Chapter Thirty-Two
The South Wall of the Chapel on the North Pasture
Wade brought the horse up at the chapel gate at a hard sliding stop and was down off the saddle with the Henry in his hands before the animal had its feet set.
He came through the gate at a walk.
He had little choice about the walk. The pistol in Jameson’s hand was pointed at the side of Zoe’s head.
George came behind Wade and set the Sharps at his shoulder and held it there, little able to fire past Zoe and hit Jameson.
Both of them came to a stand on the trampled snow ten feet from the rose.
“Dawson.” Wade set the word down flat and cold. “Take the pistol off her.”
“I will take the pistol off her when you have set the rifle down, Collins, and your brother’s Sharps beside it.” Jameson had his back to the wall and Zoe in front of him, pale gray eyes steady on Wade. “You have come at a run. A run is a poor way to come at a thing like this. Set the rifle down.”
Wade held a beat. He crouched slow and set the Henry down.
George set the Sharps down beside it.
“There,” Wade said. “The rifles are down. Take the pistol off her, Dawson. You have what you’ve come for. Lower the pistol and let us settle the rest of it as men.”
“The rest of it as men.” Jameson’s mouth pulled at the corner, small and bitter. “There is the trouble, Collins. I have not come here as a man. I have come here as a son. The gold, Collins, the gold your grandfather stole off my father with a lie, the gold is in the walls of this church.”
Wade held very still.
“You cut my fence,” he said, low. “You shot at me at the willow. You dug at my land at the night.”
“I cut your fence.” Jameson said steady, unashamed.
“I shot at you, and I missed as intended, on account of a dead man being little use to me. I dug at your wash. I came to your ranch peaceable at the first, Collins. I offered a fair price for the parcel at Larkin’s, and I offered a fair price a second time at the garden, to your woman, and she set the dog on me.
” He set the barrel of the pistol harder at Zoe’s temple.
“So I have come by the other road. And you will take this church down board by board with your own two hands until the gold comes out of it, or I will not have a use for this woman.”
Zoe drew a breath.
She had barely looked at Wade since he had come through the gate, on account not trusting her face. She looked at him now. She found his eyes already on her, the pale blue of them gone hard and steady. She held them a count, and she set at her own face.
Follow me, her eyes said. I have a thing to do, and little time to tell you it, and I am asking you to follow me and trust me as I have little trusted you the whole of this week.
Wade held her eyes a count. The line of his jaw eased by a hair, and she knew he had read it.
“There is no gold in the walls, Mr. Dawson,” Zoe said.
She said it in a clear, steady voice. Jameson’s grip at her arm went tight.
“The dead man wrote it in his own hand,” Jameson said at her ear. “At the top of the page. Caleb Dawson is not wrong about the gold.”
“He wrote that the gold was true, Mr. Dawson. He did not write that it was in the walls.” Zoe kept the voice steady, the whole of her mind at the lie she was building stone at a time at the cold.
“You read the letter fevered. I read the twin of it last night with a clear head. Your grandfather—” she caught the slip and corrected it “—his grandfather put the gold into the walls, yes. But he put the most of it elsewhere, Mr. Dawson. He put the most of it in a place he wrote of in a second letter, a letter not in that box. A letter at the house, in a book, on the shelf above the warming oven. I have read it. I know the place. It is not this church, and it is not the wash. You will take this whole church down to the ground and find a hard year’s wage in the mortar for the whole of your trouble, and the rest of the gold will sit where he put it, a mile off, while you stand in the rubble of a church with the law come up the road for you. ”
The pasture had gone very quiet. Jameson’s breath had gone still at her ear.
“You are lying,” he said.
“I lied to you in the garden, Mr. Dawson, and you marked it the once. Mark this.” Zoe turned her head to him, the barrel cold at her temple, her own eyes steady. “Am I lying now?”
Jameson looked at her.
He had marked her a poor liar at the garden.
Zoe had learned, in a household of silences at Albany, the one thing that turns a poor liar to a passable one, which is to build the lie into a frame of truth.
There was a second letter. It was in a book on the shelf above the warming oven.
It said nothing of a second fortune, on account of there being no second fortune to speak of, but Jameson had not read it.
“Then you will take me to it,” Jameson said.
“I will take you to the letter. I will lead you to the place the letter names. You will take the pistol off me and you will let Mr. Collins and his brother stand clear, and you will leave Sadie alone.” Zoe held his eyes. “That is the whole of the bargain, Mr. Dawson. The letter, for the family.”
The greed came up in his eyes, and the fever with it. For the space of a breath Zoe nearly had him, nearly felt the barrel come off her temple.
Then the greed narrowed.
“No,” Jameson said, at the back of his throat, low and cold and final.
“You will lead me to the place. You will lead me with the barrel at your back and your Mr. Collins in front of the both of us where I can watch him, and if the place in the letter proves a lie, Miss Preston, I will shoot you and take my chances with the law.”
He looked at Wade over Zoe’s dark hair.
Wade looked at Zoe with a question in his pale blue eyes.
Do you have a plan past the lie?
No, her eyes said. I have no plan past the lie. I have only the lie, and the time it buys, God, and the whole of my trust, at last, in you. Follow me, Wade. Follow me, and pray.