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POOR COWBOY SAVED A 22-YEAR-OLD APACHE GIRL — THEN THE WHOLE TOWN TURNED AGAINST HIM

Chapter 4

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The next morning arrived with a cold, pale wind blowing down from the mountains, carrying the sharp scent of cedar and impending rain.Jake had spent the night sleeping on the floor of Dr. Reeves’s kitchen with his back against the timber wall and his Winchester rifle resting across his knees. He hadn't slept more than an hour at a time. Every creak of the floorboards, every gust of wind pushing against the window frames, had brought his hand to the steel action of the gun.At seven o'clock, the heavy boots arrived on the porch.There were many of them—heavy, deliberate, iron-shod heels striking the pine planks with the authority of an execution squad.Jake stood up, checked the lever of his Winchester to ensure a cartridge was chambered, and stepped out onto the doctor’s front porch, closing the inner door quietly behind him.Sheriff Ellis stood on the top step. He was a man in his late fifties, his silver hair thin and wispy beneath a sweat-stained felt hat, his tin star pinned crookedly onto a faded wool vest. He looked tired—the kind of bone-deep fatigue that comes from forty years of trying to keep foolish men from killing each other over water, gold, and women.Behind Ellis stood six men from the town.At the front of the group was Briggs.Briggs was a broad-shouldered, thick-necked rancher who owned three thousand acres of scrub grazing land along the eastern creek. He had mean, small-set eyes, a face permanently reddened by sun and grain whiskey, and an ugly, sneering curl to his lip that made him look as though he were perpetually smelling something rotten. He carried a heavy Colt revolver strapped low on his hip, and his thumb was tucked aggressively into his leather gun belt.Sheriff Ellis looked at Jake, then down at the Winchester held loosely in Jake’s right hand."Jake," the sheriff said, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead with a filthy handkerchief. "Folks are worked up.""Folks in Silver Creek are always worked up, Sheriff," Jake replied smoothly, leaning his shoulder against the porch support post. "If it isn't the price of beef, it’s the rain. If it isn't the rain, it’s the land tax.""This is different, Turner, and you damn well know it!" Briggs snapped, taking a step forward onto the bottom plank of the porch stairs.Jake turned his head slowly, his eyes locking onto Briggs’s face. "Morning, Briggs. You look like you slept in your clothes.""She leaves," Briggs said, ignoring the insult entirely. "Today. Right now."Jake didn't shift his stance an inch. "Doctor says she’s too weak to stand. She’s got a gash on her shoulder and she hasn't had real food in three days.""Not my problem," Briggs sneered, spitting onto the bottom step."No," Jake replied, his voice dropping into a low, quiet register that was far more dangerous than shouting. "No, I suppose people in trouble rarely are your problem, Briggs."Briggs’s face flushed a deep, ugly red. He took another full step up the stairs, his hand twitching toward the stock of his Colt. "You watch your mouth, Turner—"Sheriff Ellis stepped swiftly between them, raising an iron-muscled arm to hold Briggs back. "That’s enough, Briggs! I’m doing the talking here!"The sheriff turned back to Jake, his eyes pleading. "Jake, listen to reason for five minutes. The town is jumpy. We had two ranches burned up near the border last month. The Miller family lost six horses three weeks back. People see an Apache woman in town, they don't see a girl who’s hurt—they see the people who killed their kin. Nobody wants blood spilled over this."Jake glanced through the small glass pane of the doctor’s front door.
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POOR COWBOY SAVED A 22-YEAR-OLD APACHE GIRL — THEN THE WHOLE TOWN TURNED AGAINST HIM

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