Sol moves his fist just in time, missing the girl’s face and punching a flat rock instead which, however more chivalrous, hurts like a fucking bastard. He rolls off her, holding his hand to his chest, cursing and hollering. Ag is running around the campfire, wide-eyed with fear, holding his gun to the darkness and threatening to shoot in all directions, yelling “Who’s there? Who is it, Sol? Who’s there?” Sol regains a semblance of composure just in time to avoid being shot by his own terrified brother.
“Don’t shoot, Ag! Goddamn it, don’t fucking shoot!” He grits his teeth around the pain in his hand, lying on his back, gingerly flexing his fingers and sucking at a bloody knuckle. “It’s just a girl.”
The girl in question has regained her feet, not pausing to dust herself off before striding over and kicking Sol in the ribs. “What on earth are you doing?” she yells, kicking again over Sol’s howls at her to stop.
Sol has never been kicked by a woman, certainly not with the intent that this one is displaying, trying to stave his ribs in with her boot. He’s never fought a woman, either, until a minute or so ago, and vows to eschew the practice in the future. “Stop it, goddamn it!” he yells. “Just stop it! Ag, get her the fuck off me!”
Ag stays where he is, still terrified, gun in hand in case he needs it. He has no idea what’s happened: one minute they were all sitting around the fire, blearily putting the finishing touches on another bottle of whiskey, and the next all hell was breaking loose. A horse had come trotting up, someone called out, and then his brother was up and running, pulling the rider off and hollering about the law. Things got even hazier then, Sol and the lawman wrestling and fighting just outside the glow of the campfire, and then his brother started screaming and cursing loud enough to wake the dead. Ag had been ready to shoot, he had been; at what, he didn’t quite know, but he felt that he should be doing something, anything, and then Sol yelled at him to put up his gun.
Now his brother is back to hollering again, yelling for help, even though Ag is reasonably sure Sol had said it was a girl come to get them. Ag does the only thing he can, at that point, which is to lean over and vomit from too much whiskey and excitement.
Josiah had sat through the whole debacle, boozy and confused. The rider had come up and, for a second, he heard a voice like Elizabeth’s, and then Parker was up and attacking. He shrugs, now, figuring the man knows best, and goes back to drinking. Things will work themselves out.
Elizabeth McDaniel steps away from the man on the ground, giving him another kick for good measure as she does so. “What on earth were you thinking?” she yells at him again, dusting herself off as best she can. She strides into the firelight. “And what on earth were you thinking?” she yells at her brother. “Who is this fool?”
Josiah blinks up at his sister, not understanding just why she’s here and why she has been wrestling his hired gun. He shrugs once more, raising the bottle to his lips again. It’s all a bit too confusing. Mr Parker is over on the ground yelling, Mr Rideout vomiting nearby, and now Elizabeth is here in his camp, instead of in Baker City where she belongs. It is all very strange, he thinks. Very strange indeed.
“Josiah!”
He nods to himself, looking up at his sister, who appears to be in a towering rage. No doubt it will all start to make sense at some point. “Hello, Lizzie,” he says, mildly. “Whiskey?”
Elizabeth has to restrain herself, to keep from kicking her brother, now that her leg is limbered. This has been a very, very long day, and to end it by being pulled off her horse and almost punched out by some foul-mouthed lout is almost too much to bear. And now – now! – her brother is offering her a drink, as if he’d just seen her that morning, as if she hadn’t spent the last several – extremely uncomfortable – days in a bumpy wagon, and then the long trip riding out alone from Boise after she’d found out that she’d missed Josiah in town. She grabs the bottle out of his hand then, and takes a long swig. Who cares if it isn’t ladylike behavior? Gagging at the taste, she gasps out a hot breath.
“What are you doing out here?” she yells, then tries to calm herself some. “What are you doing out here?” she repeats in a quieter voice. “Why aren’t you in Boise? Everyone is worried about you, Josiah. What are you doing?”
“Why, drinking, Lizzie,” Josiah explains, nodding. “And then I’m going to Portland with these gentlemen.” It seemed clear enough, to him.
