"You've done enough of that already. Whatever comes next, you don't carry it alone this time." Wade held on to that promise harder than he let himself admit in the days that followed. It turned out to matter more than either of them yet understood. They didn't have long to plan. three days after Reed's visit, Wade rode out at dawn with Wolfrunner to check the water channels far end.
Same routine they'd kept every morning since the spring work began. Autumn Sky stayed behind at camp, leg still healing enough that riding rough country wasn't advisable. How however loudly she argued otherwise. That was Wade would think later the whole reason Reed's men had waited exactly that long to move. They'd been watching, learning the routine, waiting for the one morning the camp's best tracker rode out with the one man Reed most wanted gone, leaving the daughter behind with fewer guns to protect her than any other morning that week.
Wade and Wolfrunner heard the shots from two miles off. Wrong kind of shots, not hunting, not celebration. The short controlled bursts of trained men executing a plan. They rode back hard, too hard. Horses lathered white by the time camp came back into view.
Too late. The camp stood in chaos. Warriors down, wounded, none dead that Wade could see in that first frantic sweep. Small mercy in an otherwise gutting scene. Grey Talon knelt over a fallen guard, face carved from something Wade had never seen on him before.
Not fury, terror. They took her, the chief said before Wade even had time to ask. six riders fast before anyone could mount a horse to follow. Wade's whole world narrowed down to those four words. They took her. He didn't remember afterward exactly what he said in that next handful of minutes.
Only that his voice had gone somewhere he didn't recognize. Low and flat and utterly without mercy. The voice of a man who'd already decided what he was willing to do and was only now working out the details. Wolfrunner tracked the rider's trail without being asked twice. Broken Blade appeared at Wade's shoulder, warp paint half applied, weapon already in hand.
I ride with you. Broken Blade said, "No argument invited. Thought you didn't trust me. I don't trust the man who took her." Different problem.
Today we solved the one in front of us. Grey Talon wanted to send the whole war party. Wade talked him out of it. The argument costing him nearly all the calm he had left to spend. A hundred warriors riding hard, dust rising for miles.
Reed sees that coming. He's got time to do something none of us can undo. Small party, fast, quiet. We get in before he even knows we've found him. And if you fail, then send the hundred warriors after us, Wade said.