Chapter Thirty
The muzzle was right there, in the soft place under her chin, warm from Wilkes's hand around the barrel, and she couldn't swallow because swallowing meant her throat moving against it, so she didn't swallow; she just breathed through her nose in these little shallow breaths and stared at Sam.
Sam on his knees in the snow. Empty-handed. His bad leg folded under him wrong and his coat gone dark on one whole side where the shoulder had opened up.
He looked at her.
He looked at her the way a man looks at a thing he's about to lose.
No.
No, don't you dare look at me like that, Sam Cooper, don't you dare.
She couldn't say any of it. The rag was still in her mouth.
The rope was still on her wrists, on her ankles, drawn back on itself so her whole body arched wrong against the rock.
She could look. That was the whole of it.
She could look at him and he could look at her and Wilkes was going to pull that trigger and that was going to be it.
Wilkes shouted something else. She couldn't track it. Her whole world had narrowed down to the muzzle under her jaw, and Sam's face and the small, distant fact that she'd never gotten to say a proper word to him about anything that mattered.
Then Wilkes moved.
Just a shift. His weight shifted on his back foot, and his arm shifted across her collarbones, and the rifle came off her jaw, not far, maybe two inches, because he'd swung the muzzle to gesture at Foster off to the right.
He was yelling at Foster now. Foster in particular.
Something about oaths and something about coming alone, and his voice had gone up into that crack again.
His arm loosened.
Just a hair.
Just the smallest give across her collarbones where his forearm had been locked tight and now wasn't quite so tight, because he needed the arm to gesture with the rifle at Foster, and he'd let his elbow rise off her chest by maybe an inch.
An inch.
Her whole life came down to an inch.
She didn't think about it. That's the honest truth of it.
If she'd thought about it, she wouldn't have done it, because thinking about it would've meant thinking about the muzzle two inches from her jaw and the finger on the trigger and what a jerk of that finger would do at that range, and no person in their right mind thinks about all that and then goes ahead.
She didn't think.
She went limp.
Whole body. Every last ounce of her, straight down.
Mrs. Dalton's trick, the wash-tub trick.
Only this time Wilkes wasn't carrying her; he was holding her against his own body, and dead weight going straight down out of a man's arm doesn't go anywhere clean.
It dragged on him, pulled him forward, and put his shoulder, his elbow, and his rifle all out of place in the same half-second.
He grunted.
He staggered forward a step to catch her weight, and his arm came off her collarbone entirely for maybe a count of one.
She used the count of one to twist her shoulder as hard as she could twist a shoulder that had a rope pulling it back the wrong way, and she twisted it into him, up and into his ribs.
She was smaller than him by a lot, but she was falling with her whole weight now, turning as she fell, and it wrenched his balance the rest of the way.
He came down.
Not on top of her. Sideways off her, into the snow beside the rock, and the rifle came out with him.
It jerked in his hand when he hit the ground and went off.
The sound went right through her head and out the other side, and something hot and gritty spattered against her cheek, snow or rock chip or God knew what, and her ears filled with a high ringing whine.
For a second she couldn't tell if she'd been hit because everything hurt, everything.
Her shoulders, her hips, her jaw, and now her ear on that side had gone dead deaf.
The rifle was in the snow.
She could see it there. About a foot from Wilkes's hand. Wilkes was scrabbling for it, on his side in the snow. She was thrashing like a fish on a bank because she couldn't do anything else with her arms and legs tied the way they were.
Hands.
Hands on her shoulders from behind, big hands, gloved.
"I got her! I got her, Sheriff!"
Somebody hauled her backward and over the ground in a rough scrape, and her shoulders and her hips lit up on fire because she was still tied and being dragged.
She didn't care. She wanted to be six feet from that rifle and six feet from Wilkes, and she'd have paid a hundred dollars to be even further away.
"Get her clear! GET HER CLEAR—"
Foster's voice. Right over her head now. She was on her back in the snow about ten feet from the rock, and Foster's boots were beside her ear.
