Work Text:
Growls and dog paws skittering on the floor woke her up that night.
Rose pushed off the blanket. Crescent and her pups didn’t go on alert idly. A stray cat or coyotes in the nearby hills wouldn’t set them off, nor would the night coach rolling in the distance. Most nights, they hopped on the bed and slept in perfect silence, folded snug against her, their furry bodies radiating more heat than her old coal stove. Finding them gone now, Rose knew something was amiss.
She swung her legs down, wiggling her feet into woolen slippers. The damp cold of the wooden floor reached her even through the wool. That and anxiety made her shiver, and she fumbled a bit before managing to light the bedside candle. Its shaky light filled the cramped bedroom, reflecting off the windows. If harmless troublemakers had alerted the dogs—such as the young men in town who liked to dare each other to run by her house and peep in windows—seeing her lights come on would be enough to scatter them.
If they were real outlaws...well, the dogs and Rose’s shotgun should do the job.
Unless they were the kind of outlaws who sought her out specifically. Rose's new name and the tiny homestead on the outskirts of a new town had given her a fresh start; but a widow living alone spurred gossip, and gossip spread far.
By the bedroom door, Midnight let out an unhappy whine. Rose steadied herself, grabbed the shotgun from under the bed, and shuffled out into the living room. The dogs spilled after her, running to scratch and sniff at the front door. Crescent, head cocked, stared toward the window—then, abruptly, she threw back her head and howled. The other two immediately joined her, their howls more bark-like, as they had less wolf in them.
These weren’t aggressive, home-defending noises. The dogs knew whoever had disturbed their sleep, and they didn’t consider that person a threat.
Only one visitor could show up uninvited in the dead of night and not send Rose’s dogs on the attack.
Rose swore and ran to the stove, tossing in a fresh pail of coals and turning it high. She pulled on boots and a coat, checked the shotgun—never hurt to be careful—and opened the door. Midnight and Shadow immediately exploded, yipping, into the night. Crescent stuck close, her coarse fur rubbing against Rose’s knees.
It didn’t take long for trouble to appear. At the far end of the property, where Rose’s raggedy vegetable garden met a patch of thin woods, a horse trotted into view. As the dogs jumped up around it, the rider dropped off, thumping to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Rose swore again and ran to the horse, who had reared and was snorting threateningly to scare the dogs away from his fallen rider.
“I swear to Saint Peter’s own name, Ada Beeman.” Rose caught the horse’s reins to settle it, while the rider moved slowly on the ground, groaning. “I told you not to show up like this again. I don’t want any part of this. I told you I wouldn’t help you again—I’d just as gladly set the dogs on you, I would.”
“Sorry, love.” The rider rolled onto one side, and long blonde hair spilled out from under her crumpled hat. “Didn’t have much choice. Spot of trouble…ah, over in Split Oak.”
“I don’t want any of your trouble," Rose snapped. "How many new holes you got in you, this time? You can ride right on to town—there’s a barber there’ll help you. I’m closed for business.”
“Just one,” gasped the rider.
“One what?”
“One new hole.” She spoke between groans. “Tricky spot, though. I’m not sure…” A strangled noise tore from her throat. “Not sure a barber can fix this one.”
Rose hated herself for releasing the horse's reins and kneeling by the woman. Up close, she could see the wet patches on the torn linen shirt under the dark coat, smell the blood mixed with sweat and the waft of horse.
There was a lot of blood. Some dried, some still flowing. The moon wasn’t quite full yet, but it gave enough light to see the gray Ada’s skin, the way her shaking fingers clenched spasmodically.
“Well, Devil take you,” spat Rose. She shook off the coat to pass it around the other woman’s shoulders. “That’s a damned lot of blood. I hope it hurts like hell’s own burning cauldrons.”
“Does,” Ada mumbled, then she let out a pained hiss as Rose gently tugged her up.
“Can’t do anything here in the turnip patch. Better walk over to the house, or I swear I’ll leave you here for the coyotes to eat.” Rose jammed her shoulder under Ada’s, to help her stand. “Won’t even say a prayer over your carcass. Coyotes eating you would be too good—keep moving, damn it. I can’t carry you.”
Crescent whined softly, responding to the fear in her voice. Her cold nose bumped Rose’s thigh again.
