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The girl licked her lips, watching the wagon move closer. This ‘Oregon Trail’ gig was making her quite the pretty penny, really. So many people, yet not so many that she would be easily caught, as she could always wait for a lone wagon. And no one could really turn her in, either! They had to keep moving.
“Hands in the air!” she cried, pointing her gun at the family before her. A woman, nearing the end of her child-bearing years but still obviously pregnant. No man in sight, but a whole gaggle of children. The father must have died recently, likely after this journey started.
She’d feel bad, but she knew that the family was likely doomed with or without her. A lone woman and seven children? The eldest child was a girl no older than thirteen or fourteen. The eldest boy couldn’t have been more than eight. There was no way that they could all make it, so why not make them provide for her?
“Hand over your money. All of it.”
The woman cried. The children looked fearful. She tried not to feel bad for them. What a sorry, sorry lot.
In the end, she only got $34 from them. Pathetic. Barely even worth her time.
It was almost an hour later that she noticed she’d been followed.
Not by law enforcement, not by the pregnant woman or the thirteen-year-old girl with a gun, but by a little toddler with shining golden hair. One of the children from the wagon she’d held up earlier.
“...What are you doing here, kid?”
“Followin’,” the little girl said, “Lost Mommy. Saw you.”
“I’m not really someone you want to follow, kid,” she smirked, “I’m the Outlaw Queen of the trail, ya know.”
“Okay,” the little girl nodded, “I be princess?”
“Pft,” she laughed, “I’d send you back to your Mommy, princess, but I don’t think I could find her if I tried. And I doubt she’d want to see me.”
“No more Mommy?” the little girl teared up slightly, “Then… you be Mommy?”
She blinked. “Geez, kid! I ain’t your Momma! I’ll take ya to a place with other kids, though, how about that?”
“No!” the little girl shouted, “You be Mommy!”
She sighed. “I’m Margarita, princess. Not Mommy.”
“Be Roseann’s Mommy!”
“That your name, Princess? Roseann?”
“Yes!”
“Sorry, princess, but I can’t look after a kid like you,” Margarita sighed again, “Let’s get you somewhere else.”
Despite Roseann’s continued protests, Margarita scooped the child into her arms. Hopefully the nearest fort had an orphanage… otherwise, she’d have to head all the way back east.
What a pain.