“Then we won’t trouble you further,” Blaze replied.
He motioned to the others, and they mounted up in silence.
Once they were past the last shack, Marisol let out a frustrated breath. “So that’s it? We just ride away?”
“You wanna start shooting townsfolk who don’t know better?” Blaze said.
“No,” she said. “But I sure as hell want Wilder to pay for this.”
“He will,” Blaze said. “But not today.”
Graycloud rode beside him, face unreadable. “He’s making war in a different way now. No bullets. Just words.”
“And words travel faster than horses,” Blaze replied.
They rode on, leaving Dry Creek behind. The land opened up again. The silence between them thickened, broken only by the steady rhythm of hooves.
“You think folks will really come after us?” Marisol asked finally.
“They’ll come for the gold,” Blaze said. “Always do.”
“But we don’t even have it,” she muttered.
“Don’t matter,” Blaze said. “Wilder wants the world to think we do. Gives him cover while he keeps whatever he found.”
Graycloud spat into the dust. “He’s clever.”
“Maybe,” Blaze said, “or maybe he’s desperate.”
They stopped by a dry creek bed that afternoon to rest the horses. Marisol sat beneath a tree, running her fingers through her hair.
“This changes everything,” she said.
Blaze crouched near the waterless stream, running dust through his fingers. “Yeah, it does.”
“People used to smile when we passed through,” she said. “Offer food, water. Now they look at us like we’re bandits.”
“In their eyes, we are,” Graycloud said, looking out at the horizon. “Wilder’s bought the story.”
For a moment, Blaze said nothing. The heat shimmered off the rocks, and the distant thunder was low in the hills.
“What now?” Marisol asked quietly.
“We keep moving,” Blaze said. “Stay off the roads. No towns, no camps. Not till we figure a way to clear our names.”
“And if we can’t?”
Blaze looked up, meeting her eyes. “Then we make sure the man who started it doesn’t live long enough to matter.”
Graycloud gave a small nod. “That I can ride with.”
They saddled up again, moving west into the falling light. The sun bled across the horizon, painting the land in red and gold.
As they rode, Blaze couldn’t shake the image of the posters. His own face staring back at him, lines of ink branding him something he’d never been.
He’d seen outlaws before. Killed more than a few in the last couple of days. But now he understood the way people looked at them—not as men, but as warnings.
“Wilder’s scared,” Graycloud said. “That’s why he’s shouting so loud. Men only lie that hard when they’re covering their tracks.”
