Saddle Dust

Chapter 16

Casey had not been back to her family ranch in a full decade. There was almost no chance that Philip would still be on the ranch, but it was a place to start.
It took her a little over three weeks to make it to northern Texas. She stopped at small towns along her route only three times and slept intermittently on the trail. At each town, she halted Steadfast only long enough to get a drink at a quiet saloon, put up board for Steadfast and herself in the stable, and buy coffee, jerky, hardtack, and canned beans for the next few days of the journey.
By the time Steadfast climbed up the old ridge, they had both lost nearly ten percent of their body weight. They had half-starved themselves crossing the rolling foothills of the Rockies. She had ridden straight from the southeast corner of where she had been lying on the bench in Iowa to northern Texas in a quarter of the time it would take a sane rider to cross.
Casey had walked next to Steadfast for much of the journey, and sometimes she would run as he trotted for two or three miles, bracing her injured arm up for the first few days when it had still throbbed at every step she took. At other times, she would barely have beat a snail in a footrace, so slow were her and Steadfast walking, but they had always kept moving. At one point, her feet had become so swollen in her boots that she had gone barefoot for six days straight for fear of not being able to get her feet out of her boots had she worn them another mile.
Casey's clothes were rags. Her duster was covered in every form of filth and her black leather chaps were nearly worn through. Her face had a desert's worth of dirt ground into it. She had stopped to wash her face and legs and feet only on rare occasions when the two would (sometimes literally) stumble across a stream bed or shallow river. The only item seemingly untouched by the rough claws and teeth of the elements was Sundance's black hat.
She drew Steadfast to a halt on the ridge. His now ragged coat had festering sores and wounds that matched the ones covering Casey's own body. His hooves had tossed their shoes in southwestern Nebraska, and both of their eyes were dull with the look of animals past the point of exhaustion and starvation.
Casey wearily slides off of Steadfast, her aching legs stumbling over each other before regaining her balance before she walks to the front of her horse, resting her forehead against his large, pink soft nose. She blows breath into his nostrils and reaches up to his drooping head to scratch behind his ears.

She had tried to shoe Steadfast off in Southern Kansas when she had been ready to call the march off for him and go the rest of the way by train. The journey was just taking too much out of him. She was worried he might die and had wanted to place him in a boarding corral until she could figure out what, exactly, she was doing. Casey had taken his fine leather saddle and bridle off and hit his rump with the blue-green woven saddle blanket. But he had refused to run. Turning, instead, to look confused back at his master for why he was being shunned. His ears had lain flat in sadness and shame.
Casey had cursed herself under her breath before shaking out the saddle blanket and throwing it over his worn and sore-patched back, speaking to the worn-out but now happy horse as she did so.
"Oh, I guess you're right. You're just as stubborn and stupid as me. Guess we'll both go out to die in the desert together then, huh?"
Casey cinched the tack back on him so it was flush with his thinning frame. The saddle belt tightened to a new notch. Casey turned to walk southward, throwing the reins over the saddle horn and leaving Steadfast to follow along behind on his own. Which, of course, he had. She had felt foolish and had yelled at herself, cursing the air when the sun got so hot her cuts and sores began to crack and bleed and swearing almost constantly when their water ran out for nearly three days.
She cursed her "city dame" ways and she had damned her softheartedness which would get them both killed. She had stumbled across an old stream bed which she and Steadfast were sad to see had died with the last rains. She had rubbed Steadfast's sore back with the remaining water which was thick with grime, desert-polished his coat with sagebrush, reattached his saddle, and slipped the bridle over his ears again. Her journey south had nearly taken both of them to the devil's table.
She owed Steadfast her life.
Now they stood on the low ridge in the very place where Philip had stood and pointed his pistol at Casey's younger self, and looked over the place where the small log cabin had once been. The standalone cabin was gone, but in its place stood a tall white-washed farmhouse where three twisted apple trees stood out front, thick with waxy green leaves.
A woman with dark blond hair Casey recognized to be her older sister, Maxine, sat on a chair under the large shaded porch with an infant curled up sleeping in her arms. Casey thought the whole scene looked like something out of a Sears and Roebuck catalog. The house was impressive and the apple trees added a sense of serenity to the place that Casey was, as of recently, quite unfamiliar with. Yes, the Hartfords were doing just fine. Maybe Philip would still be here then. Fool's gold though it was.
