High in the mountains, the air got so thin it made Jack’s blood pound in her ears. There was nothing but shale and scruff and sharp trees, like shards of bone, sticking out from the earth. If Jack only stood on her horse and strained an arm, she was sure she could touch the clouds.

She hadn’t seen a single other soul in days; just her and Laz. They rode along the cliffs in endless circles, surveying the untrodden land. They were looking for camp.

"Why don't you go out that way?" Jack pointed yet further up, nearly the tip of the mountain. "And I’ll look down here. We can whistle if we find something."

"It'll be dark soon."

"All the better, then!"

Lazarus agreed; Jack watched as he rode away, seeming to dissolve into the sun. She went down the mountain on stiff, steep trails. There was smoke in the air — by smell, not sight. All one could see were crows gathering in twisted silver branches against the bruised sky.

When the cold came, the cold came fast. Her thin breath got thinner. She held herself tight, but nothing would stop the chill down her spine. When the brush got too thick, she went down on her hands and knees and crawled through. She was pricked and prodded, thin white scratches all over her skin. When she emerged, she found a little cabin.

It was neat and orderly. There was a quilt laid upon a wooden chair, and a warm fire already in the grate. This is perfect, she thought. Lazarus and I… we could live here forever.

Jack went out and perched herself atop the highest rock. She held her fingers to her dry lips and whistled so that the sound echoed across the mountains.

There was no reply.

But perhaps she wasn't high up enough. Jack scaled the tree, right up to the very tip of its thin piney boughs. It swayed beneath her as she whistled again. Nothing.

From her new height, she could see the place they had separated. Where there was once a mountain pass there was now a black, yawning chasm.

Broken stones lined its gaping maw, like teeth. Cold air emanated from its belly. Jack stood over it. The cold was so forceful that it burned. It was as if, as she leaned over to gaze into its abyss, her nose would freeze right off and fall away.

But she couldn't leave. Lazarus was on the other side.

She could see him — all alone, kneeling upon the ground. His back was to hers, bowed against the force of the wind. The noise was so powerful that he could not hear her, no matter how loud she shouted.

“Laz!” Jack cried. “Don’t you go anywhere! I’m coming!”

Jack tried to go around the chasm, but it merely stretched further, as long as her eyes could see and farther than her legs could travel. No matter how far she traced its lips, it continued on, stretching through the mountain, squeezing around its sides. There was no way to go, she realized, but over.

Now Lazarus was rising with evident pain. He was bleeding; she saw it, the dim glimmer, slip down his arm and into the chasm.

She began to panic. She cried, over and over again. She whistled until her lips cracked, like a little bird singing for its mate, shrill in the silence that hung over the mountain. She tried a rope, but the rope broke. She tried a horse, but it wouldn't jump.

It seemed that everything in the world was putting itself in her way; she wasn't meant to cross, no matter what she wanted. Lazarus would walk away, beneath the enfolding ridges of the Rockies, and she would never see him again.

So, she jumped.

Her body went numb; the only sensation was that inside her stomach, as she began to fall. It was only by the tips of her fingers that she met the edge. Short nails bit into the rock, which fell away with every grasping strike.

Lazarus took one step after the other.

"Don't leave me!" she cried. "No matter where you go, don't let it be where I can't follow!”

Still, he went where he was bidden.

Jack forced her way up. All of the folds of her clothes were coated thick with frost. Her eyelashes were white. Her lips split and bloody. She collapsed onto the ground. "I'm here, I'm here…"

But she wasn’t supposed to be.

Lazarus had stopped dead in his tracks. Jack raised her head with great pain to look upon him. There was a hole in his heart where light shined through.

“Promise?” she said.

He turned, and all of the air left the world. Jack gasped and bled like a skinned rabbit. Her eyes exploded from her sockets. He reached his hand out.

Jack woke with Lazarus in the bed beside her.

It was not a suspicion. It was not a fear. She lay, her body stiff and sweaty, and stared up at the wooden shafts in the ceiling. If she were only to turn her head, he would be there. Not touching her, only sleeping on his side, laying over the quilt. She could feel the weight on the bed. If she could only still her beating heart, she could hear him breathe.

