“They Stole My Clothes Cowboy, Please Help Me!,” Said the Apache Woman Bathing in the Lake!

Chapter 5

Clay Jensen was not dead.

He was sitting in the sheriff’s office with a bandage wrapped around his arm, a bruise spreading across his jaw, and a story he was telling to anyone who would listen.

“She came at me with a knife,” Clay said, his voice carrying through the open door. “That Apache woman. I was just riding past her place and she—”

“She slashed you?” the sheriff asked.

“No. *Cole* slashed me.” Clay’s voice cracked with indignation. “He ambushed me on the road. Her too. They’re both in on it. They’re probably laughing about it right now.”

Cole stood in the doorway of the sheriff’s office, listening. He had not touched Clay in three days. He had not left his cabin since the ride to the Jensen ranch.

But someone had attacked Clay. Someone wearing—according to Clay—a coat that looked exactly like Cole’s.

“Where were you when this happened?” the sheriff asked.

“North trail. Near the old crossing.”

“And what were you doing there?”

Clay hesitated. The pause lasted a beat too long.

“Nothing. Just riding.”

“You were riding toward Merrick’s place.”

“So what if I was? It’s a free trail.”

The sheriff leaned forward, his chair creaking under his weight. He was a tired man in his fifties, with a face that had seen too many of these conversations.

“I’ve got three witnesses who say you were headed toward Merrick’s place with two other riders. Armed. Just before sundown.”

Silence.

Clay’s eyes darted around the room. “Those witnesses are lying.”

“One of them’s your own hired hand.”

Cole watched Clay’s face change. The bravado crumbled, replaced by something younger and uglier. Panic.

“Look, I don’t know who slashed me. It was dark. It could have been anyone. But I’m telling you—”

“You’re telling me you don’t know who attacked you, but you’re sure it was Merrick.” The sheriff’s voice was flat. “That doesn’t hold water, Clay.”

Clay’s mouth opened. Closed. His face flushed red.

The sheriff looked past him, at Cole standing in the doorway, and gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head. *Leave it.*

Cole turned and walked out into the night.

—

She was waiting for him at the cabin, sitting on the porch with the coat wrapped around her shoulders. The same coat Clay had described. The same coat she had worn every day since the creek.

The moon was high, casting silver light across the yard. The air smelled of dry grass and wood smoke.

“You did not go to his place tonight,” Nia said as he approached. It was not a question.

“I didn’t.”

“But someone did.”

Cole sat down beside her on the porch, close enough that their shoulders touched. The wood was still warm from the day’s heat. The sky above was a deep, bruised purple, scattered with stars.

“Clay’s arm was cut,” he said. “He claims I did it.”

Nia did not react.

“Someone wants this war to happen,” Cole continued. “Wants me to fire first. Wants a reason to come here and finish what they started with Sarah.”

Nia was silent for a long moment. The wind moved through the cottonwoods, carrying the sound of water from the creek. Then she reached inside the coat and pulled out something Cole had never seen before.

A small knife. Old blade, bone handle, the edge recently sharpened to a gleam that caught the moonlight.

“You know the cut on his arm?” she asked quietly. “The one he said you made?”

Cole looked at the blade. At the faint traces of dried blood near the hilt, barely visible in the dim light.

“Nia.”

“He would have killed you.” Her voice did not waver, but something flickered in her eyes—a darkness that had been there all along, hiding beneath the fear. “Or he would have killed me. I saw it in his eyes at the creek. I saw it again tonight when he came back.”

“He came for you tonight?”

“He came for both of us.” She closed her fingers around the knife and tucked it back inside the coat. “He had a gun. I heard him talking to the other one. They were going to burn the cabin. They were going to—” She stopped. Swallowed. “I was waiting.”

Cole stared at her for a long time.

The woman he had pulled from the creek, half-drowned and shaking, was gone. In her place sat someone else—someone who had been forged in a fire he was only beginning to understand. Someone who had lost everything and refused to lose anything else.

“You told me you came here looking for a place that would not burn,” he said slowly.

“I did.”

“Maybe you found it.”

Nia turned to face him. In the moonlight, her eyes caught the last glow of the stars and held them like embers.

“Maybe we both did.”