Mercy: A Serialized Novel

Blake Coal stood on the edge of the greenwood. He held his hat at waist level with both hands while Carol and her sister read verses from the Good Book. Between them, a hole in the ground. In the hole, a box. In the box, the body of a twelve-year-old boy Coal met only once. The boy’s name was Lance McClint, Carol’s only son.

Aunt Abigail was reading Psalm 107, “He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.”

“That’s enough reading. I want to know, and I want to know now. Who shot that boy?”

“This is a funeral, Coal. That’s my son down there,” Carol scowled, pointing a stern finger at the Jack Pine casket. “You can wait. You hear me Coal? You can wait until my son is buried.”

“Just tell me, and then you can take all day to say your piece to whoever you pray to. Your boy was tending to my horse when he was shot. My horse, the black,” Coal said while gesturing toward his sable Morgan. “Maybe nobody told you, but I came to town dusty, looking for rye, and the black was hard-pressed. Your boy had the bit before I even tied off. I offered to pay him and he shook his head.”

Coal’s hands began to stiffen into fists around his hat. He recalled how impressed he was with the boy. There was something there, a confidence young Lance McClint had no right to. He was small, barely as tall as the bat-wing doors on the saloon, but he grabbed the black’s bit as horse-sure as any full-grown cowhand.

Later, after cutting the dust from his throat, Coal took a shot of rye to the stable as payment for the kindness. If the boy wouldn’t take money, he sure wouldn’t turn down rye. Heck, maybe it would be his first real drink, something he’d remember all his life, long after Coal’s face faded from memory.

Coal continued, determined to get an answer, “I know that boy’s daddy was an outlaw. I saw him strung up myself. I only just learned that you raised him alone. He weren’t like his daddy, ma'am. He was a good boy, almost a man. A good boy. Someone took your boy from you. Took him while he was just fixing to start making his own tracks. I don’t tie up to that, ma’am. I aim to set things right. No disrespect meant, ladies, my hat being off my head and all. Tell me. Who shot the boy?”

Aunt Abigail spoke plainly. “The man you want is Curt Barren.”

Carol erupted, “Abigail, hush! We don’t need no more blood spillin’, not even for Lance.”

“I loved Lance like he were my own son. I loved him and I want justice. Real justice. Not the kind sheriff yellow-belly will give us, Carol. The kind Coal will deal out. Iron and leather. You hear me Coal, the name’s Curt Barren. He shot our boy in the back. For nothin’! Now you go find him. I know you ain't got no use for Bible words. Go right now, Coal. Right now, hear me? And remember what I said. Iron and leather.”

Aunt Abigail broke down in tears at the edge of the grave as Coal put on this hat and mounted the black. He dug his heels in and headed toward the desert.

“And what about mercy? What words will we speak over my son’s grave now? What have you done?” Carol’s voice began to weaken, quivering like a loose wagon wheel before dropping into silence.

Aunt Abigail stood and looked toward the desert. Her voice growing steady once more. “That desert spawned Coal. It’s where he learned his code. The desert will eat up the unprepared. It takes snakes and coyotes alike. It’s home to men like Coal. The desert is his church, and there’s no mercy in the desert. Not for any man. Certainly not for Barren.”

Coal knew what the desert meant, long paced rides with no cover. As for food, he had the confidence of the years to reassure him. He didn’t bother to get provisions before heading toward the waning sun. The desert provides plenty for those who know where to look. With barely a quarter mile in, the last of the black dirt from free grazing country was behind them. Coal sat deeply into the back of his saddle, the kind of posture that signaled to the black that a long ride was ahead.

The desert was a mix of dry, tan dirt and pale rock. It wasn’t always apparent to the eye where dirt gave way to stone, but if there was ever any doubt, the truth was made obvious by the striding clip clop of the black’s iron shoes, a sound that travelled too far for Coal’s liking. He didn’t know Barren, not really. His only run in with the Barrens was seven years ago, when Coal returned some cattle that he found wandering miles from the Barren ranch. That kindness stung a little now, and he would take it back if he could. He wondered if Curt Barren was the kind of man that would hold up on the edge of the desert, maybe at the first decent ambush spot. Surely, Curt had to know someone would be after him after what he did to that boy.

Coal had already resigned to tie bundles of sage around the black’s hooves when he reached the desert canyons. It was something an old Indian taught him many years ago. Over the last few years, he practiced it many times with the black. It would deaden the sounds of their movement across any terrain. He hoped it might give him an even chance if he stumbled across Barren in the foothills or along the narrow canyons further in. But until then, the footfalls of the black were welcome company. He knew that clip clop melody so well, and he could tell from the rhythm how tired the black was, and if anything was spooking him.

Everyone around those parts knew the Barrens. Their range was a four-day ride across the desert. They raised cattle and horses, and for as long as Blake Coal could remember, they were known to do it very well. That is until Curt Barren’s father, Jesse, died under mysterious circumstances while riding the fence lines with Curt. That was almost two years ago, and since then, Curt Barren has been the face of the outfit. The word around town was that Curt took to personally appearing at every public sale. Barren seemed to enjoy the attention the way pigs delight in a wallowing ditch. He kept the money for every sale on his person, and quickly found his way to every comfort the nearest saloon offered. Jesse used to say that trusting Curt with ranch money was a lick and a promise away from ruining the Barren name. There was truth to that. The Barren ranch already started to show a lack of attention under Curt’s supervision. Several hands left straight away, nobody with half a wit comes asking for work, and not a single silver dollar has gone back into the ranch.

The sun began to set on the horizon, red and orange-yellow, hanging like a ripe peach pit against a lilac sky. The purple hues of a desert sunset are the rarest and most fleeting. The way the purple light casts over the dry sages seems to adorn the whole world, even the long shadows, “in the appearance of fine blue lace prettifying a thin and delicate dress.” Those were the words Coal’s wife used when she wrote to her family back east about the desert sunsets. When Coal read those words the first time, he knew he could only ever appreciate from afar the depth of a woman’s soul. It was something he would never have, something beautiful and precious. Something worth dying for. “Lucy, why couldn’t it have been me?” He let the familiar words slip under his breath as he had so many times before.

In that same instant, the lilac sky began to give way to the orange afterglow of sunset. The first hint of the cool desert night was welcome in the heat of his chaps. His memories would return soon enough. It was time for Coal to look for a place to make camp.

Coal made camp at the edge of a small hill. He hoped the mound would shield his campfire some. He knew there was water two hours ahead, and he shared the balance of his canteen with the black. In the morning, he would head for the water. No sooner had the black begun to three hoof it, Coal saw a strange glow on the horizon. Saint Elmo’s fire maybe? He heard the words but never really knew what it meant. It looked like campfires flying in the sky, and there was a thrumming sound, at times it was briefly like a hummingbird’s wings.

The strange lights went one way, then the other, in an arc that seemed to be hundreds of miles across big sky country. There were short, bright flashes. The black grew restless in a way Coal had never witnessed, causing Coal to leap up and grab the bridal. Things only got worse and Coal struggled to hold on, forcing him to get rough with the black, something he could never remember doing. The great sable Morgan was terrified of something.

Then Coal heard it. A rustling nearby, just beyond the light of his campfire. He couldn’t reach his gun without releasing the black. Whatever it was, it was getting closer. Just as he had resigned to let go of the bridle, he heard a woman’s voice from the darkness. “Don’t let that horse go or we’re both gonna die out here.”

The female voice from the darkness carried with it an unmistakable urgency. Again, she cried out, “Don’t let that horse go!” If Coal knew anything about the desert, it was that women are never unaccompanied. The hair on the back of his neck began to prickle and his dark eyes darted in all directions. He imagined rustlers in the dark, just out of sight, using the woman to urge him not to get his guns. The black reared up a little, and Coal knew he had precious few seconds to make a decision.

A sudden awareness overcame his senses. A huge laboring, mechanical sound thrust forward, and with it appeared a flurry of lights that shown down onto the backside of the rocky mound that his camp abutted to. Coal tried to see what it was but the mound obscured his view. Whatever it was in the sky was low enough to be hidden behind the hill, and high enough to shine lights straight down. The sound it made was like the funnel of a steam engine, except slower and less rhythmic than the distant hummingbird-type noises he heard earlier. Every handful of beats there was a faint ping that seemed to get more pronounced with every revolution, like a blacksmith striking iron. It had the sound of a machine, a great malfunctioning machine, and the lights it cast were erratic and senseless.

Whatever had spooked the black was nearly upon them, and with an image of rustlers in the dark, it was all too much to manage. Coal stepped up onto a small outcropping at the base of the mound. He planted his foot and hefted his body onto the back of the black. Coal wanted out of there. He had no real regard for what direction he made his escape, and even if he did, there was no coming to an understanding with the black in this frenzied moment. The best he could do was hold on for dear life as they shot like lightning into the night.

They wound in and out of the foothills at a fevered pace. At times, it was so dark that Coal’s only hint of their whereabouts was in the fleeting, dim light given off by sparks from the black’s shoes over the stony ground. The great horse, never turning too abruptly in any direction, continued its desperate plunge into ever-darkening terrain. As horse and rider, they understood the limits of Coal’s ability to hold on bareback, and those were the only limits the great sable Morgan adhered to.

Coal knew the black’s speed was impressive, though he never witnessed it like this, and the cold air of the desert night caused his eyes to water up as they made their own wind. Coal relaxed his body onto the back of the bolting steed, creating as much physical contact as possible so the friction would help him stay mounted. He leaned forward, pressing his cheek against the Morgan’s neck while its thick mane whipped back and into Coals face during the whole mad dash. Though he wanted to look up and see what made those terrible sounds, those lights, and the strange crashing noises that followed, he saw nothing clearly. Together, they stole away into a shallow canyon, small and dark, where they waited until daybreak.

As the sun rose and light filtered into the canyon, both coal and his horse were wide awake. He looked the black over carefully, checking all the shoes, the leg joints, and when he was satisfied that there were no injuries, he took a deep breath and let slip a sigh that signaled the abatement of the anxiety he shouldered for hours. The black sighed in return and nudged Coal with its nose. They were alright. They had made it together, and they were grateful to each other for it.

Coal took a good look around. Nothing looked familiar. He was in a box canyon, thank goodness. There was no doubt which way they came in. At least there was that. He had no water. The rising sun was all he needed to discern what direction the river was. He would try to track back to his belongings, and if he didn’t find them in a few hours, he would cut bait and head for water.

Coal was parched, and he knew the black was already smelling for water he didn’t have. Coal took a bandana out of his pocket and fashioned it over the black’s mouth. It would help stave off dehydration, at least for a while. He mounted the great Morgan and there was no need for a saddle. He directed the horse with a pull on the mane or a nudge of his foot, and it soon became evident that their tracks were easy to follow. It’s usually the way it is when a horse is at a full run. There are plenty of tracks to follow, even over the stone, and Coal felt sure they would find his gear soon enough.

He thought back to the voice in the darkness. That woman last night. What if she really was alone out there? What if I left her to the mercy of whatever the hell that thing was in the sky? On balance, it’s easier for a man to second guess himself when a woman is involved, even if he never laid eyes on her. Still, that was quite a leap, imagining that a woman was out there alone. And why didn’t she just step forward into the light? Maybe she was some kind of ghost? Some ancient Indian wandering the desert. Coal had heard some strange tales around campfires over the years. Maybe he finally had his own tale to tell.

As he pondered the possibilities, he eventually came back around to Barren. Maybe she was a woman Barren put up to it. Maybe he was involved somehow. And just that fast, Coal’s mind set firmly on young Lance McClint and how Barren had shot that boy in the back. Just then, Coal followed the tracks around a small hill and he spotted the mound where he had camped last night. He could see his saddle, his guns, even his hat. In the distance he could see smoke rising from something burning a mile or so away. All he really cared about were those guns. He had a purpose for those, a purpose Barren would soon find out about.

Coal wasted no time saddling the black and arranging his gear. Then he headed for the river, reassuring the black that they would have water soon. Before he made it even a hundred yards, he stopped for a moment to listen. He thought he heard the faintest cry of a woman’s voice on the wind. Maybe a guilty conscious can make you hear things in the desert. Maybe so, but two hundred yards later, he picked up a single set of fresh footprints, small, bare feet headed in the same direction he was going, toward the water. He followed them for about a quarter of a mile, until he came upon a large circle of scorched earth. In that circle, the footprints disappeared.

