I WENT SWIFTLY downstairs and out the door. I looked up the street. Far at the end I saw a figure on horseback, talking with some other Yankee soldiers who were likely visiting the town. Heffernan!
“Luli, come quick,” Gabe called softly.
I scooted to him under the cottonwood trees.
“He’s coming back,” Gabe said in a harsh whisper. “Where is she? Where’s Sis?”
“She . . . won’t . . . come . . . down. I’m sorry, Gabe. I did my best.”
“Still sees me as the master and her as the slave, is that it? Else Heffernan has got her seeing things that way.”
“She said she loves you and she hates you. She said, too, that Heffernan would track her down and kill her if she left him for you.”
Something inside me wouldn’t let me tell him about the baby. Even now. Especially now, because he’d go crazy if he knew.
“Well, he’s going to have to get past me to do it.”
I picked up my rifle and cocked it. “I’ll help you. Tell me what to do.”
“Just watch my back. I’m going to demand he bring her down and hand her over. After all, he kidnapped her when he deserted.”
“Gabe, there are other Yankee soldiers in the saloon.”
“Just a gang having a last drink before they go home. They don’t want a fight any more than Ma does. If he kills me,” and he turned to look at me, “don’t stay around. Get on your horse and go. Take my horse, too, and go back to the nuns in San Felipe. Write to Ma and she’ll send someone to escort you home. You’ve got to promise me.”
I promised him.
It took forever for Heffernan to reach the boardinghouse. I could hear my heart beating. What was that other noise? Gabe’s? Who was that behind the tattered lace curtain on the second floor? It was room 3D, I was sure of it. The curtains parted, and then someone was wiping the dust off the windows with a hand.
That someone was still wearing the blue cloak, I could see. And I thought, crazily, again, that if she came downstairs onto the porch with Heffernan, Gabe would see she was carrying a child.
Heffernan finally reached the boardinghouse, dismounted his horse, and without looking around started up the steps.
Two things happened then: Sis Goose came clattering down the steps and appeared on the porch, and Gabe stood up in full view and said, “Hold it right there, Heffernan.”
“Who the hell are you?” Heffernan asked, pulling out his own revolver. And I was reminded that he’d never met Gabe before.
“It’s Gabe,” we heard Sis tell him. “I think he’s come for me.”
“Gabe, is it? Oh, so this is the massa’s son who didn’t even have to go down to the quarters at night to get what he wanted. Who had it right in his own house. This is the massa’s son who’s been at you till he got you pregnant. Show him how far gone you are, Sis Goose,” and he unlatched the cloak and pulled it off from her.
And there, in the light of God’s good day, you could see her rounded belly.
“You see that, Gabe?” Heffernan yelled. “There’s what you did and I’m willing to care for.”
“Noooo,” Gabe yelled and leaned over his rifle and aimed at Heffernan. But Heffernan fired first. The shot was loud and seemed to echo right through town and bounce off the old boards of buildings and bring out the people.
Gabe doubled over and clutched himself, and I thought, Oh God, dear God, don’t let him be hurt bad.
I went to him and leaned over him. “Gabe?”
“It’s my shoulder. But I can get one shot in.”
“Let me do it.”
“I have to try, Luli. You have to let me.”
He stood up and Heffernan waited, laughing.
“Gabe, don’t,” Sis Goose begged.
“Move out of the way, Sis,” he said.
She moved, a big answer to him on her part, and Gabe fired but missed. Between his bleeding shoulder and the knowledge of Sis Goose carrying his child, he was completely undone.
He slumped down. “He’s all yours, hon,” he said to me. “Give it your best. Remember what we taught you.”
I stood up and took aim.
Heffernan laughed. “So he sends his little sister to do his fighting for him now.”
“She’s good,” Sis Goose said. She’d moved back to Heffernan.
“I’m wearin’ proof of it,” he said. “This little witch is crazy.”
“Move, Sis,” I barked at her. A hundred words I wanted to say, but that was all that was good for now.
“Don’t, Luli, please. Don’t you remember?” she asked.
“I don’t because you don’t. You use your memories and hopes to play people, so I don’t, now move.”
Heffernan pushed her away and aimed at me. No going back now. I aimed true, steady, unafraid, as I’d been taught. Then I fired.
Just as I took aim, or some second in eternity afterward, Heffernan pulled Sis Goose toward him. More in front of him, to be exact.
There. In that spot where the heart is.
This time the shot didn’t ring out. This time there was a deathly thud and it stopped, right in the center of Sis Goose’s forehead.
She took the shot for him. Not because she wanted to but because he wanted her to. She took it and crumpled right at his feet.
Sis Goose was dead. I screamed. I remember screaming and screaming, and I remember Gabe crawling over to me, and with one arm around me saying, “Stop it, Luli, stop it!” All half delirious-like. And then, raising his head to look at the porch of the boardinghouse, and saying, “Oh my God, what’s happened? Oh my God!”
And then I do not remember any more. At all.