The celebration went late into the night, but Ethan slipped away after a few hours, needing quiet. He walked to the edge of the camp, where the firelight faded into darkness, and stood looking up at the stars. The Big Dipper hung low on the northern horizon. Ethan had used it to navigate a hundred times during the war and after, when he was lost in more ways than one. It was constant, reliable, always there, even when everything else fell apart.
"You did well today." Ethan turned. Nashoba stood a few feet away, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders against the desert cold. "We got lucky," Ethan said. "Luck is what you call skill when you do not want to seem arrogant." Nashoba moved to stand beside him. "You fought like a man who has seen much war.
Too much." "There is no such thing as too much. Only war that teaches you and war that breaks you." Nashoba looked at him. "You are not broken. Bent, perhaps, but not broken." "I was before Ayla." "And now?" Ethan thought about it. "Now I don't know what I am." "Then you are fortunate.
Most men die never questioning it." Nashoba pulled the blanket tighter. "I will tell you something. When I was young, I believed I knew everything. The world was simple. The people were good.
The white men were evil, and all that mattered was survival. Then I grew older. I watched good men do evil things, evil men do good things. I watched the world refuse to be simple." He paused. "And I learned that the only thing that matters is the choice you make in the moment.
Not the past, not the future. Just the choice." "And what if you make the wrong choice?" "Then you make another, and another, until you are too old or too dead to choose anymore." Nashoba smiled slightly. "But you are neither. So keep choosing." He walked away, leaving Ethan alone with the stars. Ethan stood there for a long time, thinking about choices, about Kansas and the ranch and Vance, about Ayla and her impossible request and the 90 days that had turned into something else entirely.
He thought about Emma's laugh and Sarah's strength and all the things he'd lost and would never get back. And then he thought about Kale's eager face and Nashoba's wisdom and Ayla's fierce stubborn refusal to become a ghost. Maybe Nashoba was right. Maybe the past didn't matter as much as the next choice. And maybe, just maybe, Ethan was finally ready to make a different one.
He walked back to the fire where Ayla sat talking with some of the women. Her hands moving as she told some story that made them laugh. When she saw him, she smiled and Ethan felt something shift inside him. Not healing, not yet, but something close. The next morning, Ethan woke before dawn to find half the camp already moving.
The Apache were packing up, breaking down shelters, loading supplies onto travois. It was organized chaos, everyone knowing their role without needing to be told. Ayla appeared beside his bedroll, already dressed and ready. We are moving. Why?
Vance may be dead, but others will come. The militia will want to know what happened to their men. So, we move deeper into the canyon country, somewhere they cannot find us. In the winter? We will survive it.