Many hands grabbed at him, pulling him and dragging him backward. Even in their emaciated, tortured states, there were too many for him to fight against. Not unless he resorted to fists and these women had suffered more than enough at the hands of their captors for Henry to add to their injuries. The hammer and chisel fell from his hands as the women dragged him into the shadows and then surrounded him, the stench of their unwashed bodies filling his nostrils.
"I thought Murcies couldn't come out during the day!" His hissing thought became muffled beneath the press of bodies. "Are they not Murcies?"
"Not all of 'em, Mister. But they got ways of movin' unhindered in the light, anyways." A thin-fingered hand pressed against his mouth. "Now shush! Don't speak none."
Even beneath the women, Henry could see the light fall into the barn as the approaching captors opened the doors wide. He had no sense of the fresh air that now flowed into the barn, and only had the most bare of views of those that had entered, but he could see they were men. All of them. One carried a bullwhip in his hand, but, apart from that, Henry saw little else.
None of the men said a word as they took casual steps into the barn and the women surrounding Henry, hiding him, scuttled back, pushing him further away from the men. Were it any other time, Henry's face would have reddened at the close proximity of so many female bodies, but he found no arousal in these circumstances. Instead, he felt an impending sense of dread that threatened to overwhelm him.
"That one. Right there." The voice of the man held an amusement to it. A sense of lascivious excitement and the women huddled closer. "Separate her from the rest and take her to the milking barn."
Bile crept into Henry's throat at the thought of what insidious fate awaited the chosen woman. Even now, he struggled to reach for the butt of his pistol, or the handle of the scythe. He was not a fighting man, but he could not countenance further harm befalling these women. The close quarters of the women, however, stymied any attempt to reach his weapons.
"Say! Did one of you boys forget to put the tools away?" Another voice, noticing the hammer and chisel Henry had dropped and it caused all the warmth to pass from Henry's skin. "And a lantern? Come on, fellas! Do you want these fine ladies escaping? Do you want to tell the Boss why we done lost his prime cattle?"
"Weren't me." A third voice.
"Reckon it weren't none of us. Lookit. Sack cloth." The first voice again, the words coming in a slow drawl as thoughts passed through his mind. "We got us a saviour for these girls. Spread out an' if any of these cattle get in the way, beat their asses to the ground."
A panic began to pass through the women but Henry could not allow them to suffer for him. He began to push the bodies aside, apologising in his mind for any unwarranted touches. They tried to stop him, to keep him hidden, but he placed every ounce of his strength into revealing himself and saving them further punishment. With one last effort, he scrambled to his feet, pistol rising, only to find the men otherwise occupied.
Annie had returned.
One of the men had already fallen to her large knife, sightless eyes rolling into the back of his head, but, even as she withdrew the knife, the man with the bullwhip had already turned, flicking his wrist to send the taut leather rolling out in a wave from his side. Annie had moved, spinning to the side and lowering her pitchfork toward the second man.
A crack thundered in the close, thick air and the pitchfork became ripped from Annie's hands, dragged away by the receding whip and falling to the rotting straw to the side. Her hand fell across her waist, reaching for her pistol, but the whip cracked again, leaving a red welt across the back of her hand. Her cold, green eyes narrowed as she bared her teeth, ready to charge toward the bullwhip bearing man even as he coiled the whip in his hands to strike again.
The other man tackled her to the ground, pressing his entire body weight upon her and Henry couldn't believe such men could claim victory against her. Not against Annie. Her arrival had torn attention away from the women in the barn, and, in consequence, from Henry, and he could not waste the God-given opportunity that afforded him.
Decrying the use of the pistol, Annie could have killed all three men in a flash had she used hers, therefore she had good reason not use far quieter tools and Henry followed her lead on that. Holstering the pistol, he drew the scythe from its holder and stepped over the cowering women around him, raising the scythe above his head.
Henry felt certain he had not made a sound, but some unnatural instinct had called to the bullwhip wielding man and he turned to see Henry almost atop him. The man's eyes widened as Henry brought the scythe down upon him, but the man caught the blade upon the curled whip, knocking it aside. His fist followed that movement, crashing into Henry's face, dislodging his spectacles and causing blood to erupt from his nose.
