Chapter 2 of 2·7 min read·That same night, from Mercy Junction to the first camp west
The Road That Lied
Mateo got me through the broken window before the train had stopped moving.
I landed hard on the packed earth beside the tracks. My skirts caught on a jagged piece of frame, and Mateo’s hand closed around my waist to keep me from falling beneath the wheels. His coils struck the ground behind me with a heavy, living thump. The train screamed past, dragging sparks from the rails.
“Run, señorita.” His voice carried a warm Spanish shape around the words. “If you can run.”
“I can run.”
I could not run well in my traveling dress, with my pistol knocking against my hip and my burned palm throbbing like a coal. I ran anyway.
The night had come down in earnest. Smoke rolled over the tracks, swallowing the stranded train and the people shouting around it. Mateo moved beside me with astonishing speed, his tail pushing him across the dirt in long, powerful strokes. Every few yards he glanced back, not at me, but at the others.
“Lucía!” he shouted. “Keep the little one close. Tomás, take the north side. No firing unless you see the collector.”
The riflewoman answered from the dark. “He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Toward the train.”
Mateo swore under his breath. The word was Spanish, sharp and intimate. Then he turned to me. “We are leaving now.”
A wagon waited beyond the water tower, its canvas cover patched with flour sacks and blue army cloth. The small hairless creature from the train crouched beneath it, teeth bared. The harpy stood on the wagon’s roof with her wings folded tight against the cold. Someone had hitched two broad-chested mules to the traces.
Mateo lifted me into the wagon as if I weighed no more than a child. He climbed after me and pulled the canvas flap closed.
Inside, three figures had already made room. The woman with the rifle sat with her back to the front board. A narrow young man with a bandage around his throat held a sack of ammunition. The small creature occupied the corner, watching me with blue, unblinking eyes.
Mateo entered last. He filled the space, though he gathered his coils carefully so no one’s feet were trapped beneath them.
“Are you hurt?” he asked the woman.
“Only insulted.”
“Then you are well.”
She struck his shoulder with the butt of her rifle. He caught it, kissed two fingers, and returned the weapon.
The wagon jolted forward.
Next
Before dawn, Evelyn and Mateo must take the old survey road toward the settlement, while Vincent’s gunshot suggests he survived the train—and may be following them with the Pale Rider close behind.
Mateo looked over the others. “Lucía, your shoulder?”
“Bruised.”
“Tomás?”
The young man touched his bandage. “Still attached.”
“Good. I have need of all your parts.”
He said it lightly, but his eyes remained on the blood seeping through the cloth. He reached into a saddlebag, took out a clean strip of linen, and handed it to Tomás.
The boy accepted it with a sheepish nod. “Gracias, jefe.”
That small exchange unsettled me more than his rifle or his fangs. Mateo had risked a train full of passengers to reach me, but he knew who had been hit, who needed bandages, and which child had been frightened during the escape. Danger did not make him careless with the people who depended on him.
He caught me looking.
“My gang is not furniture,” he said. “I keep account of them.”
“You keep account of everything?”
“Of debts. Of ammunition. Of graves.” His gaze dropped to my burned hand. “And of promises.”
The wagon left the station road and entered open country. Through a tear in the canvas, I saw Mercy Junction shrinking behind us, its depot lamps wavering in the dust. The train stood black against the horizon. A pale figure moved beside it.
The rider had not followed.
That should have comforted me. Instead, the mark in my palm gave a slow, hot pulse.
Mateo saw my face. “It tells him where you are.”
“You knew that before you took me.”
“I knew it was likely.”
“Likely?”
He leaned back against the wagon wall. “Magic does not come with a newspaper, señorita. We learn what it costs by surviving it.”
“And the name Elias Vale?”
The men and women in the wagon went quiet.
Mateo’s expression tightened. “That is the name given to him by a clerk in a territorial record. The clerk died before anyone could ask where he got it.”
“Vincent said it was his name.”
“Marshal Ridgestone said many things.”
“He knew the rules.”
“He knows more than most humans.” Mateo looked toward the canvas slit. “He does not know the demon’s name.”
“Does anyone?”
“Señorita, if anyone knew it, they would have tried to bind him with it long ago. The names people use are masks. Elias Vale. The Pale Rider. El Cobrador. Stories written by frightened people who wished a word could make a monster manageable.”
The wagon wheels struck a rut. My shoulder knocked against his chest. His arm came around me, steadying me until the wagon leveled again.
