Chapter 28
Jem sat with his back against the post, where he’d been tied. The guard changed twice. Neither man spoke to him. The second one, a younger fellow whose name he thought was Curtis, looked at him once with more of a guilty expression than anything.
Jem didn't try to sleep. He sat with his tied wrists resting on his knees and thought about Theda's face when Tolliver said his name, and then he made himself stop thinking about it because there was nothing useful in it right now and he needed to think clearly.
The stars moved. The fires burned down. Somewhere, not too far away a horse shifted and stamped and went quiet.
Jem was still awake when Phineas came.
It was the hour just before dawn, the sky beginning to separate itself from the ridgeline in a thin grey line to the east. Phineas came alone. He stopped in front of Jem and looked down at him for a moment. Then he crouched.
Jem looked back at him.
“Tell me what I need to know,” Phineas said.
Jem pulled in a slow breath of cold air. “How much time do you have?”
“Enough.”
Jem started talking.
He told Phineas the size of the gang, which was eleven men not counting himself and Tolliver.
He told him how Ransom moved, never straight at a target, always angled, always with a man sent ahead the night before to count heads and map exits.
He told him about the three mistakes Ransom made every time without fail: he underestimated resistance, he moved too fast once he believed he'd already won, and he always kept his best men close to himself rather than spread where they'd do the most good.
“He's not stupid,” Jem said. “I want to be clear about that. He's effective and he's ruthless and he's been doing this a long time. But he has a blind spot about people. He thinks everyone can be bought or broken, and when someone turns out to be neither, he doesn't adjust fast enough.”
Phineas was quiet.
“The most likely approach is from the eastern ridge,” Jem continued.
“He'll send two men through the pass ahead of the main group, on foot, to confirm position.
They'll signal back before he moves. If the signal doesn't come, he waits. Patience is the one thing Ransom genuinely has.” He paused.
“The window between the signal and the attack is small. Twenty minutes, maybe less.”
“What does the signal look like?”
“Three shots. Spaced.” Jem looked at him. “Which means if you hear three spaced shots from the eastern ridge, you won't have long.”
Phineas turned his hat slowly in his hands, looking at the ground between them, thinking. Then he looked back up.
“When did you remember all this.”
“Pieces came back over the past couple days, after the incident with Tolliver. Before that, it was all blank.” He hoped Phineas could see that he had no reason to lie.
“And before you remembered. When you were with us.” Phineas' eyes held his steadily. “What were you doing?”
“Living,” It came out simply because it was simple.
“That's all I can tell you, because that's all it was.
I didn't know who I was or what I'd been doing in that storm. When I started to remember, I…” He stopped.
“I didn't want to lose what I'd found here.
That's the truth of it, and I know how it sounds.”
Phineas said nothing.
“I was going to tell Theda,” Jem said. “That night by the wagon, I'd made up my mind.” He looked down at his bound wrists briefly. “I was going to tell you both and let you decide what to do with it. Leland got to me first and I realized, if I told you, I couldn't help protect you as well.”
“Leland knew.” Betrayal slipped across Phineas’ expression.
“Not for long, and I think he only kept it a secret, because he wanted to protect you both from Ransom as much as I wanted to, and still want to.
I'm not going to sit here and ask you to forgive it.” He held Phineas' gaze.
“I can only do my best to help protect you from Ransom and his men when they come.
Phineas looked at him for a long time.
“You care about her,” he said finally.
“Yes.” Jem wasn’t hiding it.
Phineas turned his hat over once more in his hands. Phineas was quiet for a long moment after Jem's answer about Theda.
“My instincts about you were right from the start,” he said. “I want you to know that. Something never sat quite straight. I told myself I was being unfair to a man who'd nearly died in a storm and couldn't remember his own name.” A pause. “I guess I was in a way.”
Jem sighed.
“I wish I was anyone else, as much as you do.” Jem chuckled, trying to find the humor in the situation. “I do want you to know, everything I’ve done with the company, and everything I’m continuing to do, is genuine.
“I don't know how I can trust you,” Phineas said in a low tone, “And yet…I want to.” He looked at Jem steadily.
“But before I make my decision, I have one question. If it comes to a choice between this company and your brother, or your brother and my sister,” Phineas paused, “which way do you fall.”
“Your sister, and this company.” No hesitation.
Phineas looked at him for a long moment. Whatever he found seemed to be enough, because he untied Jem’s hands, then he stood and looked down at him.
“Get up,” he said. “I’m going to need your help, to protect this wagon train and everyone in it.”
Jem stood, rubbing his wrists together, then he held his hand out. To his surprise, Phineas shook it.
“Thank you,” Jem said, trying to temper the emotion clogging his throat. “It means a lot that you’re allowing me to…work beside you.”
Phineas nodded once.
“I may be making a terrible mistake, but these past few weeks, you’ve made my sister smile in a way I haven’t seen her do in years.
