“I searched.”
“Not well.”
“Thank you.”
“How did you find it?”
“A carpenter repairing the lid.”
“That is embarrassing.”
“Deeply.”
Mara smiled despite herself.
The moment vanished when hoofbeats sounded outside.
Everyone became still.
Samuel entered instantly.
“Riders.”
Mara moved toward the rifle.
Elias forced himself upright.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Rusk?”
Samuel nodded.
Elias reached for his revolver.
Mara took it first.
“Hey.”
“You cannot stand.”
“I can shoot sitting.”
“You can barely stay awake.”
Samuel said something.
Mara answered.
Then looked at Elias.
“They cannot know you are here.”
“How do you plan that?”
She pointed toward the back of the cabin.
A small opening led into a narrow storage space built against the stone wall.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I’m wounded, not furniture.”
Mara stared.
“Do you want to argue while Harrow’s men arrive?”
Elias climbed into the space.
Poorly.
Mara shut the wooden panel.
Darkness swallowed him.
He heard horses.
Men.
Then Cal Rusk’s voice.
“Afternoon.”
No one answered.
Rusk continued.
“Looking for a white man.”
Still nothing.
“Dark hair. Thirty-something. Wounded.”
Elias held his breath.
Another voice.
Jonas Bell.
“Horse tracks came this way.”
Mara answered calmly.
“You see many horses.”
Rusk laughed.
“Mercer is dangerous.”
Mara said something Elias could not hear.
Rusk continued:
“He stole property belonging to Victor Harrow.”
“What property?”
“Documents.”
“Then find your papers.”
“We’re finding him.”
Samuel spoke.
Rusk’s tone hardened.
“Careful.”
Elias pressed one hand against his wound.
Pain pulsed with every heartbeat.
Rusk said:
“If Mercer came through here and you helped him, Sheriff Tolliver will hear.”
Mara answered:
“Tell him.”
Silence.
Rusk had expected fear.
Mara offered none.
“Maybe we search.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
Elias tightened his hand around the revolver he no longer had.
Then another voice came.
Rose.
Older.
Steady.
She spoke in English.
“You enter my home without invitation, everyone in this valley hears.”
Rusk laughed.
“Who’s going to tell them?”
Rose answered:
“You.”
Another silence.
Elias almost smiled.
Rusk stayed fifteen minutes.
Long enough for Elias’s side to begin bleeding again.
Then the riders left.
Mara opened the panel.
Elias nearly fell out.
“Tell your mother I’m afraid of her.”
“She knows.”
Samuel entered.
“They will return.”
Elias nodded.
“That’s why I leave tonight.”
“You cannot.”