Willow

Chapter Ten: Old Iron

Willow woke early enough that the sky had barely started paling toward morning, and rather than break camp straightaway, she nudged Reyna awake with a quiet suggestion that turned into a small, easy plan between them — Abel had fed them well the night before, unasked and ungrudging, and it sat wrong to walk off this morning without returning the favor in whatever small way they could manage.

"Grouse," Willow decided, checking the state of her remaining arrows before setting off toward the tree line with Reyna half a step behind, still working the sleep out of her eyes. "Saw sign of a covey yesterday evening before we found his smoke. Shouldn't take long."

It took less time than Willow expected, the birds flushing from a thicket close enough to their own camp that Reyna managed the shot herself, a clean kill that drew a small, proud smile even through the early morning grogginess. They dressed the birds together at the fire, quick and practiced now in a way that would have taken Reyna twice as long a week earlier, and by the time Abel emerged from his lean-to, stretching stiff joints against the morning chill, the smell of roasting meat was already drifting toward his camp.

"Didn't have to do that," he said, though the pleased crinkle at the corners of his eyes suggested he was glad they had.

"Figured turnabout's fair," Willow said, offering him a portion once it was done. "You fed us. Least we could do."

They ate together as the sun climbed properly over the ridge, morning light gilding the frost still clinging to shadowed patches of grass, and the conversation picked up again with the same easy rhythm it had found the night before, comfortable in a way that surprised Willow a little every time she noticed it.

"So," Abel said, once the meal had settled and he'd leaned back against a fallen log with the contented air of a man in no particular hurry, "tell me more about this father of yours, Willow. You mentioned him last night, mountains west of here, just the two of you and your mother. Man who taught you to shoot the way you clearly know how to shoot doesn't come along often, in my experience. Curious what he was like, if you don't mind the asking."

Willow considered the question, weighing how much to offer against the old, familiar instinct to keep such things close. But something about Abel's easy manner, the genuine warmth underneath his weathered curiosity, made the answer come more freely than it might have with anyone else she'd met these last two years.

"Patient," she said finally. "More patient than made sense, some days, teaching a kid who couldn't hold a bowstring steady for more than a few seconds at a time. Quiet, mostly, but not cold about it — just didn't waste words on things that didn't need them." She turned a stick over in her hands, watching the fire eat at its edges. "Tall. Taller than most men I've come across since. Had a scar through one eyebrow he never explained properly — used to joke it was from an argument with a mule that the mule won outright."

Something shifted in Abel's expression at that, subtle but unmistakable, his easy posture going very slightly still. "Scar through the eyebrow," he repeated, quiet, almost to himself. "Which one?"

"Left." Willow watched him carefully now, some old instinct sharpening at the strange focus in his question. "Why?"

Abel was quiet a moment longer than felt entirely comfortable, gaze gone distant, turned inward toward some memory Willow couldn't see the shape of. "Knew a man once, years back, matched that description close enough to make an old man's chest go tight hearing it." He shook his head slowly, as if dislodging the thought before it could fully take hold. "Common enough scar, common enough build. Probably nothing. World's smaller than it used to be, but it's not that small, and memory plays tricks on a man my age more often than I'd like to admit."

"What was his name?" Willow asked, the question coming out sharper than she meant it to, something unfamiliar and urgent tightening in her chest.

"Can't rightly recall, if I'm honest. Long time ago, brief crossing of paths, nothing more than a shared fire and a few hours' conversation before we went our separate ways." Abel offered an apologetic shrug, though something in his eyes suggested the memory hadn't entirely let go of him either. "Wish I could give you more than that. Might be nothing at all. Might just be an old man's mind reaching for connections that aren't really there."

Willow held the disappointment carefully, tucking it away rather than letting it show too plainly, though Reyna's gentle glance across the fire told her she hadn't hidden it as well as she'd hoped. "It's fine," she said, and mostly meant it. "Wouldn't be the first coincidence that turned out to be exactly that. Coincidence."

"For what it's worth," Abel added, gentler now, "whoever your father was, sounds like he did right by you. That's worth more than any name I might or might not remember correctly."

