The crowd began to break apart just like that. Like the whole conversation had been a show and the show was over. Nobody offered to ride with him. Nobody offered a spare rifle, a bag of feed, a word of luck. Ezra stood there a second longer.
Let it land. The particular loneliness of being surrounded by people and understood by none of them. Then he turned back toward Ash toward the road west. Whitfield caught his arm before he mounted. Old fingers surprising strength.
Listen to me, Whitfield said low just for him now. That brand circle broken line. I've heard whispers it belongs to a man called Silus Crane runs with raiders through the territory. Sells stolen stock down south. Nobody's ever caught him.
Nobody's ever tried hard enough. Crane. Ezra said the name like he was testing whether it would burn going down. It did. You know him?
I will. He swung up into the saddle. Ash shifted under him, restless like the horse could feel something had changed in the man on his back. Which trail? Ezra said.
Whitfield pointed west past the dry riverbed toward a smear of red rock on the horizon that looked from this distance almost gentle almost soft. Ezra knew better. Distance lies about everything. Mountains most of all. God with you son.
He didn't last time. Ezra said no reason to expect different now. He rode. The town fell away behind him fast. buildings first, then fences, then the last stubborn fingers of cultivated land giving way to open scrub. By the time the sun climbed to its highest point, redstone was just a smudge behind him.
Small the way everything gets small once you stop needing it. The desert stretched out ahead, endless, indifferent. He thought about turning back exactly once, not because he was afraid. Fear he could work with. Fear had a shape you could aim a rifle at.
This was different. This was the old ache climbing up his spine again, whispering that he already knew how this story ended. Man rides out for revenge. Man doesn't ride back. He'd heard that story a dozen times in a dozen saloons.