No, he admitted. I don't, but we ride through the night if we have to. We get him to that healer if it's the last thing either of us does. Ayanna looked up at him, exhaustion and fear, and something fiercer than both etched deep into her face. Why does this matter so much to you?
She asked, voice raw. Really, not the town, not the horses. Him, why does it matter to you whether my brother lives or dies? Ezra crouched beside her, meeting her eyes steady despite everything screaming inside his chest. "Because I watched my father die once already," he said.
"Because I froze and I've spent 11 years wishing I hadn't. I'm not freezing this time. Not for your brother. Not for you." His voice cracked just slightly on the last word and he let it. Didn't try to hide it.
So he holds because I need him to because I think you need him to more than anyone and I'm done watching people eye. He stopped himself. The sentence hung unfinished in the air between them and Ayanna's eyes widened just slightly catching exactly what he hadn't quite let himself say. "People, you what?" she asked quiet. Ezra held her gaze.
Somewhere outside the canyon, the herd shifted restless in the dying light. And somewhere beyond that, riders were closing and a wounded man breathed shallow between them. And none of it mattered more in that single suspended second than the question hanging unanswered in her eyes. "People I care about," he said finally, "watching people I care about get hurt. While I do nothing, it wasn't the whole truth.
Both of them seemed to understand that. But it was true enough and honest enough, and this was neither the time nor the place for anything more. We should move, Ayanna said, breaking the moment before it could stretch any further. Now, while there's still enough light to find better ground before dark, they lifted Chaitan between them, careful of the wound, and pressed on into the failing light. The herd moving restless and uneasy around them, sensing danger neither horse nor human could, yet name precisely, but every creature in that canyon felt regardless.
Behind them, somewhere in the deepening shadows of Red Mountain, Silas Crane sat a stride his own horse, watching a distant plume of dust mark exactly where his stolen property was headed. He was in no hurry. Ezra didn't know that yet. Ayanna didn't know it either. But Crane had already sent riders ahead, already positioned men along the one route that led toward the Apache camp, already begun setting a trap far more patient and far more dangerous than any raid on a sleeping corral.
He'd learned who was coming for him now. A woman who'd survived one massacre already, and refused to be broken by a second, a brother who'd bled trying to save his people's future. and a stranger with a debt 11 years old, finally close enough to collect it. Crane smiled, thin and cold, and turned his horse toward the pass where the trap waited. "Let them run," he thought. "Let them think they'd won something.
The night wasn't finished with any of them yet. Night fell hard over the box canyon, and with it came the sound none of them wanted to hear. hoof beatats. Many closing from the north from the pass that was supposed to be the safe way home. That's them, Ayanna whispered, easing Chaitton's head down against a folded blanket. Not scattered, not searching, coming straight for us.