Then I saw them crest the ridge. Garrick Vane, riding hard with a dozen men from the Dust Veil folk behind him, armed and charging straight into the fight. Merrell must have convinced him we needed help, and he answered. The moment they hit the canyon floor, the tide turned. Holt's men, already shaken, broke under the pressure.
Some ran for their horses. Others fled on foot, disappearing into the rocks. But Holt, he was still fighting Sihaya, and the fight was turning desperate. He was bigger, stronger, and he'd managed to pin her down, one hand already reaching for the knife at his belt. I didn't have a clean shot.
Didn't matter. I fired anyway. The bullet tore into Varick Holt's shoulder, snapping him sideways and breaking his grip on Sihaya just long enough for her to break free. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up in one smooth motion I'd already learned to admire. Blood stained her dress, but her eyes, they burned.
Holt was hurt, but not finished. He lunged again, knife in his good hand, his face twisted with rage and pain. Sihaya was ready. She slipped the strike, drove her knee hard into his gut, folding him just enough. And what came next was fast, final.
She tore the knife from his hand with a move clean enough to impress any soldier alive. And when she rose to her full height, Varick Holt was no longer a threat to anyone. The fight was over. The Holt Syndicate scattered like dust on the wind. Their leader lay dead, and the danger to the Ash Trail Caravan was gone.
As I made my way down from the canyon ridge to join the others, something settled deep inside me. We hadn't just stopped an ambush. We'd proven something. That ordinary people, when they stand together, can face down evil. That justice doesn't always come from badges or courts.
Sometimes, it comes from those who refuse to let cruelty go unanswered. And maybe more than that, we proved something else, too. That even in the harshest corners of the frontier, something like love can still take root. By the time I reached the canyon floor, Sihaya broke from the group and ran straight toward me. When she wrapped her arms around me and lifted me clean off the ground, laughing through everything we'd just survived, I knew my life as a drifting gunman was over.
I'd found something worth staying for. Three months later, I stood beside Sihaya in the small church of Willow Run, listening as Benedict Warren pronounced us husband and wife. She wore a dress Merrell had sewn just for her, a beautiful blend of Apache tradition and settler style. Everything I'd come to love about her in one piece. When the pastor said I could kiss my wife, I had to stretch just to reach her.