Chapter Twenty The Hunter in Shadow
The trail had lain plain as scars across the earth. Hooves had gouged deep into the clay, broken twigs pointing like arrows. The faint ash of campfires drifted in the wind. Grey Horse followed without haste, without error. His pony moved light and steady beneath him, head low, ears flicking.
Each sign he’d read cut deeper than the last. Violet’s small print in the mud, the mark of her skirt where it had brushed through grass, the sudden sharpness of Thomas’s deep prints beside hers. He’d read her story written on the land taken, claimed, carried farther with each passing hour.
The ache in his chest grew with every mile, but he held it tight. Pain must be mastered. A man who gave way to it was no warrior, no protector.
She’d walked with the white man. She spoke the words. Yet her spirit was not his.
This truth Grey Horse clung to.
?
At night he camped alone, the stars wheeling cold overhead. He ate little, drank carefully, his body tuned for the hunt. Sleep came in fits, broken by dreams: Violet’s face bright with firelight, her hair soft under his hands, her walking beside him.
Grey Horse woke from such dreams with fire in his blood, the ashes of longing heavy on his tongue.
Although the elders had promised him to Pale Moon, he had never accepted that, never given his consent or spoken any words to confirm such a union.
His heart had now chosen, though the path was thorny and steep.
He would not let Violet be bound to a man unworthy of her, a man who believed he owned her, body and soul.
?
Eventually, he came to the creek where Thomas’s land began. From the rise he looked down, and there it was—a cabin weathered gray, a sagging barn, fields barren. No prosperity, no pride. Only neglect and ugliness.
He saw her then, moving in the yard with a bucket, her shoulders bowed, her step heavy. Thomas loomed near, barking something sharp that carried faint across the air. Violet flinched.
Grey Horse’s hand tightened on his reins.
He could ride down now, cut through the man, sweep her up. Too much risk though, too soon. To act in fury would be to fail her. If he took her before she herself decided to break away, she would never be free of the burden of guilt.
Patience.
He slid back into the trees, eyes never leaving the yard.
?
For two days he watched from the shadows. He learned Thomas’s rhythm—when he rose, when he worked, when he drank. He saw Violet fetch water, tend the fire, scrub floors until her hands reddened. He saw the weariness in her step, the way her hair hung loose now, stripped of his braid.
Each time Thomas touched her, Grey Horse’s blood boiled. A hand on her arm, a shove to her shoulder, once a cuff that made her stagger. But always she straightened, always she endured. Her spirit had not broken. Not yet.
The restraint it took to remain hidden burned in him like a forge. But he forced himself to hold, to wait. He was not a boy to rush blind. He was a warrior. And warriors chose their moment.
?
On the third night, he saw a lone rider, his figure lean, his horse steady. Grey Horse’s eyes narrowed. It was Ezra, the scout. A man he had encountered more than once, a man he had found trustworthy in his dealings with the Kiowa.
The man dismounted and approached Grey Horse as he sat on his pony. “You watching for her?” he asked. “For Violet?”
Grey Horse’s heart stirred. Ezra understood.
This could be the opening.
“I noticed you dogging us,” Ezra said quietly.
Grey Horse nodded once. “The woman is not his.”
Ezra’s mouth tightened. “She went with him.”
“She was bound by words,” Grey Horse said, voice low but fierce. “Not by heart. She is not safe with him.”
Ezra studied him for a long moment. Then he sighed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I know it. I saw enough. That man … he’ll break her if he can.”
Grey Horse’s eyes burned. “Then we break him first.”
Ezra gave a humorless smile. “You’ve got fire. But you know you can’t help her until she decides on her own to leave him.”
“I have patience,” Grey Horse replied.
The silence stretched. Then Ezra gave a single nod. “I’ve no stomach either for leaving her to that fate. But if we do this, we do it smart. Quiet. When she walks out on her own.”
Grey Horse inclined his head in agreement.
?
The fire crackled softly between them. In the dark beyond, an owl called, solemn as a vow.
And so the first threads of an unlikely alliance were tied.
?
Grey Horse lay awake long after Ezra slept.
His gaze turned upward, to the stars wheeling cold and distant.
He thought of Violet, her hair in his hands, her eyes wide with longing and fear.
He thought of the promise she had once written to another, and the unspoken promise she had made to him in the quiet of her heart.
He would not let her spirit be broken.
The hunt had only begun.