“That was insane!” I scream the words into Orion’s ear, but he’s not listening. I can feel the tension in his body, the pure focus which must come from fear. I’ve never seen him afraid before. Then again, I’ve never seen him have to face the real possibility that we were both going to be killed before either.
I can feel him thinking. He’s never been this tense before. The horse senses it too, instead of giving us that easy extended gallop which it usually settles into, it feels like riding an exploding bullet. It is all over the place, just barely wrestled in a straight line.
“How was Atticus there?”
Orion’s not talking. He doesn’t talk for the next three hours, not until he has thrashed his horse across several valleys, down a canyon, into a dry cave network and out the other side to a grassy plain where he finally lets the exhausted beast slow to a walk.
“Git some water,” he says. I do as I’m told. He’s pumped and I don’t want him to focus his ire on me because he thinks I’m disobeying him while we’re in danger.
“I don’t know how he was there,” he growls, answering my question hours after I asked it. “I do know we almost died today. And I know that’s not good enough.”
“Not good enough?”
“I promised to protect you long enough for you to get off this planet,” he says. “But I almost lost you today. They got the jump on us. We walked right into them. We were getting cocky.”
I refrain from correcting him by telling him that he was getting cocky, not me. I was worried as soon as I saw the billboards. They gave me the worst feeling. I felt Atticus before I saw him, I could swear.
“It’s not your fault,” I say instead. “And we got out alive.”
“That time,” he growls. “But what about next time? I can’t shake the feeling he knows what we’re doing. The two of us together is going to make him think there’s something going on between us.”
“There is something going on between us.”
“It’s best he doesn’t know that,” Orion says, pulling his hat off his head, then putting it back on again, as if that might fix something.
“Maybe we should just forget about the ranch,” I suggest.
“We can’t forget the ranch. The ranch is the key to everything.”
“It would be, if people played fair. But they don’t. Atticus is going to confiscate it and kill you. It’s not worth trying to even reach. If my father is alive, then it is for nothing. And if he is dead, Atticus has the papers which say I am his wife and that I am dead, so it will be his. It doesn’t matter if I’m actually alive, I’m dead to this world, and have been since he put his hands on me.”
Orion looks at me with a flash of fury. I don’t think he is angry at me, but I know he is furious at this situation.
“I want that land,” he growls. “I’m tired of this. There’s only so many times we can destroy an entire town before people start to get sick of us. Hell, I’m sick of us. I want a place to lay my head every night. Hell, I want a home.”
I don’t know what to say. We survived today, but arguably it would have been better for everyone in that little town if we hadn’t. So much has been destroyed. So much is yet to be destroyed. And all because we want to live.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Sure it is,” he says. “Every stupid decision I’ve ever made has led to this.”
“Well, I didn’t make stupid decisions, and I’m in the same boat as you. So maybe don’t sit there pitying yourself. Maybe accept that sometimes you’re on the wrong side of things, but that doesn’t make them right. Atticus is a monster.”
“So are we,” Orion says, giving me an intense look which chills me to my core. “Ain’t a single one of us that’s got a soul worth saving, Josie. Maybe you still do, but mine is gone. I sold it to the devil a dozen times.”
“Well, he’s not cashing out today,” I say. “We’re still here. Bunch got close, but close isn’t good enough.”
“He’s toying with us. That’s what he’s doing. Atticus knows exactly where we are, where we’ve been, where we’ll go next. It’s like he’s inside my mind,” Orion says. He’s pacing, agitated. Something about this isn’t sitting right with him. I guess it’s not sitting right with me either, but I’ve never been surprised by losing. This is what I thought was going to happen all along.
“That’s it,” he says suddenly. “I’m using it.”
“Using what?”
My question is useless. He’s looking up at the sun, then over at the mountains and lining himself up with a tree. I watch as he takes six paces north, then three south, then another five southwest, drops to his knees and starts digging with his hands in the loose dirt.