Chapter 1

 

The rumors had been flying for days. The ship had been spotted just over the town line, in Copper Creek. It hung heavy in the sky, a blot against the sun, and messages had been streaming into Fortuna’s Post Office, warnings and pleas alike.

Penelope took them down dutifully, listening to the clicks of the telegraph and writing the messages in careful, clear letters. She sorted them methodically, pretending that she was merely a conduit for the words that flew over the line, merely another cog in the machine, her pencil connected to the wire that snaked its way through the sky, all part of the great Line.

As postmistress, she knew everyone’s business—often before they did. Every family emergency, every business deal gone good or bad. Every love letter sent over the line arrived at its destination in her neat, careful handwriting and every Dear John letter came the same way.

Penelope had to pretend not to see, because she had to look the townspeople in the eye, had to smile at them in the general store, chat with them over coffee at church, dine with them at her father’s house. She had to be a townsperson like everyone else, as if she wasn’t so full of secrets she often felt liable to burst at the seams, nothing holding her together but the corset that bound her rib cage tight.

So she wrote down the messages from Copper Creek and pretended not to see them, pretended fear didn’t well up in her throat as she wrote the name Mirage Currier over and over again, and put them in a neat little pile to be delivered to the sheriff.

Tobias Combes came in at midday, looking spooked. He was a frail man, tall but so lean he looked like he’d fall over with a gentle breeze. He crossed his spindly arms on the high counter and bent forward, eyes wide. “A rider just arrived from Copper Creek.” He pitched his voice low, as if they weren’t the only two in the office.

“Oh?” Penelope said mildly. She knew what he wanted. People came by all the time, “just to chat,” knowing Penelope knew more than she let on, hoping she’d let something slip.

She took pride in her job and so kept her lips sealed tight. No one was going to say a woman couldn’t be trusted with the line while Penelope was in charge.

“A ship’s come into Copper Creek,” Tobias continued, his thin face more pinched than usual. “An outlaw ship.”

If she weren’t so unnerved herself, Penelope would have laughed. Everything sounded ridiculous coming from Tobias, a man who could be frightened by a black cat crossing his path.

“Is their sheriff doing anything about it?” Penelope asked. She’d been wondering all day. Surely the problem was Copper Creek’s—not theirs.

“They’re not causing any trouble, so the sheriff can’t do nothing.”

“Outlaws who don’t cause trouble?” Penelope arched a brow, reaching for the mail sack for something to do with her hands.

“Not in Copper Creek,” Tobias said darkly. He bent closer. “It’s the Persephone Star—Mirage Currier’s ship.”

Penelope had only been in town for nine months, since her father came to Fortuna to open the town’s first bank. But everyone in Fortuna knew the Persephone Star—it had become legend, along with its captain, Mirage Currier. Penelope was sure that the legend had spread far beyond their little town. She couldn’t believe they weren’t talking about it all the way back east. A woman bandit, leading a crew of female outlaws.

“I thought Currier was in jail,” Penelope said, forcing blandness into her voice.

“Got out, got her crew together, and came right here.”

“To Copper Creek,” Penelope corrected.

“For now.” Tobias’s brows lowered, and Penelope was glad she didn’t have to upset him more, to tell him what the messages that had been streaming in all day said: Currier was gathering supplies, trading for guns and ammunition with the worst Copper Creek had to offer. Gearing up to come to Fortuna.

“Don’t worry,” she said, trying to be kind. “The sheriff will handle it.”

“It’s him they’re coming for,” Tobias mumbled, and Penelope turned from the counter, pretending not to hear.

“You mind letting Mrs. Cranshaw know she’s got a letter here, Tobias? I know she’s been waiting.”

“Oh. Course, Miss Moser.” Tobias was too polite to stay when he’d been so clearly dismissed. He shuffled out of the office, rolling his narrow shoulders to avoid cracking his head on the doorframe.

Penelope picked up the stack of messages for the sheriff. Everyone knew why Currier was back in town: it was Fortuna’s sheriff who had put her away. The Star had been terrorizing the good God-fearing folks of the area for too long, and when Wiley got elected sheriff, he’d decided to do something about it. Currier hadn’t ever hit Fortuna, but Wiley got together with some of the other sheriffs in the territory and went after her—before she could come after Fortuna, he said.

And now she was back for revenge.

Penelope tucked the sheriff’s messages into her knapsack and set about tidying the office for the day. Mail and telegrams got sorted into neat slots under the desk, and the moneybox was kept under lock and key in a safe to be extra secure. Penelope wasn’t a fool, and she knew that the post office was the place most likely to be robbed if anyone looking for trouble came to Fortuna.

Once those chores were done, Penelope turned to her pride and joy: the library.

It was really just two shelves on the wall behind the counter, lined with volumes donated by townspeople. But each one had a slip pasted into the front, with neat little boxes to write a due date in.

