“I’d prefer you being three counties over,” he said. “But if you insist on being here, I want you safe, out of sight.”
“They took my shotgun,” she said. “But today I can ride over to Carl Jospers and ask to borrow his. Tell him I need to shoot some rabbits.”
“Good,” he said. “But we just need it for your protection. I don’t want you out in a firefight. In the meantime, I need to get some practice in with that rifle. You have some way of sending Sturgess a message?”
“The mail comes out here once a week,” she said. “They’re due tomorrow.”
“I think this will work,” he said. “We just have to cut off the head of the snake.”
But the worried look on her face made him think she didn’t completely agree. He was good with a rifle at long distances, though, and he felt like this was their best shot.
“We’re gonna have to run,” she said. “After it’s all done.” It wasn’t a question. He was still a wanted man, and killing Sturgess on top of that, in cold blood, was only going to make him more wanted.
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s a wide-open country with a lot of places to settle down where no one will even think to look for us. It’s not like we have to worry about CSI or anything.”
“What?”
“Nevermind,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
13: Sally
They had a plan all right, but Sally wasn’t sure just how much she liked it. She rode back from the Josper’s farm with an old single-barrel shotgun hanging from a sling on Maisy’s saddle.
She’d never broken the law in all her life. Not once. And now she was going to help Logan shoot down a man in front of her house. Sturgess was a bad man, no doubt about it. He was foul. And with a small army behind him, maybe this was the only way to do it. But it just didn't seem right.
Logan was trying to change the future, a future she hadn’t seen and would never see. It was hard for her to care about the death of a man she didn’t know, who wouldn’t be born for over a hundred years. But she understood all the same. And she loved Logan.
If this was how it had to be, then she would help him. She just wished there was another way.
As she got closer to home, she heard the tinny echoes of rifle fire. Logan was practicing. They’d gotten the tall ladder out of the barn, and he’d climbed up to the roof carrying a piece of string tied to the rifle. He’d pulled it up, along with a leather pouch with all the ammunition they had, which wasn’t much. Thirty-four shells. He needed to practice, but that wouldn’t leave him much to work with for the actual fight.
Although, it wasn’t going to be a fight, was it? They were going to gun down a man from ambush.
As she rode up the trail to the house, she saw the bottles lined up along the ground in front. She heard a shot, then the tinkle of broken glass as one of the green bottles shattered. He was a good shot. That made her feel better and worse at the same time.
She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, waving her hand at him. She saw him stand up on the roof of the barn, holding the rifle in one hand and waving back with the other.
He disappeared from view, heading toward the back of the barn and the ladder there. As she walked Maisy across the yard, she looked down at the row of green bottles. She counted nine of them, all broken.
As she got near the barn, Logan came around the corner. He had a grim look of determination on his face. Maybe he was having doubts as well, but she didn’t bring it up. She got down from Maisy and fell into his arms, kissing him.
“I see you got the gun,” he said.
“Josper knew it wasn’t for rabbits,” she said. “But he gave it to me anyway.” She hugged him fiercely. She had a bad feeling about how this was all going to go down.
He hugged her back. “It’s going to be all right.”
She wanted to believe him, but she wasn’t sure she could.
Two days later, everything was in place. The postal carrier had taken her note into town, asking to meet at her ranch the next day at noon. Logan had kept out of sight. He said he didn’t need any more practice. He had eighteen rounds left.
Sally helped him with the ladder and the gun. She watched him climb up on the roof, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Once he was up there, he looked down at her. She squinted, shielding her eyes from the sun.
From down here, he was just a dark shadow, outlined by light. She couldn’t see his face. Maybe that’s the way he had always been. Maybe in her grief she had latched onto him like a drowning woman. She’d always prided herself on her common sense, but now she wondered if she’d let her emotion get the better of her.
“Everything okay?” he said down to her.
I hope so, she thought. “Yes.” She wondered what to say next. Good luck? Be careful? Instead, she said what was in her heart. “Logan?” She heard the urgency in her own voice.
“Yeah?” he called back.
“I love you.” Neither one of them had said it yet, but now seemed like the time. He’d gone up on the roof early, but soon enough Sturgess would be riding down the path to the house.
The shadowy outline of him was perfectly still. She couldn’t see his face, so she had no idea what he was thinking. Seconds ticked by, and then she heard his voice in the hot summer air.
“I love you, too.” With that, he moved away from the edge of the roof.
Her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know what to feel. In an hour they could both be dead. The best outcome put them on the run. But she loved him with all her heart. Did anything else really matter?
She walked back around the barn and up to the door of her house, glancing over her shoulder once more to try to spot him on the roof. But she couldn’t see anything, which was good. If she couldn’t see him, then Sturgess and his men couldn’t see him either.
Sally went inside, closing and bolting the door behind her. Just as they had discussed, she took the shotgun and lay down in the empty tub they’d dragged to the center of the house. She checked the chamber, making sure there was a fresh shell inside. She had a pile of a dozen more shells in the bottom of the tub, though she didn’t think she’d have time to reload. If things went bad, she’d probably only be able to get one shot off.
