He saw the open safe. He saw Clara. "Well," Pike said, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm. "I was wondering when you would try. " Clara did not hesitate. She threw the heavy ledger at the candle in his hand.
The candle flew. Darkness engulfed the room. Clara dove for the door. Pike lunged, grabbing her skirt. She kicked backward, her heel connecting with his shin.
He grunted and let go. She scrambled into the hallway. Thief! Pike roared. "Guards! " Clara sprinted for the back stairs.
Heavy boots were thundering up from the lobby. She burst out the back door into the alley. "Run! " she screamed at Eli. They scrambled onto their horses. A gunshot cracked the air, the bullet chipping the brick inches from Eli's head.
"Go, go! " Eli shouted, slapping her horse's rump. They tore out of the alley, hooves striking sparks on the cobblestones. They galloped down the main street, past the startled late night drinkers. Behind them, the bell of the cattleman's club was ringing, a frantic, clanging alarm. They hit the open prairie as the moon broke through the clouds.
The wind hit them like a hammer. They rode hard, pushing the horses to their limit. The cold air burned their lungs, tasting of iron and fear. They will follow, Eli shouted over the wind. "The sheriff will deputize us. " "We have the book! " Clara yelled back, patting the saddle bag where she had shoved the ledger.
"We cannot go back to town," Eli said. They will arrest us before we see the judge. We need to get to the ranch. We can hold them off there. We have rifles and ammunition.
It was a desperate logic. The ranch was a trap, but it was their trap. They rode through the night, the horses stumbling on the frozen ground. By the time the sun rose, painting the world in a blood red light, they were crossing the boundary line of the Kincaid claim. They were exhausted.
Their faces were gray with cold. They pulled up in the yard, the horses blowing hard, steam rising from their flanks in clouds. "We made it! " Clara gasped, sliding from the saddle, her legs gave way, and she fell into the dust. Eli jumped down and hauled her up. "Inside, now we have to barricade the windows. " He looked back at the horizon.
A cloud of dust was rising in the east. Pike's riders. And in the north, another cloud. the sheriff's posse. They were coming from both sides, the hammer and the anvil. Eli dragged Clara into the house and slammed the heavy oak door.
He dropped the bar into place with a sound like a tomb ceiling shut. "Load the rifles," Eli said. "Outside. " The wind began to howl, and the sound of 50 horses thundered against the earth. The sky above the Kincaid Ranch was a hard, blinding white, stripped of color by the biting cold of the early winter morning. It hung over the valley like a lid, trapping the sound of the wind and the rhythmic, desperate pounding of a hammer.