Chapter Text
The crow came to Ava’s window five times before she began to consider that it might be an omen. She’d only been sizing up the world for a brief 26 years, but found that things rarely happened many times in a row by accident.
Mary dismissed the idea as she was dismissing most things in those days, almost contemptuously. There was no way of saying how long it had been since the two of them could talk about birds and their possible significance peaceably, but it had to be a magnitude of years.
Suzanne, however, entertained her. “They’re cunning,” She said one morning, after the crow had come tapping at the glass above Ava’s bed for a sixth time, “I had a teacher in school when I was a girl say they’re as smart as dogs.”
“Dogs?” Ava said, using her tongue to fish a piece of bacon between her teeth, “No way.”
“Ava, keep your mouth closed.” Suzanne said lightly. She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders, “I’m raising girls, not wolves.”
“Ava’s both.” Mary said from around a gulp of coffee, dodging the piece of flatbread Ava lobbed from across the table with a snicker.
“What would I have to do for some peace and quiet at the breakfast table?” Suzanne asked, but she was smiling. After all those years, Ava had come to know when she was really vexed and when she was just teasing, “My teacher told me that if you give them something, they’ll give you something in return.”
“Give them something? Like money?” Ava asked, “We don’t have that.”
“Food,” Suzanne said, “Or something shiny.”
“How is she supposed to know it’s the same one?” Mary asked. She was already dressed for the day in a loose button down shirt and trousers. Ava wore the same; her’s a shirt of Robin’s egg blue. Like all of her and Mary’s clothes, it had been patched by Suzanne two or four times in all the high wear places; at her elbows and down her arms.
“It looks the same,” Ava shrugged and took a bite of her own food. The kitchen door was open, letting in a breeze, and she could hear the sheep bleating out in the far yard. The chickens skittering. And something out beyond it; the lack of sound that was a sound. The big empty.
“We can barely afford to feed ourselves.” Mary grumbled, slouching into her chair. Suzanne shot her a look and opened her mouth to say something. A baritone, rattling cough escaped her instead.
Mary sat forward and reached for her. “Ava, go to the well.”
And Ava, as she often did, went to the well to get water for Suzanne’s cough. On her way, as she tried to always do, she searched for things to be grateful for.
That the days were longer. That she was a year older. That they still had the homestead. She pulled a pail of water and stared down into her own rippling reflection for a moment before bringing it in.
The talk of the crow got lost somewhere in the grind of the day. Animals got to be fed, the doctor had to be fetched. Was there enough money to pay him? Mary made a tea instead with plenty of honey and peppermint, and got a fire going even though summer had arrived and all the world was warmer for it.
Did they need to call Shannon in to watch Suzanne while the chores got done? No, she would be happy patching clothes by the fire.
Ava rode Cowgirl out to the western fence to fix a hole and she was not thinking of birds, but of JC, of Suzanne, and briefly of Mary.
It wasn’t until they came back, the setting sun at Ava’s back, riding through a creek, that the idea entered her mind again. She looked down as Cowgirl found her balance in the uneven creek bed and caught her own reflection in the moving water.
And then, and only then, she thought of the crow.
Ava waited until everybody had gone to bed to ascend to her bedroom and open the drawer where she and Mary kept the items they had yet to fence. It was fuller at that time than it had ever been before, being that it needed to be sorted through. They’d been putting it off because the idea depressed both of them.
Most of it was worthless or nearly so, but there were a few nuggets of silver glinting at the bottom underneath all the cheap looking jewelry. They’d gotten it from a job on the house of a mine owner. A cheap bastard, as it turned out, but nearly every drawer in the damn place rattled with tiny pieces of silver.
Not enough, on its own, to warrant the work it would take to melt it into something sellable. But she and Mary had kept it thinking, maybe someday.
It felt like they were saying that more and more every day. And it felt like every time they said it they were less sure what they were hoping for.
Ava selected a piece smaller than the tip of her pinky and then crawled onto her bed to open the window. She put the silver nugget on a small porcelain dish she kept bedside for her hairpins and rings and set the dish on the outside windowsill.
It had been put there by Ava, once upon a time, with the hope that they’d have time to plant flowers there. Maybe someday.
When Ava woke up the next morning, she checked the dish. The silver nugget was gone.
*
JC’s letter arrived the next day. Mary brought it in from the post office without saying anything, setting it out on the kitchen table. Ava had to summon a boatload of courage to have Mary read it and even then only at the end of the day, after hours spent agonizing over it.
Nothing was said about the two of them, for which she was grateful. In it, JC only asked if Todd Tradwell could stay at the homestead overnight on his way down to New Year two weeks therefrom, and Ava had written back via Mary’s hand and agreed, feeling like she’d owed JC something after all that had happened between them in January.
Some time later, Ava would come to see the provenance of Todd’s visit as clearly as if she’d known it all along. Everything, she reckoned, had a reason, even if that was the sort of thinking that made Mary roll her eyes. Some things were meant to be known in the instant they happened, others lay in wait for the perfect moment of reveal.
This had to be the latter. Because, in the two weeks it took Todd Tradwell to arrive, things got worse. That might have been fine, except that it had been a long while since the last time they’d gotten better.
The tea stopped working. Suzanne would just cough on through it, cough so much that she couldn’t stomach more than half a cup. She was cold, even in front of the fire. Work became scarce, and so did the trappings of their pantry.
And so that was how he found them; a sick mother, a barren pantry. Mary in a snit that they were hosting at all, on top of everything else. Ava more tired than she’d ever been, being that she was the only source of optimism in the house.
