His pace slowed when a figure from Ridgewater appeared like a wraith at the other end of the bridge, horse shuddering as he raked spurs in a bloody groove along her side. A black veil swung from the brim of his hat like a burial shroud, muffling his graveled voice. “No one crosses.”
Apprehension pried at the back of Decker’s mind and he slowed to a walk.
“I gotta get home.” Marshal danced under him as Cricket held him back. “River’s too high to take the other way.”
The stranger’s horse paced across the bridge, crowding him. “Go back.”
Decker reached Cricket and caught a flash of a grin accompanied with glazed eyes, and he knew under the cuffs of his shirt he’d have the same wretched blisters as everyone.
A crowd gathered at the other end of the bridge, pushing to get the best look, curiosity brimming at the two men facing off.
“If I get past you, what you gonna do? Doubt you’ll shoot me. Not in that town,” Cricket goaded.
“I enforce the quarantine. No one crosses,” the stranger said.
Silver glinted under the long black duster and a chill ran down Decker’s spine. He was thankful his bandana covered his face. “You aim to shoot a boy to enforce a quarantine? Offering no aid? No doctor?”
“I am a doctor.”
There it was again. The grating, shriveled voice, muffled through the concealing veil. His voice stirred memories in Decker—gunsmoke and a man left at the altar by the woman Willa loved.
No.
This couldn’t be him. Not after Safine and Willa spent a week searching for him and came up empty-handed.
Could it?
“Then help us,” Decker said, searching for any sign.
Are you the root of evil for this town? Are you the one bringing sicknesses upon us like plagues?
Spurs raked across the mare’s belly again and she pinned her ears and paced closer. “I said go back.”
A flicker of a smile pulled at Cricket’s lips even as he hunched forward in the saddle. “Hope she’s fast, you old buzzard.”
Cricket dug in his heels and Marshal jumped into a gallop. Decker shouted, throwing himself out of his path as he thundered towards the bridge.
The man slid off bulky leather gloves with surgical precision and reached for his gun.
Metal hissed as he spun the cylinder with a smooth, bone-white finger. It clicked shut with a brown thumb. His wrinkled, sun-aged trigger finger slipped into place.
Stitched together like a damn patchwork quilt.
If Ender’s Ridge was the Devil’s Town, the Devil had come home.
Dr. Jacob Whitton, prized surgeon of the 5th Regiment in the British army, now frontier doctor bent on creation, squeezed the trigger.
The shot flew high and Cricket’s hat tumbled into the river below as he galloped across the bridge.
Whitton snarled under the heavy veil and cocked the hammer for another shot.
The heartbeats from across the river crowded Decker’s mind like a frantic flock of sparrows, fear of discovery rooting him in place.
Whitton spun to Decker. Foam splattered the ground as the bit sawed at his mare’s mouth. The yawning barrel aimed between Decker’s eyes mocked him.
“I remember you.” Whitton said softly. “You look the same.”
“Thank you,” Decker said.
