human being was reassuring. She hadn’t realized how much she craved it. After a long time like this, he let her go.
“I’ll run the team back to Lost Pine and get cash-money out of the office safe. You and Stanton get up to Cutter’s Rise. I’ll meet you before the train gets there at half past ten.”
He looked as if he was going to say something else, but he closed his mouth.
“Go on, now,” he said. “There isn’t much time.”
* * *
Emily heard Stanton before she saw him. He was whistling something that managed to sound spry and despondent at the same time. She found him sitting on a rocky outcropping overlooking a deep valley that was colored golden with the rays of the sinking sun. He had his legs drawn up to his chest, his arms resting straight out over them. His long fingers were tearing apart a pine cone in a way that seemed to indicate a personal grudge against conifers.
Emily didn’t go to him immediately. Instead she wandered around, gathering a handful of new green herbs. Popping the leaves into her mouth, she chewed them. Then she sat down next to Stanton, took one of his hands, and looked at the ugly rope burns on his wrist. Spitting the masticated herbs into her palm, she smeared them onto the raw scrapes.
“Ugh!” Stanton tried to jerk his hand away, but she held his wrist tight. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t move,” Emily said. She fished around in her pocket until she found Ruthless Mike’s handkerchief. She tore it down the middle, then bandaged each of Stanton’s wrists with the herbs and linen.
“You’re the one who got shot.” He looked at her bloodsoaked sleeve.
Emily shrugged, unwrapping the dirty, badly tied bandage from around her arm. She looked critically at the wound. The bullet had raked the flesh deep, but it had long since stopped bleeding.
“It’ll leave a right pretty scar,” she said.
“Scars aren’t pretty,” he said.
Emily plastered the last of the chewed herbs onto the wound. She pressed clean dry moss over it and bound it all up with the last of the linen from the handkerchief. So much for Ruthless Mike.
“They could have killed you,” Stanton said.
“But they didn’t.” Emily paused, stretching her legs in front of her. “Dag is gone.”
Stanton’s eyes flashed.
“You let him go?” he said. A silence. “I don’t think that was a good idea.”
“He’s going to ride to Lost Pine. He’s going to get money. He’s going to buy the Morgans.”
“Then shoot them for spite, I suppose.”
“No,” Emily said. “I explained everything to him. He understands that I have to go to New York. He’s going to help.”
Stanton looked at her. Emily wondered if this was one of the looks Dag had been referring to; if so, it didn’t seem much different from the look one would give to an unimaginably simple child.
“You have a good heart, Miss Edwards,” Stanton said softly. “He’s not going back to get money to buy my horses. He’s going back to find Captain Caul.”
Emily shook her head violently. “He won’t! I know he won’t!”
“He loves you. He won’t let you go. He doesn’t understand what Caul is. He thinks he can bargain with him.” Stanton was silent for a moment. “I’ve known men like that. They believe they can do anything.”
“Dag’s not like that,” Emily said hotly. “He gave me his word, honor bright.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re not a man. You’ve never been in love. You don’t understand.”
“And you do?” Emily snapped.
Stanton said nothing, only gazed out over the rapidly darkening valley below. When he finally spoke, the words were bitten short.
“We need to do something that Caul doesn’t expect. We’ll ride south, to Stockton. I can get a good price for the horses there …”
“Dag will give us the money,” Emily said. “Mr. Stanton, I’ve known Dag all my life. He’s a good, honest man, Witched or not. If he makes a promise, he’ll live by it. He will live by it if it kills him.”
“If he does, it just might,” Stanton muttered. His fingers resumed their methodical torment of the pine-cone. “I should have known about New Bethel. The fact that I didn’t …” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“Why couldn’t you fight them?”
Stanton sighed.
“Too many of them, and not enough of me.”
“You told me credomancy was the magic of faith,” Emily said. “You never mentioned being in league with Satan.”
“I am not currently in league with Satan, Baal, or any dark power in particular,” Stanton said.