What are you saying? I'm saying, Brody said, his eyes hard. That I've got two deputies. I can't police the whole county. If Pike comes back and he brings men with him.
If he brings a posse to reclaim his property, I can't stop them. The law will be on his side. You'll be on your own. Daniel did not buy the cloth. He left the salt and flour on the street.
He mounted Sully and rode out of town. His mind a black storm. He was not just a pariah. He was an outlaw. They would come.
They would come for her. And now they would be coming for his child. He burst into the cabin, his face wild. Tyen was sitting at the table, carefully shaping the letters of her name on a piece of slate. T A Y N.
She looked up, startled by his panic. He's here, Daniel said, his voice harsh. The preacher, the one who owned you. He's in town. He's got papers.
He says you're his property. He grabbed his spare rifle from the rack, checking the action. He began stuffing boxes of cartridges into a saddlebag. "What?" What does he want?" she asked, standing, her hand on her stomach.
"He wants you. He's coming for you, Brody. The sheriff. He won't stop him. They'll come in numbers."
He threw the saddlebag at her feet. We have to go now. We can't fight them all. We'll go into the high mountains. We can follow the Rio Grand up into the high passes.
They won't find us there. We can winter in the canyons. We have to leave. He was frantic, grabbing blankets, jerky, his mind racing. He was seeing her chain to the wagon again.
He would not let that happen. Tyen watched him. She listened to his words, his panic filling the small room they had built together. He was a soldier and his instinct was to move, to run, to find a defensible possetion. She did not move.
She was perfectly, terribly still. When he had finished, when he stood breathing heavily, a rifle in one hand and a bag in the other, she finally spoke. She walked past him to the cabin door. She looked out. She looked at the small field of green corn, an impossible splash of life in the dry country.
She looked at the new timbers on the roof. She looked at the corral that held his horse and the two chickens she fed every morning. She touched the wooden doorframe, the wood smooth beneath her hand. Then she turned to face him. Her eyes were not filled with fear.
They were hard, as hard as the desert rock. "No," she said. Tyen, you don't understand. They will take you. "No," she repeated, her voice low and absolute.