Her hand itched to move, but she couldn't bring it to. She feared breaking this delicate balance. Could she not lay there forever, content with only being near him, even if she could not touch or hear or see?

Now she grew heavy with trepidation. Was that a way to live? In Ianthe's bed forever, simmering beneath the musty quilt? She twitched again. She had to move, had to touch him and kiss him and hear his voice. The room was dark as pitch; those were the only senses she had.

When she rolled over, there was a rush of air and a shadow that flitted across the room. Jack rushed to her feet.

"Laz!"

Her bare soles were cold against the floor. It was impossible to trace a shadow in the hallway because they were all shadows, never-ending, pools of them bleeding from every door. Jack banged against the walls in her desperate chase, knocked knees with a side table. She followed the shadow to a room where light still shone — dim, hushed, but light all the same.

Jack ended up in the parlor, and the sight of Blackbird’s face, flat with unalloyed judgment, shocked her out of her stupor.

“Did you…?” Jack ran a hand through her hair. “I thought I saw…”

“Oh, Jack!” Ianthe greeted her. “Another nightmare?”

Jack swallowed back a gasp. “Y—yes, I suppose so.”

Ianthe sat in her favorite armchair very casually despite it being the dead of night. That part was not so troubling — only,  she had her legs spread, and her trousers down, and Daphne on her knees, face between them.

“Blackbird, be a dear, and put on another light?”

The girl rose. She wore a robe of striped silk over her nightgown, and tasseled slippers. Jack realized that she herself was only in her nightshirt, and felt oddly bashful.

Still, no one seemed concerned as Jack found a spot: across from Blackbird, a spitting distance from Ianthe and Daphne. No one commented on the obvious, and Jack found it simpler to merely avert her eyes and not rock the boat.

Blackbird set down a second oil lamp on the table at Ianthe’s elbow. The hearth was simmering, but the room was drafty as always. Jack hugged her arms, and fiddled with her toes, as the strange scene went on.

Ianthe raised a lazy arm and scratched the top of Daphne’s head. She continued what had, apparently, been her topic of previous conversation. “As I said, it might only be a matter of politics.”

Blackbird fell back into her chair, right next to the fire, and continued what she had been doing: retying her braids. She said, “Perhaps.”

“Oh, have some faith in me. I’m sure I can persuade Mayor Tinsley to see the light.”

“You are…” Blackbird visibly paused around the word, feeling it around in her mouth. “Persuasive.”

Jack could hear Daphne licking. A flush went through Jack’s body. It was one thing to know what was going on around the ranch; it was another to see it.

She turned to Ianthe, not looking down. “What was this about?”

“Loveday.”

“Ah…”

“Ianthe wants to be ‘nice’,” said Blackbird, who scoffed.

“If it came to arms, we wouldn’t stand a fighting chance.” Ianthe leaned her head in her hand.

Blackbird laughed.

Jack paused. "You want to expand."

"Of course."

"Then, it doesn't have to be Loveday. What about the Indians? Could you not negotiate something there? You have someone to speak on your behalf."

Blackbird turned to Ianthe. "She does not know?"

“Evidently not.”

“What — what don’t I know?”

"My relations with the locals fell apart on account of her." Ianthe leaned back in her seat, pushing her crotch further into Daphne’s mouth.

Blackbird looked very small in the dusky room. Her head was down, and both hands were moving, fingers whispering in a practiced dance, braiding.

“Really now?” Jack said, in hushed shock.

“It is not a happy story,” said Blackbird.

Ianthe told it anyways. "When I first built Devil's Bush, I went and requested permission to use the land. Most who built homes here never bothered — but I always thought it good to be cordial to your neighbors. And over the many years afterwards, I saw the suffering those poor people went through. Their lands encroached upon. Their hunt whittled down. All that they once relied upon, stripped bare by interlopers.