Only, Penelope couldn’t get anyone to borrow them. She’d taken the position as postmistress for something to do, some way to pass the time in the tiny town fate had brought her to. The library was her pet project. She’d been to the public library in New York once, a massive building with stacks and stacks of books for anyone to read. Wandering through, running her childish fingers over the endless spines, Penelope had got it into her head that it was where she belonged. She looked at the women behind the big desks, helping people to find books, and decided then and there that that was what she was going to do when she grew up.

But her father kept them moving, farther and farther west, out of the country and into the territories, and then beyond, into Indian country and the true Wild West. He founded banks in town after town, none of them with libraries.

It was only here, in Fortuna, that Penelope decided to stop wishing and to make her dream happen. If she couldn’t move to a town with a library, she could damn well found a library in her town.

For now, there were a dozen books that no one but Penelope had ever bothered to read. She adjusted them on the shelf, lining up the spines neatly and brushing off any dust that had settled over the course of the day.

Turning the heavy key in the lock was her last task of the day, and Penelope smiled with pride at the tidy office before she turned down the street toward her father’s house. The summer sun still blazed high in the sky at this hour, making Penelope perspire under the layers of her cotton dress and heavy undergarments.

She ran a self-conscious hand over her face, hoping sweat wasn’t beading on her forehead. She offered a smile to the people she passed in the street, waving to the schoolteacher and nodding politely at the reverend as he passed on his way home from church.

Penelope paused outside the house she occupied with her father and straightened her clothes and hair, smoothing any unruly curls back into place in the knot at the back of her head. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and pasted on a cheerful smile.

Voices rose from within as she stepped through the front door. The girl who did the cleaning met her in the hall with her ever-present anxious smile.

“Anything I can get you, ma’am?”

“No, thank you, Sarah.”

Penelope didn’t like having servants, not even this teenager, but her father insisted since Penelope wasn’t willing to “do her duty” by keeping house for him. Penelope knew she’d be trapped in a man’s house soon enough; she didn’t want to start just yet.

“Your father and the sheriff are in the parlor,” Sarah said with a bobbing curtsy.

Penelope reinforced her smile, and walked down the hall. Her father lounged in his favorite chair, a cigar in his mouth and a whiskey in his hand. Across from him sat Wiley Barnett, his hat on the table in front of him and his sheriff’s badge gleaming proudly on his chest.

They both looked up as Penelope paused in the doorway, Wiley’s eyes sliding proprietarily over her. Penelope flushed under his gaze, dropping her eyes to hunt through her satchel. Wiley was a handsome man, with hair dark enough to belong to one of the surrounding tribes, and the kind of cocky smile that won people over instantly. He wore the heavy moustache of a military man.

“I brought your telegrams from the office,” she said, holding out the stack. Wiley’s fingers brushed hers as he took the papers, a lingering stroke over the back of her hand. She fought the urge to pull back, reminding herself that it was allowed. Expected even.

After all, he was her fiancé.

She perched on the sofa as Wiley sorted through the messages with a snort.

“Lot of telegrams,” Ashes observed. Her father had the bulk of a man of his station, the buttons of his waistcoat straining over his thick waist. He raised his eyebrows expectantly, waiting to be told all the secrets Wiley held in his hand.

Wiley raised his head, a hard, amused look in his light eyes. “All from Copper Creek. Probably funded their post office for a year with these.” He tossed the stack down on the table in front of him and picked up his drink in their stead.

There was never any glass of whiskey waiting for Penelope when she got home. Her lips curved up unbidden as she imagined her father’s face, or Wiley’s, if she asked for one, and ducked her head to hide the smile. God forbid a good little girl have a drink in the evenings. God forbid she ever relax, even in her own home. Instead, she was expected to perch daintily on the edge of the sofa, her hands folded neatly in her lap, listening expectantly to everything the men said—but never contributing.

“What do they want?” Ashes asked. He maintained the air of a benevolent leader, presiding over the small room, but Penelope knew he must have heard the rumors, same as anyone. The bank was as much a center of gossip as the post office and the general store.

Wiley shifted, his glance raking over the small pieces of paper in front of him. Penelope watched closely, wondering if his movement betrayed nerves she didn’t see on his face. But he looked as relaxed as he ever did when she spied him through the window of the saloon, his boots propped up on the bar.

“The Persephone Star has been seen in the area,” he said with relish, lingering on the name that caused so many others to quake.

Her father’s thick gray eyebrows rose, not in surprise but in barely suppressed interest. “With or without Mirage Currier at the helm?”

Wiley sneered. “Seems that trumped-up little jilt is out of prison. I testified that she should be hanged, but the bottle-head of a federal marshal only managed to pin her sister for the murder. And she still hasn’t swung yet.”

An involuntary gasp escaped Penelope. “They’re going to hang her sister?” It wasn’t completely unheard of for a woman to hang, but it certainly wasn’t common either. Penelope raised a hand to her throat, her fingers hovering uncertainly over the slender expanse of her neck. “But she’s just a girl.”

