Epilogue
In the final minutes of daylight, Aidan paced behind the ruins of the barn. The smell of smoke still hung in the air. He turned away from the charred wood that rose from the ground like gnarled fingers. Alexandra sat on a rock nearby. She didn’t say anything, which he appreciated.
Black arrived with his men, trailing a cloud of dust as they drove a buckboard wagon through the remains of the ranch. Aidan watched them come.
“How many?” Alexandra asked quietly.
“At least a dozen,” Aidan answered.
Neither of them said the rest of it: that was a lot of guns, and they had no real idea how successful Antony had been in putting together a posse, if at all.
“You don’t have to—you shouldn’t be here,” Aidan said, turning toward her. She looked small sitting there on that rock.
“Yes, I should,” she said simply. “If nothing else, no one expects a gunfight to break out when there’s refreshments.” She lifted the basket of food she’d thrown together and the glass jar of mint water.
“You probably have a point,” Aidan grunted.
Kevin Black rode right up to them, a grin on his face. “Well, don’t this beat all,” he said. “It’s a glorious day, we’re all about to be rich, and… what’s this, the little woman even packed us some victuals? My, oh my, what a treat we’re all in for.”
His men snickered behind him. Aidan gritted his teeth.
“Now, why don’t you show us where all this silver is meant to be lying in wait for us?” Black said.
“You’ll have to dismount and leave the horses about a half mile up,” Aidan said, pointing vaguely up the hill. “There’s a gully the wagon won’t get through. That’s why we need so many hands—the silver has to be carried down.”
“After you, then,” Black said with a mocking bow.
Aidan scowled at him, briefly, and mounted Cyprus, pulling Alexandra up after him. She rode with her legs dangling on one side and her arms locked tightly about his waist.
Slowly, they picked their way up the path. Brendan’s memorial stood at the crest of the hill on their right. As they passed it, Aidan bowed his head. Please, Brendan, if you’re there, watch over us all.
“Y’know,” Black said, bringing his horse level with Aidan’s, “my offer to take your wife off your hands still stands. I might even trade some of the silver for it.”
Alexandra’s arms tightened around Aidan’s waist.
“Not for all the gold in California,” Aidan said sharply.
Black laughed and pulled back, speaking to his men. Aidan patted Alexandra’s hands where they were clenched tight at his belly. “Not too much farther now,” he murmured.
She buried her face against his back.
Much as he’d warned, the path narrowed where it crossed a dried gully, too steep to take the wagon down. They pulled to the side, setting the hill brake on flat ground.
Aidan swung down from his horse and reached up for Alexandra. She held tightly to his arms for a moment, staring up into his face.
“Well? I personally would like to see this picnic concluded as fast as possible,” Black said, his voice low and dangerous.
Alexandra glanced behind Aidan, past Black and his men. Something moved in her face. She nodded, the motion so small it scarcely existed. Aidan lifted his brows and nodded back before releasing her.
“Drina, you stay here and mind the horses,” Aidan said, gesturing her toward the wagon. The last time he’d used the name, he’d been asking her for something. She looked at him.
“I think not,” Black said. “Hopkins, Jeremiah, you stay with her—make sure there’s no funny business.”
Alexandra pressed her lips together but didn’t object. His only comfort was that she still had her gun.
“If you follow me, gentlemen,” Aidan called, waving everyone over. “We need to cross this gully, then it’s a short climb up. You’ll see the crates once we’re clear of the bushes.” He gestured with his lantern.
Aidan turned, half-expecting a gun in the back. He forced himself to walk slowly, casually, pushing through the bushes as if nothing at all were the matter.
Up ahead, the stack of crates was waiting. Black’s men whooped and rushed forward around Aidan, hauling at the crates, grunting with the effort.
Black clapped Aidan on the shoulder. “You’re a man of your word after all,” he said with a chummy air. “Y’know, this could be the beginning of a beautiful partnership. I’m thinking we—”
One of the men yelped and dropped his end of the crate. It hit the ground with a thud and the crack of splintering wood. Aidan froze, his stomach an icy stone.
“Clumsy clod!” Black barked. “If you lose any of my silver, I’ll skin you alive.”
The man rubbed his knee and righted himself. One of the other men lifted a lantern, squinting into the crate. “Boss, you better take a look at this,” he called.
“What? What is it?” Black demanded, shouldering his way through the men.
Aidan set his lantern down and slipped back the way they’d come. He had just made the gully when Black knelt to the spilled crate—rock and sand and gravel, every shovelful of it out of the holes they’d dug on the hill behind the barn.
He plunged his fingers into it and stood, the dirt sifting through them.
“Boys,” he said, “the only thing I hate more than being cheated is a pig-ugly rancher that thinks he’s clever. Bring me his hide!”
