nearly bled out, the color drained from his face and the clear sound of a sucking chest wound in the man’s labored breaths. “Tell me now, or the muzzle of this revolver is the last thing you’ll ever see.”
“The Bledsoe girl—really took her. Suckerin’ you away from your place so they can kill the women. They was gonna hit ‘em hours ago. Count ‘em dead.”
The dialogue wasn’t crafted for effect this time. “You fucking bastard!” Jack Naile almost pulled the trigger as he stabbed the revolver toward Blake’s face.
“Figured if’n I killed ya’, Jess Fowler’d pay up more than just’ the gettin’ ya out here. Mebbe ya got me, Naile, but them women is goners sure ‘nough by—” And he died.
Marshal Titus Blake’s head lolled back, rainwater falling into eyes that would not shut. Jack let Blake’s body slump to the ground.
On his knees beside the dead man, the long-barreled revolver, rain glistening from its metal in the firelight, balled tight in his right fist, Jack Naile shouted into the darkness above. “Why, God?! Why?!”
In his old life, Jack had written of violence, never really tasted it, never felt the hollowness inside that a killing bred, that every killing nurtured. He had, at last, become the fantasy role model of his childhood, the triumphant gunfighter on the side of goodness and right. But death was death, and Jack had neither the taste nor the stomach for it; and, perhaps, neither had the real-life gunmen, the counterparts of the fictions spun from imaginations like his own. It started, it went on. It was a trap. And nearly all that was precious to him might already have been sacrificed because of his passion to play cowboy.
“God! Don’t let them die! Please, God!” Jack rose from his knees.
Like the fictional heroes of his boyhood, there was a clarity within him, and he knew what he had to do. If his home had already been attacked, what had happened had happened and he would not rest until he found those responsible and took their lives.
But there was a terrified girl, a girl the same age as his daughter, less than a half-day’s ride, perhaps only hours, away. Any way he judged it, she was closer to get to than his own family. Her life could still be saved, because she was being kept alive to trap him. That was obvious.
Jack partially lowered the hammer on his revolver, rolled the cylinder, then lowered the hammer onto an empty chamber. He buckled on his gun belt. If he left Blake’s saddle, but took the dead marshal’s horse, swapping mounts every hour or so, he could catch the men before they would expect him. It would take more than twice as long to reach his home. If his wife and daughter and Clarence’s wife were dead, they’d still be dead when he got there, and the Bledsoe girl’s death would be on his conscience as well.
Jack still had that: a conscience.
Soaked to the skin, chilled to the bone, he shrugged into his coat, its lining still dry, but not for long.
He grabbed up his saddle and walked toward the picket line where the horses were, away from the light.
Lizzie felt something shaking her, and she opened her eyes. “Fifteen more minutes?”
But it wasn’t her mother’s voice. Rather, it was Peggy’s that she heard. “You’re not home in bed. You’ve been shot. And you’ll bleed to death if I don’t get the bullet out. And I can only do that at the house, where there’s light. I’m not strong enough to carry you, Lizzie. You’ve got to get up and walk. The ones you didn’t shoot rode off, Fowler with them. It’s safe. The house is alright, but I have to get you there.”
“Just five more minutes? Wake me up at—”
“Get up and walk! Or you’ll die!”
Liz mumbled, “If you’re going to be all bent out of shape about it, then I guess—”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Ellen was up and riding before full dawn, the heavy gray clouds, high and moving fast, made blue in patches by the infusion of the first tentative rays of sunlight from below them. The morning was cool, the air clean. Despite being chilled to the bone—after decades sleeping beside Jack, she was ill-used to sleeping alone—and having to take care of the obvious bodily functions without even so much as a chamber pot, she felt refreshed. With the wind in her face as it was, its freshness stinging her skin, she could have felt no other