Maxine looked up at the strange grime-cloaked figure standing next to a filthy black, tall, half-starved…draft horse? The two looked like skeletons. She stood, the chair snapping against the backs of her legs and scraping along the wooden porch floor. Maxine stepped quickly into the house, pressing her child against her shoulder, and called for someone to fetch Papa from the cattle field because "there was a strange sight up on the ridge."
Casey waited on the ridge with Steadfast until Papaâ€" yes it really was the papa who had adopted her the first time, came riding up to meet her on a tall grey and white-brown paint horse.
Her papa looked older, his hair mostly silvered and his eyes had faded a bit under the sun. His skin bore the marks of another ten years' worth of wear, but he was undoubtedly the same kind and gentle man who had raised Casey for the first part of her childhood.
Fredrick stopped short and waved his tall white ranger hat off in greeting. He was dressed in a fancy ranch shirt and clean pants. New fringed, brown gloves were looped under a heavy cow leather belt with a glistening silver buckle bearing the name 'Hartford' above a longhorn skull.
"Howdy there, what brings you to my ranch here on this day in, if I may danger, in such a state?"
"Just looking for a wash, food to chew, and a place to put myself and my horse for a little rest, if that's alright."Casey's voice was choked as she took off her black hat, greasy-tangled braid falling out and lying stiff with grime down her back.
Fredrick's smile dropped from his face faster than a rock off a cliff as he looked at the real-life face of his daughter. He had seen images of her three or four times in newspapers since she left the ranch to go to the finishing school in Philadelphia.
He had looked for her in the papers whenever a major train line was robbed as she usually appeared under the sheriff's suspect list, and in those rare instances when he saw her image (many train robberies by the Wild Gang went unreported), her solemn, 'I-dare-you-to' face always appeared either next to various combinations of Butch Cassidy's Wild Gang (usually next to the Sundance Kid) or, as she appeared once, in an expensive-looking group photo-snap of the Wild Gang which showed up in all of the papers big and small after the infamous shootout in Bolivia and deaths of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Though he still looked occasionally, he had not heard any news of his now outlawed daughter since the shootout in Bolivia and he had thought that she had probably disappeared in the ever-changing landscape of the new country. But now here she stoodâ€" Casey, was that what the papers had been calling her? Casey Long? The papers also said that the Sundance Kid had called her his daughter (these same papers had made hundreds of prints usually outlining theoretical wannabe stories about how the Sundance Kid had secretly been hiding his daughter in St. Louis until she was old enough to rob trains), but that also wasn't true. She was always Lily Hartford to him.
HIS daughter whom Philip, Michael, and Victor had saved from those fool-dangerous frontier folk in Alaska after their tragic accident on the frozen lake. It was no town secret that while her blood folks had doted on Lily, they were downright cruel to Philip, Michael, and Victor. Refusing to feed them when they returned from a day's work if they hadn't completed the task to their liking. That was an entire kettle of cod that could be left alone for good now that his daughter had returned. But why had she anyway? She knew it was dangerous to come into any town with law around and people who knew her.
"Lily? What…"
He slides off his paint horse and walks cautiously over to her. She is dressed in rags that seem like they had once been quite the envy of any well-fitted outdoorsman, but the fabric had long since been replaced with the desert sands and mountain dirt. She also looks (smells) like she hadn't bathed in ages.
"…what are you doing here?"
Her face remains that same image of solemnness that he had seen in the papers, but there is sadness in her eyes and a weariness in the way she is standing. She had also lost the edge in her voice, letting her exhaustion settle in.
"I came back to learn more about my parents in Alaska. But first I would like a bath and…some grub if you have any please?" She looked almost broken.
"Lily, no need to act like a stranger. Of course you can have a wash and some food, and more…but it's been so long. Where have you been? Oh, never mind, we'll jaw later."
Fredrick crosses the ten-year-long distance to his daughter and hugged her short, solid but starved frame worn down by weeks in the desert.
"Come back to the house with me, and bring your beast. We've a fine place for him."
"Thank you, Fredrick."
Fredrick freezes, then turns back towards Lily again.
