“That’s a load of bull to me and you know it, Bell.”
“If you want to be the sheriff, act the part.”
“It’s not enough that I’m out here manning the town with you?”
“You don’t seem to think so. And if I’m being frank, I’ve not a clue why you want to do this if you’re acting so skittish about it. You’d be better off staying at home if you’re too good for this.”
“I’m not doing anything, I’m staying right put.” Childs stared directly at her partner in the dingy saloon and saw him purse his lips smugly.
“Good,” his eyes widened imperceptibly as he pursed his lips tighter, threatening to fall right off his face. “I thought so. Now let’s dodge out of here.” Bell sat up from his stool and didn’t wait for Childs to follow, merely tipped his hat at the owner and walked out.
They stepped outside and Bell put his hands in his pockets, evaluating the small town as his eyes scanned the area. They started walking in the direction of the Sheriff’s office, and Childs’ house several paces down.
“You’ve been here long enough.”
“Too long.” Childs muttered almost inaudibly.
A ghost of a smile shadowed on Bell’s lips. “I think you know what you’re doing. I’m not here to hold your hand. I’ll just keep an eye out.”
“It’s not like anything’s going to happen, huh?”
“Why? You nervous?”
“Far from it.”
An actual smile stretched on Bell’s lips and he regarded at his partner. “Maybe you’ll get a glimpse of that Sandrider.”
“The Sandrider, eh. Is that the new nickname?” Childs echoed the name as she tested it out.
“Sandrider, Shadow Kid, whatever. It’s all the same to me.”
Childs narrowed her eyes as she crossed her arms. She didn’t realize she’d been staring directly at one of the townsfolk as she sunk into her reverie. When she snapped out of her pensiveness, the person in question stared back quizzically at the pair more curious than offended.
Bell caught the look and took another glance at Childs, much more softened than he usually offered. “It’ll take a while for some of them to get used to a lady roughing up the bad guys.”
“You’ve got no problem with it?”
Bell’s eyes slowly met Childs’ gaze and he looked at her in a way that could only be described as something a man would look like if a cow had just spoken up and insulted his mother, except this man didn’t care about the talking cow and instead was quite scandalized about how rude someone could possibly be.
“Doesn’t matter squat to me. I only want the best for this town and you seem to be the next best thing.”
“Gee, thanks.” Childs smiled as the anxiety that was supposedly lingering in her body eased away. She hadn’t realized how nervous she was, but she felt fortunate that she’d realized it now rather than before.
“Let it get to your head, I don’t care. You’ve been walking around with your nose to the ground all day. Chin up, kid. But don’t stick your nose out, never leave it in the air for a bird to plant in.”
“It’s good luck if a bird gets one on ya.”
“Not if it shits in your nose. There’s a reason brown-nosers are called brown-nosers.”
“My nostrils aren’t as big as yours.”
Bell narrowed his eyes as he shot a dangerous look to his partner. “A hawk could warm up an egg in yours.”
“Whoa, okay!” Childs threw her hands up in mock submission. “Don’t need to be so sensitive.”
“Hey, hold on.” Childs followed Bell’s gaze and noted where he was looking. A mark drawn on the sand was etched onto the dirt in front of the office.
“Well, would ya look at that. First day on the job.”
“I thought we’d seen the last of him.” Bell crouched to his knees as he tilted his head to one side, then to the other.
“The infamous Sandrider?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You’ll never see the last of him.” Childs muttered to herself as she scoped the area, noticing several boot prints that fade into the dirt. She walked up to them, noting the small boot size. When she crouched lower, she noted that the strides were larger than a child’s foot. There was more that didn’t feel right to these prints than its disappearing into thin air.
“Just some kids messing around, I think. This guy’s becoming some freakish legend.” He took another moment to examine the mark before standing up again.
Bell started to walk to the office when he turned around, realizing Childs wasn’t follow him. “Hey, you going to wait for it to rain or are you coming in?”
“Yeah, yeah, in a minute. Just give me a bit alright? I have to go on home anyway, check up on some things.”