He staggered back yet still managed to maintain a hold upon the scythe in his hand. It took only the barest fraction of a moment for Henry to regain his balance, even if the flashes of stars before his vision continued, but it proved far too slow to reengage his opponent. The sound of the whip cracking broke the silence once again and Henry felt the most intense, burning sting arc across his chest. He had never felt pain its like in the entirety of his life. It continued to burn long after the whip itself had retreated.
Through his pain, Henry could see and hear the struggle that passed beyond the man with the bullwhip. The other man and Annie rolled across the dirt packed floor of the barn, dust rising as they turned and fought each other. Annie's fist cracked into the man's jaw and he reciprocated. Her thumbs pressed into the man's eyes and he screamed like no other man Henry had heard, yet still he launched a punch toward Annie.
The palm of her hand deflected that punch and the man fell against her and, with a move Henry had seen in carnival wrestling matches, she wrapped her arms about the man's neck, forcing his own arm against his throat, his face reddening immediately, his eyes bulging. The veins in Annie's neck throbbed as she used the entirety of her strength to choke the man atop her, but the man with the bullwhip had seen enough.
His hand flicked up and backward, sending the coiled, tight leather behind him, thinking Henry too injured to do anything. That Annie had proven the most dangerous of the two interlopers, but, in this instance and this instance alone, he was sorely mistaken. If Annie could fight through her pain, that she suffered now and that she had suffered in the past, then Henry could suffer his pain, also.
Almost blind, his spectacles askew, his nose bleeding, his chest afire, Henry saw that arm raised high and he knew what the man intended. Henry decided to curtail that intention with an intervention of his own. Without thought or strategy, Henry launched himself forward with a yell, swinging the scythe toward the man, if only to distract him long enough for Annie to recover her feet. He brought the scythe down upon the man with all his might, all the fury built since seeing this house of horror, since Simmons, since Granite Peak, since that lone farmhouse and the unnamed man. All of that fell upon the man.
"God damn." The man did not exclaim those words. They almost emerged from his lips in surprise as he looked down in confusion. "God damn."
Henry staggered backward, almost tripping over the man's dismembered arm, the bullwhip still clutched in closed fingers. The man dropped to his knees, a look of confusion upon his face as he stared at Henry. He shook his head in disbelief even as his lifeblood erupted from the stump where his arm once sat attached to the rest of his body. He wavered, upon his knees, tilted and then fell forward, his face crashing against the dirt, his eyes continuing to stare at Henry until the blood became nothing but a trickle.
"Come on, Henry, we gotta go." At the door, Annie had pushed the man she had choked to death from atop her and had gathered her weapons. She waved a hand as she looked out of the door. "Others're a'rousin'. We can't stay here."
"What about these poor folks?" He looked to the women and saw a sea of desperation and fear. He couldn't begin to think what he looked like to them now. "We must save them. We must!"
"Mister, you gotta go. If'n they catch you, they won't go easy on you." The girl. She and the others had tried to hide him. He couldn't abandon them now. "Please, Mister, you an' the Lady gotta go. If it pleases The Lord, we'll pass from this life soon enough, risen to His glory. But you don't have to. Please."
Henry hesitated. Annie, her impatience palpable as she shifted her feet by the door, did not feel these women worth her time. She had other considerations to attend to. The women appeared adamant that he should leave. He did not wish to, but they had already disturbed the place. They could not effect an escape for these women. Not fast enough. Not in this moment.
He had never hated himself more than in that moment. Even as leaded feet began to trudge back to the doors, he knew he would never forgive himself for this choice. Even were he to return and set these women free, and the others in the other barns, he would know he had made this choice first.
Annie had already started to run in a crouch toward the Drifter protected fencing, the pitchfork moving in the fashion of a piston. Henry adjusted his spectacles, unbroken but bent, and began to set off after the woman. Only for something to snake around his throat and the familiar sound of a whip crack following only a fraction of a moment later. His hands rose to the whip coiled about his throat and he did the only thing he could do. He waved Annie away. She needn't suffer for his sins.