Chapter 34
The ground was cold against Jem’s cheek.
He didn't know how long he'd been there. Long enough that the cold had worked all the way through his coat, through his shirt, into the muscle beneath. Everything in his body hurt.
He couldn’t tell where one pain started and another ended. His nerves tingled with fire. His ribs were the most affected in his body. Every breath was a negotiation.
Ransom's boots had stopped a while ago. He’d hit Jem many times throughout their life, but he’d never gone so far, he’d been so cruel, Jem thought he would go through with things, that he’d kill him there on the ground.
Ransom had crouched down close enough that Jem could smell the coffee on his breath.
“She won't get far,” Ransom sneered. “I'm going to bring her back, and when I do, I want to see the look on your face when you realize that you couldn’t save her.”
Then the boots had moved away.
Jem hadn't moved since.
He breathed as carefully as he could. His ribs were damaged, possibly cracked, at least two of them from the feel of it. His jaw ached from the first hit, and his left eye was swelling shut. His hands were numb from the cold.
He tried to push himself up. His arms made it halfway, and then something in his midsection simply refused, and he went back down, one hand catching the dirt.
Theda. Had she gotten to safety?
The sky was turning a bright blue with the sunrise. Theda had been running for a couple of hours, he hoped.
He held onto that.
His head felt strange. Foggy and disoriented. He focused on a fixed point. A rock, half-buried in the dirt three feet in front of his face. He looked at the rock and breathed and pushed.
He made it to his knees.
He stayed there for a moment, head down, one hand braced on the ground, waiting for the world to stop tilting. Around him, the camp moved. He could hear Ransom's voice somewhere beyond the tree line, organizing men, sending them out. He counted the voices he could hear.
Fewer than before.
That was either good or very bad, depending on how far Ransom had sent them and in which direction.
He got one foot under him. He had to do something, to help her, to save her. He’d die trying. The fog was still there. He blinked against it.
Tolliver was watching him from across the fire, sitting on a log with a cup in his hands. Jem looked at him.
Then he looked at the tree line where Ransom had gone.
Then he looked at the remaining men in the camp, counted them properly this time, noted their positions, noted what they were holding, and what they weren't. He couldn't take them on. As much as he wanted to, he was too weak.
The first shot came from the eastern tree line.
Jem dropped before he'd processed what the sound was, he hit the ground on his hands and knees and stayed low while the camp exploded around him.
Ransom's voice cut through everything else. “Positions. Move.”
Men scrambled. Someone knocked a stack of logs into the fire trying to reach their rifle, and sparks scattered across the frozen ground. Jem pressed himself against the wagon wheel and looked east. Riders.
Coming through the trees at a controlled pace, spread wide, using the gap between the pines to funnel in from the eastern approach. He turned his head.
More from the west. He looked north.
There too.
Three sides at once.
He felt something loosen in his chest. Someone had come to stand up to Ransom. That meant things were over for him, too, but he couldn't bring himself to care. All that mattered was that if Ransom's days were over, he couldn't hurt Theda any longer.
Ransom was already moving, pistol drawn, “Mitchell, take the east gap. Tolliver, get behind the supply.” Men moved to obey him, but it wasn't fast enough. One of the front riders leveled a gun at Tolliver. From his uniform, Jem realized with relief that he was from the army.
“Drop your weapons.” A man in soldier’s uniform came from the eastern tree line, “Every man. Now.”
Ransom ignored him.
Two of his men raised rifles. The shots cracked out, two fast reports, and the soldiers returned them immediately, controlled and decisive. One of Ransom's men went down clutching his shoulder, the other dropped his rifle and stumbled back.
“Next man who fires,” the commander said, “we stop being careful about where we aim.”
The camp went very still. Jem clenched his fist.
Ransom stood in the center of it all with his pistol still raised, his eyes moving across the soldiers. He wouldn’t go out with a fight.
There wasn't one.
The riders had come in tight and positioned well, rifles up and level, angles covered. Jem counted twenty, maybe more. Against what remained of Ransom's outfit, half of them were already down from the morning's chaos.
Ransom knew it. Jem could see the moment he knew it, the slight shift in his jaw, the way his eyes stopped moving and went flat. One by one, the outlaws started dropping their weapons.