Elizabeth feels her hand clenching so hard around the bottle that for a moment she’s worried she’ll break it. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the man who’d tackled her skulking back to the fire, sucking on the back of his finger. The other man is still on his knees, weakly gagging, and then mostly just collapses where he is.
“Ag, you all right?” Sol calls, seeing his brother keel over.
“I’m just resting, Sol,” comes the slurred reply back. “Just resting.”
It’s embarrassing how his brother handles his drink, Sol thinks, watching the woman, wishing she would hand over that fucking whiskey she’s ungraciously monopolizing. How was he to have known that she was a girl, that she somehow knew McDaniel? She’d just sneaked up on them like a thief, so it was entirely natural that he’d moved, catlike, to defend himself and Ag. They’re wanted men, after all, and it’s entirely likely that a posse from Twin Falls could have caught them up by now. And it wasn’t like he’d actually hit the girl, anyway. His fucking hand was probably broke from hitting that rock.
“You,” the woman says, swinging a finger his way. “Sol, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, sullenly. “Sol Parker. That’s my brother Ag, yonder.”
“I couldn’t care less, Sol Parker. Why did you pull me off my horse? That his doing?” she points back to her brother, who has a hand held out for the whiskey. She takes a step back.
“No, ma’am,” Sol says. “You fucking startled me, is all. If you’ll excuse my mouth.” Saying that, though, he starts to feel a bit indignant. Why the fuck is he apologizing? Granted, his mother had frowned on strong language, but she isn’t here, is she? Sol, himself, has always been of the belief that some saltiness lends gravitas to a man’s speech, so he’ll be goddamned if he is going to start apologizing for it now. “Why were you sneaking up on us, anyway? You don’t sneak up on a man’s fire, girl. You’re lucky that I didn’t shoot you.”
“He’s right, you’re lucky.” Ag’s voice drifts over from where he lies.
“Goddamn it, shut your hole, Ag.”
Elizabeth rolls her eyes, turning back to her brother. “You say you’re going to Portland with these two, Joe? Why on earth would you do that?”
Josiah nods, several times, over and over, his head sinking lower and lower on his chest. When he finally lifts his face, Elizabeth sees that he’s crying. “Going to kill a man, Lizzie,” he says. “Going to kill the man that took Mary.”
Elizabeth’s anger evaporates and she hunkers down next to Josiah, putting her arms around him and letting him sob into her shoulder. He looks – and smells – terrible, she thinks, absolutely terrible. She’s lucky that she caught him before something even worse happened to him, before he’d fallen off his horse drunk and broken his fool neck. After she’d gotten the letter from their cousin Esther in Boise, there was only one thing that Lizzie could do, and that was to go fetch Josiah back. It was inconvenient, but Elizabeth couldn’t just stand by and let Josiah drink himself to death.
Elizabeth McDaniel wasn’t a woman who let overthinking a problem get in the way of solving it. She’d done little in the way of travel before this, certainly not on her own, but getting in the wagon with a stranger, and then renting a horse and tackle a few days later, setting out alone to track down Josiah, was simply something she’d set her mind to, a chore that needed to be done. Nothing more than that. She lived her life on those simple terms, taking each of life’s difficulties in stride, one at a time.
Upon arriving in Boise, dusty and tired, she’d spent an evening asking around town after discovering that she’d missed her brother; the general consensus was that he’d headed off northwest. That was fine, as that was back in the direction of home; she’d just find him, then, and bring him to Baker City. The man in Boise who’d rented her the mare had been aghast that she was just riding out into the desert, alone, with poor supplies and only a vague idea where her brother might have gone. He was convinced that she’d wander off lost and die of thirst or get eaten by a wild animal. His unspoken fear was that lawless men would take her and use her in terrible ways, a pretty young girl like that on her own in the wilds. She refused all offers of help, though, having little money and not wanting to be beholden to strangers, but did accept the use of a small tent, a pair of heavy, too-long trousers, a hat, and some camping supplies, on the condition that she could return them, along with a bit of money for the loan, when she had finished her errand.
