Chapter Twenty-Five Hounds on the Wind
Thomas’s ranch sat hunched under the sun like a dog that’s been beaten too often.
Thomas stomped inside his cabin, and yanked open the chest by the bed.
Powder horn. Shot. Pouch. A long rifle came down off the pegs and into his hands as simple as breathing.
He checked the nipple, ran a rag down the bore, then slung a canteen and grabbed a length of rawhide rope.
On his way out, his eye fell on a shirt of his Violet had mended neat as any Boston parlor maid might.
He grabbed it and threw it on the floor, grounding his heel on it until the itch under his skin quieted.
Then he stormed out of the cabin, slammed the door, mounted, turned the horse’s head, and kicked hard.
His bay gelding stood in the paddock where he’d left it.
The animal skittered at his approach, perhaps at the sight of his blood-streaked face or the stink of rage coming off him, but he crooned a lie until the horse stilled enough to be caught.
He saddled it, checked the cinch with shaking hands, swung up, and sat a moment while the ground tried to tilt him back into the dust.
The ache at his temple throbbed with his pulse. He welcomed it. Pain sharpened him; it kept a man from drifting. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and tasted iron and dust and the bitterness of being bested by a savage in front of the woman he’d paid for.
He turned the horse roughly in the direction of a neighbor’s ranch. He’d grabbed a gun, cartridges, and a coil of rope from his cabin. Now he’d raise help. His story would convince people to help him: kidnapped bride, savage thief, a white man’s right. Yes, folks would ride for that.
He smiled, split-lipped. “Run,” he said aloud to no one. “Run if you want to Violet. I’ll have you back soon.”
The bay laid its ears back as Thomas spurred it and then stretched into a lope, dust boiling up behind.
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Grey Horse, Violet, and Ezra moved at a steady, ground-eating pace along the river’s bend, the water bright as hammered tin where sunlight struck it clean.
Ezra set the line through scrub and shadow, avoiding open flats when he could.
Grey Horse kept his pony walking calmly for Violet’s comfort. He knew she must hurt.
She did not complain. Every time pain crept up from her feet to bite her again, she thought of Thomas’s heavy breath and the way his hand had grasped at and clamped her.
The memory drove her like a spur. Once, when the trail narrowed between willow clumps, the pony stumbled and she gasped, bracing back against Grey Horse.
He shifted to take her weight as if the act were natural as breathing.
“Tracks,” Ezra murmured from ahead, crouching to touch a V of prints pressed into damp soil. “Deer, not men. Good. Keep to where their hooves have softened the ground. Our sign will muddle in theirs.”
“Are your people close?” she asked, her breath low. The braid Grey Horse had worked threaded down Violet’s back, tight and sure, some part of her anchored by its quiet presence against her skin.
Grey Horse lifted his chin as if listening to something downriver that she could not hear. “Closer each mile.”
“Good,” Ezra said. “Because once he finds his horse and shakes the cobwebs, he’ll be hungry to ride. Man like that won’t show his bruises to daylight if he can help it. He’ll replace them with anger quick as he can.”
“Let him,” Violet said, startled at the strength in her own voice.
Ezra cut her a glance that might have been respect.
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Thomas wouldn’t seek out soldiers. Soldiers meant questions. He went for neighbors.
Cole Ransom’s place sat a mile beyond the creek, with three cows, five pigs, a flock of chickens, and a grudging garden. Cole came to the door bareheaded, eyes narrow.
“Need riders,” Thomas said without greeting. “Savages took my bride. They jumped me, cracked my head, and hauled her off. I aim to take her back.”
Cole’s mouth thinned. “You sure she didn’t leave on her own?”
Thomas let silence pull the noose tight before he let it go. “You are calling me a liar, Ransom?”
Cole’s eyes slid to the rifle across Thomas’s back. “Didn’t say that. I’ll go get Rafe and Joe.”
Rafe and Joe, Cole’s stringy brothers, had gruff faces and a hankering for trouble.
Rafe saddled their horses eagerly while Cole filled a bag with hard biscuits and Joe filled canteens from the well.
They didn’t owe Thomas friendship but enjoyed any opportunity to break their lives’ boredom.
Plus, they’d not yet paid Thomas fully for the bull he’d lent them last spring to cover their cows. This might cancel their debt.
“Which way?” Rafe asked.
“Toward the river,” Thomas said. “We’ll catch them.”
“And if there’s more than one savage?” Cole said.
