At last, silence fell.
?
Blood darkened Grey Horse’s sleeve, but his wound was shallow. Around him, the ground was littered with broken bodies—warriors and soldiers alike. Smoke drifted low, choking in his lungs.
The wagon gun lay silent, its crew scattered, the weapon splintered. The battle was won, but not without cost.
He turned, his eyes searching the river. There, on the far bank, Violet stood among the women, her dress soaked, her hair plastered to her face. Her eyes were wide, her hands trembling, but she was alive.
Alive.
For the first time since dawn, the fire in his chest eased.
He lifted his bloodied hand, raising it toward her across the distance. And though he could not hear her voice, he saw her lips form the word.
“Safe.”
?
The day bled slowly into night. The dead were gathered, their bodies honored, their spirits sent to the wind.
Violet sat by the river, her hands still shaking, the smell of smoke and blood thick in her hair. She had seen death before, but never like this—never so close, never with her own heart bound so tightly to the man who fought among it.
When Grey Horse came to her at last, his arm roughly bound with a strip of hide, his face streaked with soot, she rose without thinking. Her hands went to his, her eyes searching the wound.
“You’re hurt,” she whispered.
“Not deep.” His voice was steady, but his eyes softened as they held hers.
She pressed her forehead against his chest, the steady beat of his heart loud in her ears. “I thought … I thought….”
“Promise kept,” he said, his voice low, almost breaking. His hand cupped the back of her head, holding her as though letting go would undo everything.
And in that moment, among the ruin and the loss, Violet understood. The promise was not only of safety. It was of himself—his strength, his will, his very life.
And she would never forget it.
Chapter Thirteen: Trouble Calling
The spring wind rolled across the country, lifting curls of dust from the wagon ruts and stirring the grass into waves. Thomas McBride reined his bay gelding to a slower walk along the ridge above the river, eyes narrowed against the white glare. The land lay open as a ledger: cottonwoods marking the water like tall, spare figures; prairie running off toward the horizon. He had spent years learning how to read it: what it yielded, what it hid, what it owed.
Lately, it felt delinquent.
The ranch was too quiet. Cattle bunched together instead of spreading to graze, with their eyes tilted north, as if the wind carried warnings only they could hear. His horse tossed its head and snorted, ears pricked. Thomas laid a palm on the gelding’s neck to steady him and, by habit, steady himself.
There had been talk for some time—bands moving, military and Indian raids, coaches ambushed and robbed, and whites and Indians killed alike. Talk didn’t bother him; losses did. And loss was what he had been living with since the last post rider had failed to arrive.
He had sent money to Boston in good faith and expectation. Letters, too—words he actually did not feel, with details that did not exist, written solely to produce a result. And they had successfully created the result he had wanted and needed. She had agreed. Violet Carter, of Boston had agreed to be his mail-order bride: to become a housekeeper to keep his house, a cook to keep his table, and a womb to keep his name. He had promised comforts he had no intention of furnishing and a tender heart he did not possess, because any man with sense understood that promises were paper and reality was iron. Paper got you what you needed. Iron kept it.
And now, according to the new talk, a coach had been taken, possibly hers.
If true, his paper had blown away in a wind that was not of his making. That stung worse than anything. He disliked being cheated, whether by drought, by man, or by God.
?
By noon he had ridden the north fence and set a cracked post. The work should have done its usual thing—bleed off his temper, tie thought to muscle. It did not. He was coiling wire when dust rose across a field in a thin line like smoke. A rider came hard, not a man who Thomas recognized: blue coat rounded by road, hat cock-eyed, mount lathered and hollow-eyed.
Thomas swung up on his horse, jaw tight, and met the stranger at the fence line. The soldier slid forward, nearly falling, and croaked, “Water.”