“Whatever you say.”
Bell left Childs behind and she stood back, watching the mark with contemplative eyes. She moved around it for a bit, craning on her tip toes and tilting to the side in hopes to see something different. The mark was varied, but somehow there was always something similar about it. It was simple enough, a circle, an X inside it, and a triangle. The triangle was always drawn differently though, always facing a different direction and this is what caught Childs’ attention the most. Nobody seemed to know what it meant, and everyone agreed that the randomness was another layer to throw off the clues.
Childs stood at each point, looking down, then up, and scanning the area around her. There seemed to be nothing of significance that stood out to her. She cracked her neck, ready to make her way to her house when she looked back down at the mark and realized she’d only looked at the points.
She looked back down at the drawing and stood at the centre of the circle where the longest side of the triangle intersects with the middle of the X. The drawing was made in such a way this time that the triangle was pointed directly to her house.
Childs glanced around her again to ensure nobody was following her, and she nonchalantly walked toward her house.
When she got inside, she closed the door swiftly, keeping her back to it as she spoke up to the general silence.
“My pistol’s holstered. You can rest easy.”
When she was answered with no response, she tried again. “You couldn’t have just waited to be invited, huh? Everyone wants to meet you.”
Again, there was nothing.
“If you’ve got a point to any of this, I suggest you start giving me some answers. Although I do enjoy this place, I don’t like it enough to start having a conversation with the walls.”
There was a low whistle that came from the top of the stairs, just off to the right on the opposite of the kitchen. The foot of the stairs was opposite to Childs, so she couldn’t see at the top of the flight; a flaw she’d addressed the entirety of her childhood, nobody listened.
“Well, shoot. I was starting to get all warm and easy with the sound of your voice, Sheriff.” The voice had a soft timbre, something that sounded like it came more from the gut than it did from breath. Childs needed to hear it speak more, so she stalled for time.
“Not a Sheriff just yet, don’t think I’m at liberty to say, but I guess we can share some secrets, right?”
“Absolutely.” The owner of the voice wasn’t giving much way. Childs supposed this was an expert tactic. Even that singular word told her nothing significant, it still sounded unnatural and foreign compared to the whistle.
“Are you going to tell me why you let yourself in, or am I going to have to call my friend over the Sheriff’s next door?”
“I trust you’ll keep our little tussle to ourselves.”
“You seem to think I’ve got a lot of trust for somebody I’ve never met before. How’d you think I’ll trust you right away?”
“Same way I trust you’re not going to shoot me.”
Childs made slow, tentative steps toward the foot of the stairs. It would take more than five minutes to reach it at her current pace, but she hoped she would somehow find a way to catch even a glimpse of this faceless intruder.
“You know I can’t shoot you from up here, already told you I like this house. Nothing’s going to make me want to shoot up the floorboards.”
“I mean when we meet up again, sunshine.”
“Abandonment issues, I see. Can’t go a day without seeing me?”
“I think we both know who’s more eager between the two of us, Sheriff. Meet me at the saloon. You’ve already made it this far, I’ve faith you know who you’ll be looking for.”
“I never got a name, wise guy.”
A breathy laugh came from the stairs shortly after, Childs still couldn’t place judgement on the voice. “You already have one, don’t be cheeky.”
There was shuffling heard from upstairs, and Childs struggled to gauge the weight of the steps, but they stopped immediately after several moments of movement. She realized then that their owner was waiting.
“How are we going to do this then?”
“I knew there’s a reason I liked you. There’s manners on you. Leave first, Sheriff. Walk far away. I’ll know if you straggle, don’t try anything. Go anywhere but the tavern. Give it fifteen.”
Childs walked out of the house after several tentative moments. She contemplated just how wild she must have been to be taking orders from a bandit. Curiosity got the best of her, so she made her way to make another round of the town, making sure to avoid the tavern on her route back until the time passed.
Not wanting to waste any more time on her account or that of her faceless intruder, she did as she was instructed, waited fifteen minutes before returning to the tavern and scanned the room. There were several pairs of men wandering around, a group sitting on the stools, and a figure sitting by the farthest wall. Of course.