But Todd was, at the very least, pleasant, like all of JC’s friends were. Ava remembered that he’d been mentioned once as a former professor beset by an unplayable gambling debt that was then living life on the road as a door to door bible salesman.
Ava had no fear of being sold any bibles or lectured on the notion of God. JC and their kind were not of true believers; they were opportunists. Ava included. Mary included.
When Todd appeared at their front door, he sure was dressed like a bible salesman. His dark hair was slicked back, his shirt pressed, his trousers without fault. The only imperfection on him were the dark yellow stains just barely visible underneath his arms.
And it made Suzanne happy to have him, as she had not had company in years that wasn’t Ava or Mary or Shannon. She insisted that they all sit at the kitchen table and play Texas Hold ‘Em for spoons, and they broke into the whiskey in the top cupboard before it was dark out.
“You’re a friend of JC’s?” She asked, then clicked her tongue, “I’ve known him since he was a little boy. Did he tell you that?” Todd shook his head, “He was the most ill-mannered child I ever met.” Suzanne continued in that austere way she had, “But also the kindest, so I forgave him for it. He’s a good boy. A good man now, I suppose.”
“Yes ma’am,” Todd answered. He was sitting ramrod straight in his chair, hands clasped in his lap. “He sure is. Good folk. Sure speaks highly of your daughters, as well.”
“JC’s a smooth talker,” Ava said, leaning back into her chair. She was inwardly pleased that JC still talked about her at all.
Todd looked at her from the corner of his eye, not unkindly, and she was acutely aware that he knew exactly what had transpired between them. “Not sure I ever heard him say a word he didn’t mean.”
“Everybody who’s ever met Mary and Ava likes them,” Suzanne offered, all pragmatism with just a hint of pride, “That’s their gift, if they’ve got nothing else.”
“Gee, thanks, ma.” Mary said wryly, and Suzanne winked at her.
Ava said, “We had a decent upbringing.”
“I can see that.” Todd agreed.
The coughing started again then. Ava had been waiting on tenterhooks for it since Todd arrived, and when it happened it was all at once a relief and worse than she imagined.
Suzanne heaved with it, her small back shaking. Mary went to her, kneeling by her chair and rubbing at her back.
“I’m sorry, Todd,” Suzanne said between gasps, fist pressed to her mouth, “I haven’t been feeling my best recently.”
“Oh, that’s alright, ma’am. No trouble at all.”
“I’ll take her to bed.” Mary shot Ava a look, “I think we ought to talk tonight, Ava.”
Ava knew without asking that it was time to turn out the drawer and decide what to do with it. To talk about the doctor. And to talk about California. Half of the junk in there would get them laughed out of the pawn shop.
She brought it downstairs anyway, long after Suzanne and Todd had retired for the evening. Mary had forfeited her bedroom for their guest and so Ava found her laying sullenly on the couch, blanket strewn over her lap, staring into the fire.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Ava said as she passed, nudging the back of the couch with her hip.
There, they dumped the drawer out. $50 lay scattered across the kitchen table in the form of jewelry, mostly chintz, and some lace ladies’ items, which was a telltale sign that they were getting desperate. Ava took one of the rings - lapis lazuli she hoped - and pressed the gem to her lips.
It felt warm. Plastic. $45 lay scattered across their table, maybe less.
“Robert told me about this place. I went and saw it last week, said I was doing a water survey.” Mary placed a survey map on the table with a circle on it. Ava studied it.
“Who are they?”
“Bonners. New oil money. Found a well on their land last year.”
“So they’ve got shit.” Ava pushed the paper away from herself, “Maybe some nice jewelry, assuming one of them has common sense, but shit otherwise.”
Mary collapsed into the chair next to Ava, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, “What else have we got? This is shit.” Mary took up a handful of what Ava was rapidly beginning to think might all be costume jewelry, “And I nearly got eaten by a dog to get it.”
Ava put her head in her hands. “I know.”
“How the hell are we going to get west with this? And the doctor, Ava, he says that—”
“Pardon the interruption, ladies.” They turned toward the doorway to see Todd Tradwell in his trousers and linen shirt, pipe box in hand. His hair had sprung free of whatever pomade he’d wrangled into it, and a curl stuck up here and there on the crown of his head. Made him look approachable, Ava thought. “I couldn’t sleep and I thought I might smoke my pipe away from your mother’s bedroom.”
It was too late to clear the table of their spoils. He’d seen them. Was looking at them even then, with a curious eye.
Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Ava shrugged.
“Of course, yeah,” She said, nodding to the chair across from them, “Be our guest.” She ignored the hot look that Mary gave her.
Todd settled himself across from them and began to take the fixings out of his box and pack his pipe. None of them said anything for a long moment, the jewelry sitting conspicuously between them.
“Doing an inventory?” He asked lightly, “The two of you don’t seem like the jewelry type.” Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Mary shook her head and shrugged. “What do you two do?” Todd laughed, “C’mon, I’m a friend of JC’s. Not the law.”
“Houses.” Ava said, being that there were very few legal explanations for their spoils. “Big ones. Rich folk, oil money.”
“Victimless crime.” Todd nodded. He puffed on his pipe. In the background, from Suzanne’s room, there was a deep, rattling cough. “Does she know about it?”
Ava shrugged. Mary wiped her hand over her forehead. “She doesn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Must be good at it.” He looked back down at the jewelry. Worthless in price, high in volume.