A cruel smirk twisted Wiley’s lips. “‘Just a girl’?” he parroted with delight. “From our own little postmistress?”

Penelope sank back against the cushions, away from the force of Wiley’s unkind amusement. “I—” she began, but he held up a hand, hushing her.

“I told you,” Wiley said, turning to her father. “These women activists want to play at being men when it suits them, but the second it doesn’t, they hide behind their petticoats.”

“I’m not an activist,” Penelope said quickly. She read the news, she knew about the women fighting for suffrage. She read the accounts of the Seneca Falls Convention with bated breaths as a young girl, the incendiary words lighting up something inside her. But those revolutionary words hadn’t actually started a revolution. Women still didn’t have the vote. “I just like to feel useful.”

“You’ll feel useful soon enough,” Wiley said, softening his tone. “When there are young ones to take up all the time you waste on your job and your little library.”

Penelope dropped her eyes. “It’s not a waste,” she muttered, twining her fingers tightly in her lap. “Reading is important.”

“Sure it is, peaches,” Ashes said benevolently. “And you’ll do plenty of reading to my grandbabies.”

Penelope bit her lip. Babies and housekeeping were the only things Wiley or her father seemed to talk to her about these days. She remembered when she was younger; her father had talked to her about business. In each new town, he’d tell her the competition to his bank, the people resisting, and ask her to figure out how he should go about taking over the finances of the place. He’d smile proudly every time she got the answer right, telling her she was nearly as good at business strategy as he was.

He didn’t talk to her about those things now. Not since she’d grown up, growing into a woman’s body. He’d stopped including her then, stopped acting like it was the two of them against the world. Instead he sent for tutors and governesses, trying to train Penelope into being a “proper” woman.

Ashes had been thrilled when Wiley had come to him a few weeks before, sheriff’s hat in hand, and asked for her hand in marriage. Now all he thought about was her ability to have babies.

Penelope swallowed down her retort, the words burning at the back of her throat. The library mattered to her, but it didn’t matter to her father or to the man she was going to marry.

“What I want to know is what’s taking them so long?” Ashes demanded. “That girl was convicted a year ago! Back in my day, a bandit would have been in the noose before the ink was dry on the execution order.”

Wiley’s lip curled up in a sneer. “They got them some sort of fancy New York lawyer. Been bombardin’ the judge with bullshit appeals since the day they sentenced her. ‘She’s just a girl,’” he parroted, slanting an unpleasant glance at Penelope, who shrank back. “‘She’s just a child.’ ‘Not enough witnesses.’ Codswallop like that. They still have one in the works, far as I know. Currier must know it’ll be rejected, or she wouldn’t be chasin’ after me.”

“And what are you going to do about her?” Ashes asked.

Wiley shrugged dismissively. “If Currier wants revenge, she knows where to find me.” He took a slow, deliberate sip of his whiskey. “I ain’t scared of no girl.”

“Course not,” Ashes agreed. “Bunch of girls running around playing at bandits. Maybe this time you’ll get to put them all away for good.”

“Get them all put in the ground, more like,” Wiley said with a deep chuckle. To Penelope’s horror, Ashes laughed along with him.

Penelope jerked up from her seat. “I’ll just go check on Sarah and dinner,” she said.

Ashes smiled encouragingly at her. “That’s my good girl.”

Penelope hurried out of the room before she had to hear anything further. She never felt more like an East Coast girl than when people talked about gunfights, bandits, and hangings. She knew Wiley thought she was uptight, but sometimes the Wild West was too wild for her. She didn’t believe in the death penalty, and she certainly didn’t believe that criminals should just be gunned down in the streets. The law said that people like Currier couldn’t rob and steal, but it also said that she was owed a fair trial with an impartial judge. And Wiley was no impartial judge. If Currier came to Fortuna, there would be blood in the streets, and yet nobody seemed willing to do anything to stop it.

 

***

 

As Wiley took his leave at the end of the evening, he leaned in close to Penelope. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her, and barely managed to keep from drawing back. But instead he pushed his angry face close to hers and pointed a stern finger in her face. Fear swooped in Penelope’s gut.

“You write back to that yellow-bellied sheriff over in Copper Creek and you tell him that as long as the Persephone Star is in his town, Currier is his problem. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll arrest her, before he finds himself dealing with me.”

Seeing he expected an answer, Penelope let out a shaky “All right.”

Wiley stepped back, satisfied, and Penelope could breathe again. He tipped his hat up, staring down his nose at her. “Good girl,” he said, before sauntering out the door. Penelope’s stomach turned.

 

Jamie Sullivan has been writing for what feels like her entire life – her parents’ attic is full of notebooks brimming with early attempts at fiction. She’s found her stride, however, in romance. She’s happy experimenting with genre, and has written supernatural, science fiction, and realist stories.

She can be found on Twitter @jsullivanwrites and blogging at jamiesullivanbooks.wordpress.com. Come talk!