Is This a Robbery?
Chapter 16 of The Ballad of Abigail Lambert
They waited until nightfall to make their approach. Once it was clear the loggers had gone to bed for the evening, they slipped in through the gaps in the fence. Esperanza nicked her finger on the barbed wire, and drew blood. They snuck toward the cabin and hugged the side of its wall.
“Stay here,” Abigail whispered.
“What? Why?” Esperanza asked.
“I’m gonna talk to them.”
“That was your plan?” Yuma asked, now under the impression that he’d just signed up to be slaughtered by a mob of angry loggers.
“What’s with you?” Esperanza asked her.
“What?”
“There’s rage in your eyes,” she said.
“I won’t be long.” Abigail slipped away toward the steps leading up to the cabin door. She lightly tapped it, and it quietly opened. She snuck up the stairs and gently closed the door behind her.
Inside, the cabin was dark. She saw him underneath the covers, but the darkness within made it so she failed to notice the crib by Henry’s bedside, carved from the very same wood of the cabin. Abigail drew her knife from her boot, and approached the bed. He turned over in his sleep as she stood above him. She could barely make it out, but it seemed like there was someone sharing his bed. Abigail looked around the cabin and finally noticed the crib. She approached it, to find a baby, no more than a year old, peacefully asleep.
Henry’s new wife tossed over on the cramped bed, now awakened from her husband’s movement. She spied the silhouette of someone standing over by the crib. The moonlight that cut in from the window reflected off the tip of Abigail’s blade. The woman screamed, awaking Henry and startling the baby to tears. Abigail hopped back from the surprise of it all. Henry lit a nearby lantern.
“Abigail?” How did she find him?
“How ya doing, Henry?” She faced him, knife still in hand.
“You know this woman?” His wife asked.
“I’m his wife.”
“His wife?”
Abigail looked down at the child as it cried in its crib.
“Just leave,” she told them.
“What?” Henry could hardly hear her over the baby’s tears.
“Leave. It’s what your best at,” she said.
Henry and his wife cautiously stepped out of their bed. His wife approached the crib and quickly scooped up her child. They exited the cabin, leaving Abigail alone inside. As Henry left, he ran to one of the other cabins for help. Esperanza and Yuma hugged the wall further into the shadows. What the hell is she doing? Esperanza wondered.
Inside, Abigail stared at the crib for the child that should’ve been hers. She picked it up and flung it across the cabin. She took out her rage on everything she could pick up, flinging things around with as much strength as she could muster. As she released her rage with reckless abandon—she’d managed to knock over the lantern, setting the whole cabin ablaze. The heat mattered little to her as she continued to tear the cabin apart. The flames crept up the walls of the cabin and enveloped her in a blanket of fire. She yelled as she took the pieces of the crib and beat them against the floor, until her hands bled from the splinters. She heaved in the center of the cabin engulfed by flames, ready to let the fire consume her, but it refused.
The wood above her cracked under the pressure of the fire, and she felt something drip onto her forehead. She looked up to see a crack in the wood as it leaked sap above her. She rummaged around and managed to find a mason jar, still intact. She took it in hand and raised it above her head to collect the sap, collecting enough to fill the small jar entirely. She stepped through the flames that covered the front door, and walked outside.
The entire logging crew stood and witnessed the cabin go up in flames. They were all struck with awe at once, like a great wind, when Abigail emerged from the cabin. Covered in soot, yes, her hands covered in blood, sure. But she had nary a burn on her body. She spotted Esperanza and Yuma on their knees with a couple of the loggers behind them. One of them had Jules on a chain. She approached Yuma and laid the mason jar down in front of him.
“This is yours,” she said.
“Grab her!” Henry commanded as two of the loggers restrained her.
“Let them go, Henry,” Abigail pleaded. “It’s me that caused this, not them.”
Henry approached her, and considered her request. He looked to the two of them on the ground, then back up at Abigail.
“Get them out of here,” Henry said. The loggers forced Yuma and Esperanza to their feet, and escorted them out of the camp with Jules.
“Abigail! No!” Esperanza shouted as she was pushed away.
