No, Eli said. I am poison to you, Clara said, stepping toward him. Look at this. Look at what I brought to your door. Violence, sieges, ruin.
I ruin everything I touch. Eli, it is what I am. Eli stood up. He walked to her, ignoring the danger outside. He took her face in his broad, calloused hands.
He forced her to look at him. "Listen to me," he said fiercely. "Before you came here, I was not living. I was hiding. I was a ghost on my own land.
Terrified of my own shadow. Terrified of my father's blood. I was waiting to die." He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "You did not ruin my life, Clara."
He said, "You woke it. You made me a man who stands up. If you go out that door, you take my life with you. I would rather die with you in this house than live a hundred years without you. Clara stared at him.
The shame that had defined her for so long. The belief that she was dirty, disposable, a burden cracked under the weight of his absolute certainty. He saw her. He chose her. "Okay," she breathed.
She gripped his wrists. "Okay, we stay. We stay, Eli said. He turned back to the window. Pike, go to hell, Pike sighed, a theatrical gesture visible even from the house.
He turned to Sheriff Miller. Do your duty, Sheriff. Serve the warrant. Open fire, Miller shouted. The world exploded.
The sound was not like thunder. It was sharper. A cracking, tearing noise that filled the cabin. Bullets slammed into the heavy timber walls, thuting like hail. The window board splintered, sending showers of sharp wood flying across the room.
Eli fired. He worked the lever of the Winchester with a mechanical rhythm. Crack clack. Crack clack. Keep your head down.
He roared. Un. Clara was on her knees behind the overturned table. She was not shooting wildly. She had the shotgun rested on the table leg.
She watched the door. A shadow fell across the crack beneath the door. Someone was on the porch. Clara pulled the trigger. The heavy recoil bruised her shoulder, but the buckshot blew a hole through the door panel at knee height.
A scream of pain erupted from the other side, followed by the sound of a body tumbling down the steps. They are flanking, Eli shouted, moving to the side window. Watch the back. Clara scrambled to the bedroom door. She pressed herself against the frame, pistol raised.
The back window was boarded, but she saw the wood bowing inward. Someone was using a sledgehammer. "Eli, the bedroom," she screamed. Eli spun, firing blindly through the wall where the hammering was coming from. The hammering stopped, but the front was overwhelmed.
Bullets shattered the oil lamp on the shelf, spraying glass. A slug tore through the sleeve of Eli's shirt, leaving a line of red. He hissed but did not stop firing. There are too many. Eli yelled.
He was reloading, his fingers fumbling for a second. In that second, Silas Vance appeared at the gap in the front window, leveling a pistol at Eli's exposed back. Clara saw him. She did not think. She did not calculate.
She moved. She lunged across the room, grabbing Eli's belt and yanking him backward with all her strength. Down. She shrieked. Eli fell back just as Vance fired.
The bullet buried itself in the log wall exactly where Eli's heart had been a second before. From the floor, Clara raised her pistol. She braced her wrist on her knee. She aimed at the gap where Vance's face was. She fired.
Vance grunted and disappeared from the window, clutching his shoulder. "You hit him," Eli gasped, staring at her. "I aim for the shoulder," Clara said, her voice trembling now. Survival, Eli, not murder. The firing outside suddenly intensified, but it was different.
It wasn't directed at the house. It was directed away from it. Shouts of confusion erupted from the yard. Hold fire. Pike's voice screamed, cracking with panic.
Hold fire. Eli and Clara froze. They looked at each other. The silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire. What is happening?
Clara whispered. Eli crawled to the window. He peered out through the shattered boards. "My God," he breathed. A new group of riders had entered the yard.
They wore long dusters and rode tall, fresh horses. At the lead was Marcus Thorne, the lawyer from Cheyenne. And beside him, wearing a badge that caught the white sunlight, was a federal marshall. But it wasn't just them. Behind the law men rode a dozen men from Red Rock, the blacksmith, the owner of the livery stable, men who had stood silent for months.
They held shotguns and hunting rifles, and their barrels were pointed at Pike's mercenaries. Drop your weapons. The marshall bellowed. His voice was like iron. By order of the United States District Court, Sheriff Miller looked at Pike.
Then at the marshall, he dropped his gun in the dirt. One by one, the hired guns lowered their rifles. They were paid to fight farmers, not feds. Pike sat on his horse, his face a mask of purple rage. He was alone in the center of the yard, stripped of his army.
Eli kicked the barricade away from the door. He threw the bolt and stepped out onto the porch, his rifle in hand. Clara followed him, stepping into the biting cold. "It is over, Pike," Eli said. Thorne rode forward, waving a sheath of papers.
Judge Athetherton signed the order this morning. Pike, your assets are frozen, pending a federal investigation into racketeering, land fraud, and murder. The witness you thought you scared off. Molly, she didn't run. She came to my office last night.
Pike looked at Thorne, then at Eli. His eyes were the eyes of a trapped wolf. Wild, yellow, and devoid of reason. You think a piece of paper stops me? Pike snarled.