Chapter Twenty-Seven

At the camp ground on Elk Lake, Whicher stands in the lee of the cookhouse cabin, holding down his hat in the wind.

By the ice-bound lake, Galen Coburn dismounts his quarter horse.

He holds the reins of his mare, his face tight and red from the cold. “I don't know what the hell is going on,” he says, “I brought you out here, I didn't ask questions. You said you needed to get to Anthony, I took you at your word.”

The marshal nods.

“Anthony was placed in my charge,” the ranch owner says. “We turn up, some maniac's crashed his car into a tree, Anthony’s taken at gunpoint—with a park ranger...”

Whicher cuts him off; “Can we make it back to the ranch before nightfall?”

Coburn’s horse steps sideways, picking up her feet. The ranch owner grabs her high at the bridle.

“We're a sitting target here.”

“Why the hell are we a target?”

Whicher takes a pace back, into the shelter of the cookhouse wall. “I'm not at liberty to tell you that.”

“People shoot at me, I'm not allowed to know who they are?”

The marshal watches three horses by a slat-board shelter, his mare among them, still saddled. “I don't make the rules, Mister Coburn.”

“You expect folk just to do whatever you want?”

“I have to go talk to her.”

Coburn rubs a leather-gloved hand across his chin.

The marshal gestures with his head toward the cabin.

“You think she's hurt?” the ranch owner says.

Whicher doesn’t reply. He eyes the snow driving in over a tree-covered hill.

“I suppose you're not about to tell me who she is?”

“You suppose right.”

Coburn gives a shake of his head.

“I'm sorry for what happened,” Whicher says. He looks over at Will Jacobs, the ranch guide attending to the group of horses. “If there's any way of getting back before nightfall, I'll call law enforcement, we’ll get the hell off of your property. I give you my word.”

“We need to get the horses fed, get 'em watered. Before we can do a damn thing.”

“There's still time?”

Coburn casts a weather-eye at the darkening sky. He tugs at the bridle on the horse. Doesn't answer.

Janice Rimes steers down the cleared highway, headed south. She smokes a cigarette down to the filter.

No point staying at the bottom of a snowed-up logging road—no word from the marshal, no word from anybody else.

Head back to Rapid City—she can call in to the office, see if anybody had an update. Forty minutes, she can be there. She steers the car along the twisting road.

Ahead is a junction, where a county two-lane leads back up into the hills. Beyond it, a truck stop, RVs and campers huddled to one side in a lot.

She slows the Chevy—the road is flat-looking—she stops.

It’s white over. She shakes her head. Bad enough last time, trying to make it up to Mystic.

She scans the sky. Grinds the cigarette in the ashtray. Better to stay on the main routes, head down through Merritt.

Her foot comes off the brake pedal, she gets on the gas.

The tires slip then spin before they grip.

Don’t stop again, she tells herself.

She drives past a snow-bound field, on around the curve of a long, wooded hill.

The nose of a vehicle appears suddenly at the exit of a forest road—a big white SUV.

She gets off the gas, swerves into the center of the roadway.

The SUV dives on its brakes.

It skids slowly, stopping at the highway's edge. Light bar and a green stripe along its side. The words, U.S. PARK RANGER.

Rimes gives the driver an irritated glance—a park ranger ought to know better than to hare out from an iced-up turn.

Something about the man’s face strikes her—hawk-like, his eyes intense.

She shrugs it off. Eases back on the gas pedal. Steers the car back on-line. Continues south.

Lauren DeLuca sits on a wooden chair, the marshal's coat down around her waist. Flames from the wood stove light the dim interior of the cabin, her blonde hair is tinged with a sheen of red.

Whicher closes the door to the cookhouse. He studies the side of her face.

She said her head hurt. And her neck.

She holds herself entirely still in the straight-backed chair.

Walking up to the campground from the logging road, he’d been silent with her—unwilling to let her talk.

She was stiff, limping, no doubt in shock. He’d told her to follow Coburn, the ranch owner leading, with his horse, Whicher guarding the track from the low side—listening for any sound of a vehicle, any sign the shooter was coming back.

