Keech dropped into a fighter’s stance as a figure emerged from the shadows at the base of the stairs—a dark-skinned boy with a lean, rawboned face. He moved with purpose, wasting no time in meeting the young riders head-on. He clambered up a few steps, his teeth clenched, but when his wide eyes caught the glint of Duck’s lantern, they blinked in surprise. He stopped, his chest heaving.
Nat stood at the lip of the opening, pointing his Hawken down the stairs. “Don’t move a muscle!”
The boy in the darkness dropped back a step, away from Duck’s light and the Hawken. “Don’t y’all come any closer!” he shouted, but his voice quivered with doubt. His hands were tucked down in the gloom, possibly hiding a weapon.
For Keech, the moment froze like a winter sky as he recalled the bounty poster that Sunrise Albert had shown them. “Are you Oscar, the kid who escaped Wisdom?”
Panic and uncertainty and other emotions Keech would never understand crossed the face of the boy below. “That ain’t my name no more,” he said.
“Well, what’s your name?”
The boy ignored the question. “I just wanted to sneak a peek. I heard kids’ voices and got curious. I didn’t mean to scare y’all. I just want to be left alone.”
Keech didn’t know what to think or how to react. For close to a decade, Pa Abner had trained Keech’s body and mind to respond to situations with calculation and control, but now neither his body nor his mind could establish his best move.
His memories slipped back to a cold December afternoon, a few days before his tenth birthday. Pa had taken him and Sam into Big Timber to purchase a Christmas ham from Greely’s General Goods. Keech’s birthday was the same day as Christmas Eve, so he had been doubly excited for the coming festivities at the Home—till he saw a bearded roughrider stroll into Big Timber on a rugged, slab-sided Appaloosa.
The man steered his speckled mount down the center of Main, rambling at a leisurely pace, but he was not alone on the street. Another person walked a few feet behind the horse, a gaunt man with striking, dark skin and threadbare clothes unsuitable for December. The walking man’s shoes were an embarrassment of tatters, and his hands were bound to a pair of rusted iron chains that stretched to a couple of rings on the Appaloosa’s saddle.
Keech and Sam watched the procession in horrified silence.
As the bearded horseman passed Greely’s, he doffed his hat with a dingy smile. Keech didn’t smile back. Instead, he locked eyes with the dark-skinned man in the chains and filthy rags. The fellow trembled in the cold and stumbled a bit. The horseman yanked at the chains, pulling the fellow along. The walker returned his attention to the street, but Keech had seen that his reddened eyes were hollow, full of misery, empty of hope.
A couple of townsmen had stepped out of the Big Timber Drugstore and halted the horseman in the center of the street. You ain’t wanted here, one of the men told the rider. Didn’t you see the sign? No slavers!
Apologies, the horseman said, spitting on the ground. I thought this was a free country, where a man could go where he pleased. Then the rider led his desolate footman away, disappearing into the wilderness beyond Big Timber.
Back at the Home, Keech and Sam pressed Pa Abner for some kind of explanation. Those men told the rider to leave town, but they didn’t say nothing about helping the man in chains, Sam said.
Pa Abner looked down at the sitting room floor. Sometimes you have to pick the best way to stand your ground. The men of the town did what they thought was best for our folk.
Keech remembered his pa’s words now—an answer that had never stuck well in his heart or soul—as the boy on the stairs faced down Nat’s Hawken.
Keech backed away from the trapdoor. The jumble in his mind untangled a smidge as he moved, keeping his gaze on the stranger. “Nat, lower the gun.”
“We are deputies of the Law. Show us those hands, nice and slow,” Nat said.
The kid ignored the command. “You don’t look like no deputies I ever saw.” He had a pleasant voice that sounded shrewd, though a touch of rasp enveloped the words, no doubt from the wintry bite in the air.
“We’re not going to hurt you. You’ve got my word.” Keech raised his hands, palms out, to show them empty. “Nat, put the gun down.”
Nat shook his head. “We don’t know this kid.”
Keech started to repeat his demand, but suddenly a large hand seized the barrel of the Hawken and tugged upward. Keech braced himself for the fierce blast of the gun, but instead of firing, the rifle slipped completely from Nat’s grip. Keech and Nat wheeled about, stunned.
John Wesley stood between them, clutching the Hawken. “He said he just wants to be left alone.”
