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Episode 4

Old Friends

1.

At the end of every month, the bullet catcher administers another test. And when it’s over I lie under my canvas roof and think about running away, and each morning, when I finally find sleep, I’m resolved to stay. Sometimes it’s because I’m too tired to run. Other times because I refuse to let the bullet catcher break me. And every now and then because I sense some improvement: a near dodge, a glimpse of the bullet.

I’ve been shot so many times I might actually be getting over my fear of it. When the bullet catcher puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “It’s time,” I don’t feel anything, only gray acceptance. I follow him out to the clearing, where we count out our steps, and I take the bullet like bitter medicine. My body has become tiger-striped with scars. I’m the tiger girl, barred and banded and unafraid of the hunter and his guns.

• • •

The mountain has circled around to winter. Our breath rises like muzzle smoke in the air. I count the months in the series of scars on my body. Eleven scars. Eleven months. Somewhere along the way, I turned sixteen. One year more than Nikko ever saw.

This morning, the lake is thick with ice. I break through and ease myself into the water. While I bathe, I watch the wind blowing snow across the peaks, a white sandstorm. It distracts from the subzero water, the feeling of my skin knitting back together from my latest test.

One of my only clear memories of my father is when he would kiss me in the middle of my forehead and call me his “winter child.” Nikko was his summer child. I never much knew what he meant by that. But now I think I understand. Nikko was charming and outspoken. I was insular and quiet. Nikko was warm. I was cool, though being close to Nikko warmed me by degrees. Maybe that’s why I’ve always felt so out of place in the Southland, under the beating sun and swirling, heat-stroked winds. Maybe I was meant for winter, the cold and rain.

I trudge back to camp blowing breath into my cupped hands, but the bullet catcher hasn’t started the fire. There’s no coffee brewing. Snow coats the ground, looking like confectioners’ sugar. If I were still a child I would delight in the soft, fluffy flakes alighting on the ground. I would forget everything and start cartwheeling in the snow.

But not anymore.

Most mornings I think of nothing but training and the morning exercises. The small tree branches the bullet catcher made me carry as I shadowed him through the woods in the early days have turned to logs that I easily sling over my shoulders. Despite my slow progress, my muscles have become steel ropes beneath my tiger-striped skin.

For the first time I can remember, the bullet catcher has broken the routine. In fact, he’s nowhere to be seen. I look in his tent, but he’s not there. I run into the woods, checking the traps. Maybe he fell into one of the pitfalls by mistake. But somehow I can’t imagine that. And, sure enough, the traps are empty. I’m heading back to camp when I hear a voice. No, not a voice. Two voices, speaking in hushed tones. I follow the sounds, making sure not to make any noise myself. And then I see them: the bullet catcher and a woman I’ve never seen before. She wears a brown coat, leather pants, and boots. Gray hair spills from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. Her dark face is tattooed with scars and one of her eyes is covered with a patch. She holds the reins of her horse in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“He’s there, I know it,” the woman says. She doesn’t look at him when she speaks. She focuses on the cigarette in her hand like she can’t bear the sight of him.

“How do you know?” asks the bullet catcher.

“I seen him. I seen him clear as I see you here in front of me. Down at Los Cazadores, on the far side of the mountain.”

“Was he looking for me?”

“You? No one cares a lick about you. I’m only here because of the debt I owe. He was there talking some load o’ crap about water with the mayor.”

Then they start speaking a little more hushed and I try to edge closer to hear what they’re saying, and as I do, I break a twig underfoot. It cracks like an alarm going off. The woman draws her shooter, quick as lightning, and aims it right at me.

“Who goes there?” she growls.

The bullet catcher puts his hand on hers and gently lowers the gun. “Come out, Cub,” he says. His voice is gentle but rigid, and I do what he says.

“What’s this little thing?” the woman says, disgust in her voice.

“She’s nothing.”

“She ain’t nothing or she’d not be here.” She studies me a moment and then says, “She’s not? You’re not—training her?”

“She’s helping around camp. That’s all. I’m an old man.”

“A fool of an old man.” She spits the words and finally holsters her gun. “Anyway, I said what I came to say. This squares us.” Then she fixes me with her good eye and says, “You know what’s best for you, you’d get the hell out of here. Ride away and forget this old man. The rest of the world did ages ago.” She drops her cigarette and smashes it out with her boot. She swings onto her horse, gives it a kick, and she’s gone.

We listen to the sound of hooves receding into the morning and then I say, “Who was that?”

“Name’s Cass. An old friend.”

“Didn’t seem much like one.”

“S’pose not.” He walks past me in the direction of camp. I grab him by the arm as he passes.

“When you said I was noth—”

“A lie, Cub. And next time some fool like me says you’re nothing, you make sure he don’t get away with it.”

• • •

Back in camp, the bullet catcher doesn’t bother lighting the fire. He heads to his tent and I follow. He opens his pack on his bed and starts filling it with supplies.

“Where are we going?”

“We ain’t going nowhere,” he says. “I’m going to Los Cazadores. I’ll be gone two weeks. If I’m not back by then, I want you to take the rest of the supplies and get yourself far away from here.”

“Wait! Why? Tell me what’s going on!”

“If I’m not back by then it means he killed me and, most likely, he’s coming for you next.”

“Who?”

He takes a deep breath and fixes me with a stare. His eyes are shining. “Bullet,” he says. “His name’s Bullet. The man who killed your brother.”

Without thinking, I grab the front of his shirt. “If that’s so then I’m coming with you.”

A calm comes over him. He takes my hands in his and gently pushes them away. “You’re not ready, Cub. And I won’t be able to protect you.”

“I don’t care. It’s worth dying to kill this man.”

He stares deep into my eyes, looking for something. And maybe he finds it, because then he opens his trunk, pulls out the big silver gun that he uses to test me, loads a bullet, and points to the open tent flap and the clearing beyond. I stand slowly and make the long walk to the far end of the clearing. When I turn he’s standing on the far end, the gun in his hand. I don’t bother with first position. Screw it. I refuse to be afraid. My hatred for the man who killed my brother makes me numb and relaxes my muscles.

“Ready?” he calls across the clearing.

“Do it,” I shout. He raises the gun and fires. For a split second I think I see the bullet. But it’s less than a blur. Without thinking, I swat at it, like trying to swat gnats out of the air. Then everything goes white and all I feel is the air slamming from my lungs as I hit the ground.

The world spins into focus. I’m on my back. Above me, the tops of the trees are green teeth, the blue sky a gaping mouth. The sounds of the forest and my beating heart echo in my ears. The bullet catcher’s footsteps crunch over the pine needles, closing in on me. He kneels down beside me, blocking out the sun. His shadow is a cooling balm. I sit up, surprised to be breathing. He takes my hand in his and opens it. There, in a small pool of dark blood, is the bullet.

“I—I did it,” I stammer.

He’s still holding my hand in his. He studies the wound, the blood, the bullet, like a fortune-teller might the lines on a palm, reading the future, but what he sees he doesn’t say.

• • •