They took an eternity to reach the house. As they collapsed to the threadbare rug by the stove, Rose kicked the door shut and hoped the horse had enough sense to find her two-stall stable by itself. She wouldn't waste time seeing to its comfort, when its rider was bleeding out in her sitting room.
Habit kicked in swiftly. She stoked the fire, set a water pail to boil, then lit every candle in the house. She scrubbed her hands with rough mutton soap until they hurt, then got out a pile of towels, a neatly-folded bandage strip, a clean washbasin, and the full contents of her medicine cabinet.
Falling back into the role of gunshot-patcher was easy. Too easy. And every time, it reminded her of those long years married to the monster who'd forced to do this every week.
"Lie still." She pulled off Ada’s coat, then cut the shirt, revealing a blood-slick, torso. She cleaned the blood with a water-soaked towel and found the gaping wound a couple inches below the left shoulder.
“Told you…’s tricky,” slurred Ada—then she screamed hoarsely as Rose pressed a clean towel over the wound.
“I need to slow the bleeding. Tell me the bullet went out the other side.”
“Doubt it,” hissed Ada. “Feels—lodged.”
Rose checked, swearing quietly when she saw no second wound on Ada’s back.
“Feels—like tugging.” Ada groaned. “Stuck. Sharp pain when I move.”
“The bullet went in through your pectoralis minor muscle. A lot of important stuff under there—nerves and tendons responsible for motion, for one. Can you squeeze my hand? Do you feel when I do this?” With her free hand, Rose trailed light touches along Ada’s arm. “Good. You retain sensation. The sharp pain and lodged feeling are probably because the bullet nicked your brachial plexus.”
Ada grinned. It looked more like a pained rictus. “Barber wouldn’t know that.”
“No. What you should’ve found is a surgeon. Devil burn you, Ada, I wish you’d just…” Rose cut herself off, gritting her teeth, and she pressed another clean towel on top of the blood-soaked one.
“You’re the best surgeon I know,” hummed Ada.
“I’m no kind of surgeon at all. They don’t let women call themselves that, anyway."
But it was true that thanks to her father, three years of medical school back east, and another decade patching up gunshot wounds on the frontier, Rose had the ability to deal with this better than most anyone. Except ability didn’t equal desire.
“Judging by the angle, this missed your heart by a half-inch, if that.” She opened her instruments box and dropped several into the hot water pail. “I’ll need to get the bullet and check for fragments. It'll hurt.”
“Won’t be…first time.” Ada groaned again as Rose increased the pressure on her wound. “Now, love. That feels almost vindictive.”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear you. I don’t—just be silent, Ada. I think I’d rather take a bullet through the chest myself than another conversation with you.”
Rose’s insides twisted a little at the cruelty of her own words. But right then, if someone asked her to choose between facing down a hot-barreled shotgun or another night with Ada Beeman, legendary gunslinger and reckless disregarder of all rules of propriety and safety, she’d have chosen the gun, no hesitation.
Her life would’ve been so much easier had Ada not inserted herself into it.
Well, no—it would’ve been easier had Ada extricated herself as quickly as she’d come, Rose amended. If the gunslinger hadn’t arrived into Rose’s life at all, Rose would be dead by now. Ada had saved her.
Rose had done her best to repay the favor, but this was getting ridiculous.
The silence focused her. She pulled out her instruments with clean tongs and lay them on a towel, then lathered the wound, still seeping blood, with soap, and rinsed it thoroughly with warm water. Finally, as she’d done many times before, she probed the edges of the wound with the blunt end of a surgical staff, told Ada to brace herself and not move, then dug in the tissue forceps.
Ada arched and let out a strangled scream. Rose ignored it, letting experience guide her hand swiftly, with the forceps, deeper into the wound. She recognized the familiar vibration as the tip of the forceps scraped metal, and with the confidence of long practice, she grabbed the bullet and pulled it out.
“Done. We’re done.”
She dropped the bullet onto one of the used towels, then poured more hot water over the wound, soaped and rinsed it again, and doused it in antiseptic. She pressed a clean piece of folded linen over it and tied it as tight as she dared with the bandage.
“Bullet's whole.” She studied the misshapen piece of metal. “You got lucky. What was it—forty-five Colt? Forty-four Allen—you know what, actually, I don’t want to know.”