Then the whole clearing erupted.
She couldn't see it. She had her head down against the snow because a deputy had shoved it down and told her to stay down, but she could hear the shooting.
Three rifles, or maybe four. One was right over her, the muzzle blast close enough that she felt it through the ground more than she heard it, and men shouting.
She heard Wilkes shouting, and then a sound she'd heard once at a cattle butchering and hoped never to hear again—that wet, solid noise a body makes when a heavy thing hits it.
And a scream.
Wilkes.
She heard him scream and then heard him yelling something that wasn't words, and then the voice of one of the deputies.
"Down. Get him down. Get his arm. Peale, get his other arm, get it now—"
"He's got a knife, he's got a—"
"Hit him."
A thud. Then another. Then boots and grunting and more thuds, and a man saying, "Enough. Enough, Peale, that's enough, he's out—"
Then everything got quieter.
Evelyn’s ear on that side was still ringing, but the other one worked well enough, and what she heard was breathing.
Hard breathing. Men breathing after doing a hard thing.
And boots crunching in the snow. And somebody praying, quiet, one of the deputies maybe, just saying Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, over and over under his breath.
Then a voice right by her.
"Miss. Miss, are you all right? Miss—"
She turned her head. A young deputy she'd never laid eyes on, with red hair coming out from under his hat, was kneeling in the snow beside her. His face was very close and very pale.
"I'm gonna take this here rag out. Hold still now."
His hands worked at the knot behind her head.
He was clumsy about it, his hands were shaking, and it took him longer than it should have.
When the knot came loose, he pulled the rag out of her mouth, and she coughed, a wet, hard cough, and there was something in her mouth that tasted like blood and cloth soaked in whiskey.
She got one breath in through her mouth.
Then another.
"Oh, Lord. Oh, sweet Lord."
"Easy, miss. You just breathe."
"Where is he? Where's—"
"We got him, miss. He's roped and bleedin', but he's breathin', and he ain't goin' nowhere but a jail cell."
"Sam."
"He's—"
"Where is Sam?"
The deputy looked over his shoulder. Then he looked back at her, and she could not read his expression.
"He's here, miss. He's comin'."
He worked at the rope on her wrists next.
That took longer, because whoever had tied her had tied her as if they meant it, and the deputy's knife had to work under each loop.
Her hands came free and every finger hurt, that pins-and-needles hurt of blood coming back into a place where it hadn't been for hours, and she flexed them, and it was almost worse than being tied.
The ropes at her ankles were next. The deputy sawed through those in three passes.
Her legs came apart from her wrists and her whole spine unbent for the first time in —she didn't know how long.
Hours. All day maybe. It hurt worse than the tying had.
She made a sound she was ashamed of, and the deputy said, "That's all right, miss, that's normal.
That's your back straightenin' out, and that's a good thing. "
Then he got his hands under her arms and lifted her up to sitting. The clearing swam.
For a second everything was pines and gray sky and dark shapes of men, and she couldn't tell which shape was Sam and which was a deputy and which was Wilkes on the ground with three men on top of him, and her head went light and her stomach turned, and she thought, Don't you dare faint, Evelyn Granger. Don't you dare, not now, not now—
Then Sam was in front of her.
He'd crossed the clearing somehow. On his one good leg and his one wrecked one.
On his hands where his leg gave out. She'd figure out how later, later, later.
He was in front of her, kneeling, with both of his knees in the snow.
His face was gray, and his coat was black, wet on one whole side, and his hat had gone, and his hair was every which way.
He was alive.
He was alive and he was reaching for her.
"Evelyn—"
His hand came up, and it was shaking, and it stopped an inch off her cheek because he couldn't seem to make himself touch her, and she was staring at that hand hanging there in the space between them, and something in her that had been held together with rope and cloth and fear for God knew how many hours came the rest of the way apart.
She went for him.
She launched herself off her knees and into his chest, and her arms went around his neck.