"Lily? Are what the papers say true? Are you really the daughter of that filthy Sundance Kid? Please say it's not true and call me your pa once more?"
Casey's jaw tenses, and a full minute passes before she answers.
"I am Sundance's daughter, though not by blood of course. He saved me from a life I wasn't meant to have. Even you could see that, but that's for later…"
Casey cuts herself off abruptly. Her face goes red and she casts her eyes on the ground.
"I'm sorry. My trail tongue got the best of me. Sure. Just so long's you call me Caseyâ€""
"Hey now! That won't do. I refuse toâ€""
"No, that's the way it is. I'm not your Lily anymore, now, you've got to admit that especially if you've been reading the papers as you said you have. I've injured the unarmed, robbed the innocent, and plundered countless banks till they were more'n broke. I've lived, and I ought to be called by the name I lived for."
"Oh, you're just…welcome back to the homestead…Casey."
"Thank you…pa."
The words feel unnatural in both of their mouths, but they exchange curt nods. They walk their steeds to a pasture that is thick with fresh grass and has a pool of clear water shining in a metal trough under the dimming sun.
Casey unclips Steadfast's tack and hooks it on a corral fence post under the stable's overhang. She firmly sets a strong hand against his flank and walks the worn animal into the corral, cracked hooves meeting the grass as a stranded fish on land meets water. Casey rubbed his huge velvet ears and softly clicked to him. Steadfast's eyelids drooped down. Frederick watched intently as she went about her business, amazed at how much the horse respected his daughter.
"What's his name?"
"Steadfast."
"Why'd ya call him that? Is it because he's such a mighty draft? What are you doing with a draft anyhows? They can't run too fast and they don't do well in places without consistent nourishment. I have some good, fast horses here. I'd be more'n happy to do a nice even swap. Could use a good hauling horse, and you look like you could use a quicker ride." Casey chooses to ignore this last comment, and instead turns back to Frederick.
"I call him Steadfast because he has proven himself to be so many a time. As for his being a draft, he just crossed nearly thirty miles of the Great American Desert a day for over a fortnight and a half and never wavered in his bearing. As for his quickness, well, size can be deceiving. Find me another horse like this one here, and I'll be Lilith Rose Hartford to the whole world."
The "one and only" mighty shire draft horse took a long moment to relieve himself before flopping onto the ground and proceeding to roll unceremoniously in the dirt, snorting happily.
"Well then, I respectfully stand down, Casey." Her papa said, attempting to suppress a smile. They walked back towards the house having turned both of their horses over to the food and shelter of the corral. Maxine stood on the porch again, waiting to greet her father and the new stranger in their midst.
"Hello, Papa and visitor! Where have you been riding from in such a heat?"
Maxine's few loose strands of hair are whipped up by the dry wind of the plains and her child stirred in the breeze. She wore a kind smile on her face and looked through a pair of eyes that matched the summer sky. She was undoubtedly the same Maxine that Casey had known as a girl still living on the ranch.
"Where our guest has ridden from is not important right now. It's where she can find a bath and grub that's holding her back from runnin' from the devil."
Maxine's smile pauses on its way to a polite laugh at her Papa's joke when she sees Casey's face appear more clearly under the shade of the porch roof. Casey raises her trail-beaten, sharp brown eyes to meet Maxine's own, inquisitive blue ones. Casey removes her gambler-style hat, and the breath catches in Maxine's throat. A full tumbleweed minute passes before Maxine speaks.
"Lily? Is that…Lily?" She turns, confused, towards her Papa who simply nods in confirmation. Maxine turns back to Casey.
"But how are you still…alive? You…you're an outlaw. There's Pinkerton's everywhere. You were in Bolivia during the shootout andâ€""
"Maxine! Treat your sister with some respect. Outlaw or not she's traveled many roads and has wound up back here, and she's family. Besides, her outlaw status is frankly absurd. She…she was just a little girl and was taken in by that…that roving gang of sonsagunsâ€" but that's for later. Please show your sister into the washroom and help her with her things."
Maxine's eyes drop to the ground. "Y-yes Papa." She steps inside the cool house, bidding Casey to follow.
