Chapter Text
The day that Shelby Goodkind left Texas was the day they put Rebecca Gilroy in the ground.
It was the tail-end of spring, the first sign of thaw after an unseasonably frosty winter. Birds took to the skies, the Texas redbuds began to bloom a shocking pink. The whole world came to life as though it had no care at all for the girl who’d died.
Shelby hadn’t gone to the funeral, not in any way that counted. Her father had already gone ahead to Eve’s Landing, a town hundreds of miles away, to set up their new house and begin to meet his new congregation, so a new pastor had been hired to fill his place. This new preacher who stood above Becca’s graveside had never spoken to her a day in her life and Shelby wanted to run out into the middle of the prairie and scream, scream until her throat went raw, scream until the sun ducked behind the plains and the stars were the only ones to know her shame.
But Shelby didn’t scream.
Instead she put on her darkest day dress and pinned her hair away from her face and stood at the outskirts of the churchyard. Becca’s parents were clad in black, straight-backed, standing at the wooden cross that marked Becca’s eternal rest. Shelby couldn’t hear what the stranger preacher was murmuring, but she knew she wasn’t welcome here. Instead she focused on the solid backs of Mr. And Mrs. Gilroy, standing sentinel-like, blocking her out.
Then the train west came, and Shelby left her life behind.
***** **** ****
Shelby turned her face to the mid-summer sun, savoring the warmth of it’s rays before it dipped behind the distant mountains and set the whole world aglow.
It had been nearly six weeks since the Goodkinds had stepped off the train from Fort Travis and landed in the town of Eve’s Landing, but Shelby still wasn’t used to the feeling of being caught in the shadow of the mountains beyond. Fort Travis had been a prairie town, and the two-story saloon had been the tallest thing for miles. There was the feeling of being caught in the vast emptiness, like a rowboat in the middle of a churning sea, one wooden-walled bastion of civilization among all that darkness. But Eve’s Landing was nestled up against the sheer face of a mountain range, like a child nestles up against her mother. Needle-like peaks jutted up above the wood-shingled roofs of the town, set stark against the dusty blue of the sky. The sun would catch against all that stone each evening, until the mountains were all awash with purple, so soft they nearly glowed against the darkening sky. It made Shelby wish she had the patience for painting, so she could capture a tiny fraction of that sunset magic and keep it with her wherever she went.
But Shelby’d been born with restless hands. So she turned back to her stitching.
She sat on the porch of their new-old house, painted fresh white and sat right beside the church, steps away from the town square. The home had belonged to the last preacher, a young bachelor who preached chastity and virtue and a life free of vice but spent more time upstairs at the saloon than even the brothel’s madam. He’d been too indiscreet and so Dave Goodkind had taken his place, sweeping them from the whispers and stares and murmured rumors of Fort Travis and out to the high desert, where he could lead the wayward flock of Eve’s Landing back to the light of Christ — according to him at least.
Shelby also knew that he hoped to lead Shelby herself back to the light of Christ, to smuggle her away from any talk about unnatural tastes. His eyes had always been sharp and searching, but they were sharper now, honed to a fine point like a scalpel that could peel all her layers away until it reached her very core. Whenever he gave a sermon about virtue and families and the gifts that women could give to men, she knew she was the intended target, his words landed right through her like a trickshooter’s bullets, never missing their mark.
To anyone other than Dave Goodkind, Eve’s Landing was a quiet, regular place. A little oasis of civilization at the edge of so much wild. Rough around the edges, sure, like all frontier towns. But to hear her father say it, Eve’s Landing was like Sodom itself, a hellish place full of hellish people with hellish thoughts.
