Chapter 16 - The Edge of the Blade
The world narrowed to the sound of Pete Crow’s breath and the silver murmur of the spring twenty yards below us.
"Throw the rifle forward," the scout ordered. His voice was flat, devoid of anger or excitement—the voice of a butcher who had killed so many cattle he no longer noticed the blood on his apron. "Slow. Two fingers on the forestock."
I didn't move immediately. My mind raced through the geometry of the dark. Zora was lying two feet to my right, completely flat against the black stone, her body masked by the deep shadow of the basalt ledge. Crow was looking at me—at my height, my broad shoulders, the white man who had broken Morrison’s jail. In the darkness, he hadn't yet seen her.
"Do it, Adam," Crow repeated, the hammer of the Spencer clicking back another notch. "Morrison said he wanted you alive if possible, but he didn't say nothing about your legs. I'll shoot your kneecaps off right here and drag you down to the porch."
I slowly lifted the Winchester with two fingers, bringing it out from under my coat. As I swung it forward to drop it onto the rocks, I didn't drop it down—I swung the heavy walnut stock backward with all the strength in my shoulders, aiming for his knee.
Crow reacted with the terrifying speed of an Apache scout. He leaped sideways, dodging the blow, but the sudden movement caused his shot to go wild.
The Spencer roared, a foot-long tongue of orange flame lighting up the canyon like midday. The heavy bullet clipped the edge of my coat, burning through the wool and grazing the meat of my ribs before splintering the stone behind me.
Before Crow could work the lever to chamber another round, a dark shape launched itself from the shadow of the ledge.
Zora struck him like a mountain cat.
She didn't scream; she made no sound at all. She drove the full weight of her body into his chest, her bone-handled skinning knife flashing silver in the moonlight. Crow grunted, dropping the rifle as they both crashed down into the sharp gravel of the wash.
Crow was twice her weight, hardened by twenty years of frontier warfare. He caught her wrist with one massive, calloused hand before the blade could find his throat, twisting her arm until the bone popped in its socket. Zora gasped, her teeth bared in agony, but she did not drop the knife. She drove her knee violently into his groin.
Crow roared in pain, releasing his grip to roll away, but as he reached for the revolver at his hip, I was already on him.
I slammed my boot down on his gun wrist, pinning the Colt against the rock. With my other hand, I drove the heavy steel receiver of my Winchester into the side of his jaw.
The impact sounded like an ax striking green wood.
Crow went limp, his head snapping back against the limestone, his eyes rolling white in the moonlight. The revolver slipped from his lifeless fingers and clattered down into the pool below.
For three long seconds, there was only the sound of our ragged, desperate breathing.
Then the cabin door flew open.
The second man—a young, red-faced ranch hand named Miller—burst out onto the porch, clutching a double-barreled shotgun, his eyes wild with terror as he looked at the crumpled body of the scout.
"Pete?" Miller screamed, raising the shotgun toward the darkness. "Pete, where are you?"
I didn't give him time to aim. I levered a fresh cartridge into the Winchester and fired a single round through the lantern sitting on the porch boards.
The glass shattered in an explosion of burning kerosene, spraying liquid fire across Miller’s trousers and the dry pine decking. The young man shrieked, dropping the shotgun as flames leaped up his legs, dancing backward across the porch and throwing himself headfirst into the horse trough to quench the fire.
"Get out!" I shouted into the smoke, stepping into the circle of light with the rifle leveled at his head. "Get on that horse and ride south! Tell Morrison that if he comes across the Malpais, he won't find a trial waiting for him in Prescott! He'll find six feet of dirt!"
Miller scrambled out of the trough, coughing and sobbing, his clothes smoking in the cold night air. He didn't look at Crow, and he didn't look at his shotgun. He tore the reins of the buckskin horse from the hitching rail, scrambled into the saddle like a terrified child, and spurred the animal down the southern draw at a breakneck gallop, disappearing into the black rocks.
The canyon fell silent again, save for the crackle of the small fire dying on the wet porch boards and the steady, clean song of the spring.
I turned back to Zora.
She was sitting on the ground, holding her sprained wrist against her chest, her breath coming in short, painful gasps. Blood—Crow’s blood—was splattered across the front of her torn dress.
I knelt beside her, pulling my handkerchief from my pocket, and reached for her injured arm. "Let me see it."
She didn't pull away. She leaned her forehead against my shoulder, her body trembling with the aftershock of the violence.
"We have the water," she whispered against my neck.
"We have the water," I said, gently wrapping the linen around her wrist. "And we have their horses."
She looked up at me, her eyes dark, bottomless, and filled with a fierce, quiet intensity that made my heart hammer harder than the gunfire had.
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"Then tomorrow," she said, looking toward the high mountain wall where the trail led north toward Fort Whipple, "we stop running."
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