Mr. Murdock, he said, and then, seeing the chief, he corrected himself awkwardly. "Chief. Gentlemen. My name is Elias Pruitt. I am a surveyor, in the employ of Mr. Harlan Webb, of the eastern farms. Mr. Webb has filed a claim upon this canyon and its watercourse, for the use of his cattle range. I have the plat here, and the filing, and I am instructed to mark the boundaries."
Two claimants, one canyon, arriving within the hour of each other like two dogs arriving at the same bone. Murdock turned in his saddle and stared at the surveyor with an expression Ethan had not seen on him before: genuine surprise, sliding fast into fury.
Webb? Murdock said. "Harlan Webb filed on my canyon? That creek-thief from the east? His range is twenty-five miles from here! He has no more right to this water than the moon does!"
Mr. Webb's filing, Pruitt said, his voice thin but steady, "is dated the fourteenth of last month, and it describes the canyon by its survey lines. I am only here to mark it."
And my filing, Murdock snapped, "is dated the second, and describes it by the well line and the north trail. You can take your plat back to Webb and tell him โ"
I will tell him nothing, Pruitt interrupted, and Ethan saw the man's hands trembling on the case, and felt a sudden pity for him. He was not a gunman. He was a clerk with a ruler, sent by a rich man to do a rich man's errand, and he had ridden into a canyon full of armed men and discovered that his paper was the thinnest thing in it.
The chief raised one hand, and the arguing stopped โ not because he shouted, but because he had the kind of stillness that made other men quiet themselves to hear it.
Two men claim the water, the chief said. "Neither dug for it. Neither cleared the stone. Neither watched his children thirst beside an empty basin. One sells water at a price that starves. One diverts his creek for cattle. And both come now, when the stone is nearly moved, to say the water is theirs."
He looked first at Murdock, then at Pruitt, and his voice, when it came, was low and final as a door closing.
I refuse you both.
Murdock's smile vanished. "Chief, be careful. Refusing a lawful claim is โ"
I am careful, the chief said. "I have been careful for eleven days, while my people walked and thirsted and cleared this stone with their own hands. The water under this rockfall is not yours, because you did not find it. It is not Webb's, because a line on a map does not make a spring. It belongs to no man who comes to sell it. My people will drink from it, because they need it to live, and no paper will tell a child she must thirst so a rich man's cattle may drink."
Wade's hand moved toward his rifle, and Dzeni's rifle came up half an inch in answer, and for a heartbeat the canyon held its breath. Then Murdock laid a hand on Wade's arm, and Wade let his hand fall.
This is not finished, Murdock said. "You cannot refuse the law with a speech, Chief. I will be back, and I will bring more than talk."
We will be here, the chief said. "Drinking."
Murdock turned his horse, and his men turned with him, and the surveyor, after a long, uncertain look at the chief and at the basin, mounted and rode out behind them, his plat unmarked.
Ethan watched them go until the dust settled behind them on the canyon trail. His throat was dry โ they all were dry, still, the seep giving only sips โ and his hands were still cut from the stone. He thought of the way two greedy men had argued over water neither of them had touched, and he felt a coldness settle in his chest. Murdock would be back. The surveyor would report to Webb. The law, whatever it was out here, would arrive sooner or later on horseback, and it would not arrive thirsty.
The chief turned to him, and Ethan saw that the old man was not triumphant. He was tired, and beneath the tiredness there was a question he had not yet asked.
Ethan, the chief said. "Tonight, when the fires are low, you will come to my fire alone. There is something about this water you have not told me. I can see it in your face when you look at the basin. I would hear it before Murdock comes back with his law."
Ethan nodded. The secret he had carried since he first read the seam was heavy in his mouth. Tonight, he thought, he would set it down.
Tonight, he said.
The fires burned low that night, as the chief had said they would. The canyon held the day's heat in its stone for a while, and then gave it back slowly, and the cold came down from the stars โ sharp, clean, and sudden. The band slept in clusters around small fires, wrapped in blankets, the children tucked against their mothers, the horses picketed in the wash. Above them, on the rim, Murdock's campfires burned too: three small, bright points, too far away to hear, too near to forget.
Ethan sat at the chief's fire alone with the old man, as he had been asked to do. Nakai slept nearby, curled under a blanket, his wooden cup beside his hand. Ishtah had gone to sit with the young warrior whose hand she had splinted, and Besh kept the night watch, his rifle across his knees, his eyes on the rim. The chief did not speak for a long time. He poked the fire with a stick, and watched the sparks rise, and waited, because he understood that some truths cannot be hurried out of a man. They have to be offered.