The Librarians had a problem. It was a big problem, a problem that seemed to take up the entire camp even though it only had the footprint of a laid-out bedroll.
Amity dug a booted toe into the ribs of that big problem and shoved. The big problem didn’t do anything about it, on account of being dead.
“That’s the sheriff from Sedona,” Amity said.
“Yeah, we figured that out while you were fetching Gen and Trace back from whatever snakehole you all found to hide in,” Bet replied, standing next to Amity with her arms folded across her chest.
“Why would he be with a gang of bandits?” Esther muttered. She couldn’t stop staring at the dead man. She’d had a hand in his death—in the deaths of all his compatriots, too, sure, but them, she’d only distracted. This man, she’d held in place. She’d grabbed his horse by the reins and kept him still long enough for Bet to part his hair with a bullet.
He was bleeding on her bedroll, and he was doing it because she’d ridden a horse the right way to put him there.
“That must’ve been his posse,” Leda murmured. “Only difference between a sheriff’s posse and a gang of bandits is a man with a star pinned on his shirt.”
“He protects Sedona, doesn’t he?” Esther asked, trying not to sound naive and hearing herself fail at it. “I mean, won’t he be missed there?”
“He keeps Sedona in line, more like,” Bet answered. “They’ll wonder where he is, but we oughta have at least a week before anyone comes looking for him, and I doubt that search party’ll be too intense. They won’t want him back too fast. The real question we ought to be asking is, why was he coming after us?”
At this, Genevieve returned from behind the supply wagon, where she and Trace had been washing their clothes in a basin of horse water. Wherever they had hidden themselves away during the fight, they’d wound up covered in thick, stinking mud, and Bet had told them that they’d be walking a mile behind everyone if they didn’t wash.
Now, Genevieve was as clean as she was naked, which is to say mostly. She stood, wringing out her dress with quick, impatient motions, her hair dripping across her face. “Were they coming for us? Or did y’all just run into them on the way to town?”
“They were coming this way,” Leda said. “I think so, anyhow. No real way to tell, maybe we just caught ’em on a wild tear and they decided to chase us down.”
“Like a dog spotting a rabbit.” Amity shoved the dead sheriff with her boot again. “You sure they were on our trail?” she asked. She looked up, catching Esther’s eye. “Hey, you alright there? Not about to air your paunch, are you?”
Esther shook her head. “M’alright,” she muttered, and it was almost true. She didn’t feel sick. She just felt far-off. The corpse looked wrong, somehow, hollow, and she couldn’t make herself look away.
“This your first dead body? Or just the first time you were the one puttin’ a man to bed?”
“I didn’t— He’s not my first,” she said. She didn’t bother to clarify what she’d meant, that he wasn’t her first dead body. And she didn’t bother to correct Amity, either, that she hadn’t been the one to kill the sheriff. Because, in a way, she had.
She knew it wasn’t the same. She knew that whatever she felt about him, it didn’t halfway meet what Bet had a right to feel about him. And either way, she didn’t want to talk to Amity about it.
“What’s his name again, Leda?” Bet asked, ignoring the way the air between Esther and Amity was growing dense with challenge.
“Holthauer,” Leda said without hesitation. “He’s the biggest toad in the puddle between Phoenix and Flagstaff. The further we get up towards Zion, the easier it’ll be to make like we don’t know what happened to him, but we’re too close to his den right now for me to sleep easy at night.”
“That settles it,” Bet said with an air of finality. “We’re making tracks. Once Trace is done washing up, you two haul this bull out to the scrub and ditch him. If we’re lucky, he’ll get handled by the buzzards before anyone comes looking at him too close.”
This last directive was pointed at Esther and Cye. Cye rolled their shoulders and sighed—not ostentatiously but enough that Esther could see how exhausted they were. She was exhausted too, in her bones and in her soul, and the thought of heaving that corpse out into the desert added weight to her shoulders. The thought of then having to walk back alone with Cye, with their long pauses and significant glances, with their dimples and their wide, watchful eyes and their graceful neck … it was almost too much to bear.
“Mind if I bump in?” Amity said, interrupting Esther’s thoughts. “Me and Esther, we can take him on a ride. I wouldn’t know the half of what needs to be done to pack up the camp,” she added, glancing at Cye. “But I’d bet your right hand over there would.”
