Forgive me. The wind stopped. Even the mules seemed to listen. Voss laughed. A dry, cracked little laugh.
It grew. Then it stopped abruptly because nobody else was laughing. Absurd. Elias is a broken old thief who has confessed to taking my money. I took it, said Puit.
And I know what I just read. Wade slid a hand into his shirt. He drew out seven torn pages and the brittle brown parchment with its dozen signatures and its tiny drawn hands and stars. My father's account in his own hand. The stubs match my notebook and this the true agreement witnessed by a federal Indian agent whose name you will find on file in Washington.
Thorne read. The colonel read over his shoulder and the thin man's face went from gray to white to something close to cold fury. Sheriff Rudd said the commissioner. You are named. Rudd did not move.
Sheriff, is it true? For a long moment, nobody heard anything but the creek of a harness. Then Rudd climbed down from the buggy. Slowly, a man stepping into cold water. Gray mustache, gray face, eyes on the ground.
Wade Amos. I held the lantern. I know. I have held it every night since. I believe you.
Garrett said the boy was next. You were in the wellhouse, 14 years old. I thought if I let it end, you would live, and you did. His voice broke. I told myself that was enough.
Wade stood very still. That anger was there. A mountain of it. But it was not alone. It had company. some tired, quiet thing that looked a good deal like his father.
You pulled me out of that river? Yes. You paid for the coffin? Yes. Were those lies?
No. Rudd looked up. His eyes were wet. Those were the only true things I did. Wade nodded at once.
That was all. But the old man's shoulders came down like a bridge, no longer bearing weight. Rudd said Voss. Gone the color of paper. You spineless old.
Shut up, Garrett. Said Wade and Rudd together. It was the funniest moment of the week. And nobody laughed because Callaway had stopped looking bored. He sat the black horse a dozen yards off, one hand low on the rifle across his saddle.
His eyes moved to the ribbon. To the pages in Wade's hand. I never lose one, he said softly. The third time counts. The rifle came up.
Not at Wade. Atuit. Smooth. Quick. A man who no longer had to aim.
Wade was already moving. He hit Puit with a shoulder and they went down together in the grass. The shot cracked over his head. A soldier's horse reared. The colonel bellowed and Wade rolled to his knees and found Callaway spurring straight at him.
Rifle swinging like a scythe. He dove under the horse, grabbed a stirrup, hauled. The black horse screamed and bucked, and Callaway crashed to the ground in a spray of dust. He rose fast. A long knife in his hand.
You killed him, said Wade. Who? The old man. He stepped in front of a bullet. That is his problem.
He was the most patient man I ever knew. He was in my way. Wade had no weapon. He had no hat. He had a stiff shoulder, a bad knee, and the memory of a canteen.
And he picked up a rock and threw it at the man's ribs. The cracked ones. Callaway howled folded. Wade drove his forehead into his face, and both them went down. Dust teeth.
The knife flashed. Wade caught the wrist and twisted until something popped. And then a long shadow fell across them both. Enough, said Guan. She stood over them with the rifle on the small of Callaway's back.
Her face gave nothing away. Please, Callaway spat. Please, he said. Please, said Nalin from somewhere behind her. That is funny.
It is a little funny, said Guan. Her finger tightened. Guan said Wade. He took him from me. He took him from both of us.
Then tell me why I should not. Wade stood, wiped his mouth, looked down at the man who had hunted him for six days, and thought of an old man who stepped between a rifle and a girl, and called it being useful. Because he spent 24 years keeping that anger out of you, he sang so a boy would not hear it. "Don't hand it back to him. " Her hands trembled.
The barrel dipped an inch. "Another, the colonel," she said, not looking up. "Take him with pleasure," said the colonel, and four soldiers fell on Callaway like a collapsing tent. Voss ran. Nobody saw him go.
One moment the buggy stood on the road. The next a lone gray mare was galloping east across the open flats and a white suit was bobbing on her back like a flag of surrender. Where is he going? said the colonel. And nowhere, said Wade. There is nothing out there.
No water. 40 mi of nothing. He will probably. Wade stood a long moment. Then he walked to the lake behind the dam, knelt, filled a canteen from the cold, clear water.
Screwed on the cap. You are not, said Guan. I am after everything. He's thirsty. That is not a reason.
It's the only one I've got. She stared at him. Anger, disbelief, and behind both something like a sunrise in a dirty window. She shook her head slowly. Then helplessly she almost laughed.
He swung up a colonel's spare horse and rode east. The sun was high when he found him. Noon, white, merciless. The badlands lay flat and shimmering. And in the middle of nothing, a gray mare lay blowing on her side, one leg bent wrong.
Beside her, sprawled in the cracked red mud, with his collar torn open and his silver hair plastered to his skull, lay the owner of every fence in the county. Voss turned his head. Cracked lips, a blistered face. The famous white suit gone the color of a dish rag. Come to gloat.