It was the smallest comfort that these goons had no response. Wade and his son paused and turned back, seemingly roused by the slightest discomfort.
“His name was Landry,” Prentiss said. “He wasn’t just any man, but my brother. Best person I ever known. Best person I ever will know. And there ain’t no number of horses that could make up for him being gone.”
“That’s enough from you,” Morton said. “Best learn what little you might from that brother of yours and keep your mouth shut.”
George stepped up, tucking his shirt into his pants, eyes alight.
“You are a callous fool, Ted,” he said. “You have no right to speak a word in polite society, or any society for that matter.”
“If you’re aiming to start something again,” Ted said, “I’ll finish it again.”
“Now everyone calm down,” Hackstedde said, raising his voice.
“I saw him put paws on Mr. Morton once,” Gail said, “and I ain’t about to let it happen again.”
The horses tensed and whinnied, and the whole yard, still awash in the breezy morning light, had the feeling of boiling over. Voices trampled one another now but Prentiss was quiet amid the uproar. Although Morton was a pathetic creature, lower than he was, he could not shake the hold of Wade Webler: the grandeur of his costume, the smugness of his countenance, the self-assurance in his total command of the situation. He stood leaning against the carriage whispering to his son, grinning once more. In the face of his strength Prentiss felt a sudden shyness, as if he were a boy again, hiding in fear behind his mother’s gown. He could not have it—could not be made small anymore. The insults continued in waves and the energy carried him forward. He was halfway to the carriage before the sheriff noticed the body moving toward his party.
“Stop where you are,” Hackstedde said.
“Prentiss!” George said. “Get back here.”
But he did not take orders or commands. No longer.
“What is this boy up to?” said Wade, still lounging against the carriage as Prentiss approached.
The sheriff and the others all turned their horses to face the carriage. Behind him Prentiss could hear the scuffing of George’s hobbled steps on the dusty road.
“Prentiss! Please.”
Still Wade’s eyes were sanguine, a mellow brown, his lips plump like a woman’s, his chin jutted out. But at last the power in those eyes dissolved before Prentiss, who was close enough to the man to smell his cigar mouth. This was primal. Wade could not maintain his ease at such close, bare-knuckled quarters.
“George,” he said. “Call your dog off me.”
Prentiss took a deep breath. When he exhaled, it felt like a lifetime of grief pouring out of him, exorcised and offered back to the world as a righteous rebuke. The sensation was so pleasant, so transporting, that he would have been content knowing that single breath had been his last—indeed, it was so rapturous that he did not think much of what came forth with it: the ball of phlegm that rocketed from his mouth like cannon fodder into Wade’s face.
Wade stood stock-still, his eyes unflinching, as the mucus dripped off his nose. Time stopped then. The yard was silent. The world itself stuttered to a pause. When it commenced to moving, it was impossibly slow, laid out like a tune written note by note in real time. Prentiss’s gaze fell upon the upholstery of the carriage, blisteringly white; he then looked onward: out the back window, at the blanket-sea of green, the grass whipsawed in the wind, and he saw the breeze before he felt it upon his neck, perhaps the last of the morning before the heat swept through.
The blow of the rifle butt followed the wind. It slammed into his ribcage and was chased by a second at the dent of his leg behind his knee. He felt himself begin to fall but grabbed the side of the carriage and turned to face Hackstedde as the butt of the sheriff’s rifle came down upon him again. Prentiss dodged and was caught upon the shoulder.
“On your knees!” Hackstedde screamed.
By then his deputy had dismounted as well. As he came forward Prentiss felt a grip about his neck—Wade Webler locking him in a choke hold.
“Enough!” George yelled, drawing near.
The air was going out of him and Hackstedde pulled back for a fatal strike just as George stepped between them and waved the sheriff off.
“Put that goddamn gun down, Lamar. Wade—” George’s eyes darted toward Prentiss’s own with a look of terror. “That’s enough now,” he said calmly.
Prentiss’s heart beat so hard he felt it in his head. He could not free himself from this bear of a man and had begun to panic, squirming toward his own unconsciousness. There was a circle about them now: Isabelle and Caleb pleaded while the others remained silent, their eyes steady on Prentiss and Wade. The pressure on his neck was relentless.