Ada couldn’t manage a response, anyway. Sweat poured off her face, and her skin, in the light of a dozen candles, looked waxen. Her lips had lost all color, and her jaw was clenched so tight, tendons in her neck stood out like ropes.
Rose wiped her brow. “I’m sorry. I went as fast as I could. I don’t have anything for the pain. Can’t even afford spirits.” She passed the towel over Ada’s temples. “I’ll make you an infusion to try to ward off fever. But there’s a good chance you’ll die, anyway. I’m not a miracle-worker.”
Ada’s colorless lips stretched into a sardonic smile. “Liar.”
It was a lie. By all accounts, Rose had patched more gunshot wounds than most doctors outside of war surgeons. And only six of her patients had died. Five really—the sixth had been brought to her already dead, so, despite her late husband’s opinion to the contrary, Rose did not hold herself accountable for that one.
Of the other five, two had bled out of gruesome gut shots while she fished around for bullet fragments, and three had died of fever. But dozens more had lived, some defying all expectations. Thus Rose’s reputation among the local and not-so-local outlaws was indeed that of a miracle worker.
She hated it.
“Leg,” whispered Ada.
“What?”
“Another bullet. Thigh.” Ada hissed and craned her neck. “Maybe…couple in my lower back. Think…just buckshot.”
Rose stared at her in dismay, before instinct kicked in and she reached for the scissors to cut away Ada’s pants.
“You said there was only one.”
“I’m a liar, too,” murmured Ada. “Don’t think the others are as bad. But…since you’re here.”
Rose cursed her again and went back to work.
By dawn, she’d pulled a dozen birdshot shells from Ada’s back, dressed two gouges on her leg where bullets had rent the flesh, and poured all her strongest medicines into the woman. Then, having settled Ada comfortably under a clean blanket by the stove, she tried to sleep, but failed. Instead, she went to check on Ada’s horse (he’d bullied his way into the better stall, displacing her own gentle Mittens), made herself tea, then sat in the creaky rocking chair by the window, watching her patient.
For a disreputable, unscrupulous outlaw, Ada Beeman looked shockingly angelic.
She was pale, of course. But a little color had returned to her full lips, and the pained grimace had eased. Her long, blonde hair, no longer limp and matted with sweat and road dust, framed her face like a halo, and the lines of her nose and chin were so perfect, they’d have set a Renaissance sculptor to shame.
And everything under the blanket was perfect, too. Oh, Rose knew that very, very well. Ada not only looked like an angel, but the things she could do under those blankets were heavenly. Long ago, Rose had been convinced Providence had sent one of its own to her home and her bed.
Except eventually she and Ada left the bed, and that was when all the problems started.
Rose shook her head and stood, prying herself away from Ada. She went outside to feed the chickens and collect eggs, instead, then started a soup. Most doctors swore by porridge-and-water after severe injury, and a daily ale to ward off infection. But Rose, like her father, held with meat broth and green leaves. Her father said meat and spinach revived even the most pallid of his surgery patients.
By mid-morning, vegetables had been plucked, peeled, and added to the soup pot with a half-grouse, and Ada was making the unhappy noises that accompanied the sleep of one who had bullet holes in one’s body.
Rose sighed. “She deserves it,” she muttered, and was gratified to see Shadow wag her tail. The dog agreed with her, at least. “And I really don’t have pain medicine. Oh, don’t you argue with me.” (Midnight had made a low whine.) “That concoction the town apothecary gave me when you two fought that bobcat doesn’t count. It’s for dogs.”
All three dogs, recognizing the word, thumped their tails in unison.
“Oh, Saint Peter’s sake. Fine. I’m going to put dog analgaesic on a human." Rose growled. "If ever there was a human who deserved it…”
As she reached into the cabinet to pull out the old, dented tin, which still held some foul-smelling ointment, Ada winced, groaned, and murmured, "Hurts."
“Yeah, bullet wounds do that.”
“Not the wounds. My ego.” Ada’s eyelids fluttered open, her gaze clear even though her face was drawn with pain. “You think I’m a bitch, my rose?”
Great. She’d heard that.
Rose poured out another dose of fever medicine. “Drink this.” Then she uncapped the tin and removed the blanket from Ada’s legs. “This’ll help the pain in your back and leg. Not touching that chest wound. You’re probably still going to die of it.”