“The best.” Ava responded because, once upon a time, when the state had been booming and oil and mines had been popping up and making poor men rich, they had been. Between the two of them, they could hit a house a month and take in $400, sometimes $500.
“When I spoke to JC, though,” He continued, “He said the two of you were in need of coin.” At the strained silence that ensured, he put his hands up, “Promise I don’t mean any offense. But I don’t have anything to offer you for your hospitality except for information.”
“Information.” Ava deadpanned, her shoulders tight and raised.
“If the two of you are experts in the art of burgling and yet find yourselves in a monetary bind, it tells me two things.” He put up a fist and extended one finger, smoke training from the corners of his mouth, “One, that you are running low on houses to be burgled at an acceptable risk-benefit ratio, and two,” He extended the other, “That you are in a situation that requires a certain amount of cash at a certain time. Am I far off?”
Another booming cough from the bedroom. Ava shifted in her seat. Todd smiled. “Meaning what? If that were true, which I’m not saying that it is.”
“Meaning that perhaps it’s time to explore other ventures. On a limited basis, of course. You need coin, a lot of it, I’m assuming. I know of something that might get you that coin — higher risk than burglarizing, but much higher reward.”
“How much higher risk are we talking?” Mary queried. She was stretched out almost catlike in her chair, hands folded in her lap. Eyes riveted to Todd.
Todd brought a match to his pipe and heated the tobacco, puffing on it. “I have a cousin by the name of Snyde lives up by Bozeman. Runs a very successful ranch, has one daughter. Catherine.” Another puff, “Seems that she became quite taken with one of their ranch hands last summer and got the idea in her head that the two of them were going to get married.”
Mary said, “So far I’m not seeing where we fit into this.”
“My cousin sent her off to a convent up near Chinook, seeing the danger of a poor ranch hand marrying into the family. However, he has heard tell by word of mouth that the poor boy followed her up there like a lost dog. Has been knocking on her window talking about running off together.”
“We’re not going to kill anybody.” Ava said.
“Not asking you to,”
“We’re not in the art of intimidation, either.”
“Not asking for that.” Todd shook his head, “My cousin tried to go pick her up three weeks back, thinking maybe he could take her to a relative in Oregon. But, of course, seeing as nothing is ever easy—Mother Superior wouldn’t let him in. Said she wouldn’t be letting any man take one of her novitiates by force. Even if it were her daddy. And if she didn’t want go, she didn’t have to.”
The picture was beginning to take shape in Ava’s head. “Not killing,” She said, “Kidnapping.”
“If you want to call it that.” Todd shrugged. “My cousin is willing to pay a certain sum of money to anybody who can get Catherine from the convent and bring her down to Bozeman. ‘Course…” He took a deep breath, “…I can only imagine that a couple of women could do that more innocuous-like than a group of men. Less danger to Catherine, too, I reckon.”
Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Once, in their shared girlhood, they had been able to speak with just their minds. What an odd time, Ava thought, for them to rediscover that ability. What a fitting one, too.
She thought and Mary thought of Suzanne and who would stay with her while they did such a thing. She thought of how the two of them might even logistically accomplish taking some poor girl by force, Mary being all bark and no bite, and Ava pretty much being in possession of neither. She thought of the one gun they kept on their stone mantle that had only been used to scare off coyotes. They didn’t even bring it to do up houses.
Mary was a shit shot. Ava was worse. Could they even pretend that wasn’t true?
Ava thought of California. And she thought of the ocean. And she thought about prison.
“I understand,” Todd offered, “That this is a decision that may take some thinking on. As I said, I have no money to offer you for your hospitality. But I can tell you where the convent is, and what room Catherine is staying in. And I can tell you that if you intend to act on this information,” He paused, wetting his lips, “Well, I’d act soon.”
*
Todd left the next afternoon and Mary, as she did when she had something to digest, retreated to her room. Ava knew that she had a journal she kept in there where she puzzled through things she couldn’t puzzle through with Ava, that list getting bigger by the day.
It was coming September and the weather that day was beautiful; not sticky hot, no coldness of autumn. Ava took Suzanne out to the front porch and sat her down in her rocking chair with her shawl, sitting beside her on the top step, working her pocket knife around the skin of an apple. Not fixing on eating it. Just looking for something to do with her hands.
In front of them, the world stretched, so mighty and untenanted that it was almost frightening. Ava thought of all the things living out there, the snakes and the crows and the bears and the coyotes, and thought about how they were really just one of them. Out here surviving.
“Hey, ma,” She asked, throwing away a scrap of apple skin. Suzanne hummed. Ava shook her head, “Nevermind.”
“Sweetheart,” Ava only got called that when Suzanne was being really, terribly serious, “You know I like to hear what’s on your mind.”
It was true. Suzanne had been doing almost nothing but listening to Ava talk since she was wee. Ava thought of it and felt that old, familiar ache in her chest. She sniffed, wiping her face with the patched sleeve of her shirt. “You ever think about if we’re good people or not?”
The creaking of Suzanne’s chair paused, “What do you mean?”
“You know how we don’t go to church, and how when food gets low sometimes we’ve got to poach off of the neighbor’s land, and…” Ava thought of the houses they’d broken into, lined up in her mind all in one row, and said nothing more.
“Ava,” Suzanne’s voice was even and syrupy, “Why are you troubling your mind with such stuff?”
Ava hung her head. She thought of her childhood, of sleeping in that big upstairs bed when she was small. Of how Mary used to come upstairs and lay next to her, singing her a lullaby. Of Suzanne holding her when she was still small enough to be held.
