Chapter Twenty-Two
The mare stood alone in the corral.
Sam noticed it before he'd finished his first circuit of the perimeter, the early morning light just strong enough to show him what the dark had hidden. Two horses should have stood in that corral. One did. One didn't.
He crossed the yard at a pace his stitched-up side objected to, every stride pulling at the wound.
The corral gate hung open about six inches, enough for a horse to push through once somebody had lifted the latch.
The latch showed no damage. Somebody had lifted it clean, the same way somebody had lifted the south gate latch a week ago. Wilkes's signature, at this point.
The tracks told the rest. A set of hoofprints led away from the corral heading east, toward the timber.
Boot prints ran alongside for about fifty yards, then disappeared where the rider had mounted.
One horse, one rider, heading into the pines at a walk.
The gelding hadn't bolted or wandered. Somebody had taken that gate latch in the dark, led the horse out quietly, walked it past the barn, then swung up and ridden off at a pace designed to leave clear tracks for Sam to follow come morning.
Wilkes hadn't stolen the horse because he needed a horse.
Wilkes had stolen the horse because Sam valued it and Evelyn valued it.
Taking things from people who loved them constituted Amos Wilkes's particular brand of cruelty, the same brand he'd practiced twenty years ago when he'd taken two parents from two children and walked away into the smoke.
Sam went back to the house for the Winchester.
His side burned when he raised his left arm to shoulder the rifle, a deep pulling ache that reminded him he'd been shot forty-eight hours ago and had no business riding anywhere.
He intended to ride anyway, because Amos Wilkes had taken Evelyn's horse and that fact sat in Sam's gut worse than the bullet had.
He followed the tracks east into the timber, reading the trail the way he'd read trails for fifteen years. The gelding's hoofprints cut clear through the snow, the horse moving at a steady walk.
Broken brush along the left side marked where the rider had pushed through a thicket instead of going around it, which told Sam the rider knew the country and didn't care about leaving signs.
The trail climbed for about two miles, following the ridgeline past the cold camp Foster's deputies had located.
He saw signs of a fresh disturbance at the campsite: new boot prints overlaying old ones, and a more recent fire ring dug beside the first. Wilkes had come back to the same camp.
Bold. Maybe stupid. Or perhaps confident enough in his reading of Sam Cooper to believe Sam would follow him and get angry, sloppy, or make another mistake.
The trail hit rocky terrain half a mile past the camp, and the hoofprints disappeared into bare stone.
Sam dismounted, led the mare across the rocks on foot, and found a single scrape mark on a flat boulder pointing northeast. After that, the trail dissolved into open rock that stretched a hundred yards in every direction.
He'd lost it. Again.
He rode to town. Foster sat at his desk with a stack of WANTED circulars and the permanently cooling cup of coffee that appeared to be a fixture of the sheriff's office rather than a beverage.
"He done took my horse." Sam leaned the Winchester against the wall. "The bay geldin'. Led it out before dawn, rode it east into the timber. Trail goes cold on the rock field below the northeast ridge."
Foster set down his coffee. "You tracked it out yourself?"
"Far as it'd take me."
"Sam, you got no business ridin' nowhere with that wound still mendin'."
"I'll take it easy when that man's in the ground. Can you get your boys out yonder? Patrol the timber, check the ridge, and cover the north road. That geldin's barn-sour. He'll fight a strange rider once he gets far enough from home."
Foster stood up and reached for his hat. "I'll send two deputies out this afternoon. We'll cover the ridgeline, the creek crossings, and the north road. If he's still in the territory, we'll turn him up."
"You'd best do it right quick, Sheriff."
"We'll turn him up, Sam. You got my word."
Sam took the Winchester back from the wall. "Your word's been comin' up short of late, Foster. No offense intended."
"Plenty taken. Now go home and let me do my job."
***
He rode back to the homestead under a sky that couldn't decide between clouds and sun while his thoughts shifted between Wilkes and the issue waiting for him at home.
He called it a thing because calling it by its proper name required more honesty than he could afford right now—on horseback—and with stitches in his side.
He dismounted in the yard and walked toward the porch.
The travel bag sat beside the front door. Evelyn's travel bag—the one she'd arrived with two weeks ago. It sat on the porch boards, buckled shut, and ready to go. The sight of it stopped him on the second step; the creaky one that he kept meaning to fix.
He went inside.
Evelyn stood at the kitchen counter wrapping the last of the unsold scarves in brown paper. She looked up when he came through the door, her eyes going to his side first, checking, always checking. Then her eyes came up to his face.
"Henry's gone. Wilkes took him in the night. I followed the trail, but I lost it on the rocks past the ridge." He leaned the Winchester against the wall. "Foster's sendin' men out. Said they'll turn him up."
She set down the brown paper while her hands went still on the counter.
"He took Henry?"
The way she said the horse's name told Sam everything about what that horse had meant to her. Then again, she wouldn’t be taking him with her if she left… unless he gave him to her…
"I'll get him back for you, Evelyn. You got my word on that."
She nodded once, picked up the brown paper, and went back to wrapping scarves.
"My train pulls out tomorrow mornin'. The Helena stage goes out at seven."
He should say something. Anything. He should say: ‘Don't go,’ or ‘Stay.’
Stay in this kitchen, stay at this table, stay in the loft where I carry you when you fall asleep stitching scarves for other people's causes. Stay in this house that makes more sense with you in it than it ever made without you.
He poured himself coffee instead.
