Cruel World

Chapter 6

Adalida jumped up, trying to avoid a cigarette burn. She grabbed the cigarette up off the ground. Thankfully it had stayed lit. She popped it back in her mouth, as nonchalantly as she could. Peach could see her hands shaking. She would suspect it would be from the cold, had she not revealed something so life altering.

Adalida's eyes were glowing from the burning tip of the cigarette. She chewed on the other end between her teeth.

"Why didn't you shoot him," she yelled. Her hands flew wide, whiskey swishing from her cup onto the dirt floor.

Peach saw the rage in her eyes, the confusion in her brows.

She didn't want to tell her that she'd spent the night gambling and drinking with their greatest enemy. She didn't want to tell her that she'd actually enjoyed the time she'd spent with him. She couldn't tell her, the confusion on his face, when she'd asked about the Calloway's murder. Not yet.

"I didn't think I could escape after shooting someone in the middle of mainstreet." Peach lied.

Adalida clearly didn't buy it. On Icarus, Peach could outrun the Kentucky Derby winner. Icarus was practically a triple crown winner himself.

The realizations. struck Adalida like a frenzy of bullets. Her eyes were beginning to well up with tears.

"Adalida," Peach reached out a hand to her friend.

"No," Adalida looked at her the same way she looked at her next target, "we promised."

Her voice was cracking. She held her head high as she flew back out the tent flaps. Peach collapsed back onto her bed. Her blanket and furs enveloped around her. She wiped at a tear tickling from the corner of her eye.

She'd make Adalida understand, she just needed more information. She'd keep their promise if she ever got another chance, she'd promised him that.

Peach undid the holster on her thigh, and tucked her pistol underneath her pillow. She stood and pulled off her heavy skirt, leaving just her tight leather pants. Quickly she undid the strings, and let out a deep breath as her corset loosened. She pulled off her boots and woolen socks and set them at the end of her bed, before collapsing back into her cocoon of softness. She tucked her hand underneath her pillow, her fingers wrapped around the handle of her gun.

If anyone disturbed her tonight, she put a bullet between their eyes.

She awoke the next morning to the sounds of Evangeline making breakfast outside her tent. Without getting off the bed she reached underneath and pulled out her trunk. After digging through her pile of clothes her fingers ran along a thick strap of leather and snakeskin. She pulled it out. Her favorite holster. A thick belt of finely filligreen leather traced around the band of black water moccasin skin.

She pulled her gun out from underneath her pillow and slipped it into the holster at her right hip. She slid her boots on and sighed.

Outside her cozy tent, the sun was just beginning to come up over the canyon walls. She hadn't meant to sleep so long.

"About time, you got up," Evangeline clicked her tongue at her, "Come get some breakfast, I might have saved you a little sugar."

Peach nodded graciously as, she was handed a bowl, of oatmeal. The smell of cinnamon and sugar wafted up to wake up the rest of her senses.

She took her spot by the fire. As she spooned oatmeal into her mouth she listened to the other girl's gossip. Besides Adalida and Evangeline, and she supposed Belle, she wasn't very close with the other five girls that made up their gang. She'd gone on jobs with them through the years, and trusted them with her life, but she wouldn't tell them the same things that she'd tell Evangeline and Adalida.