Garrison reckoned he was feeling his years.
He hadn't known such exhaustion since the War. A season-long, cross-country cattle drive always wore men to the bone. You can sleep come winter, drovers told themselves and their men, both. He still believed that. He knew the fatigue got worse within weeks of the destination, which they were.
But he weren't just the foreman no more. Along with his duties as boss, he'd now taken on the jobs of soldier and scout, guarding against an unseen enemy. Used to be, he survived a drive on four or five hours of sleep a night, while the boys got about six.
Since Fort Laramie, he'd made do on about three hours. He did not complain, not even to himself. But he felt his abilities wearing and fraying, all the same.
Add to that his somewhat ill-fitting role as husband. He felt least qualified for that. Yet those responsibilities occupied his thoughts and attentions far more, and more often, than made sense... and not just his husbandly duties, as Elizabeth had once put it, although those formed a right powerful distraction.
This morning, for instance.
The previous night, he'd been so ragged that he'd crawled into the tent beside his sweet-smelling wife and fell right to sleep. He'd slept well. But she'd all but demanded he make up for that transgression this morning, and he'd felt rested and foolishly eager.
It weren't no chore, and pleasured him considerable. But their doings left him to start his workday late, sleepy, and stupid.
Garrison could not afford to be stupid.
Not with Callahan out there.
"He's back?" he quietly asked Juan, stepping away from camp to meet the reader about whatever sign he'd found that morning. His best tracker, Juan had taken to riding directly off second-guard into a larger sweep of their perimeter overnight. That left Juan working on maybe three hours of sleep, himself.
Only two days after his return from Julesburg, Cooper and Juan had found unmistakable sign of Callahan following their herd. They'd tracked him to a rocky stretch where they lost him. The day after that, with Garrison, had ended in the same failure. The day after that, they'd laid in wait and near-to caught him, following so close that the turds from the man's horse were still damp and warm. But they'd found the horse, unsaddled and patiently grazing, without finding trace of the man.
Juan insisted that he'd never seen anyone's tracks so completely vanish. Cooper expressed concern that this Callahan was far more competent than Elizabeth's "Castaway" friends had been. After that day, Callahan seemed to stay away....
But it had been too good to last.
"Si," agreed the hawk-nosed Mexican. His breath left a cloud of moisture on his fat moustache. "He is returned. Come sun-up, we will follow him again."
And likely lose him again.
Garrison spat angrily onto the frosty ground. Callahan wasn't just out there -- he was taunting them, more rash than any fugitive had the right to be. It put all of them at a disadvantage.
All of them except for the innocently uninformed Elizabeth.
"You tell the senora?" asked Juan, now.
Garrison heard himself ask, "Would you?" As if he weren't the boss. But Juan, in his mid-twenties, was married with three children. He might have good advice.
God knew, Garrison felt at a loss. So far, he'd erred on the side of hiding Callahan's exploits from the wife, if only because he could always change his mind about keeping silent. Once he told her, he could not reverse that decision.
"No," his swing rider insisted. "Just upset her, si?"
Upset her either way, Garrison thought. But that weren't Juan's to know.
Elizabeth had made her wishes quite clear at Fort Laramie, when she learned what Shanghai Pierce told him about Chicago. No need to concern me about me? she'd demanded, in a high lather.
But Garrison had to consider more than his wife's wishes. She seemed so fragile, since learning the news about her friends. She seemed so sad.
Callahan wanted to play games with them, same as the killer had played games with her friends in Julesburg afore shooting them. But Garrison refused to deal Elizabeth in on those games.
A cry sounded from camp.
"Jacob!" Only two people in Wyoming used that name for him. Benj Cooper's voice held an uncharacteristic note of urgency.
Garrison left Juan and ran toward the fuss – Schmidt, no longer cooking, and Tomas, newly awake, and--
He stopped dead at the sight of his wife, a clump of quilt and nightgown with loose hair and bare feet and one hanging hand, gathered in his partner's arms.
For a terrible moment, Garrison feared she'd been shot.
She was dead.
He had failed to protect his wife and baby.
He could not think. Could not breathe....
Then the bundle in Cooper's arms stirred. A weak, beautiful voice said, "Jacob?"
And of course—he'd heard no gunshot.
"Swooned," pronounced Schmidt, and turned back to making breakfast.
Garrison had to shift his step, because he felt suddenly dizzy. And saved. He felt confused—and yet newly determined. He had not failed—yet. He would not fail.
"Jacob," she said again, from his partner's arms.
Cooper looked up from his armful, his gaze near agonized, even as he forced a cheerful tone.
"Jacob's right here, Darlin'. See?"
Garrison stepped quickly forward and accepted her into his arms. His wife. His baby. He readjusted her weight and her position, so that her head rested on his shoulder. "What happened."
"I think I saw the ghost," she whispered. "I think it's Maddie."
"Ain't no ghost," he reassured her, and he offered a quick prayer that her mind weren't addled.
By no means would he tell her that the man who'd killed her friends was following them. Playing with them.
He carried her back to the tent.