He could barely stomach the peaches.
“What will we do?” he said to Ridley.
Considering how little energy he had left, he didn’t know if he should continue the plan to mislead Hackstedde or if he should instead begin home. But soon he was robbed of the choice altogether. He first thought the noise was his mind playing tricks upon him once more, but when the horse’s ears flicked forward and Ridley turned toward the sound, he knew it was real.
There was a happiness that swept over him on a carnal level, the prospect of survival, the company of other humans after such a trying evening. Yet the relief was dashed when he spotted Wade Webler riding behind Hackstedde and Gail Cooley, along with the deputy and two young men, one with a hound. The six of them drifted leisurely into his ambit, and his only comfort was that they had found him and not the boys.
The sun bled a dark crimson at their backs. They halted before him and Wade came up to the front of the pack once he saw it was only one man alone.
“George,” he said, “I must venture to ask how a man so old and so lazy as you managed to end up this far from Old Ox. With, I might add, one of my most prized horses.”
George hobbled forward to meet them. It felt like he’d forgotten how to speak and he stood there in a trancelike silence.
Wade appeared downright triumphant. He sat stout on his horse, basking in the moment.
“Look at yourself,” said Wade. “Absolutely beaten. With only three days’ riding. The word pathetic comes to mind, but I’d hate to be so generous.”
There was a time when the words would have rankled him, but he was no longer that same person, and whatever harm Wade wished to cause had already been self-imposed many times over by George himself. Besides, this man pontificating before his underlings like some cooing toddler was hardly the all-powerful potentate he imagined himself to be. It was probably the first time he’d ever looked upon Wade without even a hint of hatred, knowing how dire was his need for revenge compared with the insignificance of the trespass that had occasioned the man’s entire expedition. George tried to listen as he went on—composing a metaphor about how he’d taken leave of work to come to the woods and bag a young buck, not a fat sow like George, insisting that he tell them where Prentiss and Caleb had gone off to—but he could think only of how petulant Wade had become. A father, a landowner, supposedly the town’s most influential personage, capable of bringing even Union generals to heel, and yet at heart a scared little boy, too proud to shrug off a little spit to the face. George pitied him—thoroughly and totally—and he had no urge to argue, to play the role Wade needed him to fill.
“Speak up.” It was Hackstedde now, who appeared as fed up with Wade’s speech as George was. “Just tell us where the colored boy is so we can end this.”
George gestured toward the horse—his eyes still on Wade—and found his voice.
“I have your property. What do we say you take back what’s yours, charge me for any crimes done, and let this go?”
When his words met silence, he offered them once more, begging this time.
“Let it go, Wade. You want more land? Why don’t I sign mine over to you. You want justice? Allow me to hang. You can even keep the bag off my head and watch me writhe, knowing it was you who brought about my agony. That’s what you seek, is it not? Retribution? Consider it yours. Just let it go.”
Everyone looked toward Webler for some concession, yet he merely shook his head.
“I’ve promised many good folks in the county a nigger to be hanged. I believe I’ll have him.”
So there would be no satisfying Wade without Prentiss. The chieftain of Old Ox had dreamed up some threat to his empire, to his people, and had placed the burden on Prentiss and Prentiss alone; he was a man in crisis, and reason had no place in the conversation. Words would not deter him. George could only sigh. Without any fuss he pulled his son’s pistol from his waistband and held it out limply with both hands.
The men protested with a roar before drawing their own guns, all but Gail, who whirled his horse and cowered at the back, and the deputy, who screamed out that everyone needed to calm down, lest things spiral further, then joined Gail at the back himself. That left the two young men George didn’t know, who had yet to speak a word, flanking Wade and the sheriff.
“Put it down,” Wade said, holding forth his own pistol. “You don’t even know how to shoot that damn thing.”
There was some truth to this. The last time George had pulled a trigger he was a boy, hunting with his father, and even then he hadn’t enjoyed the brutal tug of the hammer, or the way the cry of the scattergun obliterated the calm of the afternoon. But he would protect the boys’ passage at all costs, and if Wade proved as unrelenting as his posturing suggested, George would take a shot at him. He had never been so sure of anything in his life.