Chapter Twenty-Six
Cold first. The road under his cheek. Cold the way a stove goes cold overnight in January, that specific cold that gets into you and makes your teeth start chattering before the rest of you catches on to what's happening.
Then the pain.
It came at him in one big wave. There was something wrong with his left leg. Right shoulder—that was the old bullet wound, and it had opened something up because he could feel moisture spreading under his shirt. His head hurt in a way that made the sky pulse when he tried to look at it.
Sky. He was looking at sky.
He was on his back. Half on his back. The wagon—
The wagon.
Evelyn.
He tried to sit up. His left leg screamed at him, and his shoulder screamed at him, and something else that hadn't spoken up yet joined in from his lower back. He got about four inches off the ground before he had to lie back down or throw up, and he wasn't going to throw up on the road.
Footsteps.
He caught them before he saw the man. Boots on frozen dirt, coming at a run from up the road, from the direction of town. His right hand went for the Colt on instinct, and his shoulder gave a warning bark.
"Lord Almighty. Lord have mercy, mister. Hold still now—"
A face over him. Not Wilkes. An older fella, gray in the beard, wearing the kind of coat a freighter wore.
"Don't you move a muscle, mister, don't you move. I'll fetch the doc, I'll—"
"Get this wagon off my leg."
"Mister, you're—"
"Get this here wagon off my leg."
The freighter went to work. He circled the buckboard trying to figure out the geometry, and part of Sam's brain thought he don't rightly know what he's about, that mule's still tangled, and the other part went, hush, let the man work, because arguing took wind and Sam had no wind to spare.
The mule wasn't fighting anymore. It stood in the traces with its head down, blowing hard, one nostril bloody where Wilkes had hit it. The poor animal was wrung out.
The freighter unhitched what he could and got a length of the traces free. Then he came around, put his shoulder under the wagon bed, and heaved.
"Now, mister, drag on out—"
Sam dragged.
He got both hands flat on the road, and he pushed with his good leg. His bad leg came with him, and every inch of it was fire. Then it was out, and the wagon came back down, and he was clear.
He lay there panting.
"You’re busted up somethin' fierce. I gotta fetch the doc, I gotta—"
"Where'd he go?"
"Who, mister?"
"The man what done this. Where'd he go?"
"I didn't see no man, mister, I come down the road and seen the wagon over and you underneath, that's all, I—"
"There was a woman with me."
The freighter looked around. Looked at the road. Looked at the wagon. Looked back at Sam, and his mouth opened a little because he understood the question before Sam finished asking it.
"There ain't no woman here, mister. Just you."
Sam already knew. He'd known before he asked.
He turned his head.
Prints. In the mud beside the wagon. A man's boot, deep, planted, then dragging. Smaller prints beside them, hers, and then further off, where the man had lifted her some. Then there was only one set of prints, going deeper, going toward the tree line.
Into the pines.
Sam sat up.
He got most of the way up before the freighter's hand landed on his good shoulder and pushed him back.
"Mister, you cannot—"
"Help me up."
"Mister, your leg's—"
"Help me up or step aside."
The freighter helped him up. Sam got his good leg under him and hopped one step. The bad leg took a little weight and screamed, but it came from his ankle, not from his thigh. He could put weight on it if he had to. He had to.
Up the road, maybe a hundred yards back at the bend, a freight wagon sat stopped in the ruts with a four-horse team blowing steam in the traces. A sorrel saddle horse stood tied off behind the tailgate, stamping at the cold.
"That your rig yonder?"
"Aye. I left it at the bend when I seen you under the wagon. Come the rest of the way afoot."
"That sorrel tied behind. She yours too?"
"She is, but—"
"I'm takin' her."
"Mister, you can't—"
"I'll send her back directly. You got a team and a wagon, and that's all you need. Drive for town fast as them horses'll pull. You find Sheriff Foster, and you tell him Sam Cooper had trouble on the west road and Amos Wilkes has took a woman. You got that name?"
"Amos Wilkes."
"Don't you spare them horses. You hear me? You drive like the devil's on your tail."
The freighter jogged back up the road and untied the sorrel from the tailgate and led her down.
Sam stood on one and a half legs and looked at the tree line where the prints went. Wilkes had a head start. Sam didn't know how much. The sun told him maybe an hour, but that couldn't be right. Half an hour. Less, maybe.
Long enough that going into those pines on foot, on one leg, without a rifle, without knowing where the trail bent, would put him dead inside twenty minutes and get her nowhere.
