Chapter Thirty
Buck’s hooves ate up the distance between Henry and the other riders with every stride and he bent low over the horse’s neck, urging every last reserve of strength from an animal that had already given him more than any horse should be asked to give in a single night.
The riders ahead grew larger with agonizing slowness.
First, only shapes in the dark, then distinguishable figures, then close enough that Henry could make out Ruth’s pale face turned back over her shoulder, could see the moment she recognized him and went rigid in the saddle.
“Henry!” Her voice carried thin and desperate across the distance between them.
Behind him, Pastor Luke’s horse labored to keep pace, the old minister’s coat flapping loose in the wind, his hat long since lost somewhere on the road. Henry did not slow to check on him. There was no room left in him for anything but the growing distance he still had to close.
Walker’s party pulled up at last, wheeling their horses to face the road behind them, and Henry hauled Buck to a hard stop a dozen yards off, close enough now to see Walker’s face clearly in the moonlight, satisfaction written plainly across it.
Flanking Walker on either side rode two men Henry had never laid eyes on before but one look at them was enough to tell him exactly what sort of men they were.
The larger of the two sat on his horse with the heavy, unhurried stillness of someone who’d made his living from violence long enough that it no longer troubled him one way or another.
He had thick shoulders, a jaw darkened with a day’s stubble, a coiled length of rope hanging loose at his horse’s side.
The second was leaner, restless in the saddle, his eyes moving constantly over the road.
He had the calculating attention of a man who enjoyed his work rather more than the first.
Hired muscle, both of them, the kind Walker’s money bought easily enough in towns just like Weatherford. Men without loyalty beyond the wage in their pocket, and, Henry suspected, without much conscience to trouble them regarding how that wage got earned.
“Mr. Foster.” Walker’s voice carried easily across the still night air.
“I confess I hadn’t expected you to catch us quite so soon.
Though I’ll admit, you’ve chosen a rather poor moment to get yourself killed.
” His gaze slid past Henry to the pastor drawing up beside him, and something like amusement flickered across his features.
“And you’ve brought along a pitiful old parson for the occasion.
Should I take that as some sort of last rites, arranged in advance? ”
“Let her go, Walker.” Henry’s voice came out low and hard, his hand already resting near the pistol at his hip, though he made no move to draw it yet.
“I think not,” Gideon said. He then turned his head and nodded to the two men, who removed their pistols from the holsters at their hips.
“No!” Ruth cried, twisting against the arm Walker had locked around her waist. “You said you wouldn’t hurt him if I came with you willingly! You gave your word!”
Walker did not so much as glance at her. “I said I would leave him alone, provided he had the sense to stay on his own land and mind his own business.” His mouth curved, thin and cold. “He did not have that sense. The terms of our arrangement have changed accordingly.”
Before Henry could answer, Pastor Luke urged his horse forward a few paces, drawing level with Henry’s shoulder. His weathered face was grave in the moonlight but entirely without fear.
“Mr. Walker.” The old minister’s voice carried the same steady, unhurried authority Henry had heard him use from the pulpit a hundred times before. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” Walker’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And pray tell, what is a pastor doing so far away from his church?”
“I came with the hope of stopping any kind of violence.”
Walker smiled coldly. “Ah,” he said. “Well, perhaps you should turn your horse around and return to your flock. We wouldn’t want the good town of Weatherford to wake up tomorrow morning only to learn of the untimely passing of their favorite pastor.”
Pastor Luke did not move, his eyes fixed on Walker.
“I’ve buried men who lived exactly as you’re living now,” he said.
“Men who believed fear was the only currency worth collecting, right up until the moment they stood before a judge who cannot be bribed, threatened, or bargained with. I’d ask you to consider, before this goes any further, whether tonight is truly the night you wish to add murder to whatever else already weighs on your soul. ”
Walker laughed again, short and genuine, the sound of it carrying strangely across the empty road.
“You think I fear judgment, old man? I’ve spent my whole life building myself into something no man dares touch.
Heck, even God wouldn’t dare challenge me.
I didn’t do that by fearing consequences.
