Among Wolves and Killers (Preview)

Chapter One

The wagon groaned along the road, the wheels leaving deep grooves in the trail. Solomon “Saul” King swiped at the sweat on his brow.

The road wound through the Rockies in deep curves, hugging the mountainside as though it feared the drop waiting just a few feet too far to the right. Below, the land fell away into a vast spill of stone and timber, death to anyone who slid off the side. Above, the peaks climbed high into the cloudless sky.

Saul rode at the front of it all, reins loose in his hands, posture easy. He’d ridden through this place a thousand times and would do so a thousand times more. Sometimes in spring. Sometimes in summer.

Fall had settled into the mountains proper.

The air carried that dry, thinning edge that came before winter laid its claim. Leaves shone gold and red along the slopes, scattered in patches that caught the light like fire. Every so often, a breeze would drift through and stir them loose, sending a few spinning down toward the valley below.

After ten years of making this same journey, the land was a familiar friend. No, he couldn’t discount the dangers of it. But the familiarity was as comfortable as the groove in his saddle.

Spring had its thaw and mud. Summer brought dust and long, blistering days that baked the trail hard as bone. But fall? Fall was usually quiet, peaceful. Fall let a man breathe. Relax. And that was a rarity in his line of work.

Saul shifted slightly on the wagon bench, adjusting his weight as the wagon eased through another turn. His hands gripped the reins as he angled the team just a touch away from the drop without thinking about it. The kind of correction that came from years, not effort.

Behind him, the rest of the train followed in a stretched-out sequence, four wagons in all, spaced careful along the narrow trail. The sound of them carried in pieces: the low rattle of chains, the soft jingle of tack, the muted thud of hooves.

And somewhere in the back, a voice.

Mason Montgomery didn’t sing like a man trying to impress anybody. He never had. His voice was rough, worn down by years of dust, whiskey, and weather, but it carried all the same. Low and steady, drifting up the line of wagons in a tune that didn’t seem to belong to any one place.

Saul caught it on the wind. Didn’t matter what the song was. Mason had a handful he circled through, changing words when it suited him, forgetting lines when it didn’t. What mattered was that he was singing at all.

He didn’t turn to look. Didn’t need to. He could picture Mason well enough without it: sitting easy near the rear, reins in one hand, rifle not far from reach, hat pulled low against the sun. Like he’d been every year before this one. Like he would be next year, if things held steady.

Work had been steady for a long time.

Saul let his gaze drift ahead again, following the trail as it climbed gently upward along the ridge. The mountains opened slightly there, giving way to a wider stretch where the trees thinned just enough to let more light through. Pine mixed with aspen, the latter standing out in pale trunks and trembling leaves that shimmered gold in the afternoon sun.

It was quiet in a way most men never trusted. No town noise. No shouting. No gunfire carried on the wind. Just the slow, natural sounds of the land doing as it pleased. Wind through branches. Leather creaking. Wheels turning.

Saul trusted it.

Peace wasn’t something you believed in out here. It was something you recognized while it lasted.

He drew in a slow breath, letting the air fill his chest. It tasted clean. Thin, but clean. It carried the scent of pine and cold earth, maybe a hint of something distant he couldn’t quite place. It settled in him easy.

This was why he took the job. Not the money, though there was plenty of that, more than most men hauling freight could expect in a lifetime. Not the risk, either, though that had once been reason enough for him to take on worse.

He rolled his shoulders once, easing out a bit of stiffness, then shifted his grip on the reins. The horses flicked their ears but didn’t break stride. Behind him, Mason’s voice carried again, a little louder this time as the trail curved just right. Saul’s smile lingered a second longer before fading back into something neutral. Content, if a man needed a word for it.

The others kept their places along the line. Five of them in total, riding as an escort more than anything else. They weren’t wagon men, not the way Saul and Mason were. Didn’t carry themselves with that same ease around the slow, grinding work of wheels and teams. These men rode like they were used to having space. Used to moving quick when they needed to.

