Ellen's Arc

Chapter 44 of 45

The four springs kept her women drinking. But water didn't warn them. Ellen rode the wagon between camps for three days and saw the flaw grow. Her groups sat a full day apart. If riders hit the north camp at dawn, the south camp wouldn't know until she rode in and found the bodies. She needed a way to shout across the salt. She had none. She tried smoke first. She built a signal fire at the north camp and told the women to light it if hunters came. It worked in the day. At night, the flame could be seen for miles by the wrong eyes. Worse, wind off the flats dragged the smoke sideways. The south camp read it as a false alarm twice and packed to flee for nothing. Smoke lied. She stamped the fire out and sat in the ash. A man watched her from the wagon's shadow. Small, hunched, red and green stripes under a filthy hat. Burn scars crossed his face. He turned a bladed glove in the light, and the women behind Ellen went still and quiet. Freddy Krueger. Ellen had heard the name in camp talk, a thing that found people when they slept. "You're screaming with fire," he said. His voice scraped. "Fire's for enemies to see. I do it quieter." "I don't want your kind of quiet." He grinned with wrecked teeth. "You want a whisper that skips a day of riding. I can carry a warning between your camps in the dark. One night's work. Cheap." Ellen's skin crawled. But he was right about the fire. "What's cheap?" "A name." He pointed the glove past her, north. "There's a man out there hunting you personal. Black jacket, half-gray hair, hates you like it's food. Sarah Morrell. He's paying me to find your camps." The blades caught light. "I'll sell him a wrong one. Send him to empty salt. In trade, you owe me a favor I name later." Ellen weighed it. A hunter she didn't know was already close. If she refused, Freddy sold him the truth. If she paid, she bought a false trail and a warning system in one night. "Show me the whisper works first." He did. He slipped between camps in the dark and left a knotted cord at each. Pull the cord's marker, and a rider three hours out learned trouble had come, no fire, no smoke. By morning both camps could warn each other faster than she could ride. Ellen tested it twice. It held. "Done," she said. Freddy pointed the black jacket the wrong way and vanished into the flats. Ellen's scattered women now had ears across the salt. But she'd bought them from a monster, and Sarah Morrell was still out there, still hunting hard, and one wrong trail would only slow him. The favor she owed had no shape yet. That scared her most.