The thick, pale green buffalo grass lays flattened by the passing of the horses, like a ship's wake. A strange wind has come up, hot and dry and smelling of wild mustard and pine. The wind drowns out the jingle of the harness and that of her sniffles. It drowns out the frightened chuckles of the prairie chickens and Soul's silence. He hasn't spoken since he carried her away from the tipi. He's held her close their whole trip, cradled in his arms.

He'd opted out of putting her on Kippy, instead tethering her horse behind his. He climbed in his saddle, still holding her close, and left town without looking back. She hasn't protested his over-the-top actions at all, her heart weary and her head still hurting.

As the miles pass the gentle rocking of his saddle and the steady drum of his heart lull her into a more peaceful place. Maka, no longer crying, looks at her friend's closed face. He's maintaining a taut hold on his lips as if saving up his inventory of words. It's certainly a fit of different anger than she's used to. Silence instead of biting words.

She watches from the safety of his embrace as the dry, hot wind bends the brim of his hat and flattens his shirt against his chest. He isn't a big man, but his shoulders are broad and his arms muscular. Her gaze goes to his hands, which loosely hold the reins. Large-boned hands, strong and capable of fighting, playing the piano, and hard work. There is a dryness in her mouth and a tightness in her chest. She can't take his silence much longer.

"Are you cross with me?" She whispers, her voice snatched away by the prairie wind.

Soul swallows hard and nods, his eyes never wavering from their path.

"What can I do. To make things better?"

He peels his eyes from the prairie and pins her with a frustrated glance. He seems so big, yet so vulnerable as he looks down at her in his arms.

"Would you even listen to me if I told you? Or would you just throw it back in my face, like my words mean nothing to you?"

Maka winces, but stays quiet, allowing him the time to speak freely.

"Would it kill you, to heed my warnings, even a little bit? I'm only trying to keep you safe." His voice is thick with an emotion she doesn't recognize.

"So you're angry because I didn't listen to you?" She questions.

Soul hangs his head, his forehead resting on the top of her head. He inhales deeply before speaking.

"No, I'm angry because you purposely put yourself in danger, again. Do you know how worried I was about you? When I came back and found you gone. When I saw that brave charging at you. I thought he was going to bash your skull in."

She feels his body shudder underneath her. She places a comforting hand on his cheek, and to her surprise he leans into it, closing his eyes.

"I'm sorry." She says, so easily.

It must surprise him because it causes his jaw to snap shut on his forthcoming retort. Apologizing isn't her strong suit, but knowing she's worried him so much causes her heart to ache.

Soul chuckles, his breath washing over her hands.

"I feel you only half mean that, Kid."

"I am sorry to cause you so much trouble." She whispers, her thumbs rubbing little circles across his cheeks. He's been wound like a top since they left the Indian camp, but she can feel a bit of that seeping away under her fingertips.

"I'll try to be more cautious when dealing with strangers."

He grunts in reply, but his eyes stay shut.

"But you know I can't overlook people in need, not when there's something I can do to help."

The image of a skinny baby and a mother with hollow sad eyes blur her vision. The sound of her fearful wails as her husband did God only knows what tobher still rings in her ears.

"Why Evans? Why did he hurt her?" Maka asks, her voice feeling so small in this terribly cruel land.

"She shamed him with her begging, Kid," he says, his voice calmer, though the pulse still beats hard and fast in his neck. "And they're man and wife. Indian man and wife, anyway. It isn't our place to interfere. They have their own laws and rules, we have to respect that, even if we don't agree."

"I feel as though I didn't help, that I only made things worse for her, and for you as well." her voice cracks as she touches the dark and bloody place along his cheek. The blood has stopped flowing, the cut superficial, but the dark bloom of a bitter bruise creeps along his jaw and up to his temple where it disappears in a sticky mat of white and red congealed hair.

Maka sniffles, letting her hands drop from his face as her cheeks grow wet again. Soul's eyes snap open and he stops the horses abruptly. He lets his gaze drift down to her face.

"Hey now, Kid, don't cry. He implores, his eyes boring into hers.

"It's all my fault, she was hurt because of me. You were hurt trying to protect me. I know what you did, I know you took that blow in my stead." She begins to shake as the sobs take over. "All because I couldn't mind my own bloody business!"

She clings to him, buffeting the wind as it picks up around them. A scream of frustration and helplessness wells up in her breast. It builds and builds until it comes bursting out of her in cries that tear at her throat.

