Chapter Thirty #2
The land here was rougher than the road, uneven and studded with brush and the pale shapes of rock jutting up out of the scrub. Henry felt every jarring stride beneath him as Buck fought to close the distance, lungs heaving, sides slick with sweat.
Ahead, Walker rode low and reckless, driving his horse harder than the animal or the terrain could safely bear. Twice, Henry saw the horse stumble beneath its double burden, catching itself only at the last moment.
“Ruth!” Henry’s voice tore raw from his throat, though he doubted she could hear him over the thunder of hooves and her own labored breathing.
The gap between them narrowed, foot by hard-won foot, until Henry could make out the pale shape of Ruth’s face turned back toward him and could see her struggling against the arm locked around her waist. And then Walker’s horse hit a shadowed depression in the ground at a dead run, and everything happened at once.
The animal’s foreleg buckled, and horse and riders went down together in a violent tangle of dust and thrashing limbs. Ruth was thrown clear into the scrub while Walker rolled hard across the packed earth, cursing.
Henry hauled Buck to a skidding stop and was off the horse before it had fully halted, running toward where Ruth lay stunned in the brush, but Walker was faster, scrambling up out of the dirt and reaching her first
He hauled her upright by the arm with a snarl of pain and fury both. Henry froze mid-stride as moonlight caught the blade Walker had wrenched free and now held pressed hard against the pale line of Ruth’s throat. Henry’s heart was racing so loudly he could hear the blood pumping in his ears.
“Not another step.” Walker’s voice was ragged, his composure finally, entirely stripped away, replaced by something wild and desperate. “I have lost everything else tonight. I will not lose this, too.”
“Gideon.” Henry made himself go still, hands rising slowly, his heart hammering so hard he could feel it in his throat.
“Look at me. This ends one way or another tonight, and you know it. Killing her gains you nothing you don’t already stand to lose regardless.
Let her go, and I’ll see the judge hears exactly how far you were willing to go to make this right instead of worse. ”
“Spare me, Foster. I’ve had enough of those tonight already.” Walker’s arm tightened, the blade pressing close enough that Ruth gasped, her eyes wide and fixed on Henry across the short, unbearable distance between them.
“You don’t want to do this,” Henry said, low and steady, though every instinct in him screamed to close the gap regardless.
“A man like you, careful, calculating, you didn’t build what you have by throwing it away on a moment’s rage.
Think, Gideon. There’s still a way out of this that doesn’t end with a rope around your neck. ”
For one taut, endless moment, Walker’s eyes flicked toward him, some frantic calculation working behind them. In that moment, Henry watched as Ruth drove her heel down hard onto Gideon’s instep with everything she had left.
“Aargh,” Walker yelled in pain as he loosened his grip just enough, just long enough, for Ruth to twist free and stumble clear.
Henry was already moving. He closed the last of the distance in three long strides as Walker fumbled, off-balance. Henry’s hand found the pistol at his hip and brought it up level and steady, the barrel trained squarely on Walker’s chest before the other man had the time to lift his blade.
“Don’t,” Henry said.
The single word carried enough finality that Walker went utterly still.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The night air hung heavy and silent around them, broken only by the ragged sound of everyone’s breathing and the distant call of some night bird, indifferent to what had very nearly happened on that empty stretch of road.
“It’s over, Walker,” Henry said quietly. “Drop the knife.”
Walker’s jaw worked once, some final calculation passing behind his eyes. Weighing, perhaps, whether there remained any version of tonight that still ended in his favor, before he seemed to accept, with visible bitterness, that there did not. So, after a moment, he dropped the knife.
“Ruth,” Henry said, not taking his eyes off of Gideon. “Get the rope out of my saddlebag.”
Without hesitating, Ruth hurried over to Buck and retrieved the coil of rope. Henry took it from her before she stepped back. Working quickly, he bound Walker’s wrists tightly behind his back.
“We should get back,” Henry said. “Make sure Pastor Luke is okay.”
Ruth nodded silently, still trembling, one hand pressed briefly to her throat where the blade had rested only moments before.
Henry boosted Walker roughly into his own saddle, tying the man’s bound hands to the pommel to keep him from any further mischief.
Then, he led the horse by its reins to where Ruth stood waiting.
He mounted Buck and reached a hand down to her, pulling her up to sit before him in the saddle. Henry wrapped one arm securely around her waist as though he did not entirely trust the night to let her go without a fight of its own.
“Hold on,” he murmured against her hair.
He turned Buck back toward the road, Walker’s horse trailing behind on a short lead.
The ride back felt far shorter than the chase that had carried them out here.
Within a few minutes, the huddled outlines of the two thugs came into view.
Pastor Luke stood watch nearby, his makeshift club still gripped in one hand, though he lowered it the moment he recognized the riders approaching.
“Thank God.” The old minister’s voice carried real relief across the distance between them.
“I heard the horses go down out there and feared the worst.” His eyes moved over Ruth, checking her for injury, then settled on Walker slumped and bound in his saddle.
“I see you managed well enough without me.”
“Barely,” Henry admitted, drawing Buck to a stop beside him. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Pastor Luke allowed himself a faint, weary smile, though his eyes lingered a moment longer on Ruth. “Are you all right, my dear?”
“I am now,” Ruth said quietly, and leaned back, just slightly.
“We should get them back to Weatherford,” Henry said.
It took the better part of an hour to march the three men back to Weatherford.
Sheriff Colton met them at the jailhouse door in his nightshirt and boots, roused from sleep by the sound of horses in the street, and listened with a grim, gathering fury as Henry laid out the whole of what had happened.
The debt, the threats, the two men hired for violence, the knife drawn on the open road.
“We’ll hold all three,” the sheriff said finally, studying Walker with open contempt as he shoved him toward a cell.
“Judge rides through Thursday next. I expect a man of your particular reputation, Mr. Walker, has considerably more waiting for him than one county’s worth of trouble once word of tonight gets out. ”
Walker said nothing at all, only stared back through the bars with the same cold, calculating stillness he’d worn since the moment Henry first laid eyes on him.
Though even that composure, Henry noted with some quiet satisfaction, could not entirely hide the fact that, for tonight at least, Gideon Walker had finally lost.