Coal fingered his guns, reminding himself what he was out there for. Then he pressed on toward the river. “It will all be worth it when we catch up to Barren,” he murmured. He fantasized about cutting Barren down. And his fantasies never included trickery or ambushes. He wanted nothing more than to face him honestly. He wanted Barren to know why, and to see Barren’s eyes when the Colts flew free of their leather holsters and released their justice upon him. A faint smile crossed Coal’s face, and he pressed back, deep into the saddle, and let the black set the pace. Despite his resolve to keep focused on Barren, a fugitive notion appeared in his thoughts from time to time. Who was that woman last night?

Coal thought deeply about things as he rode to the river. He all but ignored whatever was burning near last night’s camp. There were still visible plumes of smoke in the distance. He knew deep down that it was something foreign and distracting—none of his business. Like many things in the west that are none of a man’s business, poking around usually brought more trouble than it was worth.

Instead, he focused on thoughts about Lucy. He wondered how close he came last night to joining her in the afterlife. He thought about how he’d met her, their holidays together and that bitter cold winter when they had to burn the barn in the stove. He thought about the baby they lost, the day they saved a heifer from a mud hole, and the many nights they spent making love under the stars. When he slowed down and thought deeply about all that he could remember about her, it felt like a lifetime together, and for Lucy, it was. They had survived travelling all the way to Nevada from Boston, and two murderous raids by Indians, not to mention one very ornery mother-in-law. But Lucy couldn’t survive typhoid fever, and Coal barely survived watching her die.

The river appeared in the distance and the black picked up the pace. When they arrived, Coal dismounted and looked for shallow pools around the edges of the water. The river was down a bit, and there were many such pools in the rocks nearby. Something about thin, sunlit pools made them safer to drink from. The black walked straight into the shallow current and drank deeply. Dehydration comes on fast but takes many hours to shake. Coal waited by the river for the better part of the day, resting and rehydrating while the black ate tender grasses along the bank and occasionally rolled in the dirt. He half-expected to look up and see that mystery woman appear at the river’s edge, but she never did.

When Coal was sated, he crossed over the river and rode toward the canyons on the other side. There were strange and intricate dwellings carved into the canyon walls. Even stair-like steps that lead up to chambers three and sometimes four stories high where some ancient Indian civilization had made their homes in the rock. Each chamber had a hole that led to the one above, much like a chimney. It must have been quite a city. He had made camp there many times in the past.

Coal rode past the ground-level entrances to a small outcrop in the canyon wall where he found an arched entrance. He rode inside and found the chamber exactly as he had left it four summers ago. He stumbled across this grand chamber only after visiting the location several times. The entrance isn’t obvious until you are almost on top of it. He believed that this must have been some kind of church or something, a gathering place for Indian people. The room was large, larger than the dwellings, and easily accommodated both Coal and his horse. This was now his favorite camp anytime he crossed the river.

After dismounting the black, he withdrew a small knife from his belt and carved another notch in the wall adjacent to the entrance. He could tell from the markings that this was his sixth time camping there.

As luck would have it, Coal found a lizard in the great chamber. He started a very small fire from a few bits of tinder in the room, and he quickly cooked it for dinner. He fed the black a small ration of oats and he double tied the black to a large wooden beam that lay on the floor at the far end of the room. Then Coal bedded down in the opposite corner. He needed his wits about him for his confrontation with Barren. As things were, he felt punchy and tired. Sleep was very welcome for both Coal and the black. Neither had slept the night before, and it only made sense to make camp a little early. They both deserved a good night’s sleep.

Coal had only been sleeping for a few hours when he awoke to the sound of some inhuman moaning. It sounded like sorrow and pain, at times urgent and then plaintive. He listened for a short time and reasoned that it was the wind howling in and around the dwellings. He had heard the wind howl there before, but never like this. He tried to go back to sleep but each time he dozed off, there was something about the noise that woke him and stirred genuine concern. So languid and woeful were the howls that he felt something like pity for this place. Maybe these were the ghosts of those Indians that once dwelled here. Maybe they cried out sorrowfully for the memories of this strange place.

As Coal closed his eyes again, he heard an eruption of muffled laughter. Several men laughing at once. They were not far away, and Coal quickly got up and checked the entrance to the chamber. He saw nothing. The black stirred a little and Coal heard the strange moaning again, except louder than before. He waited in the archway and listened for some time, and each time he heard the pitiful wails, he heard the raucous laughter of the men that followed. He slipped out of the great chamber and along the canyon wall. He made his way toward the noise until he noticed the glow of a dim light coming from one of the Indian dwellings. Outside, there were three horses loosely tied to a large boulder.

Coal crouched low and made his way toward the commotion, stopping when he was close enough to make out the conversation inside.

“What should we do with it?”

“Cook it for dinner, maybe?”

“You can’t eat it. She’s human, sort of. She has arms and legs.”

“It ain’t human, that’s for sure.”

“Watch this. I’m going to slice off one of her ears and then we’ll see how loud she yells!”

“No, slice off her milkers. Look that those dinner buckets!”

“I’ll start with the ears!”

A moment later, Coal heard the plaintive cry again, only much louder and more desperate. That guttural wail wasn’t human but was so familiar in its meaning. Coal remembered Lucy crying out in pain, how she moaned under her breath as she was dying. It was the same pitiful, guttural cry. The same visceral, desperate plea to hold onto life. Coal wasn’t sure what was going on in the room, but he knew the sort of men these were. They were the sort that delighted in the pain of others. They were the sort that couldn’t be reasoned with.

Coal made a dash for the doorway and quickly stepped inside. He immediately made out the shapes of three men standing around a bundle on the ground. All three were wearing guns and the biggest of the three was holding a knife. Coal hoped that his sudden presence would prompt them to ask what he wanted, but it didn’t go that way. The three men turned toward him in unison. The man on the left went straight for his gun and Coal’s Colts flit from their holsters on muscle memory alone. No thought went into what came next as both Colts unloaded on all three men. There was no time for talking, only killing. Sometimes, with certain kinds of men, that’s the only language they understand.

Coal returned to the doorway and looked in both directions as he reloaded. After a couple long minutes, he turned his attention to the bundle on the floor. At first, he couldn’t make sense of it. He saw two big black eyes staring at him from beneath a blanket. He pulled the blanket back and there was some creature there. He could make out that it was naked and female. She had dark blue skin, thin, and pink in places, and a very long face. Other than the large, bulbous head and the way her body seemed very long compared to her legs, she looked something like a human. That is to say she had two arms and two legs, a long neck and head, large breasts, fingers, and she was breathing. Her feet were kicking. The large black eyes were blinking. Her nose seemed to be twitching. She was smelling him like some kind of animal catches a scent. And as foreign as those eyes were, unlike any animal he had ever seen, he saw fear in them.

Though she didn’t look particularly dangerous, the men had tied her up very tightly. There were no claws or fangs. Her limbs were spindly and nothing about them looked powerful. The method of the rope tying was overkill, meant to be restraining but also painful. Coal was momentarily conflicted about untying her. Maybe this human-like creature had something to do with those lights in the sky. Maybe she was just some aberrant freak of nature, like an albino deer or something. And as he slipped his guns back into his holsters, her body seemed to relax a little and she let out a sorrowful wail. Whatever she was, she seemed to know about guns. Her large black eyes looked around at the bodies of the dead men, and then back to Coal. Her frightened look seemed to soften a little, then she let out a small whimper, pleading with him to let her go.

Coal didn’t know what to make of her, but he knew that she was hurting. He withdrew the small knife on his belt and began to cut the ropes.

Coal felt the knife begin to sever the fibers of the rope. He stopped abruptly, looking around the room. What would he do when this creature was released? He had no doubts about liberating her from the ropes, but he had released many live animals from traps. Sometimes they attack the hand that frees them.

“I’m going to cut the ropes and set you free,” he told her, “just don’t bite me.”

He hoped she understood his words as well as she seemed to understand what guns were. Coal stood upright and looked around the room. After a moment, he took the lantern and pressed the wick higher, flooding the room with light. It was at this moment that Coal thought about making a torch that he could wield after he cut the ropes. He could drive her out of the room that way.

Coal glanced about at the dead men. Their bandanas would work well enough. He could soak them in the lantern oil and tie them around a stick to make the torch. The panic of the gunfight was over, and he was thinking more clearly now. Coal knew there was time to get organized before setting her free.

He took a deep breath and started gathering the guns and personal possessions of the dead men. They didn’t have much on them, a little tobacco and fewer than 20 rounds of good ammunition. One of the men had four dollars in his boot. The other two had no money at all. Coal was no thief, and if he ever learned the identities of these men, he would quietly deliver the meager possessions, including the saddles, guns and belts to their families. For now, he would hide their belongings in the large chamber he made camp in. After he freed the creature, he didn’t want her to get ahold of an equalizer, and it was unlikely that she would ever find that chamber. It was only by dumb luck that Coal found it the first time.

With the possessions of the dead men stashed away, Coal saddled the black and drug the dead bodies to the edge of the river-crossing where they would be found by the next wagon that crossed that way. He loosed the three horses that had belonged to the dead men, leaving them by the river bank where they could graze. Only then did Coal ride back to the Indian dwellings to deal with the creature.

Coal tied up the black and followed the lamplight back to the room. She was exactly where he left her, bound tightly on the floor. She looked smaller somehow, and as he approached her, he could tell something was different. She was breathing shallowly and no longer struggling. He gave her a gentle nudge with his boot. Was she sleeping or playing opossum? He kicked her a little more forcefully, and still she gave no reaction. Coal let loose a loud yelp, in the manner cowhands do when trying to startle stray cattle back to the herd. Still, she was unresponsive.

Coal reasoned that this was a trick or she was dying, and that either way, he wanted to get this over with. He quickly fashioned the torch and lit it. It blazed brightly in his left hand as he withdrew the knife and cut the ropes with his right hand. The fibers gave way and when the rope went slack around her body, her left arm slumped to the floor. “You’re free, now go!” He said, and then he repeated himself several times while pushing her limp body with his boot. She wasn’t going anywhere.

The sight of this strange creature was captivating, being completely vulnerable and slight, as feminine a thing as he had ever seen. In the bright lights of the torch and lantern, he could see the tiny details of her. Not a single pore interrupted the smoothness that was her perfect skin. Though he tried to sidestep the notion, she was undeniably sexual, the way her ribs sloped and narrowed, giving way to the bowing curve of her hips, which was as streamlined and beautiful a curvature as any human woman dreamed of having, something only achieved through the use of a corset and many years of training and discomfort. Her chest rose and fell with every breath, and the slackness of her petite form served to further exaggerate her insistent breasts.

He examined her femininity, and then her soft and dainty hands. And as he studied her for several long minutes, there could be no mistaking her for a freak of nature. She was something strange and different. Coal had no doubt that whatever kind of creature this was, she was perfect in design and form. Though inhuman, there was nothing objectionable about her, and as he admired her, he felt the pangs of pity return. He had fought and killed to protect her, and now he would do what he could to keep her alive.

Coal removed the ropes completely, treating her gently and more modestly than he would have treated a mere animal. Though she was a naked creature, he was careful to preserve her dignity, if she had any, as he lifted her to a seated position and cradled her in his arms. He did his best to give her water.

Occasionally, he rocked her the way a farmer rocks a stillborn calf, using large movements that force the inner workings to wake up and perform their functions. He noticed that doing this caused her breathing to deepen and become more regular. Holding her upright was taxing and uncomfortable, but he continued for hours. As he did, she began to regain consciousness for a few seconds at a time. And each time Coal was there with water, coaxing her to drink. He dabbed water on her skin, and it seemed to absorb into her. He continued until she was breathing normally and her eyes opened. He imagined that she was still too weak to move, but it was a good sign that she may live.

In the moments before daybreak, he laid her down in his lap and pressed his back against the wall for a little relief from the discomfort. He held her hand and occasionally looked into her eyes. She looked back with softer eyes than before, and she made no effort to move. Though she wasn’t human, somewhere below the surface of his consciousness, he was comforted by the notion that he was caring for a female, and that he wasn’t alone among the cold stone walls of the Indian dwelling. He succumbed to a few moments of sleep, and when he opened his eyes, she was gone.

Blake Coal saddled the black in the golden hour just after daybreak. One hard day’s ride and he would make camp just a mile or two from the Barren ranch. There, he would rest and make ready for what was to come. Time was no longer on his side. Curt Barren was at least two days ahead, with plenty of time to prepare. Coal pursued men before, and they always seemed to sense the inevitability of his arrival. The Indians said it was Coal’s demons whispering to his enemies, informing them that death was coming.

