Afternoon, Elias said.
Afternoon, the old man said. "You look like a man who rode in off a long trail and hasn't decided yet whether the town is worth the dust on his boots."
My name's Elias Whitlock, Elias said. "I'm looking for land. River acreage, if there's any to be had."
The old man snorted softly and set his knife down. "Otis," he said. "I keep this store. And if you're lookin' for river acreage, stranger, you're about four years too late or thirty miles too far south." He leaned forward on the lard tub, his elbows on his knees, and studied Elias with a frankness that was almost kind. "The only soft water between here and the Gila runs through the canyon beside the red peaks. And that belongs to Chief Iron Elk's people."
Elias leaned his forearms on the wooden counter. The wood was smooth where a thousand hands had rested, and cool against his skin. "Is it good bottomland?"
Best in the territory, Otis grunted, spitting a stream of brown juice into a brass spittoon by the door with an accuracy born of long practice. "Tall grass. Black dirt three feet deep. Cold creek, runs all year, even when the washes out here are cracked like old plates. A man could grow anything in that dirt, and the grass would fatten a horse just standing in it." He paused, and his face hardened a little. "But every white man who's tried to drive survey stakes into that dirt came back with his horse shot out from under him or ran off the range scared half to death. Iron Elk doesn't like speculators, and he sure as hell doesn't like soldiers."
Elias thought about the compass in his saddlebag and the watch in his coat, and said nothing for a moment. "I'm neither," he said at last. "Not a speculator, and not a soldier anymore. I was infantry, once. Wilson's Creek. I'm done with that."
Otis watched him, and something in the old man's face shifted, a fraction. "That matters to some men and not to others," he said. "Iron Elk is a patient man, from what I hear, but patience ain't the same as welcome. His people have held that canyon a long time, and they've watched a lot of white men come with papers and promises and leave with the water." He shaved another curl of tobacco, slowly. "You'd do well to understand that before you go nosing around up there. Men who don't understand it don't always come back to explain themselves."
I understand wanting to keep your own ground, Elias said. "That's the whole reason I'm here. I have been told to move along by men with papers in towns I never lived in, and I have buried friends for causes I never chose. I do not want another man's ground. I want a place where the telling stops."
Then you're rarer than you think, Otis said, and he looked at Elias a moment longer, as if weighing whether the stranger's quiet words were worth more than the usual talk that passed over his counter. He poured Elias a cup of coffee from a pot on the stove without being asked, black and strong enough to stand a spoon in, and set it on the counter. "Drink. You look like you need it. There's a saloon down the track run by Mae Hollis, fair woman, and a deputy named Sam Wilkes who keeps the peace when he can and minds his own business when he can't. If you're staying the night, the stable behind the store will do for your mare, and there's a room above the saloon that's clean enough, if you don't mind the piano."
Elias drank, and the coffee cut through the dust in his throat. He asked about the trail to the canyon, and Otis told him plainly: a day's ride to the foothills, then a narrow pass between two red shoulders, then the canyon opening like a hand. "Don't go alone," Otis said, "and don't go with a stake in your hand. A man on foot with his hands open is a visitor. A man with a survey chain is a claim." He said it without heat, the way a man states the weather, and Elias took it as the warning it was.
Outside, the light had turned gold and the shadows of the shacks stretched long across the track. Elias thanked Otis, stepped out onto the creaking porch, and stood a moment letting his eyes adjust to the brightness. The town was settling into its evening noises: a hammer somewhere, a woman calling a child in, the mule braying at the trough. Elias paused on the porch to take in the street once more, the way a man takes a last look at a place before leaving it, and he noticed the stable yard behind the store, the water barrel by the door, and the long dust of the track running north toward the peaks he had come to see. Then, from the shadow of the hitching rack, a man stepped out, quiet as a man who had been waiting to be noticed on his own terms. He wore an old blue cavalry coat with the yellow piping ripped off the collar, and a smile that arrived a fraction too quickly. Elias felt Sage shift beside him, and felt his own hand go still at his side. The stranger touched the brim of his hat.