On the third morning, May asked why he crossed streams twice.
Elias told her the horses liked water.
Her pony lifted its head from the creek, snorted at him and walked out. May let the answer stand until they reached the other bank.
“Mother says a horse likes water in a bucket.”
Elias was leading their horses through shallow water to hide the tracks. Someone might be following him. He could hear May’s father laughing at the explanation he had chosen instead. Tom had always laughed first and believed afterward, which was how Elias had persuaded him to help rob the mail wagon.
That had been four years ago. In the chase, Tom pulled Elias out from under a fallen horse. Elias got away. Tom did not.
Tom had died of an illness in prison. Now Elias was taking Tom’s daughter, May, to her mother. She lived at a small station in the hills. May’s aunt had entrusted her to the man who brought Tom’s last letter. May’s aunt did not know that Elias had been Tom’s partner in the robbery.
Elias called himself Reed. He kept his gun wrapped in his saddlebag, where May could not see it. He slept badly enough that she asked whether he disliked the ground.
Dark rain clouds hung over the hills upstream. At the supply store he bought oats, flour, a new strap and a coil of rope to replace his frayed pack line. Ruth stood on the porch, holding a folded notice.
“That white rein suits your horse,” she said.
He turned the mare so the patched saddle faced away. Too late. Ruth looked at the copper rivet in the skirt, then at his left hand, where two fingers no longer straightened.
The notice described the white rein, the saddle repair and his injured fingers. Tom had told the court about them while naming his partner. Elias knew because he had read it before taking May from her aunt’s house.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“You might know that paper.”
Ruth had once hunted wanted men for reward money. Now she was a county deputy, with a court order to arrest Elias. The posted reward would cover overdue stable rent if she brought him back to the town where the wagon had been robbed. She told him that much while showing him the warrant’s seal.
He saw the distance between her and the porch steps. He could mount and be gone before she reached the mare. May was still inside, choosing between two boiled sweets with great seriousness.
“The child isn’t part of it,” he said.
“Then don’t make her part of it.”
The storekeeper came out carrying the oats. Elias took the sack, asked him to bring May’s pony round, and walked the mare behind the building. There was a back track he knew. He could not use it with May riding at her usual pace.
Instead he led both horses to the creek below the store and told May they would walk a little way. He left the mare’s old white rein tied to a willow beside a crossing. Ruth would recognize it from above; the tracks led into the water and disappeared downstream. Elias and May would take the footpath along the upper bank, leaving the animals tethered in the trees until dark.
“We’re not leaving Button,” May said.
“We come back for him.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
She looked at the path, then at the pony. Elias climbed a few yards to check the bend. When he turned back, May had untied Button and was leading him toward the store.
“She knows you’re here,” she said. “She can mind him.”
He ran after her. He wanted to be angry, but she had chosen the only person at the store who had not lied to her.
Ruth was already at the lower ford. The white rein had drawn her down as intended, but she had seen the clear hoofprints leading back to the trees and was checking the bank rather than plunging after his invented trail. A sudden surge rolled through the creek from the rain upriver. The gravel under her horse shifted. It scrambled toward shore and came out on the wrong side, without her.
Elias saw Ruth catch an exposed root below the ford. Water climbed past her waist. She could reach the bank with one arm but could not get a foothold beneath it.
May stood beside Button, silent now.
The upper path led around the deep creek channel. Elias could take it, collect his mare and put miles between them before Ruth found a crossing. If she found one.
“Stay here with the pony,” he said. “This time I mean here.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to bring her out,” Elias said. “Wait with Button. I’ll come back to you.”
Elias took the spare rope from the oats sack. May waited on the near bank. He ran upstream, crossed where the creek spread wide and shallow, then followed a ledge down the far bank to Ruth. He knew the route from an earlier escape. Now he had to go slowly over its loose stones. She had seen him coming and did not spend breath asking whether he intended to help.
He reached the low shelf above her, lay down and lowered the line. She caught it on the second try. He braced while she used the line and the exposed roots to move toward the shelf. Twice her foot slipped from a root. He could not lift her bodily. He could only keep the line steady while she found the next hold.
When she reached him, both lay flat until she could stand.
Her first words were about May.
“Across there,” he said.
“Can we reach her?”
They followed the ledge upstream and found Ruth’s horse on their side. At the wide crossing, they waited until the rush of water fell. Then they led her horse back to May’s bank. May had stayed beside Button. She had also collected the discarded white rein. Elias fetched his tethered mare from the trees before Ruth asked him to mount.
Ruth took Elias’s gun. She told him saving her would be in her account to the court. It would not cancel the order to arrest him.
“I know,” he said.
She could not take May back to the store and forget her. Her mother waited at the station half a day’s ride ahead. Ruth sent a note with a passing wagon for the county office, then took Elias and May toward the station. Elias was now her prisoner. He rode between her and May, keeping his hands where Ruth could see them.
May did not ask another question until the station roof came into view.
“Was Reed Tom’s friend?”
Elias looked at the roof. “My real name is Elias,” he said. “I was Tom’s friend. Not always a good one.”
Her mother came out before he could decide what else to say. May slid from the pony into her arms. Elias watched them from his saddle; he did not approach to receive thanks for a promise he had used to protect another lie.
Ruth wrote his full name beneath the warrant. When May brought her the white rein, she asked Elias whether it belonged to him.
“Yes.”
“Can she keep it?”
He nodded. May used it to replace Button’s fraying lead, and Elias turned his mare toward the road Ruth had chosen.
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