She clicked the shotgun shut and lay the gun across her lap.
The cicadas chirped outside. The chickens clucked as they moved around in their pen.
The next half hour was the longest of Sally’s life.
She gripped the gun in her lap and waited.
Time stretched out like a spoonful of molasses. Sally closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. She was damn near panting, and she needed to get hold of herself.
Her eyes were closed when she heard the horses. The difference between one or more was easy to tell, but after that, the hoof beats just became like the sound of drums and the numbers got lost. There could have been three or ten. She didn’t know. Logan had said the rest would scatter once Sturgess was down, and she hoped to God he was right.
She had drawn the curtains. Ideally they would have been able to board up the doors and windows, but that would have been far too suspicious. Either way, she couldn’t see what was happening outside.
The horses drew close. She waited for the sound of a rifle shot. He must be waiting for them to stop, she thought. But when they had obviously pulled up in front of her house, and the sounds of hoof beats was gone, she still heard no shot.
What she did hear were the sounds of men climbing down off their horses. That was already bad. Logan was supposed to shoot Sturgess while they were still mounted. The man should be dead, and his men should be riding away by now. Maybe Logan didn’t have a clean shot.
She heard boot steps thumping across the porch, then a knock at her door. Her heart began to pound. This was not how things were supposed to go. Should she answer? Not answer? Make them think she wasn’t home.
She stared at the door. If it was Sturgess himself standing on her porch, surely Logan had a
clean shot now.
The knock came again, harder this time. She opted for staying silent. If she had looked down at her knuckles, she would have seen how white they were from squeezing the gun, but her eyes were fixed to the door.
She heard the thump of boots again, then a shadow appeared behind the curtained window on the right. The outline of a man stood there, shorter than most, the distinctive curve of a bowler hat upon his head.
The shadow grew bigger, the head growing darker as the man leaned closer to the glass. Sally slowly, quietly, raised the gun, pointing the barrel at the figure at the window. She thumbed the hammer back with a soft click that sounded a hundred times louder in her ears. Then she moved her finger to the trigger.
The shadow started to raise its hands, whether to cup them around his eyes for a better look or to break the window, Sally didn’t know and would never find out.
A shot rang out.
Sally flinched, almost surprised that she didn’t accidentally pull the trigger. The shadow at the window disappeared in a blur. It had been Winston, no doubt, and her first thought had been to wonder why Logan would shoot Winston. He was a dangerous man, to be sure, and maybe Logan figured he’d be the most loyal. But the plan had been to kill Sturgess, not his henchman, even if Winston was the worst of the bunch.
She stayed hunkered down in the tub, clenching the gun, listening.
Men were shouting, at least two, but just how many was hard to tell. Another shot was fired, a deep, echoing shot that had to have come from Logan’s rifle. Then there was what surely had to be return fire, the loud cracks of pistol fire.
This was all wrong.
She thought of climbing out of the bath, unlatching the front door, and joining the fray, but she remembered what Logan had said to her. Besides, she had no idea how many men were out there. Logan was probably safe on top of the barn, a superior position, well-covered by the slant of the rooftop.
So much for the plan, though. The exchange continued outside, the echoing thunder of the rifle overlaid with the cracking of pistol fire. As she listened closely, she reckoned there were at least three men with pistols.
The rifle fired again, and she heard a man scream, a terrible, gurgling wail that was mercifully short. Logan had almost certainly killed one of the men, but it didn’t seem to have deterred the others. She wondered if one of them was Winston, but she had never seen the man carry a gun. In the street in front of Abigail’s, he had taken those strange, flat stones from his jacket and begun to hurl them, looking almost comically like a little boy skipping stones at the lake. But there was nothing funny about the man. He was as deadly as a copperhead. If he wasn’t exchanging fire with Logan, she wondered where he was.
She heard the clop of boots on the porch, and then she saw a different shadow in the window on the left, a man wearing a cowboy hat, gun drawn, firing up at an angle. Maybe he’d run close to the house for cover. But it didn’t help. As she watched, she heard the boom of the rifle, then the shadow jolted, the shadow of blood spatter on the window. The shadow jerked, the head thrown back, and then it fell. She heard the heavy thump of the body hitting the porch.
The shadow of the spray pattern made the curtained window look like some strange piece of art hanging in a gallery somewhere. The dark spots began to run into dark lines down the glass.
She only heard one pistol firing now, and then it paused, likely reloading. For the next twenty seconds, everything was quiet. She would have thought the silence would be a welcome reprieve. Instead, it was more disturbing than the clatter of gunfire.
Something was wrong.
She heard the footsteps behind her, but not until it was far too late. Sally sat up in the tub and began to turn. Winston was there. She swung the gun, but he grabbed the barrel, twisting it out of her hand with one smooth motion. He broke the gun open, ejecting the shell, then tossed the weapon in the far corner.
Sally stood in the tub. She balled her fists and swung at him. He may have been the quickest man she’d ever seen. He may have studied fighting in the Orient. But he hadn’t been expecting the blow.