Even with her staunch self-belief, Elizabeth couldn’t help but have some fear as that first afternoon out of Boise, on her own, had settled into evening and she’d had no sign of Josiah. She realized that she had no idea how one went about tracking a man in the first place: she watched for signs and marks but the dirt and brush just looked like dirt and brush. Once, she got excited, thinking she saw a hoofprint, and then discovered that it was her own mare’s, that she’d somehow made a looping circle around a low set of hills while lost in thought. When the sun had started to go down, she just kept riding, as she didn’t quite know how to put up her tent and had also forgotten to bring matches. So, when she saw the fire at the base of a small rise, she put her heels to her horse. If it wasn’t Josiah, at least maybe someone there would let her borrow a few burning sticks for a fire of her own. She was confident that she’d figure out the rest, given time. Not for the first time she wished she’d brought a gun of some kind, though. Upon setting out from Baker City, she’d simply assumed that she’d ride the wagon to Boise and fetch Josiah back; after finding him gone, then, she’d just ridden that momentum into her present predicament. She understands, now, that the matter likely had deserved a bit more thought and planning before she’d set out.
She glances over her brother’s shoulder at the man who had dragged her from her horse. He’s watching her sullenly, still rubbing one hand. He’s young, she realizes, close to her own age. His youth, combined with his expression, makes him look like a pouty boy, almost like one of her students back in Baker City. Wordlessly, not knowing exactly why, she extends her arm, holding out the bottle his way. His sullen expression evaporates almost instantly and, while he doesn’t smile exactly, he lightens up considerably.
Sol takes the bottle from the girl, putting it to his lips and taking a long drink to knock the dust out of his throat. He watches her over the bottle; she’s rocking Josiah, who is blubbering uncontrollably. Is that his wife, he wonders, the one who is supposed to be dead? On closer inspection he reckons not; this girl is bigger than Josiah, just by a hair, but certainly not the tiny thing the man had described earlier. They have a similar look, he notices now, same brown hair and sharp cheekbones. Sister, maybe a cousin. The girl, whoever she is, is pretty enough, even in the odd getup of a dress worn over old men’s pants, rolled up around big boots. Her hair is a little crazy under a wide hat and she is as dirty as he is, from rolling in the dust.
Sol feels somewhat guilty and foolish, now, having wrestled the girl. Also a bit distracted: the image of rolling around on the ground with her has a way of catching in the mind, he realizes. In retrospect, he wishes he’d paid a bit more attention to the matter, although he has to admit that, at the time, he’d been too intent on his own fucking terror before things had gotten straightened out. The girl glances over at him then and he looks guiltily away, understanding that he’s been staring. He tries to smooth his hair a bit, brush some of the dust from his clothes. It’s disconcerting to have a girl right there at their fire. Of an evening, lately, he’s used to cursing and bullshitting around the fire with Ag, farting when he needs to and pissing close by their camp. He has a moment of panic now when he realizes that he’ll have to piss far away from the fire, out in the dark. It is one of Sol’s most closely guarded secrets that he still has a fear of the dark, that he worries a bear or bandit or the like is lurking out there, waiting for him.
Josiah seems to have cried himself out, and Elizabeth can feel his heavy, sloppy liquor breath on her neck. She shakes him a little, but he appears to be out cold. She lays him down as gently as she can, then, rolling him on his side in case he’s sick – not the first time, by the smell of it – and cushioning his head with his battered hat. She pulls a nearby saddle blanket over his body. Josiah, she thinks, what am I going to do with you?
She hears her horse whicker and realizes that she needs to take the saddle off and perhaps hobble her for the night, rub her down, maybe. She isn’t entirely sure of the process, relying on a livery stable at home for such things the few times she goes riding. When she looks over, the saddle is already coming off, though, and the stocky man who’d tackled her is carrying it near the fire, her bedroll and bags in his other hand.
“I’ve got it, miss,” he says, sounding embarrassed. “I was just over throwing a fucking blanket on Ag there and seen that your horse was still cinched up.”
“Thank you. I was just going to hobble her.” The man is standing there looking at her. “You can put down that saddle if you like.”
“Oh,” Sol says, feeling foolish, kneeling down and setting the gear near Josiah. “Right. You don’t probably need to hobble her, the horse I mean. She ain’t going to go nowhere. Horses like to stay together.” He stands up. “Are you Mr McDaniel’s cousin, then, miss?”