“Won't have to...see me again, then.”
“No, just explain to the town sheriff why your corpse is in my sitting room. They’ll hang me, probably.”
“I’ll crawl into the woods to die," Ada promised. "Burrow somewhere. Like a...hmm, what animal does that, again?”
Rose scoffed. “You're no dog. Dogs are loyal and don't abandon people.” She began applying the ointment with brisk, ungentle motions. Ada’s legs—her perfectly shaped, long, muscular legs—were best dealt with quickly, especially the bits of buckshot on her appealing posterior upper thigh. Rose gritted her teeth as her hands touched the bare skin there, and she snapped as Adam made a sort of purring noise.
“Stop it! I'm not enjoying this.”
“Sorry.” Ada sighed and said nothing until Rose was done and had replaced the tin cap and rearranged the blanket. “You know I didn’t get shot on purpose,” she whispered, then. “Contrary to your belief, I don’t set out to make your life harder."
“Oh, so you never rode shooting into a bandit hideout? Or challenged a corrupt sheriff? Or cheated at cards in an illegal saloon?”
Ada’s lips pressed into a smile. “Wasn’t cheating. Won fairly.”
“Against the leader of the biggest outlaw gang in Red River. And then you called him a pussycat.”
“A pussy-footed limp snake.”
“Yeah, tell me again how you don’t get shot on purpose.”
Ada began to chuckle, then stopped herself with a moan. Rose swore to herself she wouldn’t feel empathy for woman. She’d earned all that pain by being a stubborn, stupid, shoot-first-and-think-later adventurer. She deserved every bullet hole she got.
“You’re beautiful when you’re mad,” said Ada.
Rose scoffed. “I wish you’d think I was more beautiful when I’m happy."
“You are. In the afterglow of lovemaking, especially. You flush all the way down to your—”
“Stop it.” Rose stood, walking to the stove to stab angrily at the soup with her ladle. “Damn it. I don’t—I don’t want this. I’ve had enough. Stop playing with me.”
There was brief silence, then Ada said: “I’m not. I’m sorry.”
“I asked you to quit coming here. I don’t want to see you.”
“I know.” Ada sighed. “I can’t stay away, though.”
“You do a fine job staying away when no one’s put bullets into you. So do the same the other times. There are doctors in other towns. Actual doctors, who finished medical school and have nice diplomas hanging on their walls.”
“Hacks, all of them.” Ada hissed out a pained breath, then rustled under the blanket. It was a minute before she spoke again. “I didn’t mean to leave like that, last time. I had… I needed to finish my business with the Red River gang. If I’d stayed longer, they’d have tracked me to your house.”
“So you vanished in the dead of night without a word, leaving me to find the bed cold in the morning when not a few hours before you were swearing you never wanted to be anywhere but in my arms?”
“I’m sorry. I—I should've explained...”
“And the time before that? Went to get more supplies in town and came back to find you gone, just that stupid dead rose sitting on my pillow? And the time before that, when I begged you to stay with me and you said you had business elsewhere and walked away without looking back?”
“I know—”
Rose slammed the ladle into the pot. “Do you?”
It was hard to stay angry with a woman lying prone and white-faced under a heap of blankets. But Rose had a lot of anger, and it needed to come out.
“You’re just as bad as he was! Worse! At least he didn’t pretend to cherish me. Didn’t make me—want things, and then yank them away time and again. You know I used to tell myself I should be grateful to you, because you shot my husband before he could beat me to death one drunken night. But if I’d known what you’d do to me instead, I’d have helped him shoot you the second you showed up.”
Crescent began to howl, marking her unease over Rose’s climbing tone. Midnight and Shadow joined her again, with anxious, long barks, until Rose snapped at the three of them to be quiet.
“Rose,” whispered Ada. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t. I don’t want to talk to you anymore, or hear you, or see you. I just—At least the pain from all those beatings that bastard gave me healed in a few days. This, what you’re doing? It just hurts more and more every time, and it never stops.”
She yanked the soup pot off the heat and onto the table, then, snapping her fingers, she ordered the dogs to the bedroom. She followed them and slammed the door, and she curled herself on the bed, burying her nose into Shadow’s fur as the dogs piled around her. Anger, pain, and fear bubbled inside her, spilling out in dry, silent sobs that made her chest feel like it was caving in.