“You’ll be fine, Esperanza. Home ain’t much farther now,” she assured her as she stared at the ground.
Esperanza kicked and thrashed, but remained unsuccessful in escaping their grasp.
“Tie her to one of the trees,” Henry told his men. “We’ll ship her off with Peter in the morning,” Henry said.
“What does that mean?” Abigail asked.
“That you’ll be tried in the city for nearly killing my family,” Henry told her.
Abigail nodded as the loggers carried her away to her fate.
Outside the perimeter of the camp, the loggers restraining Yuma and Esperanza threw them to the ground. They released Jules from her leash and she growled at them as they left. Yuma dusted himself off and walked back toward the horses they’d left behind.
“Where are you going?” Esperanza asked him.
“To Mount Reneda,” he replied.
“We can’t leave her there!”
“The woman walked through fire. She can survive anything.”
Esperanza rushed over and stopped him in his tracks.
“I can’t do this alone,” she pleaded.
“You would risk your life for this woman?”
“She’s the only person I’ve ever met worth doing so.” There was a long silence between them.
“What will you need of me?”
Esperanza kept awake for most of the night as she monitored Abigail through her binoculars outside the camp. She’d dozed off on more than a couple occasions, but she had to make sure the loggers hadn’t made good on the sign’s promise of shooting trespassers. By the time morning broke, she’d been jostled awake by Yuma, who sat beside her with his legs crossed.
“They’re moving her,” he said.
She could see them loading Abigail into the back of a closed wooden cart, her hands tied at the wrists. They bolted the door shut with a padlock, and handed the driver the key.
“What is your plan?” He asked.
“Get on your horse and follow me.”
Peter rolled out of the logging camp, unaware of what awaited him further on down the road. Once he was out of shouting distance from the camp, Esperanza and Yuma rode up alongside him on their horses and covered him from both sides. Peter looked to his left to see him, and to his right to see her. Down at her side, Jules chased along on foot. He watched as Esperanza lagged behind him, only to turn back to his left and see Yuma get close enough to him to spook his horse and send the cart careening off the road. What they hadn’t accounted for was the dip up ahead, which sent the cart tumbling down onto its side and shattering it. As Peter managed to crawl out from the wreckage, Esperanza and Yuma stood above him.
“Is this a robbery?” He asked them.
Before Esperanza could even answer, Abigail’s foot exploded through a crack in the debris. She kicked the boards around until she could slide out. Covered in cuts, she took to her feet and joined the two of them. She held out her wrists, and Yuma cut her free.
“My gun,” she demanded. Peter unholstered her weapon and handed it up to her. “Get out of here.”
He took to his feet and mounted the horse that had been dragging the cart. He rode back toward the camp. Abigail turned to Yuma.
“You came back for me,” she told him.
“It was her that put this together.” He pointed at Esperanza.
“I told you to go home,” Abigail said.
“I wasn’t about to leave you behind if I could help it.” Abigail gave her a hug. As they embraced, Jules whimpered.
“Where’s that dog?” Abigail asked.
Jules’s whimpers grew louder and more strained as they searched the wreckage, only to discover the dog buried beneath what remained of the cart. Esperanza was quick to clear the debris, but when they finally got to Jules underneath, they found her injured severely—bleeding from multiple wounds. Esperanza dropped to her knees beside her. Just to whimper was a strain on the poor creature. It was clear these were not wounds she would come back from. Abigail took a knee beside Esperanza and gently patted the dog. She rose to her feet and aimed her gun at Jules’s head.
“No.” Esperanza said.
“We can’t leave her like this,” Abigail said.
“We won’t.” Esperanza took the gun from Abigail’s hands.
“You don’t have to do this,” Abigail said.
“I do.”
Abigail nodded and walked away to give her a moment. Esperanza laid her head against the dog’s. She took to her feet, and the echo of the gunshot sent birds flying out of a nearby tree. They dug a grave for the little one, and Esperanza planted a cross fashioned out of two twigs at the head of the grave. After their moment in silence, without a word, Esperanza mounted her horse.
“Let’s go,” she said.
And they rode off for Mount Reneda.
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