It was clear that William had moved on from this area. She should go back and investigate the storehouse while she had the opportunity.
But what if he’s only gone a little way farther? You’d better be certain.
She would walk only a little bit more, just to be sure that William wasn’t just around the bend of the path. She knew she only had a short amount of time and she needed to use it.
Mattie followed the trail William had broken in the snow, the cloth-wrapped sandwich gripped tight in her hand. She didn’t see any sign of him except his footprints, and after about a quarter of an hour she decided it was safe and she could turn around.
That was when she heard the voices.
CHAPTER NINE
It wasn’t just voices. It was men shouting—no, William shouting, and two others speaking loudly, but not as loudly as William.
Griffin and C.P. Oh god, what are they doing so close to the cabin? Didn’t I warn them? Didn’t I tell them they needed to go far from here?
Mattie didn’t want William to see her, so she stepped off the path and into the cover of trees, moving slowly and carefully between the trunks until she was close enough to see. She was just behind the group, with William’s back to her and the strangers’ faces visible.
William stood in the center of the path, the shovel in his hands, and it was clear from his posture that he might swing it at one of the other men any moment now.
Griffin and C.P. stood side by side, and at C.P.’s shoulder was a woman nearly as tall as he was. She had long black hair spilling out of a red cap and her lips were pressed together so tightly that they were practically white.
That’s Jen, Mattie thought. Their friend. The one they were going to meet.
“I’m saying it for the last time. You get off this mountain if you know what’s good for you,” William said.
Griffin had his hands up in a placatory manner, but his eyes and voice were hard. “And I’m telling you that you have no right to drive us off. This is public land. Your land ends back there. We saw the signs. You don’t have the right to dig like this out here. It’s dangerous for anyone passing through.”
“I have the right to do whatever I want. This is my mountain, and God has given me a mission,” William said.
Mattie saw Jen and C.P. glance at one another, their eyes saying that William was a crazy person.
C.P. gave Griffin’s arm a little tug. “Maybe we should just go.”
“No,” Griffin said. “He doesn’t have the right to send us off. He doesn’t have the right to do any of this. And when we get back down to where there’s cell service, I’m going to report him. Someone ought to report him for what he’s done to that girl he calls his wife, anyway.”
Mattie saw the muscles of William’s back bunch up, his hands tighten on the handle of the shovel. His voice, when he spoke, was low and icy cold as the river in winter.
“What,” he said, “do you know of my wife?”
Oh, no, Mattie thought. Panic bubbled up inside her. Why had Griffin said that? William would kill her if he knew that she’d seen two strange men at the cabin and not mentioned it to him.
“We saw what you did to her,” Griffin said.
“Griff,” C.P. said, and there was warning in his tone.
No, no, don’t say anything else, don’t make it worse, you need to run, you need to run now before William hurts you, he’s going to hurt you.
Mattie knew she ought to run herself, ought to run back to the cabin and grab the money and anything else and fly down the mountain now, before something terrible happened. But she was frozen with fear, with indecision. Should she run, thinking only of herself? Or should she stay, and try to stop William?
And how are you to stop him? You can’t stop him from hurting you.
“I don’t know how you could have seen my wife,” William said. “Because my wife has been in our home for the last two days, and if you saw her there then you came onto my private property. And if you came onto my private property and looked at my wife, who is also my property, then I have every right to defend what is mine.”
Mattie saw it before Griffin did, because she knew it was coming. The flat end of the shovel swung out and connected with Griffin’s ear. Griffin stumbled to one side of the path as C.P. and Jen shouted. William raised the shovel again.
He’s going to beat Griffin to death, Mattie thought, and then she was running before she knew what she was doing, but running toward the fight instead of away from it as she knew she ought to do.