In the three years I’d spent with Boon, from my near-death outside Goliad to our journey by train to the westernmost points of the continent, she never once came within shouting distance of her mother, her father, or anyone who could be reliably said to have known them. Hers was a herky-jerky quest, given to mount up and gallop after the faintest rumor or lie. And me, of course, along for the ride. I did not mind it one whit. But I could tell she was growing tired. More tired than I had ever seen her or would have believed possible for a wildcat like Boonsri Angchuan.
“Texas took too long,” she said, slumped against the window with her hat perched over her eyes. The red feather bounced against the glass, outside of which the Red Butte rose crimson from the Coconino Plateau, dark and imperious against the violet haze of the rising sun. We’d been in the Arizona Territory two days by then, sleeping in fits and starts on the hard, rough benches as passengers boarded and disembarked, played cards and sang hymns and occasionally argued about things happening in places they’d never see. “Years wasted. Years, by Christ.”
“You got me out of it,” I said.
She smiled wanly beneath the brim of her hat.
“I got you,” she said, and the smile melted away. “A lot of death, too. It took a lot of death just to get us this far.”
“Not for no reason,” I said.
“Mayhap I’m starting to forget the reason.”
“Your ma and pa,” I offered stupidly.
“Sure, Edward,” Boon said. “I know.”
“We’ll find her,” I said. “You will. Both of them.”
“Could be. And then what? Who will she be when I see her? Who have I become? Do you know I haven’t ever thought that far ahead, Edward? To one damned second after I find them—either of them?”
“Well, with him, it’s easier to reckon.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Dead. But that ain’t the end of it. That ain’t ever the end of it.”
“No, I guess it ain’t.”
“You believe in Heaven and Hell?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I don’t. Doesn’t really add up much to me.”
“Just this, then.”
I shrugged.
“I expect so.”
“What the hell for?”
She sat up a little, let the hat slide back to reveal her big brown eyes to me. They were as bright as ever, but the skin around them was dark and tight.
I said, “Does everything got to have a reason?”
“Be easier.”
“Would.”
“But it don’t.”
“Not always.”
“I’m tired, Edward.”
“I know, Boon.”
She slid back down, and so did her hat, and in a matter of minutes, she was asleep. I stayed awake a good long while after that, watching the world grow dark and listening to some of the other passengers snore. Mostly I thought about how tired Boon was, and how close we seemed to be getting to the end—and more than any of that, what good any of this was. Or had ever been.