Even though William was literally falling asleep as he stood there, Annie coaxed him back down to the ground, where they found a tack room. They carried stiff saddle blankets and a canvas tarp up to their fort and lined its floor with them. William was asleep before Annie could adjust the tarp to cover him.
She made one more trip to the tack room, and found a long, scythe-shaped hay hook and a pitchfork, which she took up to their fort. The pitchfork was now within reach on the top of the bales. The hay hook, with its long shaft and curled tine that looked like a pointed metal question mark, was stuck in the hay at eye level.
Annie had slept fitfully. Every sound-a bird whistling through the rafters, the fat cow shifting her weight or peeing with the sound of a bucket being emptied-scared her and kept her awake. The events of the previous day and night kept replaying in her head, her reminiscence even more vibrant and vivid than what she had actually experienced in the first place. The bright red blood pouring from the chest and face of the Wavy-Haired Man who’d been shot. The smell of pig manure from Mr. Swann’s boots as they huddled on the floor of his pickup. The sharp pine needles that scratched at them as they ran through the night, putting several hours between themselves and Mr. Swann’s home. William, though, had slept like something dead. When he snored, she prodded him with her elbow to make him stop.
The last thing she remembered, until now, was seeing the muted cream glow from the rising sun through gaps in the east side of the barn.
Someone was coming.
It was much warmer in the barn now, and heat beat down on them from the roof just a few feet over the top of their hay wall. She guessed it was midday, or early afternoon. She threw the tarp back and found herself drenched in sweat. She was thirsty, and her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to her teeth as she tried to talk.
“Here they come,” she said thickly.
A LARGE sliding door opened, flooding the barn with light. The sound of it was like a roll of distant thunder. William’s eyes widened, and Annie withdrew her hand from his mouth.
Who is it? he mouthed.
She shrugged in reply. She didn’t dare rise and peek over the hay bales to see who it was.
“Hello,” a man called. “Is someone in here?”
She tried to judge the voice. It didn’t sound threatening. But neither had Mr. Swann’s.
“I saw some tracks outside,” the man said. “They were pointed this direction. If you’re in here, speak up.”
Annie and William exchanged looks. Annie narrowed her eyes and gestured toward the hay hook and the pitchfork, and William saw them for the first time. He looked back at his sister with admiration.
Annie pulled William to her, and she whispered in his ear. “If he comes up here, we’ll have to defend ourselves.”
William nodded his understanding.
For a moment, there was no sound at all from below. What was he doing, Annie wondered. Had he left? What if he decided to go into his house and call the sheriff? Or his neighbor, Mr. Swann?
“Annie and Willie, are you in here?” the man asked softly.
Annie’s heart raced: He knew their names!
She looked at William, who was scowling. He didn’t like to be called Willie. He reached up and drew the hay hook out of the bale, and ran his finger along its sharpened tip.
The man below was walking through the barn, and she heard the door to the tack room open and the sound of boots scuffing on the slat-board floor. Then the door closed, and the man called out, even more softly than before.
“Annie and Willie, if you’re in here, you can come out. You’re probably pretty hungry and thirsty, and I’d guess you’ve got family who is worried as hell about you. I see I’m missing some blankets and a tarp, and my guess is you needed them to get through the night. That was smart thinking. But I’d bet that a shower and something cool to drink would sound even better right now.”
William looked to Annie and made a face, indicating, “It sure would!”
Annie scolded him with her eyes.
“I imagine you two are scared,” the man said. “I understand. But I’m not going to do you any harm. My name’s Jess Rawlins. I own this ranch.”
Suddenly, Annie had doubts. The man’s voice seemed kind, and caring. There was a timbre to it she liked. But how could she know he was telling the truth? Or that even if he was a rancher, he wasn’t friends with people like Mr. Swann or the executioners?
“I’m coming up there on the top of my hay,” Rawlins said, “because if I was a kid your age, that’s where I’d go. Plus, it looks like my stack is one row higher today than it was last night when I left it.”
William clutched the handle of the hay hook with both hands. Annie slid the pitchfork into their fort from where she had put it the night before. She grasped the rough wooden handle and pointed the rusty curved tines toward the top edge of the hay bales.
They could hear him breathing hard as he climbed the stack, and felt a slight vibration in the closely packed hay from his weight.
“Don’t get scared,” Rawlins said. “It’s going to be okay.”
When the long, brown hand reached over the top bale like some kind of crab, William lunged and swung the hook through the air, striking flesh. The man responded with a sharp intake of breath. The point cut through the webbing of the man’s hand between his thumb and index finger and opened a gash. Blood spurted from the wound.
Annie’s first, instinctive reaction was revulsion. She wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run. So she swallowed hard, stood with the pitchfork ready, and leaned forward, following the writhing arm down toward a shoulder, then a battered cowboy hat, and a lean, weathered face suspended in a silent scream. She pointed the tines toward his face and tried to scowl.
Rawlins looked back at her, obviously in pain, but his eyes didn’t seem to threaten her.
“Damn,” Rawlins said. “Why’d you go and do that to my hand? It really hurts.”
Annie wasn’t sure what to do. She glanced back at William and found him huddled in the corner of the fort, staring at the hand of the rancher pinned with the hook to the bale of hay. A thin line of dark blood coursed down Rawlins’s hand and dripped on the tarp. A quarter inch of skin held the hand pinned to the bale. The rancher could pull away and break the skin, and keep climbing. William looked up to her for direction, and she saw the terror in his eyes from what he had done and its implications.
She turned back to Rawlins. His other hand was now on the top bale as well.
“I need to reach over with my free hand and pull that hook out,” Rawlins said. “I don’t want you jabbing me with that fork, though.”
Annie knew she had him, and knew he knew it. So why did she feel so awful?
“You’re Annie, right?”
She nodded.
“And Willie?”
“William,” her brother corrected.
“Well, Annie and William, I’m glad you’re all right. The whole county’s looking for you.”
Annie shook her head, as if denying the truth of what she had just heard. If everyone was looking for them, maybe it was safe to come out after all.
“Mind if I pull this hook out of my hand?” Rawlins asked.
“We’re hungry,” Annie said, wishing she could put more sand into her voice. “You can pull it out if you’ll take us in and get us something to eat and drink.”
Jess Rawlins looked at her with something like amusement. Then he nodded at William. “I was going to offer that anyway,” he said. “Luckily, I never liked this hand all that much.”
Saturday, 5:34 P.M.
THE BANKER, Jim Hearne, shouldered his way through the knot of men in jackets and ties and women in cocktail dresses and ordered another Scotch and water at the makeshift bar. It was his fourth in barely an hour.