The bell at the Bitter Springs checkpoint lookout post clanged wildly, the sound of wood hitting brass flat but loud in the still heat of the desert air. As soon as Bet heard the sound, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle, raising her other fist high in the air.
The bell faltered. All of the horses in the Librarians’ convoy stopped walking, even Esther’s. They knew that whistle, it seemed. So did the guard posted at the lookout.
The air hung heavy after Bet’s whistle, and for a long minute, no one moved. Then the door at the foot of the lookout tower opened, and a figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. The bell hadn’t started to clang until the convoy was within a hundred feet of passing it—just far enough that Esther couldn’t make out the details of the figure’s face, but close enough for her to see that he wasn’t looking friendly. He stayed put, and after a moment’s hesitation, Bet dismounted, handing the reins of her horse over to Leda.
The figure didn’t move to greet her. Slowly, Bet began walking toward the tower. She held her hands by her sides—not raising them in the air but keeping them both clearly visible. “Evening, Hooch,” she called, her voice steady, aggressively calm.
“Sure is,” the man replied flatly, taking a single step past his doorway. Esther wondered if Hooch was his real name. “Where you headed, Bet?”
Bet kept walking toward him at that same slow, careful pace. “Marble Canyon,” she said. “Same’s always.”
Hooch took another step out into the sand. The farther he got from the bright interior of the lookout tower, the easier he was to see. Esther could just make out the bright star on his vest, and her throat tightened, remembering the way blood had found its way into the outline of the eagle on the Sedona sheriff’s star.
“Who’s that you’ve got with you?” the lookout asked, lifting his chin. Genevieve and Trace had been hidden away for a mile, and Amity was supposed to have joined them, but of course she hadn’t. Something in the set of Leda’s shoulders told Esther that she and Bet had accepted this, had accepted the fight it would probably represent.
But Bet acted like a fight was the furthest thing from her mind. She cocked her head and glanced over her shoulder. “Them?” she said, cool as well water. “Trainees. Me and Leda, we’re getting old. Coming up on retirement time for the both of us.” She took a few more steps toward Hooch, her every step as loud as a rattling tail.
“You oughta stop there, Bet,” Hooch said. He almost sounded regretful.
“Something the matter?” Bet asked in a carrying voice, still walking toward Hooch. Her volume was no accident—something Esther realized only when she saw that Amity and Leda were both resting ready hands on their guns.
“Get ready, Hopalong,” Cye muttered.
“I’ll need to talk to that trainee of yours,” he said. “And the rest of the posse will, too. Stop there, now, don’t come any closer.”
Cye’s palomino took a few steps to one side, tossing its head. Cye clicked their tongue, and the horse came to a halt, flicking its tail nervously.
“She’s approved for travel. Do you need to take a look at her papers?” Bet said. She was nearly within reach of the lookout. He glanced over his shoulder, back toward his doorway, shaking his head, but Bet kept closing the distance between them. “I’ve got ’em right here.”
She reached for the inside pocket of her vest. She didn’t reach slow.
The lookout noticed.
He shouted something indistinct. He turned to run back into his tower, but in his haste, he tripped over his own feet and sprawled headlong in the dust. Bet fell on him before he could stand up, and the two of them scrapped on the ground for a moment, messy and desperate and grunting. The sun caught on the flat of a knife blade, just a flash of silver in the air and then gone. It was impossible to see who was holding the knife, not in that tangle of limbs. Leda started to get down off her horse, shouting.
The sound of her voice distracted Bet. Just for a moment—but it was a moment too long.
Hooch scrambled out from under her, aiming a clumsy mule-kick behind him. His foot caught her in the temple and then she was on her back, her hat knocked to the ground a few feet behind her. By the time she managed to push herself up onto her elbows, the lookout had slammed the tower door behind him.
Before Leda had gotten to her and helped her to her feet, that brass bell was clanging again, loud and insistent.
“Fuck,” Cye spat, watching as Leda and Bet hurried back toward the convoy. Bet held her hat on her head with one hand, her other hand pressed hard against her rib cage.
“What do we do?” Esther asked. She had only intended for Cye to hear her, but it was Amity who answered.
“You run away, Hopalong,” Amity called, a smile in her voice. “Or you stick by. What’ll it be?”
A cloud of dust rose, close by and getting closer. Esther could hear hoofbeats. Her lungs suddenly seemed too small to get her enough air. Her horse jerked its head, and she realized she’d been gripping the reins in tight fists. She forced herself to unclench her fingers.
“I’ll stick by,” she called back.
