"Were you one of them?" He didn't answer. The silence was louder than confession. By noon they reached the rim of a canyon where the trail split into two narrow passes. Robert dismounted, studying the tracks in the dust.
"We'll take the northern route. Less open ground, more hiding places," he said. "For them or for you?" He looked at her, then really looked. The dirt on her cheeks couldn't hide the fierce steadiness in her eyes.
"You'll live longer if you stop thinking everyone's your enemy." "Everyone is," she replied, and nudged her horse past him. That night they made camp beneath a cluster of dead cottonwoods. The sky above was clear, black as coal dust, pricked with hard stars. Robert gathered wood in silence while Kanti crouched nearby, sharpening a piece of scrap metal into a crude blade.
When sparks rose from his flint, she flinched. He noticed. You've seen too many fires. She glared.
So have you. Neither spoke after that. The wind moaned through the branches, carrying the smell of ash and old ghosts. Before dawn, the sound of hooves woke them both.
Robert reached for his rifle, motioning for her to stay down. But she was already moving silent as a shadow. From the ridge above, two riders appeared, torches flickering. Dinsly's men.
Robert fired once, hitting the torch, not the man. The flames dropped, scattering sparks. The riders bolted into the dark, shouting curses. When the last echo faded, Robert leaned against a boulder, breath ragged, blood darkened his sleeve.
You're hit. Kanti said, kneeling beside him. It's nothing. Don't lie.
She tore a strip from her deerskin skirt, pressed it to the wound. Her fingers were firm, quick, unafraid. Hold still. The smell of cactus sap filled the air.
She'd crushed it between her palms to stop the bleeding. His voice came low, strained. You've done this before. For others?
She said, not for men like you. He tried to speak again, but his words tangled into a groan. Fever climbed fast. She laid him down near the fire, watching his face twist in pain.
Then, in the half-light, he muttered through clenched teeth, words she wasn't meant to hear. I burned it, the camp. Children were inside. She froze.
The world seemed to fall silent except for his ragged breathing. By morning the fever had broken. He opened his eyes to find her sitting a few feet away. The knife across her knees staring at the horizon.
"You heard," he said. She didn't look at him. "I did." "Then why am I still breathing?" Her voice was steady. Almost weary.
"Because mercy isn't obedience and hate doesn't feed the thirsty." He said nothing more. The desert wind moved between them hot dry and alive. That day when they rode on she no longer followed 10 paces behind. She rode beside him.
The trail carried them deeper into the Pecos Basin where the land shimmered like hammered copper beneath the heat. Days blurred together dust by daylight cold by night. Every breath tasted of iron and dryness. Yet between the stretches of silence something fragile began to form.
An unspoken rhythm. A quiet endurance shared by two people who had run out of places to hide. Robert rarely spoke unless he needed to. He rode with the same precision he used at the forge.
Careful. Controlled. A man afraid of sudden things. Kanti moved differently alert.
A fluid. Her eyes scanning the horizon like a hawk. Sometimes she rode ahead scouting for danger. Sometimes she simply wanted space.
One morning while he mended a broken horseshoe she crouched nearby watching the sparks. "You work like you're praying," she said. He didn't glance up. "Maybe I am." "To who?" He paused.
"I'm not sure he listens anymore. She smiled faintly, not in mockery, but in recognition. Then you understand the gods I know. Their voices faded into the hum of the desert. The world around them was vast, but no longer empty.
At dusk, they reached a dry arroyo where faint water trickled beneath the sand. Robert dug a shallow pit, coaxing out a slow seep of brown water. Kanti crouched beside him, letting the mud cool her wrists. You could have left me, she said suddenly.
I tried, he admitted. Then why didn't you? He met her gaze, steady and tired. Because when you look at me, I see everything I ran from.
She studied him for a long moment, then turned away. That's not a good reason. It's the truth, he said. The wind rose, carrying a swirl of grit between them.
For a heartbeat, the tension cracked into something almost tender. Two days later, they crossed a stretch of salt flats that glowed white under the sun. Robert's sleeve was stiff with dried blood, his wound healing slowly. Kanti insisted on cleaning it each night, her hands steady, even when his breath hissed through his teeth.
Your people taught you this, he asked once. Yes, she said, before they were scattered. He watched her wrap the bandage with careful precision. You were a healer.
Her eyes flickered. I was a daughter. That was all she said, but in the way her fingers lingered at the knot, he could almost feel the ghost of a childhood stolen too soon. By the fourth night, they reached the foothills of Davis Mountains.
The air was cooler here, the rocks turning black and jagged under the moonlight. Robert slowed his horse as they approached the broken ruins of an old military outpost. The crumbled walls and rusted gate still bore the insignia of the regiment he'd once served under. He stopped, staring at the collapsed barracks.
"I knew this place." Kanti's voice was low. "The men who burned my village wore that same mark." He said nothing, only dismounted and walked to the base of a shattered flagpole. His hand brushed the iron ring still dangling from the rope. The sound it made was hollow, like the echo of a past that refused to die.