Josephine took a deep breath, adjusting her long, ragged poncho, her fingers stiff and cold around the metal beneath its fabric, approaching the two men in front of the solitary hut.
“I’m sorry, sir, are you Deputy Browns?” Her voice trembled, her arms hidden beneath the wool of her garment slung over her shoulders like a pelerine. One of the two men looked up, his shaded features beneath his leather hat like a stone carving, split and creased by a great river-valley of wrinkles.
“What brings ye so far out here, miss?” His voice was a hoarse croak, the scent of tobacco rising from his cracked lips under his broad black mustache. Beneath his unbuttoned coat he wore only a linen shirt, a holster at his belt. His companion was similarly worse for wear, adorned with only his rawhide hat and brown poncho.
“Traveling to California.” Her lips quivered as she braced herself. “I saw Indians riding north over the hills, Mr. Browns, I’m certain I saw them.”
The former deputy let out a quiet chuckle. “There’s no Injuns in these parts, miss. They all rode west a long time ago.”
“Please take a look, sir, you’ll see them too.” She pointed west, stepping east with the scorching sun to her back. He turned to look. Her wrist rose beneath her poncho as her fist closed.
Deafening thunder cracked between them, launching the deputy against the wooden wall behind him. She heard only the ringing in her ears as she turned, her entire arm numb, watching his companion flinch and stumble. She braced herself as thunder echoed across the valley once more, spraying hellfire from the second barrel, shredding his garments.
Scarlet seeped into the arid earth in streams, dyeing his linens as he collapsed. She stared down at them as a red lake formed around their bodies, expanding ever further. Her arm sent aching pulses up her shoulder with the rhythm of her heart, hearing only the ever present ringing. Her thoughts were silent as the valley as she stared, watching more blood pour out of them than she had known a man could possess.
Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. Then thirty. Finally her glossy eyes tore themselves from their broken silhouettes, looking down at her poncho. Soot marked its lower edge where the barrels had discharged. She lowered her stiff arms carefully. A bruise was forming just below her shoulder, where she had rested the carved down stock. There were no injuries on her, though her mind seemed certain that there had to be. With trembling fingers she folded open the shortened Belgian coach gun. The brass cartridges were almost too hot to touch, reeking of sulfur as she replaced them sluggishly. The scent and taste of copper rose slowly into the air as the yellow grass soaked in the first water it had gotten in weeks.
She swallowed her nausea as she bowed to pull the badges from their inner pockets. They were warm in her fingers, shields of polished brass, bearing the inscription of Deputy Sheriff in bold letters. Mr. Browns’ badge was dented inward, a single pellet of lead nested in its middle. For a moment she closed her eyes, gathering her strength. She stripped them of their belts, eyeing the revolvers for damage. American Colt Walkers, still loaded with powder, percussion cap, and shot, property of the United States Army. She recognized their make as she tied both belts around her waist. Crimson stained her fingers as she rifled through their pockets, clinking coins finding their way into her grasp. Two silver dollars, a copper half-cent, a discolored dime, a queer coin bearing the inscription Republica Del Equador, and a silver 8 Mexican Reales coin. She stared down at them for seconds, calculating their value in her head.
Duchess whinnied and stepped nervously as she returned with the deputy’s leather hat and solid leather boots, her ears folded back at the copper scent, pulling at the reins tying her firmly to the withered post. The ride back was a silent feverdream, watching as a puppeteer from above as her body drove the steed into a gallop over the empty plane of dried red earth. Dust colored her ragged poncho and tattered rider’s pants as she drove the animal northeast mile by mile over the featureless desolation, an unending nothingness, inhabited only by buzzards and serpents. She watched them fly overhead, seeing them in her mind’s eye as they buried their sharp beaks in their newmade feed.
The door to the sheriff’s office felt unusually heavy. He sat as he always did, his clean boots rested on his desk, a crooked cigarillo in the corner of his mouth, eyeing the newspaper in his hands suspiciously. Beneath the golden shimmer of his ring she could read the words Congress Passes 5 Bills In Compromise, New Borders Settled.
“Miss Leopold!” he greeted with wide eyes, righting himself in his seat. “We’d thought you’d gone, what brings you-”
He froze as he spotted the rolled up poster in her hands, now flecked with red stains. Timidly she stepped forward, unrolling it on the table.