Mitchell first, letting his rifle fall into the dirt and putting his hands up. Then two others near the far fire. Then Tolliver, setting his pistol down carefully on the log beside him.
Ransom didn't move.
The commander rode forward three paces and stopped. He looked at Ransom.
“Last chance,” the commander said.
Ransom looked at him. Then, slowly, he turned his head and looked at Jem.
Jem looked back at him.
Ransom was going to run, to try to escape. Jem pushed off the wagon wheel. Ransom swung the pistol toward him.
Jem was already moving, trying to close the distance, but his injuries held him back, made him slow.
Ransom was stronger. He always had been.
Jem's legs buckled. He went down to one knee. Soldiers were moving; everyone jumped into the fray at once. Men who hadn't surrendered put up a fight, and the ones who had were a good distraction as Ransom tried to run.
His brother wouldn't get far. Not with how many men had come for them. Some of his men had been shot, others were running into the trees, with the soldiers in pursuit. Still more were actively fighting in the clearing.
Jem didn't let himself get distracted; he tried to gather his strength to go after Ransom while he was still visible. As Jem got back to his feet and took a few uncertain steps, his body slowly came to his aid.
Mitchell, one of Ransom's men nearby, gave up. He lowered his rifle, dropping it into the dirt, his hands coming up. Then two near the eastern fire, then three more by the supply wagon. The men could see they couldn’t win, but perhaps they could still escape with their lives.
Tolliver set his pistol on the log beside him.
Ransom was moving fast and low toward the horses that remained, the ones that hadn't scattered in Jem's sweep of the picket line and somehow had stuck around during the chaos. One of them still stood tethered to a post near the tree line. Ransom reached it and got his foot in the stirrup.
Jem searched frantically for someone who could get there first. After everything they’d been through, he wouldn’t be happy until he knew that Ransom was stopped, that he wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
He spotted Leland, not too far off from where Ransom was.
“Leland!” For a moment, Jem didn't know if he said it loud enough, but Leland was already moving, cutting wide around the camp's edge on his horse, coming in fast from the north to block the only clear line of escape through the pass.
Ransom saw him coming. He mounted in one quick movement. He moved to the left, in what looked like an effort to slip through a small space in the trees. trying to find the gap, and Leland closed it, the two horses meeting in a collision of movement and noise, and Ransom's horse reared.
Ransom tumbled to the ground, his efforts failing him. Jem moved forward, ducking and avoiding everyone in front of him. He just had to be close enough to make sure that…
Ransom hit the ground hard and rolled and was on his feet in a matter of seconds, once again, moving toward the tree line. He was going to disappear into the trees. Ransom had survived worse than this by disappearing.
Jem started running. He pushed through the ache in his lungs and the dizziness that threatened his consciousness.
Then he saw her. For a moment, it was like an angel stepped from the cover of the trees. Bright red hair framing her face, and soft green eyes scanning the clearing for him. He was certain by the way her expression lit up when her eyes landed on him.
She hadn't stayed away, or been safe, or stayed at the wagon train. She'd come with the rescuers.
Of course, she had. He should have known.
“Theda!” he called, screaming her name as Ransom saw her, too. Ransom, who was closer, was much stronger.
Jem watched his brother's face change in the space of a second, the calculation happening fast and cold.
“No…” Jem's words got stuck in his throat as Ransom took a few running strides, and his hand shot out, closing around Theda's arm.
Jem's heart fractured. He'd done everything, everything he possibly could to protect her, and she'd ended up right back in Ransom's clutches.
A gleam of metal flashed as the pistol came up against her temple, and Jem stopped moving.
Everything stopped. The chaos around them slowed as Phineas and Leland realized what was going on.
The soldiers nearest them held their positions. He heard the commander's voice somewhere behind him, telling his men to hold. Leland had pulled his horse up short.
Theda's eyes found his.
She was sorry, sorry she'd not listened to him. It was in her expression, and it made his chest ache. Of course, she couldn't stay away; she wasn't the type of person to turn away from danger when she thought it would help.
Theda’s big green eyes widened, and her skin went pale. But they did not fill with tears, and she didn’t falter.
Ransom's eyes were on Jem. Only Jem.
“Call them off,” Ransom announced. “Call them off and let me walk out of here.”
Jem looked at his brother. He looked at Theda's face, and she gave him the smallest nod, barely anything, and he understood that she was telling him she trusted him.