"I came again to speak to their counsel and offer an alliance. But instead of welcoming me with open arms as they had once done, they were now cold. I do believe that missionaries might have infiltrated, clouded their minds into thinking my way of life was a sin. I cannot say for sure.

"All I knew is that arrows were drawn on me. My interpreter said 'Leave this place, you may never touch our soil again!  If you test us further, we will burn that ranch of yours to the ground, and you, wicked woman, with it!’”

Ianthe sighed. “And all I wanted was to help.”

Jack, even as she listened to Ianthe’s story, found her vision suddenly pulled away. Something had moved against the wall, beyond the halo of light from the oil lamps. "What was that?"

"Hm?" Ianthe hardly looked. "Oh, likely the wind."

The story went on: when Ianthe was leaving that she came across a girl from the village; she had been injured by a wild dog. Ianthe rescued her. When she tried to leave, the girl — Blackbird — would not let her go.

Ianthe asked if she wanted to come with her.

"I did," Blackbird said. "But…"

Jack said, “Your family did not see it that way.”

“So long as I am here, they will not destroy the ranch.” Blackbird sighed. “However, I can never return.”

“That is…” Jack’s mouth was dry. “I’m mighty sor— ah!”

Floom! A flare of light and sound. The oil lamp, which had sat undisturbed, suddenly tipped over. In the chaos, as Jack tried to keep from lighting her sorry ass on fire, she thought she saw someone moving against the wall.

Daphne was quick to hush the lamp and settle it back into place.

Then — then, it was the most peculiar thing. Daphne said not a word the entire scene; her expression never faltered, her bearing never ruffled. Crisis averted, she fell right back to her knees, and lifted her glossy gaze to meet Ianthe’s eye. Her tongue poked from between her lips.

“What — what was that?”

Even Ianthe and Blackbird seemed perturbed. There was oil leaking now, all over Jack’s bare legs. She ran a hand through her hair.

“Why,” Jack said, meaning to joke, “it must’ve been a ghost!”

“Don’t be silly. Ghosts aren’t real.” Ianthe tapped Daphne’s head, and she returned to her duty. Ianthe caught Jack staring, at last, and said, “Oh? Would you like to…?”

“Still, it didn’t seem like an accident,” said Jack. "More like an act of God."

“God has nothing to do with me,” Ianthe said. “Do you want a turn, or not?”

Despite such strange moments, Jack came to consider Ianthe a friend.

Or maybe that wasn't the right word. The proper word escaped Jack; not a friend, not a lover, but something close and certain. Quite often she spoke with Ianthe of deeper things than the running of the ranch. Once, she even told her about Grace.

It started on Ianthe's end. When night fell, Ianthe grew restless. She would stalk around the house, sometimes going outside (weather permitting) and returning with a frown. Unlike the others, she had no idle work to attend to: no mending, no washing, no spinning. She only liked to read when she had someone else to do so for her.

One night she sat with Jack in the room, and Jack tried to read to her some. But Jack wasn't the strongest reader, and was prone to making a lot of fun of all the silly people on the page.

“‘Nelly, do you never dream queer dreams?’ she said, suddenly, after some minutes’ reflection.’ — Minutes, huh? Awfully slow girl.”

Ianthe huffed in amusement.

“‘Yes, now and then,’ I answered.

“‘And so do I,” Jack read. “‘I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind…’”

Jack's voice died in her throat. Silence draped itself over the room until Ianthe, with a strange contemplative tone, said, "Sometimes, you remind me of my brother."

"I didn't know you had one."

"A long time ago. He's dead now," Ianthe said. "But sometimes you get very serious, and there's a certain determined glimmer in your eye — he had that."

"Only sometimes?"

"Most of the time, you remind me of my sister."

The word made Jack ache, and her face fell.

Ianthe caught this, and shifted in her chair, but she did not press quite yet. "She was very wild, and very musical, and — well, quite annoying at times."

"And she's dead now?"

Ianthe nodded. "It is for the better. Life was not kind to her."

Jack looked down at the book in her lap, but she might as well have been trying to read hieroglyphics. The words swam from the tears in her eyes. "You know… I had — have a sister, too."

