Page 90 of Ransom
Coyote said: "Now, Ransom. Now."
Ransom came back through the entrance fast, hat low, jaw set.
"Can you ride?"
"I can ride. Get me up."
He got an arm under my shoulders lifting me off the pallet, and the cave swung once and steadied. He walked me out into the dusk. Galahad stood saddled and breathing hard, reins looped over the horn. Coyote stood at his shoulder with one hand flat against the horse's neck. There were four bodies stacked on a wooden sled nearby, the kind of sled made for snowy hills in the winter. Coyote was untying the sled from his horse, then he pulled a tarp over the bodies and quickly nailed it down.
"Two-up?" I said.
"Two-up. He'll carry it."
He swung up first and settled in the saddle, and reached down for me. I got my boot in the stirrup and he caught me under the arm and pulled, and I came up across the saddle in front of him with my ribs screaming about every inch of it. His arm came around me and locked across my chest, and held me against him.
"Lean back," he said. "Hand on the horn. Don't fight him."
I leaned. I put my hand on the horn. Galahad shifted under us, took the weight, and didn't object.
The arm across my chest didn't move. I wasn't going to ask it to.
"Coyote," Ransom said.
"Don't wait for me, Ransom. I'll come behind when I'm done here."
Ransom nodded, turned Galahad for the wash, and we went.
Galahad's head was up and his ears were forward, and Ransom didn't have to ask him for any of it. Ransom's chest was warm against my back, and his arm was an iron bar across me. The last light went purple over the ridge in front of us, and we rode hard for the ranch where a huge plume of black smoke rose into the air.
The smoke reached mebefore we made the ridge. I cursed under my breath as we crested it.
The ranch was on fire below us.
Fat, black smoke rose off the hay barn first, the kind hay throws when there's been gas on it. The horse barn behind it was paler, slower, going up through the roof. The yard had taken light too. Two of Rex's trucks sat at angles past the corral with their doors open. A gate I'd hung myself eight years ago lay knocked off its post in the dirt. The bunkhouse roof was intact, but somebody had punched holes through three of its windows. Gunfire cracked across the yard.
My hands closed up on the reins, and Galahad felt it, and I made myself ease them. Sorry, buddy. This was my ranch, and these were my boys, and my horses were inside that barn. Ten years on this land and I'd ridden home to it burning.
Winston tensed against me.
"Easy," I said into his hair. He smelled of hospital tape gone sour and sage, and wet leather.
We dropped into the mouth of the arroyo and Coyote was already there, breathing slow like he hadn't just run a mile down a hillside. I slid off Galahad and reached up to lift Winston down, my hand sliding under his ribs. He got his feet under him and held. Behind us, the horses inside the barn screamed. The screaming went up under the smoke, but there was no getting to them. The fire was too big already.
Galahad shied hard. I put my forehead against his neck. "I know, buddy. Easy. Stay with me." I held him a moment longer than I had time for, then walked him back into the cut and tied him off where the scrub would hide him. He stood with his head down and let me do it.
I turned back to Winston. He had his pistol in his good hand and his eyes on the yard, blood drying on his upper lip from where some of the packing had come out.
Stay with me, I almost said. Don't ask me to do this without you twenty feet behind me.
"Stay tight on me," I said instead.
"No." He shook his head once. "We split. You go right under the corral rail; I go left along the wash to the bunkhouse. They've got the tree line and the south fence both. One of us flanks, or those boys don't last."
Goddamn him. He was right.
"Winston—"
"Go."