The conversation drifted after that, Abel steering it with the easy tact of someone who'd noticed he'd stirred up more than he intended and was working to smooth the water back over. He asked after Reyna's family too, listening with the same genuine attention he'd shown the night before, and slowly the strange tightness in Willow's chest eased back into something more manageable, filed away alongside every other loose thread this journey had left dangling.

It was Abel who shifted the conversation somewhere unexpected, setting his empty bowl aside with a considering look aimed at both of them. "Either of you two ever actually seen a gun? Real one, I mean. Not just heard stories about them."

Reyna shook her head. "Camp elders talked about them sometimes. Never had one ourselves. Too rare, too hard to come by ammunition for even if you found one."

"I've seen one," Willow said slowly, "once. Trader passing through a settlement I stopped at, maybe a year back. Didn't get close enough to really look at it."

"Well." Abel pushed himself up with a soft grunt, joints protesting the movement, and disappeared into his lean-to for a moment before returning with two objects wrapped carefully in oiled cloth, handling them with the particular reverence of a man handling something both precious and dangerous in equal measure. He unwrapped the first and held it out for them to see — a bolt-action rifle, wood stock worn smooth and dark with decades of handling, metal cleaned and oiled despite its age, clearly a thing maintained with real care rather than simply hoarded and forgotten.

"Guns went the way of most everything else, after," Abel said, turning the rifle over in his weathered hands. "What didn't get used up in those first hard years mostly rusted to uselessness, or got lost, or got fought over till they broke in the fighting. Ammunition's worse still — can't exactly walk into a shop and buy more, not anymore. What's left of it is old, unreliable, sometimes more dangerous to the shooter than whoever's on the other end of it." He held the rifle out toward Willow, offering it grip-first with careful deliberation. "Go on. Get a feel for it. Not loaded, so no harm in holding it proper."

Willow accepted it slowly, surprised by the weight of it, colder and heavier than she'd expected, the wood stock smooth beneath her palm in a way that spoke of countless hands before her own. She turned it over carefully, studying the mechanism with the same careful attention she gave everything unfamiliar, though she made no move to test the action without Abel's guidance.

"Bolt's here," Abel said, guiding her hand with a gentle touch, showing her the motion without pressing her to attempt it herself. "Chambers a round, same principle whether it's this old thing or something fancier from before. Trigger's simple enough once loaded. Recoil's the part that surprises people who've never fired one — kicks harder than you'd expect from something this size."

Reyna took her turn once Willow passed it over, holding it with visible uncertainty, testing the balance of it against her shoulder the way Abel showed her, though her expression carried more wariness than fascination. "It's heavier than I thought it'd be."

"Everything worth respecting usually is." Abel accepted it back with the same careful reverence, wrapping it again before producing the second item — a pistol, smaller, similarly aged but well-tended, its grip worn to the shape of a hand that had held it many times over many years. "This one I keep closer, mostly. Rifle's for distance and patience. This is for when distance and patience have already run out."

They examined the pistol in turn as well, Willow noting the mechanism, the weight, the particular danger implied in something small enough to conceal but capable of ending a fight in a single motion. "Why show us these?" she asked eventually, curious rather than suspicious, though a thread of the latter remained woven through the former out of old habit.

"Because you're heading into something that might well involve real guns on the other side of it, if Broken Wheel's got the reach and resources rumor suggests." Abel's expression sobered, the easy warmth giving way to something more serious. "Better you've held one before you ever face one pointed at you. Better you know the weight, the sound, the way they change a fight compared to a bow. Doesn't mean you'll have one yourselves. Just means you won't freeze up from pure unfamiliarity if it comes to that."

The weight of that landed heavier than the pistol itself had, and both women fell quiet a moment, absorbing the practical wisdom underneath the old man's careful demonstration.

"You said guns are nearly impossible to find," Reyna said slowly, working through something. "But you've got two."

Abel's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile, more a wry acknowledgment of a secret he'd apparently decided these two had earned. "Found these myself, years back, along with a fair bit more I didn't have the means or the nerve to carry off." He lowered his voice slightly, though there was no one else for miles to overhear. "There's an old armory, up near where Whitefish used to sit, close to the border of whatever's left of Kalispell proper. Military stock, sealed up tight enough that whatever chaos took the rest of the world in those first years never quite got to it. Found it by accident, chasing shelter from a storm that near killed me otherwise. Took what I could carry, left the rest behind — more than I could manage alone, and more than I trusted myself to protect if word ever got out I'd found it."