"Oh?"

"She's…" Jack sighed. "Soft."

Jack began her story:

"Grace always cried like a colicky kitten. It was extraordinary how it could carry itself, through hell and highwater, over to my ears… "

“Jennie! Jeeeniieee!”

All the way across the field her little sister came with tears streaming down her face. She clambered over the fence and into Jack's arms. At first she merely sobbed, her salty tears staining the flannel front of Jack's dress. But when Jack asked what was the matter, Grace's sweet little face darkened like a storm cloud.

"That damn Nathaniel Thatcher is the problem!"

"Now, watch your tongue, or else Mama will —"

“Why should I watch my tongue when he doesn’t?” Grace pelted Jack's stomach. Her little fists were so small and soft, it felt like the thud of the dog's wagging tail. "I went over to their farm because Mama wanted to trade some eggs, and — and he tripped me, and I broke them!"

"Mistakes happen."

"But he did it on purpose!" Grace cried. “And he’s always calling me Cabbage Face and sayin’ I’ve got moldy spots —” Her freckles. “He laughed at me, and Mama was awful angry, and I told her what I saw and she…” Grace sighed, and all her limbs loosened, and Jack had to catch her dejected, boneless body to keep her from falling into the pig sty. “She said that I’ve gotta make nice with him quick, ‘cuz we’re gonna get married.”

“That’s horseshit!” Jack paused. “Don’t say that, either.”

“I don’t wanna marry Nathaniel Thatcher!” Grace waggled her tiny arms again. “He’s mean and he smells bad and he’s ugly.”

“Mama’s only saying that to scare you,” Jack said, matter-of-factly. “He’s like the Boogeyman. She wants you to behave yourself, that’s all.”

Grace shrieked as Jack hoisted her over the shoulder. Jack took big long strides over the backs of the pigs and plopped Grace down on the fence.

Once settled, Grace grew quiet again. Her frizzy hair was in her eyes, hands dangling — too big — from spindly wrists. That thick Hawthorne skin would never grow on her. “Mama told me that boys are only mean to girls if they like them…”

"What does it matter if Nathaniel Thatcher likes you, if you don't like him?"

“Maybe I should try being nice…”

“No.” Jack flicked Grace’s head. “Don’t be thinking like that.”

“Ack! Jennie!”

“Don’t you be lettin’ any boy walk all over you,” said Jack. “If he’s rotten, he’s rotten, and no amount of sugar will sweeten the pot. You try and be nice, he’ll just pinch and pull until he can break you again. You let ‘im walk all over you, and you’ll just get stuck in his boot heel.”

“But…”

“And what’ll you do when you’re so damn nice you can’t say ‘no’ when he pops the question?”

“I— I dunno…” Grace gnawed on a lock of hair, pulling taut against her dry lip. “What should I do?”

“Make ‘im scared of you,” Jack said. “Take none of his shit. Throw it back in his face. He thinks he can call you names? Call him something back. And if you can’t do it, or you know Mama’s watching? Walk away.”

“Huh?” Grace looked up at Jack with wide eyes.

“Walk, don’t run. You’re not scared of him chasing after. You’re not scared of anything.”

“But I am!”

"And do you want that wicked Thatcher to know that?"

"No!" Grace buried her face in Jack's side. "No, no, I don't want to speak to him ever again!"

“Then you make sure of that. You never let a man take advantage of you, got it?”

Grace sniffled; soon, she laid her head against Jack's knee. "I will…" She looked up — Jack's body blocked the sun from her eyes. "But it's so easy for you."

Jack smiled. "I've got a lot more practice."

But that was a lie. Truth was, Jack never could quite understand Grace's dilemma. Jack had kicked and fought from the first moment someone tried to stomp on her. No amount of Mama's wrath or of Daddy's belt could dissuade it. Jack was small, but she was mighty. The moment she smelled a rat, she killed it.

Ianthe, having heard the story, quite agreed.

It was then that Jack realized how very close they had gotten. Ianthe lifted her hand and ran it up Jack's sleeve. Fabric rustled like the slink of water beneath Ianthe’s palm.

