Chapter Twenty-Five #2
His face did that gray thing again, and his hand fell back, and he just about passed out from whatever moving his shoulder had cost him, and then he pushed on again, forcing his eyes open, forcing them to find her, and he shouted something. She heard the shape of it more than the sound.
I'll find you.
Maybe. Maybe that came out of him. Maybe she made that up because that was what she needed him to say.
The tree line came up.
She still fought. Her arm had gone numb where Wilkes had it locked.
Her right cheek had started to swell where he'd hit her, and one eye watered so badly she couldn't see straight out of it.
Her braid had come loose, hair had gotten in her face, and her bonnet had gone, back on the road somewhere.
She thought very clearly and very stupidly about her bonnet, about how she'd have to go get it, about how Sam would grump at her if she left it in the road, and part of her brain went stop it, stop it, stop it, that don't matter, none of that matters and the other part went I liked that bonnet, I paid good money for that bonnet—
The pines closed over them.
The light changed. The road-light had held that flat cold gray of Montana morning; under the pines it went dim and green.
Behind them the sound of the mule went quieter.
The sound of Sam trying to shout went quieter.
Her boots caught on roots now, and she stumbled, and Wilkes hauled her upright without breaking stride.
"Keep on your feet."
Cheerful again. He'd gotten cheerful back. Whatever she'd done to his face hadn't stayed in his voice.
"Where are you—"
"Hush now."
"Where are you taking—"
"I said hush."
His forearm came up higher against her throat. Not enough to choke. Enough to let her know he could.
She hushed.
Not because she wanted to, but nothing she could say would matter, and because saving her breath might be the smart thing.
Mrs. Dalton had also taught her that you don't spend what you don't have to spend, girl.
Sass costs. Evelyn had spent a lot of sass in her life. Right now she couldn't afford it.
Her mind went in a hundred directions. Landmarks.
Sam had said something once about tracking, about how a person could get lost inside of a quarter mile if they didn't pay attention.
She started paying attention. Big pine, forked at the top, on her left.
Rock outcrop about the size of a wagon, ahead and right.
The ground climbed. They went up. Toward the ridge, maybe.
Toward that timber Foster had mentioned where they'd found the cold camp.
That marked where he was taking her. To wherever he'd been living.
Sam.
Sam, please.
Please what? Please get out from under the wagon. Please still be alive. Please—
She'd told him she loved him.
That thought arrived as clearly as anything, and she'd have laughed if she'd had the wind for it, because of all the things to be thinking with a bandit's arm around her throat and blood in her mouth. Her foot caught a root, and she went down.
Just onto one knee. He hauled her back up so fast her shoulder wrenched.
"Come on, girl. Not far now."
Not far. Not far. Not far to what?
Something moved off to her left, in the pines. She whipped her head that way, hoping— a bird. Just a grouse. Flushed up out of the brush and gone.
No one came. Nobody had seen them go into the trees.
Sam lay on his back in the road, and the mule was still fretting, and if any wagon came down that road, they'd stop and help Sam, because that was what people did.
They'd help Sam, but they wouldn't know she'd gone.
They wouldn't know where to look, and by the time Sam could talk enough to tell them—
She'd been counting. That was the thing.
Part of her brain had counted steps without asking the rest of her, the way it counted stitches, the way it counted anything, and they'd come up on about two hundred steps.
The ground had climbed that whole way, and if she'd been reading the country right, they'd come at least a quarter mile from the road already.
A quarter mile. In pines this thick. A man could disappear into that timber in about thirty seconds and stay disappeared as long as he pleased.
Wilkes stopped walking.
Just like that. In the middle of a stride. Her boots slipped on pine needles, and she almost went down again, but he held her up.
Ahead of them, in a little clearing— her eye still watered too badly to see it clearly— something waited. A structure. Half a shack. A lean-to. A dead fire ring out front.
Oh. Oh no.
"Here we are."
He said it the way a man shows off a house he thinks of renting.
Behind them, way behind them, way off through the trees, the mule screamed one more time.
Then something—a hand, a rag—came up hard over the lower half of her face, and it stank like whiskey and something else, something sharp and sweet and awful, like rotten flowers left in a jar of turpentine, and her knees went soft, and her thoughts became slow.
The last thought that came clearly in her head, the very last one: I never told him what I named the horse.
I never told Sam I named the horse Henry.
The pines got tall.
Then all she knew was darkness.