Harlan set the deed on the table.
“Let it point.”
Her eyes filled.
“I don’t know what to do with kindness this heavy.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “But I know what to do with a door.”
A sound came from the porch.
One scrape.
Then another.
Harlan lifted the rifle.
Mara reached for the shotgun.
A voice came through the wood.
“Mara Black.”
Jonas Creed.
Harlan’s finger tightened.
“Don’t answer,” Mara breathed.
Jonas spoke again, lower now.
“I came alone.”
“Liar,” Mara whispered.
“I know Dorian is less than an hour behind me. I know Ruth is inside. I know the babies are inside. And I know where Gideon is.”
Mara’s face changed.
Jonas continued quickly.
“He’s not with Dorian. He’s tied in a ravine with two broken ribs because he tried to stop them after Ruth ran.”
Ruth gasped from the bed.
“No.”
“I can take you to him,” Jonas said. “Or you can leave him there to freeze.”
Mara looked at Harlan.
Harlan shook his head once.
“It could be a trap.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But it could be true.”
Ruth tried to sit up.
“Please.”
Harlan opened the door six inches with the rifle through the gap.
Jonas sat on the porch steps exactly as a man should sit when he wanted to live: pistol on the boards, hands open, hat beside him.
He looked younger without the smile.
“Why?” Harlan asked.
Jonas looked toward the road.
“Because I had a wife once. Her father sold her to a man like Voss with a better coat and the same rotten soul. I wore this badge for ten years hoping to get close enough to men like him to learn where they keep their sins.”
Mara stood behind Harlan.
“Where is Gideon?”
“North ravine. Half a mile. Dorian left him alive because he wanted Ruth to hear him calling when she was dragged back.”
Ruth covered her mouth.
Harlan looked at Mara.
“I’ll bring him.”
“I go with you.”
“You can barely stand.”
“He helped my sister.”
“And Anna needs you. Thomas needs you. Ruth cannot hold a newborn and a gun.”
Mara trembled with fury and helplessness.
Harlan stepped closer.
“I will bring him back.”
“Promise me better than revenge.”
“What?”
“Promise me Ruth won’t spend the rest of her life wondering if he died calling her name.”
Harlan nodded.
“I promise.”
She gripped his coat.
“Come back.”
“I intend to.”
“No,” she said. “Say it like a man who knows someone is waiting.”
Harlan looked at her, at the woman who had come through his door bleeding and somehow made his dead house breathe.
“I’m coming home.”
The ride took twelve minutes.
Jonas led. Harlan followed low in the saddle with a rifle across his arm. They found Gideon in the ravine, tied to a cottonwood, beaten badly but breathing.
When Harlan cut him loose, Gideon grabbed his sleeve.
“Ruth?”
“Alive.”
“The baby?”
“Alive.”
Gideon broke.
Not loudly. He had no strength for loud. He folded over himself and sobbed once into the snow.
“He told me I was weak,” Gideon whispered. “He said a man who listened to his wife deserved to lose her.”
Harlan hauled him upright.
“Then let’s prove him wrong.”
They rode back hard.
Mara was already on the porch when they reached the cabin, shotgun in hand, Anna crying inside. Ruth saw Gideon and made a broken sound from the bed.
Gideon fell to his knees beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Ruth touched his bruised face.
“Be sorry later. Hold your son.”
There was no time for more.
Jonas stepped inside.
“He’s close.”
Harlan moved everyone into place.
Ruth lay in the bedroom with the newborn Eli, Anna, and Thomas. Gideon sat by the bed with a pistol and a shaking hand. Mara stood near the hearth with the shotgun. Jonas went outside behind the woodpile. Harlan stood by the hinge of the front door, rifle ready.
The lamp burned in the window.
Dorian Voss came on foot.
They heard him before they saw him.
Slow steps in the snow.
A man who believed every door in the world would open if he waited with enough arrogance.
His voice came smooth through the dark.
“Mara.”
Anna started crying in the bedroom.
Mara’s face went white.
Ruth hushed the baby quickly.
Dorian laughed softly.
“I hear her. You were always poor at hiding what belongs to me.”
Harlan saw Mara’s hand tighten on the shotgun.
He mouthed, Wait.
Dorian knocked once.
Then again.
“Open the door. I’m tired, and I have chased you farther than a woman your size should have been able to travel.”
Mara flinched.
Harlan saw it.
Something inside him went still.
Not calm.
Still like the air before lightning strikes.
Dorian continued, “Come out now, and I may forgive the embarrassment. Bring my daughter, and I may even let this rancher keep breathing.”
Mara stepped toward the door.
Harlan shook his head.
She did not open it.
She spoke through the boards.
“Anna is not yours.”
Silence.
Then a soft laugh.