Chapter Twenty-Nine
The mare wanted to slow down, so he let her.
He hadn't planned it. His leg had gone past the point of pretending.
Every step she took, the swing of it moved through his knee and up his hip and out his shoulder, and he'd stopped biting through it about half a mile back.
He just rode with his teeth apart and his jaw slack and let the pain do whatever it was going to do.
The claim opened out of the pines up ahead.
He knew this country. He'd ridden the north fork chasing a horse thief maybe four years back, and the Marley claim sat on a bench above the creek where an old boy named Marley had scratched at a seam of quartz for two summers and turned up nothing worth staying for.
The trail up to it ran narrow between a rock slope on one side and a drop on the other, one horse wide, no cover.
Wilkes had picked well. Wilkes had picked exactly the kind of ground a man with a rifle picks when he wants the other man to walk to him.
Sam had figured all this in the kitchen at four in the morning.
He rode the mare up the trail slowly, not because he had planned to be slow, but because slow was what she and his leg agreed on. The sun sat where he'd told Sarah it would sit. Sundown was coming, but it wasn’t here yet. He'd made his time.
He had the money in a canvas sack tied to the saddle horn, in plain sight, so Wilkes could see it from wherever Wilkes was watching.
The ring rode separate, in the inside pocket of his coat.
The Colt sat on his hip, the Winchester in the scabbard, the Sharps strapped across his back where he couldn't reach it without shrugging out of the strap. He wasn't going to get to do that.
He had one plan. It wasn't much of one.
The plan was to get Evelyn breathing. Everything else, he'd figure as it came.
Then he saw her.
She was off the trail, on his left, sat back against a rock, bound. She had a rag tied around her mouth, her arms bound behind her, her ankles roped. Somebody had tied her the way you'd tie a calf, ankles up to wrists so her whole body arched wrong.
His hand went for the Colt before his brain caught up. He stopped it hard, put it back on the reins, and made himself breathe through his teeth.
Don't look at her.
Don't do it. Don't look. You look at her another second, and you'll go over there, and you'll die in the trying, and she'll die in the watching, and that ain't happening, that ain't—
He looked at her.
He couldn't help it. He looked at her, and her eyes were wide as saucers, rolling hard to her left, up the slope, again and again. She was trying to tell him something with her whole face, and he understood exactly what she was trying to tell him.
Up the slope. Wilkes was up the slope.
I know, honey. I know it. I know he's there. Look at me. Look at me and hold steady. I know it.
He couldn't say any of that. He gave her one small nod and hoped she caught it.
Then he made himself look away.
He got down off the mare on his good leg. His bad leg took the ground and gave under him. He caught the stirrup one-handed and held there a second until it settled. The mare stood for him. A good horse, the best he'd ever had, and he'd never told her so.
"Wilkes."
He said it to the slope, to the rocks, to wherever the man was.
"Wilkes, I come alone. I got your money. Show yourself and let's get this done."
Nothing for a second.
Then a voice came from up the slope, off to the right of a big shelf of rock about thirty yards up.
"Sam Cooper. As I live and breathe."
Cheerful. Lord, the man was cheerful.
"You got the three hundred?"
"I got what I got."
"That there ain't an answer, Cooper."
"I got the three hundred. Come and count it."
A little laugh, small and dry.
"You come to me, Cooper. Set that sack on that flat rock right in front of you, walk on backwards ten paces, and you keep your hands where I can see 'em the whole while."
"I put that sack down. I want to see the woman first."
"You already seen her. Don't play cute, Cooper. She's right there. Now put the sack down."
"She alive?"
"She's breathin', and she's got all her fingers and toes, which is more'n you'll have if you don't quit runnin' your jaw."
Sam untied the sack from the saddle horn one-handed.
He limped four steps to the flat rock Wilkes had named. He set the sack on it, hard, so the coins in it made a good honest chunk of a sound. Then he backed up, ten paces. He counted them off out loud because if Wilkes wanted a show, Wilkes could have a show.
"One. Two. Three."
He kept his hands out from his body, palms open, empty.
"Four. Five. Six."
Every backward step his leg screamed, and he swallowed it and made the next one.
"Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten."
He stopped.
Boots on rock, above him and to his right, not close, coming down slow. Wilkes was working his way off the shelf.
The man came into view around a bit of scrub, same coat as on the road, same low hat, a rifle in his right hand held loose against his thigh, muzzle down.
