Page 22 of Follow the Lonesome Trail

Blaze of Memories

Allison Tebo

I stared at the end of the gun barrel, my hands in the air, and licked my lips, nervously. “Edith? Don’t shoot. It’s me . . . your granddaughter, Rachel.”

She leaned against the door jamb, fingering her shotgun, so much older than when I last saw her. There were lines and scars on her face that I had never seen, and an emptiness in her eyes that I did not remember.

“I never saw you before,” she said shortly.

Her words were like a slap. They were the last thing I had expected to hear. Tears sprang to my eyes. “What are you talking about? Don’t you remember me?”

She shrugged, careless, not lowering her weapon. “Don’t remember much that happened before three years ago.”

I stared at her, hands still in the air and mind spinning, trying to understand. “Wh . . . why not?”

She pointed to a scar along her temple. “This happened. Was told I took a tumble off a stagecoach. Not that it’s any of your business.”

My heart sank as I gazed into the faded blue eyes, so cold, so uninterested. I wanted so badly for her to sweep me into her arms and call me her little mouse again. But she only stared at me as if I was a complete stranger.

I tried pleading with her, stepping closer, as if proximity would bring back memories. “Please let me in. I’ve come so far to see you.” I had traveled for days, surviving rough terrain, wild animals, and a worrisome guide; and now, on her very doorstep, I was facing failure.

“You’re Edith Cole,” I insisted, daring to lower my hands a fraction.

Her face twitched, and for a moment my heart lifted in hope, only to drop again when she finally said, “Edith Cole ? It’s true I go by Edith, but I don’t have any recollection of my last name being Cole.

I don’t have no recollection of nothing other than staying in my cabin up here and minding my own business, so why don’t you just clear on out? ”

My insides twisted. How could she not remember her own name? She didn’t remember that she was Edith Cole, the best stagecoach driver in the territory. She didn’t remember that she had been my hero, even though she left when I was five.

She had thought her life was an improper environment in which to raise a young girl.

That’s what a distant relative had told her—a cousin who didn’t care for me, but only wished to mold me into her ladylike pattern.

And so Edith Cole had disappeared from my life, but not from my memories.

Even though it had been ten years since I had last seen her, I still yearned for her presence in my life as desperately as little Rachel had.

My cousin had passed away a few months ago, and I was finally free to choose my own life and to be with the only person who had ever truly loved me.

And so I had traveled all this way and, against all odds, tracked her down.

I wouldn’t give up now.

I took another step towards Edith and reached for her, desperate. “Please let me in. I’ll help you remember.”

She leapt back from me as if I was a rattlesnake, her finger tight on the trigger of her shotgun. “Leave me alone!”

The door shut in my face and I stared at it, misery sweeping over me.

My guide, a man named Whip, stepped out of the tree line. He had hung back when I first approached the cabin, giving me privacy till now, but he must have been watching.

Back in Booneville, when I had been looking for someone to conduct me safely into the hills, Whip had volunteered. I didn’t like him—his mangled face and cold gaze unnerved me—but no one else had offered to come, so I had accepted.

“That her?” he asked, as he strolled towards the cabin, looking up at me where I stood, shaking, on the broken-down step.

“Yes, but. . . .” I blinked. “She . . . she doesn’t remember me.”

Whip scratched his chin, a strange expression crossing his face. “Well, maybe I can help her remember.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about—?”

He grabbed me by the arm and jerked me off the step.

“Let go!” I cried, my voice breaking off in a squeak as he spun me around and slammed me against his chest, pinning me so tightly I could barely move.

Then he pressed a cold blade against my throat.

“Edith Cole!” Whip yelled in my ear. “You’d better come out if you want this girl to live! If you don’t show your face, I’ll kill her!”

“What are you doing ?” I was too scared and stunned to move: even speaking was nearly impossible and I had to force the words out.

“Shut your mouth!” Whip growled.

The door creaked open, revealing the muzzle of a shotgun again and Edith’s cautious face.

