A man near the door coughed and turned away. Mrs. Talbot's lips thinned, but she took the money, muttering under her breath. Alden gathered the supplies without another word, his jaw tight. outside. Yanni tried to thank him, but he shook his head. "Don't," he said quietly.
"Shouldn't have been needed." They drove home in silence. Yet that night, while May stirred stew by the fire, Yanni caught Alden's eyes across the table, steady, unguarded. Something passed between them that needed no language. As the days stretched into late August, drought turned the hills into glass.
Every living thing waited for rain that would not come. Yanni often sat on the porch after sunset, June asleep in her lap, the air humming with heat. Alden sometimes joined her a respectful distance away. "She likes you," he said one night, nodding toward his daughter. She's brave, Yanni replied.
Like her father. Alden gave a quiet laugh, one that sounded unused. "Brave, maybe foolish." Yanni turned toward him, the lamplight catching the faint scar that cut across his cheek. "Foolish men don't stand between a storm and their people," she said.
He didn't answer, but his eyes softened in the dark. That week, May caught Yanni humming again in the kitchen and smiled knowingly. "Careful now, child. The heart's a wild horse once you open the gate. You best be ready to hold on."
Yanni only laughed. A rare, genuine sound that made May grin wider. By the end of summer, the ranch had changed. It wasn't just the fences Alden repaired or the garden May coaxed back to life. It was the way they all moved slower, easier, as if something fragile but good had begun to grow among them.
And yet beneath that calm, Yanni felt the old unease stir like wind through dry grass. Because in places like Dry Creek, peace was never left alone for long. Rumors traveled faster than rain. The first whisper came from a wagon that rattled through Dry Creek on a Tuesday morning by sundown. The story had already reached Coyote Bend.
"They say the Apache girl from the Holloway Ranch is working out there. A traitor," the blacksmith said. "Got herself thrown out for witchcraft. Put a spell on her master." By the next market day, it wasn't a rumor anymore.
It was truth repeated often enough to be believed. The desert didn't need rain to make things spread, only wind and human mouths. May heard it first at the feed store. The woman beside her lowered her voice. "You best be careful, May.
They say she charms men with her eyes." May slammed a sack of flour onto the counter, the sound sharp as thunder. "Then maybe that's why the good Lord gave her two. You got the same number. Better watch yourself."