Free Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente Page A

west got himself shot over a cooking pot in Laramie.
    Little Mab Volsky, bank robber, bandit queen, pretty as a spring lamb and twice as likely to kick your face in. Did a job at Billings Bank and Trust to the tune of a dandy fortune, and some train in Arizona plum full of horses and silver and oranges. She and her gang ate that gold for days. Took the horses and coin north. Still a few bottles of orange moonshine in Little Mab’s cellar. Still a lot of horses in town with an Arizona brand on their rumps.
    Cocklebur Macaluso, best wildcat on the Lode, five fat dollars just to kiss her, and not a man ever called himself cheated. Girl can cock a gun by squeezing her legs together. You know her by her green bustle and her big ruby mouth, you know her by her laugh and the shine of her knife—and you know her by the jags on her face where a broke down cattleman cut her up good because he wanted power over something.
    Woman Without a Name, horse thief, run off from the Crow Nation when her family went down red under gun. Her pompadour’s slicked up high and stiff and her hand on a mare’s head’s as sure and cool as rain. She’ll ride down a deer until its heart pops and have it skinned and trussed before it knows it’s dead.
    Old Epharim, bear of a woman, grey in the braid with half a beard coming in. Used to wrestle cougars for a dollar a match in some traveling show. If you can find blank skin between her scars you’re a better eye than most. Middle of town sits a big black pan as wide as a bull’s back, and the old girl fries up every night whatever she’s shot, wrestled, trampled, or scared dead. Shares it out fair-like. Smokes the whole time like a burning beast.
    Witch Hex Watson, scamped out of Maine when the snow-hump knocked the cattle down and all the pretty wives called witchcraft on Missus Watson. Girl don’t care. Just as well for a one who never liked the stink of cows, never had a hanker for marrying, never had a smile for anyone but scowls enough to go round. And maybe she did know a thing or two, maybe she’d highed to the woods with her skirts up and maybe the old Puritan cold dark boocraft hopped in her pocket like a frog o’ green.
    Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny . Well, she’s pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory. Astolaine lit off before the new model could hit the doorstep, skinning rabbits and scooping mushrooms like her daddy taught her until she walked out of the woods and into a town full of banshees with no love for anyone’s history.
    Your past’s a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in a box where it can’t hurt anyone.

Snow White
    Meets the Red Ants
     

Her heart’s balled up in her chest and she wants to be quit of it, just cut it out and leave it on the road. Shoulda let the dude have it. In the end she can’t hardly see no difference atwixt her and that deer she shot down. No use but meat. Charming carries her through a black oak forest and a mess of plum and peach trees and she don’t even stop to get that fruit. Snow White don’t care. Her body’s all her trouble and she won’t feed it any sweet thing. That girl’s frown sinks so black she don’t see them coming til they’re on her.
    Seven of them bolt riding down a rill in a spring rainstorm, a bunch of Kates dressed afright and hollering. They’ve got on deerskins and skunk skins and spotted cat skins, pink silk and purple and blue and green, black lace and harlot’s satin, cavalry coats with gold braid and tuxedo trousers, widow’s veils and stovepipe hats and one had a whole horse skull on her head like a helmet. Another has a belt of cattle horns. The biggest toad in the puddle has a silver breastplate strapped on and lord knows where she got it,