The frontiersman stayed outside the settlement.
Nobody asked him to.
Nobody asked him to leave.
On the second evening, the aunt brought him food.
She placed the bowl beside his fire.
“Thank you.”
She sat across from him.
For a while they ate in silence.
Then she said, “My daughter remembers you.”
The frontiersman stopped.
“The child?”
“Yes.”
He could barely ask.
“She lived?”
The aunt looked toward the settlement.
A young woman was repairing a saddle beneath a tree.
Nearly grown.
The stranger stared.
“She remembers your coat.”
He looked down at his weathered brown coat.
“I had another one then.”
“She says it smelled terrible.”
He laughed unexpectedly.
The aunt almost smiled.
“She remembers you telling her to close her eyes while crossing the creek.”
The frontiersman's throat tightened.
“I don't remember saying that.”
“She does.”
He looked toward the young woman.
The aunt continued.
“You saved us.”
The frontiersman shook his head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I also brought them.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
The aunt's voice remained calm.
“Both are true.”
That was harder to hear than condemnation.
Because condemnation was simple.
A man could accept hatred.
He knew how to live under it.
But complexity required something more.
The aunt said, “For years I hated the man who guided them.”
“You should.”
“I did not know he was the same man who showed me the canyon.”
The frontiersman looked into the fire.
“What do you do with that?”
She considered.
“Live.”
He almost smiled.
“That simple?”
“No.”
She stood.
“That is why it matters.”
Before leaving, she looked back.
“My niece watches you.”
The frontiersman immediately became uncomfortable.
“I've noticed she watches everybody.”
“Not that way.”
He frowned.
“What way?”
The aunt walked away.
He stared after her.
Then he heard a voice behind him.
“What did she say?”
He turned.
The daughter stood with her arms crossed.
“Nothing.”
“You are a poor liar.”
“So I've been told.”
She sat beside the fire.
For a while neither spoke.
Then she asked, “Do you still want to leave?”
The question surprised him.
“I don't know.”
“You always know.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“That may be the first honest answer you have given.”
He smiled.
“You said that before.”
“Then you are improving slowly.”
The stranger looked toward the settlement.
“I've spent three years moving.”
“Why?”
“If I stayed anywhere long enough, people asked questions.”
“What questions?”
“Where I came from. What I did. Why I woke up shouting.”
The daughter's expression softened.
“And moving stopped the dreams?”
“No.”
“Then you were not running very well.”
He laughed quietly.
“No.”