“Seen you comin up the street,” she whispered, trembling.
“You’re poorly,” Gloria said.
Bessie looked downslope toward town, her eyes stormy with the weight of some damning choice. “I believe he’s cut his wolf loose.”
“Who?” the preacher asked.
Tears were running over her lips now. “My Billy.” And Bessie’s bare hand emerged from the blankets, grasping the bar of gold, snow falling on it, melting, making the yellow metal glisten. “He give me this this mornin, all wrapped up, like some Christmas present. Wouldn’t tell me nothin of how he come to have it.”
“Where’s your husband right now?” Ezekiel asked.
“He left a few hours ago with Mr.Wallace.”
“Know where they went?”
“Rode off toward the mine.”
“You better come on with us.”
“Why?”
Ezekiel leaned in, whispered in her ear for the sake of the child. “Packer and his ladies been murdered up at Emerald House.”
The bar of gold dropped from her hand and sank into the snow.
“What you sayin, Mr.Curtice?”
“In a town of a hunerd twenty-three souls, they ain’t much breathin space for coincidence.”
“They killed ’em? Billy and Oatha—”
“Nobody knows exactly who done what yet. Now, was it just Billy and Mr.Wallace, or was there more men?”
“I think it’s just the two a them. You gonna hurt him?”
“I’m gonna bring him in. Whether or not he gets hurt or kilt, that’s his choice. He do that to you?”
Bessie brought her hand to the bruises, as if to hide them, eyes alight with shame.
“Daddy done it,” Harriet said.
Ezekiel brushed his gloved hand across the little girl’s cheek.
“I’m real sorry about that, sweetie. He ought not’ve.”
Ezekiel squatted down, lifted the gold bar out of the snow, stood mesmerized by it, trying to disavow the shot of adrenaline it pushed through his veins, thinking if there was anything left in him of that man he used to be, he’d ride up to the mine with an entirely different purpose, caught himself half-wishing he’d stumbled onto an opportunity like this back in the old days.
He handed the bar to the preacher. “You better keep this. Well, come on, ladies. No point in y’all standin out here, freezin in them rags.”
They walked up the street, then veered onto the path to the Curtices’ little steeple-notched cabin, a barrel for a chimney pot, a root cellar on the south wall, and a sod roof that in the summertime sprouted sunflowers. At the front door, Ezekiel stopped, said, “Gloria, bring my rifle and the revolver for Stephen. We’ll be needin a box a cartridges for each.”
As the women went inside, Stephen said, “I’ll not carry a gun, Zeke.”
“You kiddin me?”
The preacher shook his head. “But I will ride up with you.”
“The hell you gonna do if they start shootin?”
“I’m praying it won’t come to that.”
“You see the same thing I saw up on the roof a Emerald House? That look like the handiwork a men who talk things out? Hell, we’ll have to get Doc now.”
Gloria returned with the old Schofield in one hand, Ezekiel’s sawed-off Winchester in the other. Bessie was bawling inside, Harriet whispering, “It’s all right, Mama. It’s all right. Don’t cry.”
Ezekiel took the box of cartridges, his carbine by the barrel, said, “Man a God don’t want the revolver, but you hang on to it. Better pull in the latch-string and fort up. Don’t go out. Don’t open it for nobody. Billy or Oatha or some rough-lookin feller come by, you know what to do.” She nodded. “Better go on, load up that Schofield now. Remember how I showed you?”
Gloria threw her arms around his neck, felt the sandpaper of his face against hers, caught that smell of his that still melted her knees. “You come back to me,” she whispered.
He lifted his hat and pulled off Gloria’s sealskin cap so he could kiss her forehead and tug at those blond curls.
“Always have, Glori. Always will.”
TWENTY-NINE
T
he cabin of Russell and Emma Ilg stood a hundred yards north of the Curtice homestead and was unprotected by trees, so the snow had drifted to the roof on the windward side. Ezekiel followed the snow tunnel up to the front
