as though someone other than the darkness could hear. “I promised Ma I’d take care of you. I’ll ride with ’em for a few jobs, just long enough to save a little money. Then we’ll head to California or Oregon and buy us a pretty stretch of land.”
Casey stared into the face of her seventeen-year-old brother and searched for the right words to change his mind.
“Have I ever lied to you?” he said.
“No. But what would I do while you rode with them?”
He smiled, that boyish grin that always melted her heart. “They said you could cook for ’em. Nothing else.”
And she’d believed him.
When would it end? The blood and the victims of selfish greed haunted her. What did it do to him? The sound of a cocked rifle. The smell of gunfire. The taste of violence. The feeling of fear and despair that twisted her gut. She dug her heels into Stoney’s sides. Keep moving. Soon it will be over. Soon.
Casey remembered the Bible tucked into the saddlebag. Beginning tonight, she’d read by firelight, and the thought gave her something to look forward to. Surely the answers plaguing her miserable life were written within those pages. Sometimes she felt like a prairie twister, ready to tear up everything in her path. The anger frightened her as though she might end up like Tim.
“If you can’t handle this, then work for Rose,” Tim had said when she asked him last winter to leave the gang.
“Sell myself for the next meal?” Casey said. “Working in a brothel? At least here I’m only fighting off one man.”
“Then quit whining. I’m tired of hearing it. You want a better life? Stop fighting Jenkins, and he’ll take care of you.”
“I’d rather be dead.”
“Suit yourself.”
As twilight crept in around her, much like the old quilt she used to hide under during storms when she was a kid, Casey urged Stoney up through the aged formation of weathered rock. She recalled from past rides through the area how it changed magnificently in color from red and white to yellow and black: the beauty of a land totally suspended in time.
Tomorrow I’ll see the beauty on the other side of the cliffs. The realization brought a spark of hope, fueling all her secret dreams, like wearing a dress and not a gun belt. She knew large patches of deep green pine and waving blades of grass stretched for miles. Beautiful. Utterly breathtaking. Perhaps solitude was the best form of freedom.
Weary, she stopped for the night and gathered enough wood to build a small fire. When she finished eating leftover biscuits and bacon from the morning, she opened the Bible to Genesis and read by the dancing flames.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth . . .” She read through the creation and on to the struggle between Adam and Eve’s sons. Reading about Cain killing Abel tugged at her conscience. She had read as far as Noah when her eyes closed.
The following morning, Casey ignored the rumbling in her stomach to put miles behind her. She picked her way down through low brush and bluish-gray rock lining Nine Mile Canyon. The dry, bleached terrain spread nearly five times longer than its title.
Carved into the stone walls were the signs of an ancient Indian civilization. Are you haunted? What stories are engraved in your rock? She stared at the tall, silent tombs. I’m not afraid. I’ve more to fear from men.
Nine Mile Canyon eventually evened out onto the flats of the lower Colorado Plateau. Casey rested Stoney and took in one of the most majestic views of the country. Shielding her eyes from bright sun rays, she glanced eastward to see huge rock strongholds that stood as stepping stones to higher mountains.
Slowly her gaze moved to the south. She dreaded the ride ahead through parched territory where rattlesnakes and scorpions would be her only companions. Deep gullies, jagged rock, and dry riverbeds invited death to all who attempted to find their way through the rock guarding the Green River.
Many a gang led a posse into a dry canyon here, only to leave them to die from lack of food or water. Tim had once said the smartest men were outlaws, and the most cunning of lawmen had once been on the run. Jenkins had been a young officer for the Confederacy. He never liked losing.
For five days, Casey wound through the treacherous, often confusing canyon lands. She camped near the Yampa and Dirty Devil rivers,