But Lars was faster, and for once, he didn’t miss his mark.
The sheriff screamed out when a bullet hit his midsection, threw him off balance, and then sent him off the gallows. Rory leapt off the wagon used to transport Ned and Cole earlier, but he couldn’t have grabbed his superior’s hand on time, and the lawman disappeared under the endless stream of cattle, swallowed like meat in a grinder. He didn’t even make a peep.
Rory fell to his hands and knees, deathly pale in the yellow clouds of dust that brought Cole another chance at life and stared at the running cows as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Cole, on the other hand, couldn’t believe his luck until the platform creaked under someone’s weight, and a warm hand touched his. There was a single tug at the rope binding his wrists, and once a knife cut through hemp, he was free.
Lars pushed a revolver into his hand, but by the time Cole’s neck had been released, Rory stood, coughing as the herd’s stragglers dashed past them like hyenas eager to enjoy what the lions had left behind. Cole pointed the gun at the young deputy without thinking, painfully aware of Ned wiggling on the rope just over an arm’s length away. His choked grunts overpowered all other noise, drilling into Cole’s head with the insistence of an army surgeon.
“Just walk away,” Cole said, cocking the gun. Life was once again flowing through his veins, and this time he was truly grateful that fate saved his hide.
Lars pointed his gun at Rory as well. “Do you want to live, boy?” he yelled, attempting to obscure his Norwegian accent without much success.
Rory put down his gun and backed toward the wagon, which was somehow still whole.
Lars pulled on Cole’s arm, staring at him from behind the skull mask. “I’ve got your horse uphill.”
He’d come for Cole at a risk to his own life.
He really had.
But as Lars dragged Cole to the other side of the platform and jumped off in the ridiculous Wolfman costume, Cole’s eyes were drawn to the figure still struggling against the rope tightening around his neck.
Ned was shaking now, the noose so impossibly tight the sight alone made Cole’s own throat ache. Lars called his name, already halfway up the wall of the ravine, but Cole couldn’t follow.
This couldn’t be the end of his seven-year-long search.
Cole’s back screamed as he grabbed Ned around the waist and pulled. With the gallows leaning forward, Ned’s feet soon found support, but he couldn’t remove free himself, and Cole reached up, fighting through the numbness in his own hands to loosen the tight loop around Ned’s throat.
His veins burned with fire when Ned sucked in air, so he held on to keep him from stumbling back into the open trapdoor, and yanked at the rope in an effort to untangle it.
“Leave him!” Lars yelled, but was already on his way back to Cole’s side.
“Cut him down!” Cole urged him while his arms trembled with the effort of holding Ned’s fainting body.
Lars grumbled something in Norwegian but jumped onto the gallows in fast strides. As soon as he cut through the rope, Cole couldn’t handle the additional weight any longer and let go.
Ned dropped into the rubble of wood under the gallows, and for a moment all Cole could hear was his coughing.
The ice of Lars’s gaze froze Cole in place. “Satisfied? I said, let’s go!”
In the cloud of dust, he looked like a real monster about to unleash its wrath on the town, but Cole knew the person hiding behind the skull mask was only a man.
“We’re taking him,” he growled and lay on the broken platform, reaching into the hole that had just swallowed Ned.
Lars didn’t argue for once and helped him yank the writhing body back up.
“I guess,” Lars scoffed. “Might as well get paid for him elsewhere.”
The words snapped Cole back to a reality he’d forgotten in the rush of this second chance at life, and as the truth sank in, he dragged Ned away from the gallows and toward the hillside, deaf to anything but his own heartbeat.
He’d told Ned O’Leary he still loved him.
And now he couldn’t take it back.
Chapter 7
They rode toward the mountains until Carol lost steam from carrying two men. A clearing by a creek was the perfect spot for a moment of respite, and Lars slid from Galahad’s back, gasping loudly. He’d removed the wolf skull mask the moment they deemed it safe, but only now would he get the chance to take off the heavy fur coat.
“We gotta… rest the horses,” he rasped between one deep breath and another, flushed a dark red from the heat of his costume.
Cole wanted to dismount too, but Ned sat behind him, uncomfortably close. Neither of them had made a peep since leaving Beaver Springs, but they both knew what had been said when they’d both believed that this day would be their last.
The truth had been carved on Cole’s heart a long time ago, and feelings his stupid heart still harbored for the deceitful bastard couldn’t change the simple truth that actions spoke louder than words. If Ned betrayed him once and lied to him still, then Cole needed to establish that nothing had changed.
“Off,” he growled.
“I’ve got my hands tied. Am I supposed to just fall off?” Ned mumbled from under the sack sitting on his head. At least Cole didn’t have to face him for as long as it was on.
Lars snickered, washing his face with the water from the creek. “Sounds good to me. I stink of him after wearing that mangy fur.”
Cole stalled, for a moment imagining what it would be like to lie down with Lars, close his eyes and smell Ned when they rubbed off on one another. But Ned no longer smelled like soap and rosemary, and Lars would never yield to Cole’s touch the way Ned used to. The illusion he craved could never satisfy him.
“Just get him off. I need to stretch my legs,” Cole said, halting a shiver when Ned shifted behind him and pressed his knee to the back of Cole’s thigh in the process of leaving Carol’s back.
“Gotta say I didn’t much appreciate you stayin’ behind for him with everything that was going on, but now I figure it wasn’t such a bad idea. You might not differentiate between your As and Es, but I can always trust you to smell the money,” Lars said and squeezed Cole’s thigh as soon as Ned was off.
Cole exhaled and dismounted too, surprised how solid the ground felt under his feet. Now that they weren’t hurrying away from town, for fear of a posse following their tracks, a strange sense of calm sank into his muscles while the trees whispered under heavy clouds that hadn’t yet produced any rain. His lungs filled with fresh air, and were he still that young man from seven years back, he’d have shouted with joy. Instead, he shut his eyes and let himself feel the faint touch of wind on his cheeks, welcoming him back to the world of the living.
“We need to think. Folk are gonna care for the wounded first, but sooner rather than later we’ll have a chase on us.”
“Is this sack still necessary?” Ned complained and sat down in the snow.
Lars threw a pebble at him, his skin pink like that of a suckling pig. “Shut your damn mouth or we’ll gag you again. If it wasn’t for you trying to flee, Cole wouldn’t have lost his bandana in the first place!”
The tiny rock wouldn’t hurt Ned, but seeing it hurled at him made Cole’s blood simmer. His hands squeezed into fists, and he took a step toward Lars in case he dared pick up another. But Lars was too busy getting rid of the uncomfortably hot fur. He exhaled with relief the moment it was off and peeled the sweaty front of his shirt away from skin with a scowl of distaste.