It was a Winchester, from the look. Could've been a brother to Sam's.
There were three long scratches down his right cheek that had scabbed over dark.
He reckoned Evelyn had put those there.
Good.
Wilkes stopped about fifteen feet off. He looked at Sam a long second, top of his head to his boots, and his mouth did a small, pleased thing.
"You look about half dead."
"I've felt better."
"That leg's broke."
"I'm aware."
"You ride four miles on a broke leg to fetch me three hundred dollars, and you'd have rode forty. Wouldn't you?"
"Count the money, Wilkes."
Wilkes moved to the flat rock without ever taking his eyes fully off Sam. He kept the rifle down but ready. He got to the sack, worked the drawstring one-handed, dumped the coin out on the rock, and started nudging it around with his fingers, still watching Sam, still watching Sam the whole time.
"I'm short. You said three hundred. That's—what—two hundred, maybe."
"Look in the sack again. There's paper in the bottom, and there's this here besides."
Sam reached slowly into his coat with two fingers, and he pulled out the little cloth-wrapped bundle, and he held it up so Wilkes could see it plain.
"Gold. It'll make up the shortfall and then some."
"What is it?"
"My mother's ring."
Wilkes's mouth turned up at the edges.
"Well. Ain't that a thing."
"Come and take it."
Wilkes came.
He came slow, the rifle up now, not aimed but ready. He came within arm's reach and held out his free hand, and Sam laid the little bundle in his palm. Wilkes squeezed it once through the cloth and slipped it into his own coat pocket without unwrapping it.
"Much obliged, Cooper."
"Now the woman."
"Directly. Now that gun belt off first. Left hand only, and slow, and you drop it right there at your feet."
Sam unbuckled the gun belt one-handed. The Colt, belt and holster dropped in the snow with a soft thud.
"Kick it over here."
Sam kicked it. His bad leg screamed at the effort. The belt slid maybe six feet.
"The Winchester's on the mare."
"I see it. And the Sharps on your back, don't reckon I ain't seen that. Shrug out of the strap. Slow. Let it fall."
Sam shrugged out of the strap. The Sharps dropped in the snow behind him.
"Knife."
Sam pulled the knife from his boot top and dropped it.
"There's a little Derringer in your left inside coat pocket. Two shots."
Sam looked at him.
Wilkes smiled a small, tired smile.
"I been at this a spell, Cooper. Fetch it out."
Sam fetched it out and dropped it.
Wilkes looked him up and down another long moment and then nodded, satisfied.
"There we are. Now."
He stepped back a pace. He raised the Winchester and settled the stock against his shoulder in that easy, loose way of a man who'd shouldered a rifle ten thousand times, and he sighted along it at Sam's chest.
"You believed me. Didn't you?"
"About what."
"About the exchange. About her for the money. You believed a fella like me'd take your coin and hand your woman over and ride on off into the sunset, and you'd all go home and eat pie."
Sam didn't answer.
"You know how I know you believed it? On account of you're standin' there.
If you hadn't believed it, you'd have brought Foster and his men.
Which you didn't. You come alone, Cooper.
You come alone with money and your mama's ring, and you thought old Amos Wilkes was gonna be a gentleman about it.
That is about the most touchin' thing I have witnessed in a good long spell. "
Sam didn't answer.
"Anythin' you want to say?"
"Yeah."
"Go on."
"You're gonna miss."
Wilkes laughed, actually laughed, a real one, showing teeth.
"From fifteen—"
He didn't finish the word.
The pines exploded.
Not literally, and not gunfire, but movement. Men appeared, boots crashing through the underbrush from three sides at once, and a voice, Foster's voice, huge and full of teeth—
"WILKES. DROP IT. DROP IT NOW."
And another voice from the rocks above the trail. One of the deputies, who must've climbed up the back side of the ridge in the dark. "PUT THAT RIFLE DOWN, MISTER. YOU AIN'T GOT NOWHERE TO GO. PUT IT DOWN—"
More from behind, more to the left. Sam counted the voices before he counted anything else, six, seven. God bless Foster, God bless him, God bless every last deputy he'd sworn in this week—
Wilkes moved.
He moved fast, faster than a man that age had any right to move. He was off the flat rock and going for Evelyn before Sam's brain caught up to what he was seeing. Sam went after him, and his leg went out from under him on the first step, and he crashed down hard on his good knee in the snow.
No.