The sun began its final arc across the dusty blue sky, and Eve’s Landing began to come alive once more. The cowhands and ranchers and farmers streamed into town from their lonely spreads and the cow trails that snaked through the valley, weary and dusty and in need of a drink and the easy, saccharine smile of a working girl. The shopkeeps shuttered their stores and joined the joyful congregation as it made it’s way to the doors of Eden’s Rest, the most well-reputed saloon in town, situated right across from the Goodkinds’ neat little home and the watchful, windworn spire of the church. Shelby liked to sit out here, liked to watch the mountains turn from rusty red to pink to purple, liked to watch the gas lamps flicker to life in the windows of the town homes and catch the wisps of laughter and piano music that floated from the saloon, carried by a dry mid-summer breeze.
She also liked to watch the people ride and walk and stumble by, memorize the faces of those who were strangers to her merely weeks before. She noticed the way the young cowboys would dip their chins and tilt their hats to her, would turn pink and smile softly and be jostled teasingly by their companions if she nodded in return. Her mother was always warning her to be aloof, giving her stern, disapproving looks if ever she smiled back at a young man in passing, but Shelby had a habit of smiling back at anyone who passed and wasn’t worldly enough to understand why young men should be any different.
The light caught on a rider Shelby recognized, solitary and steady. Dorothy Campbell rode atop her chestnut horse, straight-backed and stoic. Her hair was shorter than any other girl’s Shelby had ever seen, and hung in a mousy-brown curtain to her shoulders. She was always simply dressed in a faded calico, and she rode astride, like a man, with one leg on either side. Shelby had never heard Dorothy ever say a word, and there was some secret sort of sadness in the glint of her eye and strong set of her jaw. Almost every evening Dorothy would ride into town from the Campbell’s small spread just south of town, stopping first at Doc Faber’s and then at the Eden’s Rest for a drink. Shelby had never had a sip of liquor in all her twenty years, as her father had always said the only women who drank were the fallen and the fatherless. Dorothy Campbell was rough around the edges, strong-shouldered with calloused hands, but she was far from fallen. However, according to rumor, Mr. Campbell was too ill to leave his bed, which placed Dorothy solidly in the latter category.
Shelby caught Dorothy’s eye and smiled. The smile wasn’t returned, but the other girl did give a barely perceptible nod before turning the corner, and Shelby wondered what on Earth it felt like to be without the steady, stern, ever-present guidance of a father, and shivered against the sharpening chill in the wind.
The air felt electric, wild. Like anything could happen. Like a secret storm was rolling in.
**** **** ****
The next day was Sunday, and after her father’s sermon Shelby had been sent with a plate of cornbread to the Sheriff’s office on account of him missing Sunday service due to his peace-keeping duties. Her mother had loaded her arms with the baked goods and given her instructions to send them as a thank you gift to the deputy for working so hard, but there was an intention in her mother’s gaze that set Shelby on edge.
The Sheriff’s deputy was young and fresh-faced and named Andrew McKinney, and he had an easy smile and handsome blue eyes and whenever he spoke to the Goodkinds Shelby’s kid sister Melody would blush something fierce and forget how to speak. But more often than not, Shelby found herself the target of that blue gaze, fixed with a certain kind of intensity that made her uneasy. When Andrew looked on her he looked with intention, like she was a pretty thing in a shop window he was looking to buy.
Shelby stepped up onto the boardwalk outside his office, plastered on her sweetest, blandest smile, and stepped inside.
Andrew was sitting at his desk, leaning back in his chair, dusty boots lazily propped up on the wooden surface. The moment he saw her he shot right up to standing, giving her a quick smile. “Miss Goodkind!” He said, voice honeyed. “And why on God’s green Earth are you gracing my doorstep? Anyone give you trouble?”
“No, nothing like that,” Shelby replied, hoisting her basket of cornbread in the air before setting it upon his desk. “A gift from my Mama. On account of you working so hard you missed church.”
Andrew’s easy smile never left his face, and his piercing gaze never left hers. “Well, that was mighty kind of y’all.”
“My mama’s the one who had the idea,” Shelby clarified, compelled by an uneasiness she didn’t understand. She didn’t want the young deputy to think this whole thing had been her doing.
“Still mighty kind to walk all this way.” Andrew was undeterred, his smile unflinching. His teeth were even and square and white, like gravestones lined up in his mouth. Shelby held back her response — that the sheriff’s office was barely five minutes from her front stoop.