“I just wish that love was a little easier,” Ava said, “And that I knew how to do the right thing.”
“Come here, child,” Ava did, leaning her cheek against the comfort of Suzanne’s skirts, and sighed when she felt her mother’s hand in her hair, “If any one of us knows how to do the right thing, it’s you. And if you’re not sure, I’m not sure anybody ever could be.”
Ava stared out onto the horizon. “Ma?”
“Yes, Ava,”
“How would you feel if Shannon came to stay with you for a week or two and took care of the place? JC offered Mary and I some work driving cattle up at the ranch.”
There was a brief pause in which Ava was sure—no, beyond sure—that Suzanne knew exactly what they were about to do. She tensed.
“Well, that sounds alright, Ava,” Suzanne said, “If that’s what you think is best.”
*
Todd Tradwell had left detailed instructions as to where and how to find Catherine. But, being that Ava could not read a stitch, she devised a rhyme to help her remember. Catherine Snyde, her door’s second on the right side, wonder what it is it hides?
Mary hadn’t paid it any mind. If Suzanne had known, she might have declared it whimsical.
They’d set up camp in the woods out by Box Elder, a half a day’s ride from Chinook. The gun Ava had taken off the mantle and stuffed into the band of her trousers along with a length of rope that would have to do for restraints in a pinch, if needed.
The plan had been hastily conceived of in whispers in front of the fire. The two of them riding up to the convent would be too conspicuous. A single Black woman riding up too would raise attention, so better it be Ava while Mary remained behind and made camp. Ava would come back with Catherine, and they’d ride together to Bozeman.
On the night before her ride to the convent, they ate jerky around the campfire while the horses milled about behind them. Neither said a word about what Ava was about to do, though when Ava laid down on her blanket to sleep she had the feeling that they hadn’t decided to do it until that evening. Not really.
Up until then, they could have gotten on their horses, turned around, and ridden south back to the homestead and Suzanne and a life of grinding, inconsequential work. Maybe they would have stopped by JC’s farm on the way and had a laugh over a few pints of beer.
You’ll never believe what we were about to do, Ava would have laughed, it was a silly idea though, wasn’t it?
But Ava’s mind had turned, as she supposed Mary’s had, to Suzanne. And as she rolled on her side and rubbed her cheek into the fabric of the blanket she thought, yes. Yes, tomorrow I’m going up to that convent and I’m leaving with a girl.
No, I’m leaving with Catherine Snyde.
When Ava finally fell asleep, she dreamed about she and Mary, riding south. Just the two of them. In the dream, she supposed, there was no Catherine Snyde. In the dream, they were laughing.
*
The convent lay five miles north of Chinook. Ava went for a first pass in the daytime, to mark the route in her head, and found it interrupting the expanse of plain with nothing before it, nothing after it, and nothing to either side but for a herd of bison grazing in the distance and a few patches of scrub.
An eyesore, in Ava’s opinion. Back in New York, she’d seen the grand catholic churches with stained glass adornments and naves filled with gold and precious stones.
There were no such luxuries on the frontier. Of the two buildings that stood huddled together, one was four-stories with white clapboard where the nuns slept, and the other was smaller with a steepled roof. The church.
She gazed on it from a distance, counting the windows, trying to guess which one might be Catherine’s.
Ava slept a spell under a tree and returned in the evening, planting Cowgirl out of sight about a half mile from the compound. She walked up the dirt road by the light of the moon and her own memory, thinking how fortunate it was that the night was so clear and that the sky was so goddamn big.
She had brought a few things in case she found the doors and the windows locked, but Ava suspected that the only thing the Sisters of Ursinus had to worry about this far out were bison and the occasional lost grizzly. Neither of which could be stopped by a locked door.
‘Round the back of the convent there was a door, and a few feet away from that a water pump. Ava gazed at it, hands on her hips, then lifted her eyes to the rows of windows above. All of them dark. Perfect.
Catherine Snyde, her door’s second on the right side—
Ava tried the door handle. It pushed inward without resistance.
Wonder what it is it hides?
The room it opened into was a kitchen. Ava tried one of the floorboards for squeakiness and then, finding it quiet to her satisfaction, stepped inside.
It was darker in the guts of the house than it had been on the dirt path with the moon, and so Ava had to move cautiously. She put her hands out and felt along a stove, then the brick of a fireplace, then an open doorway.
From the windows at the front of the house, she could see that the room that lay beyond was a cafeteria-style dining room. And that to the side of it was a staircase.
The third floor, Mary had said. Ava ascended the stairs to the second, the revolver in her waistband feeling heavier than it had a few minutes prior. She crossed the hall to the adjacent staircase.
Halfway to the third floor, Ava’s eyes adjusted. At first she thought they’d grown used to the darkness, but then she realized that it was lighter halfway up the staircase than it had been on the second floor.
She paused, foot on the sixth step, and considered the possibilities. One of the sisters could be awake. Ava opened her ears and heard nothing more than the prairie winds rattling the window glass.
Somebody had just forgotten to snuff all the candleholders that lined the walls, more likely. She continued up, to the seventh stair, then to the eighth. Then Ava’s boot touched the landing, and she turned to the third floor hallway.
For no reason at all, when Ava saw the light burning outside the second to the right door, the crow crossed her mind. She was wondering what it had done with that silver she left out for it.
