My instincts say the note is real, she said. "Whoever wrote it was scared. Scared people don't run complicated games — they run straight at the thing they need you to know. And Deke's crew has been loud all week. Loud is what you are when you want somebody looking the wrong way."
Eli nodded once. Then he raised two fingers, and Dutch and Sarge materialized like they'd been waiting for the signal — which they had.
Change of plan, Eli said. "We split the pack. Dutch, you take half the riders and all the noise — you ride the false route exactly like we leaked it, big and loud, deputies shadowing at a distance. Sarge, you take the rest with me. We ride the canyon road — the real route — quiet and ready." He glanced at Miriam. "And the support truck goes with us. If the note's telling the truth, that's where it'll go bad. If it's lying —" he shrugged, "— then Dutch has the party."
Eli, Dutch said quietly, "you're splitting our strength on the word of an unsigned note."
I'm splitting our strength on Miriam's word, Eli said. "She hasn't been wrong yet."
Miriam felt something tighten in her throat, and covered it by checking Barnaby's water bowl.
They rolled out at seven-thirty, and Miriam had never seen anything like it — Dutch's half peeling off south with engines roaring and colors flying, a thunder built for an audience, while Eli's half went north in a low, disciplined rumble, bikes keeping tight formation with Miriam's red Ford rattling along behind the med trailer, Barnaby's nose out the window.
The canyon road climbed through limestone country, the walls rising on either side until the sky was a ribbon and the radio chatter went thin with static. Miriam drove with both hands on the wheel, arthritis be damned, and watched the rock faces for anything that didn't belong.
Beside her, Barnaby stood on the seat with his nose high, reading the wind. In the mirror, the column of bikes stretched back around the bend, headlights on against the gloom, engines holding the same low note like a held breath. Miriam's hands ached on the wheel. She thought about the note in Eli's vest pocket — six unsigned words — and prayed, not for miracles, just for steady hands. Hers, and everyone else's.
It was Patch who saw it first — or rather, Patch's radio, crackling: "Movement on the east rim — two trucks, no plates —"
Then Eli's voice, calm as stone: "All riders, weapons down, eyes up. We see them before they see us seeing them."
Miriam's heart was hammering against her ribs like it wanted out. She eased the Ford to the shoulder behind the trailer and killed the engine, the way they'd agreed. Barnaby whined once, low.
They came out of the rocks like the desert spitting them up — four pickups and maybe twenty men, fanning across the canyon mouth ahead, rifles visible, a couple of them already shouting. And at the front, on a black Harley with ape hangers, a man Miriam knew from Jessie's description before she'd ever laid eyes on him: Deke Slade, fifty-eight years old, mean and wiry, a Dust Devils patch on his back and hate in every line of him.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved. The riders idling in the canyon. Twenty men with rifles at the mouth. The dust hanging in the cold air.
Then Deke shouted something — Miriam couldn't make out the words, just the fury in them — and one of his men, young and jumpy, fired into the air.
The crack of it rolled off the canyon walls like the world splitting.
Miriam flinched. Barnaby barked once, sharp. On the radio, Eli's voice: "Hold. Hold the line."
And the line held. The riders sat their bikes and stared down twenty men, and Miriam understood, watching it, what Eli had understood at dawn: Deke hadn't brought an army. He'd brought a gesture. He'd expected an unguarded charity ride, soft targets, panic. What he'd found was the Hells Angels waiting for him, calm and ready, with a sheriff's deputy lighting up his cherries a half-mile back — because Danner's men had followed the real route too, once Eli made the call.
Deke stared at the wall of leather and chrome. He stared at the deputy's lights. One of his men lowered his rifle slowly, like a man setting down something hot. Another took a step back. Deke stared — Miriam would swear it later — directly at her red Ford, as if he knew.
Then he gunned his Harley, spun it in a shower of gravel, and rode for the gap in the rocks to the east. His men scattered after him — trucks fishtailing, men running, the whole ambush dissolving into dust and engine scream, melting back into the desert the way they'd come.
One of the deputies started to give chase. Eli raised a hand.
Let them run, he said into the radio. "We know where the rabbit hole is now."
Silence settled over the canyon, broken only by cooling engines and somebody's shaky laugh. Miriam sat in the Ford with her hands still locked on the wheel, and realized she'd been holding her breath. Barnaby put his head in her lap.
Eli walked back along the line of bikes to her truck, his boots crunching gravel, and leaned on the window frame.
You were right, he said.
I know, Miriam said, but her voice shook a little. "Don't make a habit of saying it. I'll get insufferable."
He almost smiled. Then he looked east, toward the dust still hanging over the rocks where Deke had vanished.
He'll be back, Eli said quietly. "Men like Deke don't stop. They just reload."
I know, Miriam said again.
They stood there in the canyon mouth — the president and the old woman and the one-eyed dog — watching the dust settle over the place where the ambush had almost happened, where twenty men had almost started a war.
Nobody dead. This time.
Eli stared at the dust of Deke's escape for a long moment. Then he straightened, rolled his shoulders, and keyed his radio.