Inside, Maxine lays her now sleeping baby into an intricately carved rocking cradle in the corner of the main room of the house. She shows Casey to a small room off of the kitchen with wooden floors stained with dried water rings which encircled a fancy pressed tin wash tub big enough to sit in fully.
Maxine passes through the room to the back door which doubles as the outside door to the kitchen, but Casey stops and stares wide-eyed at the tub.
"I've been gone a while I suppose…y'all appear to be doing quite well."
Maxine turns back towards the polished metal object of Casey's wonderment and flinches internally at her free-flowing use of "y'all." Such dirty cowboy slang she has picked up in her years living with our country's filthiest and most immoral degenerates…
Maxine swallows her distaste and responds with the lady-like politeness required of her station.
"Yes, Papa had it installed just two years ago. All the most modern homes have them nowadays."
Maxine hands Casey a large bucket that had been standing in the corner and they both leave through the back kitchen door to the rear of the house. A newly installed windmill-pump well rotates slowly in the hot breeze. Maxine works the handle and Casey holds the bucket out to collect the cool groundwater.
Casey asked only a few awkwardly polite questions on how the family had been fairing, which were answered in terse, clipped tones. Maxine asked her own questions about where Casey had attained such "curious, and unbecoming clothing." This line of questioning on Casey's clothing had quickly ended after Casey finally responded that the clothes fit her line of work better than dresses would have. Maxine's face had gone pale and she had pursed her lips.
Once the tub is filled, Maxine turns to get clothes from her own room for her sister, but Casey calls after her.
"Maxine, I would be most grateful if you would…bring me…well, work pants and a…a shirt please? It's…I would prefer it if…well, it's just safer for me if I can moveâ€""
Maxine silences Casey with a clean motion of her hand and hard blue eyes. When she replies, it is in a voice pinched with forced politeness.
"Casey, please. It's alright. I'll…bring you what you ask for."
Maxine turns, placing her hand feather-like on the white painted door frame, and softens her eyes to look at the starved and weather-beaten figure sitting drenched in the tub now filled with filthy water. She searches with some desperation for the thing that was her sister. Where was she? Where was the sweet darling sister she had picked dandelions and crocuses with by the pond? Was she even still in there, struggling through the confusing, dangerous world of outlaws and gunslingers and other rough types that this new sisterâ€" Casey Long had bullied her into?
Through her distaste and mild disgust, Maxine feels a gentle tugging at her heart when she looks into those same brown eyes that had once watched her own hands knitting a pair of socks for their Mother. Casey had watched Maxine's hands twisting the yarn back and forth with such innocent curiosity that Maxine had been reminded of a kitten she had seen once watching its mother stalk a horsefly for the very first time.
Maxine shakes the image from her head and turns with a sigh to herself and leaves Casey to her pink bar of soap and fresh linen towel.
Maxine came back several minutes later with a pair of Sam's (the middle brother of Casey and Maxine) work pants and a fresh shirt, taking Casey's old, ragged clothing away for what she called washing and mending, but what was really burning and burying.
Casey emerged from the pink foam with two weeks less trail grime on her and dressed in a well-tailored shirt and jeans.
The kitchen table was creaking with plates and various delicious smelling foods which had all been set out by Casey's first real family. They had all been told that she was visiting, but they had not yet seen her, so when Casey stepped awkwardly into the doorway of the kitchen, stopping and putting her hands self-consciously into her pockets with no small amount of shyness, everyone stopped dead in their tracks to give her a good long circus stare.
Her own Momma, who had been heartbroken at her daughter's sudden disappearance in Philadelphia had a glistening of tears in her eyes as she ran and hugged the very bones out of Casey. Casey, unsure of what to do, placed first her left hand on her momma's back, then hugged her fully with both arms.
The rest of the family decided that it was best for them to stay a safe distance away from the stranger.
Everyone sat down, Sam led the family in prayer, and then they settled in to eat the field of food that lay before them. The quiet contented sound of chewing is broken only by the passing of dishes and the knocking of glasses on wood. Eventually, someone had to bring up the question of the stranger sitting at the table. Dr. Richard Arlington (town doctor, Maxine's husband) decides it's going to be him.
"So, Casey…" He pauses to chew, rather rudely, before continuing.
"Where are you harkening from? *gulp* What I mean is… where ya been?"