Aidan turned and bolted, scrambling up the other side of the gully, his fingers grabbing for dirt, plant roots, anything to haul himself up. Whatever she’d seen behind them, he needed it to be close.
The wagon came into view, Alexandra standing near it, petting the horses. Hopkins and Jeremiah startled and half-drew. Aidan pulled up sharply as one of them took aim at her.
“Don’t!” he shouted. “It’s me you want!” He put his hands in the air. Alexandra had gone very still.
The man grinned gap-toothed and pulled back the hammer. Aidan closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. The crack of gunfire echoed around the hills. In the silence after it, everyone skidded to a halt.
Aidan opened his eyes, not understanding how he was still alive.
The man who had drawn on Alexandra looked equally confused.
His gun arm had gone loose at his side, and he was staring at his own shoulder as though it belonged to somebody else.
A second shot cracked out, and the man beside him sat down hard in the dirt, swearing steadily, both hands clamped to his thigh.
“Kevin Black, your days of terrorizing our town are over!”
The sheriff rode up out of the dark, at least a dozen men behind him, Antony among them with a smoking rifle. He dipped his head to Aidan. Aidan grinned.
Aidan couldn’t say exactly what happened next. He’d lived on the frontier all his adult life and never once been in a gunfight. One minute both groups were glowering at one another; the next it was a storm of dust and gun smoke and men and horses screaming.
He had only one thought: Alexandra.
Aidan charged for her. Men galloped past; bullets went by his ears close enough to sting. He bobbed and weaved, stepping over a fallen man, darting around a horse. It was like swimming upstream.
He reached her and shoved her under the wagon. “Stay down. Don’t come out for anything, not for me.”
He ran to Cyprus, tethered nearby, and pulled his rifle from the bedroll behind the saddle. He put his eye to the sights and found a man in them, and for a moment his finger would not move.
They burned down our home, he told himself. He clenched his jaw, exhaled, and squeezed.
They took our horses. He lined up another shot, a man on horseback who was firing wildly at the sheriff. Aidan fired, and the man dropped his gun and hauled his horse around.
They killed my brother. Another shot, another man clutching his arm.
They threatened my family, my wife. He fired, again and again, pausing only long enough to slide more cartridges into the rifle.
Antony yelped and pitched from his horse, landing hard in the dirt. Aidan dropped his rifle and ran for him. All around, muzzles flashed, and the gunfire slowed; men were dropping their guns and putting their hands up where the sheriff’s riders could see them.
He slid to him on his knees and rolled him over. A bloody mess on his shoulder. “Damned scoundrels,” Antony said through gritted teeth.
“It’ll be fine; it’s nothing,” Aidan said. He pulled his kerchief from his neck and pressed it hard against Antony’s shoulder, making the older man hiss in response. “You’re not dying.”
“Good God, let me just bleed,” Antony wheezed. “I’d rather that than whatever you’re doing to me.”
“You’re fine if you can sass me,” Aidan retorted.
“Rawlins!” the sheriff called over the din. “Black! He’s getting away!”
Aidan looked up sharply. Black had edged to the outside of the fight. Cyprus was the only horse tied over there, and if Black got on him, they’d have a bear of a time catching him.
“No!” Aidan shouted. He stood, his hands clutching for a gun that wasn’t there, and went after him anyway.
Black ran past the wagon. A last shot rang out. Black stopped, fell, and clutched his lower right leg, shrieking. Aidan skidded to a halt, not understanding what had just happened.
Slowly, Alexandra emerged from under the wagon, covered in dirt. She was holding her aunt’s gun, smoke curling up from the barrel. Awkwardly, she pulled the hammer back, the chamber rotating.
“You shot me! You good-for-nothing sow, you shot my leg!” Black howled.
“Do you really think this is a good time to be insulting me?” Alexandra said.
Aidan came up on him and stood over him.
“Brendan,” he said. “Where is he?”
Black’s face was slick and gray with pain, and something moved through it that Aidan would think about for a long time afterward. Not confusion. He laughed instead, wet and ugly, and said nothing.
The sheriff came up at a trot with two of his men behind him, took one look at Black clutching his leg, and said, “Get him bound. And mind that leg—I want him fit to stand up in a courtroom.”
Somewhere back toward the gully, Antony was explaining at length and in considerable detail exactly how he wished to be carried.
Aidan laughed. All around him, there was dust and shouting. Men were being put facedown in the dirt with their hands behind them, and right there in front of him was Alexandra, dirt to the elbows and holding her aunt’s pistol like a woman who had decided something.
“I knew I picked the right woman,” he said to her. Alexandra laughed, and that was all the treasure Aidan needed.
THE END?
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