Chapter Twenty-Five
The mule fought the reins. Sam braced his boots against the footboard, locked his arms, and worked his shoulders. Evelyn had gone past scared into something quieter, into that place her body went to when the orphanage roof leaked in storms and gave her nothing to do but wait and count the drips.
Then she saw why.
A man on the road. Maybe twenty yards ahead. Dark coat. Hat pulled low. Standing right in the middle of the track like he'd waited there all morning for exactly this buckboard to come around exactly this bend.
Amos Wilkes.
Her stomach dropped so hard she could almost taste her fear.
That same clipped voice from the fence line, that same angle of the shoulders, that same nothing-in-the-face way of looking at a person like they were a thing on a shelf he might or might not decide to buy.
And the mule had spotted him before she did.
Of course it had. Animals knew. Mrs. Krauss had said that once, back in Springfield, about a dog that wouldn't go near a certain customer.
They know before we do, girl. They just don't have the manners to pretend otherwise.
The buckboard bucked sideways again and Evelyn's shoulder cracked against the bench rail. She grabbed the rail with both hands and held on because the alternative involved the ground, and the ground looked a fair piece down from where she sat.
"Sam."
He'd already spotted him. His whole body had gone into that stillness she'd learned to read, the one that meant every muscle in him had picked its job.
Wilkes took a step forward. Slow. Not rushing at all. Like a man walking up to fetch the paper.
The mule screamed again and threw itself sideways in the traces. Evelyn's teeth clacked together hard enough to bite her tongue, and she tasted iron. She dug her fingers into the wood.
"Get down." Sam had the reins wrapped once around his left fist, and his right hand had already gone to his hip. "Evelyn, get down off this here bench, get on the far side of the wagon, get down, get down now—"
She tried. She swung one leg over the side, and the buckboard heaved, and her boot didn't find anything.
For about half a second, she hung off the side of a jerking wagon, the frozen road slewing past underneath, then she got her boot back on the runner and hauled herself back up because falling off would put her right where Wilkes was heading.
Sam had the Colt half drawn.
Wilkes moved. Fast. He hadn't looked fast standing there, but he crossed the last of the distance in three strides, and instead of coming at Sam, he came at the mule, arm cocked, and brought something down hard across the animal's nose. Something dark. Metal. A pistol butt, maybe.
The mule went wild.
It wasn’t scared anymore. It was past scared. That sound came out of it, the one Evelyn hoped to God she'd never hear another living thing make, and it reared up so high the traces snapped tightly enough to sing. The whole buckboard tipped up onto the right wheels, and Sam—
Sam disappeared.
He'd wrapped the reins, and half stood to get down, but he'd leaned wrong when the mule went up, and the world had tipped. He fell off the bench like a man thrown from a bad horse—arms out, hat gone, and he hit the road on his shoulder, rolled once, and stopped.
The buckboard came down.
It came down half on its side and half on him.
Not the whole weight of it—the mule still bucked, and the traces still held some of it—but the corner of the bed came down across his legs below the knee and stayed there, and the mule fought on.
Every jerk of the traces ground the wagon deeper into him, and Sam's face contorted in a way Evelyn had never seen.
His face took on a gray hue where the color drained away and left only the bones underneath.
"Sam!"
He said something, but she couldn't hear it. The mule screamed, the wood groaned, and her own breathing went loud in her ears in a way that shut out most of the rest.
"Sam, Sam, I'm—"
She meant to jump. She had a foot up on the rail already and her hands on the top edge and she meant to go, but then Sam's eyes locked on something past her and they’d gone wide. She twisted her head to look—
Wilkes was already at the wagon.
He'd come around fast. Around the tipped side of it, around the mule, and he'd reached her elbow before her brain caught up. His hand closed around her wrist.
His grip was—Lord. She'd shaken hands with men who worked leather for a living and none of them had ever felt like this. Her wrist had gone into a vise somebody had cranked twice and then walked away from.
"Off you get, miss."
Cheerful. That was the part that took her a second to understand. He sounded cheerful, like he was helping her down from a proper carriage on a Sunday afternoon.
She yanked. Yanked hard, put her whole shoulder into it, and threw her weight back so he'd have to hold her up or let her drop. If she’d fallen, she'd have gone right off the buckboard into the road and taken the skin off her palms, but she wasn't going with him. She wouldn’t. Not one step, not one inch.
