"I could ride out right now, leave you here." "You could, but you won't." "Why not?" Kaya smiled, and there was something sad in it. "Because you're starting to like having us around."
Cole opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Because she wasn't wrong. Somewhere between the canyon and Fort Dalton, between gunfights and cattle drives and a hundred small moments he hadn't paid attention to, the women had stopped being strangers. They'd become something else. Not friends, exactly.
Not family. But something close enough that the thought of riding away felt wrong. "Damn it," he muttered. Lyra grinned. "Told you he'd come around."
They left Fort Dalton two days later, heading west toward Coldwater Springs with their saddlebags heavier and their spirits lighter than they'd been in weeks. The landscape shifted as they rode, trading scrubland for rolling grassland dotted with wildflowers that swayed in the wind like they were dancing. It was the kind of country that made a person believe the frontier wasn't all dust and death. Kaya rode beside Cole, her posture relaxed, eyes scanning the horizon. "Can I ask you something?" she said.
"You're going to anyway." "Why'd you help us that day in the canyon?" Cole didn't answer right away. He'd asked himself the same question a hundred times and never come up with a good answer. "Don't know," he said finally.
"Seemed like the right thing to do." "Most people don't do the right thing when it might get them killed." "Most people are smarter than me." Kaya laughed softly. "I don't think that's true."
They rode in silence for a while, the only sound the steady rhythm of hooves on hard-packed earth. Then Kaya spoke again, her voice quieter. "Where I'm from, there's a belief that every life is a thread in a larger weave. When you save someone, you tie your thread to theirs. It's not something you can undo."
"It just is." Cole frowned. "That why you're so stubborn about this debt?" "It's not stubbornness. It's truth."
"Whose truth?" "Mine, Lyra's, Sani's. The truth of the people who raised us and taught us what it means to live with honor." Cole glanced at her. "And what happens when the debt's paid? Your thread just unties?"
Kaya shook her head. "No, it stays. But the weight of it changes. Right now we owe you everything. When the debt is settled, we'll owe you nothing."
"But the thread remains." "Sounds complicated." "Life is complicated." Cole couldn't argue with that. They reached Coldwater Springs late on the third day, the town sprawling along the banks of a wide, slow-moving river that gave the place its name.
It was bigger than Silver Ridge, more permanent, with brick buildings and paved streets that suggested people actually planned to stay. There was a hotel, a bank, a general store, and at least three saloons that Cole could see from the edge of town. "Fancy," Lyra said, looking around. "Don't get used to it," Cole replied. "We're just passing through."
They found Garrett's friend, a man named Hoskins, at the freight office near the river docks. He was a short, barrel-chested man with a thick beard and a voice like gravel being poured into a bucket. He looked the four of them over with sharp, assessing eyes and didn't waste time on pleasantries. "Garrett sent you?" he asked. "That's right," Cole said.
"You any good?" "Good enough." Hoskins grunted. "I need guards for a run to Canyon Bend. Three wagons, valuable cargo, high risk of bandits."