Rafe and Joe nodded, heads tilted, waiting for Thomas to reply.
Thomas smiled without humor. “Then there’ll be less when we’re done.”
They put their heels in and went.
?
By late afternoon the river split around a narrow island green with willow and grass. Ezra pointed. “We’ll hide on the island tonight, crossing to it by rock, not sand, to leave less of a trail.”
Grey Horse rode the pony downstream to a riffle where dark stones shouldered up under clear water. He guided the horse through the stream flawlessly.
On the island, the world tucked itself around them. Willow shade sheltered them and the grass smelled of green. Ezra made a fire small enough to hide under his hat if need be. Grey Horse went quiet and tall and still, the way he did when he was listening to something only the land said.
Violet tended to her feet again, the wound in the left foot angry and red. She bound it tighter and flexed her toes until the ache eased. When she looked up, Grey Horse was close, holding a skin filled with river water.
“Drink,” he said.
She did, and some small tremor in her ribs eased.
“Rest while you can,” Ezra said softly to Grey Horse. “I’ll take the first watch. You take the second. We’ll wake with the birds, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be under Kiowa eyes by noon.”
Violet lay down with her braid tucked against her cheek and watched the leaves above move the sky into pieces. She should have been ragged by the day, but inside, something had begun stitching itself back together.
“Grey Horse,” she said.
He turned his head.
“When we come to your camp,” she said, “what should I do about Pale Moon?”
The name lilted like a song and cut like flint. She felt its taste in her mouth.
He stared out through the willow leaves until it seemed he had counted each one. “You stand,” he said at last. “You speak true. You show respect.”
“And if she hates me?” Violet asked, eyes on her bandaged foot.
“She will hate,” he said simply. “Maybe for a while. Maybe for long. That is hers to carry.”
Violet sat up again, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “And your heart?” she asked, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. “Where does that belong?”
He did not answer quickly. Wind made the willow leaves shiver. Somewhere a frog sang once and stopped.
“Here,” he said, and cupped his hands around her face.
She closed her eyes, the world going soft around the edges at his tender touch, and breathed past the ache that rose sharp as joy.
?
Thomas and his wayward gang had hit sign by sundown. They found two sets of prints crossing a sand tongue.
“Fresh,” Cole said, squatting. He dug a thumb into the damp. “This afternoon.”
Thomas frowned. “We push to dark.”
They pushed on until the light fell away and the river began to speak louder than the land. “They might be anywhere, even on one of them little islands,” Rafe said, peering at the water. “Hard to see through all the brush.”
Thomas’s head pounded; the world tilted sometimes when he turned too fast. He blinked the wavering away. “We wait till dawn. Smoke will tell.”
Joe grunted. “And if they don’t light any?”
“Then sign will.” Thomas wiped his mouth with his knuckles. “They ain’t ghosts.”
They made a grudging camp under a cottonwood, no fire, shared a bitter swallow from Thomas’s jug, and lay down on their blankets.
Thomas stared up into branches where the sky moved in strips and saw Violet’s face defiant in a way it had never looked before. The memory of her fighting under him made his hands ache with wanting to punish, to break.
His battle with Grey Horse replay in his mind. The savage’s blows had stolen more than his breath; they’d taken the shape of his life and knocked it crooked.
He rolled onto his side and smiled where no one could see. He would set things right soon. A man did not ask for permission to bind what was his.
?
Violet woke to Ezra’s hand on her shoulder quietly waking her.
Dawn had turned the river pewter and pushed night back under the willows.
They mounted quick and quiet, guiding their horses across the river.
On the far bank, Grey Horse slipped off his pony, knelt, and laid a flat palm to the ground. “No fresh sign,” he said.
They kept to deer lines until the sun threw shadows short.
Twice Ezra pulled them into a brushy pocket and crouched, head cocked, listening to the land, while Violet’s heartbeat thundered against her ribs harder than any hoof could pound.
Both times no riders emerged, only the wind moving the grass like water.
Suddenly, the world changed in a way that made Violet’s breath catch. A slim column of smoke rose beyond the bend ahead, not from dead cottonwood and drift, but from a small, clear flame properly laid. It line-threaded the sky and hung there as if it had every right.
Grey Horse smiled then, small and quiet, a change that had the force of a shout. “My people.”
Violet swallowed. Pale Moon’s name slid through her mind and was gone, edged by the stronger thought that she was about to step into the place where her dreams had walked before her.