He picked up the wooden grease paddle from the corral post and walked back toward the wagon, his stride as unhurried and steady as the turning of the windmill vanes above the stone tank.
The first hard frost arrived in the third week of November, dropping down from the high limestone spine of the Peloncillo mountains like a white shroud spread over the basin. By midnight, the moisture in the gravel had frozen solid, locking the loose stones into an iron crust; by dawn, every blade of blue grama grass in the pasture was coated in thick, brittle rime that snapped like glass beneath the tread of a boot.
Tala stood on the eastern veranda while the sky was still the color of wet lead. She wore a coat of heavy grey mackinaw cloth that Jonah had fetched from the storeroom two days before—an old garment that had belonged to his brother, broad in the shoulders and shortened at the cuffs with rough twine. It smelled of sheep fat, tobacco smoke, and pine tar, but it kept the bitter valley wind from cutting through her ribs.
Down in the corral, the horses stood with their heads lowered, their breath pouring from their nostrils in white, rhythmic plumes. The bay gelding lifted its muzzle toward the southern gap where the wagon trail entered the basin between two low hills of crumbled malpais. It pricked its ears forward, then let out a low, vibrating snort that set the pack mule pacing along the basalt wall.
Tala did not need the horse’s warning. She had felt the change in the air twenty minutes earlier—not a shift in the temperature, but that sudden, hollow stillness that comes over a prairie when riders are moving through the draws. The crows that usually scavenged along the dry wash had left the cottonwoods without a sound, drifting low and black across the grey scrub toward the north.
She turned and stepped into the kitchen.
Jonah was sitting by the stove, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, holding a tin cup of black coffee between his palms. He did not have the lantern lit; the only light came from the red glow of the damper vent in the cast-iron firebox. Leaning against the pine table were two rifles: his Model 1873 Winchester and an older, long-barreled Springfield rifle-musket with a walnut stock bound near the lock with raw copper wire. A shallow wooden box containing fifty brass cartridges sat open between them.
He looked up as she closed the heavy door behind her.
“How many?” he asked.
“Six,” Tala said. Her voice was flat, carrying no tremor. “Four coming by the creek trail, two keeping to the ridge to watch the horse pen.”
Jonah took a slow swallow of the coffee, set the tin cup on the warm hearth plate of the stove, and stood up. His joints gave off a dry, muffled pop in the cold room. He picked up the Winchester, worked the lever halfway to verify that a cartridge was seated in the chamber, and let the brass elevator slide home with an oiled, metallic click.
“Go to the storeroom, Tala,” he said, looking at the floorboards between his feet. “Drop the oak bar. If they fire through the window, the mud bricks are eighteen inches thick; a lead slug won't penetrate past four. There is a five-gallon crock of water under the cot and a loaf of hard bread.”
Tala did not move toward the small room. She stood planted with her feet slightly apart, her weight settled over her hips in the manner of women who grind maize upon stone metates, immovable and grounded.
“I am not going to the storeroom,” she said.
Jonah paused, his grey eyes lifting to her face. “This is Hutchins. He didn't bring deputies to read papers today. He brought men from the border who work for three silver dollars and a bottle of rye. They won't ask who is standing behind the door before they shoot.”
“If I hide behind the oak bar,” Tala said, speaking each word with cold precision, “then what Hutchins says in the town is true. He says I am a piece of beef you bought for two hundred dollars that you keep locked in a stall. If I am to be a person who cannot be bought, I must stand where the people can see that I am standing of my own choice.”
Jonah looked at her for five long seconds. The lines around his mouth, carved deep by thirty years of mountain wind and solitary labor, seemed to soften slightly, then harden back into slate.
“It is not safe out there,” he said.
“Safety is a thing white men promise when they want you to put your hands behind your back,” she answered. “Give me the long rifle.”