"Richard! That is very impolite!"
Maxine cuts in, glaring at her husband, her hand going red and then white on her fork.
Casey takes a thoughtful sip from her mug of water, letting the question soak into the ears of her table mates whose ears perked up almost immediately. All of them had also wanted to ask the question but had held back out of politeness. Casey begins slowly and carefully.
"Well, Dr. Arlington, I came riding in from the northeast this past noon. I started in the Midwest and traveled down here over three weeks. I wanted to see how the family wasâ€""
But Doctor Arlington is not to be distracted by turning talk back to how the family's ranch is doing. He snaps his fork down onto the table, clearly flustered.
"No, I think you know what I mean. Where have you been for the last decade? Why did you leave your sisters, brothers, and only family to go join those outlaws?"
Now the table is deadly silent. Even the spoons have stopped their chatter.
"Dr. Arlington, I do consider myself a mighty patient and cool-headed person, and I can understand that y'all's tongues must be near fallin' out of your mouths with questions (at Casey's second 'y'all' of the evening, Maxine nearly drops her fork), but you have been mighty respectful of the privacy of myself which has not gone unnoticed. However, I do ask that you retain that politeness which so covers the rest of the table, and I will answer your questions with the utmost honesty due the kindness you have shown me when it's right. As to where I've been, I do reckon that y'all have been keeping a close eye on the newspapers, and as to the Wild Bunch you should have more sense than to think that I, turn of eight, left this place of my own accord and joined, joined an outlaw gang on my own steam with no external provocation whatsoever sir."
As Casey finishes her speech, she looks unemotionally at her father and mother whose expressions are blank, but hint a blushing. Frederick beats her mother to answering.
"Now Casey, it's not fair what you did to your mother and me. We just wanted to give you the best start on this world. And if any harm came to you from that place, I apologize, I really do but what we did was out of kindness, and charitability. We simply wanted the best for you, and that is one of the top-rated finishing schools in the country."
Casey's tone is gentler now.
"I understand that papa, and I'm sorry for what I said. You and Momma's home was the first in my memory where I felt really at home, and I don't forget acts of goodwill as easily as may be assumed from an outlaw. However, all I want to tell you about my current standing is that I am looking for to clear my name, and that's all I wish to discuss on that topic…please?"
Her voice breaks just the smallest, most undetectable amount at the 'please.' She is sincere, just as she had always been, and Dr. Arlington feels slightly ashamed at his questioning. The talk miraculously turns away from Casey, and starts in on the business of the family.
The Hartfords had made it big in the ranching industry due to the persuading of several large railroading companies to hold car space for their ranch alone. Her aunt and uncle, who had dropped Casey off at the school in Philadelphia, had talked to their two sons about the family's ranch business.
The two sons Carl and Wilbur, to the distaste of much of the family, had moved on to politics in Tammany Hall in New York. Their ranch was now towards the top in the country and they were quite well off. Cisteanne, Casey's middle sister, had been sent off to a different school for ladies since the other one, to the entertainment of the entire table, couldn't quite keep its borders in place. Cisteanne had done quite well and is now married to a wealthy banker in Oregon.
For Casey, the meal was a nice way to catch up on the family's doings while getting a taste of her mother's greatly missed home cooking. But she felt a sort of detachment from the people surrounding her. She had lived a life just too different for too long and enjoyed it too much to go back to an earlier chapter of her youth.
The people surrounding her were nice enough, but they were also the type of people that the gang would go after when robbing a train. Innocent and not going to put up much of a fight. Traveling with their pockets lined with silver, and dripping with gold. These types of people were also sheep. They followed the money and their own doings and successes blindly.
The dinner ended shortly after Maxine left the table to tend to her fussing son (who was named Frederick after his grandfather). After the table was cleared and the dishes washed, Casey went out to Steadfast and began to brush him down with a set of the ranch's new brushes.
Steadfast's ears droop back and his gigantic nose twitches in happiness as the sweat, dust, and sores are cleaned from his aching back, neck, and legs.
"You're a fine and noble beast there Steadfast, and I would still be up north or scattered amongst various coyote dens had you not stuck around. Probably the second one. I am sorry you've got a damn fool like me to put on your bridle and saddle every day."
