I scrambled down a steep hill and through thick brush that scratched my legs, but the fiddle grew louder, and soon I saw a flicker of firelight in the distance and even heard voices shouting and laughing. A few minutes more and I saw the fire, tall as a man and wide as a wagon, and the fiddler, standing in its light, eyes shut and face upturned as though in prayer, bow hand moving furiously. The fiddler was black-haired and brown-skinned, and garlanded head to toe with wildflowers, black-eyed Susans and bluets and sweet William. I took a few steps nearer, not sure how or if I should announce myself, and against a tree not ten yards from my shoulder I saw two people kissing and touching each other with a hunger I remembered only dimly from the early days of my marriage. The woman was short and wide-hipped, with thick dark hair and a crown made of flowers. Her lover was tall and slim and pale, his fingers in her hair almost delicate in their movements.
I ducked behind a tree; I knew enough not to surprise a pair of kissing strangers in a place I’d never been. Peeking out around the trunk, I could see the shadows of dancers cast giant-size by the firelight on the ground below, and then the dancers themselves: a tall man in a buckskin jacket trimmed with bells, and a woman in a calico dress with her hair in two neat braids. The woman, in particular, was a masterful dancer, leaping and twirling in her partner’s arms and then, when he released her, turning a series of backflips that had even the lovers turning around to cheer. When she finished her acrobatic routine she landed as easily on both feet as though she’d been playing hopscotch, her face in the light of the bonfire both serious and full of joy.
Finally, sitting in a wooden rocking chair at the edge of the firelight, I saw a handsome, dark-skinned person dressed in a top hat and tails like the mayor of Fairchild wore on festival days. Flowing around this person’s shoulders and down onto the ground below was a cape made entirely of flowers, yellow and orange and blue and purple, so large and complex that it must have taken many days and many hands to stitch it all together.
The person was drinking from a champagne glass, and when the dancer with the bells approached to refill it, and both leaned a little into the firelight as he poured, I saw that the person’s hat was a Colorado pinch-front like the one the Kid was said to wear. The person took a sip, laughed at something the dancer with the bells said, and gave a theatrical roll of the eyes. Was this the Kid, and these people his gang? Or had I stumbled upon some other group celebrating in Hole in the Wall territory? I was planning how to approach to resolve these questions when someone grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me into the firelight.
“Look at this,” she shouted, a redheaded woman with a brightly made-up face and the low-necked, full-skirted dress of a showgirl. “I’ve captured an infiltrator!”
The fiddler stopped. The dancers stared. The couple turned from each other’s faces to look at me.
“I’m not an infiltrator,” I said. “My name is Ada. I come from the Sisters of the Holy Child. The Mother Superior sent me. She said—”
The person in the cape set the champagne glass down in the dirt. “Agnes Rose, be neighborly. I’ve been expecting this young lady a long time.” The person stood and extended an elegant, long-fingered hand.
“Sister Ada, welcome to Hole in the Wall.”
“Are you the Kid?” I asked.
The person laughed, a full and mellifluous sound.
“I have gone by many names,” the person said, “but that is the one by which, today, I am most commonly known.”
“And the others?” I asked. In the stories I’d heard, the Kid rode with a gang of at least a dozen strong men—hardened outlaws, the reward for whose capture was five hundred gold eagles each.
“We are as you see us,” said the Kid, arms spreading wide, “in all our glory.”
“Who is this?” asked one of the lovers, the woman with the flower crown. “You didn’t tell us anything about a new recruit.”
“That’s because she’s not a new recruit yet,” the Kid said. “I told the Mother we’d receive her as a guest, and consider whether to keep her on.”
“And you didn’t think maybe you should tell the rest of us?” she asked. “If we do keep her, that’s one more mouth to feed, and one more person riding around the territories on our horses, getting spotted by ranchers and lawmen and who knows who else. And that’s if she’s trustworthy. How do you know she’s not one of Sheriff Dempsey’s people? After what you pulled last month, he’s sure to have bounty hunters on us.”
“I like the look of her,” said Agnes Rose, the one who had dragged me out of the dark. “I could teach her a thing or two. You ever play cards, convent girl?”
“I’m not teaching her how to ride,” said the acrobat. “It took me three months to teach Aggie and she’s still terrible. I’m not going through that again.”
The Kid stood, flower cape swirling in the night breeze.
“Cassie, Lo, my comrades, my friends,” the Kid said, “do you remember what Christ says in Luke about judgment?”
“It’s not Sunday, Kid,” said the woman with the flower crown. But the others had gone still and silent, as though on command, though no such command had been uttered.
“ ‘Judge not,’ ” the Kid went on, “ ‘and ye shall not be judged. Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned. Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.’ ”
Though high, the Kid’s voice was rich, loud, and soaring, fit for a great cathedral. The woman with the flower crown looked on in frustration.
“ ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you,’ ” the Kid said, “ ‘good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.’ ”
The Kid turned to the woman with the flower crown. “Whenever we’ve had a new mouth to feed, haven’t we found the means to do so? And haven’t we always gained more than we laid out? Look around, Cassie,” the Kid said, gesturing at the champagne glasses and flowers. “Good measure, wouldn’t you say?”
“We’ve had a run of luck,” said Cassie. “But if we keep growing—”
The Kid went to Cassie and lifted her up by both hands, danced her around the fire.
“If, if, if,” the Kid said, one arm around Cassie’s back, the other leading her by the left hand. “ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ Cassie. ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow’ ”—the Kid dipped Cassie low and her flower crown slid into the dirt—“ ‘for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.’ ”
The Kid released Cassie, bent to retrieve the crown, dusted it off, and replaced it on her head.
“You’re right, of course,” the Kid said. “You’re always right. We must be judicious in our growth, we must be cautious in our charity. Tomorrow we’ll decide what to do with Sister Ada here, whether to make her one of us or send her back out from whence she came. But tonight—surely tonight we can spare a little champagne for our guest.”
Cassie looked at the Kid with a helpless expression—exasperated, affectionate, resigned. She rose, disappeared into the dark, and returned with a bottle and a glass.