"I was wondering when you would try." Clara did not hesitate. She threw the heavy ledger at the candle in his hand. The candle flew. Darkness engulfed the room.
Clara dove for the door. Pike lunged, grabbing her skirt. She kicked backward, her heel connecting with his shin. He grunted and let go. She scrambled into the hallway.
Thief. Pike roared. Guards. Clara sprinted for the back stairs. Heavy boots were thundering up from the lobby.
She burst out the back door into the alley. Run, she screamed at Eli. They scrambled onto their horses. A gunshot cracked the air, the bullet chipping the brick inches from Eli's head. "Go, go!"
Eli shouted, slapping her horse's rump. They tore out of the alley, hooves striking sparks on the cobblestones. They galloped down the main street, past the startled late night drinkers. Behind them, the bell of the cattleman's club was ringing, a frantic, clanging alarm. They hit the open prairie as the moon broke through the clouds.
The wind hit them like a hammer. They rode hard, pushing the horses to their limit. The cold air burned their lungs, tasting of iron and fear. They will follow, Eli shouted over the wind. "The sheriff will deputize a posi."
"We have the book!" Clara yelled back, patting the saddle bag where she had shoved the ledger. "We cannot go back to town," Eli said. They will arrest us before we see the judge. We need to get to the ranch.
We can hold them off there. We have rifles and ammunition. It was a desperate logic. The ranch was a trap, but it was their trap. They rode through the night, the horses stumbling on the frozen ground.
By the time the sun rose, painting the world in a blood red light, they were crossing the boundary line of the Concaid claim. They were exhausted. Their faces were gray with cold. They pulled up in the yard, the horses blowing hard, steam rising from their flanks and clouds. "We made it!"
Clara gasped, sliding from the saddle, her legs gave way, and she fell into the dust. Eli jumped down and hauled her up. "Inside, now we have to barricade the windows." He looked back at the horizon. A cloud of dust was rising in the east.
Pike's riders. And in the north, another cloud. the sheriff's posy. They were coming from both sides, the hammer in the anvil. Eli dragged Clara into the house and slammed the heavy oak door. He dropped the bar into place with a sound like a tomb ceiling shut.
"Load the rifles," Eli said. "Outside." The wind began to howl, and the sound of 50 horses thundered against the earth. The sky above the concaid ranch was a hard, blinding white, stripped of color by the biting cold of the early winter morning. It hung over the valley like a lid, trapping the sound of the wind and the rhythmic, desperate pounding of a hammer.
Inside the ranch house, the air was thick with the smell of sawdust and stale coffee. Eli Concincaid was fortifying the only home he had ever known. He drove long iron nails into thick oak planks, sealing the windows. Every blow of the hammer was a declaration of refusal. He moved the heavy dresser in front of the back door.
He overturned the kitchen table, creating a barricade facing the front entrance. Clara moved through the house with a silence that contrasted sharply with Eli's frantic industry. She was not panicking. Panic was a luxury for people who expected to be saved. Claravale had learned long ago that no one was coming, so she prepared herself.
She laid out the ammunition on a clean towel spread across the floor behind the overturned table. Boxes of 44 caliber cartridges for the rifle. Heavy lead slugs for the shotgun. She counted them aloud, her voice steady. 40 rifle rounds, she said.
12 for the shotgun, six in your pistol, six in mine. Eli stopped hammering. He looked at her. His shirt was soaked with sweat despite the freezing temperature in the room. He looked at her hands.
They were not shaking. "You are too calm," Eli said. His voice was rough. "I have been in rooms where men wanted to hurt me before," Clara said, snapping the loading gate of the Winchester shut. "Fear makes your hands sweat.
Wet hands slip on the trigger. I will be afraid later, Eli. When we are alive." She took the Black Ledger, the book that contained the secrets of Harland Pike's Empire, and wrapped it in oil cloth. She pried up a loose floorboard near the hearth, a hiding place she had discovered while scrubbing the floors weeks ago.
She wedged the book deep into the crawl space and hammered the board back down. "If they burn the house," Eli said, watching her. "The book goes too." If they burn the house, Clara stood up, brushing dust from her knees, we will be dead, and the book will not matter. Outside, the wind carried the sound of voices.
Not the chaotic shouting of a mob, but the low, organized murmur of men who knew they held all the cards. Eli moved to a slit he had left between the window boards. He peered out. "They are here," he said. Harlon Pike sat on a massive black geling 50 yards from the porch.
He was dressed in a heavy buffalo hide coat, his silver hair perfectly combed beneath his hat. Flanking him were Silus Vance and the corrupt Sheriff Miller. Behind them, a posy of 20 men, some hired guns, some towns folk who had been bullied or bought into believing they were serving justice. Pike raised a gloved hand. The line of riders stopped.
Concaid. Pike's voice carried easily over the distance. It was a rich baritone voice, the voice of a man who was used to being listened to in boardrooms and churches. There is no need for this ugliness. Eli did not answer.
He checked the sight on his rifle. I have a warrant for the woman. Pike called out. Surrender her. Give me the item she stole from my safe.
Do that and you keep your land. You have my word. Your word is worth nothing, Eli shouted back. And the warrant is a lie. Think about it, son.
Pike said, his tone shifting to a mock paternal disappointment. You are a rancher. You belong here. Do not throw your life away for a saloon girl who is dragging you down to hell. Send her out.
We will treat her fairly. She will get a trial. Inside the dark house, Clara leaned her back against the rough logs of the wall. She closed her eyes. The words seeped into her like cold water.
Saloon girl, dragging you down. She looked at Eli. He was crouched by the window, his profile sharp and hard in the sliver of light. He looked exhausted. He looked like a man who had aged 10 years in 10 days.
"Eli," Clara whispered. He turned to her. "He is right," she said. Her voice broke just once before she clamped it down. If I go out there, if I give them the book, you survive, you keep the ranch, you can rebuild.