She was crying now, ugly crying, the kind she hadn't done since she was six years old at the orphanage the first night. Sam caught her, and his good arm came around her back and pulled her hard against him. His face went into her hair, and he was making a sound, a broken half-sound in his throat. It wasn’t a sob, just the noise of a man who'd been holding a thing in his chest for a long time and was finally letting it out.
"You're all right. You're all right. You're all right—"
He was saying it over and over into her hair. She didn't know if he meant her or himself.
"Sam."
"You're all right."
"Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam."
"You're here."
"You came."
"I came. I told you. Didn't I tell you? I said I'd come."
So she hadn't made it up. Back on the road, with him pinned under the wagon and her halfway to the tree line, she'd caught the shape of it more than the sound, and she'd spent every hour since half-convinced she'd invented it because she needed it so bad.
She hadn't invented it. He'd said it. He'd said it, and then he'd gone and done it.
"Your shoulder."
"Ain't nothin'."
"It's bleedin'—"
"Ain't nothin', Evelyn. Hush."
He said her name like it hurt to say. He said it like he'd been keeping it in his mouth the whole ride up here.
She pulled back a little and got a look at his face. He was gray up close. The kind of gray that meant the doc, the kind of gray she'd seen on him after the fair, but worse now, because there wasn't any color at all in his lips.
"You're gonna keel over."
"I ain't—"
"You are. Sam, you are, you sit right here, you don't move—"
"I ain't goin' nowhere. I ain't goin' one damn place in this world without you, Evelyn Granger, so hush your fussin' and get over here."
He pulled her back against him.
His arm around her shook. His whole body shook.
She pressed her face into the side of his neck where the collar of his coat had opened, and his skin there was hot, too hot.
Feverish maybe, or perhaps it was just from the exertion.
She didn't care; she just breathed him in.
Wood smoke, old sweat, gun oil, horse, and something like leather that had been out in cold weather. Under all that, it was just Sam.
Behind them, over by the rock, Foster's voice.
"On your feet, Wilkes. Get up. Get up, mister, or I'll drag you the rest of the way. Peale, get him up."
Wilkes's voice, low and wrecked and full of something wet.
"You dirty—"
A boot on wood. A grunt. Then all was quiet again.
Sam's arm tightened around her.
"He's whipped. They got him trussed up like a hog for market. Foster's got him."
"Sam."
"Yeah."
"On the wagon. This morning. What you said."
"Evelyn, don't—"
"You lied to me, Sam Cooper."
He pulled back just enough to look at her. His face was so gray. His eyes were the only thing with any color left in them—that steel gray that always got a little smoke in it when he was looking at her, and there was a lot of smoke in it now.
"Yeah."
"You lied to me plain."
"Yeah."
"You tell me now. You tell me right this here minute, before you keel over on top of me, on account of I aim to hear it from your mouth."
He looked at her. His whole face worked for a second like a man who's forgotten how the words go.
Then his hand came up, that shaking hand, and it settled on the side of her face where the bruise from Wilkes's slap was still swelled up, and his thumb went along her cheekbone, and he found the words.
"I love you, Evelyn. I have been lovin' you since about the third day and I done every fool thing a man can do to not love you, and none of it took, and I have loved you the whole while, and I love you now, and I aim to keep on doin' it as long as this here beat-up body of mine has a beat left in it.
That's the whole of it. That's the truth of it. That is my word."
Her eyes went hot and hard, and she was crying again, and she didn't care.
"About time."
He gave a small broken laugh. It hurt him. She could hear it hurt him.
"Yeah."
"You could've told me at breakfast."
"I know it."
"You could've told me on the porch."
"I know it, honey."
"You near got me killed on account of you couldn't—"
"I know it. I know. I know."
She put her forehead against his and closed her eyes.
Foster's boots crunched up beside them.
"Cooper. We got him. He's cuffed, and he's gonna live long enough to hang, which is more'n he deserves. Doc Merrick's on his way up from town. I sent Peale's brother down for him ten minutes back. You hold on, you hear me? Both of you hold on."
Sam nodded against her forehead.
She kept her eyes shut.