"I can't stand it! I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"

The gust of wind dies as suddenly as it has come up. The empty prairie echoes her words back, mocking her: . . . can't stand it . . . stand it . . .

A raven flies overhead, laughing at her. She is ashamed of her outburst before the echoes even fade. She is still in his arms, waiting for his displeasure, waiting for the wind to come again, waiting, waiting . . . and it doesn't 't come. Even the wind is mocking her. She chances a peek at him as she angrily wipes away her tears on her new dress that is now covered in muck and his blood.

For a moment, his eyes hang on the horizon, where the endless sky meets the grassy sea.

"You did your best, Kid, and that's all that we can ever hope for."

It surprised her, the way his voice takes on that gravely quality as if uttering it tears his throat apart. She looks up at him, through the cloudy tears, unsure of his thoughts.

He digs his heels into the side of his paint spinning the horse in the opposite direction of the ranch. She holds on to him for dear life as he urges the horses into a full-blown gallop.

"Where are we going?" She demands, breathless, her heart pounding in rhythm with the horse's hooves.

"There's somewhere I want to show you."

It's the only explanation she gets as they race across the green sea, her skirts fluttering out like a white and red sail.

They ride in silence except for the squeak of saddle leather, the steady rush, and the pull of their horses' breath. They ride through a forest of cottonwoods and pines and huge larches that filter the sun. They emerge onto a high grassy plain where the yellow sage blooms and the hot wind blows a little cooler. She feels his eyes on her and she turns her head up, meeting his gaze, though she knows it's not wise. The look he gives her is like summer thunderclouds—dark, shifting, uncertain. She looks away. His face is swollen and bruised. He had taken that beating for her.

At times he seems to her a terrible man, wild and ruthless, and always ready to spill blood. But then he would do something so fiercely brave, so earthily decent, that the very splendor of him would make her ache inside. She longs to know how his heart and mind work.

He haunts her, like an elusive memory of a dream that leaves you empty and restless when you awaken. And yearning for sleep so that you can dream it again.

It takes her a moment to realize that he has pulled up and he swings down from the saddle. He reached up and clasps her waist as she dismounts. And the feel of his hands resting on her hips, the brush of his leg against her skirt, the nearness of his face, his mouth . . . Even though the sun beats down bright and hot on them both, she shivers.

"We're here," he says quietly, almost reverently. He cuts a path through the trees and she follows on shakey legs.

They come to a clearing, an enormous larch standing isolated in the middle of the swirling grass. It has been decorated like a Christmas tree with beads and bear claws, strips of red calico, odd-shaped stones, and pieces of bone.

"This used to be a hunting ground, this plain," he explains. "The tree was sacred to them. The Indians would leave gifts here to the Great Spirit so that he would make the game plentiful and their arrows fly true."

Maka feels the pull of the tree's majesty as she walks up to it. She places her hand upon the smooth trunk, she stands beneath the canopy, and looks up. It's like the vaulted ceiling of a church, open and limitless and silent. She feels something here, a power ancient and beckoning, holy. She understands why people might have prayed here.

But some of that holiness has been defiled. A man by the name of Jones had been here, with a knife, carving his name into the bottom of the mighty trunk. Maka kneels and tries to cover up the ugly black scar with her hand.

"I wish I could take this off," she says softly, her hand following the ragged edges scratched into the trunk. "It feels like it's a violation of their sacred tree."

"This tree doesn't 't belong to the Indians anymore. It's the white man's now, like the land it grows on. If you covered up that mark, you'd, be making it a lie."

Soul also places his hand upon the tree, like he's showing his respects to an old friend who has passed on. "One day I think we're going to regret the history that we're making. All the hate we have between our different races. The way we take from our earth and give nothing back in return."

She looks up at him, startled that he would admit to such a thing. She wants so badly to think of him only as a man of rough ignorance and lawlessness, in the hopes it will make her want him less, to dampen the all-consuming flame he has lit within her. But it doesn't, not even a little.

And that terrifies her as the flame only grows stronger as the days pass.

She looks at him, the intensity on his face frightening her, thrilling her. Her gaze shifts down to his hand, which grips one of the larch's low-flung branches. To those long, urgent fingers that are capable of such explosive violence and protection.

"Why didn't you fight back?" She asks, her heart constricting as the shadow of a bruise creeps further across his cheek.

"It wasn't my place."

"How can you say that? It wasn't your job to take my place."

