The Blood on the Salt Flats And The Sacred Vessel Who Changed Everything

The wind did not respect a man’s strategy. By the time Emmett reached the white-crusted flats, the snow had turned from dry, stinging needles into a wet, blinding squall that coated the bay gelding’s eyelashes in gray frost. Behind him, the muffled shouts of the cavalrymen had dissolved into the howling expanse of the Wyoming night, swallowed by the drifts piling high against the rabbit brush.

Emmett reined the horse to a halt behind a low limestone swell. His lungs burned from the cold air, and his fingers were stiff inside his leather gloves. He unslung his Sharps, checked the breech to ensure the snow hadn't jammed the firing pin, and listened.

There was no sound of pursuit close behind. The false trail had done its work. The patrol, blinded by the blizzard and eager for a fight, would follow his boot prints straight out toward the center of the flats, spending hours chasing ghosts in the blinding white while Chata’s people slipped unmolested through the high timber toward the Sweetwater.

He turned the gelding north, moving at a slow, deliberate walk through the blinding dark. He wasn't heading back to his ranch house yet; the army patrol would eventually realize they had been tricked and would circle back to investigate his property. Instead, he angled toward the lower foothills, where the cedar breaks offered shelter and a man could build a small fire without inviting half the garrison down upon his head.

An hour later, as the wind began to ease into a steady, freezing groan, a dark shape detached itself from the shadow of a granite boulder.

Emmett’s hand tightened on his rifle stock, but he didn't raise the barrel.

A horse stepped forward, its breath pluming white in the dark. Mounted on its back, wrapped in a heavy trade blanket over her buckskin tunic, sat Desta.

Emmett pulled the bay to a stop beside her. “You should be three miles up the trail with the rest of the column,” he said, his voice rough with cold.

“The column is moving slowly because of the pack string,” Desta replied, her voice steady and entirely devoid of fear. “And my sister refused to cross the ridge until she knew you hadn't walked into a trap.”

“Ronnie is in no condition to argue about my whereabouts,” Emmett said, though the sharp edge was missing from his words.

“She is a Biin Fiin,” Desta answered simply. “When she decides a thing, argument is like spitting against the wind.” She urged her pony closer, her dark eyes searching his face in the gray gloom of the storm. “The soldiers found your trail?”

“They found it,” Emmett said, swinging down from his saddle to stretch his cramped legs. He led the bay toward the shelter of the rock ledge. “By the time they figure out they’re chasing a single rider across the salt flats, the main party will be over the pass.”

“And you?” Desta dismounted stiffly, landing with a soft thud on the packed snow. She tied her pony to a low-hanging cedar branch and pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders. “What happens to you when the trail goes cold?”

“I go back to my ranch,” Emmett said as he knelt and began scraping away the snow to find dry tinder. “Fix the fence. Check the water trough. Same as I’ve done for four years.”

Desta watched him work, her expression unreadable in the flickering light of the match he struck against his belt buckle. A tiny flame caught hold of a dry twig, casting a warm amber glow over their hands.

“You think a man can spend four years hiding from the world and then pretend the world never happened?” Desta asked quietly, crouching beside him to feed another twig into the fledgling fire.

“I wasn't hiding,” Emmett said defensively. “I was living.”

“There is a difference between living and waiting to die,” Desta said, her tone gentle but unsparing. “My sister saw it the moment she stepped into your kitchen. You carry your past like a dead horse strapped across your saddle. You think because you could not save one person, you have no right to care if anyone else lives or dies.”

Emmett didn't answer. He stared into the tiny flame, the memory of the blue embroidered M on the white handkerchief rising unbidden in his mind—the screams of the burning stage station, the smell of cordite and wet wool, the blood that wouldn't wash off his hands no matter how hard he scrubbed in the river.

“It wasn't just a person,” Emmett said after a long silence. “It was my wife.”

Desta’s hands stopped moving. She looked at him, the harsh lines of her face softening in the firelight.

“She was on the transport when the border gang hit the payroll wagon,” Emmett continued, his voice barely audible over the wind in the cedars. “I was three miles away, tracking a different set of tracks. If I’d checked the ridge line instead of the valley, I would have intercepted them. I carried her back to the fort myself. But the blood on my hands didn't save her.”

“And you blamed yourself for the outlaw’s bullet,” Desta said softly.

“I blamed myself for being in the wrong place,” Emmett replied. He looked up, meeting her dark eyes. “That’s why I came out here. To a place where there are no roads, no payrolls, and no people to fail.”

“And then we walked onto your porch bleeding,” Desta said with a faint, ghost of a smile. “The world has a way of finding the men who try hardest to leave it, Mr. Cross.”