"Jack."

The world outside was wet, and the house smelled like rotting wood. Ianthe had just finished smoking a pipe, and the room still carried the haze of smoke. The sun was going down.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

This time, as Jack crossed the threshold of Brennan's saloon, everyone looked up. Rows of eyes turned and trained themselves upon her. The long winter had changed the dynamics sharply; little food, close quarters, attacks from all kinds of bad men. Jack itched to grab her gun, even as she swallowed the memory of her last visit. She wasn't here to act tough. She was here on a mission.

Mayor Eugene Tinsley sat at a table of his own, surrounded by fawning yes-men. He was a stout man with steely eyes; he had a large belly, a deep voice, and spectacles balanced at the end of his bulbous nose.

"He likes to play himself off as this jolly old fellow,” Ianthe had explained to Jack. “But he's the shrewdest politician around. He wants money, he wants to suck those mines dry — and to do that, he needs workers. Anyone can't work for his supper — say, the whores — he'd rather leave to their own devices."

Tinsley was playing chess, a cocktail in his other hand. Any other man would’ve been laughed out of the West for such a feminine drink. But not Tinsley: no, Tinsley had the town’s balls in his grip, and everyone there knew it.

Jack sauntered over to the empty piano. She was in disguise, a bandanna across her nose and mouth. The rest were Ianthe's clothes. Black velvet, black waistcoat, her boots shined to a polish. Personally, she felt like a puffed-up turkey. She cracked her knuckles as she sat down on the bench. Then, to solidify her position as a man, she took a moment to spit on the floor.

The rabble heckled her. “Hey, who hired the infant?”

“Going to play some infernal noise?”

No, Jack thought, I’m going to play some damn good music to butter the man up.

She began to play some old standards. The atmosphere in the saloon was quick to change. Drunkards shouted requests at her, and she swerved and frolicked through the repertoire. Boots thumped against the floor. Mayor Tinsley caught the ear of one of his men, who rose up to pass along a request and a penny.

“There's a pale weeping maiden who toils her life away…”

Tinsley nodded, and returned to his chess game.

“…with a worn heart whose better days are o'er…”

Jack could hear some men gossiping even over the singing voices.

"Haven't heard nothing 'bout the Fowlers in a while."

"Didn't you hear? Tinsley's men beat them with an inch of their lives, months ago."

"Really now? Then how come my brother said he spotted them out in the field, just a couple days ago?"

"Must've been a ghost. Those bastards are more than dead."

“Oh! Hard times come again no more!”

The song ended. Jack collected her coin. Tinsley's opponent had gotten up to get another glass of whiskey. Jack stole the spot. She propped an elbow up on the table.

“Hello, sir,” she said. “Got a moment to spare?”

Tinsley raised an eyebrow. “Fancying a game?”

Jack did not know how to play chess. “If it suits you.”

Tinsley smiled, lips pressed together. He gestured towards the board. “White plays first.”

Jack, after a long pause, selected one of the little pieces, all the way to the right, and pushed it forward.

Tinsley huffed. "Perhaps you'd better stick to the piano."

“I wanted to speak to you, sir.” Jack nervously flicked at her horse piece.

“And who are you?”

“Just a good Samaritan.” Jack shrugged. “See, I was traveling about some. And through the grapevine, I hear there was this project proposed to you, once upon a time.”

Tinsley took a little guy from the center, right in front of the biggest piece, and moved it forward by two squares. Jack tried not to grimace. Fuck. Those things could move two squares?

"It was about building a shelter in this town of yours for some very vulnerable people in some tough spots. And you refused."

The yes-men hadn’t said a word, though Jack could see them shifting, suspicious in the corner of her eyes. Boy, she hoped this wasn't going to come to another shootout. Ianthe trusted her enough to do this and not die.

Wasn’t she doing a good enough job? She played some good music like Ianthe had suggested. She’d seen Tinsley drink half his weight in whiskey. He was drunk, happy, playing a fun game. Certainly, when speaking face-to-face with a fellow man (so far as he knew), he would be a bit more receptive?