It showed in the way they held their reins a little tighter than necessary. In how their heads turned more often than the road required, eyes drifting to the trees, the slopes above, the long drop below. They watched the land like it might reach out and grab them, pitch them into the darkness down the hill if they didn’t keep their eyes on it.

Saul didn’t fault them for it. Men took this kind of work for all kinds of reasons. Some for the money. Some because they had nowhere else to be. Some because the road between places felt safer than either end of it. Some carried reasons they didn’t speak on at all. Saul never asked.

The trail narrowed again up ahead, cutting along the mountain’s side in a stretch that demanded attention whether a man wanted to give it or not. The earth there grew thinner, packed down from years of passing wheels and hooves, with loose stone scattered just enough to remind you how easy it was to lose footing. Saul shifted slightly in the saddle.

“Easy now,” he murmured, more for the horses than anyone else.

They responded with the same steady obedience they always had, stepping careful as the wagon followed their lead. The right wheel edged closer to the drop than he liked for a moment, but Saul eased the team left with a light pull on the reins.

Behind him, the others followed suit, each man adjusting in turn as the line bent along the cliffside.

He guided the wagon through the narrow stretch and felt the space open slightly as they cleared it. The tension in the team eased with it. Behind him, Mason’s singing dipped, then picked back up again, like he’d paused just long enough to spit or draw breath. Saul let out a quiet breath of his own.

The men were where they were supposed to be. The wagons were still rolling. The road hadn’t taken anything from them yet.

One of the riders near the middle of the train pulled slightly on his reins.

“Hold up,” he started.

That was all he got out. His horse’s ears twisted backward, tracking the sound. A flicker of movement above the trail, too quick to be wind, too heavy to be a branch falling loose. Something in the foliage just above the ridge line shifted, disturbed in a way the mountain didn’t usually allow. Saul’s hand tightened on the reins. “Easy…” he started to say, but the word never finished forming.

The bear came down like the mountain had dropped it. A massive brown shape tore out of the trees above them, limbs and weight and muscle all crashing into the air at once. It hit a rider’s horse square in the shoulder with a force that buckled the animal sideways.

The horse screamed. The rider went flying.

For a split second, everything slowed in a way Saul hated, long enough to see the man hit the edge of the trail wrong, sliding hard toward open air where there should’ve been ground. He caught something. A root, exposed and half-torn from the cliffside. His body jerked to a stop mid-fall, dangling over the drop with nothing but his grip keeping him alive.

The bear didn’t hesitate. It twisted on impact, claws scraping stone, snapping toward anything still moving. Its head whipped back toward the trail, jaws open in a blind, furious search for something to break.

The horses panicked. Hooves slammed against stone. Wagons lurched. Saul kneed his horse over to the wagon behind him and yanked hard on the team’s reins. The lead horses fought him for half a second, eyes rolling, muscles tight with fear, but they didn’t break loose. Not yet.

Behind him, men scattered, some pulling back, some edging forward without meaning to. The line that had been steady for hours shattered into motion and noise. And the bear came again.

It swung toward the nearest rider still on horseback, claws carving through the air. The man ducked low just in time, but the swipe caught his saddle instead, tearing leather and sending the horse stumbling sideways.

The man hanging on the cliffside cried out for help.

“Don’t move!” Saul barked, not even sure who he was speaking to anymore. He leaped from the saddle and went racing toward the cliffside.

It didn’t matter. The man on the root was frozen anyway, face tight, knuckles white, breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts as the mountain wind tried to take him.

The bear turned again, blocking Saul. It was bigger up close. Everything about it was wrong in the way wild things were wrong when they got too near men, too heavy, too real, too close to something that didn’t belong in the same world as horses and wagons and roads cut into stone.

Another rifle cracked. Mason. The shot hit somewhere near the bear’s shoulder, not clean enough to drop it but enough to jolt it sideways. The animal roared, a deep, shaking sound that rolled down the cliff face.