Steadfast's eyelids droop further in response. Casey stoops to pick a burr out of the frog of one of his hooves, and is startled when a jaunty voice comes from behind.
"Whoa there Lily, let the stable boy do that for you!"
Casey's hands go cold and her fingers slip on the smooth wood of the hoof pick, causing Steadfast to stamp his hoof down. The pick Casey had been using on the burr lands in the mud at her feet, and a hand belonging to none other than Philip Wheatly scoops it up. He straightens up, pick still in hand, but does not return it.
"I was out at the north post about ten miles watching the herd, but once I heard that none other than Lily Hartford was back on the homestead, I just had to ride back out and say howww-dyyy."
His haughty grin shows his teeth and squints his eyes in a way not completely dissimilar from that of a pig. His mocking tone makes his sarcasm run like mud in the sun.
"Well, you've said it. Now go tend the damn cows before I make your guts more of a wall decoration than a belt weight. By the way, you appear to be a regular at the watering hole in town. I know a man who'll outfit you with a sturdier belt which you may be needing soon. If you'd like his name, I have it right here somewhere…"
Casey mock fishes in her duster's pockets for a notebook. The dog-smile drops quickly from Philip's face.
"Ah, never mind, he deals speedy-like, and I worry that might be a bit too much for you."
Casey promptly stops looking for her pocketbook and takes the hoof pick out from Philip's hands.
"We'll, aren't you an ear off your father's ass? Why, I oughta tell you about your Alaska seekin' folk. I reckon you don't know much about them!"
Now it's Casey's turn to freeze and stare wide-eyed.
"What do you know about them? Tell me!"
She gets a fierce, almost desperate glint in her eye. This makes Philip smile to himself. So, that's what she was here about. Her filthy parents... He takes on an air of aloofness and tips his hat back on his sweaty forehead.
"Well, wouldn't you like to know? I don't believe I'll tell you now, but I'll fill in the story tomorrow. It's too late to jaw now. Especially over such a long, and sad story as that."
His grin widens as he watches the muscles in Casey's body tense into iron. She holds one calloused finger to his face and spits as she speaks.
"Fine. But first, you're going to tell me one thing; why'd you point your gun at me when I was just a little girl? I know it was you, and that it really happened. Don't try to snake tongue that off."
"Ha, yes, I don't deny that was me."
Philip settles back in his boots, a small smile on his face as if remembering a fond memory. Then, he shakes his head.
"No, I think that little detail will have to wait as well. Sorry Lady Lilll-yy."
He spits out her name like a piece of horseshit he'd just discovered in his dinner. Casey snaps. She jams the heel of her boot into the soft flesh of his stomach, throwing him against the fence. Then, she leaps on him, holding her knife to his throat.
"Woah there! You're pretty speedy for a fanccyy little dame who likes to play cowww-boyyyy dress up and trot along on a pony while waving her toy pistol around!"
Philip is mocking now, and Casey draws a thin line of blood from his neck. Philip notes that Casey stands a little less than five and a half feet, and looks to weigh about 110lbs soaking wet. Nothing compared to his towering 6-foot height and immense 200lb bulk. He should be able to take her. Except that she's surprisingly strong. Wiry even. And he's old with a gut that shows his saloon habits despite his months on the trail. He also feels a twinge of stiff fingers and joints just beginning to creak with age and weathering.
Philip considers this for a second before concluding that the trail has wrung her of her humanity and left her with an animal's strength. He can't quite move the arm that's pinned stiffly behind him, but he doesn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing she's got him cornered. He forces his shoulders to relax.
"You say my right name right or I'llâ€""
"Do what? Cut the throat that can give you the answers? *snork* you won't do no such thing you damned bitch. Come on! You ain't never killed nobody. I paid attention to that much in the damn papers you whore around with."
Casey lets the knife drop from Philip's neck, then drags the blade slowly along his chest over where his heart is. A thin smile of blood begins to drip down his shirt. Philip suppresses a strangled whine of pain behind his clenched teeth. The blade is dull from use on the trail, and the rough edge only adds to the pain clawing at his neck and now chest.
