1.
When she was nineteen, two bandits dressed-up as Indians killed Molly Sheridan's father and her three younger brothers, and burned their ranch. They carried her off, but hadn't tied her hands properly, perhaps because they'd got so drunk, perhaps only because they didn't imagine she could give them any trouble, bound or no. Thus as they were riding, she was able to get hold of one of their pistols, and shoot the men dead.
She would later regret that she had done the deed too quickly, and neither of the villains had any notion of what had occurred. There could be no satisfaction in that.
Sheriff Fane had proposed marriage to her, the following day. She had refused him. He was a cruel man, who delighted in whipping his horses and smoking cigars, and he had a particularly odious mustache. Molly did not hate all mustaches—but his she found unbearable. Perhaps it only seemed so, not because of any quality of its own, but because of the hateful face it grew out of, and the savage, staring eyes that went with it.
So he had taken her to town and left her in the charge of Cyrus Malley, proprietor of the Creaky Springs. In his view, there was nothing else to be done with her. She had nowhere else to go—"Excepting Hell, that is," he'd remarked, thinking his wits quite sharp.
Her mother had been taken a year since by fever of one sort or another, and Molly had no remaining relations in this world. Since she had not accepted the Sheriff's "protection," at the price he set for it, she was left with no other option but outright prostitution ... save starvation or perhaps suicide.
The hard realities of frontier life. There were rather few women in the West, at this date, and most of those that were, were whores.
But Molly Sheridan had not accepted those realities. She stole herself a horse and a rifle, then fled into the wilderness. She'd always had a knack with horses, as well as with firearms. Her daddy and her brothers thought it baffling, but now she'd put those gifts to use. It would prove her salvation.
She made herself a mask, out of one of the black stockings they'd given her to wear at the brothel. She became an outlaw.
Before long, she discovered she had talent for it. Being good with horses and with guns was obviously part of that, but only part. It also took a head for planning. For management.
Everybody knew who she was, from the very beginning, but she kept wearing the mask anyway. It seemed to give her power. She wasn't just a girl with guns, when she wore that mask. It made her frightening and formidable, and mythic, too. She was the notorious outlaw, Sheridan Shooter.
2.
She soon found a partner—a woman her own age named Swift-as-a-Snake. She was not an Indian, though she had an Indian name and wore Indian clothes. She claimed she'd been abducted as a little girl by Comanche's, raised up as one of their own, so she had no memory of her original family. But then a year before, and just days after she had been married, she got angry at her husband and killed the brave, and then was banished from the tribe. Like Molly she had chosen to become an outlaw.
She was a useful companion—skilled in tracking, and living off the land, and the very Devil in a scrap. But Molly didn't entirely believe Swift's story (she only ever called her Swift—the rest made too much of a mouthful). Something about her costume, and the way she spoke—it didn't quite ring true. It had a stagy quality. Once in a gully they'd spied on other Indians, around a campfire, and Molly had asked Swift to translate their talk, in order to find out their plans ... and she couldn't do it. Claimed she couldn't hear them clearly, though Molly could, and she'd been right beside her. And she'd been certain they were Comanche's. So if these were the people that brought her up, how come Swift didn't know their language?
Plus she was a huntress and a warrior. And as far as Molly knew, Indians didn't train their women to fight or to hunt—that was the braves' job. The squaws were s'posed to tend camp and the babies, and cook and sew, all the usual womanly things ... and Swift was no good at all at any of that stuff.
She would never confront her about it—it actually didn't make a difference to their partnership—but secretly Molly was convinced Swift was just another runaway, like her. Or else she was crazy. Maybe she'd got away from some lunatic asylum, back East. Or maybe she'd been an actress in one of those traveling troupes ... Those types were all little better than vagabonds. Molly could pass hours speculating about it, turning over various ideas and possibilities. But she was careful never to let Swift know her suspicions.
For a while—a period of weeks—they picked up a third "associate," and became known as the Sheridan Shooter Gang. An actual gang! With her as the leader! Their third member was a black man who called himself Horace Coal and said he'd fought for the Union in the War Between the States. He'd been captured and lynched by Sheriff Fane and his men. Molly and Swift had avenged him by lynching Sheriff Fane.
Molly was interested to meet his replacement—wondering what kind of fellow the new sheriff would turn out to be. A better opponent, or a lesser? She just had to wait and see.
A week before his ignominious death, Molly had given her virginity to Horace Coal. Swift had suggested it. She had herself been coupling with the man, at every opportunity. Molly had made no comment and done her best to turn a blind eye to it, as much as possible. But obviously she had been fully aware of what was going on. It had been rather embarrassing. Finally Swift had asked her outright why she never took a turn with the man. Molly hadn't really known how to answer, especially with respect to the obvious delight Swift partook in the act. Soon she found she was allowing Swift to convince her to give the whole strange sticky business a try.
It had been intriguing, more than anything else. Not a wholly satisfying experience—but not unpleasant. Yes, there had been pain, and a little awkwardness—but not half as much as she'd prepared herself for. Horace had been very careful with her—Swift had threatened to scalp him if he finished too quick, or hurt her more than was avoidable. Uppermost in her mind, immediately afterward, and whenever she thought it over since then, had been a desire to repeat the experiment. To try the act anew, and find out how the second time compared to the first. Now that she had a clearer notion of how it was performed. But then Horace had the inconvenient misfortune to get himself arrested and executed. And she had no one else on hand to explore the matter with.