She approached the table as she took note of everything she possibly could. A black cowboy hat was placed on the chair, the figure’s feet were up on another chair, and its head was leaned down into its chest with a brown hat covering its head. Childs knew inevitably that a pair of eyes would be watching her.
She took notice of the boot, and it matched her estimation of the boot print near the dirt drawing pointing to her house. There was a large potato sack leaned against the wall next to the figure, and Childs stood directly beside the chair with the hat before being allowed to sit.
“You can’t physically ride sand, can you? That’s a bit dangerous, even in these deserts. What’s your story, cowboy?”
“I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at, Sheriff.” There was another breathy laugh, and Childs recognized it from earlier. Just then, the figure took its feet from the chair and crossed its legs, before deftly moving for its hat to reveal a mass of dark wavy hair cascading from its hold.
“More parts cow than I am a man.” A woman’s voice escaped from a toothy smile, and she laughed liberally at her own joke. Childs finally got a proper glimpse of the Sandrider’s face. Dark-coloured eyes lit up as she finally regarded her companion, and Childs would have been damned to admit she was relatively blown away, or at the very least just utterly shocked.
When she said nothing, the woman laughed again, her eyes somehow lighting up brighter than they were. “What? This town so full of hicks and horses, you’ve never seen another woman in your life?”
Childs narrowed her eyes, scrambled to recompose herself. She nodded at the potato sack, wanting to divert the conversation and also pursue the supposed interrogation she had in mind. “What’s in the potato sack?”
“Exactly what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“Potatoes.” The woman said it with seething certainty, her matter-of-fact smugness tainted the word like it was the funniest thing someone could have ever said.
“What do you carry in that other sack?” Childs nodded to the empty sack sitting beside it, haphazardly shoved away as if there wasn’t wholehearted attempts to actually conceal it. She glanced at the outlaw, and she could sense a staggering in her thoughts. She was getting closer.
“What do I carry in that potato sack, Sheriff? Apples.”
Childs couldn’t help the smile that escaped her lips, and she regarded the belongings and looked back at the woman.
“Carrying a lot of things, huh? Almost seems like you don’t want it to look like you’ve got heavy loads to lug around everywhere.”
“Yeah, well, travelling around and hauling this food in that blazin’ sun’s doing no favours for me.”
“You travel alone?”
A dangerous glint sparked in the woman’s eyes, and Childs took note of that as well. “Something like that.”
“Why do you steal, great Sandrider?”
She tilted her head, the ignited spark still sitting in her expression. “I do it for the thrill.”
“Lucky for you, you’ve always managed to target the traveller towns. Is that on purpose?”
“Everything’s got a purpose, Sheriff. Even you got the wit to know that.”
“I do, so what’s your story?”
“I don’t have that sack to take. I have it to bring in.”
Childs found herself stumped by the woman’s words, already beginning to get there with the initial confusion of the voice and the general shock of the identity revelation. The woman caught the look, and looked momentarily as if she’d regretted every single thing she’d done leading up to this point. Still, she continued.
“I don’t do it for me, actually. I’ve got someone else with me.”
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
“My kid.”
Childs stared at the woman suspiciously, not entirely sure she could trust the answer. She was deliberating on certain responses, but the woman mistook the look and snapped at the opportunity before Childs could reply.
“Don’t give me the good bible talk, Sheriff, I’ll have none of it. I’m not here for the judgement or the pity either.”
“I’ll be giving you neither.”
“Good.”
The conversation dived into its first unexpected silence, and it was more parts curious than it was awkward. Still, Childs was left with a lingering sense of discomfort, so she spoke up before she could be interrupted again.
“Where’s your kid when you do your runs?”
“With me.”
“Really?” She couldn’t help the eager curiosity that escaped impulsively, and she immediately saw the woman’s quizzical smile in response.
“Yeah, what’d you think I actually keep in that other potato sack?”
