In Calamity's Wake by Natalee Caple

won’t forgive you people if you shed my blood! You all going to Hell like demons! You gonna burn! You gonna burn, not me. Get away from here!
    The vigilantes began to move into small boats and they rowed over. Soon the black lines of rifle stocks were like spokes surrounding the woman on the wharf-boat. Someone gave a signal, though Calamity didn’t see or hear it, and the boat was set afire and cut adrift. As it floated out into the current, the woman on the bow fell to her knees screaming and crying and covering her eyes with her hands. After a minute she got to her feet and went into the cabin. The vigilantes were calling to each other, We got her now! We got her! Where is she? Can you see her?
    When the wharf-boat was well into the stream the woman appeared standing at the freight opening. Her hair was wild, released from its severe bun, her eyes were wide and her whole body tensed. She rolled a large keg of powder into the middle of the open space. She stood in the light of her burning craft, with a cockedmusket in her arms, the muzzle plunged into the keg of powder.
    I dare you, she screamed, I dare you to come on and take me! You demons from the underworld, you white Satans, you whoremongers, you come and get me!
    The night was soaked in silence. The small boats kept at a proper distance now, their occupants floating, stunned. The flames licked up the sides of the wharf-boat, growing thicker and brighter until enormous sheets of flame cradled the boat. The woman stood, floating down into the darkness that swallowed the river, with her cocked musket still in the keg of powder. She cursed and defied her executioners. Calamity rode to the water, swung off her horse and waded in. She swam, limbs thrashing in the water, towards the woman.
    Jump, she yelled. I won’t let them lynch you. Jump and swim away from the boat. She screamed at the vigilantes, Put your guns down. Put your guns down. She’s a woman. Are you going to burn her alive? Are you gonna hang a woman? Put your guns down. Goddammit, put your guns down!
    Calamity heard an explosion. It was a boom that struck her in the gut; she felt it move through her. She saw the wharf-boat sink. Sparks showered the water, fell on her wet hair.
    Damn you! she screamed. Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! She smacked and punched and kicked the water as she waded back to shore.
    There was a long silence from the people in the boats. Their arms were at their sides, weapons on the ground. Their expressions were astonished. A number finally spoke out in sincere voices as if to a jury:
    She didn’t have to do that.
    I didn’t have the heart to lynch a woman nigger.
    We would have taken her in for cheatin’, that’s all. We were only trying to frighten her.
    Nigger woman was crazy.
    She had a death wish.
    Don’t they all.

Miette
    S O, YOU ARE ALIVE . T HAT’S GOOD NEWS !
    I must have passed out from the pain, while my horse found the trail and kept us moving, for when I heard that voice, my eye was on her neck and my arms were numb. I called, Whoa, and she stood still.
    The voice belonged to a cheery little man mounted on a giant horse, a black mountain of a horse with a white heart on its chest and a white mane and tail. The man’s moustache was equally oversized, hiding all of his lower face but the fraction of a lip and a small bit of chin.
    He smiled at me and chuckled. I thought you were dead! he said.
    Not yet.
    Well you were headed in the right direction.
    For Virginia City?
    No, you are headed the opposite direction of Virginia City. You were headed in the right direction for death, riding around unconscious.
    I looked around me. The trail looked the same ahead as behind.
    Are you sure I’m going the wrong way? I said. Every word sent pain shooting across my scalp. My arms and legs felt stuffed with sawdust.
    Yup, I just came from visiting my sister at Alder Gulch. You need a doctor to look at that ear, he said, moving his horse in