"He smells the dead wind," Ayana warned, turning to look back at the animal. "A plains horse knows the earth beneath his feet is solid. He does not understand the mountain that has no floor. If he panics, let the lead rope go, Ethan. Do not let him drag you into the dark."
"I don't leave my horse," Ethan said flatly, his jaw tightening into iron. "This animal brought me twenty miles through dry washes when I had nothing left in the canteen. If he goes over, I go with him."
Ayana watched him through the gloom. A strange, softened expression passed through her dark eyes—an emotion that ran far deeper than the calculating necessity that had initially brought them together. She pulled a pinch of sacred pollen from a pouch at her waist, turned to face the howling wind, and scattered the dust into the black void. Then she stepped back along the ridge, moving right up to Dutch’s lathered head.
She did not pull on the bridle, nor did she speak harsh commands. She placed both of her slender, bronze hands over the gelding’s nostrils, breathing her own warm air into his muzzle while singing a low, repetitive chant—an ancient song used by Apache horse-tamers to soothe wild mustangs cornered in mountain traps.
Slowly, almost miraculously, the trembling in Dutch’s powerful flanks began to subside. The gelding’s ears lifted, rotating forward. He lowered his head, nudged Ayana’s shoulder with his nose, and took a tentative, careful step onto the narrow basalt crest.
"Now," Ayana whispered, never breaking her rhythmic hum. "One foot. Then the next."
For two agonizing hours, they traversed the Needle’s Spine. Step by calculated step, their muscles burning from strain and the biting cold, they guided the horses across the razor’s edge. Once, a loose slab of slate broke loose beneath Ethan’s right heel, plunging into the abyss. It took nearly ten seconds before the faint, distant clack of stone striking stone drifted up from the depths. Ethan’s stomach plummeted, but he kept his eyes locked on Ayana’s straight, unyielding back, matching her footfalls until the volcanic ridge finally widened into a sheltered saddle choked with dwarf pinon pines.
They rested there for thirty minutes beneath the windbreak of the trees. Ethan offered Ayana a handful of parched corn and dried venison from his pocket. They ate in companionable silence, listening to the horses crunching dry bunchgrass in the shadows.
"Why didn't you marry Kaelen?" Ethan asked suddenly, breaking the quiet. "He’s of your own people. He rides like the wind, and he would have protected your father’s name."
Ayana looked out across the eastern ridges, where the first faint line of pearl-gray dawn was beginning to outline the Santa Catalina peaks.
"Kaelen sees only the shadow he casts upon the ground," she answered softly. "When he looks at me, he does not see Ayana. He sees the chief's daughter. He sees the right to sit in the high council, the right to lead the young men into war, the right to take more horses. A marriage built on pride is like a wickiup built on dry sand; the first summer flood carries it away."
She turned her face toward him, her features sharp and beautiful in the dim morning light.
"And you, Ethan Walker? Why does a man of twenty-eight summers live alone in a mud-roof cabin, chasing steers across thorns for sixteen dollars a month? Did no white woman look into your eyes?"
Ethan let out a quiet, rueful breath that was almost a sigh. "The women in the settlements want security, Ayana. They want a frame house with glass windows, a parlor stove, a garden with a white picket fence, and a husband who comes home at sundown with money in his pocket. I couldn't give a woman that. All I ever had was a string of trail horses, a leased quarter-section of caliche dirt, and the dust in my clothes. Out here, poverty is an ugly thing to share with someone you care about."
"Poverty of things is nothing," Ayana said, her voice dropping into a tone of quiet, unshakable conviction. "The white men who dig for silver down in the canyon—they have gold in their pockets, but their spirits are beggars. They starve inside because they can never hold enough of the earth to satisfy their hunger. My father always told me: a rich man is not the one who holds many things, but the one whose word needs no paper to keep it straight."
Ethan looked down at his rough, scarred hands, feeling the truth of her words settle deep into his chest. In the space of three days, this Apache girl had seen further into his soul than any preacher, drover, or town-dweller he had ever met in his wandering life.