Chapter Sixteen: The Confrontation
The trail sharpened as they pressed on, every sign fresher than the last. Ezra rode ahead, his eyes cutting the land with the ease of long practice. Here a scrap of hide hung from a thorn. There is a set of prints pressed deep into the mud: women’s steps, children’s ponies overloaded with more than their frames should bear.
“They didn’t rest long,” Ezra muttered. “Push hard, stop just enough to breathe, then move again. Like rabbits with hawks overhead.”
Thomas leaned in the saddle, scanning the horizon. The air smelled of woodsmoke. He could taste how near they were. “How far?”
Ezra shaded his eyes. “Hours. A half-day, no more. If they don’t move any farther, we’ll be on them with the morning.”
Thomas grunted, satisfaction a tight coil in his chest. Every mile had been a ledger mark added to the balance owed him. Now, the reckoning waited just ahead.
?
That night they camped under the broken spine of a fallen oak. The fire was small, the meat dry. Ezra ate with the quiet patience of a man who had seen too much, while Thomas chewed with quick, angry bites.
“She’s alive,” Thomas said suddenly.
Ezra looked up. “The button, the cloth—they tell us someone lived. But not who still lives now.”
“It’s her,” Thomas snapped. “No doubt of it.”
Ezra studied him, then gave him a slight shrug. “Say it is. You reckon she’ll want to walk back at your side?”
Thomas’s eyes hardened. “She made a promise. I paid for that promise. A woman’s wants don’t enter into it.”
Ezra said nothing, but his mouth tightened, and he turned back to his meal.
?
The moon was pale, washed thin by drifting clouds. Violet sat outside the tepee, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the glow of the fire.
Grey Horse was near, speaking low with two other men. Pale Moon moved beyond, her eyes dark and heavy. Violet felt the weight of that gaze even when she looked away.
You are nothing here but a shadow passing through.
The words clung to her. Yet Grey Horse’s bracelet, the braid in her hair, and the carved bird in her hand told her otherwise. She wanted to believe him, wanted to believe herself more than a shadow.
Still, guilt gnawed at her. Thomas’s name had risen in her heart like a ghost, and with it came the memory of the promise she had written. That letter lay heavy across her spirit, binding her more firmly than any knot.
Her stomach twisted. She had never seen his face, had never stood before him. He was only words on paper, yet those words had power. A promise was a promise.
She pressed her fingers to her braid, emotionally torn. Then to the birthmark behind her ear. It told her nothing today.
?
At dawn Thomas and Ezra broke camp and pushed hard. The land opened, low hills giving way to a bend in the river. Smoke coiled faint in the distance. Ezra reined in, scanning.
“There,” he said. “Camp. We found them.”
Thomas’s breath caught. His hands clenched on the reins. He could almost see her already, pale among them, out of place as a swan among crows. His.
Ezra’s voice was low. “We go careful. Two white men don’t barge unannounced into a camp of twenty warriors unless they’ve lost their wits.”
Thomas ignored the caution. “She’s there. That’s enough.”
They tethered their horses and moved forward on foot, slipping through the cane and cottonwoods until the camp spread before them. Tepees ringed the fires, smoke rising slowly. Women bent over their work, children darting between hides. And there, near the river, she stood.
Violet.
