Like threading a needle. She saw movement on the ridge. Cobb was descending, picking his way down the slope, careless because he thought he was hunting a rabbit. Maggie gritted her teeth. She was not a rabbit.
She was a survivor of the tenements. She was the wife of Eli Mercer. She cocked the hammer. The sound was loud in the quiet heat. She waited.
Cobb stepped out from behind a scrub cedar. She squeezed. The gun bucked violently. The recoil jarring her shoulder. The shot went wide, hitting the dirt 3 ft to his left.
Cobb laughed, raising his rifle. That was close, little lady. Now put it down before I She fired again. This time she didn't close her eyes. This time she saw the puff of dust on his vest, saw him jerk backward as if kicked by a mule.
He dropped his rifle, clutching his shoulder, and stumbled, falling hard onto the scree. His partner on the ridge roared a curse and opened fire. Bullets chipped away at Maggie's cover. The stone turning to powder around her face. She scrambled backward.
Staying low, crawling through the brush. A sharp, stinging burn seared across her upper arm. She didn't look. She knew she had been hit. She scrambled down a wash, sliding on loose shale, her vision tunneling.
She found Bess waiting in a cluster of juniper, the horse trembling. Maggie dragged herself into the saddle, her left arm hanging useless and wet with blood. Go, Bess, she whispered, clutching the mane. Run. They ran until the sun went down, putting miles of broken country between them and the ambush.
When the dark finally swallowed the land, Maggie slid from the horse near a dry creek bed. She stumbled, falling to her knees. Her sleeve was soaked with blood. Her head spun with a dizzying, sickening vertigo. She lay back in the dirt, looking up at the vast, uncaring stars.
It was too big. The land was too big. She closed her eyes, and the dark took her. In the jail cell in Bitter Creek, Eli Mercer was pacing. He had paced for 2 days.
A caged animal wearing a groove in the floorboards. Rumors had a way of slipping through iron bars. The deputy who brought his evening gruel had whispered it. His eyes averted. Your wife is gone.