Later they are sat round a tiny fire. They are all cold and tired, wrapped in the blankets that they packed. Billy is lying down on his back, trying to find a way to get more comfortable where his wounds will be less painful.
Logan wonders about the wound on his arm. He pokes at the dressing in the feeble firelight. Some blood has seeped through but not much. Maybe the stitches the barber put in are still intact. Maybe it will be alright. If he can't rest it then he'll need to find a doctor. How many days will it be before they find a town?
'Do you think we got away? Did they follow us?' Laura asks, wiping Billy's brow with a cloth soaked in water from her canteen.
'I don't know. I watched our back trail all day and didn't see any sign of them but that doesn't mean they won't start following later on and catch us up. We're going pretty slowly and the four of us will be making a pretty easy trail to follow. Someone needs to keep watch in the night and we all need to have guns close by our beds just in case.'
'Will we ever be free from them?'
'I don't even really know who they all are. It's your town. Maybe you know them better than I do? For all I know they could be back at the bottom of a bottle of whisky in the saloon, forgetting it ever happened.'
'Where will we go? We can hardly go back to town.'
'You're right, we should maybe talk about where we want to go.'
Nobody speaks for some time, each lost in their own thoughts. He is thinking about San Francisco and if he will ever get there. He doesn't have the money, his belongings are still back in Walkers Creek, and his most lucrative means of employment will be closed to him if he has these three for company.
He looks at Emily and watches the light from the flames flicker across her face. She has a grim determined look. It wouldn't be so bad if it was only her. She does at least seem to have forgotten their argument about him working for Humby. She could be a good partner. She'd have the nerve to pull the kind of job he did on the McLaren house. And having a woman to travel with would be such a good disguise. No harm in having someone around to watch your back either, he thinks, remembering how the bullet through his shoulder was so nearly his end.
'What about the sheriff?' Billy says suddenly.
'The sheriff?'
'The smoke from the ranch must've been visible from Walkers Creek. Surely the sheriff and some deputies would have turned up there sooner or later. Wouldn't they be able to make it safe for us to get back into town?'
'You seem to have changed your tune on deputies.' Emily says sharply.
'I ain't such a fool not to realize that Mr. Wilson has saved our lives and all. And without us asking for him to do it neither. Oh, I know I swapped bullets with a deputy and all, and maybe he was a bad egg. But Laura tells me Mr. Tanner here was wearing a deputy badge when she first saw him and he's been pretty good for us too.'
'Aren't you worried what they'll say when they find out who you shot?'
'I see what you're saying, but right now death by hanging sounds more attractive than the pain of riding a horse 'til it kills me.'
They each look into the fire, not willing to meet Billy's eyes. None of them like to hear him talk about death.
'I'm scared of dying,' Billy says quietly, after a pause.
Still they stare into the fire.
'You know it's funny,' Billy says, 'when I was sick in bed and Laura was taking care of me, we agreed we was going to leave the ranch and run away someplace together. It's funny because here we are, running away. Sometimes that thing you wished for ain't nothing like you imagined it when you finally get it.'
Laura reaches over and kisses him on the forehead.
'I wanted that Ranch,' Emily says, a sad note in her voice. 'I wanted that Ranch so badly and then look what a mess I made of it. Now there's nothing left there, nobody else to help me run it, no house to live in. Nothing.'
'You could build a new house,' Laura says.
'No, I can't build anything without help and all my help has deserted me.'
'What about Sanchez?'
'Sanchez? I haven't seen him since the rest of them left the ranch. For all I know he could have gone with them.'
'So does anyone have someplace they'd like us to be heading for?' He asks impatiently, not being interested in who Sanchez is or where he might be.
Nobody answers. How long is he going to be able to put up with this bunch of self-absorbed depressives? Perhaps he should offer to take the first watch and then just slip off and leave them behind.
'Where do you want to go?' Emily says. 'You've had a lot of time since we left the house to think about it. I reckon you're the kind of man who always has a plan. What's your plan?'
'I'm thinking I'm going to need a doctor to see about this wound. I don't reckon that Walkers Creek will be pleased to see me back, so I'm thinking of the little mining camp I passed through on the way here. We should be able to get there in a day or so, even keeping off the road.'
The fire crackles.
'You don't think we could go back into Walkers Creek?' Laura asks.
'No, I said I didn't think I'd be much welcome. You'd probably do just fine. And I reckon Miss Nixon could probably still marry the mayor if she was that way inclined.'
Emily snorts with disgust.
'I don't have anything left, I've no reason to care where we end up. If you can think of a thing worse than ending up married to Jeremiah Humby then I think I'd be willing to try that just out of curiosity 'cos I don't reckon there is a thing worse.'
'Maybe we could get to Mr Tanner's mining camp and send word to Walkers Creek to find out the lay of the land?' Billy suggests.
Logan thinks that's a dumb idea and nearly says so. Any message they get back from the town is likely to be delivered by the bullets of a posse if their experience so far is anything to go by. But he bites his tongue and says nothing, realizing that they're agreeing to do what he suggests. He can lead them to the mining camp and leave them there. That will be good enough.
Emily yawns.
'We should get some sleep. Someone will need to keep watch in case we've been followed. We should take it in turns so we all get some sleep. I'm happy to do the first couple of hours, then I'll wake one of you to do the next couple.'
They murmur assent and fidget with the blankets for a few minutes trying to get something close to a comfortable bed to sleep on. None of them look like they're used to sleeping in the outdoors.
He gets up to walk around their little camp. He checks on the horses, still hobbled where they'd left them, and listens in the dark for anything that sounds like people on their trail. It is eerily quiet. Even the normal rustling sounds of wind and nocturnal nightlife seem to be absent in that sheltered gully.
He climbs up the bank to see if there is anything to see. Perhaps the campfire of someone on their trail. There is no moon and the starlight is feeble. He can make out a red glint in the distance that might be the smoldering embers of the ranch house. He can't tell.
He goes back to the fire, adds another small branch to keep it going a little longer and sits down and listens to the snores of his sleeping companions.
He wakes with a start and makes an involuntary yelp at the bright light in his face. It takes a moment to realize that the bright light is daylight and he has slept past dawn. Emily stirs from under her blanket.
'What?' she says, groggily. 'You didn't wake me for my turn on watch.'
He doesn't say anything. There isn't anything to say. He is looking at the empty space where Billy and Laura had slept.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
'You fell asleep?'
He doesn't look up and continues fussing with the fire, trying to get it lit again.