Her hands fell apart. The sudden release of pressure sent a prickling heat through her knuckles and fingertips. She immediately pulled her hands back against her ribs, her fingers curled into loose fists, ready to strike or to ward off a grasp.
Jonah did not reach for her. He folded the knife against his thigh, stood up slowly without making any sudden movement, and took three steps back toward the edge of the platform.
“The horse by the trough is carrying two canteens,” he said, looking past her toward the open road leading west out of the settlement. “One is clean well water. Drink if you have need of it. When you are ready, you can walk or you can ride the pack mule tied behind the store. No one in this square will lay a hand on your shoulder today.”
Tala looked from Jonah to Hutchins, whose face was purple with suppressed rage, and then to the crowd of men who parted slightly as Jonah walked down the steps. The world around her had not suddenly turned kind. The adobe walls were still baked dry; the dust still tasted of salt and lime; the bluebottle flies still hummed over the ink. But the rope lay on the pine planks behind her, cut into two useless lengths, and between her and the open sky there was nothing but thirty paces of empty street.
The road leading away from Black Mesa was little more than two parallel ruts gouged into the caliche clay by iron-rimmed freight wheels, running westward toward the scrub oak and mesquite that choked the foothills of the Peloncillo range. The midday heat had settled over the earth like an iron lid, pressing the scent of sage and dried manure flat against the ground.
Tala walked ten paces behind the bay gelding. She had refused the pack mule. When Jonah had pointed to the lead-line tied to the hitching rack, she had simply looked at the animal, looked at the road, and begun walking with her chin up and her arms swinging loose at her sides. Jonah had not insisted. He had untied the mule’s halter, looped the rope over the horn of his own saddle, mounted the bay, and moved out at a slow walking pace that matched the stride of a person on foot.
Every sixty rods, Tala checked the distance between them. She knew the range of a carbine—Jonah had a Model 1873 Winchester tucked in a scabbard beneath his right knee, its walnut stock worn grey near the tang—and she knew how quickly a horse could turn in soft ground. She stayed back far enough that if the bay wheeled, she could dive into the dry wash that paralleled the trail before a rider could level a barrel.
Her body was exhausted, but her mind was running with the cold clarity that had kept her alive through the winter at Fort Bowie. The white men called this land a territory, giving it boundaries on maps drawn with blue ink and red wax, but Tala knew it as a series of edges: where the water was sweet, where the rocks gave cover, and where a stranger could corner you against a limestone ledge.
Two hours out from the settlement, where the trail dipped through a stand of stunted mesquite that offered thin, filtered shade, Jonah pulled the gelding to a halt. He did not look back over his shoulder. He dismounted on the near side, took the split reins in his hand, and walked ten yards away from the trail to the edge of the wash. There he sat down on an outcrop of red sandstone, took off his broad-brimmed felt hat, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
On the horn of the saddle hung the two canvas-covered canteens. Beside them, strapped across the cantle, was a canvas saddlebag containing whatever rations he had carried from the town.
Tala stopped on the edge of the wheel ruts. She did not approach the horse. She stood beneath the thorny branches of a mesquite, her breathing shallow, her throat parched until it felt like she had swallowed dry sand. She had not drunk water since sunrise, when Hutchins’s man had thrown half a dipper into the wooden bucket in the barn.
Jonah looked at the dry hills to the north. “The canteen on the near side is river water,” he said, speaking without turning his head toward her. “It was boiled yesterday. It has a pinch of salt in it to keep the sun from taking the strength out of your limbs. The other is well water from the livery. It tastes of iron, but it is clear.”
He made no move to rise. He did not unhook the canteen and offer it to her. He remained seated on the sandstone, thirty feet away, his hands resting loose upon his knees.