Whether or not Barren knew death was coming would not save him. Of this Coal was sure. It wasn’t unearned arrogance. It was the way of the sure-handed. Visualizing the outcome with absolute certainty comes naturally to a gunfighter. He felt the urgency of vengeance growing, calling him to take action. The events of last night were all too real and desperately important at the time. But when daylight spread its gilded light over the dewy landscape, the events of the last few days seemed to collapse into one absurd and surreal notion. If there’s one thing a gun slinger does well, it’s changing focus quickly and with the intensity of a cornered animal. Coal wanted to find Barren; he wanted it like he wanted his next breath, with immediacy and urgency of purpose.

Small notions of distraction did try to breakthrough his resolve, the footprints that seemed to vanish and the woman who cried out to him when the great machine appeared. But every mental distraction was snuffed out, replaced by icy hate while fingering the grips and cold steel hammers of the two Colts that protruded from his holsters. This was a trick of Coal’s to keep him completely present in the moment. Hands at the ready prevent the mind from wandering.

Despite the long ride to camp, Coal never leaned back to relax into his saddle. Every sizeable rock he passed could be where Barren was hiding. He spent the whole day riding a perfect line toward the ranch. The rocks and trails eventually gave way once again to black-dirt farmlands and expansive pastures dotted with small groups of trees. He never stopped to eat and only paused twice to water the black. His mind never wandered, nor did his vigilance fade. Even the black felt it, and gave up mouthing for grass or tossing side glances. Today was thick in it, purpose and sharp ever-present awareness. The only break in the tension came from an occasional verbal outburst as Coal contemplated Barren’s demise. The black was accustomed to Coal’s muttering, but rarely did Coal raise his voice above a whisper on the open trail, “I’m coming Barren. You rotten son of a bitch, child killer. I hope your money buys you a pretty casket.”

Ten hours later, three miles from the Barren ranch, Coal picked up the intermittent odor of beef cooking. It couldn’t be far, maybe over the next rise. He reasoned that it must be ranch hands, probably lookouts. He spent a few moments perfectly still, listening, but he heard nothing. And when he was satisfied that nobody was watching him, he dismounted. Coal took some time to gather grasses and carefully wrapped the black’s hooves. It was time to move silently. He took a few deliberate minutes tying down his saddlebags and other gear until every strap and clasp was firm and silent. He carefully wet down his saddle to deaden any squeaking leather. When he remounted the black, he made less noise than a titmouse walking over wet grass.

Silence was the only chance to surprise anyone among the enormous pastures that spread out for miles. The gently rolling hills provided a little cover, but once he appeared at the top of the rise, there was very little chance he would remain undetected for long. Coal reached back and drew his rifle from its long leather scabbard. He detached an oily piece of split-leather from under his saddle and looped it over the saddle horn. His rifle slipped into the loop and remained there, in perfect position to grab it fast. With the sun at his back and a small pat to reassure the black that he was ready, Coal gently brushed his boots along the black’s sides, and with that nearly imperceptible motion, they seemed to float forward, silently ascending the rise to whatever fate lie ahead.

The rolling pastures of the west can’t be adequately captured in paintings or memories. When the sun begins to swing low, an hour from hitching up to the fertile prairies, the beauty of its tiny flowers and grasses leaps forward, always more vibrant than memory recalls. The smallness of crisp white flowers and variegated seed caps in many varieties are each a tiny miracle to behold. The bursting grasslands overload the senses, like trying to drink grandeur from miniature glasses, always flushing the spectator with wonder and adoration for the spectacle of nature, and always leaving one feeling inadequate to appreciate the beauty of it all, because the eye can only fall upon one marvel at a time.

Blake Coal slowly ascended the sweeping hill. The black, stealthy as a barn cat, walked at half speed, each foot stepping a few inches higher than normal, dropping straight down instead of dragging through the grasses. The wrapped hooves of the great Morgan were having the desired effect. The slow ascent was nearly silent, and as Coal neared the top, the smell of charred meat grew much stronger. Just before cresting the hill, he stopped to listen carefully, hoping to gain some advantage by knowing if the camp ahead would be to his right or left, but he heard nothing.

Coal considered dismounting so he could crawl the last few yards to survey the scene, but he thought better of it. His chance to escape would be better if he simply turned to ride back down the hill and over the next rise to a small wooded area where he could make a stand. He took a glance at the rifle, judging the ease by which it could be drawn from the leather horn loop, and then he pressed his heels firmly into the sides of the black, launching them forward until both horse and rider were openly atop the crest of the hill.

Coal swiftly surveyed the immediate area in both directions but there was no camp. As his eyes traveled beyond the hilltop, to the low meadows ahead, he could barely make sense of what he saw. From atop the hill he could see an area of scorched earth, in the same circular configuration he had seen several days earlier in the desert. He saw a large herd of dead cattle, many dismembered, and at least half were charred black. The odor he mistook for a camp was coming from the strange slaughter in the meadow, and it was disconcerting that even from a great distance, the smell carried on the breeze. As Coal stared at the scene, his senses picked up more scents, those of rotten meat, and he pulled out a handkerchief, masking his nose and mouth against the offensive wind.

He studied the bewildering pasture below, carefully picking out more details in the charred patterns on the ground, including some strange paths that looked like wagon wheel tracks in the grasses, only much thicker. The dead cattle were scattered randomly in the field, except several small groups of dismembered cattle that seem to be lined up in orderly patterns. After carefully observing the finer details in the field, he noticed a small movement in the thin grasses on the next rise beyond the low meadows. He made out the small form of a woman working her way out of the meadow and up the hill on the other side. She was little more than a faded patch of blue against the hillside, and her movements seemed erratic and confused. For every few steps forward, she managed to move an equal distance left or right, sometimes stopping and lingering before starting again.

To Coal, she looked lost, perhaps dazed and confused, maybe simply injured. Whatever the reason, he knew she needed aid. She was miles from the Barren ranch, and heading in the wrong direction. There was nothing beyond that pasture but miles of empty land. She wouldn’t find water. Only death waited for her out there. Death by snakebite or sunbaked misery; it all ends the same.

Coal began the distasteful trek across the meadow, picking the least objectionable line toward the misplaced woman on the next rise. He rode quickly, wanting to put this strange place behind him. In truth, his first instinct was that of self-preservation, but he couldn’t ignore her predicament. What little he had that was tender in him had been coaxed to the surface by the long night he shared with the creature in the Indian dwellings, and the deep and emotional recollections of his life with Lucy. He carried a stony heart across that desert many times in the past. But on this crossing, the torch of vengeance he carried was accompanied by something gentler and uninvited. Though he fought it nearly the whole way, it seeped in, filling an empty place in his heart the way groundwater fills an empty hole in the earth. He knew that eventually it would dry up, leaving only an empty hole once again. And when it did, no matter how unwelcome it had arrived, the flinty core of his being would lament the loss. Though she was gone, Lucy was still the guiding voice of his conscience deep within, and she couldn’t be clearer as he heard her voice once again, “Help her, Coal. You ride out there and help her this instant!”

He reasoned that helping anyone was a risk, and helping a woman was riskier still. He let loose a small chuckle as he recalled the words of wisdom Aunt Abigail skewered him with. Years earlier, Coal encountered an Indian woman in the general store. She didn’t have enough money for bread, and Coal followed her outside where he offered her his own groceries. A moment later, she knocked him to the ground, stood over him shaking her fist, and she said some words most townsfolks didn’t understand. It was then that Aunt Abigail called to him across a crowded street, “Be careful helping a damsel in distress, Coal, because you just might end up with a distressed damsel!” He found himself the butt of the joke, in full view of just about the whole town, and it took a long time before he got over the embarrassment. But after years of reflection, he couldn’t help but appreciate the humor in it. Aunt Abigail was never much for pulling punches when it came to saying things plainly. She was right, of course. And the wisdom in her words wasn’t lost on him. Coal steadied himself against what may come, conceding to help the struggling woman on the rise ahead.

As he coaxed the black to a gallop, he saw that it was foaming at the mouth, a sure sign of over-exertion. The exhausted steed would run to its death if Coal bade it to do so. Coal knew that when he reached the woman, they would have to rest there. The black would need to take on water and cool down. They would soon have to make camp, but not in this God forsaken place. It was probably just as well. The woman would require time to size him up, and there were questions to be answered. What happened in the field? Where did she come from? Had she seen the Barrens? Was she one of them?

While at a gallop, the wrappings on the black’s legs gave way. The sounds of pounding hooves carried up the hillside to where the woman was, and she quickly turned to see a large rider heading directly at her. He was still amidst the horrors of the field below, and there was no mistake that he would soon overtake her. She saw the rifle across the front of the saddle and the foam in the great Morgan’s mouth. The rider looked reckless and determined. A quick glance around showed that he was alone, one man, in the middle of this field of death, riding fast. For a moment, she felt like a cornered animal, but soon resigned herself to the fact that there was nowhere to run. There was no hiding from this imposing figure. She would face him head on.

Grace was no wallflower. She was tall for a woman, with blond, shoulder-length hair. Her pale blue dress was torn multiple times below the knee, and as she stood to her full height, facing Coal, he slowed to a trot and did his best to muster up a non-threatening gesture of goodwill. Grace stood, expressionless as Coal raised his right hand, palm open, trying to calm her fears. He knew that he could look very menacing. It was a fact that served him well with the men of the west, but often caused concern for those of the fairer sex.

Grace met Coal’s gaze directly. He saw no fear in her hazel eyes. There was strength in her, he sensed it immediately. “Easy there,” he said, “I’m here to help. What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“I… I… I’m…” Grace seemed to buckle at the knees, her voice trailed off and she collapsed into a soft bit of grass to her left.

Coal called out, “Are you OK?”

He dismounted the black and grabbed his canteen. He rushed to her side, hoping he was not too late to save her. Coal leaned over Grace, grabbing her shoulder in an effort to turn her over, so that he could splash some water on her face. But when she turned over, her eyes were wide open, and in her left hand, she brandished a small derringer. She held it close to his belly.

“You would be best advised to never touch me again, stranger.”

Coal respected the derringer. He had seen them at the poker table, and despite their size, they can kill a man at close range just as well as any sidearm. He also noticed that she didn’t point it at his head, nor did she extend her arm very far. She knew about firearms, and she would not be caught off guard. There would be no swatting it away, or otherwise overcoming her. She had the drop on him. It was just that simple.

“Before you move another inch, you’ll drop those guns.” She told him with the voice of a schoolmaster, both commanding and assuming compliance. There was no question in her tone, no room for discussion, and Coal obeyed. He unbuckled his gun-belt and dropped it onto the grass beside her. He also dropped the canteen, so that Grace could see both of his hands.

“Lady, I just want to…”

“You want to what?” She interrupted. “Take advantage of me? Rob me? Lay hands on me? Be my ever-lovin’ hero? Maybe you can just give me your horse.”

Coal tried his best to sound polite and respectful under the circumstances. “You can try to take my horse, but the black only responds to me. You’ll just look like a fool if you try.”

“Really, nobody else can ride your horse, not another soul? Sounds like a flannel-mouthed story.”

“Only my Lucy, and she’s gone now. Come on little lady, let’s get off on the right foot here. I came to help you. I could have left you to die, but I didn’t.”

Coal glanced down at the gun belt, but Grace noticed and steadied herself to shoot. Her small movements did not go unnoticed, and Coal thought better of it. He tried to look less threatening by taking a few steps back.

“Easy girly,” Coal said in a tone he imagined might be charming, but in return, he received only steely, compassionless eyes.

In that moment, the black approached Grace and rested its head on her shoulder. Coal could hardly believe his eyes.

“Really, your horse don’t take to nobody. What a fierce beast you have here, mister.” Grace chuckled as she gently brushed the black’s face with her free hand. “And look what you’ve done to this magnificent animal. You’ve ridden this horse half to death. Is this even your horse?”

“It’s my horse. Now stop this nonsense. Let’s get out of this hellish place and find a camp. We can get to know each other a little.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” said Grace sourly, “I don’t think I much care for the notion of knowing you better. There’s something out here, something evil! Now you don’t move, because I don’t want to kill you, or leave you with a belly-wound to die slowly. As it is, we’re both probably going to die out here.”

There was something in her voice. A familiar echo from several days ago, “It was you, in the darkness outside my camp, wasn’t it? You said not to let go of my horse or we would both die out there.”

“You!” Grace shouted. “You left me to the mercy of those monsters! I promise you, one more word and you’ll die right here.”

Coal believed her wholeheartedly, and he watched in disbelief as she quickly mounted the black and rode up and over the hill at a full run.

He shouted to her, “There’s no water that way. You’re going to kill my horse! Not that I care that much right now you rotten black Morgan traitor of a horse!”

Coal kicked at the weeds and shouted for another few minutes before retrieving his gun belt and canteen. One thing was sure, she had no water, his horse was running out of time, and if he ever wanted to see the black alive again, he would need to follow them on foot.