“Drop your weapon,” said Whip, “and she won’t get hurt.”

Edith glared at him. “How many times do I have to tell you people I lost my memory? I don’t know who either of you are, so why should I care what you do to each other?”

Whip sneered. “Me and my friends held up your stage four years ago. You pulled out your gun and let us have it. See this face? I was the lucky one.”

She sniffed and shrugged one shoulder. “Still don’t know you, but if you were robbing a stage, it sounds like you deserved what you got.”

“You’re going to pay for what you did.” Whip stroked the flat of his blade across my cheek. “This has been my lucky week. We finally found the perfect bait to get the grizzly to leave her den and come along quietly.” He laughed. “The others should be along shortly.”

I finally found the breath to speak. “Others?” Had we really been followed and I hadn’t realized it all this time?

Edith’s voice was taut. “The girl means nothing to me. I don’t know her.”

I looked at her, trembling, and shame suddenly flooded me. Maybe she didn’t remember me because she didn’t recognize anything of herself in me. The woman I had known would have never made the mistakes I had made. I had tried to be bold like her, but I had only led her enemies straight to her.

“Gran-Gran.” Using my old private name for her without thinking, I swallowed back a sob. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

The name struck her like a lightning bolt. She went rigid, and the hardness in her gaze melted away as she stared at me. “R-Rachel?”

“ Yes .” A gasp lodged in my throat and for an instant, I forgot about Whip and I tried to leap forward. “Yes, Grandma! It’s me!”

Whip dragged me back and pressed his knife closer, strangling off my words.

My grandmother’s eyes widened and she lowered her shotgun. “Wait!” I could see her frantically turning the pages of her memories, trying to find something she had lost. “Don’t . . . don’t hurt her.” Her gaze searched mine, and my heart turned over in my chest. “I’ll come quietly: just let her go.”

“Gran-Gran, no .” I had not come all this way only to get her killed. I’d sooner die myself.

I flung up my arm and shoved at Whip’s knife, whirling around to drive my knee between his legs. His grip loosened and I tore away, but not before his blade swung at me. Pain erupted in my shoulder and I stumbled to the ground.

There was the sharp crack of a gun followed by the thud of a body.

Somehow, I knew without looking who had won that draw.

Gran-Gran bundled me up off the ground and into the cabin. She tucked her shotgun under her arm as she slammed the door and then turned and took my face in her hands.

“I remember something.” Her eyes searched my face, hungry.

I didn’t dare to move, only looked at her, reaching up to touch one of the cool, wiry hands. A hand I remembered.

She looked at my hand, covering hers, and said slowly, “You stepped into a hornets’ nest and you said . . . ‘Gran-Gran, I’m sorry.’”

I gasped. “And you nursed me afterwards!” She had remembered something that even I had forgotten.

She remembered me .

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I gazed at her, memorizing the new lines and scars and the pain in her face and claiming it as mine. She was still my grandma, no matter how much we had changed. “Oh Gran-Gran, I’ve missed you so much.”

Glass shattered as a shot rang out.

She jerked me behind her and we both risked a glance through the broken window. Men were rushing out of the trees. Whip’s friends. They must have seen their dead compatriot and they were madder than ever.

Gran-Gran jerked her kerchief from her neck and bandaged my arm. “You all right?”

I looked up at her and she looked back—knowing me, recognizing me—and I smiled. “I’m just fine.”

She pulled a pistol off a table and tossed it to me. “I still don’t remember much. Just that I had a granddaughter named Rachel, and those hornets.”

“That’s all right,” I said, as I took up position at one of the cabin’s windows and knocked out the glass. “I’ll help you remember!”

She took up a position at the other window on the other side of the door, ducking to one side as Whip’s men began to open fire. “So . . . was I a good grandma?”

I snapped off a quick shot through my window. “The best.”

She glanced over at me and grinned. The years melted away from her face and suddenly she was the same again: the wild and warm woman I had once known.

“Keep your head down, little mouse!”

My heart leaped.

Bullets flew overhead, but I had never felt safer.