Jack rolled onto her back with a groan, her muscles sore, and reached for her head to rub the ache from her temples. A fire crackled in the hearth and Jack's bones ached from lying on Soka's wooden floor overnight. The kind Powhatan woman had offered Jack her bed, but Jack had refused, claiming she was still young and spry. The groaning in her joints and muscles belied her overeager words.

Donovan rested against a wall, a low-burning candle still next to him from where he'd spent the evening reading the local newspaper and scouring it for information about the Slate Brothers. Jack rose to a sitting position and studied his features, relaxed in sleep. Weariness and defiance mingled in the lines around his eyes and mouth and forehead. His resistance had brought him only sorrow and death. His brother, dead. His nephew, drafted. His sister-in-law, reduced to nothing. Donovan himself had become a fugitive, on the run from terrible men who plotted revenge with the law on their side.

If only Titus knew. Titus Fletcher, sheriff of Irvington, was a righteous man and he would protect Donovan if only he would trust him. Jack swore to herself that if Donovan didn't confess all to Sheriff Fletcher, she would. They needed help.

As Jack rose and folded the woven blanket on which she'd slept, Donovan stirred as well, his dark eyes fluttering open. He smiled up at Jack beneath heavy lids, groaning as he rose from the awkward position against the wall.

"Good morning, Jack," he said, taking the folded blanket from her with one hand while touching her face softly with the other.

Jack turned her face into his hand with a smile. "Good morning."

He set the blanket down and took her hands in his, stepping close enough that she could smell the faint scent of the wax candle on his shirt. "You do not know what this means to me, Jack. You coming with me. It's beyond what I could expect of anyone, it's--"

"It's my pleasure, I swear," Jack said, blushing under the praise.

Jack didn't say the rest of what she was thinking, that she would gladly sacrifice so much for anyone she loved. She couldn't utter those words here in the poor Powhatan house, not when Donovan had so much more weight on his shoulders. In fact, she scarcely knew what to do with the words herself, but she knew that any sacrifice she made on his behalf would be repaid tenfold by time spent with him.

"You're too good for me, Jack," he said, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth as he intently studied her.

"Yes, and you best remember it," Jack said, turning away from him as they heard Soka stir in the room next to them.

Soka served them corn pone, cold from the day before, for their meager breakfast, but Jack didn't complain. Without her husband or her son or Donovan to help her with the harvest and the Slate brothers pressuring her at every turn, how could Soka offer them anything else? By the meager stock in her pantry, Jack knew the woman was near starving.

The three of them sat at Soka's crooked table, one leg shorter than the rest, with mugs of fresh-brewed tea that dispelled their exhaustion from the restless night's sleep. As Soka sat with them, she fingered something in the pocket of her dress and her eyes wandered out the window. Jack wondered whether she thought of her dead husband or her distant son.

"Have you heard from him?" Donovan asked.

Soka nodded reluctantly, pulling a wrinkled parchment from her pocket and setting it on the table. "Three weeks ago was the last letter."

"He is well?"

"How can I know?" Soka asked, cursing in her native tongue. "He would not tell me if he were half-dead. But I think he is well. He says there is not enough food, but he's used to scarcity so he will survive better than the over-fed boys in his company."

Rage burned in Jack's stomach. While she supported the war effort and had the greatest respect for those who served, she hardly thought it fair that an Indian boy of 18 with a widowed mother had been taken from his family at the behest of the Slate brothers.

"How did this happen?" she finally asked, unable to keep her anger withheld. "He was just a boy--and you needed him here. How could they take him?"

Donovan opened his mouth to speak, but Soka silenced him with an upraised palm. "Let me, Kitchi. I will tell her all."

Soka rose and lifted a cast iron pot onto the fire, stirring it with a long wooden spoon. "Ahanu wanted land for our own. He was like you, Kitchi. Greedy. Greedy for respect and recognition and power. I don't fault him for it, and yet--my son would be here if he had been content with staying on the reservation." She turned away from them, her silhouette outlined by the golden glow of the flames. "The Dawes Act is supposed to help us become more American. We are citizens now. Equals. It's a lie, but we own this land and we are citizens. That's what we received in exchange for the protection of the reservation."

"And that's how they drafted your son," Jack murmured under her breath.

She had heard rumors of the Dawes Act of 1887 that intended to make Indians more "American" as if they weren't American enough by their heritage that outdates any European settlers. The Dawes Act would give them a small parcel of land and citizenship if they'd leave their traditional homeland on the reservation, so it could be sold off to whites like the Slates. Now their citizenship had betrayed them and their son would die for a country that had mistreated him.