She pieced the information together, finally beginning to understand the fragmented pieces of the grander story that was being laid out for her. She looked again at the neglected potato sack. She couldn’t see it in the dimly lit room, but she figured there would be some punctured holes in the bag.
“I don’t suppose apples need to breathe, huh?”
The woman smiled mischievously and wiggled her eyebrows. “Special apples I got, straight from Europe.”
“So what’s different? Why are we here?”
“I know that you can help me, and you’re the only one I trust.”
“Somehow, that sounds like a flightless bird.”
“If you’re not going to take me seriously, you can pretend I was even here, and you can forget about your precious career-”
“Relax, what am I doing?”
“You can help me.” The woman reiterated again, and Childs was growing mildly impatient.
“I’m not giving you a ransom, I’m not going to enable your theft.”
“Don’t tell anybody I was here.”
The remark stupefied Childs, and she sat in dumbfounded silence. Then, she broke out in her own breathy laugh, and the woman regarded her coolly. “I can’t well pretend you weren’t here, you already made your mark.”
“That’s nothing, play it off with rumour. That’s what it’s there for.”
“Don’t tell me you fabricated all of that yourself.”
The woman smiled genuinely, grew wider as the seconds passed. Childs already knew the answer, and she was both parts impressed and ready to laugh. “Wow, you really did.”
“It’s not hard to get people talking.”
“Riddle me this then, are you the Shadow Kid? Did you make that up too?”
The woman met Childs’ gaze and smiled easily again, something of pride painting her face this time. “Baby’s gotta have something.”
Childs laughed, disbelieving that this conversation was somehow even occurring. It all seemed too easy, too rational. She shouldn’t have been so impressed with the newly-appointed identity of Shadow Kid. She shouldn’t have felt the need to envision a tiny version of this woman’s figure running around doing scores with her. It was all so bizarre, and still, she could understand why there was a need to take and not establish a proper place anywhere for too long. It wasn’t exactly right, it wasn’t actually something Childs could condone, but she understood it.
The woman gave her a questioning look as if she was waiting for something else. She had a tentative look, something bordering on unease and urgency. Childs recomposed herself and sat up to indicate her attentiveness.
“You know I can’t stay, you know there’s no other way you can help me. I can’t stick around.” There was no need to say it, no explanation needed. I’m on the run, was lingering after the silence, and Childs didn’t need much more elaboration. The woman continued voluntarily.
“It’s not for me. It’s for her.” She imperceptibly cringed, realizing she’d slipped up on that personal admission.
Childs left it alone, addressed something else instead. “Could I meet her?”
The woman’s eyes slowly met Childs’ and she smiled sadly. “Afraid not, that’s not a party for right now.”
Childs nodded her head, understanding the consequences and the technicalities.
“I’ve always liked the cat and mouse game. It’s a wild ride. But I do it for her now. Her dad’s a cow herder. Can still say he’s a cowboy. Equal parts cow and boy.” The woman smiled ruefully. “Guess she really is my kid.”
“You can’t leave her here?”
The woman stared at Childs and seemed for an impossibly long moment to be looking into Childs. She sat perfectly still, and it unnerved Childs, but it was only after another moment did she realize that the woman was really considering the option. Instead, she stood up abruptly, snapping out of her reverie and even mildly starting Childs.
“So, what’s the verdict? Are you going to help or not?”
“Seems like I don’t have much of a choice. You’ll do what you want anyway.”
“You have a cute, long-winded way of saying no.”
“And you have terrible judgement of verbal cues.”
“Whatever that means.” The woman gathered her belongings and tucked her hair back into her hat, she untucked her shirt and she toted the sack over her shoulder.
“See you around then, Sheriff.”
“It’s just Beth.” She stared at the retreating woman and called out, already wanting to severely reprimand herself for her foot-in-mouth disease. “Am I going to get any other name from you?”
“Alright, just Beth.” The woman spoke over her shoulder. “It starts with S.”
She stole a glance at Beth and smiled, shaking the potato sack she was carrying as she breezed away.