He started walking while chastising his inner voice, “Why did I listen to you? This woman is going to be the death of me.”

The sun dropped behind the dunes and the desert set about giving back all the heat it had hoarded through the day. Coal felt it come up through his boot soles. The sky went violet, then navy, and the moon rose over it looking like it had nowhere in particular to be.

He was walking. That was the plain fact of the thing, and it galled him worse than the heat did.

He had crossed this country on horseback more times than he could count, and every crossing he had spent reading the ground for other men’s tracks. Now he read it for his own horse’s. The black’s shoes cut clean through the sand and the wind filled the cuts in behind him near as fast as he could find them. So he walked, and he read, and he did not let himself think about water.

What he thought about was Grace.

A woman he had known the better part of one afternoon had put a derringer against his belly, taken his horse, and ridden it into country that would kill the both of them by Thursday. Coal had been robbed before. Twice by men he had fed. It never sat like this. The black was not property to be taken. The black was the last living thing that knew him.

He came up over a rise an hour past full dark, and there they were.

The black stood out against the pale sand with Grace up on him, her shoulders down, the two of them stopped and going nowhere. Something pulled tight in Coal’s throat that he did not care for. He put his voice out across the sand, low and level.

“Grace.”

She went stiff. She turned in the saddle, and he watched the surprise cross her face and get put away again behind the same flat look she had given him in the meadow. Neither of them moved. They took each other’s measure in the moonlight, and everything neither of them said sat down in the sand between them and waited.

Coal looked past her at his horse.

The black’s sides were working like a bellows. There was dried foam white along the shoulder and the flank was dark and wet. Something hot came up in Coal’s chest and he took hold of it the way a man takes hold of a bridle.

“You ran him hard,” he said. “Damn near ran him into the ground.” He let that sit where it fell. “That horse ain’t just a horse to me.”

Grace straightened up. She met him square. “I did what I had to do. Better to take your horse than stand out there and die.”

Coal came on a few steps and his shadow went long across the sand ahead of him. “Staying alive don’t give a person the right to take whatever’s handy and never mind what it costs somebody else.”

“Out here there is no time to reckon the cost.” Her chin came up. “You take what keeps you breathing, or you stop breathing. That is the whole of it.”

The words sat between them, flat and cold as a horseshoe in January.

Coal found he could not hold onto the anger the way he wanted to. He studied her face for something that would explain her, and what he found was not carelessness and was not foolishness. She had the look of somebody who had been making hard choices for a long while and had gotten good at it. That was worse. A fool he could have forgiven quicker.

He turned his head toward a shelf of rock off to the north where the shadow lay heavier than it ought to.

“There’s water in them rocks,” he said. “Enough for him. Enough for us.”

Grace did not answer straight off. She looked at him a good while, the way a person looks at a card that has been played too easy. Then she nodded and came down off the black and followed him, keeping her distance, and the only sound the two of them made was boots in sand.

The spring was no more than a cupful working up between two slabs and going nowhere. Coal knelt and drank first, because that was the way of it in strange water, and when he did not die of it he cupped his hands and held them up and let the black drink out of them. The horse drove his muzzle down into Coal’s palms and drank like he meant to empty the desert.

Grace stood back and watched him do it. She did not come forward until he had moved aside and made room, and she did not say anything when she did.

When she had drunk her fill she sat back on her heels. “Why are you chasing me, Coal? You figure I took your horse to lead you off on some fool’s errand?”

He kept his eyes on the water and the way the moon lay broken on it. “I ain’t chasing you. You’re mixed up in something you don’t understand, and it’s got Barren’s name on it. That makes you part of his trouble, and his trouble is mine.”

She laughed at that, one hard note with nothing funny in it. “You think I’d choose to be part of anything that man planned? Sometimes running is the only choice on the table. Out here nobody is coming to save you and nobody minds much whether you live.”

He turned and looked at her. “If you ain’t with him, then why take my horse? Why leave me afoot?”

She held his eye. “Because I thought you would let me go. I thought you’d see I was no business of yours.”

“You don’t get to say what’s my business.” He heard how it came out and did not soften it. “You took my horse and left me standing. That ain’t surviving. That’s dragging a stranger into whatever you’re running from.”

Her shoulders came up, but she did not look away. There was a tiredness on her that he recognized, having worn it himself. “You don’t know what I have seen. You don’t know what I have had to do to keep walking. Barren is not a man a person gets to walk away from. If he wants me, there is nowhere I can go that he will not eventually stand in the doorway of.”

Coal chewed on that. He did not like the shape of it.

“Then I reckon you’re stuck with me,” he said. “Leastways till we’re clear of him.”

The quiet came back down. It was not the same quiet as before. It was the kind that holds instead of the kind that cuts.

Coal looked off at a low rise a hundred yards on that would put rock between them and the night wind. He nodded at it. “We’ll camp up there. No sense walking further in the dark and turning an ankle for it.”

Grace’s face said the notion of a night in his company ranked somewhere below the wind. But she did not argue. She followed him up and settled herself a good six feet from where he laid down his hat and his gear, which was about five and a half feet farther than she needed to.

They sat. Neither one of them put their guard down. The cold came in the way it does out there, sudden and personal, and the only sound was the black shifting his weight in his sleep.

After a long while Grace spoke, and her voice had come down some.

“You could have left me back there.”

Coal thought about that honestly. “Could have. Didn’t.” He looked over at her. “So you can tell me what it is you’re running from.”

She drew a line in the sand with two fingers and rubbed it out again. “You think I know what Barren is after? I don’t. All I know is that whatever it is, he will kill for it, and he does not intend to let anything stand between him and it.”

Coal nodded slow. She was not running because she had a mind to run. She was running because there was nothing else left on the menu.

“Then you’ll stay with me,” he said. “Till we’re clear.”

The quiet came back a third time, and it had gotten easier to sit in.

They looked out at the dark, the both of them, at the long shadows going out and out until there was nothing left to go out to. They each knew what it was to run. Neither one of them said so.

Coal lay back against the sand and put his eyes on the stars. That great weight of empty sky had never troubled him. He had slept under it half his life. But he noticed, lying there, that it did not press down on him the way it had every night since Lucy, and he was not fool enough to say why, not even under his breath, not even to the horse.

He looked over. Grace had gone to sleep with her jaw finally unset. The moonlight took ten years off her.

Tomorrow there would be Barren, and whatever else that desert had been saving up. Tonight there was a spring in the rocks and a horse breathing easy and a woman who had robbed him at gunpoint sleeping six feet off.

Coal decided that was enough to be going on with, and closed his eyes.

The night went from silver to a deep blue, and then somebody spilled apricot along the eastern rim of it, and then the golden hour came and buttered the whole world.

They walked as much as they rode. One up and one afoot, trading off, so the black carried a single rider or none at all. Coal set it up that way without discussing it and Grace did not argue, which told him something about her he filed away and did not mention.

All that day and into the next night their boots raised little plumes of dust that hung a second and settled back. They kept a space between them, six or eight feet of it, and neither one closed it. The desert was quiet, but it was not a restful quiet. It was the quiet of a room where somebody is about to say something.

There was something else, too. Coal felt it before he could name it, a thin metal hum that came up through the soles of his feet and set his back teeth on edge. And there were the marks.

They were cut into the sand and into the flat rock, long winding lines that looped back over themselves, and in the moonlight they held a faint shine that no sand ought to hold. They were not writing that Coal knew. They were not Indian. They had the look of something made by a hand that was sure of itself, a long time ago, and had not been in a hurry.

Coal kept his eyes front and let his hand find the black’s mane every so often. The warmth of the horse under his fingers was a real thing in a night that was running short of real things.

Grace walked beside him with her eyes going from shadow to shadow. She was doing a fair job of not showing what she thought about the marks, and Coal gave her credit for it.

She broke first.

“Are you meaning to follow me until we both drop dead of it,” she said, “or is there a plan somewhere in this?”

Coal did not turn his head. “There’s a plan. It’s called keeping you from getting yourself killed.”

“You are not my guardian. I did not ask for your protection.”

“No, you surely didn’t.” He kept walking. “But somebody’s got to stand between you and the next reckless thing, and there ain’t a line of volunteers. You got a gift for finding trouble.”

Her color came up. “Maybe trouble finds me because I am trying to do something with myself. Instead of only existing.”

Coal stopped. He turned and looked at her, and whatever she saw in his face made her wait.

“Sometimes just existing is enough,” he said.

She did not have anything ready for that. They stood a moment, and the sharp edges came off the both of them.

When she spoke again the fight had gone out of her voice. “Do you think we get out of here?”

Coal looked her over. The tiredness had settled under her eyes in the last two days and put shadows there that had not been there in the meadow.

“Depends on you,” he said. “If you can quit looking behind you long enough to look at what’s in front of you, then maybe.”

She let out a breath and put her hand on the black’s neck. The horse blew warm against her wrist and she stood there taking some comfort from it, and Coal let her have it without remarking on it.

“This is not how I thought it would go,” she said after a while.

“How’d you think it’d go?”

A small laugh, more bitter than not. “I don’t know. Not this. Not leaning on somebody else to see it through.” Her fingers went on working the black’s mane. “I have always been on my own.”

“You ain’t now,” Coal said. “You may not care for it. Don’t change it.”

She looked up at him then, and for a second she caught something in his face that was not duty and was not obligation, and it was gone again before she could take hold of it.

They walked on.

The marks came thicker as they went, scattered across the dunes and the flats, and it began to seem to Coal that they were not scattered at all. They were laid down in some order he could not read from the ground. The hum came up with them.

Grace slowed at one that curled through the sand near a foot deep. “That one,” she said, and stopped. “There is something about that one.”

“Keep moving.” Coal’s hand had found his Colt without being told. “Don’t study on it. We don’t know what it says, and I’d as soon not find out standing on top of it.”

She swallowed and nodded and came away, but she looked back at it twice.

“Why do you care?” she said, out of nothing. “What happens to me. Why does it matter to you at all?”

Coal walked a good ten steps before he answered, and he answered it looking straight ahead.

“Because I’ve buried my share,” he said. “And I’d not sleep good, leaving you out here to be somebody else’s burying.”

Grace did not say anything. But she had heard the shape of it, and she was quiet in a different way afterward, and once she looked over at him for longer than she meant to.

The hum grew as the night wore on until it was less a sound than a feeling in the jaw. The marks put off more light than they had any business putting off. Coal had the sensation of standing in the middle of somebody’s front room with the family watching from the dark, and he did not like it one bit.

“You think it’s Barren’s men?” Grace said, low.

“Maybe.” Coal looked out over the dunes. “Or maybe it’s worse than Barren.”

They came up over the next rise and Coal put a hand out and stopped her.

There in the sand, half filled and shallow but plain as print, was a line of boot tracks.

“Barren’s men,” he said. “They ain’t far.”

Grace’s face hardened up. She looked at the tracks and then at him and nodded once, and there was nothing else needed saying about it.

They went down the far side of the dune together and took up the trail.

They followed the boot tracks by moonlight, and the desert did its level best to take them away.

The trail dipped in and out of shadow and doubled where the ground went hard. Every gust filled a little more of it. Coal went down on his heel every hundred yards or so to put his fingers in a print and find which way the sand had drifted into it, which was slow work and thankless, and the kind of work he had done most of his life.

Grace kept beside him and watched him do it. She had been watching him for two days now the way a person studies a lock.

The black came along easy with the grass still bound around his hooves, making about as much noise as a thought. Coal put his hand on the horse’s neck when he stood up out of a crouch. It steadied him. He did not examine why.

At length he came up off a print and shook his head. “They’re close. But this sand’s playing tricks. Every time I get a clean line on ’em it fills in behind me.”

“Funny how the desert works against a man when he is chasing somebody,” Grace said. “I suppose it has no particular opinion about justice.”

Coal’s jaw set. She was reaching in to see what she could get hold of.

“This ain’t revenge,” he said. “It’s justice. Barren’s done more than you know about.”

“Justice.” She let the word out sideways. “Because riding a man down across a desert is such a noble line of work.”

Coal came up out of his crouch and faced her, and something moved behind his eyes that made her go still.

“You’ve got no idea what that man’s taken,” he said, quiet, “from people who were only trying to live decent in a place that don’t make it easy.”

Grace’s face changed. The sharpness went out of it. “Then tell me.”

Coal looked off east, past the dunes, as though he could see all the way back to the greenwood and the hole in the ground.

“There was a boy,” he said. “Lance McClint. Twelve years old. Carol McClint raised him by herself and made a good job of it.”

Grace waited.