"It is though, as surely as the sky is blue and the prairie green." He says it so calmly, so matter of factly, that it brings her to tears again.

"Hey now, don't start that again, kid." He murmurs, crouching next to her. "Sometimes these things happen. And we can't control the outcome."

"How could we not help her, we let him beat her. All I wanted was to feed her poor children!" She nearly wails, as hot angry tears run down her face.

"We are not a part of their world. Getting involved gets messy." He places his hand on her head, his rough fingers feathering against her hair.

Soul closes his eyes as sharp-angled blades of sunlight slice open the heavy green canopy above, bleeding lemon-yellow splashes of warmth and light into the cool shade of their private oasis.

"You've got a big heart, Kid. You like helping people. This is a great thing, but you can't go around trying to fix everyone's problems. That's not how it works." He stands suddenly, bringing her up with him.

He takes her arm, to help her steady herself on her feet.

He wipes at one of her tears, his face dark and his pale brows flaring. "You spend so much time worrying about others that it exhausts you. You keep their burdens, holding them tight to your heart, so much so that it makes it difficult for you to catch your own breath."

Maka feels the weight of his words, settling on her soul like a heavy stone, touched by the cold waters of truth.

"I can't just stop caring. That's impossible for me." She says, struggling with the right words. Soul nods like he expected as much.

"Don't change, just let it out. Don't hold it in. Or it'll kill you one day."

"Isn't that what you do? You hold it all in as well?" She implores, her eye trying to find his. The brim of his hat shadows his face, but she suspects even so that she wouldn't be able to read what was there.

"Come on, I still have something to show you." He mumbles, a sharp edge slicing through everything he's left unsaid.

His hand moves down her side and presses into the small of her back. She draws in a deep breath, heady with the smell of sage and sun-ripe grass.

He leads her through a thicket of cottonwoods, they are nearly bursting, falling down like snow in the summertime. It muffles her steps, adding to the quiet magic around them. She notices Soul's feet never make any noise, something she imagines he picked up from the natives. He cuts through the grass, like a silent hunter, guiding her through his enchanted woods. He leads her out into the open and she sees that the plain they stand on is actually the shoulder of a high bluff. About two hundred feet below them is a narrow canyon filled with knee-high grass that ripples in the wind. The canyon twists past cliffs the color of driftwood and hogback ridges of red rocks and stunted pines.

It's beautiful and wild all in the same breath, much like the man standing next to her.

Her eyes pick out a skull wedged between a crevice in the stones. It looks like a cow's skull, only not exactly. And then she sees more bones, thousands of them, heaped in jagged weathered piles among the sere grass.

"A buffalo is pretty much a stupid critter," comes Soul's voice from beside her. "And they don't see too good, either. Once spooked, they'll stop for nothing. When the Indians hunted here they used to stampede whole herds of them over this cliff."

"What a terrible thing." She sighs the thought saddening her. The poor dumb blind animals being driven so callously to their death.

"No more terrible than standing at the end of a railcar and shooting them down with carbine rifles like wooden ducks at a fair."

She turns her head to look up at him. "I've come to understand that all people are capable of great cruelty, no matter the color of their skin."

Soul grunts in agreement, his eyes soaking in the dips and rises of the plains.

"I also believe that there is still kindness out there. Good people, mixed among the others. Shining brightly."

Soul cuts his eyes to her, and he can't help but feel the warmth of her seep into his bones. If people's kindness caused them to shine, he has no doubts that she'd burn bright; brighter than anyone he'd ever met before.

"I reckon you're right, Kid. Maybe there's hope for us yet." There's a vulnerability in his crimson eyes that she's never noticed before. As if the tough shell he lives inside has cracked a little to reveal the meat of the man he is, behind the boots and the Stetson and the six-shooter.

A loud snore-like grunt echoes up from the bottom of the canyon. She whips around, clutching one-handed at her hat to peer over the cliff edge. Directly below them, an enormous buffalo stands alone.

"Oh, look, Evans!" she exclaims, grabbing his arm, her excitement making her forget herself. All these months out west and this is her first close look at a buffalo. She has never seen anything at once so ugly and so majestic, with his huge head and dainty legs, his humped back, and coffee-colored fur like an old matted rug. His long beard trailing in the grass. His quarter-moon horns are as thick as tree limbs, and he tosses his head to show them off.

"How magnificent he is!"

