WE WERE ANOTHER MONTH on the road from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Badlands of the Nebraska Territory.
My dear, if ever you have reason to travel west of the Missouri River, keep in mind the wide expanses of untouched land lain between you and your destination. This country began its life as thirteen colonies on the eastern shores of a populous and inhabited land, and the borders have pushed ever westward so long as American soldiers have had bayonets and gunpowder. I have no doubt in my mind another war will come to pass before you are grown.
However difficult the journey had been on the way to New Orleans, the journey north was even more difficult still. To the fire kindled by grief, I had added unrelenting fear for your gran. I imagined her eyes blindfolded and her mouth gagged, her hands bound, slung over the back of a horse when she could no longer keep stubborn pace along the path. I imagined your father’s killer tearing her into pieces as he had your great-aunt Griselda.
While I tormented myself with these thoughts, Hawking deteriorated. His hands shook even when he held on to the reins, and on more than one occasion he either climbed or collapsed down from the cart’s front seat to empty his stomach, no doubt raw after a lifetime of heavy drinking. I suspected he did not want to be nursed, and so I did my best to ignore his sickness until it became an impediment to me.
“You can’t just stop all at once,” I said to him on the fourth day, when he was barely able to sit up on his own but insisted on doing so all the same.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Drinking. You trying to kill yourself?”
“I’m fine.”
“That dead rabbit we passed a few miles back looks better than you do.”
“Darlin’,” he said, “you say the sweetest damned things.”
Taking my heavy sigh as an indication of waning patience, he allowed me to stop the wagon early and start a fire that I could brew a tea made from milk thistle and nettle. This I added to a two-quart glass jar I had brought along for a similar purpose, along with enough whiskey as to cause the average person to become sick for the opposite reason. When I was through, I handed him the jar and told him to drink it.
Though he griped, Hawking allowed me to continue driving the wagon while he rested. By the time he had finished the jar, considerable color had returned to his gaunt cheeks and his stomach had settled enough that he could take in solid food.
He steadied himself and turned to me.
“Lilian,” Hawking said, “I’m not sure I ever knew what this little mission of ours was about. That man shot me and killed Matthew. You were trapped in that cell, and Ness was going to see you hang, and that didn’t sit right with me. But I never really played it out.”
“Well, you should’ve,” I said. “Now ain’t the time.”
“Do you even know what we’re chasing?”
“Shut up, Hawk. I mean it.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” he said.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I know whatever we’re chasing ain’t a man, and I know what happened that night wasn’t about someone getting angry at the doc for not being able to mend a leg.”
“Please, Hawk.”
“He’s been baiting us. He’s been baiting you. Ever since De Soto. We ain’t chasing him, he’s letting us follow him, and it ain’t cause he has plans for you to avenge Matt’s death or save your ma.”
I regret how I treated Hawking next, but I was not ready to contemplate what lay ahead, and anger came to me easier than understanding.
“What?” he asked.
“The potter’s field in New Orleans. I followed you.”
Hawking drew a deep breath, his jaws tight for a moment. Though he said nothing, I persisted.
“How did she die?”
“Natural causes,” he said. A long pause followed, and I held my tongue in anticipation of the truth. “Once upon a time,” he said, “in a little town called New Orleans, there lived a butcher and his wife. The butcher had inherited his business from his stepfather, a mean son of a bitch who died with more debt than even his accountant had known about, and while the butcher found this revelation distressing, the butcher’s wife was much calmer about the matter. She assured him the Lord never gives a man more burden than he can bear, and besides, she loved him.
“Well, the butcher had a bit of a love affair with gambling, and long story short, he soon found himself not only still very much in debt to the bank but to a bad man who, it was generally agreed upon, nobody in the city wanted to owe money to. The butcher was in quite a bit of hot water, but his wife told him not to worry. They’d figure something out.
“Well, the butcher kept on gambling, figuring if he kept splashing coin around on the table he would have to break even one of these nights. He didn’t break even. He got himself further into debt than he already was, and since he couldn’t pay up once he lost, his associates told him, ‘Sorry, pal, you’re not welcome here anymore. Try someplace else. Come back when your credit’s good again.’
“Wouldn’t you know it, the last place in the whole city where the butcher’s money was any good was this little whorehouse in Storyville run by a Madame Chantal Lavoie.”
Hawking cleared his throat, and though I suspected he would leave the story unfinished, he did not.
“She was there. I went out of my damned mind, got tossed out by a couple of Lavoie’s kept men. Next time I saw her, she was hanging from a beam in the attic. Left me a note and a box full of cash, enough to pay off the rest of the debt and then some. Coroner said the baby in her belly’d been there since before she started whoring.”
We observed a spell of silence, he having said all he cared to say and I feeling uncertain of what to say myself. Condolences would not do my thoughts justice, and Hawking would have laughed at my pity, anyway.
So I let the silence run its course and then I asked, “That why you giving up drinking? You drinking ain’t got nothing to do with my failing Matt.”
“Bah,” said Hawking, and spat in the road. “You didn’t fail your man, and we ain’t failing now, neither. We’re going to find the bastard, Lilian. And I intend to be sober when we do.”
“I don’t know who he is, Hawk,” I said. “I don’t know where he came from. I don’t know why he killed Matthew. I don’t know what control he has over others, or why he chose me, or if we’re going to find him before he finds us.”
“Does it matter?”
The absence of an answer was an answer on its own.
“You could turn back,” he said. “It’s a big country.”
“Don’t matter how big it is. Did you forget I’m wanted for murdering my husband? The lawman chasing after me was his best friend. If he finds me before I find this man, he’s promised me the courtesy of letting me give birth in a jail cell before they hang me, so he can raise my child as his. And he won’t stop until he does find me. So there ain’t no way out except through.”
“So that’s it.”
“He killed my husband. He took my mother. Whether we’re hunting him or he’s baiting us, ain’t no way this ends without our paths crossing. So yeah, Hawk, that’s it.”
We traveled in silence for a time, my blood up and Hawking’s spirits down. Before I could grow accustomed to it, Hawking broke it.
“ ‘Died in a bullet storm’ makes a better tombstone, anyway.”