I found your letter. Then you know I do not need to kill you. I only need the order to stand. And unless unless unless I send a writer with a note to a man who owes me a great deal of money. Wade's jaw clenched across the fire light.
Non was crying silently, trying so hard not to. Guan had a knife at her throat and was looking at Wade with murder in her eyes and something else underneath. Something that looked terribly like trust. Your word, said Wade, is worth exactly what it costs me. And tonight it costs very little.
The deed. The woman and the boy walk free and Captain Pike receives a sudden attack of conscience. Wait, no, said Guan. But quiet, said Callaway. Wade.
It is the only proof. I know it is your father's name. I know it is everything. I know. His own voice cracked across the canyon.
And in the silence after it, the only sound was the water behind the wall. P heavy waiting. Wade looked at Nalin, the 14-year-old boy with a split lip and a dirty face, who had cast a copy of a bronze disc from a tin lid who had lied to Voss's face from. He thought about a canteen, about three strangers in the dirt, about the 60 others who had no one passing by. A name is just ink, he thought.
It's just ink. People are not ink. He reached into his shirt, pulled out the folded deed, held it up. The seal glowed red along the ribbon. and the tiny holes winked in the fire light like stars. "Let them go," he said, and handed it over.
Voss took it. Like a man receiving the host, he unfolded it, examined the signature, examined the seal, then slowly closed his eyes, and breathed in. At last, he whispered, "Let them go. " "Of course," Voss opened his eyes, pulled a card from his pocket, wrote four words, handed it to a rider. "Ride!
Meet Pike at the Red Bluff Road. Do not stop," the rider vanished. Cut them loose, said Voss. The ropes dropped. Nalin stumbled.
Guan straightened and in the half second when her hands were free, her eyes found Callaway. The man who had cracked her throat. She lunged. Not at Voss, not at Wade. At Callaway.
No, Wade shouted. Callaway's rifle came up smooth, bored. One shot, point blank, and something moved in front of her. An old man, slow, bleeding, a blanket around his shoulders. He did not shout.
He did not run. He simply stepped across the space between a rifle and a girl. And the bullet found him and stown was very small. Dakaya folded gently like a tree deciding to rest. "No!
" Guan screamed. Wade was there before he knew he'd moved on his knees, catching the old man's head. His hands were slick. His voice was a stranger's aaya. Dakaya!
Hey, easy. Look at me. I am looking. Stay with me, Wade. A cough read at the corner of his mouth.
You tied that man twice and did not kill him. I'm not proud of it. Your would have been. Don't talk. Listen.
The old man's fingers closed around Wade's wrist. His other hand pressed something into Wade's palm. The handkerchief. Do not let them see. Wade's fist closed over it.
He slid it up his sleeve. Into the up was he not the well breathed. It is not the way up. It is the way down. What down?
Not up. Dakaya, tell the boy the voice was real. And then the old man's hand went slack. The canyon was very quiet. Somewhere far off, a coyote started up, stopped as if even the coyote knew better.
Guan made a sound Wade would never forget, not a scream. Lower than that, a sound like a rope breaking. She dropped to her knees beside him, pressed her forehead to the old man's chest, and did not move. I did not authorize that, said Voss. Nobody answered.
I want that on the record. Shut up, Garrett, said Wade very softly. Voss shut up. Wade got to his feet. Walk straight to Guan.
Crouched, put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, then leaned into it. Take Nalin, he said. Go to the camp. Get them out.
Wake every one of them. Move them down river away from the wall. But before dawn. No, Guan. I will not leave you.
I know. But you will. I will come back for you. I know that, too. She looked at him, tears cutting clean lines through the soot, and something broke open in her face, something fierce, the something that said everything they had not said in 6 days.
Nalin took her hand. "Come," he whispered. "Please," she went, looking back the whole way, until the dark swallowed her, and Wade turned to face the men who would not let him follow. "The disc," said Voss. "Where is it?
River? Which river? " Sorrow bend. Guan threw both halves when she thought she was drowning. The Voss studied him.
A long cold look, then shrugged. Then the river keeps it. And I keep you. Callaway's rifle butt came down. The world went white.
Then a long strange nothing. He woke to the smell of ash. The cabin. What was left? A chimney, a stone foundation, a sky full of stars gone thin and gray at the edges.
3:00, maybe four. His hands were tied behind him. His ankles, too, and the handkerchief was still in his cuff, hard against the bone of his wrist. He had never been so grateful for anything in his life. A circle of torches, Voss's face above him, calm, almost kind.
I am a practical man, Voss said. I have what I came for. The deep, the old fool's signature. By 9 this morning, it will be in the records, and Red Bluff will own every acre between here and the mountains. And me?
You are a problem. I've been told you are a man everybody saw argue with a deputy. A man everybody saw take a dead man's horse. A man with a burned home and nothing left. Voss walks slowly toward the stone rim.