Relentless

8

The woman sat with her knees against her breasts and her head tipped to one side on her folded arms. He realized she was watching him. Looking right at him.

He let his eyes open a little wider.

When she knew she had his attention she sat up and began to do something with her hair: pulled it back from her face on both sides and tied it in a horsetail knot at the back of her head. He could see tautness and pain ground into the lines across her eyes and mouth. She kept darting glances at Baraclough and the others: she had the look of a boxed in animal trying to watch five converging wolves at once. It was clear she was near the perilous edge of breaking, keeping herself rigidly under control.

Baraclough stood up, leaned his rifle against the wall, stretched, and bent forward a little to massage his thighs. His thin face glowed in the chilly air and his cynical eyebrows arched when he looked at the woman.

Walker watched him as he might have watched a barracuda.

His gut ached. He looked at the woman again and saw in her bloodless face the knowledge of what was going to happen to her. He suspected she’d known all along-she wasn’t stupid-but she’d probably found some way, just as he had, to keep herself from believing it. Until now. Now the defenses were down and she knew. Looking at Baraclough she knew.

It was like a hunk of concrete in Walker’s stomach: fear.

His slitted eyes moved and locked on the woman’s. Her face turned until it was no longer in Baraclough’s view but she held Walker’s eyes with her own and now her expression changed and they had between them that same unspoken shared understanding he had felt in the ranch yard, a sudden impact of communication and contact: and her eyes went wide, full of silent pleading, desperate need, a voiceless cry for help.

Almost imperceptibly Walker nodded. It was more in the drooping of eyelids than in any movement of his head but he was sure she caught it and understood it; she almost smiled.

It wasn’t important that she trusted him. What was important-in a way he sensed but did not really comprehend-was that she thought she knew him well enough to trust him. Something he had said, something he had done, something in the way he had looked at her: he had revealed enough of himself to give her that idea. And if he let her down now it wouldn’t just spoil her picture of him, it would spoil his own picture of himself. He didn’t have much self-respect left to his name but what was left he cherished.

So he knew he was going to try.