Matt's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

Matt cleared the ridge trail by mid-morning and hit the southern road with the blanket buttoned inside his coat. The wool pressed warm against his ribs. He kept a steady pace and did not look back for the first hour. When he did look back, he saw a rider a quarter mile behind him, holding the same speed. The road ran open here, low scrub on both sides, no cover for miles. The rider had picked him up somewhere near the flats and had not closed the gap or fallen away. An hour on, the road bent past a leaning tree with a thick twisted trunk and branches that swept low over the ditch. Matt walked under it and used the turn to glance back without turning his head. The rider was still there. He had slowed to match. When Matt lost sight of him behind the trunk, the man did not reappear for a long minute. He was using the tree the same way Matt had, to look without being seen. Matt kept walking. A mile on he came to a small saloon set back from the road, gray boards and a trough out front, two horses tied to the rail. He did not stop. He wanted to know if the rider would. He counted three hundred steps past the door and looked back. The rider had pulled up at the trough and swung down. He was not drinking. He was watching Matt's back over the neck of his horse. The road dropped toward a creek and Matt saw his chance. A stand of willows leaned over the water, their long branches hanging to the ground like a curtain. He walked to the bank as if to fill his canteen, stepped through the leaves, and did not come out the other side. Inside the green shell he crouched, unbuttoned his coat, and worked the hawk feather out of the inside pocket. He set it on a flat rock at the base of the trunk, striped side up, where a man pushing through the leaves would see it before he saw Matt. Hooves came down the road and stopped. Boots hit dirt. The willow branches parted and a thin man stepped through, hand on his belt knife. His eyes went to the feather on the rock. He stared at it. His hand came off the knife. He looked at Matt, then at the feather again, then backed out through the leaves without a word. A minute later the horse went back up the road the way it had come, at a trot, then a canter. Matt picked up the feather and put it away. He sat under the willows until his hands stopped shaking. The rider knew the mark and it had sent him running, which meant the mark was known on this road, which meant someone down it was watching for the same girl he was. He stood up, buttoned the blanket back against his ribs, and kept south.