Andrew stood smiling at her for a minute, and then a minute more, and Shelby fought the urge to squirm. Her savior came from an extremely unexpected place.
“Quit your courting, boy, and let me out of this here cell!” It was old Mr. Barker, a notorious drunkard who Shelby only ever saw hanging around Eden’s Rest like a horse fly. She knew for a fact that this wasn’t his first time sleeping off the drink behind the iron bars of a jail cell — and though she was new blood in this town, she also knew for a fact that it wouldn’t be his last.
His coarseness broke whatever focus Andrew had fallen into, the kind of trance-like concentration of a mountain lion stalking prey. “Now why would I do a thing like that? So you can go right back to the bottle?”
Though she couldn’t see Mr. Barker clearly from where she stood near the door, Shelby could almost perfectly imagine the expression on his droopy, drink-red face as he sputtered indignantly from his cell. “No! So I can practice my shootin’!”
Andrew put both of his hands on his hips and shared a secret look with Shelby, like they were in on some sort of joke together. “Why on Earth would you need to practice your shootin’?”
Mr. Barker’s answer was matter of fact: “Because Shalifoe’s comin’ back to town.”
Andrew rolled his eyes.
“Shalifoe?” Shelby asked.
“Yeah, Shalifoe!” Exclaimed Mr. Barker. “Trick shooter.”
“A gunslinger?” echoed Shelby. There was a thin icy pang of fear in her now at the thought. Fort Travis was a prairie town, sure, with it’s fair share of vice. But thankfully it was too small and drab to attract the attention of outlaws and gunslingers and those who lived and died by the six-shooters at their belts. Her little brother Spencer had some boyish fascination with the romance of it all, but their father had caught him playing Outlaw with tied-together stick revolvers once and showed Spencer the wrath of a God-fearing man. Spencer’s gunslinging dreams died that day.
“Hardly,” scoffed Andrew. “Goes from town to town and talks a lot of game, is one shoot-out short of being an outlaw, but I can tell you one thing, Shelby—“ Shelby bristled subconsciously at his familiarity — “there’s only one gunslinger worth their salt in this town.” Andrew patted the revolver on his hip. “And you’re looking at him.”
“That’s nice,” said Shelby, thinly. She was still thinking about the chaos that a gunfighter would bring to her new home: the wild sounds of gunfire, shells falling to the sandy streets outside, shots echoing off of the faces of those sharp, stern mountains beyond. She shuddered.
Andrew had begun to look at her like she was a horse he was looking to buy, eyes intent and sharp and peering, and so Shelby acted like she was late for chores back at her home and ducked out of the office as quickly as she could, feeling Andrew McKinney’s eyes on her back all the while.
She promised to say extra prayers that night as penance for her lie and hoped that Jesus would understand.
**** **** ****
A week passed, and still no sign of this mysterious Shalifoe. Every evening, Shelby kept her porch vigil, nodding to the procession of townsfolk and countryfolk alike who sought song and … well, other pleasures over at the saloon. And every evening she smiled at Dorothy Campbell and received a stoic, barely-there nod in reply. Shelby was beginning to recognize other characters too, with detail filled in by her mother’s gossip.
The saloon girl with the round, piercing eyes was Leah Rilke. She’d run off from home to chase after an older fellow who said he loved her, but that fellow had run off on her, too. For whatever reason she found work at Eden’s Rest instead of returning home, and she’s been here ever since. Shelby’s mother said all of this with a disapproving hush in her voice, as if Leah Rilke was a bad person for loving and losing, but all Shelby felt was sympathy.
The smiling girl with the long black hair and soft edges was Martha Blackburn. She and her mother and father and sisters lived on a big spread over an hour’s ride from town, so she was a much rarer sight in Eve’s Landing than the rest. Shelby’s father disapproved of the fact that none of the Blackburns were church-going folk, or at least that none of them went to his particular church. But Shelby was sure that if her father looked long enough at somebody he could find just about anything to disapprove of. Heck, she was sure that he’d scold Jesus himself for turning perfectly good water into wine.
