Both Matthew and Julian were instantly at Autrey’s side to peer through the glass, while Greta rushed to the second window. Matthew could see firelight leaping between chinks in the barn’s boards, and now he thought he did catch the high terrified scream of a horse carried by the moaning wind.

“Ha,” Firebaugh said tonelessly. “The cats have caught the squirrels.”

Without a word, Julian turned from the window, took two paces toward Firebaugh and laid the doctor out upon the floor with a right fist to the jaw.

“I have to go out!” Autrey was going for the door.

“Don’t!” Julian said, and the urgency of his voice stopped the other man. “They’re waiting for whoever comes out!”

“I … I have to,” said Autrey, all the blood seemingly drained from his face and his lips a waxy gray. “The horses! They’ll burn alive!”

The moment hung.

Matthew swallowed the gritty taste of his own fear. It had to be done. “I’ll go with you,” he said, reaching into the polar bear coat and his jacket to pull out the pistol.

Autrey’s eyes widened further. Elizabeth said, “Let me go out to him, Matthew. I can—”

“Yes, let her go out!” Firebaugh taunted from the floor. “Once I tell him what a traitor she is, he’ll—”

Julian put a boot upon his throat, which turned the doctor’s voice into a strangled gurgle.

“I never heard a chamberpot talking before, and I don’t like it,” he said.

“I’m going!” Autrey opened the door, and Matthew cocked his pistol and followed him. Julian shouted for Matthew to stop and there was real fear in the shout, but then Matthew and Autrey were out in the snow and both were running toward the barn, where the firelight glowed orange between the boards and tendrils of smoke were being whipped back and forth by the wind.

They had gotten about twenty feet from the cottage when Matthew saw the white flash of a gunshot from the woods across the road and a heartbeat later heard the crack of the blast. At his side, Autrey gave a shout of pain, clutched at his right thigh and then he staggered and went down. Matthew instantly fell to his knees beside the man, who grasped at Matthew’s coat with a bloodied hand and cried out, “The horses! Don’t let ’em burn!”

There was no time for weighing life and death. There was no time to decide if the next bullet would be better aimed than the first.

There was no time.

Matthew leaped up and, crouching low, ran for the barn. He expected another shot but it did not come. Whoever had fired it was getting into a better position, or crossing the road, or whatever. Odds are Lash had brought others with him, and maybe the entire gathering. If so, the odds against himself and Julian were very bad indeed.