For a little while after the last green?skin fell, the only thing the boy could hear was his own breath and the slow drip of blood off smashed armor into the dust. The air stank—sour sweat, black powder, that iron smell that soaked into everything after a fight. Horses shifted and blew, eyes rolling. Somewhere a man groaned, low and steady, and a dying horse kicked the air beside him.

  Inside him, the System’s numbers still hummed, all that stolen strength and life settling into bone and muscle. It made the world feel too clear. Too sharp. He felt too strong for his own body.

  “Brother!”

  Lily’s voice cut through everything.

  He turned in time for her to slam into him, all elbows and thin arms and the scratch of her borrowed coat. She hit him so hard he took half a step back before his new strength caught them both.

  Her arms locked around his ribs like a vise.

  “You’re stupid,” she gasped into his shirt. “You’re so stupid.”

  He blinked down at the top of her head.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “You’re squeezin’ my guts.”

  “I thought you were dead,” she snapped, voice high and shaky. “I saw you runnin’ at those things with your little pea?shooter and I thought, ‘He’s gonna get squished and then what am I supposed to do?’”

  Her words tumbled over each other. She sounded angry. She sounded like crying.

  He put one hand on the back of her head, fingers finding the familiar tangle of her hair. It felt… easy, suddenly, to hold her, like she weighed nothing at all.

  “I ain’t squished,” he said. “See? Still hollerin’.”

  Mary slid in a heartbeat later, stopping short of the bodies.

  She had Ember clutched tight to her chest, fingers dug into the doll’s scorched dress. Her eyes went wide, white all around, as she took in the churned ground, the sprawled shapes.

  “Lord,” she breathed.

  The green?skins looked worse up close.

  They were big even in death, sprawled where they’d fallen, armor plates bent and split. One of them lay on its back, jaw lolling, tusks black with dried blood. The boy’s bullet had taken half its skull; gray and dark stuff had sprayed over the dirt. Another was still skewered on a ranger’s broken sword, mouth frozen in a last snarl.

  Mary clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “They’re…” She gulped air. “They’re not right.”

  “No,” the boy agreed.

  She wasn’t just looking at the green?skins. Rangers lay scattered too.

  Some were still. Too still. Hats rolled off, hair dark with blood. One man sat with his back to a rock, eyes half?open, chest not moving.

  Others lay groaning where they’d fallen, hands clamped to wounds. A horse dragged itself in a small circle, one leg broken, eyes showing white.

  Lily flinched and turned her head away from a ranger whose arm ended where a jagged bit of green?skin axe stuck from his shoulder.

  “Don’t look,” the boy told her.

  “I can’t not look,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

  The men who were still alive were beginning to move more on purpose.

  One of them pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. He was long?limbed and rawboned, with a sandy?brown beard and a face gone pinched and gray under the dirt. Blood streaked the sleeve of his duster, but it didn’t seem to be pouring out of him.

  He saw the boy first.

  For a breath, his eyes went narrow, trying to make sense of it all.

  Then he barked a laugh that sounded halfway to a cough.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Little cuss actually did it.”

  Another man levered himself up behind him, leaning on a rifle like a cane. He was shorter, stockier, hair dark and too long, cap lost somewhere. There was a furrow along his scalp where something had parted it without cracking bone. Blood had dried in his eyebrow, making it stick up funny.

  A third figure limped in from the side, hat still on his head by some miracle. Tall as the first, but broader in the shoulders, one hand pressed to his side where a green?skin arrow had gouged a groove without sinking all the way. His coat was torn, shirt underneath streaked red.

  Three of them. No more standing.

  They came toward the boy, picking their way around bodies. Their faces were lined by sun and wind. Lines at the corners of their eyes, squint marks.

  The sandy?bearded one stopped a few paces off and tugged at the star pinned crooked on his vest, like he’d forgotten it and wanted to be sure it was still there.

  “Don’t suppose you dropped out o’ the sky, did you, kid?” he said. “’Cause if you did, I might start goin’ to church regular.”

  The boy blinked.

  “No,” he said.

  The man’s mouth twitched.

  “You’re the one that took the shaman, aren’t you?” the dark?haired one cut in. His accent had edges—Irish, maybe. “That big bastard with the stick. Saw his head come apart. Thought the Lord Himself had taken a shot.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “He was makin’ the sky wrong,” he said. “Had to stop him.”

  “Just like that,” the sandy one murmured.

  He stuck out his free hand.

  “Name’s Ben,” he said. “Ben Wallow. Texas Ranger, what’s left of me.”

  The boy eyed the hand a second, then shifted Lily to one side enough to take it. Ben’s grip was firm and calloused. His palm was rough with old rope burns.

  The dark?haired man lifted two fingers in a little salute.

  “Kieran McNamara,” he said. “Also Ranger, sadly. From County Clare, if that still means anythin’.”