Though she’d thought that sleeping that night in Box Elder was the last time she could have changed her mind, Ava realized that the true last time was then, right then, approaching the door and putting her hand on the handle. Gunmetal cold on her hip, rope half tucked into her underwear.
Ava opened the door.
When she saw the girl for the first time she thought, there you are, Catherine. Catherine was standing in the candlelight of her bedroom, dark-haired and slack jawed and so pretty that for a moment, Ava nearly forgot where she was and what she was going.
“Can I help you?” Catherine asked, then squinted. Ava closed the door behind herself and saw that Catherine was wearing an overcoat over her dressing gown, the flaps hanging open. Then, she took in the rest of the room—a suitcase lay open on the floor, clothes hanging out of it. A book lay on top, and on the dresser as well. Peeking out from her nightgown were a pair of fine, brown leather boots.
“Were you going somewhere?”
“I was just—who are you?” They were whispering, the two of them, and Ava thought how odd it seemed that Catherine wouldn’t want anybody to hear them either. “Are you from Ennis?”
“Where the hell is Ennis?”
“Language,” Catherine hissed, “Don’t you know that this is a nunnery?”
“Sorry, Sister.” Ava said, contrite only for show, “Where are you headed?”
“None of your business.” Catherine frowned, “And I’m not sure why I should tell you when you won’t tell me who you are? I mean, honestly,” Her voice took on a scolding tone, “A woman dressed like a cowboy vagrant has just exploded into my room at 2 in the morning and asked me where I’m going? Were you raised in a barn?”
Ava paused, chastised, “Well, kind of.” Something occurred to Ava and she wrinkled her nose, “He didn’t tell me that his cousins were British.”
“He? He who?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ava said, “But I’ve come to take you back to Bozeman. Now, you can come quietly or you can cause a fuss. But I’d really prefer it if you chose the first option.”
She groped into the back of her pants for the gun, took it by its handle, and drew it. The only indication that Catherine registered what had just happened was a slight lift in her eyebrows.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.” Ava said.
Catherine said, “Is that so?” Her eyes going to the gun.
“It’s a precaution. To make sure we get out of here smooth-like.”
“If you’re looking for money, I have bad news for you. Have you ever heard of a vow of poverty?”
With her free hand, Ava groped again and retrieved the length of rope. She’d half tied it to her underwear inside of her pants, having nowhere else to put it, and she thought it might be a good idea to apologize to Catherine for it, considering it was still warm from her skin, but then thought that some things were better left unaddressed.
This inspired more shock on Catherine’s face than did the gun. Yet still she made no noise. Ava didn’t even have to tell her so.
“Who are you?” Catherine asked again, “What do you want?”
“I want you to come with me. Quietly, like I said.”
“Why me?”
“Look, I know you like this fella. But you’ve got your family down there in Bozeman Godawful worried. And I’ve been promised a fair bit of money if I see you get returned.”
Catherine’s posture stiffened, her head tilted, “Do you think I’m Catherine Snyde?” She shook her head just slightly, “I’m not Catherine Snyde.”
Ava’s eyes roamed her face, looking for any sign that she was not telling the truth. She came up with nothing. “This is her room.”
“She left the convent. A week and a half ago. She got wooed away by a ranch hand. Silly girl.” Goddamn, it was possible that this woman was lying, but the whole thing tracked with what Todd had said. And did Ava really think that some flighty daughter of ranchers could come up with a story like that on the fly? Plus, the accent. Ava felt her heart start to thud in her chest. What the hell was she going to do? What were they going to do? “I took her room. And I’m afraid that you will find that I, like every other girl here, am poor as the dirt I’ll someday return to. Which may convolute your plan to procure any money from taking me.”
She was looking at Ava now dead in the eye, and speaking with total conviction. Ava again noticed how pretty she was, how a dusting of barely-there freckles lay across her nose, how her face, even serious, was soft at the jaw and dewey-skinned. The way she talked rang in Ava’s ears like a set of shimmering bells.
“You look disappointed.”
“Well, we had a plan. Sort of a complicated one.” The woman clicked her tongue in mock sympathy, and Ava, hearing the false note, twisted her face into an incredulous smile, “Are you making fun of the woman holding you at gunpoint?”
“You seem more interested in talking than shooting.”
“Thinking out loud.”
“You need money.”
“It’s a universal problem, I guess.”
“But you need it more than most, or you probably wouldn’t have gone through the trouble.” The woman’s face softened into something that could have been mistaken for empathy. “I hope you find it.”
A feeling that Ava hadn’t experienced in some years washed over her. It was true defeat. She would have to ride back to the camp, she supposed, empty handed, and then back to the homestead with not even a dollar between the two of them.
They could come up with a new plan, yes. With a new scheme. But there was another resource they were running low on, something far more finite than money; time. How many more weeks would it take to come up with they money they needed for Suzanne? How many months?
She swallowed harshly. It felt silly to cry in front of the woman who was still standing at the wrong end of her gun. “You too. I hope you—” She glanced around. There was a skittering in the back of her mind, something about the woman. Maybe Catherine. Maybe not. Something about the way she was standing there getting ready to go. “It’s a nice room, though. Nicer than I would expect from a nunnery.”
“Hm. I’ve always found it a bit prosaic, I suppose. Uninspiring.”
Something about those words stopped the copper rising in Ava’s throat. Her ears pricked. Her eyes narrowed. Her eyes slid again to the suitcase, to the nightstand. “What’s your name?” She asked.