That thought stopped him. Full stop. Because every part of him wanted to go straight into the trees right now, and the only part of him that counted for anything was the part that knew doing it would kill her.
Get the rifle. Get Sarah. Get Foster. Get a party of men, go in right, go in hard, go in with enough guns that when he found Wilkes he could put Wilkes down before Wilkes could put Evelyn down.
It was the only play. He hated every inch of it.
The freighter brought the horse. Laced his fingers together. Sam put his good boot in them and swung his bad leg over in a way that whited out his vision for three counts. He caught the horn with both hands and held on until the world came back.
"Go on, mister. Drive."
The freighter ran for his wagon. By the time Sam got the sorrel's head turned, the team had lurched out of the bend with the whip cracking over them, headed west for town.
Sam turned the horse east.
***
He didn't recall most of the four miles back to the homestead later. He held onto the horn with both hands and let the horse pick her way, because she was a good horse and she knew the road, and he couldn't have steered her if she'd needed steering.
Mostly he thought.
Wilkes had planned it. That was the first thing. He'd known Sam was taking Evelyn to the train. He'd known the road and known the bend. He’d been waiting.
Amos had obviously been watching the homestead this morning, before dawn, from the tree line east of the barn.
He'd seen Sam hitch the mule and he'd ridden ahead, and he'd hit the mule instead of Sam.
That was the piece that kept coming back at Sam like a bad tooth.
Wilkes had a gun. Wilkes could've shot Sam clean off the bench.
Instead, he'd spooked the mule, flipped the wagon over, and gone for Evelyn.
Wilkes didn't want Sam dead. Not yet. Wilkes wanted Sam alive to come after her. That was what this was. A hook, and Evelyn the bait, and Wilkes somewhere in those trees setting the second half of it.
Sam's hands tightened on the horn.
Alive was good. Alive meant a letter would come.
Alive meant a demand. Alive meant a meeting somewhere on Wilkes's ground.
That was bad, but it was better than the notion sitting in his chest since he'd opened his eyes on the road, which was that Wilkes had taken her into the pines to leave her there.
He wanted Sam. He'd keep her breathing until he had him.
Sam repeated it to himself the last mile. He wanted him. He'd keep her breathing.
***
Sam didn't recall dismounting. He was on his good foot, hopping toward the porch, and Sarah stood in the doorway.
She had a dish towel in her hand, and she stopped in the door with the dish towel in her hand, and her face did something he'd never wanted to see it do.
"Sam."
"Fetch the Winchester."
"Sam, what in the good Lord's name—"
"The Winchester, Sarah, and the box of forty-fours, and get me the Sharps too—"
"Sam Cooper, you sit yourself down this—"
"He took Evelyn."
Sarah stopped.
"Wilkes. He took her off the wagon. On the road. She's in the pines."
Sarah's hand went to her mouth. Then it dropped, and her whole face went the way their father's face used to go when something had to be done, and there was no use complaining about it.
"How long?"
"I don't rightly know. Under an hour. Maybe half. I was out some."
"Sit."
"Sarah—"
"You sit whilst I fetch them rifles. You're bleedin' through your coat and if you drop on this porch it won't help her nary a bit. Sit."
He sat.
Sarah moved. She fetched the Winchester and the box of shells and the Sharps and his good hat because he'd lost his on the road. She brought a flask of whiskey out of a cupboard he didn't know she used and laid all of it beside him. Then she looked at his leg.
"That leg's broke."
"It ain't broke, it's—"
"Sam, look at your boot. That leg's broke sure as sundown."
He looked. His boot was sitting at an angle it had no business sitting at.
"It ain't broke above the knee."
"That ain't no comfort to me, brother."
"It'll hold me for what I need it to hold me for."
She looked at him. Twelve years old again, both of them, standing over what was left of their folks. She'd worn that same look. He'd forgotten how much she favored their mother when she wore it.
"We ride to Foster?"
"Yeah."
"You ain't ridin' alone. I'm comin' with."
"Sarah—"
"I said I'm comin' with, Sam Cooper. Don't you start."
He didn't.
***
Foster had men in the saddle inside forty minutes. That part went the way Sam needed it to go because Foster didn't waste breath asking whether Sam was sure. Sam said Wilkes and Foster hollered for horses.
Six men. Sam and Sarah and Foster and three deputies. They rode back to the road. Sam pointed, and one of the deputies, a young fella named Peale who'd tracked some up around Fort Benton, got down and read the ground and nodded.
