Elias stared at her for two seconds, then a dry, gravelly sound broke from his throat—a short bark of laughter that surprised him as much as it did the girl. It was the first time he had laughed out loud since he crossed the Missouri River.
“Did they run?” he asked.
“Spurred their mounts so hard they dropped a saddle blanket,” Nielli said, a genuine grin splitting her features. “Aiona didn’t even cock the second hammer. But after they were gone, she went inside and sat by the stove with her hands shaking so hard she couldn't strike a match for the lamp.”
The girl looked down toward the cabin, where a pale plume of smoke was rising from the stone chimney into the autumn sky.
“She doesn't shake anymore when you’re standing on the porch,” Nielli added softly.
Elias felt a cold prickle of discomfort crawl across his neck. He turned his back on her, lifting the iron bar high above his head and driving it viciously into the rock shelf. The stone fractured with a sharp crack.
“Get that grease bucket,” he said, his voice hard as iron. “Sun won’t wait on your chatter.”
Nielli watched him for another second, then turned and scampered down the hill toward the outbuildings, her oversized boots slapping against the damp sod.
Elias worked in silence until the muscles in his forearms burned. He scooped the broken rock out with his bare hands, the jagged edges of the limestone biting into his skin. He didn't mind the pain. The physical labor gave his mind an anchor, keeping the dark thoughts from drifting back to places he had spent ten years trying to forget: the smoke-blinded fields along the Shenandoah, the scream of wounded horses caught in breastworks, the silent, bloated bodies lying in the peach orchards while the rain washed the red clay into the creek beds.
He had buried twenty-two men of his own company in a single trench outside of Petersburg. He had dug that trench with a broken entrenching tool and his bare fingers, just as he was digging this post hole now. Afterward, he had sworn to God and the open sky that he would never again take responsibility for another human life. If a man stood alone, he died alone; there was no shame in that, and more importantly, there was no blood on your hands when the line collapsed.
He reached down, lifted the first cedar post, and dropped it into the hole with a solid, echoing thud.
Behind him, across the valley, a horse nickered.
It was not the high, nervous whinny of the dun mare in the corral, nor was it the deep, rumbling call of his own gelding. It was a strange mount, down in the thick willows where the creek bent toward the southern road.
Elias did not freeze. His body moved with the fluid, unconscious economy of an old soldier. He let go of the post, stepped smoothly off the mound of fresh earth, and dropped into the shadow of the leaning spruce, his right hand falling naturally to the hammer of his revolver.
Through the yellow leaves of the creek brush, half a mile out, he saw them.
Two riders. They were moving at a walk, their horses picked out in dark silhouettes against the pale grass of the public trail. They were not farmers; they rode deep in their stock saddles, their wide-brimmed hats pulled low, their carbines carried across their pommels in scabbards that had seen hard weather. They were riding the boundary line, their eyes fixed not on the road ahead, but on the timber posts Elias had sunk that morning.
One of them pointed toward the cabin. The other leaned over, spat a brown stream of tobacco juice onto the grass, and reined his mount around to face the northern ridge.
They sat there for three long minutes, studying the layout of the buildings, the position of the barn, and the smoke drifting from the chimney. Then, without a word, the lead rider touched his spurs to his horse’s flank, and the two of them trotted south, vanishing behind the shoulder of the red bluff.
Elias remained motionless in the brush for five minutes after the dust settled. His breath came slow and shallow, the old familiar coldness settling behind his eyes.
They were scouts. He had seen enough cavalry outposts to know the look of men who were taking the measure of an objective before the main column moved.
He stepped out of the brush, walked over to the newly set cedar post, and drove his heel against the dirt at its base, packing the earth tight and hard around the wood.
The dusk came down early, squeezed between the high granite wall of the canyon and the heavy belly of gray clouds rolling in from the north. By the time Elias brought the tools back to the lean-to, the temperature had dropped ten degrees. The puddles in the barnyard had skinned over with a brittle film of ice that crunched like broken glass under his boots.