Page 46 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
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 havenever 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 rememberedme.
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.