“I’ll just put up my tent,” Elizabeth says, ignoring him. She doesn’t need any further help, just wants to get some sleep and, in the morning, get Josiah on the road back to Boise, where she can put them both on a train to Baker City, whenever one comes through. She’s too tired for idle conversation with some ruffian. Elizabeth takes the tent over to a flattish spot on the edge of the firelight and spends several minutes wrestling with the poles and ropes. She’d get two propped up and then the others would fall over, or she’d have it mostly erect and the whole thing would collapse when she pulled the ropes. Her frustration is getting the better of her and she is considering just taking out the poles and crawling under the flat canvas as-is when Sol Parker comes over and, in a short minute, has the tent up, just like that. He shrugs at her, looking embarrassed again.
“One of those things, miss. Takes a time or two to get the hang of it.” He smiles at her. “I guess we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Sol, again, Sol Parker. Ag over there is my brother.”
“Well, you should go sleep near him then, Mr Parker,” Elizabeth says crisply, crawling into her tent with her bedroll and drawing the flap. “Family should stay together, after all,” she calls from the inside.
Sol stares foolishly at the tent for a moment and then walks back to the fire, pausing to pick up the orphaned bottle of whiskey, which still has a couple inches at the bottom. Women are a thirsty proposition, he thinks. He stares at the moonlight on the girl’s tent, not feeling a bit sleepy.
“Oh no you’re not, Josiah!” The effect of Elizabeth stamping her foot is somewhat lost in the fact that it tangles with her rolled pant-leg, making her stumble. “You are not going all the way to Portland, not in the state you’re in. You need to come home, take some time to mourn. Properly mourn, I mean, not drink yourself to death. Why do you think I’m here? You’re coming back with me.” She storms over to where her brother is queasily trying to mount his horse, looking green.
“Hush with the yelling, Lizzie,” Josiah mutters. “I have a headache. And you’re my little sister, not my mother.” He feels awful, as he does nearly every morning, and there is only one cure, he knows, more whiskey and time. Well, two cures, then. He scrabbles at his saddlebag, fishing out another bottle, lifting it to his lips and turning his back on his sister as she tries to take it.
“Give me that, Josiah! Give it!” She slaps at his back, trying to get around him as he drinks.
The whiskey – or perhaps the desire to keep it from his sister – gives Josiah the boost of energy needed to finally get on his horse, although he nearly falls from the off side; he clutches at the saddle horn with his free hand, feeling his rubbery stomach flip over inside him, trying not to vomit as his vision spins.
Sol is watching the whole episode bemusedly, standing there holding the girl’s horse like a simpleton. He feels grim himself, dry-mouthed and achy, and her carrying-on isn’t helping the pounding between his eyes. Last night Elizabeth had seemed soft and feminine, lovely in the firelight, even in her ridiculous get-up. A girl he wanted to know more about but, this morning, he would gladly turn his back on her, for all time, if she would only stop yelling. He wishes he had the whiskey that Josiah is keeping away from the girl, just a bit to moisten up his dry skull again. He contents himself with a canteen of stale-tasting water.
“You ever try to take whiskey away from me of a morning like that, Ag, when I need it, and I’ll fucking shoot you,” he says to his brother. “Mark my words, boy: I will fucking shoot you.” He hands up the canteen instead.
Ag just groans, leaning over the side of his horse, a thin line of vomit dripping from his mouth. He rests his head on the roan’s soft neck. “Puked on my horse,” he gasps. “I puked on my horse,” which turns into another gag of vomiting. Sol just shakes his head at the folly of youth, stepping away a bit lest he get splashed.
Feeling slightly better, Josiah has turned his own horse and heads off in a direction he hopes is northwest. His emotions are twisted up at having Lizzie there with them. On one hand, it’s tempting to just give in to some sisterly mothering and let her lead him back to Boise or to Baker City or wherever. She’s come all this way, just how he doesn’t quite understand, but she has done it for love of him. It’s a hard thing to ignore, but he can’t let his resolve waver. He’d made the decision to avenge Mary and, by God, he would do it, even if he knows it won’t bring her back, even if, at some level, he knows it is a stupid and pointless thing to try to do.