She wished bawdy houses existed for the exclusive use of women. It was ridiculous, in her view—insufferable, in fact—that society had not addressed this need. As if it didn't exist. Of course it existed and always had—but all the fucking men suppressed it, the whole world over. And they always would, at least as long as silly women let the smug bastards get away with it.
3.
One day they robbed a stagecoach, or tried to, only to find out some other bandit had beat them to it. Cleaned out the dang-gone thing.
"Young feller, he were," said the driver. "Stopped us not ten minutes back. Damned saucy rascal."
Molly knew this driver quite well, though not by name. He was a civil old bugger. She had robbed his stage many, many times, and they had gradually established an easy rapport. Two people going about their jobs, trying to make the transaction as simple and hassle-free for the other as possible.
"He made me give him one of my gloves," put in one of the passengers, a pretty young lady, "To remember my face by, he said. He called me a Vision of Radiance." She did indeed appear to radiate, as she repeated that. And you could hear the capital letters.
"Impertinent scoundrel," growled her sour-faced chaperon. When her charge sighed wistfully, she earned herself a cruel slap from the stout old woman. "Hussy!"
"Now, now," said Molly, "No more of that."
"Don't presume to—"
"Hush," Molly said, putting her gun to the old woman's face. But she relented, when the silly girl she was sticking up for only burst into tears and pleaded for the harridan's life ...
"Don't hurt Aunt Maverly! Oh please don't hurt my dear old auntie!"
"Blast and tarnation!" Molly exclaimed, after they'd sent the coach on, "Hellfire and Jesus!"
"I track him," pronounced Swift, "I catch him, chop his pecker off. Keep it for trophy. 'Remember his face by,' like he told the foolish girl." She smiled her crazy smile, eyes sparkling.
"Never mind his dang-gone pecker," Molly countered, kicking at the dirt, "I want that dang-gone loot!"
"We go then. We get it."
4.
His real name was Lyle Leigh—he had decided his bandit name would be Wily Wildman. Wily not Willy. Perhaps he'd better spell it Whiley or Wyleigh, so there would be no confusion on that score, when it was printed on Wanted posters and in the newspapers, and perhaps even in the dime novels, if he was fortunate enough to become famous enough for that. Or infamous enough, rather.
Today's had been his first robbery. It had gone quite well. Not only had he secured for himself a nice haul, but he felt he'd made a fine impression on that pretty young lady. (She had certainly made a fine impression upon him.) Hopefully the story of his gallantly asking for her glove as a souvenir of her loveliness would spread far and wide, and furthermore he hoped it would do so with alacrity.
He had neglected to mention his new name, however. Hadn't occurred to him, until it was too late. The question had never come up. Everyone in the coach had been exceedingly cooperative—suspiciously so. None of them had bothered challenging his demands, the way he'd always imagined would be the case: "How dare you, sir? Just who do you think you are?" "They call me Wily Wildman," he'd planned on replying, "Scourge of the West!"
Well, perhaps next time.
That girl, though ... Good Lord. He couldn't get her visage out of his mind. Pretty as a picture.
He should have abducted her, maybe. Just for the evening, anyhow. He wondered if she would have come, if he had asked—or rather, when he ordered it. You don't ask a girl's permission, if you abduct her. Wouldn't work, would it? How much fight would she have put up? He liked to imagine it wouldn't have been much of one.
But realistically he'd never have dared. No sir. It was nice to think about, but actually trying it would have been too much to take on. Especially on his first durn job! Even if he'd managed to carry her off, he wouldn't have known quite what to do with her—how far to go. What if she had started crying or something? Believing he meant to kill her ... He wasn't the sort that would enjoy that. His fantasy was to seduce her—not torment a girl like that with ghastly, unspeakable fears ... No, the whole thing would have turned into a horrid and frankly ridiculous mess.
Still he couldn't stop thinking about her.
5.
"What in tarnation?" said Molly, "Hell's he doin' to himself over there?"
"Can't you see?" said Swift.
"Sure I can see. I just don't dang-gone understand it."
"Men do that plenty. All damn time. Whenever they be alone."
"Why?"
Swift just looked at her like she was an idiot. And the more she thought about it, perhaps it was a silly question.
She rubbed her own private parts, sometimes, in her bedroll. Before she fell asleep, or sometimes first thing when she woke, before she really got up ... but it had never occurred to her that other people would let themselves do that, except lunatics in asylums, like she was taught as a child. A schoolteacher had told her that, as she recalled, and once she had overheard the town minister saying something similar to somebody. So she had always assumed it was something wrong with her, a perverse weakness of her nature she couldn't personally overcome—and she had been ashamed of it, whenever she did it. But she hadn't been able to help herself—nor did she try very hard. For after choosing the life of a bandit and murderer—even though every son of a bitch she'd killed had damn gosh well deserved it—some extra sinning along such lines as those couldn't mean much, measured against all the rest.