"He's what you genteel English types would call a gentleman buffalo. These old woods buffalo, they winter up in the mountains near here. They're bigger and darker than the ones you see farther east, out on the prairie."

"Oh I wish I had brought my sketchbook, I'd love to draw him." S

oul bows his head, a look of remorse passing for a moment. "He's not much to look at. It'd probably be better not to remember him this way."

"What do you mean?" She asks softly, confused by the droop of his shoulders.

He ain't so magnificent anymore, kid. He's sick and he's old. You can practically see his ribs poking through his hide. Buffalo are social critters, yet here he is roaming the canyon alone. He's the last of his herd and chances are he won't live to see next summer."

A sense of sadness fills her, a sadness that seeps deep into her soul. It's as if she is in mourning for a friend she never knew.

The sadness swells, filling her, pressing on her chest until she can hardly breathe. She looks beyond, beyond the canyon, where flat pancake clouds skim along the tops of the saw-toothed mountains that reared, black and frightening, against the sky. This place was so big and empty. Too big and empty for the heart to bear, and too wild not to love. Standing here with Soul Evans, beneath the big Texas sky, she feels alone and fragile. As achingly lonesome as the last buffalo.

She speaks without thought, from her heart, "All this land and sky . . . how like people it is in the way that it demands my surrender."

"You'll tame it, kid. And us, too, I reckon, and everyone else you meet along the way." His lips quirk into a half smile that creases his cheek and catches her beneath the ribs. She shakes her head. She doesn't want to tame this land, but she doesn't want to leave it, either. And she wouldn't surrender to it—that most of all. She turns away from him, can't look at him anymore, but her gaze finds no relief in the wilderness that only stirs the restless, yawning achings.

"Do you believe in God, Evans?"

He's quiet for so long that she thinks he won't answer her. His gaze is focused on the immense ridges of timber and grass. But unlike her, she knows, he has no fear of them, but rather loves them fiercely.

"Looking at this," he finally whispers, "you can't help but feel there's something. You take it all in with your eyes and your breath and the pores of your skin, all the beauty and the wildness of it, and you can't help feeling at one with the mountains and the plains and the sky, a part of it somehow."

A flush touches his cheeks, and into his eyes, there's a look of searching, of wanting. "Whoever created all this, whether you call him God or the Great Spirit, I do believe he must've had a reason."

"What?" She leans into him, desperate to know. "What was his reason?"

She thought a smile might have touched his lips.

"Love."

The word hangs in the air between them. She draws in a slow breath, trying to ease the pressure in her chest. But when he speaks again his words send her heart slamming back up into her throat.

"Do you know what it is to have a heartfire for someone?"

His eyes are fierce and wild, and they called to the terrible wildness within her. She wraps her arms around herself. She is shuddering hard from the inside out, praying he doesn't notice how his words affect her.

His lips make a funny little twist that is barely a smile.

"A heartfire, Kid, is when you want someone, when you need them so damn bad, not only in your bed but in your life, that you're willin' to burn."

Her whole body seems to be straining, but whether it is reaching away from him or toward him she no longer knows. She is terrified to speak, or to touch him in some way, for she knows in her heart she would be lost to him forever.

"I feel we were made to experience this all-consuming burn, with people, and with places too." He continues, his eyes turning to her, scorching her slowly.

"Your heartfire is this land?" She murmurs, breaking the trance-like state of their locked eyes.

"Yes. This land has all of me." He grunts, his face suddenly turning rosy. "But that's not why I've brought you here, to talk of things like God or love."

"Then what?" Maka sighs, as she feels him pulling away from her, as he shades his eyes behind that damn stetson hat.

"I've brought you here to let it all out." He demands. "To tell it to the cliffs."

"I beg your pardon?" She asks, wondering if maybe he was hit in the head a little too hard.

He gives her an impatient look, and it's reminiscent of her earlier days on the ranch. It almost makes her smile.

"Yell, scream, cry, whatever you need to say, let it out. Throw your troubles into the canyon."

He strides even closer to the ledge and Maka timidly follows, the yawning edge seemingly sharp and endless in the depths of the earth.

"This seems kind of ridiculous." She says, wringing her hands together.

"Trust me." He says, moving a hair closer to her, causing her breath to quicken. "Look, I'll do it with you."

He turns to the canyon, throws his head back, and bellows. The harsh sound comes back almost instantly as it echos off the bluffs in short bursts. He turns and gives her a serious once over.

"See, it's not hard. Now you try."