  He grimaced, touching the crusted blood at his hairline. “Though I suppose I’m from here now too, seein’ as how somethin’ tries to kill me every other day.”

  The third man tipped his hat back, revealing a narrow, fox?sharp face with days?old beard.

  “Jim Booth,” he said. “You can call me Jim. Or Handsome Jim, if you’re feelin’ generous.”

  He glanced at the boy’s Colt, then the rifle slung across his back. “And you’re the damn fool who ran into my line o’ fire and stole my kills.”

  There was no real heat in it. His eyes—dark, quick—were measuring.

  Lily loosened her grip enough to look at them properly.

  “I’m Lily,” she said, still a little breathless. “That’s my brother. And this is Mary.”

  Mary edged closer, Ember clutched up under her chin. She bobbed a weird little half?curtsy.

  “Mary Hooper,” she said. Her voice shook. “From San Antonio. Or… I suppose not from anywhere now.”

  Ben’s gaze sharpened at that.

  “San Antone, eh?” he said. “Stage never made it. We were expectin’ coach two days ago. Thought Comanche had taken it.”

  His eyes flicked to the boy. “That the one you found her in?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said.

  “What about your folks?” Jim asked, not unkindly. “Where’re they?”

  “Dead,” the boy said. No point fancyin’ it. “Her folks too.”

  He jerked his chin at Mary. “Mine back when the Comanche hit our town. Hers on the road by a monster.”

  Mary’s mouth pressed thin. She stared at the ground.

  Ben’s face softened a little.

  “I’m… sorry for that,” he said. “World’s been hell ‘fore the monsters showed up. Now it’s just honest about it.”

  He looked back at the boy. “What do folks call you, son?”

  The boy opened his mouth.

  Nothing came out.

  For a heartbeat, it was like turning his hand in [Inventory] and coming up empty. A space where something ought to be. A piece missing. The word he meant to say wasn’t there.

  He tried again.

  “My…” He frowned, something knotting between his brows. “Folks used to… I think they used to…”

  He reached for it, and felt only that hollow place the System had named for him. Unnamed. Soul?pattern: incomplete.

  Lily felt him go still.

  “They used to call him ‘hey you’,” she said quickly, like she could cover the gap with noise. “Or boy. Folks in town never… they never used his name.”

  Her jaw set. “He’s my brother. That’s enough.”

  Ben’s eyes flicked between them, taking in more than the boy liked.

  He didn’t push.

  “Fair ‘nough,” he said easily. “We’ll call you whatever you answer to. Boy it is, ‘til you figure somethin’ else.”

  He let that settle, then glanced over his shoulder at the battlefield. The dead rangers lay where they’d fallen, some with eyes closed by shaky hands, some still staring.

  Kieran hissed softly when he saw one of them slumped over a boulder, a feather stuck in his hatband. He swore in his own language under his breath.

  “How many left?” he asked Ben.

  “Us three for certain,” Ben said, voice flat. “Esparza’s breathin’, but he ain’t survivin’ the next ten minutes. That’s four, countin’ him.”

  He spat in the dust, disgusted at the number. “Came out from Mason with twelve. That’s some bad bookkeepin’.”

  “We killed more of those bastards than they did us,” Jim said tightly, nudging a dead green?skin with his boot. “That’s worth somethin’.”

  “Aye,” Kieran said. “Thank this kid for that.”

  Ben looked back at the boy.

  “However you came by that nerve, you saved our hides,” he said quietly. “You killed the one throwin’ lightnin’. You broke the charge. I ain’t sure why you ain’t run the other way, but I’m glad you didn’t.”

  He tipped his hat, a small, solemn thing. “You got our thanks.”

  The boy shifted his weight, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “I needed you to kill the rest,” he said. “Couldn’t do it alone.”

  “That’s as may be,” Ben said. “Still stands: you stepped in when every sensible man would’ve been halfway to Kansas.”

  He studied the three children again, eyes narrowing.

  “Where you headed?” he asked.

  “North,” the boy said, without hesitation.

  Mary lifted Ember’s foot like a hand.

  “We were— they were takin’ me to Fort Mason,” she put in. “That’s where Papa said we’d be safe.”

  Her voice wobbled. “Soldiers and walls and such.”

  “Fort Mason is north and west o’ here,” Kieran said. “Little stone post on the Llano.”

  He jerked his chin toward the rangers. “That’s where we’re bound, or what’s left of us.”

  He looked back at the boy. “If you keep followin’ the trail, you’ll hit it. Provided nothin’ eats you first.”

  Ben rubbed his jaw.

  “Can’t say I fancy ridin’ into Fort Mason and tellin’ the captain we left three half?starved children standin’ over a pile of redskin devils,” he said. “Feels like it’d go poorly for my conscience.”

