Annie Oakley's Arc

Chapter 3 of 13

They rode out before the sun cleared the trees. Annie sat her paint horse, a tan-and-white mare with a bright, silly way of tossing her head. Lainey rode beside her on a spotted Appaloosa, calm even when the paint danced sideways at a stump. The road was flat here. Annie kept her hands loose on the reins the way her mother had shown her once, back when her mother still stood up to teach things. A mile in, Annie's stomach turned over. She swallowed. It turned again. "Lainey." Her voice came out thin. "I'm gonna be sick." Lainey swung down before Annie finished the sentence. She caught the paint's bridle and steadied her while Annie slid off and stumbled to the ditch. Annie threw up what little water she had drunk. Her knees hit the dirt. She stayed there with her hat in one hand and her hair in the other. Lainey tied both horses to a fence rail. She came back with her canteen and crouched beside Annie in the grass. "Rinse," she said. Annie rinsed and spat. "I can't do this alone." "I know." "You said the fork. You said you had your own trail." Lainey looked down the road, then back the way they had come. Annie watched her think. Lainey's jaw set the way it had at the church, when she had hummed the first note of the hymn under her breath to give Annie something to follow. "The thing hitting the farms moves at night," Lainey said. "It'll still be there next week. Or the week after." "Your neighbor," Annie said. "The one with the kids." "She's still got a door. She's still got a rifle." Lainey capped the canteen. "You've got no door." Annie sat back on her heels. "You don't have to." "I'm going to." Lainey stood and offered a hand. "Every step. Sister's town, then the next, then the camp when you're ready. I'll hum if I have to. I'll stand in the back if I have to." Annie took the hand. She got up slow. The paint horse pushed her nose against Annie's shoulder and blew warm air down her collar. Annie laughed once, weak, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "Every step," she said. "Every step." Lainey checked the girth on Annie's saddle and then her own. She swung up on the Appaloosa. Annie climbed back onto the paint. Her stomach still felt hollow, but a new thing sat under the hollow now. Someone was staying. Someone had chosen it out loud. They turned the horses toward the sister's town. Annie thought of the trail Lainey was leaving behind, the tracks that only showed at night, the farm with the door and the rifle. She would owe that farm something later. She did not know what yet. She rode.