Straight answer. Boon leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face. Straight answer is I've got three deputies covering more ground than any six men could reasonably watch. Bole's got near 20 riders from what I hear, moving fast and hitting wherever he pleases. I can send a man out your way when I've got one to spare.
Can't promise you when that'll be. That's not much of an answer. It's the honest one, Boon said. I wish I had a better. Caleb rode home with that honesty sitting heavier in his chest than any lie would have alone.
That was the shape of it, stripped down to its plainest truth. Whatever came for his ranch would arrive before help did, if help arrived at all. But it wasn't only his own danger sitting heaviest on him that afternoon. He thought of Bole's words. heard some of the ones who got away came through this direction. If Bole knew that much, knew enough to throw it at Caleb like a blade meant to cut, then it wasn't impossible he knew which direction they'd gone afterward.
Wasn't impossible he'd go looking for what he considered unfinished business. Caleb couldn't sit with that thought for long before he was saddling his horse again, riding north along the same ridge Toya's family had disappeared behind weeks before. Foolish, probably. He had no way of knowing where they'd settled, if they'd settled anywhere at all. No way of covering enough ground before dark to make any real difference.
Went anyway. He followed what he could of the old trail faint signs, mostly gone now, worn away by weeks of wind and one hard rain. A broken twig here, a half print in softer ground there, already crumbling at the edges. He rode until the light started failing, until the mountains ahead turned the deep, bruised purple. That meant he'd need every remaining minute just to get himself home safely.
He found nothing. No fire pit, no sign of a camp, recent or otherwise. Just empty land, indifferent and enormous, swallowing every trace of the people he was searching for, the same way it swallowed everything else out here eventually. He sat his horse a long moment at the top of the ridge, looking north into country he couldn't safely enter any further, and felt something helpless settle into his chest alongside the fear. I hope you're further than this," he said out loud to no one.
"I hope you're somewhere he can't reach. The wind didn't answer him. Didn't need to. He turned his horse back toward home, the failing light chasing him the whole way, and rode with the particular ache of a man who had done everything he could think to do, and knew it likely wasn't enough. So, he started preparing the only way he knew how.
Once he was home again, the ranch dark and waiting around him. He spent the afternoon reinforcing the barn doors, running fresh wire along the weakest stretch of fence, counting his ammunition twice, and coming up short both times. He walked the property the way he used to walk unfamiliar ground during the war, cataloging sightelines, cover the places a man could hide, in the places he couldn't. Old instincts, waking up fast now, faster than he liked. That night he checked every lock on the barn twice. moved the cattle into the strongest enclosure he had.
Sat up later than he should have, lamp burning low, mind circling the same track over and over because Bole knew about the Apache family, which meant someone had talked or Bole's men had eyes further out than Caleb had ever imagined. Either way, it meant the danger wasn't only to himself anymore. He must have drifted at some point because the war found him the way it always eventually did when his guard finally dropped. Not the whole of it, just fragments. the supply columns rising somewhere off past a treeine. A young lieutenant's voice steady even as the shouting rose around him that isn't soldiering.
That's just murder wearing a uniform. And then underneath all of it, a single gunshot that had nothing to do with any battle, echoing louder in memory than it ever had, in fact. He woke with his hand already reaching for the rifle beside the bed, heart slamming, the 11 boards above him swimming back into focus one at a time. Just a dream, he told himself. Except it wasn't only a dream.
It was a memory wearing a dream's clothing, the way memories sometimes did when a man's mind needed to relive something in order to finally understand what it meant. He sat up, lit the lamp, didn't bother trying to sleep again until he heard the soft knock at his door well past midnight and nearly put a bullet through it before recognizing the voice on the other side. Caleb, it's Walter. He opened the door to find Walter Pruitt standing there, hat in hand, looking like a man who hadn't slept in two nights. It's late, Walter.
I know it. Walter stepped inside without waiting to be asked, which wasn't like him at all. Wouldn't have come if it could wait. What is it? Walter's hands turned his hat over once before he finally looked up.
Bole's been in town recruiting, buying drinks, buying loyalty, buying silence from anybody who'll take his money. Man's putting together something bigger than what he's already got. How do you know all this? Because my nephew Ten's bar at the saloon, Walter said. Overheard two of Bole's men talking careless the way men do after their third whiskey.
They named your place Caleb. Said it plain enough. My nephew rode straight out to my ranch. Soon as his shift ended, scared half to death. What exactly did they say?