Chapter 1

Harper McCoy

Babyface reeled her head and knickered, almost as if she could sense Harper’s discomfort.

Gazing out over the stone-grey prairie as the sun began to rise, Harper took a deep breath and noted that the lazily swaying fields only ever seemed to turn ashen when they knew she and her daddy had been quarreling.

Come to think of it, she could not remember their natural color; whether they had been more like the placid river or the glimmering sky, as the pigment of her world had long faded like ink in the sunlight.

The air began to turn warm, so Harper decided to head back to the cabin, leading Babyface on foot. When they arrived,  a fresh and balmy Oklahoma sun bouncing off the crackling lime of the paneled cabin walls and dew clinging to the weighty overgrowth, her daddy was just getting back, and was in the midst of stabling his own great black stallion, Crane. A couple of limp jackrabbit carcasses dangled loosely from the tarnished yet sturdy leather saddle. 

“Hide for a pair of gloves each,” he muttered. He turned and suddenly lifted his finger to her. “You best hope that attitude of yours has improved since last night’.” 

She knew not to do or say anything but nod in acceptance.

“Good. Now git up in there and start breakfast. There’s bacon and eggs in the pantry.”
 

Harper cracked a couple of tan speckled eggs into the pan and as they sizzled harmoniously, she remembered how her ma used to do the same.

Harper and her ma did everything together, for a time. She would never forget when around the age of five, ma had said they were going to meet the man that was Harper’s daddy. Dressed in her fanciest pleated cotton dress and all done up in yellow silk ribbons, ma had hitched up her silvery-dappled appaloosa mare, Memento, and loaded Harper up in a wagon and wheeled her out to the jailhouse. 

Dutiful as he was grim, stoic, and robust, Clarence McCoy had been around ever since, working a meager living on the stately and well-to-do Maddox ranch. 

As her eggs turned yellow and fluffy and her bacon spat glistening sparks of grease, Harper reflected on the way ma used to get dimples on her freckled cheeks and how her laugh sounded like larks in the spring. How, in the brief time they had spent together, Clarence would now and again lovingly whisper in her ear, “Estelle…” and the stars would show themselves in a daytime thunderstorm just to dance upon the burnt sienna banks of her eyes. 

Then, just about as quick as Harper turned ten, ma got a bad cough that left her first a bed patient and then a panorama of sounds, smells, and distant memories. 

Harper’s attention suddenly darted back to Clarence, who was unfurling the latest print of Tulsa’s Indian Republican at the hearth. The date showed August in 1893.  

“Them Doolin-Dalton boys are at it again,” he sighed, reading an enlarged headline.

“How close are they?” Harper ventured to ask.

“Just up the river a ways. Walter’s keepin’ an eye peeled.”

Walter Maddox had always been like an uncle to Harper, and often showered her with little compliments and praises that her daddy seemed incapable of. He owned the ranch where Clarence worked as a cattle hand, and had been keeping an eye on headlines ever since it was reported that the Doolin-Daltons had robbed- or had at least attempted to rob- a bank out in Coffeyville the previous year. 

Harper never fully understood why her daddy had spent time at the jailhouse, but judging by how he shifted in his seat at mention of the Doolin-Dalton name in the paper made her think it had something to do with them.

“You sharp for this evenin’?” he grunted, tossing the paper aside. 

Harper handed him his steaming plate of bacon and eggs and voiced a quiet affirmative.  

“Just mind not to touch them guns,” he glowered. “You save any nasty business for Marshall.”

Harper took a bite of her own breakfast and chewed quietly. Marshall was Walter Maddox’s boy; a hair older than herself, and frequently insufferable in wanting to make everything between them a contest. Why daddy wanted Marshall around while he and Walter went into town was a mystery to her, especially if she couldn’t be of any help in a bad situation anyway. 

She could only imagine that Marshall was enlisted to babysit.

Harper’s mind flashed back to the previous night, when she and daddy had an ugly quarrel about this very topic. Harper viewed herself as old enough at thirteen to be trusted alone, but it seemed her daddy disagreed. As a result, Marshall Maddox made himself present around the cabin and in the stable more often than Harper cared for. 

Clarence took a deep, resounding  breath, cleared his throat and set aside his plate. “See to them chickens after washing the dishes,” he muttered, and trudged up the stairs.