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not breathe and I could not feed so she bathed me in warm water while my father grew cold at her feet. And then she bundled me up in a sheet and tied me to her before she smashed the gun cabinet with the axe and took out a rifle. She dragged Fitz to the opening of the cellar and then, with her feet, she rolled him in. She poured kerosene into the mouth of it and then into every dark corner of the house. She threw a match into the cellar and then match after match until it threw back flames. And then with what was left of the kerosene she drenched those armchairs and set them ablaze.
    The flames leapt up and the sound was like Fitz on a tirade. But we were safe and already outside. I clung to her as she saddled her horse, packed a blanket, a gun, a knife.
    The rain was upon us. We could hardly see where we were going. We rode anyway.

AT BEST, IF the weather held, Jack Brown was a day’s ride from Fitz’s place.
    He had been riding since dawn. Finally, just as the sun was setting, he had in his bleary sights those rocks as perfect as squares which signalled to him the end of the northern range and the beginning of the valley. He rode on and the land levelled out and the rocks overlapped like scales on some creature’s back. Trees fell away on either side, as if it had cleared a path to find its rest, its tail winding down into the valley, disappearing into darkness.
    Jack Brown rode on through the night. The sky gave enough light so he could just make out the ground, which was a litter of branches, and he stepped his horse over them and moved into clearings where he could.
    He was desperate to get to her.
    He had made the delivery, wound through the gorges he had come to know so well, three weeks’riding with stock in tow, one week back without. He had not lost one sturdy cow. His job was done. Fitz should be happy with that.
    He had rehearsed it so many times on so many rides—what it would be to finally stand up to Fitz, to ask to be paid, to quit. Jessie had warned him that with Fitz there could be no reasoning, that the only way out was to escape, or he would most certainly have them both thrown in gaol. They must wait was what she had said. But his question now was his question then: Wait for what?
    In his three years in the valley, Jack Brown had herded and branded stolen cattle for Fitz, unknowingly and then knowingly. Until Fitz discovered her pregnancy, Jessie was there for every ride and for every heist. Fitz had kept his hands clean of it all and threatened to incriminate them both if ever their loyalty wavered.
    But there was no loyalty because there was no freedom. There was only an oppressive bind. Fitz held on to a whole stable of horses as evidence of their crimes. Jack Brown knew that a black man had no more power than a convict woman, maybe less, and they could never plead a case of blackmail or rely on white man’s justice. But as much as he did not want to be imprisoned or see Jessie imprisoned again, he also did not want to be Fitz’s captive or a fugitive. He held out for the chance to reason with him, man to man.
    Over the long ride, when Jack Brown played it in his head, he did see a man. It was the man of himself, riding through Fitz’s forest, having delivered a hundred head of cattle; a man fully possessed of his own power, his own worth. He would arrive at Fitz’s homestead, walk surely up the steps, remove his hat. He would be tall at the door and stand strong. He would shake Fitz’s hand and they would bargain for his freedom and for Jessie’s.
    But he did not know what to bargain with. And as often as he played it, it never came to him what to say or how to say it. He only hoped that the man of himself, in the moment of his facing Fitz, would truly know his worth and the right words would flood his tongue, just as prayers come to desperate men when they need them.
    As he rode into the valley a storm rolled down from the northern range and clouds turned