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 a posi. " "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 Concaid 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 and 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 posy. They were coming from both sides, the hammer in 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 concaid 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. Inside the ranch house, the air was thick with the smell of sawdust and stale coffee.
Eli Concincaid was fortifying the only home he had ever known. He drove long iron nails into thick oak planks, sealing the windows. Every blow of the hammer was a declaration of refusal. He moved the heavy dresser in front of the back door. He overturned the kitchen table, creating a barricade facing the front entrance.
Clara moved through the house with a silence that contrasted sharply with Eli's frantic industry. She was not panicking. Panic was a luxury for people who expected to be saved. Claravale had learned long ago that no one was coming, so she prepared herself. She laid out the ammunition on a clean towel spread across the floor behind the overturned table.
Boxes of 44 caliber cartridges for the rifle. Heavy lead slugs for the shotgun. She counted them aloud, her voice steady. 40 rifle rounds, she said. 12 for the shotgun, six in your pistol, six in mine.
Eli stopped hammering. He looked at her. His shirt was soaked with sweat despite the freezing temperature in the room. He looked at her hands. They were not shaking.