Chapter Eight Ghosts of the Fire
The fire in Grey Horse’s tepee burned low, casting faint orange light over the hides.
Outside, the night had gone still save for the occasional stamp of a tethered pony and the mumble of distant voices.
He sat cross-legged, running a whetstone slowly along the blade of his knife, the motion familiar, grounding.
Although he tried to sleep, slumber would not come to him—not tonight, not with the ghost so close.
He could still see her face as clearly as the day they met: Eliza.
Skin pale as river stone, hair the color of wheat in the sun.
She had not belonged to this land, yet somehow she had made it hers.
He could still picture her barefoot in the grass, laughing when the wind tangled her hair.
She had learned his language without complaint, stitched shirts from traded cloth, and sat with the women as if she had always been one of them.
And one wonderful day, she had become his wife.
The day she died, the air had been heavy with the scent of rain that never came.
A raid had struck without warning, soldiers and settlers from the north, rifles cracking like summer thunder.
He had been away at the time with the other warriors, chasing buffalo along the flats.
When he returned, the tepees were burning, billows of smoke curling into the sky like black ropes.
He found her near the edge of the camp, where the grass met the scrub. She was still warm when he lifted her, but her eyes were already fixed on something far beyond him. There had been no wound he could mend, no words he could speak to call her back.
Since that day, the part of him that had been soft, quick to smile, had hardened into something else, something that could ride into the next raid without hesitation.
He set the knife aside, the blade gleaming.
The woman in his tepee now was not Eliza.
She carried herself differently, spoke with the careful rhythm of someone raised far from this country.
But there was something in her eyes that stirred an old, unwelcome echo: the same wariness Eliza had worn in the first weeks, the same hesitancy in a world she did not yet trust.
The others thought he had taken the woman as spoil, a prize from the raid.
They didn’t understand that he had felt something magical for her as he’d pulled her from the coach into a world of fear, the way her hands trembled as if holding back more than just terror.
If he had not claimed her, someone else would have. Someone who would not treat her gently.
Grey Horse could have spoken to her in her own tongue.
He had learned English long ago, in trading posts and river towns, before the wariness between his people and the settlers had hardened into blood.
But words in that language came with memories he did not want to stir up yet.
For now, he would keep silent. She would learn soon enough that he could speak her tongue.
He lay back on the furs again, one arm under his head, staring at the low flicker of the fire. The wind shifted, bringing the scent of sage from the hills.
Eliza’s face drifted through his mind again, as it did most nights. But for the first time in many seasons, it did not stay alone. The memory of this new woman’s dark eyes—wide and questioning—slipped into the space beside it.
Grey Horse closed his eyes, but sleep still did not come. He would ride again soon. There was always another raid. Always another battle waiting on the far edge of the plains.
And now, there was also her.