You've been there for all of us in different ways. Even if you didn’t remember then, you have to believe that you’ll remember now what you felt for all of them. I can’t protect them alone.”
“You won’t have to. I’d give my life for you all, because for the first time in as long as I can remember, you gave me a life.”
Jem swallowed hard. He wished Phineas could know just how much he meant it.
---*---
They worked through the remaining dark hours without speaking much.
Jem moved through the camp. He knew where the weaknesses were before he saw them, because he'd spent years exploiting the same ones.
Wagon gaps that offered no cover. Sight lines that looked protected until they weren't. Fallback positions that would become traps if the approach came from two directions at once.
He pointed and Leland moved things, and nobody wasted time explaining why.
Everyone was too focused on what they’d learned, and the impending threat of an attack.
There was a big chance they wouldn't make it to the army base before Ransom caught up to them.
Jem was relieved that Phineas had seen that.
They positioned the two heaviest wagons at the eastern approach, angled to force any riders into a narrowed line.
They identified every weapon in the company's possession and distributed them to the men Phineas had designated, making sure nothing was stored where it couldn't be reached in under ten seconds.
They marked three fallback positions, each one with a clear line to the next, so that if the first broke, the company could move without bunching.
Leland followed his lead without argument. Leland and Phineas may not have been happy about who he was, and his past, but they were more focused on helping, and preparing for what was going to be one of the most important fights of their lives.
At one point Leland stopped beside him at the eastern gap between wagons and looked out toward the ridge.
“How many will he bring,” Leland asked, glancing between Jem and Phineas.
“Six, maybe seven.” Jem kept his eyes on the ridgeline. “He'll leave the rest as a rear guard. He doesn't like to commit everything until he knows what he's walking into.” He paused. “Six or seven is dangerous. It's not impossible, not against a prepared defense.”
“What's he expecting from us?”
“Chaos.” Jem said. “Compliance. Civilians who've never held a formation in their lives and don't know how to do anything but scatter.” He glanced at Leland. “He won't be expecting this.”
Leland nodded in approval and kept moving.
The sun climbed in the sky, and dawn broke. With their preparations, Phineas let everyone know as they passed, that they’d start to move soon. They couldn't stay there all day, especially since the army base was only one and a half days away.
They ended up side by side at the eastern edge of camp, looking out at what they'd made of it. The wagons angled and braced, the fallback lines clear, the approaches covered as well as they could be covered. It wasn't a fort. But it wasn't the soft target Ransom was expecting either.
There wasn't anything left to say. The work was finished, and the dawn was there whether they were ready for it or not.
Jem stood with his hands at his sides and watched the pale light find the top of the eastern ridge and thought about his brother riding toward it somewhere out there. He was ready to face Ransom, no matter what he had to sacrifice to do so.
“Both of you, keep an eye out today. Anything strange that you see, tell me immediately.” Phineas tipped his hat to both, then walked away, heading toward the first wagon. For a moment, he didn't know what to do with his freedom.
He became aware of movement across the camp.
Theda was at the back of her wagon, working by the light of the morning. She was organizing things, setting them in the order she'd need them. Her back was straight. She didn't look up. There was sadness in the way she carried herself. He was responsible for that.
He watched her for a moment. Then he crossed the camp toward her. He had to talk to her. He had to know if she hated him, or if she knew how much she’d come to mean to him.
She heard him coming. He could tell by the slight pause in her hands before they resumed their work. She didn't look up when he stopped a few feet away.
Please look at me.
He missed her green eyes, the way they sparkled when she spoke.
“You have no reason to hear me out,” he said quietly. “I know that. But I'd like to explain myself before it’s impossible.”
She stayed silent and didn’t tell him to leave. It was better than nothing.
“The memories didn't come back all at once,” he said.
“It was pieces. Edges of things, and then more, and then enough that I understood what I was.” He kept his voice low.
“By the time I knew who I'd been sent here as, I'd already…” He stopped.
Then started again. “I didn't know what was between us before I understood what it was. And then I did, and I was afraid that telling the truth would take it away before I could find a way to protect you from what was coming.”
He cleared his throat.
“I remember now, how I saw you before I lost my memory. I saw you with Phineas, and I remember thinking that if one person in this whole wagon train should be protected, it had to be you. I still feel that way.” The protective wave he’d felt toward her from the very beginning made sense.
Theda's hands slowed. She finished folding the bandage she was holding and set it in its place. She looked down at her supplies for a long moment, not at him.
The lantern flame moved slightly in a breath of cold air.
“I…need some time to think about everything.” She raised her gaze to meet his. “You mean a lot to me, Jem. I knew you might be someone I wasn't expecting but…I was hoping to hear it from you first.”
“I’m sorry.” All he had were his words. He should have been able to offer her so much more, but he couldn't.
“Give me time, Jem, then we’ll talk.”
He nodded. He could give her as much time as he had.