I did it by making certain other men feared mine. ”
“There is no fear in love,” Pastor Luke said quietly, “only in what a man builds when love was never offered him to begin with. I don’t say that to excuse whatever’s been done to you, Mr. Walker.
Only to tell you plainly—whatever life has shaped you into, God did not intend it, and it is never too late to set that burden down before it costs you everything left worth keeping. ”
For one moment, something almost like uncertainty flickered behind Walker’s eyes.
A crack, thin and fleeting, in the composure he wore like armor.
Then it was gone, smoothed over as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by the same cold, unhurried contempt he’d worn since the road first brought them together.
“Touching,” Walker said. “But I didn’t ride out tonight for a sermon.” He jerked his chin toward the two men, who had already begun easing their horses forward, flanking wide on either side of Henry and the pastor. “Deal with them.”
The two men came at Henry from either side at once, and there was no more time left for words. Henry swung down from Buck just as the bigger man closed the distance, meeting the man’s charge with his own weight thrown forward. The two of them went down hard into the dust of the road.
A fist came down and Henry took a glancing blow to the jaw that set his vision swimming.
He answered it with his own fist, driving it hard into the man’s ribs, and felt the man’s breath leave him in a ragged gasp.
A second blow, aimed true this time, caught him across the temple and dropped him flat into the dirt, groaning.
Henry staggered upright, chest heaving, just in time to see the second man bearing down on him from the other side, a length of rope already looped menacingly around one fist. Then, to his utter astonishment, Pastor Luke drove his own horse forward and brought the flat of an old fence post, snatched up from somewhere along the road, down hard across the back of the second man’s skull.
The man dropped without a sound, crumpling into the dust beside his companion. Pastor Luke sat astride his horse a moment, breathing hard, the makeshift club still clutched in one trembling hand, looking almost as startled by what he’d done as Henry felt watching him do it.
“I did warn you,” the old minister said, somewhat unsteadily, “that God meets a man where he stands. I hadn’t quite expected Him to require this of a pastor tonight, but I don’t suppose He minds much which of us does the work.”
There was no time to marvel further. Henry turned back toward Walker, who had gone very still atop his horse, his earlier amusement drained away entirely, replaced by something harder and far more dangerous.
“Not one more step, Foster.” Walker’s arm tightened around Ruth, dragging her back hard against him. In the moonlight, Henry saw the glint of something at Walker’s hip. A blade, half-drawn.
“I’ll cut her throat before I let you take her from me. Do you understand that? I have built too much, lost too much face already tonight, to walk away from this with nothing at all.”
Henry stopped where he stood, every instinct screaming at him to close the remaining distance and every ounce of sense he had left warning him that one wrong move now would cost Ruth her life.
“Walker.” His own voice came out rougher than he intended, but he did not look away from the man’s eyes.
“You want to know what she’s worth to me?
I’ll tell you plainly, in front of God and this pastor and whatever’s left of your pride.
I love her. Not the name on a marriage license, not some arrangement made for convenience.
Her. Whatever it costs me, I’m not riding home without her. ”
Something flickered across Walker’s face. Surprise, perhaps, or something closer to fury at hearing so plainly spoken the very thing he guessed the man had never once been able to claim for himself. Not truly, not from anyone.
“Love.” Walker said the word as though it tasted foul in his mouth. “A rancher’s love. That’s meant to frighten me, is it?” He hauled Ruth harder against him, ignoring her cry of pain. “You want her so badly, Foster? Come and get her.”
Before Henry could move, Walker wrenched his horse’s head around and drove his heels in, hard. The animal lurched forward into a gallop, carrying him and Ruth both off the road and out across the open scrub toward the dark tree line beyond.
“Henry!” Ruth’s scream tore across the night, already growing distant.
“Pastor—tie them tight, both of them, and don’t let them out of your sight!”
Henry was already running for Buck, swinging up into the saddle before his boot had fully found the stirrup, and then there was no more time for anything but the chase. Buck’s hooves tore up the dark ground beneath him as he drove the horse hard after the fleeing shape ahead.