Ellen's Arc

Chapter 7 of 45

Ellen reached the six women crouched in the brush. No wall stood between them and the guns. The ridge gave no cover. Vincent's men pressed from behind. The eight who burned Cade's town closed from ahead. She had one man to hold them off, and the ground gave her nothing to work with. Behind her, the big man from the ridge spoke. This was the one hunting Cade, the leader of the eight. Marcus Brennan had ridden a long way to close this distance. He wanted Cade himself. "Step aside," Marcus said to Cade. "This isn't your women. It's you." Cade did not move. "Then it's me." Ellen watched the two forces stall. Neither wanted to fire first into open ground. Every gun waited on another gun. She saw it then. They were all bunched at one point, and none of them trusted the men beside them. She pulled the flint from her coat. Dry brush ringed the ridge on every side. She struck sparks into a clump at her feet. The stalks caught. Flame ran fast through the dry scrub, low and quick, spreading a line between the women and the men. "Fire," a hunter shouted. The wall of smoke rose. The eight fell back from the heat. Vincent's men behind them cursed and gave ground too. "Move," Ellen told the women. "Through the gap. Now." They ran along the one lane the fire had not sealed. Ellen shoved the last one ahead of her. Cade backed after them, rifle up, firing once to keep Marcus honest. The flames split the hunters from their target. Marcus stood at the edge of the smoke, watching the women vanish. He did not chase them into the burn. "You bought an hour," he called through the haze. "That's all fire does. It goes out." They did not stop until the ridge was far behind. The women dropped in a hollow, gasping. Six alive. All six. Ellen counted them twice. Cade knelt beside her, reloading. "They'll circle the fire," he said. "Both bands. They'll pick up our trail by dark." "I know." Ellen looked at the six faces, filthy and scared and breathing. She had shielded them. The ridge had offered nothing, and she had made the ground burn. But Marcus was right. Fire went out. And now two bands of hunters shared one purpose: find the woman who cheated them, and the man she ran with. Cade holstered a pistol. "You need a place they can't follow you into. Walls. One way in." Ellen thought of the plain, the distant red barn, the hotel with its cellar and its rear corridor. Somewhere she could hold. "I know a place," she said. "But Vincent owns half of it, and I owe him a debt he'll come to collect." The women watched her. She had saved them once. Now she had to give them a roof before nightfall.