  He lifted a hand. “You come with us. To the fort. Plenty o’ room on the horses for little ones to double up. We’re short on men, not mounts.”

  Mary’s shoulders slumped with relief.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please. I don’t want to walk anymore. Or see any more… things.”

  Her eyes slid over the bodies.

  The boy thought about it.

  He liked the river. He liked bein’ able to step off the road whenever he wished. He didn’t like the idea of stone walls. Fort meant rules. Officers. Men with questions. But mostly rules. He hated rules.

  But then he also pictured Lily’s feet, blistered and thin in a dead man’s boots. He pictured Mary stumbling on the rocks, breath hitching. He pictured the Comanche warband that had passed like a storm; more like that would come.

  He nodded once.

  “All right,” he said.

  “Good,” Ben said. “Settled.”

  Then his jaw tightened as he looked at his fallen men again.

  “Only thing is,” he added, quieter, “I ain’t leavin’ my boys here to rot.”

  Kieran swore again, sharper.

  “Can’t carry ‘em all on the saddles,” Jim said grimly. “And the gear. We’re short a wagon.”

  He kicked at the dirt. “We could lay ‘em in a trench, I suppose. Say a word. Leave their bones to coyotes.”

  The way he said it, he hated the idea.

  Lily’s hand tightened on her brother’s sleeve.

  The boy looked at the bodies, at the horses, at the slope of the ground. Ben was right. There weren’t enough backs left to sling all that weight over. Men were built heavy.

  He felt [Inventory] stir at the back of his thoughts.

  It had grown since the last time it had filled on him. Stretched with every Level, every bit of Strength and Vitality he’d jammed into himself. When he reached for it now, it was like reaching into a deep, cold cellar. Lots of shelves. Lots of space.

  It held beans and pemmican and powder horns and a fish or two. It could hold more.

  His eyes went back to the nearest dead ranger—a young man with freckles, hat fallen off, mouth slack.

  He swallowed.

  “Maybe we don’t need a wagon,” he said quietly.

  Ben frowned. “You got a better idea, son?”

  The boy hesitated.

  Then he stepped over to the freckled ranger and crouched by his side. The man’s eyes had been closed. Someone had pulled his hands onto his chest, fingers tangled in the rosary he’d worn. The hole in his sternum had already stopped oozing.

  Lily stiffened.

  “Brother—”

  He ignored her. He set his palm flat on the dead man’s shoulder. Flesh that had been warm not long ago was already cooling.

  [Inventory], he thought.

  For a second, nothing happened.

  Then the familiar drag came—something being pulled out of the world and into that other?place. The ranger’s body shimmered, just a little, edges going soft like heat over a road.

  Then he vanished.

  Clothes, boots, rosary and all. Gone. The dust where he’d lain puffed and settled. His hat rolled a little in the hollow his head had made and flopped over.

  Mary made a noise like she was choking.

  Ben’s mouth dropped open.

  “What in God’s name,” Jim breathed.

  Kieran swore again, this time purely from surprise.

  The boy rocked back on his heels, heart thumping a little weird.

  He hadn’t stored anything so big before. He could feel it now, in that inner space—an awkward bundle on a shelf, weighty, but nowhere near the edges.

  Behind his ribs, the System’s voice murmured, very faint:

  Stored: Human Corpse (Male, adult).

  Inventory load: 71%…

  He ignored it.

  “It… works,” he said.

  Ben stared at the empty patch of dirt, then at the boy’s face.

  “You put him in your… in that place?” he demanded.

  “Yeah,” the boy said.

  “Whole man,” Jim said.

  “Not just—” He waved vaguely. “Morsels.”

  “Whole,” the boy said. “Reckon you can too.”

  Kieran shook himself and touched two fingers to his temple like he was checking for fever.

  “I thought that place was just for beans and bullets,” he muttered.

  “That’s what folks say when they haven’t tried much,” the boy said. “System doesn’t care what you put in, long as it fits–long as it ain’t still kickin’.”

  He glanced at the other fallen rangers. “If we don’t fill it to bustin’, we can take most of ‘em. Maybe all. You can… take ’em back out later. At the fort.”

  Ben’s jaw worked.

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  “We’d be carryin’ the dead inside our heads,” he said slowly.

  “Inside the System,” Kieran corrected, lips twisting. “Which might be worse.”

  Mary’s face had gone gray.

  “That’s wrong,” she whispered. “That’s… that can’t be right. People ain’t… ain’t parcels.”

  The boy looked at her.

  “They ain’t people anymore,” he said, blunt but soft. “They’re bodies. These men’d rather their bones be in their own dirt than feedin’ buzzards. We can help that. Or we can walk away.”

  Ben lifted a hand.

  “Enough,” he said, not unkind. “Miss Mary, you ain’t got to watch if it turns your stomach. You can… say your psalms over there.”

  He nodded toward a patch of grass away from the worst of it.