Bet stared at Amity for a moment, then nodded. “You two be back here before an hour’s gone, or you’ll be following our tracks. Understand?”
Amity nodded, and before Esther could bother having an opinion about a change of plans, everyone but the three of them was off and working.
“Feet or head?” Amity said, pointing to the dead man that lay still on Esther’s bedroll.
Esther looked at the dead man’s boots. They were dirt-crusted, the toes pointing away from each other. She decided not to look at his head, which was a mess of blood and sweat, all caked in dust. There was a smell coming off the man, like baking leather and sour sweat, like piss and rage, like the burlap they reused for everyone who walked to the noose back in Valor. “I’ll take the feet,” she said.
“I hoped you would,” Amity replied. “I hate taking the feet.” She scooped her arms under Holthauer’s shoulders, hooking her elbows under his armpits. His head lolled against her shirt, smearing it with streaks of dark brown. “Get along, now,” Amity grunted. “We’ve only got an hour, and all.”
Esther grabbed his feet and stood. The dead sheriff swayed between the two of them like a hammock. Carrying him away from the camp was awkward, because neither woman wanted to walk backward—there were too many pits in the earth and patches of scrub to trip over or turn an ankle on. They made slow progress away from the camp, back toward the place where all the other bandits still lay.
“I’m sorry this happened to you today,” Amity said. “I’m sorry that you had to get tangled up in it.”
“It’s what I signed up for.” Esther was breathless already from hauling the sheriff’s deadweight. “I knew the risks when I joined the Librarians.”
“Naw, you didn’t,” Amity replied easily. “You had no idea. Maybe you knew there would be adventure, and maybe you knew about how it’s not always the safest proposition, being out between cities. But you didn’t know death would come so close by you, and so soon. You didn’t know how heavy a man gets when there’s no life left in him. You don’t deserve to have to know what it’s like.”
“Sure I do.” Esther hadn’t expected the words to slip out of her, but they did, easier than a coinpurse falling out of a drunk’s pocket. “This is the kind of life there is for me.”
They passed the fallen body of a bandit—or, Esther supposed, a deputy. His horse was long gone, vanished into the desert. The other four of his kindred lay not far off, a couple of them already attracting buzzards. Once they’d gotten twenty paces past the fallen man, Amity stopped walking.
“Here, this’ll do. Don’t want to spread ’em out too far from each other,” she said, and she dropped Holthauer’s shoulders. The weight of him jerked his ankles out of Esther’s hands, and he fell to the ground like a sack of pamphlets. “What’s that supposed to mean, then? The kind of life there is for you?”
Esther braced her hands on her thighs, trying to catch her breath. The sun was steadily climbing, and it was high and hot enough now to cook the sweat right out of her. “Never mind,” she panted. “Do we need to do anything else to him before we get back to camp?”
“Sure do,” Amity replied, pulling a broad hunting knife from a sheath Esther hadn’t noticed earlier and couldn’t seem to spot now. “Get his boots off. Someone’ll recognize those boots if we leave ’em here.”
Esther began the work of tugging the dead sheriff’s boots off, which was no easy task. His leg twisted loosely in her hands, and his knee gave a baritone pop when she tugged hard on his ankle to dislodge his boot. “Oh,” she said, the sound leaving her without her permission.
“That’ll happen,” Amity said. “He’s not holding any muscles tense, so his joints aren’t as hard to dislocate. Don’t worry about being gentle, though, not like he’s going to be mad at you if his feet wind up facing the wrong way.” She chuckled to herself at that, then drove her knife into Holthauer’s belly, burying the blade in him to the hilt. With a jerk of her wrist, she dragged the knife up toward his sternum, pausing a few times to adjust her grip as she went.
Esther managed not to scream, but it was a close call. “What are you— Stop that!” she shouted frantically, wanting only for Amity to stop sawing her way through the dead man’s abdomen.
She got her wish. Amity paused, her knife still sheathed in Holthauer’s gut, and looked at Esther with a puzzled expression. “Why?”
“Why? Well—well, why are you doing it in the first place?”
“The smell,” Amity said with an easy smile. She had dimples just like Cye did, but that smile was anything but warm. “The smell will carry, and it’ll call over more buzzards. Them and bugs. This way, he’ll be et up before sundown. Are you done with those boots yet?”
