A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters Read Online Free Page A

on the trail, eating dust on foot at first, later eating more dust on horseback. Those hadn’t been precisely happy days—shelter was often scanty, and Prudence and Jake both mourned those who had died of the sickness. They’d done all right for food, though, both being skilled with various weapons. And they’d had hope, hope of finding a place where they could settle, raise cattle, and maybe someday forget.
    Buck snorted and shifted uneasily. Prudence shook herself from the dangerous distraction of memory. Pulling her rifle from the saddle boot, she swung down to get a look at what had disturbed the big mustang.
    She found it within a few yards of the trail: a sheep, one of the hardy, four-horned churro breed that the Navajo favored. Telling much more was pretty near impossible. The sheep hadn’t just been killed; it had been flayed open. The guts had been pulled out and much of the meat had been stripped from the carcass. The hide had been left intact, but many of the bones were splintered and sucked clean of marrow.
    Flies buzzed over what remained, their wings making enough noise that Prudence knew she should have heard it from the trail. The carcass stunk, too. She should have smelled that.
    Prudence scanned her surroundings, resolving that no matter how compelling the past was, old memories had to wait on the present. That is, unless she wanted to give up all hopes of a future.
    A new thought hit Prudence, making her catch her breath.
    Did she honestly care if she had a future? The future had been taken from her twice: once when the Bledsloe clan had been wiped out by disease, once when Jake had been taken from her.
    She’d been drifting since then, drifting west, drifting after rumors that might lead her to . . .
    Prudence forced herself to think about what she was seeking, forced herself to accept.
    To lead her to what Jake had become.
    Standing under the hot sun, hearing Trick shift nervously under the packs, Prudence faced the memories.
    She and Jake had gotten wind of a town where cattle buyers were congregating. She’d never been quite sure whether the buyers had come because the cattle were being driven there or whether the cattle were being driven there to meet the buyers. What she did know was that for a couple of weeks there was plenty of work, even for a couple of scraggly drifters.
    Prudence had gotten work washing dishes and chopping stuff in the kitchen of the railroad hotel. Jake—who dreamed of owning a ranch someday—had gotten a job keeping the gathered herds in order. After weeks in the saddle, the cowhands were eager for the delights of civilization, even as offered by a rough-edged nowhere town like this one.
    That their delights included women was a given, so Prudence kept back in the kitchen. Days had passed. The buying and selling ended. The loaded trains rattled back toward Chicago.
    The cowboys, their pockets fat with severance pay, remained, wilder than ever. Jake’s work, however, had evaporated when the cattle were shipped out, so he and Prudence decided to move on.
    Had the cowboys tracked them or had the meeting been chance? Prudence didn’t know. Her memories of that terrible night began with waking to the sound of coarse laughter, the smell of tobacco and whiskey. Of Jake’s voice, superficially tough and angry. Trembling beneath the anger was a thread of fear.
    Prudence had been jerked from her bedroll by a rough hand. Still half-asleep, she’d staggered, trying to catch her balance. Instead, she’d fallen into the arms of the man who had pulled her up. He started pawing at her breasts, pushing aside the fabric of the loose cotton nightshirt she wore for sleeping.
    “Leave my sister alone!” Jake had shouted.
    The cowboys had only laughed. Prudence fought to get loose, froze when she realized her struggles only excited her captors.
    And Jake . . . Jake had lost control. The moon was full, and but for that they might both be dead now: raped, anonymous corpses, if ever they