“My name is Pearl Archer,” The woman, who’s name was almost certainly not Pearl Archer, replied. “And I’m the daughter of farmers from Santa Rita.”
“What are you reading?”
The woman’s mouth twitched. “What?”
“You’ve got an awful lot of books, is all.”
Her mouth twitched again, and this time she tilted her head, just slightly, to glance over her shoulder at the suitcase. Never fully taking her eyes off of Ava. “The House of Mirth.”
“Ah.” Ava widened her eyes slightly and bobbed her head in a nod, “And who would that be by?”
“Edith Wharton.”
Ava said, “You’re a long way from Santa Rita.”
The woman’s mouth was still this time. “There aren’t many Catholic churches that take novitiates in Montana.”
“Now see,” Ava sniffed, “I myself am, as you say, poor as the dirt that I will someday return to. From Gallatin County. Ever heard of it?” The woman’s eyes flashed, “What I cannot figure is why a poor girl out in Santa Rita would use a word like prosaic. Or why she’d be traveling with so many damn books. They must have a hell of a school out there,” Now the woman was frowning, deep lines appearing at the corners of her mouth, “As for me, I can’t read a stitch. Funny how people can be the same and different at the same time, isn’t it?”
The whole time, Ava was looking all around the room, all around the woman, for some sign of who she was. It was still possible that this was Catherine, and that Catherine was simply
more cunning than Todd had prepared them for. She’d found that most of the time, when people were telling a whopper, there was a clue as to the truth near at hand.
Her eyes traveled over her face, to her ears, down the slope of her neck. And then—
“What’s that?”
The woman shifted, “What’s what?”
“You’re wearing something under your nightgown.”
There was a brown leather strap at the woman’s shoulder, a sliver of which was exposed by the downward slope of her nightgown and overcoat. She shrugged as soon as Ava said it, trying to move the garment back into place.
But Ava had already caught the scent. She tucked the rope half into the pocket of her trousers and retrieved instead her pocket knife, flipping it open, the blade glinting in the candlelight.
“Easy,” She said to the woman’s slightly wild expression, “Just stay still, alright?”
Ava approached her, moving the blade of the knife underneath the leather strap. It must have been cold, because goosebumps rose around it. The woman’s nostrils flared. Her jaw tensed. “What do I have to do,” She whispered, close enough that her breath was hot and sweet on Ava’s cheek, “For you to go on your way and for me to go on mine?”
It was easier to say nothing in response, and it only took a moment of pulling before the thin leather of the strap snapped. There was a slithering sound as it slid from the woman’s body, then a dull thud as the bag attached to the end hit the floor.
They both looked toward the doorway, and both stood still for a moment. Ava wondered if, like her, the woman was listening for the sounds of waking or footsteps from the other room.
When a second passed with only silence, Ava stooped, gun still pointed and took the bag. It was a simple satchel, thin and folded on top like an envelope with a button snap. It was awkward to pull it open with one hand still holding the gun, but Ava managed it. She peered inside.
What she saw made Ava’s heart leap, skip a thousand beats, then plummet down to her stomach and back up to her throat. Maybe they weren’t as fucked as she’d first imagined. “Awful lot of gold and cash money in here for a poor girl from Santa Rita.”
“You can have it,” The woman’s face had turned a lovely shade of red, “You can have all of it. Even the bag.”
Ava shook the bag somewhat and angled it, inspecting the lining, “I’m not a genius, as I said, but I suspect this tag would have your name on it, yeah?” She lifted her eyes to the woman’s, “And maybe where you live? Or whereabouts?”
“It’s worth at least five hundred dollars, five-ten if you sell the bag.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I stole it,” The woman blurted, and then, sensing that Ava did not believe her, “I found it on the side of the road.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re pointing a gun at me.”
“And I’m awfully sorry to be doing it.”
“Then stop. You seem half-decent. I suspect you don’t really want to be doing this. Is that true?” Ava shrugged. It was true enough. “The girl you want isn’t here. And I’m not going to tell a soul. You could get off scot free—find some other rich woman in some other convent.”
Yes, Ava supposed. She saw real desperation on the woman’s face and heard it in the way she talked, quick and quiet. She felt that little twinge of something that she had most anytime they did something criminal, even if it was just breaking into some oil baron’s house, which according to Mary and Ava’s own moral compass was only a crime as a technicality.
She took no pleasure in it. Ava did not like making people unhappy, nor did she like upsetting them. But, thing was, Ava was desperate too. And there was a plan forming in her mind for how they could salvage this situation.
The girl could be Catherine. Or she could be a daughter from a rich family who might pay a certain sum of money to see her return. Either way, Ava wasn’t leaving without her.
“Sounds like you were fixing to leave anyway. Can’t say I blame you. So this’ll just be a detour, eh? Turn around.” The woman’s body was still, but her eyes were darting around the room, “I said turn around. Face the wall and put your hands behind your back.” Ava said again, trying to be harsh the way Mary had taught her to say it. It took a lot of practice to achieve the tone without bursting out into laughter. She even pulled the hammer on the gun for good measure. All show.
But the woman, who had not been there to witness Ava pulling the gun fireside, saying turn around, missus, and nobody gets hurt, then bursting into cheeky laughter, turned and faced the wall, putting her wrists behind her back, and when Ava approached her, gun tucked into her pants but close enough and hand that she could draw it if need be, she whispered, “You’re making a horrible mistake.”
“Am I?” Ava murmured, putting the muzzle of the gun to her back, “Walk downstairs. And be quiet about it.”