Saul sprinted. He hit the edge of the cliff where the man was hanging, dropped to one knee, and grabbed him by the wrist with both hands. “Don’t look down,” Saul said flatly.

The man tried to nod. It didn’t help. Saul braced himself against the rock, boots digging in, and hauled. For a moment, it felt like the mountain itself didn’t want to give him back. Then the man came up over the edge in a sudden, violent pull, collapsing onto solid ground. Saul didn’t release him immediately. He held on for another second just to make sure he stayed.

Behind them, the bear roared again. Mason fired again.

The bear flinched, then backed off, slipping into the tree line with a heavy, furious push of its body through brush and rock. The animal didn’t seem to be interested in the fight any longer. The forest swallowed it.

Saul stayed low for a moment longer, one knee pressed into stone, the grit under his boot shifting slightly every time the wind moved through the cliffside. The man he’d pulled back was still half-sprawled on the ground, chest rising too fast, hands shaking like they couldn’t remember what still counted as real.

Saul finally let go of his wrist. “Stand up,” he said.

The man obeyed slowly, dragging himself upright like the ground might still decide to take him back if he moved too quickly.

Behind them, the rest of the train was regrouping in pieces.

Hooves scraped and settled. Leather creaked as men reined in horses that didn’t want to stand still yet. One wagon sat skewed at an angle, its team snorting hard, eyes wide and rolling, still half-convinced something was coming back for them.

Mason’s voice cut through it all. “You boys planning to stare holes in the trees all day, or are we moving?”

A second later, another rifle clicked as one of the men reloaded it somewhere down the line.

Saul finally stood. He turned just enough to see the rear of the train. Most of it seemed to be intact, though a few people were trading out torn leather for fresh. One of the other guards let out a short, disbelieving laugh. Another man followed it. Then another.

The sound spread unevenly down the line, breaking the tension in jagged pieces. Not everyone laughed, but enough did that it shifted what had just happened from something suffocating into something survivable. Saul didn’t join them.

One horse was missing.

Saul spotted it a few yards down the slope, still alive, but down hard, tangled awkwardly against brush and stone. Breathing, but not moving right. It looked as if the shoulder was broken, or the poor thing had broken its neck. Gone, then.

He turned his attention back to the men. “We lost one,” he said simply.

Mason had dismounted and came right on over. He glanced toward Saul, then toward the cliff, then back again. “I can take care of it, make sure it doesn’t suffer,” Mason replied.

Saul gave him a quick nod and walked back to his horse. “You good?” he muttered to the animal.

The horse exhaled hard through its nose but stood. Good enough.

Behind him, one of the escorts finally climbed back into his saddle properly, still pale but upright again. Another checked his rifle like he didn’t fully trust it anymore, as if the weapon had somehow failed the moment it mattered. Saul understood that feeling.

A rifle shot cracked through the silence. There was a rustle of something rolling downhill and then silence. A few of the men glanced toward Mason as he walked back along the train, gun slung over his shoulder, smoke reeling off the barrel. One man took his hat from his head, lowered it to his chest, and muttered a prayer.

Not all men prized a good horse in such a way, but some did. A good horse was the difference between life and death out on the trail. Saul had seen plenty of them die. He gave the cliffside a slight nod. The preachers said animals didn’t go on to heaven or hell, but he hoped they were wrong. As much as the horses did, they deserved a peaceful resting spot, too.

The train reformed slowly. Not perfectly, but enough. Harnesses were checked. Lines were straightened. Men found their places again, like muscle memory refusing to let the day fall apart completely.

Saul exhaled. “Move out,” he said.

And the wagon train started forward again, slower now, quieter, briefly. Behind him, Mason’s voice drifted back up the line once more, softer this time.

The kind of peaceful tone one heard at a cemetery right after a funeral.

Saul shuddered and kneed his horse forward. They needed to make it to the campsite before dark.

That was all that mattered.

Chapter Two

The camp had gone quiet in the way it always did after a long day.

