Chapter 2 - The Question She Feared Most
Aayoka refused to sleep.
Elias could see it in the way she sat against the cabin wall, knees drawn toward her chest, watching every shadow that passed the window.
The sandstorm had cooled the desert, but tension had heated the small room.
Outside, the cowboys argued.
“We don't know who she is,” Jeb said.
“We know she's half-starved.”
“That doesn't answer my question.”
“What question?”
“What she's doing here.”
Elias glanced toward Aayoka.
She didn't understand every English word, but she understood enough.
Especially tone.
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
“Keep your voice down.”
Jeb stared at him.
“You knew about her.”
Elias didn't answer.
“The bread,” Jeb continued. “You've been feeding her.”
“She was starving.”
“You should've told us.”
“And then what?”
Jeb's jaw tightened.
Elias knew he had hit the uncomfortable part of the argument.
Jeb looked toward the hoofprints.
“Those riders might be her people.”
Aayoka suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
It was the first English word they had heard her speak clearly.
Aayoka pointed toward the tracks.
“No Apache.”
Elias stepped closer.
“Who?”
Aayoka's expression changed.
“Rourke.”
“Who's Rourke?”
She struggled for words.
“Man.”
She pointed west.
“White man.”
Jeb's eyebrows rose.
“What does he want?”
Aayoka looked down.
Elias noticed her fingers trembling.
He returned to the cabin and sat several feet from her.
“Aayoka.”
She looked at him.
“Rourke hurt you?”
Her face hardened.
She shook her head.
Then pointed toward the desert.
“People.”
“Your people?”
She nodded.
What followed took almost an hour.
Aayoka knew more English than Elias initially realized, but fear and exhaustion made communication difficult. Elias used gestures. Aayoka drew lines in dust on the floor.
Slowly a story emerged.
Aayoka had been traveling with a small group of relatives and other Apache families displaced by years of violence and forced movement. They were not raiders. Most were women, children and older people.
Several weeks earlier, near an isolated water source, they encountered men led by Silas Rourke.
Rourke called himself a cattleman.
But cattle were not the only things he traded.
He sold stolen horses.
Weapons.
Information.
Anything that produced money.
His men had discovered that frightened settlers would pay for stories about supposed raids—and that stolen livestock could conveniently be blamed on Apache groups.
Rourke created fear.
Then profited from it.
Aayoka's group had seen something they were never meant to see.
Rourke's men moving stolen cattle through a hidden canyon.
A confrontation followed.
People scattered.
Aayoka had become separated from her younger brother, Keme, and an older woman named Tala who had raised them after their parents died.
Since then, Aayoka had been running.
“Brother?” Elias asked.
Aayoka nodded.
“How old?”
She held her hand near her shoulder.
“Fourteen.”
Elias looked away.
Fourteen.
Too young to survive long alone in that country.
“Alive?” he asked carefully.
Aayoka's eyes filled with stubborn certainty.
“Yes.”
She had no proof.
But Elias did not challenge her.
Jeb stood in the doorway listening.
“Silas Rourke,” he murmured.
Elias turned.
“You know him?”
“Know the name.”
“How?”
“Cattle buyer. Comes through Prescott.”
Elias's expression tightened.
Prescott.
A place he had spent years avoiding.
Jeb continued.
“Rich enough that people don't ask where every cow came from.”
Elias stood.
“We move at dawn.”
Jeb laughed without humor.
“With her?”
“Yes.”
“Ward, we've got cattle to deliver.”
“Then deliver them.”
Jeb stared at him.
“You quitting?”
“If that's what it takes.”
Aayoka watched the exchange.
She understood one thing.
Elias was choosing trouble.
For her.
That frightened her almost as much as Rourke.
People did not give without eventually taking.
That was one of the lessons the frontier taught quickly.
Later, while the others slept, Elias remained near the doorway.
Aayoka sat awake.
After a long silence, she said, “Why?”
Elias turned.
“Why what?”
She pointed toward the bread.
Then toward herself.
“Why help?”
Elias considered giving an easy answer.
Because you needed it.
Because it was right.
Instead, he looked toward the dark desert.
“Once I didn't help someone.”
Aayoka waited.
“A boy.”
He touched an imaginary badge over his chest.
“Lawman.”
Then pointed to himself.
“Me.”
Aayoka's eyes narrowed with concentration.
Elias shaped his fingers like a pistol, then lowered them.
“Boy died.”
Understanding arrived slowly.
“You kill?”
Elias's face went still.
“Yes.”
Aayoka studied him.
“Bad boy?”
“I thought so for about half a second.”
He swallowed.
“Half a second can be a very long time.”
She didn't understand all of it.
But she understood regret.
Aayoka had her own.
When Rourke's riders appeared, Tala had told her to take Keme and run.
Aayoka had grabbed her brother's hand.
Then gunfire frightened the horses.
People scattered.
Keme's fingers slipped from hers.
She had looked back.
That moment lived inside her now.
The empty space where her brother had been.
“I lost brother,” she whispered.
Elias looked at her.
“Then we'll find him.”
Aayoka immediately shook her head.
“No.”
“No?”
“Rourke kill you.”
“Wouldn't be the first man who's wanted to.”
Aayoka didn't smile.
Neither did Elias.
Then they heard it.
A distant whistle.
Elias stood instantly.
Another whistle answered from the darkness.
Jeb burst from his blanket.
“Riders!”
The camp erupted.
Elias grabbed his rifle but kept the barrel down.
“Put out the fire!”
Darkness swallowed them.
Hoofbeats approached.
One horse.
Then several.
A voice called from beyond the riverbed.
“Evening, camp!”
Elias recognized the confidence before he recognized the man.
A rider entered the moonlight.
Tall.
Gray coat.
Silver-handled revolver.
Two men followed.
The stranger smiled.
“Didn't mean to alarm anybody.”
Jeb stepped forward.
“Who are you?”
“Silas Rourke.”
Inside the cabin, Aayoka covered her mouth.
Elias felt the world become very quiet.
Rourke dismounted.
“We're searching for a missing woman.”
Elias said nothing.
“Apache girl,” Rourke continued. “Dangerous one.”
Elias looked at him.
“Dangerous?”
“Killed one of my men.”
From the cabin came the faintest sound.
A floorboard.
Rourke's eyes shifted toward the door.
Elias stepped sideways, blocking his view.
Rourke smiled.
“Something in there?”
“Supplies.”
Rourke studied him.
Then he noticed Elias's face more carefully.
“Well.”
His smile widened.
“I know you.”
Elias's stomach sank.
Rourke removed his hat.
“Deputy Ward.”
Jeb looked sharply at Elias.
Rourke chuckled.
“Didn't think I'd ever see Prescott's famous boy-killer again.”
The words struck exactly where Rourke intended.
Elias's expression remained still.
But inside the cabin, Aayoka heard them.
Boy-killer.
She looked toward the man who had fed her.
The man who had promised to find Keme.
The man who had admitted killing someone but never explained everything.
For the first time since the sandstorm, fear returned to her eyes.
May you like
And Silas Rourke had not even discovered she was there yet.
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