  Mary swallowed and nodded, eyes too wide. She stumbled off a little distance and knelt, Ember crushed to her chest, lips already moving.

  Ben looked back at the boy.

  “Can you take more?” he asked. “How many you think you can put in that… nowhere pocket of yours?”

  The boy closed his eyes briefly, feeling along the edges of his [Inventory]. Shelves crowded with food, guns, powder, the ranger’s corpse like a bundled coat.

  “A few,” he said. “It’s bigger now. From… from fightin’.”

  He opened his eyes. “But you got your own.”

  Ben’s brows creased.

  “I tried once,” he said slowly. “With a sack of cornmeal. It near knocked me on my ass. Thought the devil was comin’ for me.”

  The boy nodded toward another fallen man. “Try now. Think about him goin’ in. Like you pulled a coat off a peg and hung it inside somewhere.”

  Ben glanced at Kieran and Jim.

  “Worth a try,” Jim said. “Worse thing happens, nothin’ happens.”

  “Or the Devil jumps out your ears,” Kieran muttered.

  Ben huffed out a humorless breath and crouched beside a fallen ranger. The man had a mustache thick as a brush; it sat crooked over lips gone slack.

  Ben laid a hand on his cold chest.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Inventory,” he whispered.

  The boy watched his face. Watched the way the muscles around his jaw tightened, the cords in his neck standing out just a little. Sweat broke on his brow, sudden.

  The body flickered. Shimmered. For a heartbeat it looked like a picture over water, ripples running through it.

  Then it was gone.

  Ben sucked in a breath like he’d been under a long time.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “It worked.”

  “Language,” Lily muttered automatically.

  Kieran barked a short, shocked laugh.

  “Aye, Father,” he said to her. “Say three Hail Marys for me as well, little miss.”

  They set to it.

  Ben took some. Kieran took some, once he’d gotten over his reluctance, jaw clenched and lips moving in a muttered prayer each time. Jim grumbled a lot but laid his hands on his dead comrades anyway, swallowing hard, eyes bright, as each man vanished.

  The boy took the rest.

  He could feel the [Inventory] filling, weight adding in strange, abstract ways. It never bent his back. It bent something, though. Each time a body slipped out of the world, a little pressure built behind his eyes.

  At one point, when he reached for another dead man, a faint message nudged his thoughts:

  Inventory load: 94%…

  “Last one for me,” he said, stepping back. “You three’ll have to take whoever’s left.”

  “That’s enough,” Ben replied. “We ain’t leavin’ none to rot.”

  In truth, there weren’t that many.

  By the time they were done, the battlefield was emptier. Green?skins lay where they’d fallen, heavy and ugly. The men… the men were somewhere else. The dirt where they’d been held only trampled grass and dark stains.

  Mary came back when it was over, face blotchy from praying and refusing to watch.

  “Is it… done?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Lily said. “They’re… put away.”

  Mary shuddered.

  “I don’t like it,” she said.

  Jim clapped his hands once, sharp, and winced when the movement tugged at his side.

  “All right,” he said. “We standin’ around or we goin’ to that nice Army fort full o’ men who might shoot at us for draggin’ ghosts in our pockets?”

  “Mount up,” Ben said. “We ride ‘til dark.”

  They went to the horses.

  There were more mounts than men now. Some stood near their dead owners, reins dragging. Others had bolted when the lightnin’ fell and came back later, blowing and snorting.

  Ben whistled low and the nearest sorrel pricked its ears and stepped to him. He slapped its neck, murmuring something soft and stupid, and the horse’s rollin’ eye calmed.

  “Girls with me,” he said. “We’ll stack you like firewood.”

  Mary gave a small squeak but let Lily drag her to Ben’s horse. Ben swung up into the saddle like his body had learned it so long ago it did it without asking. Then he leaned down and reached.

  “Lily first,” he said.

  The boy lifted his sister by the waist. Ben took her under the arms and set her in front of him on the saddle, settling her between the horn and his chest like she’d done it a hundred times.

  Mary looked up with big, wet eyes.

  “Come on, Miss,” Kieran called from his own horse, a rangy gray with a torn ear. “You ride with me. I promise I won’t let you fall. I’ve still got one good hand.”

  He lifted the one without the bandage and waggled his fingers.

  Mary swallowed and let him hoist her up. She ended up sideways on the saddle in front of him, clutching the horn like it was a tree trunk.

  Jim jerked his head at the boy.

  “You with me, kid,” he said. “You look like you’ll bounce if you fall. Easier on my conscience.”

  The boy hesitated one breath, hand on the warm leather of the saddle.

  He didn’t like being off the ground, didn’t like not feeling the soil at his feet.

  Still.

  He put his foot in the stirrup and levered himself up. The world lurched under him. Jim grabbed the back of his belt and hauled, boosting him the rest of the way.