It really would’ve hurt less if the heartless bastard who’s wooed her away from her family and married her against her will had just killed her in a drunken rage.
All those years forced to treat him and his cronies, beaten each time she failed to save someone’s life—and sometimes, even if she did save them, if her jealous husband decided she’d stared at a wound a little too long, or touched a man a little too tenderly. Those years had felt like a nightmare. Now, the man was dead, she was safe, with a new name and away from anyone who’d known him…and the nightmare went on.
Rose turned onto her side, hugging Midnight. The dog, who hated hugs, wiggled out, landed her butt on Rose’s thigh, and licked her chin.
Night had fallen when Rose woke up. Briefly, she didn’t understand why her head hurt and anxiety turned in her stomach. Then she remembered everything, and, with a gasp, scrambled from the bed, dislodging the grumbling dogs, and ran to the sitting room.
Ada was gone.
The room spun, as Rose’s mind tried to accept with what her eyes were saying. How could anyone leave with a bullet in the chest? But the improvised cot on the floor sat empty, the blanket tossed aside. The wood stove was still on, casting a faint glow over the room, but the smell of soup had dissipated, and the pot sat, cold, on the table—
The door swung open, and Ada limped in, pausing to lean in the doorway. Her face was grey and tight with effort. She blinked owlishly at Rose, then groaned:
“Need to sit.”
Rose grabbed her before her knees buckled, and supported her to a chair.
“That was stupid. You’re not supposed to be walking, when just a few hours ago I dug a hole in your chest to pull out a bullet.”
“Yeah. Needed the privy.”
“You should’ve woken me.”
Ada snorted quietly. She was warm to the touch, though not hot. Rose dosed her again with fever medicine, then half-dragged her to the bedroom, breathing relief when she saw her settled against two pillows. She bought her a soup bowl and opened the windows to air out the room while Ada ate in silence.
The silence stretched long after the spoon had quit clinking against the bowl. Rose brought her a clean blanket, then busied herself around the house, tidying up and taking stock of supplies. But there was only so much she could do in the dead of night. In the end, tiredness caught up again, and she sat in the rocking chair and pulled on one of the blankets that had made up Ada's cot. It still smelled like Ada. Of course.
She slept fitfully and briefly, waking at dawn with a crink in her neck. She wasn't a young girl anymore. In fact, if the young girl she'd once been could see her now—living under a different name in a dingy frontier town shack, with three dogs for company that were more than half-wolf, and a famous gunslinger in her bedroom... Well. That young girl would probably run screaming.
Or maybe she'd take one peek at Ada's half-naked form and give Rose the thumbs-up. That young girl had liked beautiful women, too.
By the time Rose went into the bedroom, Ada was awake and poking gingerly at her chest bandage.
"Don't do that." Rose set a steaming mug on the nightstand. "Nettle and chamomile tea. Should help fight off infection. I want you drinking at least three mugs today."
She touched Ada's forehead and tried not to notice the woman's studiously neutral expression. In the past, Ada would've leaned into the touch, grinned, made some insinuation. But after last night, she'd kept quiet.
Rose knew she'd asked for this. But it still bothered her. She didn't want this silent, polite, reluctant Ada.
She didn't know what she wanted.
She ordered the dogs off the bed and pulled the curtains, letting in the sun, then checked on Ada's wound, reapplied antiseptic, and changed the bandage.
"Doesn't look too bad. Stopped bleeding. If you make it through tomorrow with no fever, you've probably dodged infection." She sighed as she poured out another dose of medicine. "Took me months to make this. Got it from an eight-hundred-year old leechbook recipe; my father swears the rest of the book is nonsense, but this one antimicrobial solution saved half his patients. Except it takes twelve weeks for the ingredients to ferment together, and I had to have the copper salts mailed special from Boston..."
She trailed off, shaking her head. She always babbled when she was nervous.
"I'm going to bill you," she finished, and a fleeting smile curled one of Ada's lips, gone too quickly.
Then they were back to stunted silence.
"Look." Rose stood, replacing the stopper on the medicine bottle. "You won't be back on your feet for at least a week. Not fit to ride for another week after, if then. We're stuck here a while, and I... I'd rather just be... cordial."
"Cordial," breathed Ada, staring at the frayed edge of the blanket. "You said you'd rather take a bullet to the chest than talk to me."
