“I won’t think twice if you ride the other way come morning.”
“No,” Sheffield said. “I won’t do that. I started this. I’m gonna finish it.”
“All right.”
“But then, I guess maybe I’d better head up to Stump Run and check on my boy.”
“You won’t ride alone.”
“Appreciate it. Because I reckon maybe Junior’s got himself into trouble up there with Ligget and them. I might end up needing some help.”
“You’ll have it. Least I can do after all you’ve done for me.”
Sheffield said nothing to that.
They sat in silence for a long stretch, the wind howling across the ridge high above them and sighing through the treetops between. The woods were silent, save for the wind and the light hiss of gritty snow.
There were no bird calls, not even an owl’s hoot. Nothing was moving. Everything was still.
“You know Mayfield from before, huh?” Sheffield said.
“Yeah, I know him. We had what you might call a disagreement down in Arizona.”
Sheffield arched one brow, waiting.
“I was riding for a cattle outfit down there,” Conn said, remembering the heat and the dust and the way everything seemed to go wrong that trip. “Never should have gone on that drive. The night I signed on, I was drunk and broke.”
“Bad combination.”
“It is. As I soon learned. Point is, we started in Texas, and right from the start, everything that could’ve gone wrong did.”
“I been on drives like that.”
“Me, too. But this one took the cake. Bad luck every step of the way. Bad weather, bad crossings, and bad food—which got even worse when a band of Comancheros killed our cook.”
Sheffield sipped his coffee.
Conn said, “But we didn’t hit the real trouble until we crossed over into Arizona. By that time, I knew I’d fallen in with the wrong outfit. It wasn’t just things going wrong. It was the men.Some of them were pretty rough. But it was too late to turn back. I’d signed on.”
Sheffield nodded.
“Then one night on the borderlands, we bedded down beside a dry creek, and rustlers hit us again. Or that’s what I thought when the gunshots woke me. I grabbed my gun and ran toward the fighting, and this fella stepped out of the darkness and shot at me. Burned me across my hip. I fired back and put him down. Then Mayfield comes at me from an angle with his gun drawn. I would’ve killed him, but I saw his badge and lowered my weapon. Then one of his men yelled that I wasn’t the one.”
Up on the ridge, the wind howled fiercely. A cold breeze whipped through the enclosure. The fire wavered, making light and shadow dance.
“Turns out they were after another fella in the outfit. He was tall with a scarred face, too. He got killed in the fight. Mayfield didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to shoot me. We both stood there. He was telling me to lay my weapon on the ground, and his men were shouting that I wasn’t the guy, that they had gotten him.”
“Wonder you didn’t shoot each other.”
“It is. I didn’t want to kill a lawman, and I guess he didn’t want to kill an innocent man. Afterward, he took me in and jailed me and made me stand trial for shooting his deputy. It was a clearcut case of self-defense. Everybody knew it. And the circuit judge cut me loose. But I was stuck in that borderlands jail for three weeks waiting for that judge to show up. Waiting and sweating. Got in a fight in there, too. I sorted him, but he stuck his thumb in my eye, and I couldn’t see right for near on a month. All because of Mayfield.”
“Seems like he’s still sore about it, too.”
Conn nodded. “It’s unfinished business between us.”
29
“Your tea, sir,” the waitress said, setting a steaming mug on the table.
