He maneuvered around me and made his way to the hearth. With two or three quick kicks he dislodged the logs, which spilled out and tumbled near our dining table. The flame from the logs began to lick at it, and I would have to act quickly to prevent the spread of fire.
It was what Tindall depended upon, because he used my moment of confusion to rush out the door.
I should have let him go. The cabin needed tending to, but I did not think of it. I had no reason to charge after him, and yet I did. I was so full of hatred for what he had done, what he had threatened to do, what he had made me do. The part of myself I knew as me, where my soul resided, retreated and shriveled. All that was left was a white-hot demon who yearned to do some unnamed, unknown, violence. At that moment, the thought of life, the thought of continuing to breathe upon an earth where Tindall still lived, was unsupportable. He ran to his horse and I chased him hard and fast, waving my burning branch and screaming I can hardly say what.
Coming down the path now was Andrew with Dalton and Skye, approaching from the path on the other side of the tree where Tindall had tied his horse. I saw them, though I did not think about what I saw, or I would have left Tindall to them. Little can I suppose what they must have made of this scene, Tindall running frantically, me chasing him with a club of fire.
Andrew came running to me. He did not care about Tindall, and he would have known that if there was violence to be done, Mr. Dalton should have been happy to do it. He only wanted to come to me, and if I had only wanted him, to be safe and in his arms, then all would have been different. I should have turned and dropped my weapon and gone to Andrew. Instead, I ignored him and continued toward Tindall. I had killed one man, and I wanted nothing more than to kill another. Phineas had said that the West would change me, and now I knew it had. I was so changed I did not even know myself.
Tindall reached his horse but did not mount. He looked and saw me, then looked past me. I was a crazed woman with a stick, he an officer beside his mount. He saw Andrew running, and that was another matter. He did not know that Andrew would not harm him, that he only wanted me, to make certain I was unharmed. Tindall might simply ride away. Instead, he took a pistol from his saddlebag and turned to Andrew.
I saw it happening, and I opened my mouth to call out, but I could make no noise. My voice betrayed me, though I know not what I should have shouted to make a difference.
Tindall fired the pistol at Andrew, discharging it at a distance of no more than ten feet. Andrew was thrown back and fell at once to the ground, striking hard and flat and with sudden force. He landed not like a living man but a lifeless weight.
I found my voice and let out a scream as I dropped my torch and rushed to Andrew, ignoring now the murderous Tindall. That Andrew was struck need not mean his end. He was young and strong and resilient. It is what I told myself, but it was all deceit. Even from a distance I saw the ball had struck his heart, and I believe he was dead before he fell. He lay there, eyes wide and lifeless. I reached him and knelt. I cradled his head in my arms, I stroked his hair, I called out to heaven, though heaven would not answer. I felt a heat upon my skin, and though I did not look up, I knew it was the cabin, awash in flames I had not troubled myself to extinguish.
Tindall knew he was in danger now, and he acted quickly. He climbed onto his horse and rode off. Dalton fired his rifle after him, but he had no clear shot. I hardly heard the crack of the weapon, the cries of anguish around me.
What did I lose that day? It pains me now to speak of it, for I lost everything. I lost my darling Andrew, who wanted only that I should live the life of my innermost desires. I lost his child, which died inside me, though I know not if it was from Hendry’s violence or from my shock at the events that unfolded. I lost my freedom, for Tindall put it about at once that I had murdered Hendry in cold blood and sought to murder the colonel too. And though it sounded trivial in my own ears, I lost my novel, taken by the flames that scorched my cabin. This too I lost-my innocence, for I had killed a man, and I could not regret doing so. Surely that made me into someone I was not before.
Everything I had desired and dreamed of and wanted in life was taken from me. Can it be wondered that I set myself against my enemies, and if my enemies were the first men in the nation itself, can I be blamed for seeking justice? The shape of that justice was not formed until later, and not formed alone, but even as I sat with my beloved husband’s body in my arms, the ghost of it was there, haunting me from the spectral realm of notions not yet conceived.
Ethan Saunders
I had considered it a possibility that I might see her-not a realistic possibility, but within the realm of the conceivable. Yet, upon seeing her, I could not imagine a response other than to stand frozen, staring, then to look away, then to stare. Her gown, sky blue with swirling yellow designs, revealed her still-marvelous figure to advantage, having a low neckline and sleeves to just above her elbows, exposing her fine white skin. Her pale blond hair was piled high in the fashion, and atop it rested a prim little cap with yellow feathers stretching upward, a blue ribbon, which matched the gown itself, billowing down.
I had seen her in fine dresses before, of course, though when she had been younger they had been less stiff, less formal; they had been the simple if elegant dresses of a lovely girl, not complex fabric cages of European origin. Then she’d been a soft and charming young lady, a foot still planted in girlhood, but now she had turned into a woman, stony and commanding in her beauty.
Lavien walked toward them, came within ten feet, and then turned back to me. “I’ll not speak to him here,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It cannot be done here. For now, it is enough that he is returned. If he were in hiding, he would not have come to this house. Pearson is back, and that is all that matters. If you will excuse me.” Lavien hurried off, careful, it seemed to me, to avoid being seen by the Pearsons. Across the room, he approached Hamilton and whispered in his ear.
This could not long hold my attention, not while Cynthia was in the room. She did not see me. Jacob Pearson, however, did. He looked up and met my gaze, and turned, most desirous of speaking to his wife. It had been many years since I’d seen him, but I had no difficulty in recognizing him. He was perhaps six or seven years older than myself, though the years had been more unkind to him than I flatter myself they had been to me. His hair had turned white, and lines had exploded around his eyes. Deep crevices had formed in his cheeks, and his teeth were yellow-those he still had. For all that, he retained some of the rugged handsomeness he had possessed a decade earlier, and though he was clearly Cynthia’s senior, the two of them together did not have the comical aspect of some couples in which the husband is significantly older than the wife.
Pearson looked at me, and there was something cloudy in his brown eyes, bloodshot and tired-looking. I watched while he pretended not to have noticed me and reached out with his hand-thick with veins and unusually large-to grasp Cynthia’s arm, digging into her flesh with his yellow fingernails. I saw her white flesh turn whiter and then red. She blanched, closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded very briefly.
I was too far away to hear what he said, but I could see from the cruel shape of his lips that he said terrible things. I knew too that his soul was tainted with a blackness that frightened me. It is easy to look at the man who has married the woman you love and see only evil, but this was not simple prejudice. I knew what I looked at, and I hated it.