I spurred the horse on and rode as fast as I could to meet the wagon, then hesitated when I saw the look on John’s face. I knew that expression of quiet rage all too well.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked when we met. “And why are you driving as if the devil is chasing you?”

  “I wanted to know if it was true.” His reply startled me some, as did the tears that had welled up in his eyes, and which he angrily wiped at with his hand.

  “If what is true, John? Why are you out here?” I did not even think to ask how he had found me.

  “I had to know if you were really seeing him—that widower! Have I been a fool, Kate, for believing it was nothing more than rumors and lies?” His wet eyes pleaded with me.

  “Of course not.” I lifted my chin. “I’m helping Mr. Morrin speak to his dead wife. You know that. Everybody does.”

  “Giving him cures, huh?” Something ugly had come into his face and made him look like a snake. “I cannot believe that I was so gullible,” he complained. “After Brockman, I thought we were done with this nonsense.” He wiped at his eyes again.

  “John.” Impatience tugged at me, overriding all concern. “There’s nothing between Mr. Morrin and myself, though even if there were, it’s nothing to you.”

  “How can you even say that, after all we have done?” His knuckles around the reins were as white as chalk. “How can you say that after all the blood we have shed? We’re not fit for anyone else but each other now, Kate. Can you truly not see that? We have supped and dined with the devil—”

  “Have you been talking to Ma?” It certainly sounded like her mother’s words.

  He straightened up and looked almost haughty in that rickety wagon. “She told me all there is to know about you and this widower—” He spat the last word.

  “Ma knows nothing,” I hissed. I could not believe she would tell on me—she knew how John would get.

  “Ma knows more than you think,” John retorted. “She said it’s been going on for some time now, with you riding out here instead of seeing to the sick with cures, as you said. It is he who gives you the ham and honey you bring home.” His face was almost as white as his knuckles at that point. “What is it he is paying you for, Kate?”

  “That’s not for you to worry about,” I tried again. The horse beneath me had become uneasy from the shouting and was moving a little sideways.

  “Like hell it’s not my concern!” he bellowed, setting my mare dancing. “I would kill for you, Kate—you know this! I’ve already done it!”

  “I know you have,” I said when I had gotten the horse back under control. My voice was very quiet as the threat in his words became real to me. “You must leave Mr. Morrin and his daughters alone.”

  “Why do I have to do that?” He sneered. “What is another body to us? We have nearly a dozen to account for already.”

  I quickly looked around. Even if nobody but us was on the road, it was still foolish to speak of our secrets so openly. “You will leave Mr. Morrin alone,” I said again. “I will not speak to you again if you don’t.” It would ruin everything if he harmed Nicholas. If he killed him, everything would unravel—and should he merely scare him away, my dreams would still be forfeit.

  “I think I’ll take my chances.” John shrugged. “He means an awful lot to you, though, for being just a sitter.” His eyes were narrow with suspicion; he did not believe me at all.

  “I’ve said a thousand times that I won’t marry you, John.” That was, after all, what lay at the heart of his ire.

  “I need no priest to tie you to me,” said he, sounding awfully smug. “The blood already did that. We belong together now.”

  “Not if you hurt Mr. Morrin,” said I.

  His eyes when he looked at me were calculating and cold. “Perhaps I should tell him about Emil Zimmerman,” he said.

  “He would never believe you.” The thought was absurd.

  “Yet, there would be suspicion—one that he might find it hard to shake. Perhaps I should tell the other townspeople as well. They won’t offer you a stage then, Kate. They won’t offer you anything at all!”

  “You wouldn’t,” I snapped. “I could tell stories of my own!”

  John only shrugged. “What is it to me?” he asked. “I’m not hankering to make a name for myself. Ill rumors are nothing to me—we’re all about to leave soon anyway, and then I can take another name. You, though . . . you’ll be stuck with yours.”

  I just stared at him as if I had never seen him before. I had not thought such cunning to be a part of his nature—but then perhaps he had watched and learned.

  “You will give him up,” John stated, “or you won’t ever make a name for yourself. Mayhap the law will even come looking for you, just like Ma says.”

  “Maybe it’s you they’ll come for!” I shot back, but my ammunition was not up to par. What little groundwork I had lain with Nicholas was hardly enough—yet—to blame John for the whole debacle. I found myself caught in a trap, and I did not like it at all.

  But then, I should perhaps have seen it coming.

  When we had first arrived in Pennsylvania, John was a lanky young man of seventeen. He was sullen and a loner already then. I had perhaps thought that he was moldable; that he was like the dough Pa was beating every morning, something that could be fashioned to my liking. The first time I got an inkling that it was not so, that I had been wrong about the depth of his feelings and the strength of his anger, it had to do with a cow.

  John had always brought the cattle out to pasture; they were beautiful animals with dun-colored hides, large black eyes, and horns like ivory rising from their brows. He had named every one of them and treated them better than he did people. His favorite among the small herd was a silken-smooth cow called Lorelei.

