We are alive. When the room went quiet again, the plan formed in the darkness. We cannot stay, Eli said into the silence. The sheriff is gone. The town is against us.
If we stay the next time, they won't stop at a warning. We go to Cheyenne, Clara said. We take the evidence to Judge Athetherton. It is a 4-day ride, Eli said. Through open country, Pike controls the roads.
We will go cross country, Clara said. Through the foothills, it is rougher, but they won't expect it. We leave tomorrow night, Eli decided under the new moon. But Pike was not waiting for tomorrow. Eli fell into a restless sleep, but Clara lay awake, the pain in her arm, a sharp reminder of the stakes.
She watched the window. She saw the light before she smelled the smoke. It was a flickering orange glow, reflecting off the low clouds in the south. Eli, Clara screamed, shaking him awake. They ran to the window.
The stackyard, where Eli had stored the winter hay. The only food for the cattle to survive the coming snows was an inferno. The fire was massive, fueled by the dry grass and the oil that must have been poured over it. The flames leaped 30 ft into the air, casting a hellish light over the ranch. Eli stood at the window, his hand pressed against the glass.
"The hay! " he whispered. "It's gone. Without the hay, the herd would starve before January. The bank would foreclose on the loan. The ranch was effectively dead.
The fire roared in the distance, a funeral p for their hopes. Pike hadn't just sent a warning this time. He had started the countdown. Eli turned from the window. His face was no longer terrified.
It was cold and clear, stripped of all doubt. Get the letters, Eli said. Pack the saddle bags. We ride now. Winter did not wait for the calendar.
It fell upon the high plains in late October. A sudden, brutal crushing of the autumn sky. The clouds lowered themselves until they scraped the tops of the maces. Heavy and metallic, the color of a bruised gun barrel. The wind lost its bluster and gained a razor edge, finding every gap in a coat collar, every crack in a window frame.
On the Concincaid ranch, survival stripped itself of all romance. It was a daily math of calories and warmth. The cattle already thinned by the drought, huddled in the lee of the ravines, their coats shaggy and frosted with rhyme. Eli Concincaid stood by the corral fence, his breath pluming in the frigid air. He held his heavy coat revolver in his hand, the metal dull and cold beside him.
Clara shivered, though she was wrapped in two wool shaws. "It is not about strength," Eli said, his voice low and steady against the wind. It is about the line between your eye and the sight. You must stop shaking. Clara gripped the heavy pistol with both hands.