Chapter 2: The Giant and the Knife

Three days after James Bell died in Redwater, Stella arrived in Mercy Creek with another name folded inside the pocket of her coat, another reward waiting somewhere at the end of the trail, and the same small pistol hidden against the right side of her belt. The town was little more than a collection of weather-beaten buildings scattered along a dusty road, with a general store, a blacksmith, a livery stable, and a saloon whose swinging doors seemed permanently stained by years of tobacco smoke and spilled whiskey, but Mercy Creek had one distinction that mattered to Stella: Silas Crowe was there.

Silas Crowe was a very large man, so large that people seemed to become smaller when they stood beside him, and he had the unpleasant habit of reminding everyone of that fact whenever he entered a room. He was nearly seven feet tall in his boots, with shoulders like a barn door, hands broad enough to close around another man’s throat, and a deep voice that seemed to come from somewhere below the floorboards, and although he had never been accused of being intelligent, he had learned that his size alone could make most people surrender before a fight even began.

His reward was eight hundred dollars, which was enough money to make a poor man rich and a rich man greedy, and there were plenty of stories attached to it. Silas had killed three men, robbed freight wagons, broken a sheriff’s jaw with one punch, and once thrown a bartender through a plate-glass window because the man had refused to serve him after midnight, but what interested Stella most was not his violence but his confidence, because confidence was often the easiest thing in the world to use against a man.

She saw him sitting outside the general store that afternoon, occupying a chair that looked absurd beneath him, while several townspeople kept a careful distance. Silas was eating an apple with enormous bites, occasionally spitting the seeds into the street, and whenever somebody passed too close he would lift his eyes and stare until the person hurried away, apparently amused by the fear he created without even having to speak.

Stella stopped on the opposite side of the street and studied him for several minutes, her small figure almost disappearing beneath the brim of her hat and the loose fall of her coat. She did not look like a bounty hunter, and that was precisely the point, because there was nothing in her appearance that suggested she had come to collect eight hundred dollars from a man who could probably lift her from the ground with one hand.

When she finally crossed the street, Silas noticed her immediately, and his eyes moved slowly from her boots to her face with the same crude curiosity that a man might show toward something delicate that had accidentally wandered into the wrong place. Stella stopped in front of him and lowered her gaze just enough to appear uncertain, while inside she was measuring the distance between them, watching his hands, and thinking about the pistol hidden against her belt.

“You lost, little girl?” Silas asked.

His voice was almost playful, but there was something ugly underneath it, something that told Stella he enjoyed making people uncomfortable. She gave him a faint smile and shook her head.

“No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Passing through.”

Silas laughed, and the sound made several people in the street turn their heads before quickly looking away again. He reached out suddenly and caught Stella by the wrist, not with enough force to injure her but with enough to remind her that he could have done so if he wished, and she looked down at his enormous hand around her slender arm before raising her eyes to his face.