Willow felt something sharpen in her chest at the information, calculating instantly what it might mean for the fight ahead of them. "Still there? The rest of it?"

"Last I knew, years back now. Can't promise it's untouched still — plenty of time's passed, plenty of people wandering this country since. But it wasn't the kind of easy find that gets stumbled onto by accident twice. Buried under collapsed structure, hidden well enough that I near missed it myself despite practically living in the doorway during that storm." Abel studied them both with careful consideration. "Might be worth a look, if your path takes you anywhere close to it. Might be worth more than a look, given what you're walking toward."

"And if it's guarded, or already picked clean?"

"Then you've lost nothing but the time it took to check." Abel shrugged, the gesture carrying the weathered practicality of someone who'd made peace long ago with uncertain odds being better than no odds at all. "There's also a trading town, little farther north than the armory — small place, does honest business mostly, from what I've heard passing through. Might have information on Broken Wheel too, given how close it sits to territory rumor says they operate through. Wouldn't hurt to ask around there either, if the armory doesn't pan out."

Willow absorbed both pieces of information carefully, filing them alongside everything else Abel had already given them, the shape of a plan beginning to form more solid now than the vague hope they'd set out with days before. "That's more than we had an hour ago. Thank you."

"Don't thank me till you know it's actually worth something." Abel wrapped the guns back in their oiled cloth with the same careful reverence, tucking them away in his lean-to once more. "But if it helps you find what you're looking for, or gives you an edge you wouldn't have had otherwise, I'll count this morning's stew a fair trade for a fair trade."

They lingered a while longer, finishing the last of the coffee-substitute Abel brewed from some bitter root Willow didn't recognize, the conversation winding gently back toward easier ground before the inevitable parting. When the sun had climbed high enough that further delay would only cost them daylight better spent walking, Willow rose and offered Abel her hand, an oddly formal gesture that felt right given everything the old man had offered them freely over these last many hours.

"Good luck to you both," Abel said, gripping her hand firm despite his age. "Mind the ground, mind each other, and if that armory's still sitting there untouched, take what you need and don't linger longer than you have to. Old buildings and old secrets both have a way of collapsing on people who overstay their welcome."

"We'll remember," Willow said, and meant it.

Reyna offered her own quiet thanks, and then the two of them shouldered their packs and turned north once more, following the direction Abel had pointed toward — the armory first, if the path allowed it, and the trading town beyond that if it didn't pan out, the cart ruts and Broken Wheel and whatever waited at the end of all of it still ahead of them, but the ground beneath their feet feeling, for the first time in days, a little less like blind guessing and a little more like an actual plan.

Behind them, Abel's fire burned on alone, and Willow found herself glancing back once before the tree line swallowed the little camp from view, an old, unplaceable ache settling into her chest at the thought of a scarred stranger's eyebrow and a memory neither of them had quite managed to fully unearth.

"You still thinking about it," Reyna said, not a question, falling into step beside her once the trees closed properly around them. "The scar. The thing he said."

"Trying not to." Willow adjusted her pack, eyes already scanning ahead for the terrain Abel had described, the vague northward path that would carry them toward Whitefish and whatever remained of it. "Probably nothing, like he said. Common enough scar. Common enough build. World's full of tall men with old injuries they never explained properly."

"But."

"But." Willow allowed herself the small admission, the word carrying more weight than its size suggested. "Would've liked a name. Something more than a maybe and an old man's uncertain memory to chew on."

Reyna didn't push further, understanding by now the particular shape of the things Willow needed to carry quietly rather than examine too closely out loud. Instead she matched her pace, the two of them falling into the familiar rhythm of walking together that had become, over these last many days, less like two strangers thrown together by circumstance and more like something steadier, something that could carry weight without buckling under it.

The armory waited somewhere ahead, buried and uncertain, and beyond it the trading town, and beyond that whatever Broken Wheel had left of Reyna's people to find. But for now there was only the trail underfoot and the mountains rising pale and patient on the horizon, and the particular, hard-won comfort of not walking toward any of it alone.