He took a deep breath. It wasn't important to know the whole thing, not to the exact detail. He'd done it all before, and it would come to him. The most important part was just doing the next step in line.
He lowered himself down the side of the roof, wedged himself in between the good rafters and yanked hard until the little piece of the busted rafter came free. It was tossed back behind him, where it landed with a thud.
Marie called up again.
"Is everything alright? You sure you're alright?"
"Sure, everything's fine."
"And it's all going according to plan?"
"Sure. Gonna have to cut a rafter to length and nail her back in, and then it's just reattaching the roofing. Easy."
His voice, strained as it was as Chris tried to figure how to ease himself back to safety, didn't exactly communicate 'easy,' he knew. But there was easy, and there was easy.
He wedged his hands in behind him and pushed up. With his body free, he tilted until one leg turned over to the building's frame and put his weight down. Easy.
A sound that caught his ear made him start. Someone yelling, coming in from the plains. He climbed up the roof and looked out. Definitely someone yelling, and now that he could see, he was riding hard, too.
His hand dropped naturally to his hip, where it found a heavy carpenter's hammer. Useless. If someone were chasing this fellow—
Chri
s scanned the horizon. Nothing. Nobody was following him. He closed the gap to the ladder in two long, easy steps and was down a minute later. Marie was out the door by the time he set his feet on the floor.
"What's wrong?"
He looked over at her, considering not telling her for a moment. As if he didn't have the time, but it wouldn't cost anything.
"Rider coming in. Riding hard and hollering up a storm."
He started moving before waiting to see what Marie's thoughts on it were. He didn't know what he'd be able to do about it, but he'd at least get there to see what the problem was. Then, if he could do something about it, he'd find out what it was.
Eleven
The first thing that Marie saw was the man, same as Chris had told her was coming into town. The second thing, the thing that worried her a hell of a lot more, was what he had slung over the horse's flank.
Two people. From their clothes, a man and a woman, and from the way they were laid there, without moving except when the horse's rump kicked a little hard. It didn't take a great deal of imagination to figure out whether or not they were going to be alright.
Chris's voice caught her by surprise.
"What the hell happened?" He sounded angry. Why would he be angry? Hurt, sure. Worried, upset. She was afraid, but she couldn't imagine him being afraid for an instant.
As the rider pulled up to a stop, Marie got a better look at the bodies laid out across the horse's rump. Spots of red stained their torsos. The rider wasn't heading from Indian territory way, and no arrows meant it couldn't have been that.
The teacher hoped somehow that it was an animal. Somehow it would be better to imagine that they'd been attacked by a wild dog than to imagine that there were people who'd chosen to do it.
"I don't know," the man answers, his voice wavering a little. "I found 'em like this. No horses, and nothing of value in their bags."
Chris filled in the blank. "Robbery, then, you think."
"I don't want to jump to no conclusions," the man said, but in spite of his stubborn response, it wasn't hard to hear the warble in his voice that agreed with the conclusion.
"G'on to the Sheriff's office, sorry to have taken your time."
The big man's shoulders set and he started moving before the horse did. Marie scurried to follow, the schoolhouse temporarily forgotten. He didn't stop to answer her when she put a hand on his shoulder. Her hand practically recoiled, once she realized what she'd done, but she had to know what he was doing.
"Stop," she said. She didn't like the edge of worry that she heard in her own voice.