“Right. That’s the short one out there. Get in the cellar, Mary. If anything happens, you know what to do.”
Her eyes grew huge, shining in the candlelight. “If anything happens? What do you mean? What could happen?”
“There’s no time, Mary. Get down there. Everything will be all right. I just have to talk to these men and see what they want. But if anything happens, you know what to do.”
“The tunnel? That was for Indian attacks. You?—”
“Tell me you know what to do, Mary.”
“I know what to do. But Cole, I don’t want to leave you.”
“You gotta get down there, Mary. You gotta get down there, now.” Saying this, he knelt under the table and pulled the rug aside and opened the hatch.
“Take your rifle, Cole.”
He shook his head. “That will only stir them up. I will talk with them hospitably. I just pray to God that they are good Christian men.”
Which he doubted. But he did not share this doubt with Mary, who was frightened enough already.
She kissedhis cheek and told him she loved him and started down the steps.
“I love you, too, Mary,” he said, and handed her a candle before shutting the hatch again and dragging the rug back over it and returning to the window.
Just as he looked out, the short man called, “Hello, the house.”
Cole was tempted not to answer. Maybe they would just ride on.
But half a second later, he shook his head.
They wouldn’t ride on. Not if they were here for what he reckoned they were here for.
The thought had a curious effect on him. It chilled him to the bone but also lit a white-hot fire in his heart.
He knew this was bad, knew that he and Mary and everything they owned, everything they had built together, and all of their dreams hung in the balance.
These men were not the welcome wagon.
4
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan,” the short man called in his unpleasant voice.
“Good evening,” Cole said, stepping from the house.
The horsemen had drawn closer. The short man, still at the front of the pack, was only twenty feet away, close enough for Cole to see his face. In the dying light of day, it was a brutal, crude face, like a thing carved with a hatchet.
The man’s head was squat and blocky, reminding Cole of a toad, except for the eyes, which were small and dark and gleamed with menace, like the eyes of a weasel. He remembered the man’s face well from their brief encounter in the lumber yard and remembered noting the misshapen ears, crumpled nose, and scarred eyebrows that told him this man was a fighter, maybe even a boxer.
In the lumber yard, he’d caught the man looking at Mary. It was only a split second, but he’d seen the lecherous look in the man’s eyes. Then the surprise. Then a flash of anger. Then the disguise, a mask of awkward cordiality.
Now, the man appeared to be gloating.
“There he is,” the man said. “Mr. Sullivan himself. Where’s your wife?”
“Not here,” Cole said, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.
“That’s a lie,” one of the other men said from the side of the house. “I seen her through the window.”
“Tell her to come out here,” the short man said.