Tinsley raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know so much about my personal dealings?”

“As I said — just rumors. Seems like they’re accurate.” Jack’s hands nearly shook as she picked up her next piece. She pushed it two squares up.

He stared at her piece. He did not make his play. “I seem to remember,” he said, “an asinine attempt at blackmail, that’s all. Has she sent herself an assassin?”

"I'm just a concerned citizen. I mean nobody no harm. I just want to protect the fairer sex.”

Tinsley laughed. “By hostile takeover?”

“Who said anything about taking over?”

“That damn Devil’s Bush woman.” Tinsley laughed. “What did she tell you? That she wanted to plant a field of buttercups?”

“That she wanted to help, and you damn greedy—” Jack raised her voice, and that was her mistake. She was too invested in her conversation with the mayor to realize she had gained an audience.

“Go back to your little playground, kid,” said the mayor. “Politics are for grown men.”

“I am a—”

Glass shattered. “You!”

Jack looked up. Brennan, of Brennan’s Saloon, stood over the bar.  “Jack Hawthorne, I told you never to show yer sorry fucking face in my establishment ever again!”

“Ah, I’m not—”

A man pulled down her bandanna.

It was hardly a fight. Jack was hoisted up like a kitten by the scruff, and tossed into the spring mud (not before getting punched in the jaw). Her fancy coat was ruined, her hat flopped over her sorry head.

When she finally raised her face, she swore. Blackbird was supposed to be waiting outside, watching the horses. Instead, the wind howled and Jack was all alone. She spit dirt out of her mouth, cursing the name of everyone in that damned bar, and Blackbird besides. She stumbled to her feet.

The sun was going down as Jack wandered the town. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Loveday was a small and dirty place; Jack could've walked the whole thing several times over were she not so beaten down. The gray boards that held the houses together seemed to lean against the direction of the wind; it whistled through the gaps. Jack paused at one of these houses, and when she snuck a look through the window, she found piles and piles of paper and machine pressing letters. A little boy rolled the excess into bundles.

Where there's people, Jack thought, there's papers to sell.

Next Jack went up the muddy Main Street, towards the steeple. The whitewashed church was chipped and gray. Jack looked at it with some amount of trepidation. Was she going to have to spend the night in such a place, should her s0-called companion not show?

She fancied lightning would strike her down before she could go inside. She took a moment to spit some of the blood that had gathered in her mouth on its doorstep.

It was only after desecrating the local church that Jack heard the gentle tinkling of reins. Blackbird, leading both of the horses, finally showed her sorry face. She sat with a very bored expression in her dark winter coat. The bulk of it, combined with the natural tilt of her face and long eyelashes, made the girl seem old and regal.

"Where the devil did you go?" Jack asked.

"You lost," Blackbird said. "Your face has been punched."

“No — I—I…” Jack swallowed. “Maybe.”

Jack said nothing more. Blackbird handed off the bridle, and they rode back to the ranch in silence.

Daphne had a hot bath prepared for them. In the dim candlelight, Jack stripped down and sat back-to-back with Blackbird in the water. It was so late they had to keep quiet to keep from waking the boarders; Jack kept on holding her breath.

Blackbird undid her braids, and her hair spread across the tub like a thick black cloud. Steam filled the parlor. Jack slumped against the side of the tub and nearly fell asleep there. Her eyes drooped near closing. It was only when Ianthe came into the room — like a shadow against her slitted vision — that Jack came to life once again.

Ianthe stood there for a time, hands clasped behind her back. Jack’s face heated up when Ianthe’s gaze landed upon her bruised cheek. “I see it went well,” Ianthe said.

“No…” Jack murmured.

Ianthe said something else, though Jack couldn’t quite remember what. She was fully falling asleep at that point, dropped low by the tiresome, tedious day. Her tiresome, tedious life. The warm water cooled around her. She shivered when Ianthe, for just a moment, touched her swollen cheek.

“Next time,” Ianthe said, “you’ll do better.”