"I know what I said." Rose's cheeks warmed. She wasn't expecting Ada to be mad; Ada didn't have the right to be mad, did she?
"Which by the way, is particularly insensitive when your interlocutor actually did take a bullet to the chest," added Ada, wryly. "But I take your meaning. I didn't realize...I didn't know you felt quite that way." She sighed. "We can be...cordial, if that's your wish, and then..."
But here she trailed off, leaving Rose hanging onto her words. And then...?
And then she'd be gone, as always. Back to her business of hunting down and irritating criminals and lowlifes and corrupt lawmen into wanting to put lead balls into her.
"I'll stay away," she finished. "I give you my word. I won't come back here again."
"So I'll just spend the rest of my days wondering if a bullet finally killed you, or when?"
Ada's sky-blue eyes met hers. Rose could lose herself in that gaze. Even when Ada was mad, there was something unfathomably stunning about her large, piercing eyes.
"You said you'd rather I go to hell that come here. I'm paraphrasing," Ada added, as Rose opened her mouth to protest. "That was the gist of it, anyway. Are you saying you changed your mind?"
"What I'd rather is your visits don't leave me wrung out and hollow on the inside," said Rose. "That you wouldn't just show up when you need me to fish out bullets from your flesh, then vanish and leave me feeling like I took a damned cannonball to the chest. That you didn't talk about love and forever, then the next day take off for five or six or ten months, until the next time you need to use me. So yes... if the best you can offer me is brief lies of something beautiful followed by months-long pain and regrets, then I'd rather you go to hell. But I thought..." She gritted her teeth, fighting through the knot in her throat. "I thought you cared."
"I do." Ada's voice softened. "I made a mistake, leaving like I did all those times. I thought you'd prefer it—you said you're not the kind to beg anyone to stay."
"I lied, damn it," growled Rose. "If I thought I could make you quit running off to get yourself shot at, I'd beg you on my knees."
Ada made a quiet little purr in her throat, and Rose wanted to strangle her.
"Don't do that. I won't let you distract me. Just...tell me why. Why do you keep leaving? Is chasing down dangerous men so important to you? And if it is...why do you keep coming here? I've moved six hundred miles away from the place we met. Why did you follow me? Aren't there enough sharpshooting bullies to keep you occupied somewhere else?"
She lowered her face in her hands and sat at the end of the bed.
"I just don't understand, Ada. I didn't think you'd be deliberately cruel. But I can't think of why you'd do this to me."
The silence stretched on long enough that she thought Ada wouldn't respond. She stood, waving off Crescent's head nudging her thigh, and she walked to the door. "I'll be back at lunch with your food. Let me know if you need to use the privy again before that, and I can help you get there."
"I'm hunting down Lord's associates," said Ada quietly.
The name of her dead husband, spoken so suddenly in her quiet home, chilled Rose. She turned back, eyes wide, her heart racing.
"After I put that bullet in him and we ran, that wasn't the end of it," said Ada. "The surviving members of his band wanted to come after you—"
"I know. But we took care of that. We went to that federal judge. We got warrants. They're all in prison or hung!" Rose hated how her voice grew shrill, desperate. But she really needed to believe what she was saying. "None of them know where I am. They're all gone!"
"Lord's immediate cronies, yes. But there were others, Rose. Everyone knew of Lord's woman, who could sew up spilled guts and have you back on your feet two weeks later. You patched up bullets in a hundred outlaws: when rumor spread Lord was dead, many wanted you for themselves. I..." Ada shifted on the pillows, grimacing. "I tracked down rumors of your location, and took care of anyone who was trying to follow you."
Rose slid to the floor in the doorframe, hugging Crescent to herself when the wolf-dog tried to climb on her lap.
"I think I'm down to the last of them," said Ada. "It's been seven years, so they mostly gave up by now. Except this gang of convoy-robbers in Split Oak. Their leader used to be one of Lord's henchmen. He's one of the ones you stitched together, too. Got himself shot in the head trying to steal some farmer's daughter."
Rose shivered. She remembered that man. She'd saved him—but she wished she hadn't. "There was something wrong with him," she whispered. "The way he was, when he woke up. I think...that bullet broke something in his head. The way he looked at me..." Her voice trembled. "Lord noticed too. Kicked him out half-way through recovery time, and then he beat me for having tempted him. Worst rage I saw."
