They stood up. They fixed their clothes with trembling hands. Eli looked at her one last time, memorizing her face in the lantern light, the strength in her jaw, the softness of her mouth, the fire in her eyes. He walked to the door, his head high. He did not look like a prisoner.
He looked like a man who had something worth dying for. Maggie watched the wagon fade into the night, the red taillight bobbing like a bloody eye. She stood in the doorway of the barn, the cold wind drying the tears on her face. She went back to the house, to the burnt parlor. She picked up the iron poker she had dropped.
She sat in the chair facing the door, the metal heavy in her lap. She would not sleep. She would wait for dawn, and then she would ride. The world was trying to crush them. But as she looked at the ring on her finger, glimmering in the moonlight, she knew one thing for certain.
It would have to kill them to stop them. The morning after Eli was taken, the silence on the Mercer ranch was a physical weight. It pressed against the burnt timbers of the porch and settled heavy in the dust of the yard. The ranch hands moved like ghosts, speaking in low murmurs, their eyes constantly scanning the ridge for Silas Crane's riders. Maggie did not sleep.
She sat in the kitchen, the heavy Colt revolver on the table beside a cup of cold coffee. She was not waiting for rescue. She was waiting for an opening. It came in the form of a rattletrap wagon driven by an old peddler named Jeremiah, a man who sold tin pots and gossip from the Dakota territory to the Utah border. He watered his mules at their trough, oblivious to the tension until Gus explained the situation in hushed tones.
Jeremiah spat tobacco juice into the dirt and looked at Maggie, who stood on the steps with her arms crossed. "There is a judge," Jeremiah rasped, wiping his mouth with a stained sleeve. "Judge Thaddius Blackwood. He is holding circuit court in Granite Peak. That is 3 days hard ride south.
He is a federal man. Does not answer to local cattle barons or crooked sheriffs. He hangs horse thieves and bankers with equal enthusiasm. 3 days," Maggie repeated. Through the bad lands, Jeremiah warned.
No water, plenty of rattlesnakes. And if Crane finds out you are gone, he will send wolves after you. Maggie looked at the south horizon. It was a jagged line of gray rock and heat haze. It looked like the mouth of hell.
"Thank you, Jeremiah," she said. She packed her saddle bags within the hour. dried beef, a canteen, a jar of salve, and the box of cartridges Eli had taught her to use. Gus tried to stop her, his weathered face twisted with worry. Mrs. Mercer, you cannot go alone.
Let me send Dutch. If you send a man, Silas will notice the ranch is short-handed," Maggie argued, tightening the cinch on Bess. "He is watching you. He expects me to be a weeping widow in the house. He will not look for me on the trail until it is too late. " She mounted the mare.
She wore a split riding skirt she had fashioned herself in one of Eli's heavy coats. She looked down at Gus. If I am not back in week, tell Eli. Tell him I tried. She turned Bess toward the south and kicked her into a gallop, leaving the only home she had ever known for a wilderness that promised nothing but danger.