Once the sun passed the peak of the sky and the worst heat of the day was over, Shelby stepped out onto the dusty road before her house, arm in arm with her mama. The two Goodkinds strode toward the general store in search of calico for a new dress for Melody. Both JoBeth and Shelby were tall women, but Melody was sprouting up like a stalk of corn and quickly outgrowing her old clothes. Besides, she’d been forced to leave both her best friend in the world and the young boy she was sweet on back in Fort Travis, and Melody had been taking the family’s move hard. Shelby needed something to keep her hands busy and her sister needed a reason to smile, so a new dress seemed the perfect remedy.
“So how did young Deputy McKinney find the cornbread?” asked her mother, voice lilting and conspiratorial.
Shelby suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. “I think he liked it just fine.” She cast a pointed sidelong glance at her mother. “I think he liked the messenger more.”
Shelby’s mother broke into a girlish giggle, sounding young in the way she only could among her daughters. JoBeth Goodkind had become a mother at a young age, and for all her years and added responsibilities sometimes Shelby felt like her mother had been frozen in time. “Well, I just bet he did.”
“I know what you’re after, Mama.”
“You could make a worse match than Deputy McKinney, that’s for darn sure.” Her mother glanced around them, wide eyes taking in the comings and goings of their fellow townsfolk, surely saving details away for later gossip. She led them daintily around a puddle of mud in the street, careful not to stain their skirts. “He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s got secure, respectable work. Many girls marry for much less. He could give you a good life.”
“I already have a good life,” said Shelby, and meant it. Her father earned plenty enough to keep his family fed and clean and comfortable. She loved her siblings, she loved her home, she loved the view of the purple mountaintops from her bedroom window.
“It can’t be your life forever, Shelby Faith. You’re old enough to know that.” Her mother’s voice was somehow both gentle and stern. “I bet half of the Landing’s single ladies would be chomping at the bit to have Deputy McKinney’s attention. What’s so wrong with him?”
Shelby tried to think of a fault and found none. He was handsome, he was healthy, by all appearances he seemed to be without vice. He had a nice smile with all his teeth and he was polite to her family and he was well-built and strong. She should be falling all over him like the other ladies her age. She should be beside herself with giddiness at the way he always worked hard to catch her eye. She should feel a storm of butterflies within her core every time he sent a smile her way. But instead, she felt nothing but mild, roiling discomfort.
“I don’t love him.”
They stepped up onto the boardwalk, pressed into the general store. Her mother said nothing, but squeezed her arm and sent her a pitying sort of bless-your-heart look that conveyed all that Shelby needed to know:
Love’s got nothing at all to do with it.
Shelby let her mother do the negotiating, nodding placidly at each bolt of cloth that JoBeth cooed over and rubbed between her fingers. While her mother chose the fabrics, Shelby allowed her mind to drift to thoughts of outlaws and trick-shooters and this mysterious gunslinger that had the whole town in a tizzy. Shalifoe.
Almost as if reading her mind, two young boys around Spencer’s age jostled their way into the store, mid-conversation. “My older brother’s said that folks’ve seen Toni Shalifoe passin’ through Durango.”
“That’s only a four days’ ride. When did your brother say this?”
“A week ago.”
“Well, shoot.”
The hair on the back of Shelby’s neck stood on end, like it would before a lightning strike. “You boys talking about this gunslinger I keep hearing about?”
The boys immediately straightened, looked over at her with gaping fish mouths as if in shock that Shelby was speaking to them. “Yes, ma’am,” the taller of the two mumbled, ducking his head in a polite nod.
“What’s this Shalifoe done that’s got the whole town in a tizzy? He famous, or something?”
The boys shared a sidelong look and an amused snort at something Shelby had said. She frowned. Again, the taller one spoke. “Famous around these parts, for sure,” his lips quirked up in a grin, “especially on account that she’s a lady gunslinger.”
