Slowly. A command. You blinked at her. You, you're still here. I'm here.
She set the gourd down. Tamson ordered it. He watched her. The memory of the fever was hazy. Fragments mostly, but he remembered her hands.
Remembered a voice pulling him back from some edge he couldn't quite name. I had dreams, he whispered. I know. Kessa's eyes didn't leave his face. You talk in your sleep, Merrick.
You talk of rivers and fire. You talk of a brother named Amos. He closed his eyes, shame washing over him, fresh as the first day. He was my younger brother, Silas said. Died 3 years ago.
Kessa didn't flinch. My husband died 3 years ago. Soldier's bullet. The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was heavy with the wreckage of two histories that had somehow, without either of them choosing it, started running along the exact same road.
Why did you scout for them? Kessa asked quiet. You don't hate us. I've seen you are not a killer by nature. Why?
Silas stared at the roof poles. I was 29, he said. Amos was younger, 19. We had nothing. Our father left us dry dirt and a debt neither of us could pay.
The army offered gold. Real gold. enough his head to look at her. It wasn't about hate Kessa. It was about us up being poor.
If I had enough, I could build a wall high enough to keep the world out. He laughed. Dry, bitter. I bought the ranch. The war followed me home anyway.
Kessa looked down at her hands. I had a dream once, she said soft before the soldiers came. A valley where the corn grew tall and the children didn't wake up screaming. I wanted to be a woman who made things, not a woman who sharpens knives. She looked up, dark eyes locking onto his blue ones.
We are both fools, Merrick. We thought we could choose our lives, but the land chooses for us. The closeness in the small hut was suffocating. Too intimate, too real. Silas felt a sudden, desperate urge to reach out, to close the gap between two tragedies that had somehow become mirrors of each other.
Kessa saw it in his eyes, tensed, fear flickering across her face, and though not fear of him. Fear of rest, she said abruptly. Blew out the candle, plunged them into dark sleep. You are not dead yet. Recovery came slow.
Another week before Silas could walk without a staff. Then crews arrived, and everything that had been quietly, carefully built between them started to come apart at the seams. He came in dragged by two of the young entries, buckskin torn, hatc crushed, hands bound tight behind his back, mixed blood skin like polished bronze, hair long and greasy, a face already bruised from the fight it had taken to bring him down. Silas swung down from where he'd been working the horse line. Froze.
He knew this man. Three years riding together as trackers for the same column. A man who drank too much and talked more than he should have when he did. Cruz looked up, spat blood into the dust. A bloody delighted grin spread across his face.
Well, hell, his voice wet and mocking. Heard you were dead, Merrick. Figured your scalp was drying on a lodge pole by now. The women crowded around. Tamson stepped forward, face thunderous.
This man? Silas nodded slowly, his stomach already turning over on itself. Cruz, he scouts for Voss's column. Did Cruz corrected, cheerful despite the ropes. freelance now just passing through.
His eyes narrowed on Silas, sensing something in the air. The way a coyote senses a wounded rabbit before it ever moves in. You look cozy, Merrick. Working for the women now. Long way to fall with a hero of Drywash Creek.
The name landed in the air like smoke that wouldn't clear. Kessa went rigid. The color drained clean out of her face. What did you say? Her voice barely a whisper.
Cruz looked at her, then back at Silas. And like a man who's found a wound and can't resist pressing on it, he pushed harder. You didn't tell them. He turned to the women, voice rising, delighted with his own cruelty. This man is a legend.
Best tracker Voss ever had. He's the one who found the trail to drywash Creek 3 years back. Cruz. Silas stepped forward. Shut your mouth.
Found the water hole. Cruz kept going louder now, feeding off the horror spreading across every face in the circle. Led the whole column right to the edge of the canyon. Dawn Raid caught him sleeping. It was a turkey shoot.
Kessa turned to Silas. Her eyes had gone wide. Black holes of horror where her face used to be. Drywash Creek, she said, barely audible. That was my village.
The world dropped out from under Silas. Merrick. Blood roared in his ears loud enough to drown out every other sound in the canyon. He remembered the map. remembered his own hand reaching full of finger gaping sapat that looked in memory exactly like the shape of this canyon.
He remembered saying, "Yes, sir. That's the place. If you block the path that you trapped them, you led them there."Kessa's voice hollow. Not a question.
Silas looked at her, couldn't lie. Not to her. Not anymore. I tracked a raiding party, he said. Voice pleading even as he heard how useless the pleading sounded.
They told me it was a war camp. They told me it was the men who'd burned the freight wagons. I didn't know there were families. I didn't know it was a village, but you led them. Kessa's scream tore through the canyon raw enough to send birds scattering off the rim above.