“I met him one time.” Coal’s voice came down. “One time, mind. I rode into town dusty and looking for rye and my horse was hard-pressed, and that boy had the bit in his hand before I got the reins tied off. Didn’t ask. Just took hold of him, horse-sure as any grown hand, and he weren’t but as tall as the bat-wing doors.” Something that was nearly a smile went across his mouth and did not stay. “I offered to pay him for it. He shook his head at me. Wouldn’t take a cent.”

“So what did you do?”

“Took him a shot of rye out to the stable.” Coal shrugged. “Figured if he wouldn’t take money he wouldn’t turn down whiskey. Figured it might be his first, and he’d remember it a long while after he’d forgot my face.”

The wind moved across the flats and neither of them said anything into it.

“He was tending my horse when Barren shot him,” Coal said. “In the back. Over nothing at all. Not because that boy stood in his way. Because he could, and because everybody in that town would hear about it by supper, and that was the whole point of it.”

Grace’s hand had come up to her mouth.

“Kid like that,” Coal said. “In a town like that. He was about the only thing in forty miles worth being hopeful about.” He looked down at the sand. “Barren took him and left him laying there like a notice nailed to a post. And after that the whole place went quiet. You could feel it go out of them.”

He was silent a moment.

“He weren’t kin to me. I knew him the better part of an hour.” Coal’s eyes came up and there was nothing soft anywhere in them. “But he was one of the few things I had left that I believed in. So no, Grace. It ain’t revenge.” He turned back to the trail. “It’s making sure he don’t get to do it to somebody else’s boy.”

Grace’s voice, when it came, was small. “I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.”

They took up walking again, and what he had said walked along with them. Something had changed in the way they went. It was not friendliness exactly. It was the thing that comes of two people finding out they are carrying the same weight in different hands.

After a mile Grace said, “How can you even tell it is them?”

Coal crouched by a shallow dish in the sand and traced its edge without touching it. “There’s a pattern to it. Look how each one leans a hair to the left of the last. Group of men moving together will do that without knowing they do it, and it walks ’em west by a little every hour. Anybody else out here would have wandered off their line and been lost by now.”

Grace looked at the print and then at him with her eyebrow up. He got the impression she had revised her opinion of him again, and not downward.

They went on. The hours came off the night and Coal’s mind went back to the boy with his hand on the bit, and every print the wind took from him felt like something else being taken.

Which is why he almost walked past the mark.

It caught his eye wrong, and he stopped. It was cut into the flat sand off to their left, an ellipse maybe six feet across with lines inside it that looped and crossed and came back on themselves. It was not blown there. Somebody had put it there.

“What is that?” Grace said, keeping her voice down.

Coal crouched and brushed at the edge of it with the flat of his hand. The lines went down deeper than his fingers.

“That ain’t Barren’s men,” he said. “But it’s laid alongside their trail.”

“Another party, then. Somebody else hunting him.”

“No.” He sat back on his heels. “Them’s not tracks. Them’s writing.”

He could not have said how he knew. The thing did not look old, exactly. It did not look new either. It looked like it had been put there and then simply waited, and a chill went up the back of Coal’s neck the way it does when a man realizes he is not the first one to have this idea.

“Do you think it’s a warning?” Grace said.

“Maybe.” Coal stood and dusted his hands off. “Or maybe it’s something meant to be found. Something a body’s supposed to know before he goes any further.”

They walked on, and the marks came with them.

They were thicker now. Every few hundred yards there was another, and then closer than that, and they had begun to lean the same direction, the way iron filings lean toward a magnet. Coal did not care for the arithmetic of it.

“They are getting closer together,” Grace said. “It is as though they are pointing at something.”

“That, or somebody’s laid us a road and is waiting at the end of it.” Coal’s hand rested on his Colt.

The wind came up and brought a smell with it, thin and metallic, like a mouthful of pennies. Coal had smelled it once before, in the meadow with the burned cattle.

They came up over a dune and Grace caught his sleeve.

Out ahead, standing up out of the sand, something took the moonlight and threw it back.

They went toward it slow. It got no friendlier as they came on. It stood better than two men high, smooth as poured glass and dark, and the sand had drifted up one side of it the way sand drifts against anything that has stood still long enough. There were no seams in it. Around the base of it the marks were cut deep into the material itself, the same looping lines, running all the way around.

Grace stopped ten feet short. “This is old,” she said. “This is older than anything I have ever stood next to.”

Coal put his palm flat against it.

It was cool, and it was humming. Not loud. Just enough that he felt it come up his arm and settle behind his breastbone, keeping time with his own heart, which he liked least of all.

He took his hand back.

“It feels wrong,” he said. “Like it’s been stood here waiting on somebody.”

Grace was looking at the marks around the base. “Do you think this has anything to do with Barren?”

Coal turned and looked back the way they had come, at the long empty miles of it.

“If it don’t,” he said, “then we’ve walked into something a sight bigger than him.”

He gave the thing one more look, and then he turned his back on it, which took more out of him than he let on.

Forty yards on, the boot prints came up out of the sand again, leaning west by a little, the way they had all night.

Coal knelt, read them, and stood.

“Come on,” he said.

The desert has a rhythm to it, and a man who has lived in it long enough will notice when the rhythm goes wrong before he can tell you what went wrong about it.

Coal noticed. There was a low grumble somewhere off past hearing, more felt than heard, and the air had gone strange and flat.

“Grace,” he said.

She looked up. Before she could ask him what, the wind arrived.

It came all at once, the way it does out there. One minute the sand lay still and the next it was up around their boots and turning, and then it was up past their knees and stinging, and then the whole world went the color of a dirty sheet.

Coal got his bandana up over his face and got Grace by the shoulder and hauled her in against him.

“Keep hold of the horse!” he shouted, and the wind took the words out of his mouth and lost them somewhere.

The black stood into it. He put his head down and set his feet and let the storm come, the way a good horse will, and Coal took a fist of mane and hung onto that. Twenty years of country like this had taught him one lesson worth having: in a blow, the horse knows more than you do.

He could not see ten feet. Grace was a shape at his elbow and then a darker patch in the brown and then a shape again. He got his arm around her waist and clamped her in against his side and the two of them went forward like one clumsy animal, leaning on the wind the way you lean on a door that will not shut.

Then he saw the light.

It was out ahead of them and off to the left, a soft pulsing glow, and it was moving crossways to the wind. Nothing in a sandstorm moves crossways to the wind. Coal’s insides went cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.

He put his mouth near Grace’s ear. “You see that?”

She squinted into it and nodded. She had gone hard around the jaw. Whatever the light was, they were both looking at the same one, and Coal would have preferred she said no.

They pushed toward it because there was nothing else to push toward, and the storm shoved back at them like it had a stake in the matter.

Then Grace was not under his arm.

Coal turned and had nothing. He shouted her name and it went nowhere. He got one glimpse of her, twenty feet off and moving the wrong way, walking like a person walks in their sleep, and then the brown closed over her.

And the black tore loose.

The horse threw his head, wrenched the mane out of Coal’s fist, and was gone into it inside of two seconds.

Coal stood alone in the middle of it with the sand going through him.

He had stood in one other place like this, in a room in Nevada, holding a hand that was going cold, and he had learned there the same thing he was learning now, which is that a man can be entirely capable and entirely useless at the same moment.

He started forward. He did not know toward what.

Then a shape came up out of the brown, low and black and deliberate.

The black had his head down and he was walking, and he was walking a line, and Grace was against his shoulder with both hands wound into his mane, letting herself be brought.

Coal got to them and put his hand flat on the horse’s neck and found he had to wait a second before he trusted his voice.

“Good boy,” he said. “Good boy.”

Grace looked up at him out of a mask of dust. There was a crack in her that let a smile through.

“Seems he knows his way about better than the two of us put together,” she said, and her voice was scoured down to nothing.

“I’d say we owe him more’n a good feed,” Coal said.

And that was about when the storm let go of them. It went off across the flats grumbling, and behind it came the gray, and then the first real light of morning.

Coal found them a dip between two rocks where the wind could not reach, and they got down into it. He dug the grain pouch out and poured a handful and held it flat, and the black took it off his palm with his lip, unhurried, as though the night had been nothing much.

“You and me are square,” Coal told him quietly. “For now.”

He sat back against the rock and stretched his legs out and every part of him complained about it.

Grace sat down beside him and after a minute her head came over onto his shoulder. Coal did not move. He sat there and let her sleep on him and watched the light come up gold along the top of the rock, and he thought about how long it had been since anybody had gone to sleep against him, and then he made himself quit thinking about it.

Some while later she came awake. She did not sit up straight off. She let herself stay where she was another minute with her eyes shut and her cheek against his shirt, and Coal, who noticed most things, did not notice that.

Then she straightened and rolled her shoulders and said, “Well.”

Coal got up and knocked the dust off his hat. The sun was full up now and hard on the eyes.

“We ought to move,” he said.

He tightened the cinch and gave the black a slap on the neck. The horse shook out his mane and stood ready, which is more than Coal could say for himself.

Grace was looking off to the west, where the air went to water above the flats and something green sat shimmering in the middle of it.

She looked at that a long moment, and something in her face said she did not care for it. But she did not say so.

When they set out she walked in close, and her shoulder came against his arm and stayed a second before she went on ahead of him.

The desert went on the way it always does, and then it quit.

There was green ahead of them. Real green, the kind that has no business inside forty miles of that country. Cottonwoods stood up tall around a pool of water, and the water was clear, and the whole of it sat in the middle of the flats like a picture somebody had cut out and pasted where it did not belong.

Coal knew the desert’s idea of generous. Sage, thorn, a juniper if the ground was feeling charitable. This was not that.

“That does not make sense,” Grace said. She had stopped walking. “An oasis like that, out here? It is too fine. I do not trust it.”

“No,” Coal said. “It ain’t right.” He went forward anyway and crouched at the edge. “But water’s water and we’re bone dry.”

He put his hand in. It was cold enough to ache. He took a little and held it in his mouth a while before he swallowed it, and nothing happened to him, so he took some more.

The black put his nose down and drank deep and the tightness went out of his neck for the first time in two days.

Coal ran his hand along the horse’s shoulder and looked around and did not like anything he saw.

No flies. No bird sign. Not one track in the mud at the rim, and there ought to have been a hundred. In country like that, water means everything for ten miles around comes to it eventually. This water had not been come to.

“Coal,” Grace said. “There is something wrong here.”

He was already turning when the pool broke open.

The thing came up out of it without a sound worth mentioning. Long limbs first, too many joints in them, and then a body drawn tight over bones that stood out wrong, all of it a slick greenish gray that the light did not sit right on. Its eyes were flat and glassy and they came around and found them and stayed, and there was thinking going on behind them.

Grace’s knife was out. She backed a step.

“Stay back,” Coal said, and he had both Colts in his hands before he had decided to.

The thing made a noise low in itself and came on, unhurried, the way a thing comes on when it has done this before.

Coal shot it in the shoulder. It rocked back and something dark came out of the hole and ran down its arm, and then it straightened up and came on again.

So Coal went to work.

He emptied both guns into it. He put them in close and even, the way he had been taught by nobody, and the thing shuddered under each one and finally folded up and went down in the sand and stayed there.

The pool rippled. A second one was coming up out of it.

Coal swung the black around with his heel and had the Colts broke open and was thumbing shells in when Grace called out.

“Coal — there is a third.”

He looked. There was. It was rising slow out of the water at the far side, taking its time, and that was the part he liked least.

“You’re right,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

He put one more round into the nearest one to give it something to think about, got Grace up behind him, and put the black into a run.

They did not run alone. The things came out of the water after them and moved across that open ground far quicker than anything built like that ought to move, and the noise they made came along behind, low and wet and steady.

Coal fired back over his shoulder twice. It slowed them and did not stop them.

But somewhere out past a hundred yards, something began to go out of them. Their legs came down heavier. The noise thinned. Whatever the pool was giving them, they were getting less of it the farther they came.

All but one. That one kept up, close enough that Coal could hear it in the sand, close enough that its hand came out once toward the black’s flank.

Coal was reloading at a dead run and dropped two shells doing it, and swore.

Grace felt him fighting his own elbows. She let go of his waist and took hold of the cantle instead, and gave him his arms back without being asked.

He got both cylinders closed. They snapped home one after the other.

Coal hauled the black around hard and stood in the stirrups.

“That’s enough of you,” he said.

He fed it lead until there was nothing left worth feeding, and it came apart and went down and did not get up.

The other two stopped where they were. They stood a moment, working, and then they turned and dragged themselves back toward the water, and Coal sat and watched them go the whole way with both guns still up.