Something in Shelby lurched, like her world twisted on its axis. She’d been raised a Goodkind, with a Goodkind’s view of the world, and this fact could not be reconciled with the Goodkind way. The image of a woman with a pistol, riding rough and wild through the unforgiving West, sounded about as plausible as a flying pig. She turned over the image in her mind, trying to make it fit, but it couldn’t.
Then, she realized. They were pulling her leg. She was a wide-eyed preacher’s daughter, new in town. An easy mark. She laughed. “C’mon, boys,” Shelby joked, “didn’t your mamas teach you that lying is a sin?”
“I’d swear it on a Bible,” said the taller boy, solemn as a preacher.
“I seen her once,” said the shorter, “she rode through about two years back and I waved at her on the street. She didn’t wave back.”
Shelby blinked, still half-sure that they were playing a trick on her, but as she moved to question the boys further her mother finished up her business with the clerk and steered Shelby by her elbow out the door.
“C’mon, darling,” JoBeth said, cheery. She handed off a bolt of deep blue calico to Shelby. “Best we get home. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Which means I’ve got cornbread to make.”
Her mother gave her a teasing look, but Shelby knew that her words rang true. Her parents were set on turning Shelby Goodkind into Shelby McKinney, and she had a feeling the deputy himself was all too willing to oblige. A part of Shelby felt as though she were caught in the tracks before an oncoming train — all too aware of her fate, but unable to move, unable to change its course, facing down several tons of unyielding disaster.
That night, Shelby sat before her bedroom window and stared at the darkening patch of sky beyond. The wind was changing, a storm was lumbering in, and she whispered the name “Toni Shalifoe” like a secret, rolling the sounds around in her mouth as if to see how they felt there.
**** **** ****
Shelby woke to grey skies. The wind had blown in a thick blanket of clouds, and for the first time since she’d found herself in Eve’s Landing the sky wasn’t some brilliant shade of blue. She dressed quickly for church, keeping an eye on the darkening horizon.
After the service, she was once again ladened with a basket full of cornbread. Her mother patted her cheek and gave her a knowing smile before placing the baked goods into her arms.
“For the deputy?” asked Shelby, although she knew the answer. Her voice sounded flat to her ears.
JoBeth nodded. “And all the hard work he does for us here.”
Andrew had once again been absent from church, and he’d missed a rousing sermon from Dave Goodkind about the dangers of sin that had made even the most zealous Eve’s Landing residents squirm with its intensity. For all her complicated feelings toward her father, Shelby had always loved watching him preach. As a young girl she’d felt beyond special that her own daddy was the one who had the ear of God, who could speak with His voice and spread His wisdom and if ever Shelby felt like she needed an extra bit of guidance she could ask her father to pray a while with her and it’d feel like Jesus himself was knelt there along with them, whispering just the right words into her father’s ear.
She wasn’t sure how much she loved watching her father preach now.
He was all brimstone and hellfire, roaring with a passion to save the wayward souls, and Shelby harbored a quiet, angry fear that she was counted among that number.
For the briefest flash, she saw in her mind’s eye a tangle of brown curls, eyes crinkled with laughter, a rosy-cheeked round face, a cheerful drawl. And then she saw the black-clad backs of the Gilroys, standing before their only daughter’s fresh-dug grave, and Shelby felt suddenly clammy and sick.
She was halfway to the sheriff’s office, and seeing the shape of Andrew through the window only made her feel sicker. An idea struck Shelby then, like lightning on the prairie, and she abruptly turned left, skirting along the boardwalk in the direction of the livery stables where her family’s pair of horses were boarded. She knew that her father would be busy with church work, and her mother would be busy with her younger siblings, which meant no one would notice their absence. The family only kept two mounts — one was her father’s, a strong chestnut stallion, and the other was for the other four to share, a tame mare named Bess.