  He ended up perched in front of Jim, small backside on the saddle, feet nowhere near the stirrups.

  “Sit easy,” Jim said. He took the reins up. “Don’t lean back sudden, or we’re gonna get awful friendly awful quick.”

  They rode.

  The trail to Fort Mason was a brown scar through the land, cut by wagon wheels and hooves. It curled between low hills and dry washes, sometimes hugging the line of a creek, sometimes striking out across open ground where the wind had room to run.

  The boy watched the land slip by, the way the grasses changed, the way the sky got bigger when the trees fell back.

  From up on a horse, the world looked… different. He saw further. The dips and rises in the land made more sense.

  His thighs burned from keepin’ himself balanced. Every time the horse changed its gait, his stomach dropped. Jim’s arm, braced across him to hold the reins, was a solid bar at his back.

  “You ever been on a horse before?” Jim asked after a while.

  “No,” the boy said.

  “You should learn,” Jim said. “Like anythin’ scary, you either get used to it or get trampled.”

  He shifted the reins and the horse eased from trot to walk. “We’ll fix that tonight. Ben loves teachin’ strays.”

  The sun slid down the sky.

  After a while, the smell of blood and powder blew away. The air turned cleaner—dust and dry grass, a hint of cedar when they passed a thicket. A hawk wheeled overhead, lazy. Once, in the distance, the boy saw a dark line of shapes low on the horizon.

  Buffalo, he thought. Too far to smell. Big lumps moving together, slow. The land had room for them yet.

  They stopped a couple of times to water the horses at creeks and let them tear at what grass they could find. The rangers checked each other’s bandages, tightened cinches, swore at little things.

  Even hurt, they moved like men who’d been doing this their whole lives—killing and not dying.

  It was near full dark when Ben finally raised his hand and drew his horse up.

  “Here,” he said. “We’ll make camp.”

  They’d come to a low ridge that overlooked the land to the north and west. From the crest, the world opened out in a long, rolling fall of hill and hollow. The road cut across it as a pale line. Beyond, the land went on and on, fading to dark.

  “Fort’s a day out, if the horses hold,” Kieran said, shading his eyes for a last look at the trail. “Maybe less, if we push ‘em.”

  He swung down stiffly from his saddle and hissed through his teeth when his feet hit dirt.

  “Let ‘em rest,” Ben said. “We rode ‘em hard enough today. Men, too.”

  They unsaddled in the dimming light, loosening cinches, pulling blankets and gear. The horses rolled and shook when freed, then dropped their heads and set to cropping what scrub they could find.

  Lily slid to the ground from Ben’s horse with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. Her knees went out from under her. She laughed breathlessly as she caught herself.

  “Legs don’t work,” she complained.

  “They will,” Ben said. “Tomorrow they’ll hurt like sin. Day after, you’ll barely notice.”

  Mary needed more help. Kieran swung her down, keeping a firm hand on her elbow until he was sure she wouldn’t topple.

  The boy slid off Jim’s horse on his own. His feet hit the ground with a jolt. For a second the world swayed, then settled.

  Ben pointed to a flat spot just below the ridge line, half?sheltered by a spill of rocks and a scrub oak.

  “Fire there,” he said. “Keep it small. Don’t need every band o’ Comanche and whatever?the?hell?else comin’ to sniff us.”

  He looked at Lily. “You know how to lay one?”

  She opened her mouth to say something about flint and steel, then remembered.

  “I can light it,” she said.

  “Everyone can light it if you hand ‘em a match,” Jim said. “Question’s, can you build it so it doesn’t smoke us all out?”

  Lily stuck her tongue out at him, which made Mary snort in spite of herself.

  The boy and Lily gathered wood—dead branches, dry grass from under rocks, a few chunks of half?rotten log that’d still burn if they coaxed it. Mary helped, arms already tired, but stubborn.

  Ben watched them a while, then turned his attention to his own gear, muttering at his saddle straps.

  When the little tipi of twigs and grass was built, Lily crouched beside it.

  “I don’t like watchin’ you do that,” Mary whispered.

  Lily looked at her.

  “You don’t have to look,” she said. “Just… don’t scream.”

  She held out her hand over the tinder.

  The boy felt it, now that he knew to. A little tightness in the air around her fingers. A prickle at the back of his teeth.

  “[Spark],” Lily murmured.

  A bright bead of light popped into being at her fingertip, like a tiny star squeezed through her skin. It jumped, hit the dry grass, and spread.

  Fire crawled through the tinder, licking it up. The thin sticks caught, then the thicker ones. In heartbeats, a small, tight flame was going, orange tongues licking the blackening wood.

  Mary flinched back.

  Ben, Kieran, and Jim all stared.

  “Well, I’ll…” Jim began, then thought better of finishin’ that.

  Kieran crossed himself in the Irish way, fingers quick.

  “Holy Mother,” he muttered.

