Ottilie hated the west almost as much as she hated the smells of tobacco and whiskey. She didn’t care for the men in the west because they often smelled of both. She loved daises and her family’s home in Pennsylvania. She loved her brothers and the way they called her “Tillie.”
Ottilie had killed 23 men and she suspected she would kill a number more unless she was killed first. She didn’t expect old age or the pox would get her first, not at the rate she was going. She wasn’t pretty or well-read enough to marry a wealthy man, but she was too pretty and well-read to be a whore. Ottilie didn’t dwell much on how she came to be where she was, but when she did think about it, she saw the humor, the oddness, and the novelty others took in her. Lady manhunters weren’t much heard of, though she wasn’t the first she’d heard tell of. There were two Indian women to the north, a half-negro lady who ran with a crew in Mexico, and there had been one or two others to dot the American west before her. She didn’t know how many men they’d killed, but she had a strong notion it was fewer than 23. The only person Ottilie had ever met who was a better shot than herself was her brother Augustus, and not better by much. She was close, but he always had her by a hair.
Ottilie loved dresses but couldn’t deny the practicality of trousers on the trail. She would often fall asleep thinking about a tearful family reunion back home, her clad in a beautiful gown, what was left of her family in their Sunday best, and forgiveness all around. She wasn’t sure that would ever happen, and if she gambled she’d put her money against it. The war hadn’t taken as many men from her family as it had some, but the one it did snatch away left a gaping hole in her heart and opened up a flood of bitterness between her and her kin. Some women, most women, would have accepted the plan the Lord handed down for her and moved on with their lives, but Ottilie was too rough and stubborn for that. She was a mule among mares, and when a shell at Gettysburg took the intended her family loathed and they pushed her to move on, well, Ottilie bucked. Cruel words and Biblical prescriptions from her parents backed her into a corner, and that was a place where Ottilie fought ferociously from, as wounded animals do.