Former U.S. Deputy Meredith Browns, known accomplices: Former U.S. Deputy Johan Stone. Wanted for Fraud, Embezzlement, Desertion, Larceny, Armed Robbery. $50.00 Reward for Capture or Proof of Death, $15.00 Reward for returning of Stolen Property: Two United States Army Colt Revolvers, Two United States Deputy Sheriff Badges.
Their faces were displayed in the middle as accurate caricatures. With trembling fingers she reached into her poncho and pulled forth both badges, the pellet still embedded in one of them. They rang as she placed them under each man’s face. Carefully she unbuckled both belts, laying the revolvers next to the poster with great care, avoiding the sheriff’s gaze.
“Mr. Grimshaw, sir,” she forced from her lips, her eyes still on the table before her, daring not to look up. “I need those fifty dollars.”
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed quietly. “Of all the fool things I’d thought you’d do…” He turned, rubbing his forehead in silent frustration as he grasped for the coffee pot. When he turned his gaze back to her he held two steaming cups, placing one gently before her as he sank into his seat. “Listen, Miss Leopold,” he spoke sternly, his features looking suddenly very old. “Here it is.” He pulled forth the till beneath his desk, counting out four paper bills, three twenty dollar bills marked Citizen’s Bank of Louisiana, one five dollar bill marked State Bank, South Carolina. “Your pay. Sixty-five dollars. And I will give it to you this evening. When we go down to the postal office by the tracks. I will buy you a ticket, to Santa Fe, to Kansas City, to Louisiana, wherever you want. And you will get on that train. And I will hand you your pay through the window.”
She gave no response for several seconds, watching soft steam rise from her cup, the rich scent of coffee in her nose. “Sir, I do not believe that is standard procedure.”
“Christ,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Miss Leopold, you are a fine young woman. You know how to read and write, play the piano, speak french. Go east. You’ll find your fortune in Louisiana.”
“I am only here for my pay, Mr. Grimshaw.”
“Immune to wisdom, are you?” he scoffed, folding his arms as he leaned back. “There’s nothing out there for you, Miss Leopold.”
“It was hard work, Mr. Grimshaw.” She met his eyes, steadying her breath beneath his ancient glare.
“Fine,” he spat, casting the folded bills onto the table. “Fine. But the next time you come in here with a poster I’m putting you in the sobering cell for the next week.”
She nodded silently as the bills disappeared into her pockets, taking a final sip of her coffee before she left. The merciful wind sent the subtle scent of the river her way, washing her clean of the horrid reek of sulfur. She scrubbed her hands clean in the watering troth before she untied Duchess from her post. Her eye trailed west, past the high church. There was still gold in California. North militias bled Kansas dry. Southeast were the cotton fields, and the poor souls that tended them. South was lost and arid Mexico, where the soldaderas grieved their husbands and the Comanche still rode free. There was still space, still land untouched by the heavy boot coming down on all of them. Somewhere out there she’d find it. Free of this town. Free of this wretched country.
The day felt like a half-remembered dream as she made her preparations, parting with the two silver dollars for four pounds buffalo pemmican, two pounds salt beef, two pounds hard bread and two tins of beans. The shopkeep had asked her if she was going up the trail. “Following the wind,” had been all she had managed. His gaze followed her as she left to stow the packets in her tattered saddlebags. The gunsmith’s shop stood next to the column-facade of the hallowed bank on the unpaved road to the church. The cross cast her in its shade as she marched to the door, avoiding the merciless gaze of the spire upon which it nested.
Isaiah sat the counter, as he always did. The young man looked up from his book, his round, gilded glasses shimmering in the sunlight. His black hair was slicked back with pomade.
“Come to finally sell your father’s gun?” he grinned. His smile faded the moment he saw what she’d done to it. “Good god, woman,” he cursed quietly, staring at the shortened barrel.
“I need a revolver,” she spoke hollowly, ignoring his wide eyes. “A Colt.”
“You have any idea how much that gun cost?” he cursed, examining the coach gun as she set it down on the counter.
“The Colt, Isaiah,” she reminded him. He sighed, dragging himself away from the defiled rifle. He drew a revolver from one of the many drawers beneath his display case, placing it before her.
“Twenty-five.”
“Fifteen. I won’t sell you my father’s gun if you’re going to rob me.”
“What’s there to sell?” he spat, gesturing to the crippled weapon.
