These were people walking the last mile before death. They are starving, he thought. The realization landing harder than the club had. They're stealing cattle because they're dying. He remembered the woman in Barrow's store.
He remembered his own silence. The guilt he'd carried three years suddenly shifted shape. It wasn't only about the past anymore. It was about right now. And he was part of the machine grinding these people into dust.
The gray-haired warrior stopped, pointed up. A hidden trail switched back and forth along a sheer rock face up. Silas looked at the trail, then at the faces around him. No mercy in any of them, only a desperate, terrifying need. He began to climb, the rope tight around his neck, leading him toward judgment he was beginning to suspect he'd earned a long time ago.
The trail spat him out onto the lip of a canyon floor, and Silas fell hard, dust puffing up around him like smoke off a grave. The moccasin clad foot shoved him back down before he could rise. He stayed there, listening to a sudden total silence. The camp had been alive with the sound of daily labor. Now it held the hush of a courtroom, waiting on a verdict.
Get up, he climbed to his feet, a suede, blood roaring in his ears. An amphitheater of red rock closed around him on three sides, walls climbing halfway to heaven. Wiki up scattered like tossed tumble weed. Smoke and leather and unwashed bodies, and underneath it all a sharper scent. Resentment, the thick as smoke, and just as choking.
He stood inside a loose circle of women, 30 maybe, young girls with wide, terrified eyes beside grandmothers whose faces had become maps of wrinkles. The children peeking from behind skirts, eyes darting between the stranger and the weapons the old men carried. He'd been stripped of his gun, his knife, his hat. His dignity had gone somewhere back on the trail and hadn't caught up yet. A white man in a world where his own skin was a uniform of death.
Kessa stepped forward. Up close, she was more formidable than she'd been during the ambush. Not tall, but she held herself like a bow string, pulled taut and waiting. Buckskin stained with grease and earth, hands scarred from work, face struck from flint. She looked at Silas the way a woman might look at a rattlesnake, found curled up in a cradle.
Why is he breathing? She didn't look at him, looked at the old warrior instead. We don't need another mouth to feed. We don't need a spy leading soldiers to this canyon. He is strong.
The warrior grunted. He has a white heart. Kessa a spat into the dust. Returned to the circle, voice rising. Do you not see?
He tracks like a wolf. If we let him live, he escapes. If he escapes, he brings soldiers. If soldiers come, we die. All of us.
Her finger shook as she pointed at Silas. But kill him now. Put his head on a steak at the entrance. Let the white men see what happens when they come for us. A murmur ran through the circle.
Younger women nodding, faces hardening like clay set in a kiln. Silas felt sweat cut a line down his spine. He knew with the flat certainty a man only gets a handful of times in his life, that he was seconds from dying. He thought of the graves on the hill behind his cabin. He thought of Josie's face the morning he'd ridden out for the last campaign.
How she hadn't asked him not to go, only asked him to come back. Wait, one word cracked through the tension like a whip. The circle parted. Tamson came forward, leaning heavy on a staff of polished juniper. Hair entirely white, nodded at the nape of her neck.
Body twisted by injury and time. Eyes like black glass sharp enough to cut. She stopped in front of Silas, looked him up and down. Boots, hands, the width of his shoulders, the way a buyer might look at a horse before deciding whether it was worth the price. He is strong.
Her voice dry as old paper. He is an enemy. Kessa's tone lost some of its edge in the old woman's presence, though it lost none of its conviction. He is a resource, Tamson turned to her. "You want to kill him for revenge, daughter?" "That is a luxury we can no longer afford. Revenge does not fill the water skins. Revenge does not chop the wood. Revenge does not mend the fences."She turned back to Silas. "What is your name, white man?"His throat felt packed with sand. Silas Merrick. Merrick. She tasted the sound of it like it might tell her something.
Stepped closer. Smelled of sage and old smoke. Tell me, Merrick. Where are the soldiers? I don't know.
Do not lie to me. Soft. No raised voice needed. The threat sat there anyway, sharp as a blade laid flat against the throat. We have seen the dust.
Where are they going? Sweeping the southern range. The words tumbled out before pride could stop them, and shame followed a half second behind. Hot and immediate. Sergeant said they're moving toward the border looking for stragglers.
Stragglers. Kessa repeated it bitter as bad water. But that is what they call us, not people. Debris to be swept away. Tamson silenced her with a raised hand.
Looked around the circle dead or rotting in chains. We have only boys and old ones left. The work is hard. Our backs are break. She pointed her staff at Silas's chest.
This man owes a debt. His people have taken our land. Our buffalo. our husbands. A pause heavy as a held breath.