The ranch lay in a shallow basin where two dry watercourses met to form a broad gravel wash lined with desert willow and scrub walnut. It was not a grand spread. There was a low house built of sun-dried adobe bricks, three rooms wide, with a roof of cedar poles covered in mud and topped with wild rye that had died yellow in the heat. A stone corral stood eighty yards from the kitchen door, its walls built from basalt fieldstones gathered from the benchlands and fitted together without mortar, five feet high and solid enough to turn a longhorn bull.
To the east of the house, a wooden windmill with four grey paddles creaked as it turned in the evening draft, pumping a thin, steady trickle of cold water into a galvanized iron tank that overflowed into a green patch of wild clover.
The sun had dropped behind the western ridge by the time the bay reached the yard, leaving the sky stained with deep violet and streaks of greenish amber. The temperature dropped with the suddenness peculiar to the high desert; the air turned sharp, smelling of cold granite and the smoke of cedar wood.
Jonah led the animals to the corral gate. He unhitched the pack mule, slipped its bridle, and let it roll in the powdery dust near the fence. He unsaddled the bay, rubbing its back down with a scrap of clean burlap before carrying the heavy saddle and the rifle into the lean-to shed against the corral wall.
Tala stood twenty yards back, beside the corner of the low adobe house. The white-washed wall behind her was still warm from the day’s sun, radiating a faint, dry heat into her shoulder blades. She did not enter the veranda, nor did she approach the open doorway of the kitchen, through which the black silhouette of a cast-iron stove could be seen against the whitewash.
Jonah emerged from the lean-to carrying his saddlebags and the tin box he had fetched from the mule’s pack. He walked toward the house, his spurs giving a faint clink-clink against the stone path, then stopped five feet from where she stood.
“The room on the west end was my wife’s storeroom,” he said. He did not look directly into her eyes, but directed his gaze toward the small square window beside the corner. “It has an iron cot, a wool mattress stuffed with clean straw, and a cedar chest. There is an iron latch on the inside of the door. The bar drops into a steel staple. If it is down, no man can turn the handle from the porch without a crowbar.”
He reached into his pocket, took out a heavy brass key, and laid it on the window ledge of the kitchen.
“The water from the pump tank is good for washing,” he continued. “There is castile soap in the tin on the shelf by the door. I will be in the barn until full dark, seeing to the gelding’s hock. He took a stone three miles back.”
He walked past her, his heavy canvas coat brushing against the doorframe, and entered the kitchen. Tala heard the strike of a sulfur match, followed by the soft, yellow flare of a kerosene lamp through the glass window. A moment later, he came out carrying an armload of split cedar wood, walked across the yard without looking in her direction, and disappeared into the shadowed interior of the barn.
Tala remained motionless for several minutes. The only sounds were the creak of the windmill’s vanes as the breeze shifted and the occasional stamp of the bay gelding’s hoof against the corral dirt.
She stepped up onto the packed-earth veranda. The house was quiet. She looked at the brass key on the window ledge, but did not touch it. Instead, she moved down the length of the porch toward the low door at the western corner.
The wood of the door was rough pine, planed flat on the outside and reinforced with three horizontal battens held by square-headed iron clouts. She lifted the latch. The door swung open inward on heavy iron hinges that had been rubbed with tallow; they made no sound at all.
Inside, the room was small, perhaps eight paces from wall to wall. The smell was of dried lavender, dry mud, and the clean, sharp resin of cedar. A single window, no larger than a man’s hat, looked out toward the empty western benchland, barred by two vertical rods of wrought iron set deep into the adobe sill. In the corner stood a narrow bedstead of black iron, made up with a clean cotton sheet and two grey wool blankets folded at the foot. Beside it was a three-legged stool holding a white ceramic basin and an earthenware pitcher.