Tasker swung his rifle around. Rides Far, ten yards away on her mare, did not move at all.
"You may shoot me," she said conversationally. "Then you will be a white man afoot, forty miles from anywhere, who has killed the daughter of Strikes Twice. The men who just took your horses are my cousins. They are sitting on the ridge behind you now, and they have your saddle guns." She tilted her head toward the slope. "Turn and look, if you like. I will wait."
Tasker did not turn. Nate Fowler did, and went white, and lowered his rifle very slowly.
"Put 'em down, Cobb," Nate said. "For God's sake."
"Harlan," said Tasker, ignoring him, and his pale eyes had gone very bright. "You goddamned fool. You know what Pike'll do to you? You know what you're throwing over? For what? For a—"
Wes never afterward knew what word Tasker had been about to use. He knew only that he was off the gray and halfway across the clearing with his fists already closed, and that Rides Far said his name, just once, not loudly, and he stopped.
He stood there breathing hard, an arm's length from Tasker's rifle. He could see the man's finger on the trigger. He could see, too, the sweat standing on his lip in the cold.
"For my brother," he said. "That's what for. You took his letters, Cobb. Three of them. You let me think he was dead for two years so you and Dorran and Pike could go on selling the same steers to the government. You shot him in the back." He held out his hand. "Now give me that rifle, or shoot me, or stand there till you freeze. But you're not going to Fort Custer today, and you're not stopping us from going."
For a long moment nothing happened. Then Nate Fowler stepped forward and took the rifle out of Tasker's hands as gently as if he were taking a bottle from a drunk, and handed it, stock first, to Wes.
"I didn't know about no letters," Nate said miserably. "Wes, I swear. Pike just said there was a renegade and we was to stop him reaching the fort."
"I know, Nate. I didn't know either." Wes looked at Tasker, who stood with his empty hands half raised and his face working. "There's a ranch on the Bighorn about fifteen miles north. Walk east till you hit the river and follow it down. You'll make it by tomorrow if you don't sit down."