Astray by Emma Donoghue

throws him a blanket before she settles down on her bedroll with the horses’ ropes under her. The pistol digs into her hip as she drops into sleep.
    In the gray dawn, the end of Jensen’s rope lies blackened in the ashes. “Well, that’s just daisy,” Mollie mutters, through a yawn. She’s mildly impressed, though he didn’t manage to sneak his horse away from her, or his rifle.
    She follows his tracks back toward Wickenburg, catching up with him in a quarter of an hour. From a distance, he looks like some mad preacher, stalking along with joined hands.
    Mollie reins in beside him. He’s got a healthier color than yesterday, at least. He stops, panting slightly.
    “Care to ride?” she asks, indicating his horse.
    “Care to go fuck yourself?”
    Men often think to scandalize her, which is funny. As if, under the buckskins, there’s still some fragile lady, trembling at each dirty word.
    “You’re a cross-grained son of a bitch, aren’t you?” she remarks, putting Jensen on a long rope. “Don’t seem to care how hungry that family of yours gets. Course, all alone in that godforsaken camp since Tuesday, they could have been scalped by now.”
    His eyes glitter. “No Apaches left south of Prescott.”
    “Yeah, sure, except for the odd renegade in the hills. Or of course any white desperadoes who might see Mrs. J’s fire, they’d be sure to treat her like gentlemen.”
    She lets him mull that over. Clicks to her horse, moving off at a walk so Jensen has to stumble along behind. If this takes three days, he’ll just have to tell his wife they went the long way.
    He jerks, drags his feet, curses.
    At one point he trips and can’t seem to get to his feet again. For a minute she lets the horse pull him along in the dust—but he won’t be much good to Mrs. J. all shredded, so Mollie calls a halt. “Get on your cayuse, or we’re gonna be baking out here all week.”
    It could go either way.
    But Jensen climbs up into the saddle, and on they ride. Southwest, keeping Twin Peaks on the right and Vulture Peak on the left.
    “Old Vulture’s given up over thirty million dollars in gold,” Mollie remarks.
    “Not to me, she hasn’t.”
    Mollie’s watching the horizon for dust storms. Below them the Sonoran desert stretches away, already shimmering. Jensen’s botched escape has cost them an hour, so they have to ride hard in the heat of the afternoon to have any chance of reaching the camp by nightfall. A little scrub oak and piñon juniper for shade, but every crick they pass is dry; Mollie doles out the water bag sparingly. It’s too hot to talk; she rubs her gritty eyes and urges her pony on.
    “Come on,” says Jensen suddenly, “has my wife promised you something she’s got stashed away, from her papa?”
    “She’s got nothing,” says Mollie, “except another little Jensen about to carve its way out of her.”
    He stares. “You some class of do-gooder?”
    “It was a slack week.”
    The fact is, she does make a habit of this kind of thing. Hears of a man sick in camp, rides out with medicine and rabbit soup. Adventure’s scarce since the Indian Wars ended.
    As darkness moves over the hills, she decides they must be another hour from Jensen’s camp, and it isn’t worth breaking her pony’s leg.
    She likes to sing while she’s cooking. Jensen pulls a face: “Somebody forgot to grease the wagon.”
    When she serves up the doings, he holds out his bound hands. “Let me hold my fork.”
    “Not till you’re home.”
    “For blazes’ sake, I’m not some lost steer.”
    “A steer would have more sense.”
    It may be foolish, but she undoes the knot anyway. Jensen flexes his hands, shakes them, rubs them where they’re chafed.
    Mollie doles out a small measure of whiskey. “Here’s how,” she says, for a toast.
    They swap tales of veins and lodes they have known, as sailors talk of their ships.
    “I wear the clothes that fit the work,” says Mollie, “but they get me arrested every now