*
The moon was still bright when they rounded the front of the convent, their boots soft against the grass. The woman in front and Ava behind, gun pointed at her back.
“Hell of a pair of boots for a nun.” Ava commented.
“Rattlesnakes,” The woman replied dryly, “Don’t care much if you believe in God or not.”
“Good to know.” They fell back into silence. “So what is your name, anyway? Since we’re going to find out anyway.” No response. “We got a long way to go, you know. Might as well get to know each other a little. Or it’s going to feel much longer.”
“How about this. You tell me where we’re going, I’ll tell you something. Not my name.”
“Fair enough. We’re going to meet my companion. Can’t say exactly where.”
“And from there?”
“Depends on how cooperative you are. Got to find out where your people are from before we can properly put you up for ransom.” The woman scoffed, and Ava saw the back of her head bob with an eye roll, “Given your piss-poor attitude I suspect we’re going to be together a while. I hope you like sleeping under the stars.”
“My apologies for not being more accommodating to my captor. I’ll try to cheer up.”
“Look, worst thing that’s going to happen to you is you’re going to be camping a few days. You’re gonna be fed, watered, and cared for. And at the end you’ll go running home to mommy and daddy—or wherever you were headed before I so rudely interrupted you.”
“It was rude.”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? This is a hell of a regretful situation and I hate to be putting anybody out. But sometimes life leaves you no choice. Does that make you feel better?”
“It does, actually.”
There was another silence. Ava decided to leave this one be, considering that she’d riled the girl so much that she was beginning to feel riled herself. It wasn’t anger exactly, more like agitation, or a state of alertness.
“There’s nobody who’s going to pay a ransom for me.”
The woman said it so quietly at first that Ava had to strain to hear her. “What?”
“There is not a person,” The woman repeated, “In the whole state of Montana who would pay a cent to see me return home. You picked the wrong girl.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not.”
“O-kay.”
There was a scuffling sound as the woman stopped, nearly cutting Ava’s step short. She stumbled and came a half inch from colliding with her body.
The woman turned. In front, it was obvious that everything on her was askew. Ava didn’t get the feeling that she was the type to be disheveled much. She held Ava’s gaze in a vice grip.
There in the moonlight, looking at the woman’s face, Ava realized that it had been a long time since she’d seen a person so beautiful.
“Nobody is going to pay for me. Not a dollar. Not ten dollars. Not my parents. Not anybody.”
It was the queerest thing, because to Ava’s ear, it really didn’t sound like a lie. But was it the truth? She wasn’t sure she’d go that far.
Even stranger was that Ava found herself wanting to believe the woman, although there was nothing trustworthy about her, and although she couldn’t even be bothered to be honest about her name. Has it really been that long, she thought, since a beautiful woman paid me any attention? Even negative attention?
She thought about the satchel that she’d re-tied around her waist. Five-hundred-and-ten dollars. It wasn’t nothing. But it sure as hell wasn’t Oregon money. It wasn’t California money.
Ava kept the muzzle of the gun steady, “Turn around,” She said, “And keep walking.”
*
Cowgirl was right where Ava’d left her, grazing on a patch of tall grass. Her brown coat was almost red in the moonlight.
“We’re going by horseback?” The woman asked when she saw her, turning to look at Ava, “How far?”
Ava shrugged, “We’ll ride through the night, probably get to camp by 6 or so.”
The woman’s shoulders slumped, “I haven’t slept a wink all night.”
“Won’t hold it against you if you need to take a doze on my shoulder.”
The woman snorted. Said, “Hardly,” And the whole thing had such a private school meanness to it that Ava wondered how this woman ever thought she’d get away with claiming to be some poor nobody from Santa Rita.
She smiled, thinking about it, and the woman frowned. It was clearly not the reaction she’d been looking for. “Well, I’ll need to…” She gestured with her head into the distance. Ava’s gaze followed her, squinting.
“You’ll need to…”
An eye roll. “I’ll need to—have a moment, privately, to—”
Ava’s eyebrows lifted in understanding. “Oh. You need to take a piss.”
“Oh my word. Forget it, I can wait.”
“No, no. Jesus, I’m not a sadist. You can go behind those bushes over there.”
The woman blinked. “Like this?” When Ava’s face betrayed her lack of understanding, the woman continued, her words more biting: “Are you going to hold my skirt up for me?”
She did not imagine that a blush was what the woman was looking for, but it was what she got. She noticed too, even with how dark it was. Ava saw her notice. Though thankfully, as a rich woman of an unknown province and a nun, she didn’t seem to read anything into it beyond embarrassment. “You think I was born yesterday?”
“Where am I going to go?” The woman asked. She made an attempt at a gesture that was aborted by her bound wrists, “I have no idea where we are. We’re in the middle of nowhere. I’d get eaten by a coyote before I found another person.”
She wasn’t wrong. And Ava, as she had said, was no sadist. The crueler she was the harder she’d find it to justify what they were doing, and the act of handcuffing this woman and putting her at gunpoint had her almost at her limit.
Ava was distressed. The woman was distressed. And Ava had the sense that a little bit of kindness might go a long way toward making them both feel better.
She approached her. The woman lifted her wrists behind her so that Ava didn’t have to get too close to undo the knot.
“No funny business,” Ava said as the rope fell free. The woman rubbed at her wrists. She looked Ava dead in the eye and Ava, again, was struck by her.
“I’m a nun,” The woman replied, as if she hadn’t been lying and weaseling the whole way out of the convent, “Remember?”