  Ben’s eyes narrowed, not unkind, but wary.

  “That,” he said slowly, “is witch?work.”

  Lily yanked her hand back, cradling it against her chest.

  “The System gave it,” she said, defensive and scared at once. “I didn’t ask. It just… showed up. Name and all. [Spark]. Doesn’t even hurt. Just tingles.”

  She swallowed. “It keeps us from freezing. It’s not… I ain’t hurt nobody with it.”

  Ben scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “My granddaddy used to say he believed in three things,” he said. “God, bullets, and what he could see under his own hat. If he saw a little girl tossin’ fire out her fingers he’d have had a fit.”

  He squinted at the flame, then at Lily. “But that was before the sky started talkin’ and monsters started crawled out o’ books.”

  He sighed. “You do that again if we need it. Just… don’t let the fort preacher see, if you can help it. He’s already half certain the end times are sittin’ on his lap.”

  Kieran snorted.

  “We’re Rangers,” he said. “We work with what we got. Devil didn’t shoot those demons. The boy did. God didn’t light this fire. The little Witch did. I ain’t picky ‘bout who helps long as it works.”

  Mary, hugging Ember, whispered, “Mama would faint dead away.”

  They ate what the rangers had.

  Coffee, first. Dark, bitter stuff boiled in a blackened pot Ben hung over the fire. He’d tasted coffee once before, a lick off a spoon when Mrs. Hanley’s back was turned. It tasted like dirt.

  Ben poured it into battered tin cups. He put a little sugar in each of the girls’ and then more than a little in the boy’s without comment.

  They had meat too, sliced from a side of beef they’d been packing, salt?streaked and smoked. They cooked strips of it on sticks, grease hissing in the fire, and tore it with their teeth. The boy added a bit of pemmican from the [Inventory], crumbling it into the pot where Ben boiled coffee grounds again, making a greasy, ugly stew. It tasted better than it looked.

  As they ate, the questions started.

  “Where’d you come from?” Jim asked, mouth full, nodding at the boy. “Town, I mean. Before all this started.”

  The boy swallowed a mouthful of meat and chewed on the question too.

  “Little place,” he said. “Don’t even remember the name.”

  “Comanches burned it,” Lily said softly. “They killed everyone.”

  Ben nodded slowly.

  “We heard of a town goin’ quiet,” he said. “Smoke seen on the horizon. No word after. We were headin’ south to look when the captain whistled us back to Mason.”

  He studied the boy. “You get out on your own?”

  “We hid under Cobb’s store,” the boy said. “In the crawlspace. Lily and me. Comanche killed everybody else. Except the ones they took.”

  He shrugged, a small, hard motion. “We came out when it got quiet. Took what we could carry. Left.”

  “No adults?” Jim asked. “No cousins, no aunts?”

  “Nothin’,” the boy said.

  “And you just… walked,” Kieran said. “Through Comanche country. With the two of you. And now three.”

  His mouth twisted into something between a grin and a grimace. “You’re either blessed or cursed, lad. Not sure which.”

  “Bit o’ both,” Ben murmured.

  He glanced at Mary. “You, Miss Hooper? San Antone’s a long way for a girl.”

  “Papa wanted to buy land,” Mary said. “Far from the city. Near a fort.”

  She swallowed. “Said it’d be safer. Said soldiers’d keep the Comanche back.”

  She laughed once, sharp and broken. “He didn’t know about monsters.”

  Ben’s jaw clenched.

  “None of us did,” he said.

  The talk turned to the System then.

  The rangers knew about their Status. They knew they had Levels and numbers and an [Inventory]. They knew you could get stronger by killing monsters and, sometimes, men.

  They didn’t know much else.

  Ben called it “that damn ledger in my head.” Jim called it “the Devil’s account book.” Kieran called it worse things in Irish.

  The boy and Lily told them what they’d learned.

  How Leveling gave four extra points. How you could shove them where you wanted. How Vitality seemed to make hunger bite less and cuts hurt less. How [Inventory] had limits but those limits stretched. How walking and working might give you little nudges even without killing anything.

  They did not tell them about [The Hollow].

  That was his. That was a thing he didn’t want anybody to see, not if he could help it.

  “You mean to tell me,” Jim said slowly, turning his cup between his hands, “that every time I’ve been swingin’ my rifle ‘round and runnin’ my fool self up and down those hills, the System’s been tickin’ marks behind my back?”

  “Feels like it,” the boy said. “It give us a little bit more just from walkin’. Me and Lily. Like a… like a pat on the head for bein’ stubborn.”

  Kieran grunted.

  “It likes work, then,” he said. “Figures. Gods usually expect tithes.”

  Mary shivered.

  “I hate it,” she whispered. “I hate that it knows things about me I don’t. I hate that it’s in my head.”

