Page 94 of The Widow and the Wanted

Then I say, “I can’t believe that fuckin’ worked.”

Lula doesn’t answer right off.

Okee does. “That was foolish. You’re lucky we weren’t killed. Next time, you let me do the talking.”

That sends me looking over my shoulder where Lula’s brow twists up something cantankerous. “I beg your pardon? Who made you my master?”

“You will not gamble with our lives,” he says, voice dropping to something dark. A tone I ain’t heard him take in a long while. “You pull a stunt like that again, and I cannot protect you from what follows. Do you understand?”

She jerks back as if slapped.

“Okee,” I scold, and my heart races. All this fussing to catch this canary and this fool just opened up the cage and dared her to fly.

She presses her lips together in anger and her nostrils flare. “I am only in this situation⁠—”

“On our account,” Okee says, flat, cutting her off. “We know. Pity it was. But what’s done is done, and now you can choose to move on from it and obey our instructions or you can fend for yourself.”

“Hup, whoa!” I call, drawing back the reins.

Okee leans out from under the canvas cover. “What are you doing?”

Miss Rakko’s trot slows to nothing, the jingle of her traces settling until there’s only wind and the wagon’s soft creak. I turn to face them.

“We ain’t leavin’ her behind, and I don’t take kindly to using it like a threat.”

Okee’s judgment settles on me. “We were nearly shot out of our boots,” he says, low, “and you’re fretting over her tender feelings?”

“She got us through,” I snap.

“She gambled with our lives.”

“And won.”

“Through sheer luck.”

His voice don’t rise. That’s what gets under my skin. He ain’t arguing like a man trying to win. He’s calm, talking like a man already decided.

“What would you have done?” I ask. “Turn north? Add a day? Two? Put us out where anyone with a rifle and an eye for bounty can take a shot at us?”

“I would’ve kept us alive.”

“We are alive.”

“For now.”

“Please,” Lula says, voice wavering. “Let’s keep our heads. At least until Fort Gibson. Then if we must part ways, we can do so cleanly.”

The thought twists at me. “Don’t what I want matter a lick?”

Quiet falls hard. Okee’s mouth parts, but no answer comes. That’s answer enough.

“Boone,” Lula says, softer now. “We haven’t time to pause. Please.”

I want to yell at them both. Lula for putting that door in the room and Okee for damn near shoving her through it. But the road sits open around us, and every second stopped feels like a rifle sight finding my back.

So I swallow it down, turn on the bench, and set Miss Rakko east again.

We make camp before sundown, down in a shallow cut where the land dips and gathers itself. Limestone rises up around us in pale, broken walls, not high enough to trap us but enough to turn the wind and hold what little heat the fire gives. The ground’s hard underfoot, dusted with frost, and a dry run of crick bed cuts through the middle like a gash.