There hasn’t been much time for social visits and I ain’t seen him since I got here. I ain’t sure if he’s friendly or not. I remember the way he pointed that revolver at my head, and decide that he’s probably not someone I want to risk waking.
I take a step backward to climb out the window, and my foot catches a squeaky board. The movement from the bed is explosive. Mr. Gideon sits up, and a pistol gleams in the low light, the business end pointed right at me.
My heart pounds in my throat, and for the first time in my life I wonder why I always leap before looking. But there ain’t ever much time for regrets, so I swallow down my heart and raise my hands in surrender. “You sure do like to point that thing at my head.”
“Miss McKeene?”
“None other.”
“What are you doing in my sleeping chamber?”
I take a deep breath and let it out. I feel like I’m about to jump right out of my skin, but I’m in no immediate danger. The penny under my shirt is warm.
The view, what I can see of it with the moonlight coming in the window, is the nicest thing I’ve seen all week. Gideon is all slim muscles and interesting boy angles, and it’s hard to formulate an answer.
“I suppose . . . the proper answer is that I don’t rightly know. The honest answer is that life in this place is untenable, and if I don’t get out of here soon something bad is going to happen.”
I think of my momma’s warning about my temper, the temper I inherited from her. “Do not let things get to you, Jane. Do not give in to your rage,” she’d always say, her voice full of warning and a knowledge I was afraid to plumb. But now, that anger is building up, making me feel like I’m going to lose my mind. In here with this boy I don’t know, this is the calmest I’ve felt all week.
The tinkerer puts his revolver away and gives me a wry smile. “Miss McKeene, this is a place where terrible things happen more often than you know. Go back to bed before Sheriff Snyder discovers that you’ve gotten out.”
I should leave, should turn and go back to my crowded room, but I don’t. Instead, I lean against the wall, bold as can be. “You mind answering a few questions before I go?”
He crosses his arms, and I feel his regard more than see it. “You barge into a man’s room in the wee hours of the night, where he pulls a gun on you and tells you to leave, and now you wonder if you might ask some questions?”
“You did put the gun away.”
His chuckle echoes through the room. “Well then, how could I say no?”
“Why ain’t we trying to thin out the dead that surround the settlement? Whole plain is full of them, and all we do is keep them off the wall. Sooner or later they’re going to be more than we can hold back. I figured the point of settling in a place like this would be that it was far away from the eastern cities, largely empty of people to turn shambler?”
The tinkerer sighs, running his hand through his hair, and I see the telltale glint of a bracelet on his wrist. I wonder if it was a gift from someone important. I ain’t known many men to wear jewelry that wasn’t a gift. That makes me wonder if he has a wife, and if he does, why ain’t she here?
“You’re right,” he says, not really answering my question. “You met the drovers? Mean as a shambler and about as bright?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen them.”
“There aren’t any cattle here in Summerland. The only thing they’re driving are the undead. At the pastor’s and sheriff’s orders.”
The revelation leaves my mouth dry, and my hands itch for my sickles. “Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’ve told you too much already.” I just stare at him, and a soft sigh comes from the bed, a creak as his weight shifts. “The last person I told ended up turned. And I’m not about to endanger another Miss Preston’s girl.”
I think of Maisie Carpenter, mouth gaping, hands grasping. “You talking about Maisie?” He starts, and that’s all the answer I need. “How’d she end up out there on the plain?”
“She asked questions, too,” he says, his voice heavy with unsaid things.
I cross my arms, chilled despite the warm night. “What’s up with the other side of Summerland? Those nice houses?”
“Where the well-to-do folks live? They have their own stores, paved roads . . . You’ve probably seen the path that leads to the side of town, lined with electric street lamps?”
I remember the sounds of children playing my first day here, and the sight of those lights, and nod. The professor has just confirmed what Ida told me; now I need to hie myself over to that side of town and find Katherine and Lily.
I scratch at my braids and ask, “Why are people coming out here in the first place?”
“Money. Land. Empty promises. A lot of the folks out here were facing prison sentences if they didn’t go west, people like the Duchess and most of the roughnecks. The Survivalists think if they can make a go of it out here in the middle of nowhere then they’ll win more people to their cause.”
“I’d say they were pretty popular already.”
“Looks can be deceiving. The Survivalists have had trouble getting a foothold in the Northern states. People
