Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman

Author:Erin Bowman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter Sixteen

“She’s Apache,” Jesse says when we join back up. He’s squinting again, only it ain’t his normal squint. Everything ’bout his face has gone narrow. His lips are thin and pinched. Even his brow seems somehow tighter. “She ain’t riding with us.”

“She’s gonna help us out in the mountains,” I says.

“She ain’t riding with us!” He bats a hand at Lil like she’s dust he can banish back the way we came. “Get outta here,” he snarls at her. “You ain’t welcome.”

“Jesse!” His face snaps to mine and his features are caught somewhere between hate and fear. I remember the story Will told me ’bout their mother, and understand. “Look, I’m sorry ’bout what happened to yer ma, Jesse, I am, but it was years ago,” I says. “And it weren’t Lil who did it.”

“It was her people,” he barks back.

“But not her.”

“I don’t care. I won’t have no blasted Apache riding with us. Not over my dead body!”

“Oh, in tarnation!” I snap. “Will’s right. You preach ’bout letting the past be, ’bout moving on and not letting yer demons eat you whole, but yer holding on to the past more than any of us here—harping on things happened well over a decade ago! You spout all this shiny advice and can’t even figure how to follow it yerself!”

He bites his bottom lip and glares at Lil. She’s just sitting there atop her pony, gazing up at the sky like she ain’t got a care in the world.

“You don’t gotta be her best friend, you just—”

“We’ll never be friends,” Jesse snarls.

“Ugh, you make me livid!” I snap. “You just gotta ride with her, I was trying to say. You and me and Will and her. That’s all. Don’t talk to her. Don’t even look at her if you can’t bear it. But she knows the mountains, and I ain’t turning my back on that sorta resource ’cus yer too damn proud, or maybe yellow-bellied”—he glares at that—“to set aside yer prejudices a few days.”

“Oh, and you like Apache?” he says. “Yer fond of Indians now?”

“I like people who make my life easier.”

Jesse folds his arms over his chest. “I thought that’s what me and Will were doing. We help you with Rose, you help us get the—”

“I know what the deal is,” I says, cutting him off before his words send Lil running.

Jesse gnaws on his bottom lip a moment. “Still don’t see why we gotta make things more complicated by adding a fourth to the group.”

“Safety in numbers. Ain’t that what you’s said before?”

“Well, I’ll be,” he responds. “Guess you ain’t deaf after all.”

“You got a shine for everything, don’t you Jesse?”

He eyes me, frowning. “Not everything.” Then clicks his tongue and nudges Rebel east. I sit there on Silver a moment, watching him ride off ’longside Will as Mutt streaks ahead like a bullet.

“He likes you,” Liluye says.

“What?” I says, turning toward her. “No he don’t.”

“Tarak used to always speak to me in riddles. It was only after he died in a raid and his sister confessed that he wanted to marry me that I understood.

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