Soon as she said it, Amity let out a whoop and wheeled her horse around, trotting toward Esther and Cye. Her eyes were lit up bright as a coyote’s. “Thought so,” she said, grinning wide. “Ain’t time to run, anyhow,” she added. Her horse pawed at the ground and snorted.
Bet and Leda were back on their horses fast, but it didn’t feel fast enough, not while that approaching posse just kept getting closer. “You alright?” Esther called. It felt bold, somehow, shouting up at the Head Librarian, but if there was ever a time to be bold, it was this one. She couldn’t hear Bet’s reply over the drumbeat of oncoming hooves.
It didn’t matter if Bet replied at all. In that moment, it almost didn’t matter if Bet was in one piece or not.
There was no more time to talk, no more time to decide.
The posse was on them. The only thing left to do was fight.
Later on, when Esther tried to remember the battle at Bitter Springs, her memory would produce only a few images:
Five men on five coal-black horses. All of the men wore shining silver stars, and all of them were bearing down on the Librarians with rifles drawn and murder in their eyes.
Cye, leaning low over their horse with their teeth bared, charging ahead of Bet and Leda to force the sneering man at the front of the posse off course.
Amity letting out a wild holler before drawing her long-barreled revolver, seeming to aim it at the back of Cye’s head, and firing.
At this last, Esther cried out in panic, expecting to see Cye jerk forward into their saddle, their blood spattered across their horse’s braided mane. But it wasn’t Cye who collapsed in the saddle—it was the man they’d driven off course, the one at the head of the V with the thick black moustache and the hateful snarl. As Cye whooped and Amity gave an answering yell, the man slipped sideways off his horse. Everything was moving too fast for Esther to see the way he hit the ground, and once he was out of sight, the battle began in earnest.
Together, they split the posse in half: Amity and Cye running at the left arm of the V, Bet and Leda running at the right arm. Esther watched, paralyzed. The Librarians’ movements were so elegant, so clean, that they looked rehearsed—and Esther had no idea where she might fit in. They drew gunfire away from the wagons, riding through the puffs of dust that went up with each stray bullet. Amity and Leda both had guns drawn, while Bet and Cye rode in complicated circles, keeping the deputies from knowing where to look.
And then, before Esther could decide how to help—before she could even move to join the fray—it was over. Bet and Leda were working together to catch a frothing horse by the reins, and Cye and Amity were dragging a dead man off the back of a black mare.
Esther’s belly twisted hard with shame. She hadn’t helped. She hadn’t done anything. She had sat there on her horse, useless and gawping, waiting to be told what to do as always, just like she’d promised Amity she wouldn’t. This time, she’d waited while her traveling companions fought for their lives. They had all been facing an obvious but horrible choice—kill or be killed—and they had all protected each other from that harm. All of them except for her.
Run away or stick by, that’s the choice Amity had offered Esther, and she hadn’t done either one.
She slid down off her horse, running a hand across its flank. Two completely separate emotions fought for supremacy within her: the need to help now, in the aftermath, however she could, battled with overwhelming humiliation at her own uselessness.
You’re just in the way here. You’re nothing but trouble for anyone, something inside of her whispered in a voice that sounded just like Beatriz. It was a voice she trusted. She slipped into it like an old boot, well-worn and familiar.
She looked back toward the wagon. She loved this life, the long days riding and the cold starry nights and the endless rolling sand and the constant throb in her legs. She loved it because even when someone looked at her with contempt or annoyance or exhaustion, they weren’t looking at her with ownership or hate. They were the only people who had told her that it was okay to be who she was. She didn’t want to leave.
That doesn’t matter, that little Beatriz-voice inside of her whispered. It was reasonable. It was kind. It was a voice that was only trying to protect her, she knew it, and she didn’t know how to fight it. You’re only being selfish. You don’t belong here.
Esther lifted her hand to swipe away the hot tears that kept blurring her vision.
It happened fast as a knuckle cracking. Her eyes were only closed for a second—but when she opened them again, lowering her wet hand from her face, she wasn’t alone anymore.
A man stood in front of her, his face mottled with blood and dust, the two combining to crust his thick moustache with foul mud. His hair was parted low to one side, and Esther realized that she wasn’t looking at the work of a comb, but the work of a bullet—the bullet she’d thought was meant for Cye. The bullet Amity had sent toward this same man with a howl of delight.
The sheriff’s deputy had fallen off his horse, but he hadn’t stayed down.
The man lunged at Esther, his face contorted with malice, his head still bleeding freely. He swung a fist at her and she threw her arms up in front of her face, trying to remember what Amity had shown her, mixing up the need to dodge with the need to protect her face.
