Coleman's men looked around wildly, trying to find the source. Rhett looked at Ayah. She'd set down her rifle and was standing, arms raised, singing that same wordless song she'd used in the sacred chamber. "What are you doing?" he shouted.
"Finishing this!" she shouted back. The sound grew louder. The canyon walls trembled. And then, impossibly, water came.
Not from the sky. From the canyon itself. A wall of water surged down the streambed. Flash flood moving like a living thing, churning and roaring and unstoppable.
Coleman saw it and screamed a warning, but it was too late. The water hit his men like a fist, sweeping horses and riders downstream. Rhett watched in stunned silence as the flood carved through the canyon floor, erasing everything in its path. When it finally subsided, only two men were left standing.
Coleman and one of his riders. The rest were gone, swept away or pinned under debris. Coleman stared up at their position, face pale, eyes wide. "What the hell are you?"
Ayah lowered her arms. She was trembling, exhausted, but her voice was steady. "I'm the granddaughter of the canyon's keeper. And this place remembers."
Coleman's remaining man turned his horse and fled. Coleman watched him go, then looked back at Rhett and Ayah. "This isn't over," he said. "Yeah," Rhett replied.
"It is." He raised his revolver and fired. Not to kill. Just close enough to make Coleman's horse bolt.
The territorial officer tried to hold on, failed, and hit the ground hard. By the time he got to his feet, Rhett and Ayah were mounting their horses. They rode past him close enough that Rhett could see the rage and fear warring in Coleman's eyes. "Tell Vickers we're coming for him," Rhett said.
"Tell him the canyon remembers. And so do we." Then they were gone, riding east toward a future that was uncertain and dangerous, but finally, finally theirs to choose. Behind them, Coleman stood alone in the scarred canyon, surrounded by the wreckage of his ambition.
And for the first time in his miserable life, he understood what it felt like to lose. They rode for three days straight, stopping only when the horses needed rest or when exhaustion forced them to make camp in whatever cover they could find. Rhett kept expecting to hear hoofbeats behind them. Kept glancing over his shoulder at empty horizons.
But the pursuit never came. Either Coleman had given up or he was licking his wounds and planning something worse. Rhett didn't know which scared him more. On the fourth day, they reached a small town called Bitter Creek.
Nothing more than a handful of buildings clustered around a dried-up streambed. They needed supplies. Needed news. Needed to know if their faces were on wanted posters yet.
Rhett went in alone while Ayah stayed hidden with the horses in a copse of cottonwoods outside town. The general store was run by an old woman with sharp eyes and sharper opinions. She looked Rhett up and down when he walked in, taking in his trail-worn clothes and the dust caked on his boots. "Help you?" she asked.
"Need supplies. Jerky, hardtack, coffee, if you've got it. Ammunition too." She gathered the items without comment, piling them on the counter.
When Rhett went to pay, she stopped him with a bony hand on his wrist. "You're him, aren't you? The one they're talking about." Rhett's hand moved toward his gun.