  He doted on that cow; he always brought her the best hay first and made sure she got a spot in the shade on hot days. Quite often, I would catch him scratching her between the eyes and whispering into her ear. I would make fun of him then, but he would only shrug it off, as had always been his habit. Lorelei, in turn, would reward his kindness by coming toward him whenever he entered the pasture, and she would lay her large head on his shoulder in trust. I thought him so very foolish to nurture such a bond with a beast.

  Then there was our ox, Victor, one of a pair that Pa used in the field. They were large creatures, wide across the back, and with mighty horns that swung up against the sky. Victor took a liking to Lorelei and would court her in breeding season. Pa had been eager for it, too, as he thought the pair of them would make a strong calf.

  John had not been thrilled at all.

  At first, he withdrew into himself and became even quieter than before. Next, a certain expression settled on his features like a mask; his face appeared smaller, somehow, and his eyes narrowed to slits. Even at night, as we were all relaxing inside the house, he wore that uncanny expression on his face.

  Then one day, as I came into the pasture, looking for John as it happened, I was met with the sight of blood adorning the lush green grass. John sat cross-legged in the middle of the meadow, while the cows moved around him, keeping their distance, warily, as they chewed. Even Lorelei avoided him that day, preferring to stay safely within the herd. At the edge of the meadow, close to the fence, stood Victor, shivering all over. His horns were broken, I could tell it even from a distance, and his head was covered in blood. It was not hard to tell that the animal was in pain.

  I did not approach John. He looked uncanny to me: a solitary figure among the budding flowers, staring down at the ground before him, still with that dark expression on his face. Instead, I turned and ran back to the house in search of Pa.

  It turned out that John had crushed Victor’s horns with a rock and hurt his eye beyond repair. Victor had to be slaughtered that very day, and John got a bloody beating for wasting a strong ox, but that hardly remedied the damage done.

  What must doubtlessly have pained John’s sour heart, though, was that Lorelei’s belly was already swelling, and she had a strong calf come fall.

  Pa named the young ox Victor.

  John had grown sharper teeth since then—surely strong enough to bite—and as we traveled home from the Morrin farm, that truth weighed heavily upon me. I had known it ever since we came to Kansas, but I had not wanted to admit it.

  I had become John’s Lorelei.

  I had become that cow.

  31.

  KATE

  Labette County, Kansas

  1873

  BY THE TIME the New Year arrived, we had already suffered through a long and terrible winter. It was not as much the weather that made my days intolerable, but being forced to stay inside with nothing much to do but drink.

  The thought of what I had lost kept tormenting me. I barely even took sitters anymore, let alone healed anyone. It seemed so utterly pointless all of a sudden.

  Nicholas had been confused, to say the least; one day, we had been as good as married, and the next I had refused to even see him. He even showed up at the inn one day, dressed in his Sunday best. I had so dearly wanted to go out to him, to throw myself at his mercy and beg him to take me away, but that would do no good. John would surely see to that.

  It was he who went out and spoke to Nicholas in the end. What exactly was said between them I did not even want to know. Later, John asked me to pen a letter of parting, though, telling Mr. Morrin that the spirits had had a change of heart and no longer thought me the key to his happiness.

  I did no such thing, of course.

  As much as I resented John, I hated Ma even more. I could not for the life of me figure out why she had tattled to John about my secret. Did she so dearly wish to see me fail that she would risk all our lives and reputations?

  I confronted her, of course, shortly after that fateful day on the road. We had been alone in the house at last. Pa had gone hunting and John had gone with him to make sure that it was the prey he aimed at. I had spent the morning upon the bed with my pamphlets and a bottle.

  “How could you tell him, Ma?” I had yelled at her. I was still feeling raw from the ordeal then, was still grasping for ways out, a glimmer of hope. “How dare you meddle in my affairs!”

  Ma did not look very upset by my outburst, but looked up at me from her chair with a smirk on her lips. “It’s just not for us, Kate. Not anymore. You forfeited your right to a wholesome life the very first time you used that knife.” She nodded to the grandfather clock, where Pa’s knives were stored with the cash.

  “Oh, and you’re the one to judge, is it so?” I stood before her with my fists clenched at my sides, swaying a little on my feet from the drink. “You are the one to grant or deny?” I could not believe her gall!

  “I’m doing it for those girls.” She pursed her lips and lifted her chin, looked every bit the disapproving schoolmarm. “You will bring nothing but trouble to their doorstep. Even if you can curb your temper, our sins might come to light, and it sure won’t do if those girls get caught up in it—”

  “Since when do you care about the welfare of little girls?” I could not believe that she was trying to act the righteous one with me. I, who had tasted the broom many a time and spent hours locked in the cupboard. “You sure didn’t bother when I was a child—or is it just your own children you despise? Telling John was reckless, Ma! It could have caused worse damage to their household than any dead man in the ground . . . You know well how he can be. You put Mr. Morrin—and his girls—in danger—”

  “Yes,” she replied, looking all sly. “But then you saved him, so there’s that.”

  “What about your farm, Ma? Don’t you want that anymore?”

  “How would you dallying with Mr. Morrin ever help you pay me back?” She sounded quite amused.