The deputy’s fist met with her hands, and the confusion of their limbs kept him from hitting her with the face-breaking force he’d intended. Their hands tangled together for an instant, and at the feel of his callused knuckles, Esther jerked back. Her arms caught his and the momentum of his punch turned into a fall, and then his weight was on her, and her arms were pinned underneath the vast and muscled barrel of his chest, and there was no air, not even enough to scream—and then he rolled away, just enough to get his own arms free.
Just enough for Esther to try to wriggle away.
Just enough for her flailing palm to land on the butt of his revolver.
The gun was still holstered on the deputy’s hip, loose and ready to draw, and before Esther could think about what she was doing, there was iron in her hand. She scrambled to her feet, half-skidding away from the deputy. He lifted his hands, palms out, and looked warily at the girl he’d just tried to lay out.
Esther found her footing and stood upright, aiming the man’s gun right at his gore-encrusted moustache.
“You don’t want to shoot me,” he said. It was the first time Esther had heard his voice. It was higher than she expected, cut with a tremor. He was young under all that grime and hate. “I didn’t try to shoot you, did I?” He nodded toward the gun in her hand. “Because I knew you were different from them. I could have tried to shoot you, but I didn’t because you’re not like those other ones. You would never kill a man,” he added, and he sounded more confident this time. “Not you. You’re better than they are. You’re not a killer, sweetheart.”
Esther’s finger rested alongside the trigger. He was right—she didn’t want to shoot him—but she didn’t see how she had a choice in the matter. She didn’t relish being called “sweetheart,” but something deep in her chimed at the word: this was a man who would let her go, if she was nice and pliant and didn’t cause trouble. This was a man who wanted her to be the kind of woman who liked to hear “sweetheart,” and that was a role she knew how to play.
She could escape, safe. She could go back to a life of hiding who she was, playing the role assigned to her. She could do it if she wanted to.
But she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“I can’t let you go,” she said. “I can’t let you tell anyone what happened here today.”
“I won’t tell them about you,” he said, and he sounded so reasonable that it was almost easy to forget what that promise meant for Cye and Bet and Leda, for the Librarians and the work they did, for the only people Esther had ever met who were like her and liked themselves for it. “You’re not like them,” he repeated, his eyes softening, his hands starting to drop to his sides. “They’re not good people. You must know that.”
Esther’s head swam, because he still wasn’t wrong. The Librarians were road-hardened and cutthroat. They were killers, Amity especially. They had done all of this before, there could be no doubt about that, and there could be no doubt that they would do it again.
Esther would tell herself later that she hadn’t been about to let the deputy run off, but when she was frank with herself, late at night with the stars to keep her honest, she couldn’t be sure what she’d been about to do.
All she could be sure of was that Trace made the decision for her. The back flap of the supply wagon lifted, and Trace’s shock of red hair spilled out of it. She was facing away from Esther and the deputy at first, obviously checking to see if the coast was clear. When she turned around to look at them, her mouth widened into an O of shock.
Esther and the deputy were both distracted, just for a moment, but the deputy recovered faster than Esther could. He lunged again, grabbing for the gun. In that moment, Esther knew clear as the blue desert sky that the deputy would kill her. He would kill Genevieve and Trace too, and Bet and Leda and Cye and everyone like them. Even if he didn’t do the job with his own hands, he would be the instrument of their deaths. She knew that he would see to it that they swung just the same as Beatriz had, or that they lined up against a wall to take as many bullets as a firing squad could put in them. It didn’t matter to him if they were good people or bad people, if they were goat farmers or assassins. It didn’t matter to him, just the same as it hadn’t mattered to Esther’s own father.
He would kill them all, because that’s what the State told him was right, and because the State told him he was important for doing it.
Esther lifted the gun and sighted down the barrel just the way she’d seen Amity do it, and she pulled the hammer back, and she tightened her grip on the trigger until it snapped under her finger.
The gun kicked up high, whipping back toward her, but she caught herself before she fell and held herself steady enough to cock the hammer and fire again, and again, and again until the trigger was clicking and her ears were ringing and the deputy was sprawled motionless in the dust.
She couldn’t look away from him, not even after Cye eased the spent revolver out of her fingers, not even after they pressed their hands to her shoulder and tried to walk her away from the body. She stared over her shoulder at the place where his blood was draining into the desert soil, and she forced herself to memorize what he looked like.
She had seen a man decide that she deserved to die, and she had killed him for it.