The stablehand, a tall fellow called Marcus, had Bess saddled up in no time at all, and pressed the reins into Shelby’s outstretched hand. Shelby shifted her weight from foot to foot, debating whether or not to encourage Marcus’s discretion, but decided against saying anything at all. Her mother was always telling her that all a woman has in this world is her reputation, and Shelby didn’t want to sully hers by planting seeds of scandal in Marcus’s mind. Gossip spread around frontier towns like a wildfire through brush — faster than a blink and out of control before you could spit at the embers.
“Much obliged,” murmured Shelby, pressing a few cents into Marcus’s palm as a tip, before hooking her basket of cornbread awkwardly across her elbow and hoisting herself as gracefully as she could manage onto the saddle. She rode sidesaddle — at the insistence of her parents and, by extension, polite society — and spread her skirts carefully along her legs, taking care to cover any trace of her white petticoats. Once she was settled, she gave Bess a signal and the two of them trundled out of the livery barn and toward the edge of town, in search of a near-fatherless girl with sad eyes and a stoic scowl.
The Campbell spread wasn’t far out of the bounds of Eve’s Landing, a modest parcel of land fit for only a small herd of cattle and a coop of chickens. But it took far longer than Shelby had anticipated to find the place since riding side-saddle was a restrictive, delicate thing. She couldn’t hug either side of Bess’s middle and urge her into a loping canter like the cowboys who tipped their hats to her as they passed. She even spotted a handful of country girls around her age riding astride like Dorothy did, hair streaming behind them as they flew down the path. They’d look over at Shelby — back straight and slow going — with tight-lipped smiles and something like pity.
But eventually she found herself at the Campbells’ gate, and there was Dorothy herself, bent over a wash basin and hanging sheets on the line to dry. Shelby stalled for a moment, unsure of the next move. She wasn’t entirely sure her presence was a welcome one, and didn’t quite know how to explain to the other girl why she’d left the neat grid of Eve’s Landing just to deliver a basket of cornbread. Shelby felt almost silly, but it was too late to turn back, because Dorothy’s eyes had caught on the unexpected visitor. Shelby smiled as wide as she could and waved cheerfully, but Dorothy just looked her up and down and returned to her washing up.
“You lost?” Dorothy called, wringing out a sheet and pinning it deftly to the clothesline.
Shelby was almost tempted to say yes, considering how out of place she felt in her Sunday’s finest surrounded by rugged landscape and dusted with red dirt. “You’re Dorothy Campbell, isn’t that right?”
Dorothy looked almost suspicious. “That’s right. Look, if your pa sent you, you can tell him that I’ve got no time for church and I’ve got even less time for lectures.”
“My daddy doesn’t even know I’m here,” Shelby said, her own honesty surprising her. “But I’ve got a whole basket of fresh-baked cornbread and thought that maybe you and your father’d like some?”
Dorothy fixed her with another suspicious stare. “You came all the way out here to share some cornbread?”
Shelby nodded. “And hopefully, for a friend. I’ve been here near on two months, I’m gettin’ tired of keeping myself company.”
Again, Dorothy regarded her critically, like she wasn’t used to being spoken to by folks her own age.
“Also, this cornbread was actually meant to go to a man my parents want me to marry and I would rather not see him but I would also rather not return home empty-handed and face their questions. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Dorothy smiled. “Knew there was an agenda,” she said, but there was no bite behind her words. She wiped her hands off on her skirt and walked over to where Shelby still sat atop old Bess, basket extended between them. Dorothy gathered an armful of cornbread and nodded in thanks. “Dot,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Only folks I don’t know call me Dorothy. You can call me Dot.”
Shelby grinned, feeling suddenly triumphant.
“But this doesn’t mean I’m going to your church.”
**** **** ****
By the time Shelby rode back into Eve’s Landing the wind had picked up. It poked at her once-neat bun, tugging golden strands loose. There was a new kind of chill in the air, and Shelby noticed the thick grey clouds darkening above. The sky was setting up a storm, no doubt about it, but the only question was when it would let loose upon their heads.