"That beast deserved every bullet I put in him," growled Ada.
"Yes." Rose tightened her hold on Crescent, and the dog stuffed her head into her armpit. "So that man knows where I am?"
"The general whereabouts," said Ada. "I think you're right that something's wrong with him. He's obsessed with finding you. So I've been tracking him, and...well, I thought I could deal with him two nights ago. Underestimated him."
"Is he coming here?"
"He won't get near you," Ada promised. "Split Oak's thirty miles away, and I've been spreading false rumors of your whereabouts for years. There are a dozen towns he could check, and you look different and have a different name. Unless he saw you face to face, he wouldn't know you." She sighed. "He might send people to check around, though. But I've alerted every sheriff I trust, and I'm going back after him as soon as I can."
Rose lowered her face in her hands.
"Rose," said Ada. "I swear. You don't need to be afraid. I promised you seven years ago none of them would get you, and that's not a promise I intend to break. He'll never find out where you are—"
"He should," said Rose.
"What?"
Rose stood, gripping the doorframe for support, while the three dogs swarmed around her legs. "Let him come here. Then we can deal with it once and for all. This house is solid, and it only has one entrance. The dogs are trained. And there are people in town who'll help."
"Out of the question—"
"It's my life, Ada. And my home. I don't want to spend the next year looking over my shoulder. I'd rather be done with it now. We'll put out word that I'm here, and...wait for him. And then we deal with it. Together." She scowled. "You don't have the right to make my choices for me. This is my fight."
Ada made an angry noise. Rose crossed her arms.
"You should've told me years ago what you were doing," she said. "You think I feel any better knowing you got shot half a dozen times because you were hunting down my enemies? I'm not a coward, Ada. I'm willing to fight my own battles."
"And I promised you—"
"A happily ever after, too. Hard to keep that promise with a bullet in your chest. So you can quit playing white knight for me, Ada Beeman. I don't need a heroine. What I always wanted was a partner. You can start being that, or...go away and find yourself another cause. I'm no one's damsel in distress."
"Damn it, Rose."
"Damn you," said Rose. "You've got some nerve, keeping me ignorant of all this for years. But that ends now, you hear me? We can deal with the Split Oak gang together."
"Rose—"
"Oh, and in case you're thinking of pulling that disappearing act again and going after them when I'm not looking..." Rose bit her lips, then snapped her fingers to draw the dogs' attention, before pointing to Ada. "Guard," she commanded, and three heads swiveled in Ada's direction. "There. Now you're not going anywhere."
Ada's look of surprised might've been comical, had Rose been less angry and frightened.
"You're having your dogs keep me hostage?" Ada rolled her eyes, then smirked. "What if I need to use the privy? Do you plan to accompany me, then?"
"I'll bring you a chamber pot," said Rose. "And I don't suggest you test the dogs. They're well trained, and they're not letting you go anywhere until I tell them different. Which is fine, because you shouldn't be moving about with that wound, anyway. Just...think of them as your nurses."
Ada gave her a long look. "You're not thinking straight. You've had a shock. I shouldn't have said anything. You should...take a minute. Think things over."
"I'm thinking perfectly straight. Your little crusade to keep trouble from my door is over; I'm going to be fighting my own battles now, while you sit here and recover with your three furry nurses."
"Rose—"
To Rose's surprise, she felt a genuine smile on her lips. "I should've thought about this years ago. Keeping you prisoner. Perhaps I'll find a pair of cuffs and tie you to the bed. I never realized how many ways there were of keeping you here."
"Rose."
"I'm going to go get that chamber pot."
"Rose!"
Rose closed the door behind her, then leaned into it and let out a half-sobbing chuckle.
It had been years since she'd been so scared. But somehow, behind the terror, there was a sense of freedom. One way or another, her life was changing this day. She wasn't letting anyone chase her out of her home, or make her feel unsafe again.
And she wasn't letting Ada get away this time.
Perhaps the general store in town sold cuffs. Thick, solid metal ones. If not, some silk scarves would do. Silk was surprisingly sturdy. And oh, they could find so many other uses for silk scarves, once Ada's chest wound healed.
Yes, thought Rose, with a smile. One way or another, things were changing around here.