When there was nothing but flat country behind them he pulled up and got down and walked off ten paces and stood there with his fists closed.

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew that place was wrong the second I laid eyes on it.” He kicked a stone and it went nowhere. “Damn it.”

Grace came down off the black and got her breath. Her face had no color in it but her voice was level.

“You could not have known,” she said. “It looked like water. Anybody would have gone to it.”

“I don’t care to be made a fool of, Grace. Not out here.”

“Nor do I.” She came a step closer. “But we are standing here. Which is more than can be said for the ones back at the pool.”

Coal held onto it a while longer because he wanted to. Then it went out of him and he let out a breath.

“Well,” he said. “I ain’t been that mad in some years.”

Grace almost smiled. “I suppose we take what we can get.”

And she thought, privately and not for saying out loud, about a morning between two rocks when she had lain still with her cheek against his shirt and let him believe she was asleep.

What she said was: “You know what we did not see back there? Barren’s tracks. We have lost them, or those things found him first.” She looked out at the flats. “I would rather look him in the eye when he goes.”

Coal laughed, one dry note, but it was a real one. Some of the stiffness came out of his shoulders.

He put his boot in the stirrup and swung up, and Grace came up behind him and took hold, and they rode away from that green place under a white noon sun and did not look back at it.

Coal pulled up on the rim of a shallow bowl in the ground and sat looking down into it.

There were black patches scattered across the sand down there, and two or three of them were still putting up thin gray strings of smoke. He swung down and motioned Grace to come along quiet.

The smell got to them before they got to it. Burnt canvas and scorched leather, and under that the other thing, the sharp bitter tang like a mouthful of pennies. Coal had smelled it in the meadow with the cattle and again in the storm, and he was tired of smelling it.

He went down on one knee and turned over a piece of blackened canvas. It came apart in his fingers.

“This is Barren’s camp, all right.” He rubbed the char between finger and thumb. “Fire ain’t but a few hours cold.”

Grace crouched a little way off and turned something out of the sand with the toe of her boot. She picked it up and held it out to him. It was a length of metal off a rifle, twisted around on itself like a wrung-out rag and scorched black.

“That was not done by a campfire,” she said.

Coal took it and turned it over. A campfire will blacken a gun barrel. A campfire will not tie a knot in one.

“No,” he said. “And it ain’t Barren’s way of doing things neither. Barren’s a burner. This is too neat. Whatever done this went at it careful.”

He stood up and looked around the bowl and stopped looking.

There were marks in the sand. Deep ones, cut in hard, four lines together and then another four, scattered all through the camp at every angle. They looked like something had come through there clawing. They looked a little too much like it.

Grace came up beside him. “What do you make of it?”

“One of two things,” Coal said. “Either Barren wants us spooked and he’s gone to considerable trouble arranging it.” He looked at the nearest set of marks. “Or he’s throwed in with something that don’t need to go to any trouble at all. Because them ain’t a man’s hands. Nor a bear’s, nor a cat’s, nor anything else that walks around here.”

“Then he is not only covering his trail,” Grace said slowly. “He is leaving us word.”

“Or setting a trap.” Coal’s hand closed on the twisted barrel and he dropped it in the sand. “Either way he don’t get to walk off from it. Mount up.”

They picked up boot prints on the north lip of the bowl and followed them out.

They rode a while before Grace spoke again.

“That smell back there.”

“It ain’t wood smoke,” Coal said. “Metal. Like a smithy, only cold.”

“Whatever made it,” Grace said, “I do not believe it happened by accident.”

The wind changed on them then, and brought the tang up strong, and Coal reined in without meaning to.

“Hold up.”

They stepped down and went ahead on foot. There was ground here that had been worked over, sand kicked into ridges, more scorched bits scattered through it, and a line of something that caught the light leading away toward a low ridge to the northwest.

Coal crouched with a Colt already in his hand and put two fingers beside a print in the sand. It was deep in the toe. A man had gone off from the others here, and gone off in a hurry.

“There,” he said. “One of ’em split away toward that ridge.”

Grace’s hand had found the derringer in her pocket and stayed there, which they both knew was not going to be equal to anything they were likely to meet.

“If Barren has left a trail for us,” she said, “he will not be standing at the end of it with his hat in his hand.”

“Good.” Coal squinted past the ridge. The sky out that way had gone the color of a bruise and was moving. “Storm’s coming. He gets that storm between us and him, we lose two days. So we don’t let him have it.”

They went up fast after that, the black eating the ground, and the light going down out of the sky ahead of schedule.

A quarter mile short of the ridge the smell came up so strong Coal put his bandana over his face. He pulled the horse up, and the two of them went low and worked their way to the crest on their bellies.

Below them, in a hollow out of the wind, three men stood around a dead fire. They had rifles and they had the look of men who had been told to wait somewhere and were not enjoying it. Coal knew the outfit by the way they wore their hats.

One of them turned and saw the shapes on the ridge and his face went ugly.

Coal came up onto his feet with both Colts out.

“Drop it,” he said.

They did not drop it. Coal had not really thought they would. They scattered like quail and came up shooting, and the hollow filled with noise.

What happened after that took less time than it takes to tell it. Coal had been doing this a long while and he did it without hurrying, one and then the next, and the sand kicked up around his boots twice and neither one was close.

The third man came in low with a knife because his rifle had jammed on him. Coal stepped off the line of it and shot him twice going past.

Then it was quiet again, and there was that ringing in the ears that comes after, and the smell of powder laying over the other smell.

Coal broke the Colts open and thumbed out the brass and reloaded before he did anything else, because that was a habit that had kept him alive.

“We’re close,” he said. “Too close now for him not to know we’re behind him.”

Grace had come down off the ridge. “Do you think he is drawing us into something worse?”

“If he is,” Coal said, “he’ll wish he hadn’t.”

But Grace was not looking at him. She was looking at the ground beside the man who had come in with the knife, where a good Colt’s revolver lay in the sand with the lanyard still on it.

She stood over it a while. Coal watched her do it and did not say anything, because he knew what she was working out. There is a particular unpleasantness in taking a thing off a man you have just watched die, and no way around it but through.

She bent and picked it up.

She swung the gate and turned the cylinder and looked at the loads, and did it like somebody who had done it before, and then she shifted her hand on the grip twice until it sat where she wanted it.

Coal came over. “Good choice,” he said. “That’s a better piece than the one in your pocket.” He touched her wrist and moved her hand a quarter inch. “Hold it firm right there. She’ll climb on you otherwise.”

Grace adjusted and nodded once.

Something had changed and neither of them remarked on it. She had come out of that meadow a woman he had stopped to help. She was not that now.

“We’ll want every edge we can get hold of,” Coal said. “Next time Barren shows his face, he don’t get it so easy.”

They climbed up onto the black together and rode north under a sky that had gone black at the edges and was coming on fast.

She lay along the top of the ridge where the rock was the same color as she was and watched the two of them come up the wash below.

She knew the man. She had known him the moment he came out of the heat shimmer, by the way he sat a horse and by the particular stillness in him. He had cut a rope off her once when there was nothing in it for him. He walked differently now. There was a purpose in it that had not been there in the stone rooms above the river, and it was aimed at something ahead of him.

The woman beside him was new. She moved like someone who expected the ground to have opinions. Her hand went to her hip every few steps without her thinking about it. That one, too, was a fighter.

She had no word for the thing that kept her on that ridge. There was a debt, and the debt had not been settled, and she had decided some days ago that she would go where he went until it was.

Down in the wash, Coal caught a shine along the ridgeline out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and there was nothing on it but rock and sky.

He let it go and looked ahead, where the canyon mouth opened up between two walls that went up better than a hundred feet and leaned in at the top.

“This place feels like it has been waiting on us,” Grace said.

“Canyons don’t care who walks into ’em,” Coal said. “They keep what they want and let the rest go out the other end.”

They went in.

Grace kept close on his left and her eyes went along every crack and shelf. The black came behind with the sage still bound on his hooves, and the sound he made on the packed floor was a soft irregular knocking that came back off the walls a half second late.

The cold came down on them thirty yards in. It was the kind of cold that lives in stone and never gets a look at the sun, and it settled on the back of the neck.

Coal stopped and went down on his heel.

There was a boot print in the dust, and the edge of it was still sharp.

“Somebody’s come through here,” he said. “And not long ago.”

“Barren’s men?”

“Could be.” He stood and looked up the canyon where it bent out of sight. “If they know we’re behind ’em, they’ll have picked a spot. We go slow.”

They went slow. The walls stepped up higher at every turn, and there were old markings on them, cut shallow and mostly weathered off, spirals and hands and things that had meant something to somebody a long time back. Shadows sat in every fold of the rock.

Around a wide bend the floor tilted and narrowed into a ledge with a gorge dropping away on the right. It was wide enough for the horse and not much wider. Coal put himself on the outside and let Grace have the wall.

Her boot turned a loose stone and it went over the edge and rattled the whole way down, and she stopped where she stood.

“Eyes front,” Coal said. “What’s down there ain’t your business.”

She let out a breath and came on, and they got across it.

Past the next bend something caught the light in the dust and Coal bent and came up with a knife.

It was a working knife, the blade taken down narrow by a lot of years on a stone, the handle scarred. He turned it over. Burned into the butt of the handle was a brand, a bar with a wide-open B under it.

He held it up so Grace could see.

“Barren ranch,” he said. “That’s their iron. Ain’t a man on that outfit would walk off and leave a knife like this on purpose.”

Grace’s eyes went narrow. “Then he came through here.”

“He came through here in a hurry.”

They went on with more care after that. The canyon had gotten into Coal, the way a room will when somebody has just left it. He had the feeling of being looked at, and it did not come from ahead of him. It came from up.

Grace felt it too. She had drifted in until her shoulder was near his arm and he did not think she knew she had done it.

Then, from somewhere far up the canyon, there came a sound. It was thin and high and it went up and came down again, and it had almost the shape of music in it.

Grace stopped dead. “You heard that.”

“Wind,” Coal said.

It was not the wind, and they both let the lie stand because there was nothing to be gained by taking it apart.

Above them she moved along the rim, keeping pace, keeping low. She could smell something in this canyon that the two below could not, and it was the smell of her own people, and it was ahead of them.

Coal looked up again. This time he caught it square, a shimmer against the rock like heat coming off a stove, and it was gone before he could fix on it.

The path bent again and let them out into a small open place where a single bar of sunlight came down through a gap and lay on the stone.

There was brass in the dust. A dozen loose cartridges, scattered like somebody had spilled them out of a hand while walking fast.

Coal picked one up and rolled it in his fingers and put it in his vest pocket.

“He’s close,” he said.

Grace’s hand had settled on the butt of the revolver she had taken off the man in the hollow.

They moved back into the shadow of the wall and went on, and the canyon narrowed down again around them, and the cold got into everything.

Once they stopped, the both of them breathing harder than the walking accounted for, and they looked at each other. Coal saw that her jaw had come unset. She had that scoured-down look people get when they have run out of the energy to keep up an expression.

Neither of them said anything. There was not any call for it.

They came out of the canyon in the late afternoon into open country and a gust of sand that made Grace pull her hat down. Ahead the flats ran out to the edge of the world and gave no promise of anything.

Coal’s eye went to the ridges on the left, and there it was again, that shine, and then there was rock and sky and nothing else.

She was out there. She was staying with them.

“Let’s keep moving,” he said.

He touched his heels to the black and they went out into it.

They came out of the cold of the canyon into a morning that was already too bright, and the flats opened up ahead of them in tan and ochre with nothing standing on them anywhere.

Grace pulled her hat down and squinted out at it. “How far?”

“Depends what we’re going toward,” Coal said.

By midday he had an answer.

There was a thread of smoke standing up on the horizon, thin and straight, the only vertical thing in forty miles.

“You see that.”

Grace shaded her eyes. “A fire. It is too far out on its own to be a camp of any size.”

“Could be a signal,” Coal said. “Could be somebody sitting beside it waiting on us.”

They looked at each other and neither of them offered a third possibility, and Coal touched his heels to the black.

The ground changed under them a mile on. The sand thinned off and gave way to hardpan, gray and cracked, and there were marks cut into it.

Coal got down.

They were the same looping lines they had been finding for three days, only these were cut deeper and truer, burned into the hardpan rather than scratched, and when the sun went behind a thin place in the cloud the lines held a light of their own for a second after the sun quit.

“Barren’s work?” Grace said, low, the way people talk in a church they are not members of.

“No.” Coal did not touch this one. “This ain’t anything I’ve come across.”

That was when the hum started.

It came up out of the ground into his boots, and then it was in the air, and then it was loud enough that the black threw his head and started sidling. Coal got a hand on the bridle and held him and looked up.

