Land, family, a wife who actually looked at him like he mattered. and he threw me out over one horse. That's why, Ezra said, disbelief and fury tangling together in his chest. That's the whole reason, a card game. It's never just one thing, Crane snapped, sudden heat flaring. I went looking for shelter that winter, found an Apache camp instead.
Begged for a place by their fire just for one season, and they turned me away, too. called me trouble before I'd ever done a thing to earn it. His voice hardened further. Iron under iron. So maybe I decided if the whole world was going to treat me like trouble before I'd earned it, I might as well go on and earn it properly. From beside Ezra, Ayanna's breath caught sharp and quiet.
Which camp? She called out voice tight. Which winter exactly? Tell me plain. A pause.
Then Crane's voice again, almost curious now at the sharpness in hers. Camp two ridges north of here. Different band than yours. Girl, if that's what you're asking. I never rode against your people that season.
Wasn't me who came for your kin. Something almost like honesty crept into it. Cold comfort though it was. That's the truth. For whatever a truth from me is worth to you.
Same winter though, same rotten season that seemed to break every good thing it touched. Maybe that's why I never much minded. Who else it broke along with me? Ayanna's shoulders sagged. Some fraction of relief moving through her even here.
Even now, even with rifles waiting in the dark. Not him. Not the man who took her mother, but close enough in time and in kind that the wound didn't need to share a name to share a shape. You're not owed revenge," Ezra called out, forcing his voice to hold steady, even as everything inside him wanted to shatter. "You're owed consequences.
There's a difference, and you've spent 11 years pretending there isn't." "Pretty words," Crane called back. "Don't change what happens next." which is which is you hand over the herd, hand over the girl and her brother and ride back to Redstone with your life or pause deliberate cruel or you don't and this canyon becomes exactly the kind of grave that town always figured you'd earn. Ezra looked at Ayana, at Chaitton, breathing shallow and ragged in the dark at the herd, restless and unknowing. 200 lives that had already cost too much to lose now. Not happening, Ezra called back, steady as stone.
Your choice, then. The first shot cracked the night wide open. Everything after that came in fragments. Muzzle flashes carving jagged light across canyon walls. Ayanna's bow singing arrow after arrow into the dark with a precision that would have been beautiful under any other circumstance.
Ezra pressed low behind rock revolver bucking in his hand, aiming at shadows and shapes and hoping every single time that his aim held true. A man went down near the canyon mouth. And Ezra didn't have time to feel anything about it because another was already climbing over rock to his left. And Ayanna's voice cut sharp through the chaos. Left, Ezra.
Left, he spun, fired, and the shape crumpled before it ever reached striking distance. Thank you, he gasped. Don't thank me. Reload. Something that might have been laughter wild and adrenaline soaked threatened to bubble up in Ezra's chest even in the middle of gunfire because of course of course this was exactly the moment she'd choose to be dry about it.
The fighting stretched on brutal and close. The narrow canyon mouth becoming the only mercy standing between them and being overrun entirely. Every raider who tried to push through single file met either an arrow or a bullet. And slowly, agonizingly, the assault began to falter until it stopped being an assault at all and became something worse. Because through the gunfire and the shouting, another sound cut through.
Wagon wheels approaching from the opposite direction. From the south, from the direction that should have been clear. That's not Crane's men, Ayanna said, breathless, reloading with hands that hadn't stopped shaking since the first shot. Different sound, different pace. Ezra's stomach dropped again because he already suspected who it was before the wagon ever came into view.
It rolled to a stop at the canyon southern approach, lantern swinging, and the man who climbed down from the driver's seat wore a coat too clean for country this hard. A face Ezra had last seen laughing off 200 lives in a town square. Harmon. Ezra breathed. Wade.
Harmon surveyed the chaos with an expression of pure undisguised irritation like the gunfire and bodies were a minor inconvenience to his schedule rather than a battle for actual lives. Crane, he shouted over the noise carrying the particular authority of a man used to being obeyed instantly. What in God's name is this mess? Crane emerged from cover, breathing hard, blood on his sleeve from some wound. Ezra hadn't managed to see land.
They hit the relay camp. Took the herd back. They took Harmon's face went through several colors in quick succession. You said this was handled. You said nobody would even notice until the herd was three states south.
Things changed. Things changed. Harmon's laugh carried no humor at all. I've already paid you for 200 head crane. Paid in full upfront because you swore this was clean.
I did not drive out into raider country in the middle of the night to watch you lose my investment to a cowboy and two Indians. The words hit the air and hung there ugly and plain, and Ezra felt something in his chest go cold and sharp all at once. There it is, Ezra called out, standing slow from cover, revolver still raised, but voice carrying clear across the canyon. There's your innocent rancher. There's the man who stood in Redstone Square and called 200 stolen horses none of his concern.