“Fifteen.” Her tone grew firm.
“Twenty.”
“Seventeen.”
“Fine.” He pushed it over the counter. It was heavy and cold in Josephine’s grip. “I’ll give you five for the wreck.”
“Ten.”
“Now who’s robbing who?”
“Seven.”
“Deal,” he nodded. She handed him a twenty dollar bill, taking back her ten.
Fresh wind greeted her once more as she stepped outside. She bid her silent farewells with a final look at the wretched town before her. The squalid salon, where she’d once played a mistuned piano on dim evenings for single coins, engulfed in noise and smoke and Llewelyn’s old stories as he danced across the soaked floorboards. The mighty bank, a temple, its brickwork cloaked by columns and marble floors, that had denied her a loan when her father died on policy of not giving them out to unmarried women. The meager church with its crooked spire, denying her father a spot in its desolate graveyard, for he was “one quarter negro”.
No fortune here either. No future. Further west maybe. Ever westward, from Belgium to France to Louisiana to Texas. And onward west, a revolver in her belt, wearing a dead man’s hat and boots. It’d be out there somewhere. A place that didn’t reek. A place that didn’t hate. A paradise free of man and all his squalor. No matter where he was, he always yearned to be somewhere else. And no matter where she was, she always yearned to be free of him. In a world without laws or banks or churches, sharing an apple in the gentle breeze beneath a green tree’s shade with her friend Austin, who’d gone on and left her behind here, where ever here was, alone beneath a sinking sun, aboard a sinking ship, fighting a sinking feeling in her chest as she drove her steed until it could gallop no faster, racing across the empty world toward nothing in particular to escape the stinging in her heart. A thousand bleached carcasses lined her path, beckoning silently ever further west, into a land older than consciousness, where the timeless sands still lay dormant and undisturbed, where one never need dig a grave, simply lay down and await the wind. Somewhere on the horizon Comanche watched her fly across an earth claimed a thousand times by a thousand men beneath a thousand banners stained with a thousand cruelties, and remembering none of their names.
The sky turned from the shade of the peaceful sea to the hue of gold in California, to a scarlet, merciless and scorching, and fell into blackness without farewell. As Deputy Browns had. As Deputy Stone had. Somewhere along a babbling stream carved across the red stonework they slowed and halted and stooped to drink. The pemmican tasted like copper. As did the bread. As did everything else.
The night turned cold as ice as they rode on, through abandoned villages and desolate farms marked by cracked Moorish domes of catholic churches, shattered by uncaring cannon-shot, their great splendor having endured a hundred years before the Mexican-American war. Crushed beneath the unending weight of a great crawling thing, swallowing Louisiana and its free men, devouring Texas and its Comanche, burying its beak deep to drink of Mexico, consuming everything until it reached the sea, and still ravenous for more. For gold and slaves and land it had no intention to work. Unending empty plains, watered by blood, still empty, but now so under a new banner.
The moon stood high when they slowed, Duchess managing only deep and labored breaths. In the shade of a half collapsed house she lit a flame from dry, sun-bleached branches, sharing water from her flask. The winter-cold crept into her bones as she inched closer to the flame, taking in the smell of boiling beans, wishing quietly for bacon. The provisions did not have to last her to California. Only New Mexico, where there was still game to hunt, wild roots to forage. She sat and listened to the crackling of the flames, staring into their flickering light, imagining firestorms engulfing every town she’d been in.
A trembling shadow approached from the blackness, timid and tense. She watched it only out of the corner of her eye, giving no reaction as it stepped into the firelight, a rusted Mexican saber in its hands. It lowered itself carefully closer to the flame, like a frightened deer seeking warmth but fearing man, the saber’s tip ever between them. A woman in the unclean linens of a slave, her lips cracked, her eyes wide and fearful. Josephine held out the tin to her wordlessly, waiting as the woman stared at it. The saber’s tip remained on her as she raised a trembling hand and snatched it from her grasp. She ate first, and nearly a whole pound of it, before she handed the tin back to Josephine, who picked at the bland beans with no motivation or space in her stomach, where a heavy ball of lead seemed to sit.
