The Graves at Seven Devils Read Free Page B

“I’d just be really bad piss-burned, that’s all. . . .”
    Fletcher and Colter shared a glance. They chuckled around the food in their mouths, and Marie Antoinette gave a snort and followed suit.
    As they ate the sandwiches and garden vegetables, they chatted about work that needed doing around their place—the house needed a new porch, the chicken coop needed a new roof, and the stable door was off its hinges again. To help makes ends meet, Marie Antoinette sold eggs and bread around town, and she was having trouble keeping up with her growing clientele.
    â€œIt’s going to be a big help to have my cousin here,” she said, biting into a radish. Chewing, she glanced pensively at the remaining radish between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. “Dear Louisa . . . haven’t seen her in years. Not since she was just a little tyke running about her family’s place in Nebraska. . . .”
    â€œWhat’s her last name again, Ma?” Colter asked. He’d finished a sandwich and held his half-empty glass of milk to his lips.
    â€œBonaventure. Louisa Bonaventure,” Marie Antoinette said. “She’s a good five, six years younger than me. Not yet twenty, I don’t think. My ma and her pa were brother and sister. We all lived in the same county up in Nebraska until Pa went crazy from drink, and Ma took us out to Colorado. That was long before renegades burned the Bonaventure farm, killing everyone in Louisa’s family except Louisa herself.”
    â€œThat’s a terrible thing,” Fletcher said, brushing crumbs from his vest and leaning back in his chair, hands on his thighs. “How’d she get away?”
    â€œDon’t know,” Marie said. “All I know is she’s been on the drift ever since. Not sure doin’ what—but a young woman alone”—her eyes grew dark as she reflected on her own experience after her mother passed away from a fever—“I can imagine. Judging by her letter, she’s looking forward to finally settling down.” She leaned forward on her elbows and gratefully smiled at her husband across the desk. “I know how she feels.”
    Fletcher stood, sucking meat from between two teeth. “I’m glad you’ll have family here, honey. This winter, and funds permitting, I’ll see about adding a new room onto the house. In the meantime, I best shade the trail for—”
    â€œHey, Pa.” Colter had moved to the open jailhouse door for a breath of air still fresh from the recent downpour. He was looking westward up the broad main drag. “Best come have a look at this.”
    â€œWhat is it, son?” Brushing crumbs from his soup-strainer mustache, the tall, lean sheriff, his longish brown hair beginning to gray at the temples, crossed to the front door. He sidled up to the boy, whose head came up to his shoulder, and followed Colter’s gaze westward along the soggy, deserted main street.
    The Arizona town of Seven Devils claimed a population of a little over two hundred, but since gold had grown scarce in the surrounding mountains, that figure was now stretching it. The jailhouse sat in the middle of Main Street, on the north side, but the west edge of town was only about sixty yards away. That’s where the last sandstone and adobe-brick business buildings abruptly stopped and the desert took over—red rocks, creosote shrubs, mesquite, sage, and saguaros, all hemmed in by towering, craggy ridges now partly concealed by gauzy, fast-moving clouds.
    The desert floor wasn’t concealed, however. Fletcher’s eyes had no trouble picking out the handful of riders moving down a gentle slope toward the town—about seventy yards from the town’s edge and closing quickly, horses loping as they meandered around rocks and boulders and cactus snags.
    A wan light filtered through the low clouds, but there was light enough to reflect off the silver