The land changed as she rode. The rolling sagebrush plains gave way to a broken skeletal landscape of sandstone and shale. The wind here did not blow. It hissed through cracks in the rock. The sun beat down with a hammer's force, baking the moisture from the air until every breath felt like inhaling dust.
Maggie rode with her hat pulled low, her eyes squinting against the glare. Her body ached with a deep bruising fatigue. Every jolt of the horse sent a spike of pain through her spine, but she did not stop. She thought of Eli in that cell. She thought of his hands, rough and gentle, banding the bird's wing.
She thought of the way he looked at her in the barn, not as a broken thing, but as a woman, whole and terrifyingly dear. That memory was the water that kept her going when her canteen ran low. By the second day, the isolation began to play tricks on her mind. The heat waves shimmering off the rocks looked like riders. The wind sounded like voices.
She navigated narrow gullies where the walls rose up like prison bars, red and imposing. She crossed flats where the earth was cracked into a mosaic of parched mud. Miles of nothingness where a thrown shoe would mean death. She was 10 miles from Granite Peak, navigating a narrow pass known as Devil's Throat. When the shot rang out, it cracked against the stone wall inches from her head, sending a spray of rock slivers into her cheek.
Bess reared, screaming. Maggie fought the rains, keeping her seat by instinct and sheer terror. She saw them then, two riders on the ridge above, silhouetted against the blinding sky. They were not bandits. She recognized the horse of the lead man.
It was a roan with a white stocking. It belonged to one of Silas Crane's hired enforcers, a man named Cobb. "Bring her down! " Cobb shouted, racking the lever of his rifle. "Don't kill the horse! " Maggie didn't think. She reacted.
She spurred Bess forward, driving her into the chaotic tumble of boulders at the base of the cliff. Another bullet kicked up dirt near the mare's hooves. She slid from the saddle, grabbing the heavy coat from the holster. She slapped Bess on the rump, sending the horse scrambling down the draw, away from the fire. Maggie threw herself behind a slab of fallen sandstone.
Her breath came in shallow, jagged gasps. She was cornered. She was a seamstress from New York with a gun she had fired three times in her life, pinned down by men who killed for a monthly wage. Come out, Mrs. Mercer.
Cobb's voice echoed off the canyon walls. Mister Crane just wants to talk. He is worried about your safety out here all alone. Laughter followed cruel mocking laughter. Maggie rested the heavy barrel of the colt on the rock.
Her hands were shaking so hard the front sight blurred. Breathe. She heard Eli's voice in her head. Squeeze. Don't pull.