She is hesitant, but Soul squeezes her arm, making her feel that safe warm feeling bloom within her. She opens her mouth, and a small sound, barely a whisper leaves her throat.

"I know you can do better than that Kid, I've heard you squawk plenty of times."

"I do not squawk!" She snaps giving him a pointed look.

"You do when you're angry," He half chuckles.

"I do not bloody squawk!" She shouts in indignation.

Bloody... squawk.. It echoes back loud and clear.

"Oh my." She breathes, as her voice comes ringing back at her in full force. Soul gives her a lopsided grin, his hand gesturing for her to go on.

"I hate my dress, it's bloody itchy!" Maka yells.

Soul grabs his side and laughs, the warm sound echoing around them. "That's not exactly what I had in mind. Keep going though," He chuckles on an exhale.

"I hate that I was born a woman sometimes. I hate feeling so helpless."

Soul is no longer laughing, his face instead growing solemn at her words.

"I hate that I am not strong enough to help the people around me! For the sadness, this word inflicts on those who do not deserve it!" Maka's shoulders slump as her voice fades.

Soul lays his hand on her shoulder and squeezes it, an act of comfort, or to urge her forward, she isn't sure.

"I hate that we destroy more than we give. I hate the white man and Indian alike, for our differences and for what we do to each other." Soul shouts, his voice strained with emotion. "I hate that we are destroying the buffalo and the land he calls home."

Maka's eyes well up, as their words bounce from place to place.

"I hate Proud Bear, I hope he falls off a cliff! I want his wife and children to be safe and fed!"

Maka puts her face in her hands and weeps, but still, words keep tumbling from her mouth.

Soul's heart bleeds as he watches her, he dares not interrupt her or comfort her in any way. The flood gates have opened, her confessions flowing freely now. He doesn't know if she will ever be able to stop the torrent of her heart aches. She has held on to so much pain in her short life.

"I bloody hate my dad for dying, for leaving me to a man i do not love! I hate that Justin lost his wife. I hate that Tad will never see his family again. I hate how Black Star and Tsubaki are heartbroken and there's nothing we can do about it."

Soul cups his hands around his mouth to shout, his voice harsh, the ragged edges fraying her heart. "I hate who I am most days!" He says with a bitter growl. "I can't change who I am."

Maka takes up his hand in her own, her eyes never leaving the canyon range as she speaks.

"I wish... I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. How differently you would see yourself." She tuens her head and gives him a misty smile.

This stumps Soul, stopping him right in his tracks.

Through her eyes?

The question was though, how did she see him?

He itches something fierce to turn and ask her. He bites the inside of his cheek, keeping his face turned away from her.

What did he care what she thought of him, it shouldn't matter a damn bit. But he squeezes her hand and her thumb runs softly across the back of his knuckles, sending shivers cold as mounting snow and yet heated as a Texas summer coursing through his body.

"I hate the wind sometimes, but I love how it smells of prairie grass and sunshine. I hate the harshness of this wild place. But I love it too. God, I love it. It has my heart, now and always. All we've said so far are the things we hate. This won't do. There are so many other things to hold dear as well." She says, her voice almost dream-like.

She places her free hand on his arm, and it burns, it burns through his clothing, scorching his skin, searing his bones all the way to the marrow.

"What do you love, Evans?" She asks, her eyes so damn green.

And she smiles. A caressing smile, soft and sultry like the wind on a hot night. A smile that catches at his gut and stops his heart. He stares at her, stunned, unable to think. Unable even to breathe.

"What did he love?"

Hey says the only thing that could come to his addled mind.

"Green." He whispers. "I dearly love the color green."

Maka stops abruptly at her saddle and she looks back at him, a startled question in her eyes. She holds in her hands a small wreath woven of sweet grass and white sage and decorated with bird feathers and dried wildflowers. It wasn't there before, which means they had a visitor during the last hour on the cliffs, a visitor who didn't want to be seen.

"It's a dream hoop," Soul says, his eyes knowing. "You're supposed to hang it over your bed, and good dreams will come through the hole in the middle to sweeten your nights. Proud Bear's squaw made them for a time and tried to sell them in town, but no one was buyin'. I reckon it's her way of thanking you for the food and milk." He says softly.

Maka places the little wreath against her chest, close to her heart, and she cries once more, long and hard. This time it's different, these tears are healing. Her heart feels lighter than it has in a very long time.

How could she not love this land and its people so dearly?