Goldeline

it gets. Or maybe you don’t. Heck, I hope you don’t. Let me put it like this. Old Gruff took a fancy to a gal, ’bout nineteen, name of Helena Gregg. She just happened to have herself a husband, not that I knew anything about it. Boy, he was a bruiser. Could break boulders with just his skull, that kind of guy. Like to whooped me into mush.”
“How’d you beat him?” I say.
“Honey, here’s something you got to learn, and learn it good. Sometimes you got to stand your ground and fight. Win or lose, take what’s coming to you. Other times you got to turn tail and head for the woods. Like we done, after Templeton. No use fighting God and the law at the same time, a dangerous combination if there ever was one. No use getting pounded by some hillbilly husband over a little misunderstanding, know what I mean? Also, there was an issue with money.”
“Money?”
“I’m not the best gambler there is. Always pay my debt. Eventually anyhow. Pay my debt when I can. I’m an honest man. Except for when that debt is so high dadgum royalty couldn’t pay it. Again, sweetheart, that’s when you pack your bags and slip out through the window. Shimmy down on your bedclothes. Get out in the darkness, leave not a track behind.”
“I want to go,” I say.
Gruff looks at me a little confused for a second, like he forgot we were talking about Moon Haven altogether.
“Course you do,” he says. “And you’ll get to, one day, mark my words. When you’re a real bandit, of course. Because only real bandits are allowed at the Half-Moon Inn.”
See, Gruff doesn’t think I’m a real bandit yet. I know Gruff’s boys agree with him. Some of them—Pugh, Lemon, even old Buddo—laugh at me, still treat me like a kid, even though I’m the one who goes out in the road and waves down the carriages, even though I’m the only one who can mix up the forgetting herbs. So what if I get scared and have to close my eyes sometimes during the robberies? If it wasn’t for me, for the Ghost Girl of the Woods, the Townies would know it’s just flesh-and-blood people out here looting them, and then they wouldn’t be scared anymore. In fact, they’d come after us. I’m the only reason we can survive in the woods. Sometimes it makes me so mad I could spit.
But when I make it to the Half-Moon Inn, that’s when Gruff will know I’m a real bandit, not just some lonesome little kid. That’s where real bandits belong. That’s where I’ll be home. Until then I’ll live on the road with Gruff and the boys. I’ll be part of a wilder story, the kind of thing you tell kids at night to scare them. I’ll be what they fear most, the Ghost Girl of the Woods, the one who can curse the Townies, the one who when you see her it means death. I’ll be the one they are all scared of, the one they see in their dreams to let them know it’s gonna be a bad one. I’ll get my own revenge on the Townies.
A bandit. That’s what I’ll be, through and through. And a bandit’s what I’ll always be, forever.
“Let’s get on back now,” says Gruff. “We got to up and move camp early tomorrow morning.”
“Again?” I say.
I liked this spot. I think it’s my favorite campsite we’ve had in months.
“’Fraid so, Goldy,” says Gruff. “It wouldn’t do to have folks find out where we’re hiding, now would it?”
“But the Townies don’t think we exist, remember? I’m the Ghost Girl of the Woods!”
I throw my arms up and wiggle my fingers all spooky like, hoping Gruff gets a kick out of that. But Gruff doesn’t much look like laughing.
“Townies ain’t all I’m worried about,” he says.
I know exactly who he means, and it shivers me down to my bones.
“You won’t let the Preacher get me, will you, Gruff?”
“Not on your life, Goldy,” he says. “Gruff’ll good and protect you just fine. Now go on and get you some rest. We got us a big day tomorrow. Got lots to carry, thanks to your work today, and miles and miles to carry it.”
I walk with Gruff back to the camp, singing soft to myself, the moon high and bright above us. The moon is always a mystery, always a secret the sky tells. That’s what Momma used to say. Momma had a lot to say about the moon, about its pull on you, about what the moon will let you do, how if you talk to her she’ll make your hair shine with the dew. It’s true too. Momma never once lied to me, not that I ever heard.
Momma trusted Gruff, so I do too. If Gruff says he can keep me safe from the Preacher, then I believe him.

TWO
We wait only two weeks till we’re out again. I don’t like this so much. For one, it’s too soon. We always wait longer between jobs, at least three weeks, so maybe folks put their guards down a little. But the boys ate up the food too fast, and there wasn’t much gold to be had from Mr. Greencoats. We haven’t had a good meal in a whole week. Gruff was real grumbly when I mentioned it to him.
“You think I don’t know that, Goldy?” he said. “Lord, you’re complaining too. You and everybody else. Who do they want in charge? Who can do a better job than old Gruff?”
That made me feel real bad, like I wasn’t grateful. That’s why I didn’t complain about the new spot either. See, we move to a different place on the trail every couple of jobs, just in case folks get wise to us. I don’t like this new spot Gruff picked at all. It’s at a twisty, windy part of the trail, right past a curve where you can’t see what’s