Firelight still lingered in pockets between the wagons, low and orange, flickering against canvas and wood. The horses shifted now and then, reins softly clinking when they moved their weight, but even they had settled into something close to rest. Somewhere down the line, a man coughed once, then fell silent again.

Saul left the main fire without announcing it.

No one stopped him. No one needed to. Men like Mason noticed, but didn’t question it. The others were busy enough tending to gear, talking through the bear attack in low voices that still carried a little disbelief in them, like they couldn’t decide yet whether it had truly happened or not. Saul walked past them all and kept going.

The ground sloped upward behind camp, uneven and scattered with rock and scrub. It wasn’t a proper trail, just a natural rise in the land where the earth gave way to stone, and the stone gave way to a better view of everything else.

The higher he went, the quieter it got. Voices dulled into something indistinct, swallowed by distance and the shape of the land. The wind picked up slightly, brushing through the exposed rock and pulling at his coat as he moved. By the time he reached the outcropping, the camp felt like another world entirely.

He stepped up onto the flat stone and stopped. From here, the Rockies opened themselves up in full.

Ranges folded into one another in long, jagged lines, fading from dark green at the base to pale blue-gray where the distance stole their detail. Saul sat down on a long slab of stone and sighed. The stone was cold beneath him. It pressed through his clothes in a way that reminded him how quickly warmth disappeared once you stopped moving out here. He didn’t mind it. He’d learned long ago not to argue with what the land decided to give you.

From inside his coat, he pulled a bottle.

No label worth remembering. Nothing fancy. Just whiskey meant to do its job and nothing more. He worked the cork loose with his thumb and opened it with a quiet pop that got lost almost immediately in the wind. He took a drink.

Saul exhaled slowly, leaning back slightly on one hand as he looked out over everything below. The wagons were just shapes from here, dark, clustered forms near the firelight, like something temporary left behind by a larger world.

For a while, he didn’t think about anything in particular. Then, it came to him unbidden. Ten years. Three runs a year. Same route. Same mountains. Same silence between stops. It had become its own kind of life. Not one he ever planned on, not one he would have chosen when he was younger and louder and still believed most things could be forced into place with enough violence or luck.

But it had worked.

Mostly.

And now it was nearly done. A new thought settled in behind that one. What came after?

He didn’t rush to answer it. Didn’t pretend he had a real answer yet.

The whiskey bottle rested loosely in his hand. The wind moved through the rocks around him, carrying nothing useful. Just air. Just time. Saul took another slow breath and let it out.

He lifted the bottle again.

Drank.

There had been a life before this one. A place he used to sleep without checking exits. A table he used to sit at without scanning the room first. A name he used to answer to that didn’t feel like it belonged to a stranger.

A family.

The word came with an old kind of discomfort, like a wound that never fully closed, no matter how much time passed over it. He had had them.

And then he hadn’t.

Saul stared out at the darkening mountains as if they might offer an explanation he hadn’t already turned away from a hundred times before. They didn’t. They never did.

His grip tightened slightly around the bottle, then relaxed again.

What a worthless life.

The thought didn’t come with anger anymore. Not the way it used to. Something he had said to himself often enough that it stopped sounding like an insult and started sounding like a description.

He had been a gun for hire once. That much had shaped most of what came after. Men like that didn’t build things that lasted. They moved through them. Passed through lives the way weather passed through valleys, changing them without ever staying long enough to belong.

Whatever he had touched back then, he had damaged. Whatever he had tried to keep, he had lost.

Saul looked down at the bottle for a moment, then took another drink anyway. Not because it helped. Because it didn’t matter.

Two days from Grand Junction. Two days from the end of this run. Two days from something that looked almost like a door opening instead of a road continuing.

He didn’t let himself name it too clearly. Not yet. But it was there anyway, sitting just behind everything else. A chance. A return. A beginning that didn’t feel like it was already too late.

Saul exhaled slowly through his nose.