Marcus wasn’t there when she reached the livery stable. In fact, not a soul was to be found. The place seemed deserted, like a ghost town, but the stalls still held rows of horses and the occasional ornery mule. Coats and hats still hung upon pegs, and a deck of cards were scattered atop an overturned milk crate nearby, a poker game abandoned in a hurry.
Shelby tamped down the icy fear that crept up her spine at the sight and chose to be annoyed instead, huffing indignantly as she struggled to dismount and remove the heavy tack from Bess’s back all by her lonesome. Shelby considered herself capable, tougher than the usual town mouse; but she was a girl used to soft beds and stablehands and the bustling hum of civilization. She couldn’t recall a time she’d ever untacked a horse with no one around to lend a hand, but she bit back any complaints she had and set to the work before her.
She’d gotten the saddle off, smoothed the blanket over the rail, and was nearly finished brushing red clay dust from Bess’s gleaming coat when the shots came and her life was irrevocably changed.
Shelby’d grown up on the edge of civilization, she was a girl accustomed to the occasional sound of shots, but something about the storm clouds above and the eerie emptiness of the stable set her on edge and she jumped out of her skin. Bess could sense her stress, and whinnied in displeasure, nipping anxiously at a stray lock of hair that hung about Shelby’s face. Shelby hardly dared to breathe, half-hoping the sound was a hallucination, some trick that her already-anxious mind was playing on her — but then two more shots came, quick as thunderclaps and twice as loud.
She threw the brush into the tackbox and left Bess securely in her stall, creeping as careful as anything to the entrance of the stable and peering out at the seemingly empty town around her. The sun was still high in the sky, Shelby could see the muffled glow of it above her head, and while it wasn’t unusual for the town to go quiet around midday when there was work to be done, this was a Sunday and normally the Landing would be chock-full of townsfolk stocking up for the week ahead or trading post-sermon gossip.
But no one was out to greet her.
Shelby took a breath and steeled herself, then stepped out of the safety of the barn and darted to the relative safety of the boardwalks, hugging the edge of the buildings that lined the street, letting her left hand trail across the wood and brick as if to ground herself to reality. She made her way back down the main drag, in the direction of her home. She could see the sharp-edged steeple of the church ahead of her, a beacon drawing her homeward. There was another shot, louder this time, and before she could even jump there came two more, then a third, then another two. A whole six shots fired off in five seconds, and she was walking right towards the source.
Shelby passed down another town block, barely breathing, occasionally peering into the shops she passed only to spy empty rooms and “OUT FOR SUPPER” signs in the windows. Another barrage of gunshots cracked through the air, loud enough that Shelby could feel the vibrations in her bones, but this time she could hear the hoots and hollers that followed.
Outlaws, her mind screamed. Bandits. Death.
She broke into a run and darted around the corner, rounding onto the main road right before her house and right into what seemed like the entire population of Eve’s Landing crowded into large open square between the church and the saloon. The mood was rowdy and raucous, and it felt as if the entire crowd was holding a collective breath and focusing on something that Shelby couldn’t see over the sea of broad shoulders and dusty hats. She spied Marcus the stablehand a ways off, leaning against the thick trunk of a tree whose branches were full of eager children seeking higher ground for a better look.
A cowboy in front of her cleared space for her, and she shouldered her way forward, eventually reaching the first row of the crowd and the subject of their rapt attention. Another shot rang out, followed by excited hollers. All the breath left Shelby’s body due to a feeling that felt an awful lot like fear but was something warmer, more prickly.
Because this wasn’t a shootout; it was a shooting contest.
And standing not ten yards from her was a woman with a pearl-handled revolver in her hand and an arrogant tilt to her chin, a woman Shelby had never seen before but knew in an instant.
Toni Shalifoe.
