Mom’s, and my hair is real curly. It makes ringlets as it dries. It’s adorable. That’s one reason I’d paid Chrissie to cut it off.

  “Maude needs someone to work in the grocery,” Mom said, not looking at me.

  “Mom. Grocery?” Maude hadn’t said anything to me about it during my brief stop in the shop, and that was proof enough that she didn’t think I was a good choice.

  My mother laughed. “I know, it was a drug dream,” she said. “But it surely would be nice to see you behind a counter instead of toting that Winchester.”

  I stayed a couple more minutes, then left, despite my mom’s offer of lunch. Part of my good relationship with Jackson was knowing when to leave. As I walked home, I reminded myself to do something extra nice for my stepfather real soon for squaring me with Thomas.

  Laden down with my groceries and my bag of firearms, I started up the path to my place. It’s in the town limits but stuck off by itself. There’s a hill rising to the east of Segundo Mexia, and in the middle of it a running stream has formed the ground into a crevice with steep sides. The stream’s just a trickle in the summer, but now that it was spring, the water was running pretty good. We built a little bridge across the stream so we can live on both sides of it. There are other people living on my side of the hill, four families besides me. It’s friendly.

  I have a little house, all mine. I saved for the first year and a half I worked, living in a spare room in Galilee’s place. It was spare because her son, Freedom had moved out. The room was small, and it was very tight living. But it was worth it when I’d gotten enough put by to get everything I needed to build on an empty bit of land toward the top of the hill. Jackson and my mom had given me the lot. My friends came together to help me put up the building.

  I paid for the plumbing and the electrical work. The rest was us, our hands. Luckily for me, Jackson’s brother, Cedric, was a good planner and carpenter, and Cedric seemed to enjoy himself telling us all what to do. In the end, I had my own place.

  There’s one room that’s my bedroom and my kitchen and my dining room and my everything-else room. And there’s a small (tiny) enclosed bathroom, my big luxury. Segundo Mexia has a water system, mostly thanks to Jackson and some other well-to-do citizens maintaining the pre-Deconstruction system, and I’m hooked up to it, after many visits to our city hall. Sometimes I have electricity, depending on nothing in particular that I can tell. But we hill people also have an outhouse and candles, because sometimes things just don’t work.

  I was almost as smelly as I had been when I’d gotten to Corbin. I wanted to take off my filthy clothes and get in the tub, assum
ing the water was running. I wanted a door shut between me and the world. I wanted to be home. By myself.

  The sight of two strangers sitting on the bench outside my front door seemed so wrong and bad I had to blink to make sure they were really there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My visitors, a man and a woman, were both tall and fair, though the woman was the taller of the two; she was maybe six feet. They stood when they realized I was coming to the cabin.

  I didn’t look at them too closely, because I wanted them to go away. Ignoring people never works like that, though.

  “Lizbeth Rose?”

  I nodded. No point in denying it.

  The two seemed to expect me to say something, but I didn’t. I waited. I didn’t want to give them my words, much less my time.

  I was sure these were the two grigoris Army had talked about. I had made a mistake, letting him mention my name to them. He’d seen them much sooner than I’d thought. I shouldn’t have stopped at the grocery or my mom’s.

  The man was the younger of the two. He had a broad face with high cheekbones, a full mouth, long light-brown hair pulled back in a braid. The tattoos on his neck were just barely visible inside his shirt collar. Over his shirt he wore a vest with a score of pockets. Grigori vests contained herbs and spells inside the pockets, or so I’d heard.

  The woman, somewhere in her late thirties, was a blonde. I’d never seen a woman so tall. Her tattoos made his look modest. There were symbols on her face, crawling up her cheeks. It made me wince to look at them. She wore a vest, too.

  Grigoris for sure. None of the magic users from the Holy Russian Empire liked to be called grigoris, though. They liked to be called wizards.

  I disliked the two wizards even more because they were clean and they didn’t smell. And the both of them looked rested. I was so tired my bones hurt.