“And if she hates me?” Violet asked, eyes on her bandaged foot.
“She will hate,” he said simply. “Maybe for a while. Maybe for long. That is hers to carry.”
Violet sat up again, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “And your heart?” she asked, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. “Where does that belong?”
He did not answer quickly. Wind made the willow leaves shiver. Somewhere a frog sang once and stopped.
“Here,” he said, and cupped his hands around her face.
She closed her eyes, the world going soft around the edges at his tender touch, and breathed past the ache that rose sharp as joy.
?
Thomas and his wayward gang had hit sign by sundown. They found two sets of prints crossing a sand tongue.
“Fresh,” Cole said, squatting. He dug a thumb into the damp. “This afternoon.”
Thomas frowned. “We push to dark.”
They pushed on until the light fell away and the river began to speak louder than the land. “They might be anywhere, even on one of them little islands,” Rafe said, peering at the water. “Hard to see through all the brush.”
Thomas’s head pounded; the world tilted sometimes when he turned too fast. He blinked the wavering away. “We wait till dawn. Smoke will tell.”
Joe grunted. “And if they don’t light any?”
“Then sign will.” Thomas wiped his mouth with his knuckles. “They ain’t ghosts.”
They made a grudging camp under a cottonwood, no fire, shared a bitter swallow from Thomas’s jug, and lay down on their blankets.
Thomas stared up into branches where the sky moved in strips and saw Violet’s face defiant in a way it had never looked before. The memory of her fighting under him made his hands ache with wanting to punish, to break.
His battle with Grey Horse replay in his mind. The savage’s blows had stolen more than his breath; they’d taken the shape of his life and knocked it crooked.
He rolled onto his side and smiled where no one could see. He would set things right soon. A man did not ask for permission to bind what was his.
?
Violet woke to Ezra’s hand on her shoulder quietly waking her. Dawn had turned the river pewter and pushed night back underthe willows. They mounted quick and quiet, guiding their horses across the river. On the far bank, Grey Horse slipped off his pony, knelt, and laid a flat palm to the ground. “No fresh sign,” he said.
They kept to deer lines until the sun threw shadows short. Twice Ezra pulled them into a brushy pocket and crouched, head cocked, listening to the land, while Violet’s heartbeat thundered against her ribs harder than any hoof could pound. Both times no riders emerged, only the wind moving the grass like water.
Suddenly, the world changed in a way that made Violet’s breath catch. A slim column of smoke rose beyond the bend ahead, not from dead cottonwood and drift, but from a small, clear flame properly laid. It line-threaded the sky and hung there as if it had every right.
Grey Horse smiled then, small and quiet, a change that had the force of a shout. “My people.”
Violet swallowed. Pale Moon’s name slid through her mind and was gone, edged by the stronger thought that she was about to step into the place where her dreams had walked before her.
“Keep your shoulders easy,” Grey Horse murmured, feeling her stiffening. She nodded, wiped her palms down her skirt, and felt the braid rest on her neck like a gentle hand.
They topped the bend and the camp opened in a shallow bowl of land, river for a mirror, sky for a roof. Tepees stood in their circle, hides sewn neat and staked into the earth like statements. Children’s heads turned; women paused with their hands full of work; men rose like birds focusing on a hawk.
Grey Horse lifted his palm and spoke, voice carrying low and even. Language flowed from him, vowels rich, and consonants soft like grass underfoot. At first, the only answer was a deeper hush. Then a man older than Grey Horse stepped forward,braids streaked with gray, a necklace of bone and shell gracing a chest carved by years. He answered in slow syllables, eyes flicking to Violet, to Ezra, to the line of the river behind.
Violet could not read the words, only the faces: the surprise like flint sparks at seeing her alive, the caution in Ezra’s direction, the measure in the older man’s eyes as he looked at Grey Horse: warrior returned, stranger in tow, white woman braided like kin.
She slid off the pony’s back and forced herself to stand tall. “I have returned,” she said, pulse loud, “and I will not leave you again.” She felt foolish talking English into a sea of Kiowa speech, but honesty was the only ribbon she had.
The older man’s gaze did not soften, but it did not harden further. He said something that made a woman step forward with a bowl of water. Grey Horse glanced at Violet and gave the simplest nod.Accept.