Her first glimpse of the gunslinger was not at all what Shelby expected. The woman was at once delicate and rugged; fine-boned and slight, with slim shoulders and a leanly muscled frame that moved with a practiced and surefooted grace as she reloaded the revolver. But she was clad in men’s clothing: dark canvas trousers beneath road-worn leather chaps, an open vest atop a dust-caked white shirt, a deep brown waxed-canvas duster coat. Beneath a wide-brimmed hat, her features were finely carved, with a narrow sloping nose, wide brown eyes, delicate lips set in a permanent scowl, as if she looked at the world and expected it to disappoint her. Her jaw was strong and sharp, set with determination and something like arrogance as she stared down the makeshift range with an intensity that made Shelby shiver. When she lifted her pistol once more, Shelby could see that Toni Shalifoe’s knuckles were scabbed over and bruised, the remnants of some scuffle or another.
Pretty wasn’t the word for her, it fit like a too-tight coat, too small, too restrictive. Toni Shalifoe was something more than pretty; she was striking. Handsome, somehow. A mess of contradictions: rugged and fine, pretty and handsome.
She nodded her head and a man down the range threw a volley of plates in the air. Before Shelby could blink Toni squeezed the trigger six times and emptied each chamber of her revolver. Each plate was shattered before they could hit the dirt. A delicate tendril of smoke trailed from the mouth of her pistol like the smoke of a cigarette, and the air filled with the acrid scent of gunpowder. Shelby’s ears rang, and the crowd erupted once more into shouts and cheers. But through it all, Toni stood, still and solid as stone.
“That’s nothin,’” called a familiar voice from somewhere in the crowd. Shelby recognized it at once as Andrew’s, and if she didn’t know better she would wager a guess that he was drunk. The cheering stopped at once, but the crowd didn’t turn. They waited with baited breath, barely concealed anticipation. Hungry for higher stakes. “You call yourself a gunslinger and yet you can’t even shoot on the draw?”
Shelby didn’t know enough about shooting to know what Andrew meant, but the rest of the crowd surely did by the way they “ooh”-ed and hummed their assent. Toni just took it all with an arrogant smirk that didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were narrowed and dark beneath the brim of her hat, and Shelby was close enough to just catch the flint-strike of anger reflected in Toni’s expression, sparked in an instant and gone just as quick. Those nimble fingers set to work reloading her revolver, but Toni didn’t hold it aloft as she’d done before. Instead she returned it to the holster at her hip. She nodded once again at the man with the seemingly unending supply of plates, who tossed yet another volley of six into the air. Shelby leaned forward, feeling a spike of nervousness on behalf of Toni Shalifoe — why had she given him the signal, when she clearly wasn’t ready?
But once again, before Shelby could register a second thought, Toni had sprung into action. Her fingers drew the gun once more from the holster and fired it low, from the hip, her left hand working the hammer back after each sure and steady shot. Shelby watched, open-mouthed, as plate after plate shattered, some just inches from the ground. A sharp gust of wind rolled through the square, and the last plate wobbled before it met her bullet. It wasn’t as clean a shot — instead of punching a hole right through the center of the ceramic it chipped off the side — but it had hit the mark and counted.
Toni’s jaw clenched in displeasure, though she’d technically achieved a perfect streak: six bullets, six targets, not a single miss. The cheers from the crowd were nearly as raucous as the gunfire, and as if the sky wanted to celebrate too, a not-too-distant thunderclap echoed across the mountain valley.
The wind caught the gunslinger’s loose hair, unruly waves streaming and twisting in the air behind her like the delicate black smoke that had risen from the barrel of her gun.
“That quick enough for you?” Toni taunted. Her voice came out raspy, it carried across the crowd with confidence.
Then, all at once, the storm broke above them.
The last thing Shelby saw before the crowd surged toward the Eden’s Rest saloon, hurrying to get out of the summer rain, was a crooked, cocky smile on Toni Shalifoe’s face, and the image of the girl wreathed in gunsmoke burned into the backs of her eyelids and chased her all the way back to her bedroom, dancing behind her closed eyes as she tried and failed to think of anything else.
She dreamt that night of plates shattering in the air, of dark, quick eyes, of a rasp of a voice.