out of his eyes and the muck out of his tail. Old boy has a pedigree name in a ledger somewhere, but Snow White’s called him Charming ever since he mashed her foot flat half a minute after he came into the world trying to tottle up to standing.
Snow White rides him hard, no mistaking. She needs distance, the generosity of miles. Maybe there’s no gone that’s far enough, but if there is, she aims to find it. She lets Charming snatch up sea-grass and when the sea’s so far behind them she can’t smell salt, she directs him to alfalfa and meadowsweet. Snow White portions out a bag of apples she absconded with between herself and her horse. She still does not care for apples but food is food. Sugar is sugar. She has to make them last. All the smarts in the world don’t tell you where the next town lies when you’ve never seen the big open but in pictures. Don’t matter much. She’s never been happy a day in her life until she lit out hell for Hades, and if she never sees another human face it’s just as well by her. Snow White puts her gun on her arm and takes down a beaver for a week’s suppers. She’s not too sure how to dry it perfect, but she does her best, and the fur sits better on her shoulders than any dress she ever wore to please her daddy. She’s careful with her bullets. Gotta miser them good. Her life is weighted out in apples and bullets.
Snow White follows the sun.
This is her father’s country. Every town Snow White lights on is a camp with H stamped on the gold pans. She keeps her hat down. Waters Charming and rubs him down good. They’re muddy, chawed-up shanties with more drink than nuggets. The camps recall to her some mixed-up bootblack funhouse mirror of her boardwalk back home and she understands for the first time what it means to be a rich man’s daughter. Even a secret one. Even one worked like a furnace. Snow White drinks whiskey now and it tastes like dirt on fire but it makes her feel strong. She eats son of a bitch stew and before too long she gets to like it: boiled up baby cow brains, liver, tongue, heart, kidneys and on good days a carrot. It stinks powerfully, but her body wants it awful, the blood and the iron and the fat.
Snow White does not know much about men and she does not like what she sees. Their eyes dog her something dreadful. They are for the most part a miserable sight at cards. When Snow White plays, the Queen of Spades always turns up in her hand. She don’t like it. Don’t like being watched. Oftener than not, some poor overworked girl does all the work of entertaining—tinkles the piano if they got one, serves table, changes the day’s chiseling for currency, and there’s a menu behind the bar if you got a hunger dinner don’t touch. The miners use that girl awful in every place Snow White slows down long enough to scowl. It sticks in her jaw every time. That lady put on a purple skirt and shined herself up and damn but she can play those cowboy songs like she was born on a drive, but they don’t see it. Don’t see the mighty pains she took on their sorry behalf. Don’t see what it costs to get so fair.
Snow White can’t quite call whether it’s her tits or her gun that grief her most. Sure, the grimy boys grab her even when she bands her chest down tight, but once she punches one of them plum down, she gets to like that, too. Turns out her shit-shoveling arm can clean a man’s plow no problem. But no matter how she pulls her slicker over Rose Red, some ganted grubstake whose claim don’t love him sees the grip and thinks he can take it easy.
Probably it was always going to turn out like it did. Human nature only got a few tales to tell.
In a silver camp name of Haul-Off, Snow White shot a man.
It was raining fierce and the fella hadn’t eaten in three days. Any color he struck went eighty percent to the company and how can a man get ahead on those numbers? How can a man think straight with a gun like that in his sight, all those pearls