"One man, one woman, headin' northeast into the timber. She's on her feet, but he's got her tight, look here where she planted, and he dragged."
"How old are those tracks?"
Peale touched a print. Crumbled the edge with his thumb.
"Two hours. Maybe a hair over."
Two hours.
They went in.
The tracks held for the first half mile.
Then the ground turned harder, more needle mat, less bare dirt, and Peale slowed.
Then it commenced snowing, light at first, just a spit of it, and then thicker, and Sam watched a print he'd been staring at soften around the edges and fill in, and he wanted to open his mouth and roar at the sky.
He shut his teeth on it so hard his jaw ached.
The snow kept coming.
Peale lost the trail on a stretch of shale under a stand of firs, and they cast for it an hour, four men on foot moving in slow arcs, and picked up a partial a quarter mile north, and lost it again inside ten minutes.
Sam's leg had gone from humming to shrieking again. He'd bit through his lip somewhere, and he tasted the blood but couldn't recall doing it.
The light started to go.
Foster came up beside him.
"Sam."
"No."
"Sam, we're fixin' to lose men in this timber if we push it into full dark. There ain't a man livin' can find her by torchlight in this snow."
"No."
"We'll be back on it come first light. I'll have a dozen men. I'll have Peale's brother, better tracker'n Peale. I'll have Old Ridley's dog, and we will pick this trail—"
"He's got her tonight, Foster."
"I know it, Sam."
"He's got her tonight."
"I know it."
Foster didn't look away. That was the part Sam recalled later.
Foster stood there with the snow coming down on both of them, and he did not look away, and Sam understood, all at once, that Foster was right and that saying so would break something in him that wouldn't come back together for a good long spell.
He nodded. Once.
They rode back.
***
Late. Full dark. Sarah lit the stove and put water on because that's what Sarah did in a crisis, she put water on to make tea. Neither of them drank a drop of it.
They sat at the kitchen table.
Sarah had her hands wrapped around a cup she hadn't poured into. Sam had his bad leg stretched sideways because the doc had come out at some point—he didn't recall exactly when—and had set the ankle and told him he was a damn fool, and Sam had agreed and hadn't thanked him.
The stove ticked.
"Sam."
"Yeah."
"I keep on thinkin' about Mama."
He didn't answer.
"I keep thinkin' on how you got me out that window, and how her voice was—"
"Sarah."
"And now I keep thinkin' on Evelyn's voice. Callin' for you. I heard it in my head all the ride back, and I can't shake it loose."
"Sarah, don't."
"I'm afeared it's happenin' all over again."
He looked at his sister across the table. She was crying, and she hadn't even noticed. He hadn't seen her cry in years. He hadn't cried in longer than that.
"It ain't happenin' again."
"Sam—"
"It ain't happenin' again, Sarah. You hear me?
I let it happen once. I was ten years old, and I got you out that window, and I couldn't get back for them, and I have carried that every blessed day since.
I ain't carryin' it a second time. He does not get to do this twice.
Not to my family. Not while I'm above ground. "
"You was ten years old, Sam."
"Don't matter."
"It matters some."
"Not to me, it don't."
She reached across the table and took his hand. He let her.
"Sam."
"Yeah."
"That woman. Evelyn."
"Yeah."
"You love her?"
He didn't answer.
"Sam Cooper. Look at me. Do you love that girl or don't you?"
He looked at his sister. He looked at her hand on his. He thought of a dozen ways to sidestep it, and every one of them was a way of not answering, and he was tired. He'd been tired twenty years. He couldn't manage one more sidestep, not tonight, not with Evelyn in the pines.
"Yeah."
Sarah's eyes closed.
"Yeah, Sarah. I love her. Been lovin' her since about the third day, if I'm bein' honest with myself, and I done every fool thing I could think of not to, and none of it took."
"Sam—"
"And I got to keep her safe. You hear me? Whatever's left of me after this is done, whatever's in me that's still worth spendin', I aim to spend it keepin' her safe. That's the whole of it. That's all there is."
"Sam—"
"And I told her to go, Sarah. This mornin'. On the buckboard. She told me she loved me and I told her to go on back to Springfield and forget the whole business, and that was the last thing come out of my mouth 'fore he stepped into the road."
Sarah didn't speak. She just held onto his hand.
"So I got to get her back. You understand me? I got to fetch her back, and I got to tell her the truth of it, on account of the fact that she went off that wagon reckonin' I didn't want her, and I ain't havin' that be the last thing she knows on this earth."
The stove ticked.
Outside, the snow kept coming down.