She looked at him across the kitchen, steady, patient, and waiting for a door to open. He drank his coffee. She wrapped her scarves.
The front door opened.
They both turned at the same time, Sam's hand dropping to the Colt before his brain finished processing the sound, because every opening door had become a potential threat since Wilkes started circling the property.
He drew the revolver halfway from the holster before the person in the doorway registered.
Sarah.
His sister stood in the doorframe with a travel bag in one hand, snow on her bonnet, and the particular expression of a person who'd expected to come home to an empty house.
Instead, she found her brother with a gun half-drawn and a woman she'd only known through letters standing at the counter wrapping scarves.
"Sam?" Sarah's eyes went wide. "What on earth—I reckoned you was still out on the trail! What in blazes are you doin' home?"
"I could ask you the same, seein' as you ain't due back till tomorrow."
"The train come through a day early out of Bismarck. I caught a ride on a freight wagon from Helena." She set her bag down. "Why've you got your hand on that pistol? And what happened to your—are you hurt? You're movin' all stove up."
"That there's a long story. I'll tell you by and by."
"You'll tell me right this minute, Sam Cooper, or I swear I'll—"
But Sarah's attention had already shifted, because Evelyn had come around the counter and stood in the middle of the kitchen. The two women looked at each other for the first time in twelve years of letters.
Sarah's face broke open. Every wall his sister kept up, every layer of practical frontier-woman composure, crumbled in about two seconds. She crossed the kitchen in three strides, took Evelyn by the shoulders, then pulled her into an embrace so fierce it lifted Evelyn's heels off the floor.
Evelyn held on just as hard, her eyes closing while her arms locked around Sarah's back. When they finally let go, Sarah held Evelyn at arm's length.
"Lord, look at you. You're real! You're standin' right here in my kitchen and you're real!"
"I been real the whole time, Sarah. You just had to come meet me in person to find out."
"You're prettier'n I ever imagined. Ain't you somethin'. Lord above, ain't you just somethin'."
Sam holstered the Colt and stepped back because the thing happening between these two women occupied a territory he lacked the credentials to enter.
Twelve years of friendship collapsing into a kitchen embrace that contained more genuine human connection than Sam Cooper had managed in thirty years of living.
They sat together for a meal because Sarah insisted on cooking the moment she walked through a door.
Evelyn helped because she couldn't sit still while somebody else worked. Sam sat at the table while the two women moved around his kitchen together, their conversation overlapping as they finished each other's sentences. It was just what you’d expect from two people who’d been talking for twelve years and had simply shifted the medium from ink to air.
Sarah told them about the journey east. The property had sold for sixty-five dollars.
Less than she'd hoped for, but enough to cover the homestead repairs.
Evelyn told Sarah about the fair, about Mrs. Montgomery's jam, about the debt, and about the hundred-and-twenty-seven dollars.
Sarah's face went from surprise to concern to determination, and when Evelyn finished, Sarah reached across the table and took her hand.
"How much did y'all raise at the fair?"
"Near about twenty-five dollars, all told."
"That still leaves a hundred and two. I got sixty-five from the property sale. I can put that toward it."
"Sarah, that money's for the homestead."
"Mrs. Montgomery's homestead matters just as much. We'll cipher out the rest. Between us, we'll manage."
"We ought to go look in on Mrs. Montgomery come tomorrow." Sarah squeezed Evelyn's hand. "I'd surely love to meet her."
Nobody mentioned Amos Wilkes. Sam sat through the meal, through the conversation, through the plan-making, and he kept the bounty poster in his coat, the gun on his hip, the whole tangled mess locked behind the same door he'd been locking things behind since he'd turned ten.
He'd tell Sarah tomorrow. He'd tell her everything because she deserved everything and because keeping it from her any longer required a level of dishonesty he'd already exceeded.
But tonight he watched Evelyn move through his kitchen with the ease of a woman who belonged there, reaching for cups on the right shelf, stoking the fire at the right time, every gesture proving that two weeks had been long enough to learn the rhythms of a house and the people in it.
Her train left tomorrow at seven. She'd sleep in the loft one last time, come down those stairs one last time, walk out that door one last time.
The kitchen would go quiet. The flour would stop appearing on every surface.
The chair across from him at supper would sit empty until Sarah filled it, which Sarah would, because she lived here and Evelyn didn't.
The evening wound down. Sarah yawned first, blaming the travel. Evelyn followed, blaming the week. They said goodnight in the kitchen, and Sarah hugged Evelyn again before heading to Sam's room, which Sam had given up because Sarah's return reshuffled the sleeping arrangements.
Evelyn climbed the loft stairs one more time. Sam listened to her footsteps cross the floor above, and the creak of the bed frame.
He spread a bedroll on the kitchen floor beside the stove and lay on his back in the dark. The Colt was within reach, the Winchester against the wall.
The day after tomorrow, she'd leave. He could still say the thing.
He could climb those stairs right now, knock on the loft wall, and say the words his chest had been trying to push past his teeth for days.
Stay. Don't go. This house makes no sense without you in it.
I'm only just figuring that out, and the timing couldn't be worse, and I know that… and I'm asking anyway.
He lay on the floor, stared at the ceiling, and didn't climb the stairs.
Sam Cooper let her go without saying a word, because saying the word meant keeping her here and keeping her here meant Wilkes.
Wilkes had already taken his parents. Had taken his horse.
Had taken his peace of mind. Sam would be damned, would be absolutely goddamned, before he let Wilkes take Evelyn Granger too.
He closed his eyes. He didn't sleep.