The air was colder now. Above him, the first stars began to show through. Faint at first. Then more. Like someone slowly punching holes in the darkness. A shape crossed the sky before he fully registered it.

Saul’s eyes tracked upward on instinct.

A bald eagle moved across the open air, wings stretched wide, cutting cleanly through a sky so vast and dark he could barely see it.

He watched it longer than he meant to.

The eagle tilted slightly, adjusting its course without effort, then drifted farther across the open sky until it became smaller against the darkening horizon.

Saul didn’t look away until it was gone. When he finally did, it was slower, like he was returning from somewhere else. He took another drink.

The wind shifted again, carrying with it the scent of pine and stone and something faintly smoky. At first, he didn’t think much of it. Campfire smoke wasn’t unusual out here. Men passed through the mountains more often than most folks liked to admit. Hunters, traders, drifters, anyone stubborn enough to think they could outrun winter if they started early enough.

But something about it held his attention anyway. He squinted. There, past the ridgelines. A thin plume of smoke rising up from the center of the forest. Not spreading, just a steady column drifting peacefully upward. Far away from anyone and everything.

Saul frowned. Could be travelers trying to beat the weather. Could be hunters setting up early. Could be any number of ordinary things that didn’t matter in the long stretch of mountains that didn’t belong to anyone.

But it could also be something else.

***

Saul climbed down from the ridge slower than he went up.

The wagons sat where they had been left, forming a loose circle against the dark. Canvas shapes, shadowed wheels, a faint glow leaking between gaps where the fires still burned. The horses had settled into their lines, heads down, shifting only occasionally when the wind moved through them.

A few men were still awake, along with the two sentries who traded off every few hours.

The bear attack had left its mark on them. Their voices carried more edge than before, less certainty. The kind of talk men used when they were trying to convince themselves that they had already put danger behind them. Saul stepped into the edge of their light without announcing himself.

One of the escorts glanced up and nodded once.

Another kept talking, still circling the story like repeating it enough times might turn it into something manageable. Mason sat near the fire, one boot propped against a crate, rifle resting across his knee. He looked up as Saul approached, eyes tracking him with the same calm attention he always gave things that might matter later.

“You take to your thinking spot?” Mason asked.

Saul didn’t answer immediately. He crouched near the edge of the firelight instead, warming his hands just enough to remind them they still worked. “Yeah,” he said finally.

Mason grunted, like that was expected.

Then Saul spoke again. “Smoke on the north ridge,” he said.

Mason leaned forward slightly. “Campfire?”

“Looked like it,” Saul said. “Far off. East side of the line.”

One of the other men nearby stopped talking mid-story.

Mason followed Saul’s gaze out into the dark, as if he might be able to see it from there just by knowing where to look. After a moment, he shrugged. “Could be anything,” Mason said. “Hunter. Prospector. Some fool tryin’ to cross before winter shuts him in.”

Saul watched him a moment. “You think that’s all it is?”

Mason gave a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Ain’t been anyone on this trail but us in near ten years. Nobody knows our route. Nobody cares enough to follow it even if they did.” He shifted his rifle slightly, resting it more comfortably. “We been quiet a long time, Saul.”

That was true.

One of the escorts nodded along. “Reckon Mason’s right. Folks don’t wander this far unless they’ve got a death wish.”

A few low murmurs of agreement followed that. Saul didn’t argue.

Mason watched him for another beat, then leaned back again. “Bear’s got you seeing ghosts now?”

A few of the men gave short, tired laughs at that. Saul exhaled once through his nose, not quite a laugh, but not disagreement either. “Maybe,” he said.

That seemed to settle it for them. The tension that had briefly gathered loosened again, like a knot being allowed to stay tied instead of tightened further. Conversation drifted back into safer territory. The bear. The horses. The road ahead.

Saul stayed quiet. He listened more than he spoke.

Mason stood eventually, slinging his rifle strap over his shoulder. “Same as always,” he said to Saul, nodding once toward the dark. “We sleep. We ride. We get paid. We try not to die in between.”

