Keep Lily away from the windows. Sam heard Martha pull Lily closer. Heard the soft sound of the little girl's breathing begin to slow as her mother's voice and hands did their work. Then Martha said, very quietly, whatever happens, whatever they say I did, whatever story they're telling, I need you to know that everything I told you tonight is the truth. Sam looked at her across the dark room.
The fire had burned to coals, and in the low red light, she looked like something from a painting. A woman holding her child in the dark while men on horseback waited in the snow outside. The entire weight of an unjust world pressing against the walls of a small cabin in the Colorado mountains. "I know." He said.
Outside, one of the horses shifted. Still didn't move closer. Just watching. Just waiting. Sam tightened his grip on the rifle and waited too.
The horses didn't move for forty minutes. Sam stood at the door with his rifle and counted his own breaths and watched them through the gap in the shutter slats. Two dark shapes at the tree line. Patient and still as fence posts. Martha sat on the edge of the bed with Lily pressed against her chest.
The little girl's breathing slow now. Almost asleep again despite everything. The way small children can surrender to exhaustion even in the middle of danger because their bodies simply override their fear. At some point during the second hour, Martha said quietly, "They're not going to come in tonight." Sam didn't take his eyes off the window.
"You know that?" "This is Wade's way of saying he knows where I am." Her voice was even, almost clinical. He's not ready to move yet. He wants me to know he's watching.
He wants me to spend the night afraid. A pause. He's done it before. With Harold's blessing. Sam looked at her over his shoulder.
She was sitting very straight, Lily tucked against her side, her bandaged hands folded in her lap. Not trembling. Not looking at the window. Her eyes were fixed on the middle distance with the expression of a woman running calculations. "How many times?" he said.
It wasn't quite a question. "Enough that I recognize the pattern." She finally looked at him. "By morning he'll have a story. He always has a story ready before he makes a move.
That's what tonight is. He's buying himself time to construct it properly." "What kind of story?" "The kind where he's reasonable and I'm not." She smoothed Lily's hair back from her forehead with one bandaged hand, gentle and automatic.