Two shapes had come over the horizon and were closing fast. They were long and smooth and they caught the sun off their sides, and they came on without rising or falling the way a bird does, straight and level and wrong.

Coal had seen the like once, in the dark, behind a hill, when he had been too busy staying on a bolting horse to look properly.

“We need cover,” he said, and even as he said it he was looking at four square miles of open pan with not so much as a decent rock on it.

Grace had the revolver out.

“Put it up,” Coal said. “That ain’t going to answer for this.”

The machines came over them and split and went around in a circle, and the hum came down through the tops of their hats. Then one of them dropped.

It came down easy and hung a few feet off the ground with dust boiling out from under it, and a hatch came open in the side of it, and something stepped down onto the pan.

She was tall and thin and her skin took the light the way a beetle’s back does, and her eyes were black the whole way across.

Coal’s breath went out of him.

“It’s her,” he said.

Grace’s head came round. “The one from the rocks? The one you cut loose?”

She came toward them, unhurried, her eyes on Coal and not moving off him. Grace saw, as she came closer, a thin silver line running down her cheek that had not been there before.

Ten feet off she stopped and brought one hand up slow, palm out. Coal could not have said whether that meant hello or stop, and he suspected it meant both.

Then the second machine came down behind her and a second hatch opened.

The one that stepped out of it was shorter and thicker through the body and it was wearing something dark and plated, and it had a weapon up and leveled and pointed at Coal’s chest.

She moved before Coal did. She came around and put herself between him and the muzzle.

The armored one made a noise, low and grinding, and there was nothing friendly in it.

She answered. Her voice came out in quick hard syllables, and whatever she said, she said it like somebody who was accustomed to being obeyed, and the armored one shifted its feet.

Then she looked back over her shoulder at Coal.

It was half a second. But Grace was watching, and Grace saw it, and there was nothing in it of duty or debt or business of any kind. It was the look of somebody checking that a particular person is still all right.

Grace’s hand came down off the revolver and hung at her side, and something turned over in her that she did not have a name for and did not much enjoy.

Coal saw none of it. Coal was watching the gun.

The armored one brought the weapon up again.

She raised her hand and there was a flash off her palm, white and total, and Coal’s eyes went to nothing but green swimming. When they cleared, the armored one was ten feet back on the pan and not getting up quickly.

Coal did not stand around to see how the argument came out. He got a fist in Grace’s sleeve.

“Go. Now.”

They were up and the black was running before the dust had settled, and behind them the machines came up off the ground with a noise like a mountain clearing its throat.

Grace looked back once.

She was still standing there in the middle of it with the dust going around her and one hand up, holding her ground, getting smaller.

They ran the black until the hum was gone out of the air and then a while longer, and the pan broke up into rock and low broken country that a person could get into. The sun was going down red behind them.

Coal pulled up at a cluster of boulders and stepped off.

“We’ll lay up here,” he said. “Move again when it’s full dark.”

Grace got down and walked the black into the deepest shadow and stood a minute with her hand on his neck, watching the sky.

They settled in with the rocks at their backs.

For a long while neither said anything. Coal turned it over and could not make it come out. She had put herself in front of a gun for him. Twice now she had been in a bad spot and both times he had been standing in it with her, and only one of those times had it been his doing.

“What is it she wants?” Grace said at last.

Coal watched the last of the light go off the top of the rocks.

“She don’t mean us harm,” he said. “That much I’d put money on. Whatever she’s after, I figure it’s got to do with that other one.” He nodded back the way they had come. “That weren’t a friendly conversation they were having.”

The cold came in. Grace got a small fire going out of nothing much, greasewood and a little dry root, and it burned low and mean and gave off more comfort than heat.

They took the night in turns.

Grace slept first. Coal sat with his back to the rock and his Colt across his thigh and watched the dark, and listened to the small sounds the desert makes when it thinks nobody is up.

When he woke her for her turn she sat up and looked at him a moment before she was properly awake, and gave him a tired scrap of a smile, and took the watch.

Coal lay down and put his hat over his face.

Whatever was out there ahead of them, and there was plainly a good deal of it, he was not going to be meeting it by himself. He had not been able to say that in a long while.

He went to sleep.

Barren’s Hollow sat out on the flat with the sun straight up over it, and it had the look of a place the desert was in no hurry to finish but intended to get around to.

Gray board buildings gone silver where the paint had given up. Dust in the street deep enough to take a boot to the ankle. Not a soul on the walk at midday, which told Coal most of what he needed to know about who ran it.

He reined in at the edge of town and stepped down. Grace came off behind him and stood a moment, and something in the way she stood made him look at her twice.

She had gone somewhere behind her own eyes and come back with a plan.

Then, without a word about it, she reached up and undid the top of her shirt, and then the next one, and pulled the whole of it down off her shoulders an inch and tugged it tight and tucked it in a way that changed the geography considerably. She pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it loose and it came down around her face in a manner Coal had not previously had occasion to consider.

Coal’s mouth went dry as the street.

He had ridden two hundred miles with this woman. He had watched her load a dead man’s revolver and check the cylinder like a bank clerk counting money. He had not, until this exact moment, been obliged to notice one or two other facts about her, and now that he was obliged, he was finding it difficult to arrange his face.

Grace looked up and caught him at it.

“Coal,” she said. “You are staring.”

He got his eyes up to the level of hers and kept them there by main force. “Just — see that you’re careful in there.”

“Careful.” She raised an eyebrow. “You believe I cannot manage a few looks?”

“I’m saying don’t take them men lightly.” His voice had come out rougher than he meant it. “They ain’t accustomed to a woman like you.”

Grace tipped her head, and there was something wicked working at the corner of her mouth.

“That,” she said, “is rather the point.”

She winked at him. Then she turned and went off down the middle of that dusty street with a walk she had not used one time in two hundred miles, and every window she passed acquired a face.

Coal took the black’s reins and led him toward the stable and had a word with himself along the way about what he was and was not entitled to feel about any of it. The word did not take.

Inside the saloon the air was brown with old smoke.

Grace came through the bat-wings and let them swing behind her and gave the room a moment to get a good look. It took the moment. Every head at the bar came around. Two women working the far end of the room went over her like tax assessors and did not care for the assessment.

She crossed to the bar unhurried, ordered a whiskey, and took it slow, and let her eyes go around the room over the top of the glass.

She did not have to wait long.

The one who came was big through the shoulders, three days unshaved, and he had the particular ease of a man who is somebody’s right hand in a town where that means something.

“Passing through?”

“Perhaps.” Grace turned toward him and leaned a little on the bar. “Though there seems to be more to this place than shows from the road.”

“Depends on what you saw.”

“Something out past the canyons.” She let it sit, and took another sip, and did not go on until he had leaned in.

“Secrets don’t come cheap in this town,” he said.

“I have never minded paying.” She looked up at him. “Provided it is worth the money.”

He grinned at that, and Grace knew she had him hooked, and now she had only to be careful not to horse the line.

“There were marks out north,” she said, pitching it just loud enough to carry three men down the bar. “Cut into the ground. Big ones, all looped around on themselves.” She paused. “I would swear they were giving off a light.”

The room changed. It was small, but it was there — a couple of conversations quit, and a chair turned.

“Marks,” the big man said, and the ease had gone out of him. “You’re certain of that.”

“It may have been shadow.” Grace shrugged one shoulder, which cost her nothing and bought a great deal. “It looked like light to me. I thought somebody hereabouts might know the meaning of them.”

She put two fingers on his sleeve and left them there.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Barren might have an interest in hearing that.”

“Then I shall be here, if he cares to find me.” She let her hand come away slow. “Though I ought to warn you. There is another one out for that same country. Fellow named Coal.” She said it lightly, like a thing barely worth mentioning. “He seems to believe there is a weapon out there. What he wants with it I could not tell you.”

The big man’s face did something interesting.

“We been looking for him,” he said. “Obliged to you.”

“Thank a girl later,” Grace said. “And properly, if you take my meaning.”

She smiled at him, and turned, and went out through the room slow enough to be certain of it, and the bat-wings clapped behind her.

Out in the street she squared her hat, buttoned her collar back up to where she liked it, and walked to the stable without hurrying and without looking back.

Coal was standing in the stable door.

“How’d it go?” he said, and it came out about two degrees rougher than a civil question.

“Hook, line, and sinker.” Grace pulled the pins out of her pocket and started putting her hair back up. “That one at the bar is Barren’s, straight through. He will have a rider out before dark.”

Coal looked past her toward the saloon, and his hands opened and closed once.

“You surely made an impression.”

“It worked, did it not?” She got the last pin in and looked at him steady. “Or had you some other notion for how I was to get their attention?”

“Didn’t figure you’d go the whole distance with it, is all.”

“You did not think I had it in me.”

Coal opened his mouth and thought better of whatever was in it. “Just be careful,” he said.

Grace’s eyes stayed on him a second longer than she needed. Then she went past him into the dark of the stable.

They laid it out there in the shadow with the black shifting behind them: where the spires stood, where the cover was, which way Barren would come in and which way he would run when it went bad for him. Coal drew it in the dirt with a stick and rubbed out the parts he did not like and drew them again.

His mind kept walking back down that street after her, and he kept calling it to heel.

By the time they had it settled the sun was low and coming in the stable door flat and orange.

Grace put her shoulders back against the wall.

“Do you think he will come?”

Coal shifted to make room and the back of his hand went against hers. Neither of them moved it.

“He’ll come,” Coal said. “You handed that man a story about a weapon and a stranger who wants it. Barren can’t let that lay.”

“Good.” She was looking at him. “I am growing weary of waiting.”

Coal found he could not get his eyes to go anywhere else.

Then the last of the light went off the stable floor, and they took up their guns and went out to get into position.

They went out to the spires in the last of the twilight, the three of them moving quiet across ground that had gone the color of a old bruise.

The things stood up out of the sand for a quarter mile in every direction, tall and thin and canted over, some of them broken off halfway, metal that the desert had been working on for longer than anybody had been keeping count. They threw shadows that did not fall the way shadows ought to. And they hummed, low, right at the bottom of hearing, the way a telegraph wire hums in a wind.

Coal had picked the place for the cover. He was liking it less as they got into it.

“You are certain about this,” Grace said. She had the rifle she had taken off the man in the hollow, and she was looking up at the nearest spire. “This place does not feel right.”

“It’s what we’ve got.” Coal put the black behind a fallen plate of the stuff and tied him short. “Out on the open flat they’d ride us down inside a mile. In here they’ve got to come to us one at a time.”

That had been the arithmetic. The arithmetic changed about ten minutes later.

They came over the far ridge in a line, and Coal counted, and then counted again because he did not care for the first number.

“How many?” Grace said.

“Two dozen. Give or take.”

He kept his voice flat about it. They had planned this for six.

Barren was out in front. Coal knew him by the way the others sat back off him half a length, and by the voice, which came across the flat ahead of the men themselves, barking them into a line.

Then the desert took a hand.

There was a whine, high and rising, and it climbed up out of hearing and the ground jumped. All through the field the old metal came alive at once. Plates shot up out of the sand and slammed into place, and long jointed arms of the stuff came up out of the ground and stood over the whole business like something waking up in a bad temper.

Half of Barren’s men were suddenly in pockets they could not get out of.

“What in God’s name is that?” one of them hollered.

“Hold steady!” Barren’s voice came up hard. “It’s rusted junk. It’s been laying there a hundred years.”

Grace had gone down flat behind a plate beside Coal.

“I do not suppose,” she said, “that you knew these things would do that.”

“Not in my wildest dreams,” Coal said.

She put the rifle over the top of the plate and shot a man who had climbed up on a beam to see better, and he came off it.

Coal put his own rifle up beside her and went to work.

For a while it was theirs. The men were penned and confused and shooting at the machinery as much as at anything, and every time one of them broke for open ground he had to come across forty yards of nothing.

But Coal was watching the spires, and the spires were dying.

The lights along them had gone from steady to a flicker. One of the big arms started up out of the sand, got halfway, shuddered, and settled back down with a noise like a door closing in an empty house. The hum was thinning out.

“They are getting through,” Grace said. “Two on the left. That wall came down.”

“Then we make it cost ’em.” Coal shifted his aim.

Out in the middle of it Barren was on his feet in the open, which took more sand than Coal wanted to credit him with.

“Quit your panicking!” he was shouting. “You run now and I’ll see to you myself before they get the chance!”

One of his men was down behind a plate with his hat off and his face white. “Boss, this ain’t what we signed for. This place is alive.”

“Alive or dead, we ain’t turning tail. Shut up and look sharp.”