Then, under Ava’s watchful gaze and the point of her gun, the woman turned, she walked a few feet forward to a patch of scrub, and she broke out into a run.
“Fuck,” Ava said, “Fuck fuck fuck—”
In the fraction of a second it took for Ava to realize what was happening, she’d disappeared almost into the darkness. The woman was fast. But Ava, years of chasing a variety of things — cattle and dreams and women and — was faster.
She sprinted, dirt crunching under her boots. The woman started to holler. “Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me—” And then Ava’s arm closed around her waist, drawing her in.
The woman’s feet lifted from the ground, her back pressed to Ava’s front. She started to kick.
“Leave me alone!” She hollered again, “Let me go! You lout.”
“Lout?” Ava could smell her hair. She had to dodge an errant elbow before she became too lost in it, “Lout? Are you—ow, hey!” Another elbow, this one making glancing contact with her cheek. It was hard enough that Ava reared back and the woman managed to squirm free of her grasp, landing face down in the dirt.
Before she could raise herself higher than her elbows, Ava was on top of her, front draping over the woman’s back. They struggled against each other, limbs tangling, bodies bucking.
The woman was fierce. But Ava—
The woman broke free again, crawling a foot forward before Ava took her by her skirt, then her ankle, flipping her so that she was on her back and Ava was straddling her hips. Ava managed to get both of her wrists in the grip of one hand and pin them to the woman’s stomach.
She noticed that, in the struggle, the woman’s nightgown had rucked up almost around her hips, exposing an expanse of thigh. Ava used her other hand to yank it down.
“Oh, how chivalrous,” The woman spat, “You imbecilic brute—”
Ava barked out a laugh, “I understand that nuns aren’t supposed to swear, but if ever there was a time—“
“—you could have at least bathed before you forced yourself on me, and washed your teeth. You smell like a wet dog.”
A frown settled on Ava’s face. She tilted back some. “I wash my teeth every day.”
“Liar.”
“Listen, lady, we can tussle here on the ground all night if that’s what you want. That’s not going to change anything.” She leaned in, moving her face mere inches from the woman’s. Swimming in the blunt force of the resentment she saw there. Hatred, almost. That was fine. This was a kidnapping, not a popularity contest. “I know what you want, but what I want is for you to get on that horse. So you’re getting on that horse. You know it and I know it.”
To Ava’s surprise, the woman lifted her head from the dirt. They were only an inch apart, tips of their noses close to meeting. “The question is,” the woman said, “Which one of us wants it worse.”
“Yeah,” Ava said, the word coming out breathier than intended, “Are you willing to take the odds that it’s you?”
They remained locked like that for a moment, the two of them breathing heavy through their noses. Then the woman let her head fall back to the dirt and turned it, no longer meeting Ava’s eyes. She stopped struggling.
Ava tied the rope back on her and helped her off the ground with a grip on her elbow that the woman shook free of as soon as she was steady on her feet. She began to march back toward the horse without Ava needing to say a word about it.
“Hope that little stunt was worth it.” Ava said once they were back beside Cowgirl, untying her from the tree.
“Well,” The woman responded, looking off into the distance for a moment before turning back to Ava. Her eyes went to the butt of the pistol poking up from her trousers, “I know now that you’re not going to shoot me.”
Ava’s eyebrows lifted. She sucked her teeth. She thought back to the campsite, to practicing a meanness that was not innate. No, she was not going to shoot the woman, annoying as she was proving herself to be. But Goddamn if the woman wasn’t supposed to know that.
“Got a hell of a mouth on you.” Ava commented, tugging at Cowgirl’s saddle to test its security, “Wanna try and run off again? Test that theory?”
The woman said nothing. She stared at Ava. Ava stared back at her, trying her best not to betray weakness.
Then, the woman reared her head back, shot it forward, and spat directly on Ava’s face. It landed wetly on her cheek and Ava could only stumble back with a cry of surprise, wiping it from her cheek.
As she was taken off guard, the woman descended upon her. She took advantage of the fact that her hands were now tied in front of her body and began to beat at Ava with her fists.
She was petite but mighty and her blows, even restrained, hurt. Ava was able to keep her just barely at bay, but she knew with one wrong step she could end up on the ground. Or, more likely, with the woman using her head to crack Ava one between the eyes.
Without thinking about it, Ava drew the gun from her trousers. The woman in her fury did not notice. Ava pointed it to the ground on their left, pulled the hammer, and shot.
The sound reverberated through the grassland. It reverberated through the woman, too, who started back. For the first time, Ava saw fear on her face. She swallowed back bile with a heady kick of self-disgust.
Ava, with her free hand, took the woman by the shoulder, “I could tussle with you all night, miss. Before you proceed, better be sure that’s what you want.” licked her lips, “Let you spit on me a few more times too. I don’t mind.”
The woman’s face crumpled, “You’re disgusting.”
“Yeah, something like that. Gonna get on the horse? Or want to keep testing the theory that the next bullet will land somewhere nonfatal but nonetheless painful?”
The woman said nothing, nor did she try to run. Ava mounted the horse and then reached for the woman, taking her again by the elbow. “Just grab her by the saddle a bit—yeah, there you are.”
They managed together to hoist the woman’s body up. She’d clearly had experience on horses, which helped. Ava couldn’t see her, but she could feel the weight and warmth of her body against her back.
Best not to dwell on it. “Ready?” Ava asked, rhetorically. The woman said nothing. She tapped her heels into Cowgirl’s side, and they rolled onward.