  She hugged Ember closer. “But I— I put a stone in the… in the Inventory. And took it out.”

  She made a face. “It’s… warm. Like havin’ a cellar again. I don’t know what Mama would say.”

  “Probably that you should sweep it,” Lily said, earning a weak giggle.

  Ben listened, eyes half?lidded, his face hard to read in the firelight.

  “You talk about it like a thing you can… tame,” he said at last. “Like a wild horse.”

  He took a slow sip of coffee, then spit in the dirt. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you ain’t. Either way, it ain’t leavin’. Might be we ought to learn its tricks.”

  The boy nodded.

  “System doesn’t care if you like it,” he said. “Only cares what you do.”

  Ben’s gaze sharpened on him.

  “You sound older than you look,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” the boy said.

  That made Kieran snort.

  Mary yawned then, big and sudden, hand flying to cover her mouth.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t be,” Ben said. “Little ones go to sleep. Rangers’ll watch.”

  Lily opened her mouth to protest.

  “I can—”

  “You can fall over,” Jim said. “You near did twice already.”

  He jerked his thumb toward the blankets. “Go on, Witch. You too, Miss Mary. We’ll holler if somethin’ needs burnin’.”

  Mary looked like she wanted to stay awake just to keep the monsters away with her eyes. But her body betrayed her. When Lily tugged her toward the bedrolls they’d laid under the lee of the rock, she stumbled more than walked.

  They curled together, small backs to each other, Ember squashed between like a little burned saint.

  The boy stayed where he was.

  “You too, kid,” Jim said, squinting at him over his cup. “You’re all bones. Need rest more’n any of us old bastards.”

  “I’m all right,” the boy said.

  He wasn’t lying.

  His legs ached. His shoulders burned. But under all that, his body felt… solid.

  Ben watched him for a long moment.

  “You ain’t slept much since it started, have you?” he asked quietly.

  “Some,” the boy said.

  “Some, he says,” Jim muttered. “Fine. You can take last watch. That way if you fall down, it’ll be nearly mornin’ and we can drag you into the fort before you die.”

  They set a rotation anyway. Kieran took first, sitting with his back to the rock, rifle across his knees, humming some half?sad tune under his breath. Jim would take second. Ben, last, or that was the plan.

  It didn’t quite work that way.

  When Kieran’s turn was done, he nudged Jim awake and the Irishman stumbled off to his blanket without protest.

  The boy didn’t move from the spot by the fire. He sat, knees pulled up, arms around them, watching the embers sink and flare.

  He was there when time came to shake Ben.

  “Your turn,” the boy said quietly.

  Ben opened one eye.

  “You ain’t blinked in an hour,” he grumbled. “You tellin’ me you ain’t tired?”

  “A little,” the boy admitted. “But my head’s loud. I can’t sleep much when it’s loud.”

  Ben pushed himself up with a grunt and shuffled over anyway.

  “You ever cleaned that Colt?” he asked.

  The boy blinked. “Once.”

  Ben stared at him.

  “You shot that thing how many times since you found it?” he demanded.

  The boy shrugged.

  “It shoots,” he said. “When I pull the trigger. That’s what matters.”

  Ben sighed like it physically hurt him.

  “Lord save me from children,” he muttered. “You’re lucky you ain’t blown your fool hand off.”

  He held out his hand. “Gimme.”

  The boy reluctantly drew the revolver and set it in Ben’s palm. Ben turned it over, squinting at the cylinder, the crust of black fouling around the chambers, the smear of blood on the grip where something had splashed.

  “Filthy,” Ben said, disgusted. “Could plant corn in that barrel.”

  He sat cross?legged and began to take the Colt apart. Wedge out. Barrel off. Cylinder on its own. His hands were sure even in the low light, fingers moving by habit.

  “Watch,” he said. “You’re gonna learn this if it kills you. Better this than the gun doin’ it.”

  The boy leaned in, eyes fixed.

  Ben showed him how to pull the cylinder, how to ease out the little screws that held the grips and backstrap, how to set each piece aside in order so you could put it all back together again without cussin’.

  “Black powder fouls fast,” Ben said. “Every shot lays a little crud in the bore. You let it sit and it cakes. Then you get to fightin’ and load too much and bang.”

  He mimed an explosion with his free hand. “Cylinder goes. Hand goes. Maybe your face with it.”

  He dipped a cloth in the coffee pot where the grounds had gone cold and scrubbed the inside of the barrel, twisting the patch around a little rod.

  “See that?” he said, holding the muzzle so the boy could glance down and see the dull shine inside. “That’s what you want. Not pretty, just clear. No chunks.”

  He handed the cleaning rod to the boy.

  “Your turn.”

  The boy took it and worked it through the cylinder chambers one by one. His fingers were awkward at first, but he learned the feel of the patch catching and then coming clean.

  Ben watched a while, then nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “Now oil. Little. Not much. You don’t wanna drown it.”

