Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 3 here to catch up on the man who came for Willow.
Last time, I was standing in June Whitaker’s empty kitchen with her grandson Jesse reading over my shoulder. One text on my screen from a number I didn’t know: Bring the mare to the river crossing before dark. Come alone, and June comes home.
So many of you told me what you’d do. Some of you said call the sheriff. Some of you said trust the cowboy. A few of you said ride like the wind and don’t look back. Here’s what really happened.
The Choice I Made on June’s Porch
For a long minute neither of us moved. The wall clock in that kitchen ticked so loud I could hear it over my own pulse. Jesse finally put the photograph down on the table, right next to his grandmother’s coffee mug, very carefully, like it was the last thing of hers he had.
“You don’t know me,” he said. “So I won’t ask you to trust me. But I’m going to that river whether you come or not.”
I looked at him. Then at the calendar with Sunday circled in red. Then at my phone.
I called the sheriff’s office anyway. Not dispatch this time, the office itself. The woman who answered told me the deputy who was supposed to come to my barn had been pulled to a wreck out on the highway, and that Dale Pruitt was “a name they knew.” She wouldn’t say more. She told me to stay home and keep the mare locked up. I said thank you, and I hung up, and Jesse watched me do it.
“Well?” he said.
“Well,” I said, “the river crossing is three miles past my place. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it smart.”
Willow Knew Him Before He Said a Word
We rode back down the ridge side by side, Raven and Jesse’s big white gelding, Ghost, matching strides on that red mud road. Jesse didn’t talk much. He told me June taught him to ride on Willow when he was six years old, that the mare used to stand perfectly still every time he slid sideways off her back.
My neighbor’s truck was still parked across the driveway. The barn doors were still barred. I swung them open, and before Jesse even stepped inside, Willow let out a sound I had never heard from her. Not the scream from the night of the storm. A low, rolling nicker, the kind a mare gives her own foal.
Jesse walked straight to her stall and pressed his forehead against her face, and that gray mare leaned into him and closed her eyes.
I had to look away and pretend to fix a buckle. If I’d had any doubts left about the man with the creek-water eyes, they ended right there in my barn aisle.
The Ride to the River Crossing
Our plan was simple, which is how I knew it would go wrong. I would ride Willow to the crossing alone, the way the text said. Jesse would follow on Ghost through the cottonwoods along the bank, far enough back to stay hidden, close enough to reach me fast. I texted the sheriff’s office the location and the time. Nobody texted back.
I changed out of my mud-caked shorts, pulled my hair into two buns so it wouldn’t catch in the branches, and slid my phone into the pocket of my jacket with the screen recording audio. Grandma always said if you’re going to walk into trouble, at least bring a witness.
The sun was already sliding behind the hills when we left. The light comes in gold and sideways that time of evening, catching every spider web between the fence posts. Willow was calm under me the whole way, ears flicking back to check on me every few strides, like she was the one taking care of me.
Then we came over the last rise and I saw the water, and she stopped dead.
Dale Pruitt Was Waiting on the Other Bank
He was there, exactly like he promised. Same long coat, same hat, standing next to that trailer with the chained back gate. The river was low and wide after the storm, brown water moving fast over the stones, maybe thirty yards across.
“That’s far enough,” he called. “Bring her across, leave her by the trailer, and walk back. Nobody has to get hurt.”
“Where’s June?” I shouted.
He smiled that same smile that never reached his eyes. “You’ll get a call when I’m down the road.”
I didn’t believe a single word. And neither did Willow. She wasn’t looking at Dale at all. Her head was turned hard to the right, upstream, ears pinned forward toward a bend in the river where the trees grew thick and dark. She pawed the gravel. She snorted. She started backing away from the water, step by step, and then she just turned.
I didn’t steer her. I swear I didn’t. She took the bit and went.
The Line Shack Upstream
I heard Dale yelling behind us. I heard an engine start. Willow carried me along the bank at a dead run, branches whipping my arms, until the trees opened up into a little clearing I never knew existed, and in the middle of it stood an old line shack with a tin roof and one boarded-up window.
Willow slid to a stop right in front of the door and called out. That same low nicker she’d given Jesse.
And from inside the shack, so faint I almost thought I imagined it, a woman’s voice answered.
“Willow? Is that my girl?”
I was off that mare before I knew I’d decided to move. My hands were on the door latch. It was wired shut, and I was tearing at the wire, shouting “June! June, hang on, Jesse’s coming!” when I heard it.
The slow, metal click of a rifle hammer being pulled back. Right behind my head.
And then a voice that was not Dale Pruitt’s. A younger voice. A voice I knew from somewhere, and couldn’t place.
“I told you to come alone, Lana.”
I turned my head, just slightly, looking for Jesse in the trees. There was no white horse. There was no sound of hooves. There was nobody coming at all.
So tell me, who do you think is holding that rifle? And where did Jesse go?
Part 5 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what happened at the line shack.