“This country is a disease,” she whispered hoarsely into the night. The woman did not answer, moving closer to the fire to undercut the trembling. Josephine unraveled the poncho around her shoulders and held it out to her. The cold wind enveloped her like a heavy cloak as the garment left her grasp, the saber finally resting in the sand beside her. “In truth, maybe all countries are diseases.” She raised her head. Their eyes met for the first time. The tension in the woman’s shoulders had eroded away, wrapped tightly in her poncho.
“Ma’am, can you show me the way to the free states?” she asked hesitantly.
“It won’t help you,” Josephine sighed bitterly. “They’ll just send you back.”
“If you can get me in contact with Angelica Milton, ma’am, she could get me up the trail north,” she insisted, almost pleading. “I know them already, I know how to get to the railroad.”
“You’d be better off in Mexico,” she murmured hoarsely. “They say Caohuila is where they cross the Rio Grande.”
“Then…then take me to the nearest town, ma’am, I can find them myself, I’ll be out of your hair.” Tears welled in her eyes. “They’re coming after me, ma’am. Please.”
The words in the paper passed through her mind. The militias bleeding Kansas, the Fugitive Slave Act, the consequences for helping people escape. A country ruled by dogs, believing empathy a sin, where cruelty is virtue and apathy a blessing. Hate bubbled in her chest.
“What’s your name?” she asked quietly.
“Mary.”
“Mary,” she repeated, almost a chuckle. “I’m Josephine.”
Hoofbeats in the desert. Hoofbeats like a marching drum. Josephine heard them first. They both shot up at the same time, Josephine ushering her into the corner of the ruin, leaning fallen boards over her, covering her with the poncho until she blended into the desolation in the darkness. When she turned east, her hand searching frantically for the revolver at her hip, the great steed had already come to a halt.
A great white Destrier, noble and robust, saddled with decorated leather, flourishes carved into its sides. Upon it sat a gentleman, chivalric and upright, a well-groomed, knightly mustache on his features, slicked with bee’s wax, a long rifle in his grasp. His coat was dark leather, lined with patterned red silk on the inside, beneath which he wore a red vest of satin with buttons of silver. On his chest, like a knightly order, gleamed a golden star, hammered and patterned into a shimmering prize, bearing the bold, proud letters Runaway Slave Patrol.
“Miss,” the slave-catcher greeted courteously with a deep bow, holding his hat to his chest.
“Good evening, sir,” she greeted back, her hand receding from the grip of her revolver.
“I apologize for the disturbance, miss.” He lowered himself from his horse with ease and elegance. “I thought I was tracking an escaped negro. I see now that I was mistakenly tracking you.”
“I appreciate the company,” she nodded. Her mind was a vast expanse of nothingness as she looked into his courteous features, untouched by wrinkles or the sun. It would have been so much easier to bow her head. There might even have been a prize in it for her. A reward for returning lost property.
“Are you heading up to Oregon?” he asked politely with a gentle smile, hanging his rifle over his shoulder.
“California,” she answered hollowly.
“Seeking fame and fortune?” he grinned. “They say there’s gold in California. Is your husband close by?”
It would have been so much easier. Going back to Louisiana to work in some clean profession or find a weak-willed husband, far away from it all, safe in a bubble in some city.
“Is there a reward?” she asked quietly, watchful eyes following his every move as he approached the fire. He nodded, chuckling to himself.
“Mr. Callaway is offering fifty dollars for his lost property.” The slave-catcher’s features were understanding and polite as ever.
Do the right thing, Josephine, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. It’s too late anyway.
“She’s there,” she whispered, near inaudibly. “Behind the boards. Under the blanket.”
The slave-catcher raised an eyebrow, his eyes wandering from her to the hiding spot. When he rose, he did so with all the authority of his office, a towering example of chivalry, the golden medal pinned to his chest like an order of valor. He tore aside the poncho, staring down at the girl in the dark with merciless, self-satisfied eyes as she raised her saber for a desperate final fight.
Do the right thing, Josephine.
He still heard the click. He never heard the thunder. It echoed, deafening in the dark. He crumbled like a marionette into a heap of limp appendages, leeching scarlet into the earth. She heard the girl gasp through the ringing in her ears, a numb pulsing in her palm. But this time she felt nothing at all as she bent down. The star was heavy in her fingers, so finely worked, shining gilded in the firelight.
“By god,” she mocked. “There is gold in California.”
[Image Credit : Photo by suradeach saetang on Unsplash]
by 
Evelyne Dogan
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