Used to follow me around the corral, asking a thousand questions. Why do horses sleep standing up? Why do they have such big eyes? Can I ride one by myself? He smiled, faint and sad.
She had her mother's laugh, loud and bright. You could hear it across the whole damn farm. She sounds wonderful. She was. And your wife?
Sarah, she was tough. Had to be. Married to a soldier. She didn't complain when I was gone for months at a time. Just kept the farm running, kept Emma safe, or tried to.
His hands tightened on the reins. I should have been there. Should have protected them. You cannot protect people from the past, only from the future. Ethan looked at her.
Is that some kind of Apache wisdom? No, it is something my mother told me before she died. She said grief is a chain. You can carry it forever, or you can set it down and walk forward. The choice is yours.
And if I don't want to let it go? Then you will drown in it, and everything you could have been will drown with you. They rode on. That night camped in another hidden canyon. Ethan cleaned his rifle by firelight while Ayla prepared a meal from the supplies they'd salvaged.
Jerky, hardtack, wild onions she'd found near the spring. It wasn't much, but it was food. "How much farther to your people?" Ethan asked. Two days, maybe less if we push hard.
"And you're sure they'll help?" I am not sure of anything, but my cousin Nashoba is one of the elders. He will listen. What he decides after that, she shrugged. We will see.
Ethan finished cleaning the rifle and set it aside. "You never told me why you really came to me. The real reason." Ayla was quiet for a moment, staring into the fire. "I told you.
My people are dying." "There's more to it than that." She sighed. "You are right, there is." She looked up, meeting his eyes.
When I was young, maybe 10 or 11, soldiers came to our camp. They said we had to leave, go to a reservation. My father refused. So they burned our homes, killed our horses. My father fought back.
They shot him in front of me. Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled slightly. My mother took me and ran. We survived, but I watched her break piece by piece, year by year. She stopped singing, stopped smiling.