"The Slate brothers are the reason he was enlisted," Soka said, hatred deep in her voice as she turned to face them, her hands formed into fists and her eyes on fire. "There are hundreds of boys, even Powhatan boys like Matu, who were not enlisted, yet he was. Why would he fight for your country? What have they done for him but abused him and treated him like dirt?"

Jack searched for some defense, but she could find none. For a man like Christina's fiance David, serving in the war was protecting his family and fighting for a country that had given him every opportunity at success. But for Matu, a Powhatan boy with a dead father and only an allotment of land to his name, what honor or duty did he owe to the American government, to a country involved in a war that might never affect him?

The war was justified, of that Jack had no doubt. They were saving the lives of their allies and the poor and weak, and perhaps that was enough for anyone to join the war, but still. To be drafted because of the evil machinations of men bent on greed and revenge? In Soka's shoes, Jack might hate her homeland as well.

"They...the Slate brothers, they did this?" Jack asked.

Soka nodded, her hair slipping loose from its braid. "They did this. They want us all dead. They want Donovan hung for shooting my brother, they want me left destitute, and they want my son--they want him killed in this godforsaken war."

Jack expected Soka to crumble as she described the destruction of her family, but she did not. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, determined to face it with every ounce of fight left inside her.

"Don't run from them any longer, Donovan," she said, facing her brother-in-law.

Donovan stood to face her, and even though he towered over her in height, she somehow seemed larger with the fierce expression on her face.

"They will find you and kill you if you run, but you can fight them. Not with bullets, but with the power of law and morality," Soka continued. "They must be stopped, for we aren't the only ones whom they terrorize."

Donovan's shoulders sagged. "I am tired of loss, Soka. I can't endanger anyone else."

Jack watched as his eyes flicked to her and she stepped forward. "Don't you dare surrender to them because of me, Kitchi Donovan," she declared. "I can shoot a shotgun with the best of them and take care of myself, thank you very much. I'll help you, as much as a spinster bomb girl can. Soka's right. You can't let them win."

"But what can I do? What proof do we have, and who will listen to us?"

"Sheriff Fletcher will listen!" Jack stepped closer so she was face to face with Donovan, defeat etched on his face. "So will the doctor and the Bookers and Corrie and Hannah and Christina. They'll listen, and they'll help you. We all will, Donovan."

Donovan looked between Soka and Jack, torn between defeat and resistance. Jack couldn't blame him for his reluctance to fight--he'd lost his brother, his only remaining blood relative. It was no surprise that his first impulse was to run.

He took Jack's hand in his, unfurling her curled fist and studying her palm for a long moment. His voice was coarse and broken when he spoke again. "I care little for my own wellbeing, but if something happened to you because of me, Jack, I could never forgive myself."

Jack's heart swelled at his words. How had they grown so important to each other in so little time? Had they both been so starved of love and affection that when they glimpsed the other, everything in their hearts clung to them with reckless abandon?

"You'll fight back because you have to," Jack said. "If you didn't, you wouldn't be the man I've come to know. Besides, if you don't fight them, I will, and I'm quite a bit more reckless than you."

A slight smile appeared on Donovan's face, paled by the topic of conversation. "Fine. I'll consider it."

Soka stirred the pot over the fire, reminding the pair of her presence. "You would do well to listen to her, Kitchi. This scrawny white girl gives good advice."

Jack grinned, accepting the praise without reserve. Donovan laughed and began to gather his things. "We need to leave soon if we're to escape without Makka chasing out with her skinning knife. Come on, Jack. I have one more thing to show you."

They bid Soka goodbye and left their supplies in the automobile, and Donovan offered Jack his hand. She took it, grateful for the moment alone without the Powhatan reservation or the town of Irvington watching them. What she would give for a thousand more lonely moments like this.

Donovan led Jack down a trail she might have completely missed, marked only by a broken branch and soft footprints. They followed the trail, weaving between the thick trees, to a small stream that offered only the gentlest trickle of fresh water. Beside it was a grave marker made of wood with a few words burned into it, marking Donovan's brother's birth and death and his name. Ahanu.

Donovan knelt before the grave marker, the death so clearly contrasted by the life flowing in the creek next to them. He murmured a few soft words in Algonquin, a prayer or a confession, Jack couldn't tell. She stepped back, honoring the moment between the brothers.

She tried to imagine if she lost someone in her family in the same way--her estranged sister or the two nieces she loved so much. She imagined losing Donovan and her heart wretched at the imagined pain. Donovan had been beaten and bruised and broken by the greedy Slate brothers, and a vengeance rose in Jack, hot and heavy.

The Slates needed to pay and they needed to be stopped. No matter what Donovan said, Jack was determined that their cruelty would end now.

So Donovan and Jack are going to take on the Slate brothers--this isn't going to end well, is it? Thanks for reading, and if you're enjoying Jack's tale, remember to vote :)