"Next time, I'll be putting about three more inches worth of pressure on the blade. It will sink into your cold, dead heart like a boot in a cow patty on a hot July day. If you're lucky. If you're not lucky, it will be a limb you won't necessarily need anymore. That way you can live with the memory of the time you crossed Casey Long. Think of it as a good luck charm. It'll remind you to stay the hell away from me."
She slams Philip's head again onto the fence post and steps back to let him struggle to his feet.
Casey is much stronger than he had anticipated. Much stronger despite her three week march through the plains of America. Philip stands and wipes the perspiration from his black and white streaked mustache and beard. Despite his time in a good house with good food, he's still nearing his late 50s, and he feels every year of it. And Casey had been right about his wallowing in beer and rum. He places his worn ranger-style hat on his head and spits at the dirt by Casey's feet.
"Despite your impoliteness, I'm still going to share the story you asked for with you. If only to tell you who your blood is before I kill you thrice as painfully as you threatened to kill me."
Philip stalks off, muttering much the same words that the sheriff had muttered to his bottle of whiskey when Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy and the rest of the Wild Gang had made their escape from his posse.
Casey uneasily puts the brushes back in the stable shed and slides Steadfast an apple she swiped from the table before walking back to the porch where her Papa and Momma have just stepped out onto the porch with a fancy-looking bottle of whiskey and three glasses between them.
Fortunately, they had missed Casey's encounter with Philip. She didn't want them worrying about her or thinking that she'd brought trouble with her to their porch.
Casey and her mother sit down on the rocking chairs that have been drug out onto the porch from the house and her Papa pulls up the chair that Maxine had sat in earlier. Papa snaps the cork off of a bottle of whiskey and proceeds to pour the oily beverage into two glasses. He passes one to Casey, holding his own out in cheers. Her mother, never a fan of alcohol, offers up her mug of water. They all sip their drinks and sit in silence for a few moments. It's Frederick who speaks first.
"Now, I understand that you want your privacy, and I respect it. But please. Your mother and I ought to know where you've been. We won't go chatterratting to the rest of the family about your journeys and Hell'l freeze over 'fore we turn you in. We just want to know what happened in Philadelphia."
Casey takes another long sip of her whiskey (earning a look of distaste which quickly flickers across Julia's face). She can see that this is a quesiton they have been wanting to ask for the past decade. That it has kept them both up on many a long night while they worried if she was even still alive. Hanging on to each and every news article that had her name in it.
The crickets fill the silence as the stars begin to peek out from the veil of night.
"Yes, I suppose it's only fair. I don't mean to cause you any more distress than I know I already have. Truth is, Uncle Marty and Aunt Bev dropped me off at that…that damned place, and saw me off just as kindly as they could, making sure I was comfortable and all. But as soon as they were out of sight of the warden, she became a different beast. All of them so-called 'teachers' there would do horrible things to all of us. They would pit us against each other in manners classes by having two or three of us stand in the center of a circle and stand as still and stiff as we could. These competitions would go on for sometimes three or four hours before one of us would pass out from our legs going numb. They would force the loser to do the winning girl's chores which often included hours of scrubbing toilets with your own handkerchief...the way that some of the girl's knees looked afterâ€""
Casey breaks off and stares distractedly at the ground, her mind going back to Philadelphia. To her just-turned eight-year-old self, kneeling on the floors of that so-called school for ladies scrubbing bathroom tiles with a handkerchief her mother had made just for her. Her father and mother had set down their glasses and were staring wide-eyed at Casey, identical looks of shock and outrage on their faces.
"Casey, I…I…we didn't know. If you had just writ us, then we would have come back to get you, come hell or high water even if it meant dragging ourselves there by foot. We didn'tâ€"" Casey shakes her head.
"No. I did write you, but they held our mail back. They didn't even provide us with our own paper. All letters had to be writ out during cursive time, and we were carefully observed. Each letter had to be approved before it was placed in the mail, and I don't even think most of 'em were sent out even then."
Casey takes another sip of the amber oil swirling in her glass. It warms her throat and stomach. She continues to stare out into the fields of crickets and June bugs which were now starting their chorus for the night. Her voice is steady and low when she speaks again.
