I needed to know, because I had to have a chance not to end up in an unmarked grave or at the bottom of the well.
I climbed to my feet and paused, sensing … someone. It was the same odd presence that tickled my instincts at Taylor's the night his cabin burnt to the ground. It wasn't the man Fighting Badger had tortured and killed; it had to be the shadowy figure following the native.
"Talks to Spirits." There was a note of something in his voice that made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I turned - and gasped. Fighting Badger's clothing was torn, and he was bloodied. "What's wrong?" I asked immediately and crossed to the fence dividing us from one another.
"There was another man like the first," he said. "Someone who came to find you and do harm. I stopped him and tried to bury him with the first man." He shifted. His mind was its usual tangled mess, but I glimpsed his twin being dragged away while he watched.
"What happened?"
"They took my brother."
"Who did?"
"The men who found the bodies." His gaze went to his feet. "I tried to stop them. I killed three before Running Bear told me to run."
"What men?" I whispered. The vision in his head told me before he spoke.
"White Men. Settlers. They plan on hanging him because of what I did."
I gazed at him. His distress was tangled with his darkness, and it struck me that he had come to me for the reason his brothers both hinted at: he had no one else. As far as the natives and townspeople knew, he didn't exist.
It wasn't just my desire not to see a good man hanged that propelled me to act. It was the knowledge that I didn't know if I could handle the dark mystery awaiting me at the end of my wing after everything that happened the past two days.
Taylor hanged men on Saturdays, which gave us two days to help Running Bear, two days until …
The twentieth fourth. Instincts clamoring, I exited the cemetery. "We have to tell Taylor," I said and hurried by him.
"What do I do?"
I stopped. The angry side of me wanted to tell him to drink his medicine. He'd killed an unknown number of people. If anyone hanged, it should be him.
But I couldn't. He had killed two men to protect me, however misguided that was, which made me at least partially responsible. Coupled with the knowledge he was mentally ill and exiled to die at the age of ten, I wasn't able to summon any kind of condemnation.