Saul looked at him briefly, then nodded. “Yeah.”

Mason grunted, satisfied, and walked off to his bedroll. The others followed suit not long after.

Saul remained by the dying fire a moment longer. Mason was right.

And if he wasn’t, they were in a whole heap of trouble.

Chapter Three

Night in the mountains had a way of making everything feel farther away than it really was. Dawn was just creeping over the horizon when he stirred. Saul lay still for a moment, listening.

Nothing unusual.

Just wind brushing through canvas. Wood settling. The distant, patient sound of the mountains changing their shape in the dark as a stone skittered down a cliff.

He pushed himself up slowly from the lead wagon, careful not to make more noise than necessary. The wood creaked under his weight anyway, but not enough to disturb anyone who was already deep enough in sleep to matter. He swung his legs down and stepped onto the ground.

Cold hit him immediately, sharp, clean, pulling the last remnants of sleep out of his bones in a single breath. Saul adjusted his coat and started walking a short distance away from the wagons.

It wasn’t far. Just enough to put a little space between himself and the sleeping camp. Enough to avoid waking anyone. Enough to make sure he wasn’t stepping near anything important in the dark.

The ground was uneven under his boots, packed dirt giving way to scattered rock as he moved a few yards out. When he was done, he lingered only a moment, scanning the edge of camp out of reflex. Wagons in shadow. Fire barely alive. Shapes of men sleeping where they had fallen into rest.

Everything where it should be.

Saul turned back toward his wagon.

That was when he noticed something felt off.

Not in a way he could immediately name. Not movement. Not sound at first. Just…tension. A shift in the air that didn’t belong to the natural rhythm of sleeping men and quiet animals.

He paused.

A voice. Faint. Almost swallowed by the night. Saul felt his senses light up. It wasn’t loud enough to be a conversation. Not really. More like fragments of one. A whisper carried just far enough to reach him if he was already listening for something wrong.

“…quiet…just…”

A pause.

Then another voice, lower still.

“…don’t move…”

Saul didn’t breathe for a second. His hand drifted slowly toward his side without urgency, fingers finding the grip of his pistol beneath his coat. The rest of the words didn’t come clearly enough to understand. But the tone did. The sound of someone trying not to be heard while failing at it.

His eyes moved across the camp. Everything was quiet. Still.

Too still.

Saul kept his pistol low, not raised yet, but ready. His eyes tracked slowly across the camp, letting the darkness resolve itself instead of forcing it. He moved toward the place the whispering had come from.

No second voice answered now. No movement followed.

Saul stepped past the rear wagon. At first, he thought it was water. Just a dark splash on the ground, spreading unevenly near the edge of a bedroll. But, as he got closer, he caught the scent of it.

Blood.

One of the guards lay half-turned near the wagon’s wheel. Saul recognized him immediately. A new man who had just signed on, doing good work and spending the days talking about his daughter, a girl who could read and write. She was staying with her aunt while her pa made enough money on the trail to buy her a better future.

He’d never see that future with her. The man’s eyes were open, staring into nothing. His mouth slightly parted like he’d started to say something and never finished. His body had been dragged just enough that one arm lay at an unnatural angle, fingers curled toward the dirt.

There was a wound in him, cleaner than Saul expected.

Saul crouched slowly beside the body, eyes scanning without touching. His pistol stayed steady in his hand now, fully drawn, held close to his body where it wouldn’t catch light.

Then he noticed the way the blood looked. It wasn’t just dark. It was wrong in texture. Thicker than it should have been. Like oil spread thin over stone instead of something that belonged inside a man.

His gaze lifted immediately after that, moving beyond the body, beyond the wagon, into the darker edge of camp. He took one step back from the body. Then another.

And that’s when the quiet of the night shattered.

A gunshot cracked from somewhere near the wagons. The sound didn’t echo cleanly; it fractured against canvas and wood and stone, turning the whole world into a sharp, disjointed snap of noise.

Then another shot answered it.

Then more.

The camp erupted.