"They were most particular about writing properly, they were. Made sure that our hands were positioned correctly by using wooden blocks and tying our hands and feet down in certain positions to maintain good posture. They were quite fond of the leather belt and wooden stick too...so...you can understand why I left that damned hellhole of a place in the manner I did. It really wasn't too hard. Despite their rules and restrictions, they really should have kept the dorm windows under stiffer lock and key...they were truly horrible to us there at that place. Truly horrible."
Another silence follows this story.
"Well, I left that place and hopped the train as I don't believe you know. Then when it was stopped, I was taken up by Butch Cassidy's Wild Gang, and taken in by none other than the Sundance Kid. But when the train stopped and the gang started walking down the isles holding people up for their money and valuables, I saw a young boy who was holding a..."
And Casey tells the story. Just as she had told Mary back in the tack shop, she now tells it to her mother and father and the thousands of chirruping crickets and June bugs and stars. When she finished, the moon was at its zenith, and the stars were hidden in its glowing shadow. The three sit in silence. Their glasses are empty and standing silently still on the small wooden table. Casey hadn't looked at her parents once, and they hadn't made any attempt to interrupt her narrative, afraid that Casey would remember where she was and stop. Finally, her father breaks the silence. He sounds almost as weary as if he had just walked along the thousands of miles of trail in Casey's story himself.
"Casey, why did you come back?"
"Because there's things I want to know."
She turns and gives him that deadly stare, where her eyes appear to glint like a snake's.
"Why did you send only me to the school when my other sisters didn't?"
"Now, that's just not true! We sent Câ€""
"You know what I mean. You sent my sister when she was thirteen, and I know it wasn't because you thought she would run away like me. Was it because Philip pointed his gun at me? Tell me the truth."
Frederick is lost for words and Julia's small frame is pulled taught. Casey had only been shooting in the dark. She didn't actually think that her being sent away and Philip's odd threat were connected, but as she had been telling the story, she had realized that the two events had happened shortly apart from each other. The man she had been shot by in the saloon just a few weeks ago had also reminded her of Philip, and had prompted her visit down south to begin with.
Maybe it really had been about him all along and not just Casey's odd mannerisms and dislike to duties of the house. But seeing now the reactions of her parents confirmed that her shot had hit its mark, although rather unexpectedly. It was her mother who answered her pointed question, in a rather shrill and unnerved tone.
"Casey, you were just a little girl. How could you remember something that happened nearly ten years ago correctly? I told you then that it didn't happen, and that story has just gone to your head. You're far too old forâ€""
Casey jumps up suddenly, knocking over her chair and causing Frederick and Julia to nearly jump out of their skins. She sees that they are afraid of her. Afraid of what she might do in her anger. This only serves to infuriate and hurt her further.
"NO. I know what I saw. Stop trying to tell me what I saw was just a devil's eyeglass. Why'd Philip pull that gun on me?"
Now her father is standing.
"Damn it! You can't ride in here looking for food and a bed and want us to defend you at the table when the whole family's just wondering where you've been roaming around to for the past ten years and then accuse your mother and me of lying! I didn't teach you to speak in such a way. Damn that Sundance Kid and his lot. Philip's a good man. Same with Victor and Michael. They put up with a lot of horseshit in Alaska. They saved you from Alaska. You have no right to speak their names in such a way. Why don't you go talk to Philip yourself if you're such a big girl now? We were only doing what we thought was right at the time. If you only came here to kick up old cattle shit, you can turn tail and skedaddle the hell out of here with that damned horse of yours and go back to whatever hell hole you came out of."
Her eyes still stare cold and hard at her father. It was a showdown shut down abruptly by Julia.
"Stop this! Both of you! I understand your tie, Casey, but you would do better to show some respect. And Frederick, please. This is your daughter."
Casey and Frederick each take a step back from the other, but do not relax their shoulders.
"Please, let's just go to bed. Casey, we made up Angeline's room. She's not home at the moment, and I'm sure she would be more than happy to have you there."
Casey lowers her eyes, ashamed. She isn't accustomed to losing her temper twice in one day.
"Yes, momma. Thank you."
Casey and her Momma turn to walk inside the house.
"Are you coming, Frederick?"
"No, I think I'll just...just give me a minute to think."
"Alright then."
"Goodnight Casey."
"Papa, I...I didn't mean..."
"Casey, it doesn't matter. Goodnight."
"Yes, Goodnight."