He has nothing else. His wife is gone, along with his hopes for a family, and his business is in ruins. He’s a laughingstock in Boise, now, his reputation destroyed. The last of his money is gone, sitting in the pocket of these off-brand outlaws he’s hired. What else did he have but this self-appointed mission, however ill-advised it might be? Yesterday, he’d put the decision in the hand of God but, now, he doesn’t like to consider that maybe Lizzie’s arrival was in fact the work of the Almighty. More than likely it’s just a product of his sister’s bossy nature, he thinks. She’d always been that way, even when they were children: she was the baby of the McDaniel clan but, from an early age, she’d taken on the idea that she ran their family, particularly after their parents had died. Elizabeth is headstrong and brassy but, this time, he won’t let her order him around like a wayward child. And, after all, Josiah thinks, if he’s wrong about God sending Lizzie to find him and bring him back, the Lord can smite him and he will accept that.
Elizabeth stares at the back of her brother’s horse, dumbfounded that Josiah is just riding away from her like that. This isn’t the way things were supposed to work. She’d dropped her life and come all this way, through assorted dangers and inconveniences, to bring her brother back home. He didn’t just turn around and walk away from her. No, he did not. For several long seconds, she isn’t quite sure what to do; her script reads: Go to Boise, fetch Josiah home. She supposes that it had been in the realm of possibility that she wouldn’t be able to find him, at least for a time, but the idea that, once found, he’d balk her, simply doesn’t register at all. Even drunk and sick as he is, though, there’s a look in his eyes that she doesn’t recognize. Something she doesn’t like.
“I expect he’s not quite ready to go home yet, then,” Sol says. He’d sidled up nearer to Elizabeth while she stared off at his retreating employer. “Man’s got the bit between his teeth, I reckon.” He tries to ignore the silent, venomous look she gives him. “I’ll just pack up that tent for you right quick, then,” he says instead.
Elizabeth stares at Sol’s wide back as he kneels to take down her tent. “We’re not going to Portland, Mr Parker. I’ll tell you that right now.” He doesn’t answer, busying himself with rolling up the canvas. “I said, I’ll tell you that right now.”
Sol isn’t quite sure why he’s bothering with the tent, trying to be helpful. This girl is getting nothing but worse on closer acquaintance, shouting and carrying on as she’s been, and her bossy tone isn’t doing wonders for his headache. He stands up, fed up all of a sudden.
“I reckon you can tell me what you like, little girl, and I’ll do what I see fit. You didn’t fucking hire me, Mr McDaniel did; if you have a problem, then, take it up with him. I’m done here.” He drops the rolled tent at her feet, walking off. “Portland is that way,” he calls over his shoulder, waving vaguely towards Josiah. Ag’s horse has headed off at a tangent, his brother still slumped over its neck, gagging weakly from time to time. “Once I round up my brother, that’s where we’re headed. If you’re coming with us, you’d best hurry it up. If not, well, you know the way back to Boise.” He mounts his own horse, turning a bit to give her a sarcastic tip of the hat. Turns out there’s nothing like righteousness for a hangover, he realizes, feeling noticeably more spry as he trots off after Ag.
Elizabeth can feel her mouth hanging open in shock; she snaps it shut as her fury rises. She wants to run after the man and pull him off his horse, as he’d done to her the night before. Then she wants to take his gun and shoot him in the ass, followed by shooting her brother. Sol’s own brother would be spared, as he hasn’t yet vexed her and already appears to be suffering enough, from the look of it. Her violent fantasies war with the desire to just turn east and go back to Boise, washing her hands of Josiah and his idiotic life. It’s tempting, so tempting, for a hot moment, but Elizabeth is a woman that, when challenged, gets her dander up. She’ll be damned if she’ll let Josiah go against her like this.
Gathering up her tent, bedroll, and baggage, she secures them to her horse as best she can, given her lack of skill with ropes. Fortunately Sol Parker had already saddled her horse for her, as she has only a vague idea how to do that on her own. After a try or two, then, she gets her things tied tightly enough to the horse, using an unorthodox array of square knots, so she can mount and be on her way. Josiah by then is a small speck on the horizon, his hired morons further back. The rising sun at her back, Elizabeth points her horse west and trots off after them, letting her anger lead the way.