“Sure is,” said Bundy. “You think we’d be able to get away with something like that? ’Specially not with that fancy-talking lawyer-bitch Finn woman around. Nope, all’s we were doing was giving Adare a scare. I’ve heard tell it can take a man up to six minutes to pass out during a short drop hanging, twenty minutes till he’s actually dead. We weren’t going to let him dangle more than a minute or so.”
“Making a point,” said Crump. “Teaching him a lesson. Teaching all of you lot.”
“Some gorramn lesson,” Jamie croaked.
“Sure looked to me like you were going to go through with it,” Mal said.
“And to me,” said Jinny.
“Wouldn’t have been effective if it hadn’t been convincing,” said Bundy.
“And that stuff about hanging me as well?” said Mal. “That just big talk too?”
“Damn straight,” said Bundy.
Mal rose to his feet. “Okay,” he said. “Fact remains, you crossed a line, both of you.”
“As did you, Reynolds,” said Crump. “Shooting an officer of the law.”
Mal turned the gun on him. “I can always make it two officers of the law. Want that?”
Crump gulped and shook his head.
“Then shut up and listen. I reckon we all need to come to some sort of accommodation here. This is my proposal. Events went as follows. You, Sheriff Bundy, and you, Deputy Crump, came out into the wilds in order to carry out some target practice. There was an accident. Crump discharged his gun — this very one in my hand— and wounded his superior officer. That’s it. No attempted hanging, bogus hanging, whatever it was. Jamie, Jinny and I weren’t even here. What do you say? Sound reasonable?”
Bundy’s expression was steely. Blood oozed out over the fingers of the hand he was pressing against the bullet hole. Finally he said, “Seems as though I don’t have a choice.”
“You do. You can choose not to go along with what I’m suggestin’, and both you and your buddy Orville will find yourselves in shallow graves in the shade of this very tree. You think I’m not serious? I wasn’t aiming to wound you just now, Bundy, I was aiming to kill. And now that I’ve started down that road, don’t see as how I’m liable to stop. There won’t be any witnesses to your deaths, at least none that’ll testify against me. Ain’t that right, Jinny? Jamie?”
Sister and brother both nodded resolutely.
“There we go,” said Mal. “But just to make sure the three of us walk away unharmed and you don’t get it into your heads to shoot us in the back, we’re going to empty your gun of its shells, Sheriff, and this one as well, and take your ammo belts.”
When that was done, and Mal had unlocked the handcuffs on Jamie using the key from Crump’s belt, he and the Adare siblings took their leave of the lawmen, heading back to the road. While Jinny got back on her horse, Mal hotwired the police cruiser and drove it off with Jamie in the passenger seat. There seemed nothing to be gained by making it easy for Bundy and Crump to get back to town.
“Mal,” Jamie said, “how can I ever thank you?”
“You don’t need to. You’d have done the same for me.”
“I would’ve at that.” He fingered the line of rope burn on his neck. “I knew Bundy’d been getting more and more out of control lately. Just never realized he might take it as far as he did. Think he’s gone a little crazy.”
“Think the whole ’verse is going a little crazy. Bundy’s craziness just a by-product of that.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have put it past him to kill me, though. Wasn’t any doubt in my mind but that I was a goner. And now you’ve interfered, he’s only going to hate us all the more. That was some fancy knife-throwing, by the way.”
“I was aiming for Crump,” Mal said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, and I’d’ve got him too, if that damn rope hadn’t gotten in the way.”
They both laughed.
“Listen, were you being serious back there?” Jamie said. “About signing up with the Independents?”
“I’m giving it some proper thought. Crump wasn’t wrong about how the Alliance is behaving on the Red Sun worlds, and elsewhere. As you can see from what I did to him, I would seem to have a problem with authority riding roughshod over people. Guess that sentiment extends way beyond Seven Pines Pass, Shadow, the Georgia system, all the way out into the wider ’verse. Besides, ain’t as if there’s much going on for me here. Just farm work, ranching, the day-to-day grind…”
“The call of adventure, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Got me a feeling that I’m hearing it too,” Jamie said. “Maybe it takes a brush with death to put things into perspective. If you threw in with the Independents, I might just too. There’s a recruiting office opened up in Da Cheng Shi, I heard.”
“I heard that too.”
“Not sure how I’d break it to my parents.”
“Same with me and my mother. Might be best if we just didn’t, simply hopped the train to Da Cheng Shi without telling ’em. You think Jinny would join us?”
“Not sure how she feels about the whole situation. She doesn’t much like the Alliance, that’s for sure, but I reckon it’d be better if she stays at home anyway, for our parents’ sake. One child running off, like as to get himself killed, is bad enough — but both of them?”
“Yeah, I see your point.” But Mal might quite have liked it, were Jinny to have come along with them to Da Cheng Shi. Might have quite liked to spend some time in close proximity to her, without Toby around. See what developed.
“You don’t think we’d be running away, do you?” Jamie said.
“What do you mean?”
“From Bundy. Because if I know that man, he’s going to be sticking to our agreement for a while, but when his shoulder’s better, when he’s back on his feet, he’ll be fuming. He won’t let it rest. He’ll come after us again.”
“You think? I think he’s licked and he knows it.”
“Maybe you’re right. You’ve always been the confident one, Mal.”
Or, Mal thought, the one who doesn’t think things through or care about the repercussions.
They abandoned the police cruiser on the outskirts of Seven Pines Pass and walked the rest of the way in. Jamie announced that the drinks were on him, and they headed straight for the Silver Stirrup, where Jinny caught up with them later. It turned into one of the epic drinking sessions of Mal’s life, five straight hours of necking beers and whisky chasers and laughing uproariously with the Adare siblings. And when it was over, Jamie staggered homeward in the dark while Jinny accompanied Mal to the Reynolds ranch, leading her horse because she was far too inebriated to ride.
What happened next was as inevitable as it was, in hindsight, regrettable. They got as far as the bluff overlooking town. Next thing they knew, they were kissing. Next thing they knew after that, Jinny had laid out her horse’s saddle blanket on the ground. Beneath the stars, on a hot night, with all three of Shadow’s moons on the rise and a slight cooling breeze, they made love. It was sweet and fierce, tender and spectacular. Unforgettable.
Afterwards, as they lay together with Jinny’s head cradled in Mal’s arm, she said, “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“What, taken the Lord’s name in vain as much as we just did?”
“No, I mean it.” Her face was serious. “Toby and I… We’re still together. As far as he’s concerned, we’re a couple. I think he’s going to ask me to marry him. He keeps mentioning engagement rings and stuff, and looking at houses for sale.”
“That does surely seem like the talk of someone with marriage on their mind. What do you think about it?”
“I think I love Toby but I don’t love love him, if you see the difference.”