Grace worked the lever and did not take her eye off the field. “That is not what they came for. Will they break?”

“Barren’s the only thing holding ’em together,” Coal said. “Take him out of it and they’ll be gone by noon.”

The last of the light went out of the spires. The hum quit altogether, and the silence that came in behind it was worse. Now the field was just broken metal standing in the dark, and men moving through it, and both sides waiting on the other one to be first.

Coal heard them talking, low, thirty yards off.

“What do we do now?”

“I say we get clear before them things start up again.”

“Hold your ground!” Barren, from somewhere off to the right.

Grace put her mouth near Coal’s ear. “Listen to him. He is talking to keep his own courage up. He is as rattled as any of them.”

“If he was half as sure as he sounds,” Coal said, “he’d have come at us himself an hour ago.”

A gun went off somewhere on the left and the whole thing started again.

It went on a long time. They moved twice, working around behind the plates, and every time Barren’s men decided where the shooting was coming from it was not coming from there anymore.

“They’re like ghosts,” Coal heard one of them say. “They’re everywhere at once.”

“They’re flesh and blood the same as you,” Barren shouted. “Now fire!”

But the bluster had gone thin, and every man in that field could hear it.

The sky went gray behind the ridge, and then rose, and the spires came up out of the dark as plain black shapes with the light behind them. Coal’s arms ached. There was grit in the action of his rifle and grit in his teeth.

And then there was nobody left shooting.

The field lay quiet in the early light. What was left of Barren’s two dozen was scattered in the sand or gone over the ridge and still going.

Barren stood alone in the middle of it.

He had lost his hat. There was blood down one sleeve and his shirt had come out of his belt on the one side, and he stood there in that field of dead machinery and looked at the two of them coming toward him.

Coal brought the rifle up.

“It’s done, Barren,” he said. “You’re out of men and you’re out of luck.”

Barren’s lip curled. He got the sneer up on his face, but he could not get anything behind it.

“This land is mine,” he said. “You don’t take it from me.”

Grace came up on Coal’s shoulder and put her own rifle to hers, and her voice was as cold as the morning.

“Not anymore,” she said.

The desert had gone quiet the way it does right after sunup, before the heat gets going and the wind remembers what it is for.

They stood twenty feet apart in the middle of all that dead metal, and the long shadows of the spires lay across the sand between them like bars.

Grace had walked off with the black and stopped a good way out. She did not turn her back and she did not come closer. She had understood what this was without being told.

Barren got the sneer up again. It was about all he had left.

“You figure this makes you the better man?” he said. “Riding two hundred miles to shoot me?” He spat in the sand. “You ain’t a thing but what I am. Another killer standing in the dirt. Only you got a dead boy’s name to hide behind.”

Coal did not answer him. He stood easy with his hands where they belonged and looked at him, and the looking went on long enough that Barren shifted his feet.

“You think that kid would be proud of you?” Barren tried again, louder. “Dragging his name across the desert. Throwing your life after a ghost.” He wet his lips. “He was soft, Coal. He wouldn’t have lasted another year out here and you know it.”

Coal felt that one go in. He did not let it show on him.

“You never knew him,” he said.

“I knew enough.”

“No.” Coal’s voice stayed level. “You wouldn’t have understood the first thing about what made that boy strong.”

Barren laughed, and it came out wrong, too high and too short. “Strong. That boy wasn’t anything. A little shadow leaning on whoever come through town, because he hadn’t the spine to stand up on his own.”

“He had the bit in his hand before I got my reins tied off,” Coal said. “He wouldn’t take my money. Twelve years old and he wouldn’t take my money.” He let that stand a second. “He was more than you’ll ever get around to being. That boy had heart, and you wouldn’t know heart if it walked up and slapped your hat off.”

The sneer went crooked and slid.

“Heart.” Barren’s hand had begun to drift. “You come all this way to kill a man over a dead boy’s heart. You’re wasting yourself, Coal. And when I’m down you’ll be exactly what I am. Another one with blood dried on him.”

“Maybe so,” Coal said. “But I’ll ride out of here knowing I did right by that boy. You won’t be riding out of here at all.”

That was the end of the talking, and both of them knew it. Barren’s face gave up trying to be anything.

“Draw on three, then,” he said, and set himself.

Coal moved his hand two inches and let it hang.

“One—”

“Two—”

Barren went for it on two.

Coal had been expecting it since the word draw. There are men who will call the count and men who will keep it, and Barren had never in his life kept anything.

Barren’s pistol went off and the bullet went into the sand a yard short of Coal’s boot, because a man who is in that much of a hurry is not really aiming at anything.

Coal’s Colts came up out of the leather the way they had ten thousand times in his hands and a few times when it counted.

The first one turned Barren’s shoulder. He got the pistol partway up again and Coal put the second one through him, and then the third, and Barren went back a step for each one until his legs quit having opinions and he went down in the sand and did not move.

The echoes went out across the flats and came back thin off the spires and then there was nothing at all, except the small dry click of Coal’s hammer falling on an empty chamber. He had not noticed running out.

He stood there with the two guns hanging and his breath going hard.

He had thought about this a hundred nights. He had pictured it from the greenwood all the way across the desert, and every time he pictured it there had been something at the end of it, some settling, some square feeling.

There was none. There was a dead man in the sand and a smell of powder and the sun coming up on another day he was going to have to get through.

He waited to see whether anything else would arrive. Nothing did. What came instead was a kind of setting down, the way it feels to put a load off your shoulder after you have carried it so long you had stopped noticing the weight of it.

Out past the spires, Grace stood holding the black.

She had watched every bit of it, and her face had nothing on it that Coal could read. She did not look pleased for him. She did not look away from him either.

Coal put the Colts back in the leather and walked out to her.

He put his hand flat on the black’s neck when he got there and left it a moment, because the horse was warm and alive and had carried him the whole distance.

“It’s done,” he said.

Grace nodded. She looked out at the horizon and not back at the body, which Coal took as a kindness.

She did not ask him whether it had been worth it. She did not tell him he had done right. She stood there and let him have his own minute, and Coal understood, not for the first time, that she was a good deal smarter about people than he was.

He turned once and looked back.

Barren lay small out there in all that space, with the broken machinery standing over him, and the desert already beginning the long business of covering him up. There was nothing more Coal wanted from him. Whatever was owed on account of a twelve-year-old boy who would not take a stranger’s money, it was paid now, as near as it could be paid in this world.

Coal found he could put the boy down and let him rest, and that was the only thing he got out of it, and it turned out to be enough.

He got a boot in the stirrup and swung up. Grace came up beside him.

They rode out east with the sun climbing in front of them and neither of them said a word for a long while, and everything that wanted saying rode along with them and waited its turn.

They had not made a hundred yards when the grinding started behind them.

Coal brought the black around. One of the spires, a big one that had stood canted over since before anybody’s grandfather, had opened down its length like a seed pod, and there was a darkness inside it, and the darkness was coming out.

They came down onto the sand one after another. Tall, and put together heavy through the shoulder, in dark plate that lay over them in overlapping bands. Their eyes were black clear across, the same as hers, and they did not blink. Each one carried something long that was made of the same stuff as the armor, and each of those things gave off a low hum that Coal could feel in his fillings.

Coal was already down off the horse. He got the black turned and put him behind a fallen plate and stood Grace on the other side of it.

“Those are no desert raiders,” Grace said.

“No.” Coal had both Colts out. “Stay to cover. Don’t waste anything on the plate — go at the gaps. Under the arm and up the throat.”

The armored ones came apart into a line without any of them appearing to give an order about it.

Coal fired first. The bullet went off the chest plate of the nearest one and screamed away into the morning, and the thing rocked back a half step and came on again, making a noise down in itself like a millstone turning.

After that they worked.

Grace’s rifle cracked and one of them took it in the shoulder joint where the bands did not meet, and it let out a hiss and dropped its weapon and picked it back up left-handed. Coal put two into the same gap on another and got it down onto one knee.

But there were five of them and the plate was doing its job, and Coal had time to think that this was not a fight they were going to win by being right about anatomy.

Then she came out of the shadow of the spire.

She crossed the open ground fast and put herself square between Coal and the line of them, and she turned her head and looked back at him for half a second.

There was no telling what was in it. Coal had not the first idea how to read that face. But he had cut a rope off her once in the dark, and she had stood in front of a gun for him on the hardpan, and now she was doing it again, and a man does not need a shared language to follow an argument like that.

She made a sound, one short hard syllable.

Coal did not know the word. He knew what it meant. It meant get ready.

Her hand came up and the light went out of the world for a beat, and when it came back the nearest of them was down on the sand ten feet from where it had been standing.

“Now,” Coal said, and he and Grace went to work on the gaps while the things were still off balance.

He put one down for good, low through the side where it had turned to face her instead of him. Grace took another through the neck as it came around a plate.

One of them got in close to her with the blade end of its weapon and she turned it aside with her forearm, quick, and hit it with another pulse that put it on its back.

She was fast. She was faster than anything Coal had ever watched move.

And then the big one came in on her off her blind side and she did not turn in time.

Coal saw the blade go in low along her ribs. He heard the sound she made.

“Grace — put fire on that one!” he shouted, and he came out from behind the plate into the open, which was a foolish thing to do and he did it anyway, and he emptied both Colts into the big one from twelve feet, working up from the hip until he found the place where the bands ran out.

It came down.

The last of them turned and brought its weapon around on Coal, and Coal was standing there with two empty guns.

He went sideways. The thing missed him by a foot and a half, and Coal had the rifle up off the sand where Grace had dropped it and put two rounds through the front of its face, and it folded up and did not move again.

Then the field was quiet.

Coal turned around.

She was on her knees in the sand with one hand pressed against her side, and there was something dark coming out between her fingers that caught the light in colors.

He got to her and went down and took her weight against his arm, the way he had held her once before in a stone room by the river, rocking her like a farmer rocks a stillborn calf, trying to start something that had already decided to stop.

She looked up at him. The black had gone out of her eyes in patches, going gray at the edges like a fire settling.

She got her hand up off her side and put it against his cheek. It was light as a bird.

She could not talk. She had never been able to talk, not so he could understand it. But she had come a long way across that desert behind him without ever once letting him see her, and she had put herself between him and a gun twice, and she was looking at him now the same way she had looked at him then. Coal had a wife once who used to look at him like that across a supper table, and he had thought he was done being looked at that way, and he had been wrong about it.

“Thank you,” he said. His voice came out wrecked. “For all of it. Thank you.”

She held on another breath, and then another, and then she did not.

Her hand came off his face and went down into the sand.

Coal knelt there a while. Then he laid her out straight, and folded her hands the way you do, and turned her face up out of the dirt, and sat back on his heels.

Grace had come up. She stood a little way off with her hat in her hands and her head down, and she stayed like that until Coal was ready.

“We ought to go,” she said.

Coal nodded. He got up and looked once around at the spires and the dead machinery and the shapes lying in the sand, and then he did not look at any of it again.

He helped Grace up onto the black and swung up behind her, and they rode east.

They went most of the day. The country came up green at the edges by late afternoon, the first black dirt in a week, and the black smelled water somewhere out ahead and picked up his feet about it.

They could have pushed on to town. Neither of them said so. They made camp instead in a stand of cottonwood with the light going long and gold through it.

Coal helped her down. They stood there in the grass a minute, the two of them, neither one finding anything to say.

It was over. That was the plain fact and it was going to take some getting used to. There was nobody left to hunt and nobody left to fight and no reason on God’s earth to be up before dawn tomorrow.

Grace pushed her hair back off her face.

“Well, Coal,” she said. “What now?”

“We work it out, I reckon.” He turned his hat over in his hands. “One day at a time, same as anybody.”

She reached over and put her hand flat on his chest, and left it there, and he knew she could feel his heart going.

“Do you suppose there is a life out there for us?” she said. “Somewhere away from all of this.”

Coal put his hand over hers.

“I think there just might be.”

They stood close in the cottonwood shade. Whatever had been between them since the meadow — all the miles of it, the derringer in his belly, the storm, the whole hard business — had gotten quiet, and something easier had come up in its place.

Coal brought his hand up to her face and put his thumb along her cheek, careful, the way a man handles something he is not certain he is allowed to touch.

Grace tipped her head into it. She let him see, for once, that she was afraid of something.

Then she reached up and slid her fingers along the back of his neck and brought him down, and she kissed him, and it was soft, and it had two hundred miles in it.

They came apart and stood with their foreheads together, breathing the same cooling air.

“Wherever we go,” Grace whispered, “I’m with you.”

Coal smiled, a rare softness in his eyes. “And I’m with you.”

❦