  They worked in silence for a bit, passing pieces back and forth. The boy’s hands, usually so rough with knives and cans, were careful on the little screws, the springs.

  He liked it.

  There was somethin’ satisfying about putting each bit where it belonged, about feeling the gun go from crusted and stiff to smooth and sure.

  When they were done, Ben had him cock and uncock it slow, listening to the clicks.

  “See?” Ben said. “Clean gun talks nice. Filthy one grinds.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Ben said.

  “You’re gonna be doin’ that every night you shoot more’n twice. Same with that rifle. I’ll show you tomorrow. Ain’t gonna have some colonel at the fort tell me one of my Rangers—” he jerked his chin at the boy “—blowed his own thumb off ‘cause I didn’t show him better.”

  The boy’s brows knit.

  “I ain’t a Ranger,” he said.

  Ben looked at him for a moment, firelight flickering in his eyes.

  “You saved three Rangers’ lives,” he said. “That makes you practically one already.”

  He hesitated, then reached up and tugged his hat off.

  It was a good hat. Broad?brimmed, sweat?stained, the crown shaped by years of hands. The leather band around it had gone dark with use. A little tear near the brim had been stitched up neat.

  Ben turned it once in his hand, then held it out.

  “Here,” he said. “Take it.”

  The boy stared.

  “That’s yours,” he said.

  “It was,” Ben said. “Now it ain’t. I got another in the fort trunk if the Army didn’t burn it for kindlin’.”

  He pushed the hat toward him again. “You did what my own boys couldn’t. I can give you a damn hat.”

  Slowly, the boy took it.

  The leather was warm from Ben’s head. He turned it, studying the shape, the way the brim dipped just so, then set it on his own.

  It slid down over his eyes.

  Ben snorted.

  “You’ll grow into it,” he said. “Or we’ll stuff some rags in the band. Either way, you look less like a stray dog now.”

  The boy lifted the brim with one finger and peered out from under it.

  “Feels… odd,” he said.

  He wasn’t used to having something that nice that nobody had yelled at him for holding.

  Ben’s mouth crooked into something like a smile.

  “Get used to it, Ranger,” he said softly. Then he clapped his hands on his knees and groaned as he pushed himself up. “Come on. You still gotta learn to sit a horse without makin’ that poor animal cry.”

  They walked a little way from the sleeping girls and the fire to where the horses dozed, hobbled near a patch of scrub.

  Ben caught his sorrel’s reins and led him to clearer ground.

  “Up,” he said.

  He showed the boy again—foot in stirrup, hand on horn, up in one smooth motion. The boy mimicked him, hat wobbling. His first try was a mess; his second, better.

  “Keep your heels down,” Ben said. “You dig your spur in by accident, he’ll run out from under you and you’ll be kissin’ dirt.”

  They walked circles at first. Ben held the lead rope and let the boy feel the way the horse’s back moved under him, rolling like a boat. The boy’s hips wanted to stiffen; Ben tapped his ankle.

  “Loosen,” he said. “Horse moves, you move. Don’t fight him. You fight, you lose.”

  They did it again and again until the boy’s thighs trembled and his hands ached from gripping the horn.

  Finally, Ben clicked his tongue and let the horse stop.

  “That’s enough for one night,” he said. “You’ll be sorer tomorrow than any bullet ever made you.”

  He patted the horse’s neck and then the boy’s calf. “You did fine. Better than most bluebellies I’ve seen.”

  The boy slid down, legs almost going out from under him. He caught himself and huffed out a breath.

  He took the last watch without Ben asking.

  He sat in the pre?dawn gray, rifle across his knees, listening to the horses breathe and the soft wheeze of Kieran’s snore. The girls slept on, tangled together.

  When the eastern sky went from black to dark blue to the first pale smear of gold, he nudged Ben’s boot with his toe.

  “Sun’s comin’,” he murmured.

  They saddled in the chill, breath smoking. Mary groaned and clutched her legs when she tried to stand; Lily winced, but grinned through it.

  “Hurts,” she said.

  “Means you’re growin’,” Ben said. “Or the horse is. Either way, it’s good.”

  They mounted up again. The boy swung into Jim’s saddle with less fumbling this time.

  They rode.

  The land changed as the sun climbed. The hills grew more regular, the scrub giving way to more scattered trees. In the distance, a dark smudge appeared on a low rise.

  As they drew closer, it took shape.

  Low stone walls. Some buildings inside—low, white?washed, roofs dug in against the sky. A flagpole, the Stars and Stripes hanging limp in the still morning air. Smoke from a couple of chimneys, thin and steady. A few specks moved on the walls—men on watch.

  Fort Mason.

  Mary’s breath caught. Lily’s fingers dug into Ben’s coat.

  The boy pushed the brim of his new hat up with one finger and squinted at the fort.