“So, that was your brother?”

Lauren stares into the stove.

“Down there,” Whicher says. “Down that hill.”

Her eyes blink, she gives a slight nod.

“The guy with the gun was who?”

He waits a long time for her to speak.

She stares at shifting pieces of burning wood behind the glass door of the stove.

“I don't know,” she says, finally.

Whicher crosses the room, leans against a kitchen countertop.

“He said he got on to the train at Denver,” Lauren says. “Our train. The same time we did.”

Denver.

Twenty-four hours back.

Nobody knew they were catching a train.

They'd ridden a bus from Pueblo, bought tickets for cash. They’d sat in the Union Station waiting room, on high-backed wooden benches. With a handful of other passengers. Nobody knew they were there.

“At McCook,” Lauren says, “when the train was stopped—he just appeared. He came up out of nowhere.”

She stares into the fire.

The marshal folds his arms, watches her.

“You were outside,” she says, “off the train, somewhere. I don’t know where.”

Whicher thinks of prowling the snow-covered rail yard—waiting for the night crew to clear the line.

Lauren lets out a breath. “He came up to me. He said; ‘Tino Coletti sends his regards’...” Her voice trails off.

“Tino Coletti?”

She stares at the rough plank floor. “He said Anthony's whereabouts were known.” She looks up. “He told me the place where he was staying.”

“This place?”

“He told me the name of a ranch. In South Dakota, the Black Hills.”

Whicher glances at the window as wind rattles the shutters against the cabin walls.

“I knew Anthony was on a ranch...” Lauren nods. She wraps her arms around her sides. “He said Coletti's people knew where Anthony was—either I got off the train with him—or they’d have him killed.”

The marshal turns toward her.

“He was carrying a gun,” Lauren says. “Holding it so no-one would see.” She mimes the action, placing her fist close to her chest. “Just here,” she says, “inside his jacket.”

“You got off the train?”

“I tried to play for time...”

“Describe it,” Whicher says.

She brushes back a strand of hair behind her ear. “It was dark. There were no lights. He made me run. We were at the back of some grain towers,” she says, “he had his gun out. We went up some street. Then he broke into a house, he stole keys, he stole this car...”

“You waited? Then got in a car with him? Because he said they’d kill your brother?”

She swallows.

“They could kill him anyway...”

Lauren flinches.

“If they wanted,” the marshal says, “if they already knew where he was.”

“We started to drive.” She looks at Whicher. “I realized I was making a big mistake. All I could think of was Anthony...” The muscles tighten in her face.

“How come you weren’t restrained in any way?”

Her eyes come up on his. “What do you mean?”

“Where’d that Nissan come from?”

She searches his face. “A rental car office.”

“A rental office?”

“In North Platte,” she says. “This morning.”

“Y’all drove all that way?” the marshal says. “To North Platte in a stolen car. All of that time, just the two of you? You didn’t try to get away?”

A sound is in her throat, muffled. “You don't know these people. You have no idea what they're like.”

“You thought you were giving your brother some kind of a chance?” The marshal walks to the window, stares out into the blowing snow.

“I told him I have something,” Lauren says.

Whicher watches the tree line, wind battering the limbs of the pine.

“Nobody's told you?” she says. “About me?”

He shoves his hands into his pockets.

“I have money. A lot of money.”

“Mob money?”

“I offered him a share.”

The marshal steps from the window, crosses the room to the stove. Heat is strong against the side of his face. He takes out the Glock checks it over.

From a twenty-round box of .40 calibre Smith & Wesson, he reloads the rounds fired on the logging road.

“The world I lived in,” Lauren says, “that's your life. A deal. This for that.”

He finishes reloading the gun, slips the box into a pocket.

“I told him I'd split the money with him. All of it.” She shakes her head. “I was trying to play for time, for God’s sake...”

“You tell him you got money?” Whicher says. “What's to stop him doing what he needs to do with you, and taking the money anyway?”

“I have to be there.”

He looks at her.

“I have to sign. In person.”

He holds her eye a long moment.

“I have to be there at the bank—sign paper. There's no other way you can get that money out.”