Saul dropped low on instinct as another shot tore through the air where his head had been a moment before. He fired once toward the muzzle flash he caught near the edge of a wagon. The recoil snapped into his hand. Another flash answered him from a different angle.

Someone was moving fast between wagons. Friend? Foe? He had no idea.

Saul shifted position, keeping the wagon between himself and the nearest source of fire. A horse screamed somewhere behind him. Then a second gun cracked from the opposite side of camp.

He heard Mason’s voice cut through it somewhere down the line. “Down! Stay down!”

Then the answer wasn’t a voice, it was gunfire from Mason’s rifle, deeper and heavier than the pistols, steady enough to cut through the panic swamping the camp. Saul pivoted toward the sound, trying to orient himself in the chaos. The attackers were no longer hidden. Shapes moved now in the open gaps between wagons, firing as they advanced and then pulling back just as quickly, like they already knew the layout of the camp.

A flash lit the far side of camp long enough for Saul to see one of the guards fall backward off a wagon bench, arms slack, before he even hit the ground. Another shot cracked on Saul’s left, forcing him to duck behind a wheel as splinters burst from the wood. He fired again without seeing a target, just to force movement, just to make whoever was there think twice about staying in that space.

The attackers were testing the camp, not committing fully yet. Probing. Saul pushed out from under cover, scanning fast. Another flash, closer this time.

He fired immediately, and this time he heard something hit the ground. A body? A drop of equipment? He couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter.

He started to pivot and caught a glimpse of Mason farther down the line, partially lit by a lantern that hadn’t gone out yet. Mason was still standing, rifle raised, firing in measured bursts that cut through the mess of the camp.

Then, someone screamed, and the rifle went silent.

Saul moved toward it without thinking anymore, weaving between wagons as another shot snapped past him and buried itself somewhere in the woods behind him. He reached the last place he’d seen Mason standing and smelled the blood before he saw the man. Mason was half-sitting, half-fallen against the side of a wagon wheel. His rifle lay across his lap, but his hands weren’t on it anymore.

They were pressed against himself instead.

Too much blood between his fingers.

Not enough control in his breathing.

Saul dropped beside him instantly. His mouth ran dry as he stared at the man he’d ridden so many miles with.
“Mason,” he said, tearing his shirt off. He knew it was too late, but he had to try.

Mason’s head tilted slightly toward him, like it took effort just to recognize the voice. His face was pale, sweat cutting through dust and grime. His mouth opened, but nothing came out at first, just a rasp of air that didn’t form into words.

Saul twisted the shirt around the man’s chest, trying to slow the blood pouring from the gunshot wound there. “Where are they?” Saul asked. “How many?”

Mason tried to answer. It came out broken. “…in…the line…” he managed. His eyes flicked past Saul.

Saul frowned and tightened the shirt. It had already darkened where the hole was in his long-time friend. His stomach curled up, like a burned leaf in a blazing fire.

“Saul…” Mason forced out, weaker now. “Behind…”

Saul started to turn, but it was too late. The impact came from behind his skull. Not a bullet.

A blunt, brutal strike.

He hit the ground hard, one hand catching dirt that felt too far away to matter. The sound of the fight kept going, but it had shifted in distance. Like he was being pulled out of it rather than it stopping. His pistol was still in his hand, but his grip was gone. Bootsteps circled him once.

A man stood over him. There was a burlap sack pulled tight over his head, rough and stained. There were crude eyeholes cut into the fabric, the faint lines of irises just barely visible. On the front of the sack, painted in white, was a skull.

The man crouched slightly so Saul could see him better.

“Tell the devil,” the man said, calm as a man discussing the weather, “the Reaper Crew says hello.”

Saul tried to move. His body didn’t respond. The world tilted again as he forced himself to focus. Keep breathing. Keep living. His eyes slid out of focus again as the man in the mask raised his gun to Saul’s forehead.

Saul’s vision darkened immediately with the sound of one final gunshot. And then…nothing.