I became aware of the warmth of him through my dress, the breadth of his hand at my waist, and the way his thumb stopped just above the place where my ribs began. He withdrew slowly.
“Forgive me,” he said.
“I was not offended.”
“That is not the same as permission.”
“No.” I looked down at my hand. “It is not.”
His eyes met mine. The space between us narrowed with the movement of the wagon, though neither of us moved.
Then the mules stopped.
The harpy screamed from the roof.
Mateo shoved me behind him. His body uncoiled across the wagon floor, blocking the opening. Lucía raised her rifle. Tomás fumbled for the ammunition sack.
A coyote stood in the road.
It was too large to be ordinary and too composed to be mistaken for one. Its coat was gray at the shoulders and red along the muzzle. A string of little silver bells hung around its neck. In the moonlight, its eyes reflected gold.
“Evening,” it said.
The small creature hissed and crawled behind my skirts.
Mateo drew a knife. “Move.”
The coyote sat down. “You have stolen a witch, crossed a railway, and brought a collector’s mark into my country. You owe a toll.”
“This road belongs to the railroad.”
“Roads belong to whoever survives them.”
Mateo’s lips peeled back from his teeth. “I have no patience for tricks.”
“Then you are poorly suited to the frontier.”
The coyote’s voice was almost human, but the words slipped strangely, arriving a little before its mouth moved. It turned its golden gaze on me.
“You carry a door in your hand.”
I closed my fingers over the mark. “I carry a burn.”
“A door can burn.”
Mateo shifted in front of me. “Leave her out of this.”
“Ah.” The coyote’s ears pricked. “You have already decided what she is to you.”
Mateo threw the knife.
The blade struck the road where the coyote had been. The creature now stood on top of the wagon’s front board, silver bells chiming softly.
“Three days west,” it said. “The settlement has no gate strong enough for what follows her.”
“Then tell me something useful,” Mateo said.
The coyote looked at me. “When the white rider asks for invitation, do not answer with your own voice.”
My mouth went dry.
The coyote sprang down and vanished into the grass.
The mules screamed. Tomás cursed. Lucía fired once into the empty road.
Mateo did not look at the place where the creature had disappeared. “What did it mean?”
“I do not know.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
A second sound reached us from behind: hoofbeats, measured and unhurried.
The Pale Rider had found the road.
Mateo cursed again, this time without humor. “Everyone out.”
He kicked through the rear canvas. The gang poured into the grass with practiced speed. Lucía pulled Tomás down behind a low ridge. The harpy launched herself into the darkness. Mateo seized my hand and dragged me toward a stand of cottonwoods.
“What about the wagon?” I asked.
“Let him chase it.”
He cut the traces with his knife. The mules bolted, dragging the empty wagon east while we ran west through the trees.
The hoofbeats followed the wagon.
For the first time since I had seen the pale figure beyond the train, I understood that rules could be used against him. Mateo had offered him a false trail. The thought gave me courage, though it also made the world feel more dangerous. If the collector could be delayed, then he could be delayed again. If he could be tricked, then someone might eventually trick him badly enough to survive.
We crouched in a dry wash until the hoofbeats faded.
Mateo’s hand remained around mine.
“You should have told me about the door,” I said.
“I did not know there was one.”
“The coyote said—”
“The coyote says what makes people pay attention.” He looked toward the dark ridge. “Tomorrow we take the old survey road. It will add a day.”
“Your settlement is three days away.”
“It was.”
“And now?”
“Now the road knows your name.”
He took a folded paper from inside his vest. In the moonlight, I saw columns of figures and names written in two different hands. English filled one side. Spanish filled the other. Beside each name were notes about flour, medicine, ammunition, and missing persons.
“You keep ledgers,” I whispered.
“I keep people alive.”
He folded the paper again. “You may leave in the morning if you wish. I will take you to a town with a telegraph and a church. You can find Marshal Ridgestone.”
The offer hurt more than pressure would have. I thought of Vincent standing alone on the train, turning his revolver toward the frost. I thought of his cold hand on my arm and the warning he had given me.
Then I looked at Mateo’s bandaged people sleeping among the cottonwoods, each one trusting him to wake before danger reached them.
“I am not leaving,” I said.
Mateo’s gaze searched my face. “Because you trust me?”
“Because I do not trust anyone else yet.”
His smile came slowly, without triumph. “That is a beginning.”
Far to the east, a gunshot broke the night.
Mateo rose and helped me to my feet. “We move before dawn.”
Behind us, the wagon burned beside the tracks, and somewhere beyond its flames the Pale Rider turned his horse toward the west.