Never once heard the version where the man wins. Except Except his father used to say something right before the end came for him, too. something Ezra had tried for 11 years to forget and had never managed once. A man isn't measured by what he has. He's measured by what he does when nobody else is willing to do it. Ezra spurred Ash forward, faster now, like outrunning the thought would make it quieter.
Didn't. Nothing ever did. The land changed as the day wore on. Scrub gave way to cracked earth. Cracked earth gave way to the first low ridges of redstone that gave the town its borrowed name.
The mountains weren't gentle up close. They were teeth, old, patient teeth, waiting for something foolish enough to ride between them. He made camp that night in a shallow wash, sheltered from wind by a leaning slab of rock. Small fire, no more light than he needed. A man traveling alone into raider country didn't advertise.
He sat with his back against the stone and let himself remember just for a minute, just long enough to remind himself why his legs hadn't turned to stone this time. His mother's hands cracked from work, smoothing his hair back the night before the fire. His father's laugh low and rare, the kind you had to earn. The smell of bread on Sunday mornings. Small things, the smallest things are always what survive.
Then the fire. Then the silence after. Then 18 years old and alone in a house too big and too quiet. Learning how to be a ghost in his own life because feeling anything at all seemed like more than he could carry. He didn't cry.
Hadn't in years just sat there letting the memory pass through him like weather. Storm's end. That was the only mercy grief ever offered. It ended. It just always came back.
He was reaching for more firewood when he heard it. A sound that didn't belong. Not wind, not coyote. Something with intention behind it. Ezra's hand found his revolver before his mind had finished the thought.
I know you're there, he said into the dark, voice steady. He'd learned long ago that fear sounds like shaking, and shaking gets you killed. Come where I can see you. nothing, then everything all at once. An arrow split the air an inch from his shoulder and buried itself in the rock behind him with a crack like a gunshot. Ezra dropped, rolled, came up with the revolver raised, aimed at nothing.
A shadow at a shape he could barely make out at the top of the ridge. Bow already drawn again. Another arrow knocked. Next one won't miss, a voice said. A woman's voice.