Later then. Later. She agreed. And there was a promise folded into that one small word that Wade felt clear of her down to his boots. It was Wade thought the closest either of them had come yet to saying the thing neither one of them had worked up the full nerve to say plainly.
He didn't get the chance to try again. Because that's when Wolfrunner's voice cut through the celebration, sharp and urgent, coming from the edge of camp where he'd been keeping watch. Same as every sight since the spring was found. Riders, he called out. West Ridge coming fast.
The drums stopped midbeat. Every head in that circle turned as one toward the darkening horizon where a low cloud of dust was already rising, catching the last orange light of the dying sun and turning it the exact color of old blood. Not Apache riders. Wade knew that shape of movement on sight. that particular discipline of formation from a lifetime spent around men trained the same hard way he'd once been trained himself. Military or men who'd once been and never quite stopped acting like it.
He counted out of old habit the way he'd counted 200 warriors just eight days before 20 maybe 25 writing in tight deliberate columns not the scattered approach of settlers or traders but the exact formation of men who drilled it into their bones somewhere some war some outfit before they'd ever ridden out here to whatever this new life had turned into for them. Grey Talon's face went from celebration to stone in the space of a single breath. He was already moving, already calling orders in Apache that sent warriors scattering toward weapons left, leaning against wiki-ups all through the celebration. Everybody's guard dropped for one single evening. Of course, the one evening it mattered most to have it up.
Autumn Sky grabbed Wade's arm, her grip fierce despite the crutch. You know this. I can see it on your face. Tell me. I don't know for certain, Wade said, though the cold certainty already sitting in his gut said otherwise.
But I've got a bad feeling I know exactly who's riding under that dust. Wolfrunner reached them at a dead run, breathing hard. twenty-some riders, rifles moving like soldiers, not like men lost on a trail. Wade felt something cold settle low in his stomach, the same cold he'd felt kneeling in Sarah's ashes five years back, and understood with a certainty that turned his blood to ice water, exactly who was riding toward this camp on the very same night his new name had finally been spoken out loud for the first time. Dobs had talked. Whether out of fear or greed or both together hardly mattered now, and the colonel was coming, riding straight toward the one secret Wade had spent two years guarding alone.
On the single worst possible night for him to finally arrive, because some debts Wade was learning fast, don't wait politely for a man to be ready to pay them. They come collecting exactly when the fires burning brightest. When the drums have only just gone quiet. When a man has finally foolishly let himself believe the worst part might be over. It wasn't over.