He was turning back to her after throwing the gun when her fist landed against his right temple. His bowler hat flipped off his head, revealing the dark stubble of his shaved head. He stumbled backwards, looking almost laughable for a moment, like a comedian on stage making a pratfall.
He fell flat on his bottom, his eyes dazed.
Sally climbed out of the tub and made for the door. She had landed a lucky punch, but the window for escape was narrow. She was at the door, unlatching it, when she glanced over her shoulder.
Winston was in a crouched position, his eyes no longer dazed. They looked honed in and deadly, staring at her. He reached out to his right to retrieve his hat, never taking his eyes from her. He placed the bowler on his head, then reached into his jacket.
She half expected him to take his hand out holding another one of those weird rocks. Instead, he held a curved silver blade, almost like a miniature sickle.
Sally chided herself for standing there like an idiot gaping at him. She turned back to the door and undid the latch. She reached out and turned the doorknob, the door cracking open.
Then she felt him behind her, just like that. One moment he was on the floor, and the next his entire body was pressed up against hers. His arm whipped over her shoulder and she felt the cool metal of the knife at her throat, just under her jaw.
He let the door swing the rest of the way open.
One man lay dead in the yard. The only man left alive outside crouched behind a pile of wood she had stacked there for the stove. He had his back to the woodpile, pulling shells from his belt and reloading his pistol.
Winston walked her out onto the porch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other dead man, the one she’d seen shot by the window, as if it had been some kind of macabre puppet show. None of the three men outside were Sturgess.
Winston kept her walking forward, keeping her between himself and the barn. She looked up at the roof and felt the edge at her throat nick her skin. She saw him then, just the barrel of the rifle and the top of his head.
They walked to where the man crouched behind the woodpile, and Winston leaned down to whisper in his ear. The man nodded and got behind Winston. So now she was nothing more than a shield. Her heart was pounding in her chest.
“Please,” she said. “If you just let me go—”
The knife at her throat nicked her again, but this time it wasn’t due to her moving her head. He had given her a little cut as a reminder to keep her mouth shut. She felt the warmth of her own blood trickle down to her collar bone.
They began to walk back, toward the road, moving near the closest horse. Again she thought of a comedy stage act, the three of them bunched up together, walking like some strange, six-legged insect. She looked up again and saw the glint of the sun off Logan’s rifle barrel. He was a good shot, but she guessed there was no way he was going to try to shoot the men behind her.
The man gathered up the reins of the nearest horse, and then they were a strange insect leading a horse. They walked to a second horse and began to lead it backwards as well.
She imagined the frustration he must be feeling right now. The plan hadn’t worked at all, and now she was about to be taken prisoner. He could probably shoot one of the horses, but she doubted he would. He’d always seemed kind and gentle when interacting with them. Besides, that wouldn’t keep them from leaving, only slow them down.
They kept walking toward the road, the knife at her throat the entire time. She saw the rifle atop the barn disappear over the other side. The house, the barn, and everything else began to grow smaller as the kept moving. When they got to the road, the knife disappeared, and she gasped in relief, putting her hand to her throat and feeling the blood there.
But the relief was short-lived. She felt a blow at the back of her neck, and everything went dark.
14: Logan
The plan hadn’t worked at all.
He’d killed two of them and had the other one pinned down. He was running low on ammunition, but he didn’t need much.
Then that little derby-wearing freak came out of the house, and his heart sank. Winston was behind Sally, holding something to her throat. Even if he didn’t have a weapon, he was probably skilled enough to kill her in that position without one. And the margin of error for a shot at this distance was far too small.
Dammit! he thought.
Once Winston had started poking around the house, he knew he had to take a shot. He couldn’t let them find her in there with a gun, the place locked up. It would have been obvious what she intended, and who knew what they would do to her?
And Sturgess was nowhere to be seen. He’d thought for sure the man would show, eager to rub Sally’s face in his victory. But maybe he had smelled out the trap. Maybe he was just far more cautious than Logan had given him credit for. Either way, he wasn’t going to underestimate the man the next time. He just hoped there was a next time.
Winston was smart, using Sally as a shield while he moved to where his last living companion lay under cover. Then the three of them walked back the way they had rode, gathering up the horses as they went.
He could have shot one or both of the horses, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. It only would have delayed the inevitable anyway.
His best chance was to climb down and give chase. There were two horses left down there from the men he had shot. So he moved from his position, keeping low as he half-slid, half-walked back down the barn roof to where the ladder was propped against the lip.
Only when he got there, the ladder wasn’t propped up anymore. He felt a ball form in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at the ground, probably a fifteen to twenty-foot drop, and saw the ladder lying flat against the ground. Winston.
He should have fired at Winston first, but he was close to the window at the time, and Logan didn’t want to risk an errant bullet going into the house. So he’d taken the first shot at one of the men standing in the yard. He’d missed the first shot, and then it was an all-out firefight. He killed the man on the second shot, but while he was engaged with the three other men, he’d lost track of Winston.
The Time-Traveling Outlaw Page 11