“That’s all I need. It’s all any of us here needs.”
“Is it? ’Cause I look out over this gathering and I don’t see the same certainty on all of the faces.”
He could tell that Stu Deakins was harboring doubts, if the way Deakins couldn’t meet his eye was anything to go by, not to mention the benevolence he had shown back in the cell. And David Zuburi, who had earlier tried to restrain his wife from hurting Mal, was shuffling his feet. A couple of others seemed less firm in their resolve than the rest. It appeared that there were vigilantes here thinking for themselves and that not everyone was one hundred percent convinced of Mal’s guilt. This could yet evolve into a real trial, despite the presence of a hanging judge.
“Maybe if we just, y’know, hash this out,” Mal went on, “we might come to some resolution about how things happened from your point of view and from mine. I can’t help but think there has been a massive misunderstanding—”
“That is not how we are doing this,” Toby shouted, overriding him.
“Just kill him now!” shouted one of the onlookers. “We know—”
“You don’t know anything,” Mal shot back, “or I would not be standing here falsely accused. I would have given my life to our cause and there’s people here who can be in no doubt about that.” He found Deakins again and focused in on him. “And I don’t know what has happened in your life since to make you this hard-hearted and bitter, but I guarantee you killing me ain’t going to make you feel better.”
“You shut the hell up!” Sonya Zuburi shrieked at him. “Do not try to confuse us, Malcolm Reynolds. We have searched the ’verse for you and you will not escape justice.”
“Justice has not shaken hands with any of us,” Mal said. “In a just ’verse, we would have won.”
“You saw the Browncoats were going down at Serenity Valley, and you cut your losses and ran, Mal,” Toby said, seizing the reins of the conversation. “Like a rat off a sinking ship.”
“Huh? I never did anything of the kind.”
“You did!” Sonya shouted.
“I challenge you to prove even one iota of that statement to be true,” Mal said, and Toby smiled a sickly, sinister smile — the smile of a fanatic so convinced of his own righteousness that no power in the ’verse would dissuade him from it.
“Oh, I shall, I shall.” Toby waved a hand out at the crowd. “And you will understand, my fellow Browncoats, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we’ve got the right man and we will be doing the right thing.”
30
The planet Shadow, long ago
“Mal! Mal! They have Jamie!”
Jinny Adare came galloping on horseback across the field where Mal was working, breaking up the rocky, hard-packed soil for planting. Mal cut the motor on the rotavator and mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
“Who has Jamie?” he said.
Jinny reined in. “Bundy. Crump. They cornered him outside Camacho’s Grain and Feed. Said they’d had a call about someone shoplifting. Jamie was coming out lugging a sack of cobnuts. He said to Bundy he’d paid for them fair and square and if he was a shoplifter he’d steal something way less bulky than a forty-pound bag of horse feed. Bundy and Crump took him away at gunpoint anyway.”
“Who told you this?”
“Cat Camacho herself. She saw it all, and called me straight away. Bundy’s had a mad-on for Jamie ever since we tried busting Willard Krieger out of jail.”
“Had a mad-on for all of us,” Mal said, recalling the number of times either Bundy or Crump or both of them had hassled him in the street, at the Silver Stirrup, lots of other places, while he was innocently going about his business. Several times Bundy had baldly stated his desire to run Mal and the other Amigos out of town, or worse. He was itching for some payback after the humiliation of the jailbreak incident and Marla Finn’s thwarting his attempted prosecution of the culprits.
This campaign of harassment had been going on for months, and all of the Four Amigos had done their best to ride it out, hoping the sheriff and his sidekick would tire of it eventually; but now Bundy seemed to have ratcheted things up a gear.
“They taken him to the jail?” he said.
“I don’t know. That’d be the first place to look, I guess.”
“Okay. Let me get a horse and saddle up…”
“No time. You can ride with me.”
Mal heaved himself up behind Jinny, and she spun her horse round and spurred it into motion.
It was no hardship sitting with his arms around Jinny’s trim waist, her back against his chest, smelling her lavender-scented perfume at close range and a slight but heady tinge of sweat beneath it. Despite the circumstances Mal wished the ride could have lasted longer. He’d had only sporadic contact with the Adares since the jailbreak and practically none at all with Toby. As far as he knew, Jinny and Toby were still an item. But in that moment, feeling this strong, beautiful woman in front of him, so capable, so determined, Mal’s passion for her was rekindled. There was nothing he wanted more in the world — in the ’verse — than Jinny Adare.
The town jail was locked up. Empty. The sheriff’s office was shut too. Mal and Jinny made inquiries all over town, and eventually they learned that Bundy and Crump had driven out of Seven Pines Pass in their official police hover cruiser, headed towards Sageville on Arroyo Road.
Mal and Jinny raced in pursuit. They had no idea what the police officers’ plans were for Jamie, but they were sure Bundy and Crump intended no good.
Four miles out of town they came across the hover cruiser parked by the roadside. Three sets of footprints led away from the vehicle, out into the wilderness.
“We walk from here,” Mal said, dismounting.
“Why? Riding’d be faster.”
“Noisier too. My hunch is it’s better if they don’t hear us coming. We can get the drop on them then.”
Jinny dismounted too and tethered her horse, then accompanied Mal as he began following the trail of footprints. Sheriff Bundy’s heavier, deeper tread was discernible on the right of the three — the man could do with losing several pounds — and Mal could only assume the trudging set of footprints in the middle were Jamie’s. The two police officers were manhandling Jamie along between them. This had all the hallmarks of a prisoner being walked towards the gallows.
Suddenly Mal gestured at Jinny to hunker down. He had heard voices up ahead.
They crept forward on all fours through the sagebrush until they caught sight of Bundy and Crump standing beside a tall mesquite tree. Jamie was with them…
And he had a noose around his neck.
Jinny bit back a gasp of horror. “They wouldn’t…”
Mal hushed her. “They won’t,” he whispered, “not if I have anything to do with it.”
As they watched, Bundy was jeering at Jamie, whose hands were cuffed behind his back. “This has been a long time coming, kid. Ever since the Finn woman got you off the hook, you and your deadbeat pals have been asking for it. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.”
“You’re not going to do this, Sheriff,” Jamie said. It wasn’t clear if he was making a prediction or a wish. “You wouldn’t dare. You’re just trying to scare me.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah, and just so’s you know, it’s working. I’m scared. Okay? So can we call it off now? You’ve accomplished what you set out to.”
Crump tugged on the rope, cinching the noose that little bit tighter around Jamie’s neck. The rope was slung over a bough of the mesquite, tied off around the tree’s trunk.
“Have you got a gun?” Jinny asked Mal.
“Nope, only a knife. You?”
“No. Didn’t think to bring one. I was too panicked.”