The dust rose at once. It was fine and white and it got into everything โ into the eyes, into the folds of blankets, into the seams of boots, into the mouth so that every breath tasted of chalk. The sun stood above them like a burning coin, hard and white, and the sky gave no cloud to break it. By midmorning the heat had settled onto the column like a weight, and the old people swayed in their saddles, and the mothers shifted their children from one hip to the other, and the cattle lowed once, low and hopeless, and then fell silent again, as if even complaint cost water they could not spare.
Ethan watched the ground as he walked. It was a habit older than any prayer he knew. He watched where the dust lay thickest and where the stone showed through, where the ants had built their mounds and where the earth cracked in long, straight lines or in the curling pattern of a dried lake bed. He watched the line of the land ahead, where it rose gently toward a ridge, and he thought about the cottonwood saplings in Dead Canyon's side wash, green against all reason, pointing northwest like fingers. They were the only promise he had, and he carried them in his mind the way another man might carry a map.
Nakai walked near him for a time, his wooden cup tucked into his belt, his small face set in a determination far too old for eight years. He did not ask questions at first. He only walked, kicking at stones, glancing up at Ethan now and then as if to make sure the man was still there. Then, when the sun was high and the column had slowed to a crawl over a stretch of broken ground, the boy stopped.
My legs hurt, he said, simply, and sat down in the dust.
Ethan knelt beside him at once. The boy's lips were cracked. His eyes were bright in a way Ethan did not like, too bright, as if fever were already looking out through them. He took his canteen from his shoulder and tipped a mouthful into the wooden cup, and held it to Nakai's mouth. The boy drank, and then he looked up, ashamed.
I am not a baby, he said.
No, Ethan said. "Babies cry. You walked. There is a difference."
That drew a small, tired smile from him, and Ethan lifted him onto Sable's back for a little while, where the mare carried him gently, her ears flicking, as if she understood the weight she bore was precious. The chief watched this without speaking, his gray braids swinging as he turned his head, and there was something in his face that Ethan could not read โ gratitude, perhaps, or the weight of a man who had staked his people's lives on a stranger's reading of green shoots in a dry wash.
It was Tahnee's daughter Yana who fell next. She was seven, watchful and brave, and she had been walking beside her mother with her small hand clasped tight around Tahnee's fingers, carrying nothing, because Tahnee would not burden her. In the worst heat of the afternoon, on a slope of loose gravel where the footing gave way beneath tired feet, Yana's knees buckled. She did not cry out. She simply folded, as if the strings holding her upright had been cut, and went down into the dust with her eyes closed.
Tahnee screamed โ a sound that tore through the column and brought every head around โ and then she was on her knees in the gravel, gathering the girl into her arms, pressing her own cheek to Yana's forehead, whispering her name over and over. Ishtah came quickly, her medicine bundle swinging from her shoulder, her small hands steady despite her fifty-eight years. She felt the girl's wrist, lifted her eyelid, and looked up at Ethan.
Water, she said. "Now."
Ethan had already opened his canteen. The seep water he had found near camp, the damp pocket under a stone slab, was nearly gone; what remained he had guarded all morning for exactly this. He poured it into his battered tin cup and held it to Yana's lips, a little at a time, while Ishtah fanned her face with a piece of hide and Tahnee held her still. For a long moment nothing happened. The column stood waiting, breath held, dust settling on their shoulders. Then Yana coughed, a small, dry cough, and her eyes opened, confused and frightened, and she whispered, "Mother?"
Tahnee wept then, openly, pressing the girl's face to her shoulder, and the whole column seemed to breathe again. But Ethan felt the cost settle into his chest like a stone. The seep water was gone. They had walked half a day, and they had spent their last reserve on a child who had only stumbled. What would they do tomorrow, when another child fell, and the next?
Besh came up beside him as the march resumed, slower now, more careful. The oldest scout's scarred hands were steady on his horse's reins, and his eyes swept the horizon with the habit of a man who had spent a lifetime reading distance.
Riders, Besh said quietly, nodding south. "Far off. Watching."
Ethan looked. At the edge of sight, where the heat shimmered and made the world waver, there were dark shapes on horseback, too far to count, too still to be travelers. They did not approach. They did not ride away. They simply sat their horses and watched the column crawl northwest, as patient as vultures.
Murdock's men, Besh said. "They shadow us. They want to know where we go."
The chief heard, and his face did not change, but his hand tightened on his horse's mane. "Let them watch," he said. "We have nothing to hide except the water we have not yet found."