"Because I don't think Wolf Creek's finished with either one of us." That same evening, dusk settling purple over the ridgeline, Whit was latching the barn when he caught movement at the treeline of shape, low and quick, gone almost before his eyes registered it as a messin' and not a shadow. He didn't call out. Some instinct told him calling out would be the wrong move entirely. Instead, he found Yanaba already standing at the porch rail, already looking in the exact same direction. Her whole body angled toward the tree line like a compass needle finding north.
"There." She said, barely above a whisper. He followed her gaze and caught it this time. A young man, lean, moving with the kind of quiet precision that took years to build, crouched at the ridge's edge just long enough to be seen. Long enough, Whit understood, to be seen on purpose. Yanaba raised one hand.
Didn't wave it. Just held it up flat, still. A signal Whit didn't know the meaning of, but understood anyway. From the way her whole face changed, reading the answer. The young man raised his own hand the same way.
Held it a beat, then he was gone. Back into the tree line like he'd never been there at all. Yanaba let out a breath she'd clearly been holding since the moment she spotted him. "Your brother." Whit said. Not a question this time.
"Taji." She said the name like it cost her something to say out loud. Some mix of relief and grief tangled together, too tight to separate. "He is younger than me by four years. Followed me into every fight I ever had no business letting him follow me into. He's not coming clo- Not yet.
He is being careful." She turned to look at Whit, something fierce and grateful moving behind her eyes at once. "If he is seen near this ranch, seen helping me, he becomes what I already am to our people. Someone standing too close to a story already written. So, he watches instead. He watches.
And somewhere out there, he is asking the questions I cannot ask from inside this cabin, about the young warrior, about who truly held the knife that night." Her jaw set, hard and sure. "He will not stop until he has an answer. That is the one thing about my brother nobody has ever managed to change. Whit looked back toward the empty tree line, dark now with the last of the light gone out of the sky, and felt something settle in his chest that was almost not quite, but almost hope. Then he's got allies out here, too, Whit said.
Whenever he's ready to use them. Yennaba didn't answer in words, just reached over briefly and set her hand against his arm not for balance this time, not for grounding through chaos, just because for one unguarded moment she wanted to. He was right. The very next afternoon, out checking the south pasture, he heard it before he saw it. Thunder, except the sky sat clear and hard blue overhead.