“Give me the gun,” Nat said.
John Wesley stepped back, out of reach. “Go suck an egg, Embry.”
Duck touched her brother’s hand. “Nathaniel, calm down.”
Nat’s face turned a furious shade of red, as though he might explode and lash out with fists, but when his eyes dropped to meet Duck’s, he swiveled and walked away a few steps.
Turning back to the kid on the stairs, John Wesley said, “We ain’t gonna hurt you, friend. We swear it.”
“We’re the good guys!” Duck called out.
“Yeah, that’s what they always say.” The stranger’s eyes flicked to Cutter’s knife.
“Put that thing away,” Keech hissed.
Cutter flipped the long blade through his fingers—a show-off trick he liked to do for new folks he met—and then stuffed the knife back into its sheath.
Keech looked again at the kid in hiding. “My name’s Keech Blackwood. My partners and I call ourselves the Lost Causes.”
The boy remained frozen on the stairway. Duck’s lamplight revealed a black forage cap on his head, the kind of covering that US Army soldiers wore as part of their uniforms. The stranger frowned. “Lost Causes? What kinda name is that?”
“It’s from Saint Jude,” Duck said.
“It’s the name you take when you’re on a deadly mission that’s sure to get you killed,” Keech added. “We’re after a gang of ruffians who murdered our families.”
The kid pursed his lips. “I suppose y’all don’t look like bounty hunters.”
“Heavens no.” Duck laughed. “In fact, we scuffled with a rotten hunter just today. A fella who called himself Sunrise. Wore a big bear pelt, all dirtied up and ugly.”
“That’s the snake who’s been tracking me!”
“We were told you ran from Wisdom,” Keech said to the kid. “That’s where we’re trying to get to. There’s a person we have to see there. The sheriff. He goes by the name of—”
“Tom Strahan,” the boy answered for him, and his eyes lit up. “I know him. He’s a friend.”
“No way. You gotta be jokin’.” John Wesley turned back to Keech, his round face warming. “This can’t be coincidence, can it?”
After meeting the others who had been in pursuit of the same outlaw as Keech, he could not believe that mere coincidence was guiding them. Now, finding this young stranger in the wilds of Kansas Territory—a boy who had escaped the very town they were trying to find, a boy who claimed to know the lawman they were trying to reach—sealed the deal for Keech.
Granny Nell had always called matters of good fortune and chance providence—as in “Providence wills that you and Sam will be doing dishes today,” or “It’s pure providence, Keech Blackwood, that you know how to paint window shutters so well”—but Keech knew a much better word for what they were all experiencing: fate.
Outside, the Kansas norther raged against Mercy Mission’s roof. The brass bell at the front door clattered so furiously that Keech thought it would rip free from the arch.
After a moment, the kid said, “All right, if y’all step on back, I’ll come up.”
Once the entire troop had retreated, the boy climbed the remaining stairs, then stepped out onto the platform. The light of the lantern illuminated his getup. He wore a pair of muddy gray trousers, a torn brown shirt, and a ragged blue sack coat. His boots were too big for his feet. A man’s boots. About the right size to make a heel print near a Dakota pit, Keech figured.
The kid took a few seconds to peer into the dark corners of the mission. Keech liked how he checked his surroundings, peeked into the shadows. He was clearly a survivor. “Y’all have horses?”
“We do,” said Duck.
The kid’s left arm had been tucked behind his back, but now he brought it forward, revealing a thick wooden rod, a stick as big around as the neck yoke on a wagon. He held the rod out like a club. “If y’all try anything, I promise to put up a mean scrap.”
“We won’t make any sudden moves,” John Wesley said.
“In that case, I’ll introduce myself.” The boy raised himself taller. “My true name is Quinn Revels. I spit on the name ‘Oscar,’ shackled on me by terrible men. I am the son of George and Hettie Revels, who died in the cornfields of Tennessee. My mama died birthing me, my papa died while hiding me from slavers, and Auntie Ruth helped me escape out west to be a free man. I got a free body, I got a free soul, and I won’t ever wear chains again. Anybody tries to lock me up, I’ll kill them dead or die fighting.”
After a moment of silent contemplation, Duck stood. “No need to fight, Quinn Revels. You’re with friends.” The girl smiled. “Now come and sit with us.”