No, no, no—
Wilkes reached Evelyn and got behind her. He hauled her up against him with his forearm across her collarbones and the Winchester's muzzle jammed up under her jaw.
Sam got a hand out toward the Colt in the snow six feet off. He couldn't reach it, not from where he'd fallen, not without going through open ground with a rifle on the woman he—
He held still.
The whole world held still. Foster and his men had come out of the trees and stopped where they stood, half a dozen rifles up and sighted on Wilkes.
None of them were shooting, because Wilkes had Evelyn.
He'd put the rifle right under her jaw where a twitch of his finger would end it, and every man in that clearing understood the arithmetic at the same second.
Wilkes's chest heaved, once, twice. Then he laughed—a short ugly one. Not the cheerful laugh, but a different one entirely.
"Well, Cooper. Well, well."
"Wilkes, don't—"
"Don't. Don't. You brought them boys with you."
"I didn't. Wilkes, I swear on my mother's grave, I—"
"You swore to me alone. You swore it in this here transaction. That was the whole of it, Cooper. That was the whole of it, and now look what you have done."
Foster's voice, off to Sam's right, was low and steady. "Wilkes. Let the woman go. Nobody has to die here today. You lay that rifle down, and you walk out of this here on your own two feet."
"Sheriff. You hush up now."
"Wilkes—"
"You hush."
The rifle pressed harder up under Evelyn's jaw. Her chin tipped up from it. Her eyes stayed on Sam's, wide, not crying, not begging, just holding on him—holding on him hard, like if she looked away he'd disappear.
Sam looked back at her.
He was on both knees now in the snow, empty-handed.
His bad leg had folded under him, his shoulder had opened up again, and he could feel the wet spreading.
Amos Wilkes had his mother's ring in one pocket and Evelyn Granger against his chest with a rifle under her jaw.
This was the shape of it. This was what twenty years of hunting the man had brought him to, kneeling in the snow watching Wilkes standing behind the only person in the world Sam had ever—
Wilkes shouted, and his voice cracked on the shout, the first crack Sam had ever heard in it.
"I told you alone! I told you, Cooper! I put it in the letter plain as daylight! You come alone, or she don't see another sunrise, and here they are. Here's your sheriff and his boys, come to save the day, and you tell me you didn't fetch 'em? You tell me that?"
"Wilkes—"
"You lied to me, Cooper. You lied to me."
"I didn't. I rode out alone. I—"
"You did!"
His whole body was shaking now. Sam could see it from where he knelt. Wilkes was shaking, and the rifle under Evelyn's jaw was shaking with him. A finger on the trigger of a man that shook was worse than a finger on the trigger of a man that didn't, and Sam's stomach turned to ice.
"You come at me twenty years, Cooper. Twenty years.
And I let you get close. I let you get all the way close.
I looked you in the eye, and I took your money, and I took your mama's ring, and I meant to give you a clean shot at the end of it, a man's shot, a fair shot, and you couldn't even give me that, you couldn't even give me the honor of—"
"Wilkes—"
"—so here's how it goes now, on account of you brought them, on account of you couldn't come alone like a man, here is how it goes—"
He looked past Sam.
Straight at Foster.
"You want to know what a man like me does when a man like him breaks his word?"
"Wilkes, don't—"
"He takes what the other man loves."
Sam's whole body went cold, cold the way the road had been cold, cold from the inside out.
"No."
"That's how it goes, Sheriff. That's the way of it. He broke faith. So I take what he loves. That's fair. That's a man's arithmetic, right there. You hear me, Cooper? You hear me?"
Sam couldn't move.
His hand was six feet from the Colt in the snow, and he might as well have been six miles from it.
Wilkes's finger was on the trigger, and it was shaking.
Evelyn's eyes were on Sam's, and Sam was on his knees in the snow, watching every version of the rest of his life narrow down to a single second that was about to happen.
There wasn't a thing on God's earth he could do to stop it.
Evelyn.
Evelyn, I love you.
I should've said it. I should've said it on the buckboard. I should've said it in the kitchen. I should've said it on the porch the night I toted you up the stairs.
Look at me, honey. Look at me and know it.
She was looking at him.
She knew it.
He could see it in her face. Even under the gag and the terror, and the arm across her throat, she knew it, and her eyes went a little softer for a half-second in a way that broke something in his chest that wasn't going to grow back.
Wilkes took a breath.
The Winchester steadied under her jaw.