Esther swallowed hard, returning her attention to the boot that Holthauer still wore. She yanked on it hard, wanting to be finished with this job. Wanting to be back at the camp instead of alone in the desert with Amity and that cold smile.
Amity sat back on her heels, stabbing the knife into the dirt beside her, and dug her hands into the sheriff’s belly. She pulled it open with a tearing sound Esther wouldn’t soon forget. Stink rose up out of him, thick as fresh stew, and Esther pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth to try to escape the choking smell of a man’s innards. “So, you think this is the only kind of life you get, is that right? Weren’t figuring on Cye, I’d wager.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Esther protested, her chin tucked low to try to keep her face covered by the cloth of her shirt—but then she couldn’t help herself, and she let her face pop free of its refuge. “What about Cye?”
Amity laughed, a real laugh. She finished spreading Holthauer’s gut and stood, holding her hands out to her sides so they wouldn’t touch her clothes. “What about Cye, indeed. It’s plain as the bullet in that man’s skull, girl. You’re sparking for them. Guessing you never felt that kind of way back home, is that right?”
“No, that’s not right,” Esther muttered. She gave the sheriff’s boot a final tug, and it popped off his foot, knocking her back into the dust.
Amity sat down just a few feet away, rubbing her bloody hands in the dirt to clean them. “No? Well, doesn’t the plot just … turn to mud.” She laughed again, scrubbing her palms together so bloody earth fell from between them. “We’ve still got a little time, you know. To talk things through. Or I could teach you how to take a punch. Either one.”
Esther shook her head. “It’s just—I don’t want to talk about this with you,” she said.
“Who else are you going to talk about it with?” Amity replied, and Esther couldn’t help but laugh because it was true—she couldn’t tell any of the Librarians about anything, not if she wanted their respect.
“I don’t want to feel any kind of way about Cye,” she admitted. “I don’t want to feel any kind of way about anybody. I’ve been down that road, and I know what’s at the end of it.”
“Awful worldly for a colt,” Amity drawled. “What’s at the end of that road, then, world traveler?”
“Nothing but trouble,” Esther said. “I thought I put all that mess behind me when I left home, but I guess it followed me. I should have known better than to try to have something good.” She jerked her head to one side so Amity wouldn’t see her eyes filling with tears. She blinked furiously, trying not to cry. “I should have known better.”
“So, that’s it, then,” Amity said. She picked up a fresh fistful of desert sand and rubbed it across her wrists, scouring away more blood with every pass of her quick, clever hands. “You think you don’t get anything good, because you feel the wrong way about the wrong people.”
Blinking couldn’t hold the tears back anymore, not now that Amity’d said it out loud. “I do,” Esther said, unable to keep the hitch out of her voice. “I feel the wrong way about the wrong people and I know what kind of life there is for me, and I thought I could outrun it but I can’t.” Esther felt the heavy weight of Amity’s arm across her shoulders, and before she knew what she was doing, she told the whole tale.
Her and Beatriz, and what they’d been to each other, and the feelings they’d fought until the fight was lost. A whole secret year together, that’s what they’d gotten, and they’d both known the whole time that it couldn’t end but in tragedy. “That’s what happens to people like us,” Esther gasped, her voice thick with tears. “We go wrong and then we get our comeuppance. And Beatriz—”
“Beatriz got her comeuppance?” Amity finished, giving Esther’s shoulders a squeeze. Esther nodded, hiccupping. “What was it? Did her daddy beat her?”
Esther shook her head, and the thick haze that came with crying seemed to clear away all at once, replaced by something cold and cutting. “No,” she said. “My daddy hanged her.” Amity drew in a sharp breath, and Esther felt a strange sense of satisfaction: yes, it really was that bad. “Someone reported her for Unapproved Materials, and she hanged right in front of me. So, you see? We went wrong, and she paid for it. I know my bill’s in the mail,” she added bitterly. “Just a matter of time before I get what’s coming to me. But I thought that maybe—maybe if I did enough good, if I just stayed on the right path and stuck with the Librarians and didn’t lay eyes on another girl the way I laid eyes on Beatriz … maybe I’d be alright. Maybe I wouldn’t bring hurt to anyone else’s life.” She wiped her face off on her sleeves, smearing grime across her cheeks in the process. “I guess that was stupid.”
