Chapter Text
Faith; Near the Colorado State / Wyoming Territory boarder, 1883.
I remember the first time I saw it… tried to find words to describe it… but I couldn’t.
Nothing had prepared me. No books, no teachers, not even my parents.
I heard a thousand stories, but no one could describe this place.
It must be witnessed to be understood.
Blinking once, twice, I tried to rid the sting of smoke from my eyes. They watered fast and the tears trailed down my nose, dripping off onto the unforgiving ground that bit into my cheek. I lifted my head slowly, shaking it in an effort to rid myself of the ear-piercing ringing and the distant screams that floated over the top.
And yet – I’ve seen it and understand it even less than the first time I laid eyes on this place.
The wind fueled the flames engulfing the wagon beside me into a roaring fury, sending bits of charred debris off into the grass. Movement out the corner of my eye caught my attention and I turned in time to see a man fall with an arrow sticking straight out his back.
Some call it the American Desert…
Others, the Great Plains.
Hoofbeats pounded the ground beneath me and a horse passed by on the other side of the wagon, completely unaware of my presence. Its rider whooped and hollered as they came into sight, their bow strung with another arrow and had let it fly all in the time it took me to clamp my hand hard over my mouth to keep from crying out.
But those names were invented by professors at universities surrounded by the illusion of order and the fantasy of right and wrong.
The rider’s back now to me, I slowly brought myself up onto my knees and hiked my cumbersome skirt up out of the way. I scanned the carnage around me – looking for my horse, for my loved ones among the fallen.
To know it, you must walk it… bleed into its dirt and drown in its rivers.
One of the pioneers lay not far from me, face first into the dirt with the hilt of his still holstered revolver gleaming in the cruel sunshine. I lunged towards him, scrambling across the grass on my hands and knees until I was at his side.
Then its name becomes clear.
Gooseflesh rose on my arms and all the air left my lungs as an arrow whizzed past my head and landed mere inches from my hand the very same moment my fingers touched the gun. I had not heard the rider in my haste and he was clearly playing games with me.
It is hell and there are demons everywhere.
I turned to him, keeping my fingers on the smooth wood of the hilt, but not withdrawing it from its place just yet as he shook his head in command.
His face was set in an expression that I could not read beneath the painted lines of war.
My fist clenched around my weapon and he brought his horse a step closer, speaking for the first time, “I said no.”
I set my jaw as I weighed my options – noticing he had an arrow sitting ready on the string of his bow.
“Will you let me go?” I bit out, both rage and fresh tears burning at the back of my eyes.
His gaze did not leave mine as he clearly enunciated, “I will sell you… or I will kill you.”
“You speak English,” I hissed through my teeth. “How can you do this?”
“You speak English… and, no, your people did this,” his brows lowered.
I rose with my own cry of war and turned the revolver on him, firing with perfect aim in the same moment he did. My bullet hit him in the chest and sent him backwards off his horse in a spray of blood just as his arrow went through me.
But if this is hell and I’m in it…
I could see it in me, feel the shaft protruding from my body with my fingers, but felt no pain… nothing within me but the blind rage that now coursed through my body as though it were the blood that now seeped into my clothes.
Then I must be a demon too…
Charging forward in staggering steps, I tried to make every bullet count and knocked three more warriors from their horses before it emptied. I tossed it to the ground with a bellow of frustration and locked eyes with the warrior before me, his weapon raised.
And I’m already dead.