He didn't budge.
He didn't even shift his stance. Her whole weight was pulling away, but his arm held like a fence post. He just watched her do it. Head tilted a little, like a person watching a chicken try to get out of a coop it couldn’t get out of.
"Sam!"
"Save your breath, miss. He can't help you right now."
She kicked him.
She got him in the shin with the toe of her town boot, and he grunted, actually grunted.
For one crazy second she thought maybe—and then his free hand came around and hit her across the face, open-handed.
Evelyn’s whole head snapped sideways, and the road and the sky swapped places for a second.
Then she tasted blood again where her teeth had gone into her cheek.
"Now stop that."
H was still cheerful. That was the worst part of it, actually. He hadn't gotten angry. He'd hit her the way you'd swat a fly because the fly landed in the way, and now he expected the fly to have learned its lesson.
She hadn't learned.
She kicked again, and this time she got him higher up on the thigh, and she twisted her whole body sideways, trying to break his grip. She must have looked like a fish on a line, because she wouldn't go anywhere he didn't want her to go, and both of them knew it. She wasn't going to just—
"Sam! Sam, get up, please, Sam—"
Between the wheel and the mule's flank was Sam.
On his back. Trying to sit up. His hand had gone under the wagon bed, pushing at it, and his face had gone that horrible gray color again.
He wasn't going to be able to move. The wagon had pinned his legs.
Every time the mule jerked, the wagon jerked, and Sam's jaw clenched.
His eyes squeezed shut and opened again and found her.
He'd found her. That was the thing. In all of it, with his legs under a wagon, he'd kept his eyes on her, and he tried to say something, but she couldn't hear him.
Wilkes pulled, and Evelyn went off the buckboard.
He pulled her clean off the rail, and she came down half in his arms and half on her feet. He’d got her by both wrists now, one in each of his hands, and he walked her backward away from the wagon while she slipped in the frozen dirt. She was still trying to twist away, but it did nothing.
"Sam!"
Her voice cracked on it. She hated that it cracked; hated that some part of her still stood back listening to how she sounded.
"Evelyn—"
He'd gotten the word out. That much came clear. Just her name, from the road, from under the wagon, and it took whatever remained of her chest and squeezed.
She threw herself down. Just went limp and made herself a dead weight.
Mrs. Dalton at the orphanage had told her, back when Evelyn was maybe eight, that if a big person was trying to move you, the only thing you had was your weight.
You go heavy, child. Heavy as a sack of flour.
They ain't expecting it, and it buys you a second.
Mrs. Dalton had said it the way she said everything, while she was wringing out a shirt over the wash tub, never looking up.
Evelyn hadn't thought about that in fifteen years, and here it came now, riding up out of nowhere.
She went heavy.
It bought her a second. Wilkes stumbled, grunted, and had to hitch her up under one arm to keep her off the ground. In that one second, she managed to get her right hand free, and she went for his face with her nails.
She scratched him across the cheek, and the skin came up under her fingernails, and he swore, actually swore this time. It was the first sound he'd made that had a real person behind it.
"You little—"
Evelyn went for his eyes. She'd have taken them out of his head with her thumbs if she could get to them.
She clawed at his face and screamed, and the screaming didn't sound like her, it sounded like some other woman, and she thought absurdly of Mrs. Calloway back in Springfield who thought a lady raising her voice indicated poor breeding, and she thought Mrs. Calloway can go straight to—
His arm came around her.
From behind. He'd shifted his grip and pinned her arm to her side and now he'd locked her whole upper body against him, back to chest, with his forearm across her collarbones, and he walked her fast now, not toward the road but toward the tree line, toward the pines off the north side of the track.
No. No, not into the trees. If he got her into the trees Sam wouldn't be able to see. Sam wouldn't be able to—
Sam couldn't do anything anyway. Sam had gone under a wagon. Sam had—
Her boots dragged. She still fought. She'd stopped clawing because she couldn't reach him from this angle and started using her heels, kicking backward, trying for his knees, trying for anything.
"Sam! Sam! Sam!"
Sam managed to get one arm up. He reached for something under his coat and she thought the Colt, the Colt, Sam, the Colt—
His hand fell back.