Amity leaned back onto her elbows and sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “Most of what you say is stupid, though, so I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
Esther let out a startled laugh. “Now, wait just a minute,” she said, but she didn’t have anything to follow it up with, so she laughed again.
“You really believe all that? About how there’s only one end in sight for people like you?” Amity said, tipping her chin back toward the sky and pulling her hat partway down her face, so only her nose and mouth were visible. “Horseshit. You only think that because you’ve never seen different.” Esther started to reply, but Amity held up a still-bloody finger. “Don’t interrupt me, pup. You know I’m right. You’re a woman and you love people who aren’t men, is that right?”
Esther hesitated to make sure she wasn’t interrupting. “That’s right,” she said, “but—”
“No but, it’s just true,” Amity said, proving that her rule about interruptions only ran in one direction. “And you’ve only ever read stories about people like you, right? You’ve never met one of your kind before now. Well, except for Beatriz,” she added. “Ain’t that so?”
“Yeah,” Esther answered reluctantly. She sensed a trap coming, but she couldn’t figure out how to step around it.
“All those stories you’ve read,” Amity said softly, pulling her hat back off her eyes by a few degrees. “Who gave ’em to you?”
“The Librarians,” Esther said.
“And who gave ’em to the Librarians?”
Esther thought hard about that one. The things the Librarians brought weren’t subject to the Textbook Approval and Research Council, since they only worked on schoolbooks, and they weren’t subject to the Media Review Committee, since they mostly did film and television. “The Board of Materials Approval?” she guessed.
Amity nodded. “And what do you think that Board wants you to believe about yourself?” She paused, but it wasn’t the kind of pause that wants an answer. “You might not have a happy ending coming to you, Hopalong. But if you come to a bad end, it won’t be on account of what kind of person you fall for. I’ve seen a lot more of the world than you have, and I can tell you upright: I’ve seen as many good ends as bad ones for your kind of heart.”
With that, Amity stood, brushing dried blood and desert sand from her hands. She rose to her full height like a snake uncoiling, graceful and smooth and sudden all at once. Just the way she’d mounted her horse the first time Esther saw her—like quicksilver, in one place and then in the next as if there was no world in her way. She loped back over to the sheriff’s body, bent down, and plucked the silver star from the inside face of his lapel. “Hid this thing away so we couldn’t see it,” she muttered, “but couldn’t stand to take it all the way off.” She buffed the blood off it until she could see the eagle stamped into the silver, then tucked it into her pocket. “That’s our time spent,” she said, offering a grimy hand to help Esther stand up. After a moment’s hesitation, Esther took it. “Don’t leave those boots, bring ’em with us,” Amity said.
Esther did as she was told, carrying one boot in each hand. The sun climbed a little higher in the sky, beating the sweat out of the two women as they made their way back to the camp. Esther wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, pointed her feet toward the wagons in the far distance—toward Cye. As they walked, something occurred to her.
“You said before, about teaching me how to take a punch,” she said.
“So I did,” Amity replied.
“Is that offer still good?” Esther asked. “Only … I’d like to sort out how to punch, and how to shoot. Just in case something else bad comes around.”
Amity nodded. “Sure thing, Hopalong,” she said. “I’ll give you lessons. But only if you make me a promise.”
“What kind of a promise?” Esther asked.
“You’ve got to stop waiting to be told you’re allowed to do things,” Amity said. She didn’t look at her, kept loping along as casual as a fed coyote. “You’ve got to promise me you’ll stop being too scared to piss without permission.”
“I don’t—” Esther started to protest, but then she remembered that she had asked Bet’s permission to stop riding the day before, and she swallowed the rest of her sentence. “Okay,” she said. “I promise.”
They lapsed into the kind of companionable silence that follows tears, and as they picked their way through the scrub, Esther wondered if Amity was right. Maybe, she thought, just maybe it was possible.
Between Esther and the horizon, the wagons shimmered in the heat. She knew that they weren’t an oasis—no cool shade or sweet water was waiting for her there. But they weren’t a mirage, either, and that hope felt like just enough to fit in her fists.