Sarah stood over Victor Hail’s body in the dirt and spit on him — “That was for my sister. You remember my sister, Victor?” — Ethan said: “What sister?” — what did the man who killed his wife have to do with the two little girls he’d just found in a shack?
The door splintered under Ethan Cole’s boot. He stumbled into the dark with his gun drawn, breath ragged, eyes sweeping the ruined shack. Two small shapes huddled on the dirt floor, too weak to scream. A little girl, no more than four, lifted her head. Her cracked lips trembled.
“Mister,” she whispered. “Please save us before she dies.”
Ethan Cole hadn’t cried in ten years. Not at his wife’s grave. Not at the empty cradle he’d burned behind the barn. Not at the letter the army sent saying his brother wouldn’t be coming home. But kneeling there on that dirt floor with two starving children watching him like he was either God or the devil, something hot and raw pushed at the back of his eyes.
He blinked it down. There wasn’t time.
“What’s your name, darling?”
“Emma.” A pause. “And your sister?” “Ellie. She’s real sleepy, mister. She ain’t been talking since yesterday.”
“How long you been in here?”
The little girl’s mouth worked, counting on her fingers. “Three suns, maybe four. I kept forgetting.”
Lord have mercy. He put his hand against Ellie’s forehead and hissed through his teeth. Burning up. He scooped them both into his arms. They weighed almost nothing. Emma’s little hand curled into his vest and gripped it so tight her knuckles went white.
“Where’s Mama?” she whispered.
“That’s what we’re going to figure out. But first we got to get you fed. You stay with me now, Emma. Don’t you go quiet on me.”
His horse stood patient at the treeline. Ethan swung up careful as he could, both children cradled against his chest. The sun was sliding down behind the mesa and the cold was already creeping in.
“Emma. You keep your eyes open. Tell me — what’s your favorite thing in the whole world?”
A pause. Then, soft as a prayer: “When Mama sings. About the river. About the willow tree.”
“That’s a pretty song. You sing it for me. Keep your eyes open and sing it for me all the way home.”
And the child, half dead and trembling against his chest, began to sing in a whisper.
The ranch was six miles out. Ethan rode careful but fast, talking the whole way — he’d learned once in the war that a man slipping away will sometimes hold on if somebody keeps talking to him. It was the only thing he’d ever learned in that war that did anybody any good.
“I got a dog, Emma. Old yellow fella. Name’s Dusty. Real gentle. He’ll probably love you girls.”
“Ellie likes dogs.”
“Then he’ll love her, too. You hear that, Ellie? We got a dog waiting for you. You wake up and say hello to old Dusty.”
Ellie didn’t stir.
By the time the ranch came up out of the dark, Ethan’s shirt was soaked through from the fever burning off Ellie’s small body. He kicked the horse to a gallop and covered the last quarter mile hard. Martha, the old woman who kept the house, came barreling out onto the porch with a lantern and stopped dead.