  “Is that why you did it?” How little she understood! “I cannot live on as John’s prisoner,” I cried, loudly enough that Rosie ran behind the canvas curtain to hide. “You should never have told him about Nicholas Morrin.”

  “Well, someone had to, and it was better that it was me,” she said, and finally stopped her eternal knitting. “If he had learned the truth from someone else, Mr. Morrin might not have lived to see another day.” She explained it to me as if I were a child. “It couldn’t be contained, Kate. You had been seen over there—been careless . . .”

  “I think you just want to see me hurt,” I accused her in a hoarse voice.

  Ma only shrugged. “Maybe you deserve it,” she quipped. “I mostly thought of those girls, though.” She sniffed and lifted her knitting, held the unfinished garment close to her eyes so she could see the patterns she had made.

  I wanted to hurt her, but I did not think I could explain it to anyone’s satisfaction if Ma was to come to harm with only me around. I got my shawl off the peg, the bottle off the bed, and went out to the barn with Rosie instead. There I found the cigar box and the treasures inside, sat down in the hay, and played with the buttons until the darkness purred like a milk-sated cat and my breathing was calm again.

  I suppose those little trinkets reminded me that there was still power to be had in this world, and that I would not be shackled forever.

  It just felt like that—like endless torment.

  Inside me, the darkness roared with hunger.

  “I should have taken my chances,” I said to John another night. I was sitting on the bed with a deck of cards and a bottle, while he sat on the floor—guarding me, I thought. “Nicholas is a capable man. He could have defended himself against you, and he would never have believed a word you said.”

  John looked up at me. “I would rather see you hanged than with another man,” he stated quite calmly. He had pulled up his knees and was dark around the eyes as he sat there leaning his head against the back door. He did not sleep much either.

  “So you would rather give me up to the law than see me happy?”

  John snorted. “There’s no happiness for you—not with a man like that. The darkness in you is too strong.”

  “If I hang, we all hang,” I reminded him.

  “Be as that might.” John shrugged. “I will still not give you up.”

  “You would kill us all just to punish me?” I gave him a wry smile. It was such a childish notion. “Maybe I’ll get to you first.”

  The thought had certainly occurred to me—it seemed the obvious solution. But then I would be burdened with Ma and Pa, unless they died as well, of course.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS STILL early in the year when Mr. Longchor stopped by. He was a tall, slim man, cleanly shaven and with a head full of thick blond hair. He was plainly clothed but had a scarf of a dusty pale violet wound about his neck.

  Mr. Longchor was also marked.

  My mood had been foul for days prior to his arrival. The walls around me seemed to come closer by the hour. It was all becoming too much: Pa’s howling in the bed, shouting about men coming to take him; John with his little smirk upon his pale visage and a look of triumph in his eyes, because he thought that he had bested me at last. Ma in her chair, humming German psalms, as if she had not given me up to John and set the destruction of my future in motion.

  I could not stand it—I could not!

  I drank excessively because it pained me too much to have a clear head. I kept thinking that mayhap we would always be there on the prairie, living in the midst of our ruin. It was not what I had seen for myself.

  At least, I thought, I deserved a nice scarf.

  While Mr. Longchor haltingly bartered for dry goods with Ma at the store counter, I slipped behind the canvas curtain and found Pa upon the bed. He was not mad then—not restrained—just resting after his latest bout.

  “Pa,” I whispered, bending over and steadying myself against the bedframe. “The angels have spoken to me at last. They say the man who is out there now is concealing some money on his person.”

  Pa looked up at me with doubt in his eyes. “It’s not a good time, Kate. The ground is still frozen.”

  “Is it, though? I think the weather must have turned.” I was swaying on my feet when I straightened up.

  “Is he staying to eat?” William asked me.

  “Not unless we invite him to.” We did that sometimes to make them linger. No man on the road will refuse a free meal.

  “Does Ma have something in the pot?”

  I shook my head and sneered. “Her pots are rarely in use these days, but we can do a simple meal of bread and cheese.”

  William thought for moment. “Are the angels sure this time?”

  “Oh yes,” said I, nodding with much vigor. “Quite clear.”

  “All right,” he said and made to rise. “I’ll go and find John in the barn, then.”

  He went out the back door, and I walked up to the store counter, offering Mr. Longchor the simple meal to strengthen him for the road. At first he looked doubtful, but soon enough he relented and let me guide him to the table.

  “We have had some quiet days,” I told him. “It’s nice with some company other than ourselves.” I wholeheartedly stood by that statement. Ma watched me all the while, with that viper gaze of hers. Mayhap she could tell from my sweetness alone that another kill was about to occur.

  “You’re drunk,” Ma accused me in German.

  “You’re vile,” I shot back and sniggered a little.

  I was a little taken aback when Mr. Longchor refused to drink more than half a cup of cider. He seemed restless at the table, and his gaze kept drifting to the door.

  “Could we leave the door ajar?” he asked. “I have valuable cargo in the wagon.” He added a lopsided smile, looking somewhat abashed.

  “For sure,” I said, perking up at the news. I quickly swung the door open, ignoring the freezing cold that seeped inside. “Better now?” I asked.

 

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