Elias’s face went white. “The rear livery alley. He has a thoroughbred kept saddled in the back stall.”
He turned to Margaret Hale, who was frantically packing the impounded ledgers into the iron courthouse safe. “Margaret! Keep Pike inside the sheriff’s cell with Tom! Don't let him out on the street until the town is clear!”
“Go!” Margaret shouted, throwing the heavy brass combination wheel. “Don't worry about us—Tom has six deputies coming from the rail depot!”
Elias took Clara’s hand and ran. They didn't take the main stairs; they vaulted down the narrow wooden fire escape at the back of the Odd Fellows hall, their boots hammering on the snow-covered rungs, landing in the drift beside their sled.
Down the alley, seventy yards away, a man in a charcoal coat with an otter collar was galloping away on a massive black stallion, snow flying six feet into the air behind the animal’s hooves. Crowe was not riding toward the south border; he was heading north and west, directly toward the mouth of the valley.
“He’s going to Black Creek,” Elias said, his voice dropping into a register of terrifying certainty.
“Why?” Clara gasped, climbing into the sled bench. “The court has ruled against him—he’s a fugitive!”
“Because if he can’t have the water, nobody will,” Elias answered, snatching the reins and lashing the team into an immediate, frantic gallop. “He’s going for the headgate. If he blows the timber bulkhead with black powder, the whole spring thaw will wash through the cut and drown the ranch in mud before the week is out.”
The pursuit was four miles of agonizing terror.
The team ran as they had never run before, their bellies low to the snow, the iron runners of the sled screaming over the crusted drifts. The wind had risen again, sweeping down from the peaks in bitter, blinding squalls that whipped Clara’s hair into her eyes and encrusted Elias’s eyebrows with ice.
Ahead of them, two miles into the valley, a thick column of greasy black smoke began to rise into the pale silver sky.
It was not rising from the mountain ditch.
It was rising from the Black Creek ranch yard.
“The barn!” Clara screamed, standing up against the dashboard of the sled, pointing with a gloved hand. “Elias, look at the barn!”
A massive wall of orange flame was roaring through the upper hay-doors of the great timber barn. The dry prairie hay—sixty tons of cured alfalfa and brome stored for the winter—had caught like tinder. Sparks and burning shingles were rocketing eighty feet into the freezing air, carried by the gale directly toward the roof of the log ranch house.
In the middle of the yard, Silas Crowe’s black stallion stood picketed to the corral gate, lathered and riderless.
Elias brought the sled to a sliding halt beside the trough, leaped from the bench before the runners stopped moving, and drew the Winchester from its leather boot.
“Crowe!” Elias roared, his voice cutting through the roar of the fire.
The door to the house swung open.
Silas Crowe stepped onto the porch. His top hat was gone; his fine charcoal coat was smeared with soot and axle grease. In his right hand, he held a long iron crowbar; in his left, an empty five-gallon kerosene tin.
“You’re too late, Ward!” Crowe screamed over the sound of the blaze, his face twisted into an insane, blackened rictus of fury. “The house is soaked! The parlor is already burning! You wanted your family’s dirt? You can sleep in the ashes!”
He raised the iron crowbar, preparing to throw it through the front window where a red glow was already pulsing against the glass.
Elias raised the Winchester. He did not shout a warning. He did not hesitate. He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet struck Crowe through the right shoulder, spinning the cattleman around like a top. The crowbar flew from his hand, clattering against the stone steps, and Crowe collapsed into the snowbank beside the porch, clutching his bleeding arm and groaning in the dirt.
Clara was already past them.
She didn't look at Crowe. She snatched an empty cedar bucket from the wellhead, threw open the door to the burning house, and disappeared into the smoke.
“Clara! No!” Elias bellowed, dropping the rifle and sprinting up the steps.
The interior of the house was a nightmare of gray, blinding smoke and crackling heat. Crowe had poured kerosene over the braided rugs in the parlor and touched a match to the curtains. Flames were climbing the dry pine log walls, licking at the ceiling beams.
Clara was there, beating the burning rug with a heavy wool blanket she had dipped into the water barrel by the kitchen stove. The steam rose in hissing, choking clouds around her head.
“The water barrel!” she shouted, coughing violently, her eyes streaming with tears. “Help me tip the barrel!”