Ishtah nodded, her iron-gray hair catching the firelight. "And the women and children will be kept back," she said, firmly, as if it were already decided, which it was. "Not from fear. From wisdom. They will wait in the wash behind the camp, with the old people, where the rock shelters them, until the water is open and the first shouting is done. Then they will come forward, and drink in the open, where all can see them. That is the order of it. The water first, then the people, then โ if God wills โ peace."
Tahnee looked up then, Yana's small head heavy on her arm. "And if there is no peace?" she asked, quietly. "If Wade fires?"
Then we do not fire back, the chief said. "That is my order, and I give it now, before anger can change it. No retaliation. We will stand, and we will drink, and we will let Murdock's men see what they would be shooting at. If a man must be ashamed of his own rifle, let him be ashamed of it himself. We will not shame him by killing him."
A murmur went around the circle โ not dissent, exactly, but the sound of hard men hearing a hard order and measuring it against their pride. Dzeni's jaw worked. Ethan watched him, and saw the struggle in his face: his brother Pash, killed by settlers two years before, rising in his memory; the rifle in his hands, ready; and beside it, the chief's word, and the faces of the children in the wash, and the knowledge that a single shot at dawn could turn a spring into a battlefield. Slowly, Dzeni nodded. It was the hardest nod Ethan had ever seen a man give.
Then give me the high path, Dzeni said. "If Murdock's men come down the rim trail, they must pass the high path first. I will hold it. Not to shoot โ to stand, and to be seen standing. Let them come past me if they can do it without firing."
And I will go with him, Jolon said, suddenly, his voice thin but clear. Every head turned. Jolon had sat silent through the whole council, his hands in his lap, his eyes on the fire, a man who had betrayed the band's route and been forgiven and did not yet know how to live inside that forgiveness. Now he looked up, and his face was pale in the firelight, but his eyes were steady. "I told Murdock the route once. I will not let him use it again. Give me the high path with Dzeni, and let me prove, at dawn, that I am not the man I was at Murdock's well."
The silence that followed was the silence of men deciding whether to trust a man who had already broken trust once. Dzeni looked at Jolon for a long time, and Ethan held his breath, because he knew that Dzeni's answer would matter more than the chief's order โ a man can obey an order, but only a man can forgive a brother.
Come, then, Dzeni said at last, gruffly, as if the words cost him. "But you walk behind me on the path, and you carry no rifle. You carry a staff, and you stand, and you do not run."
I will not run, Jolon said.
The chief nodded, and the plan took shape around the fire. At dawn, Dzeni and Jolon would take the high path and hold the rim. Ethan would open the basin, with Besh beside him. The women and children would wait in the wash, guarded by Kani and Chinche, until Ishtah gave the signal. The warriors would stand between the water and the rim trail, rifles lowered, not raised. And no one would fire first, or fire back, whatever happened.
There was one more thing, and Ethan did it when the council broke, when the others were rising and going to their fires. He took his notebook โ the small, battered book with all his water-marks, the only thing he owned that could not be replaced โ and he held it out to Besh.
Keep this, he said, quietly, so that only Besh heard. "In case. If anything happens to me at dawn, the marks are in there. The seam, the signs, the way to the southern seep. A man who can read it can find water again."
Besh looked at the notebook, and then at Ethan, and his scarred hands closed around it slowly. "Nothing will happen to you," he said, with the dry certainty of an old scout. "But I will keep it. And I will give it back to you at noon, when we are all drinking."
I hope so, Ethan said, and he meant it, and he did not quite believe it.
He walked back to his own fire then, and lay down with his coat for a blanket, and stared up at the stars over the canyon rim, where Murdock's fires still burned, small and bright and patient. He thought about the plug-stone, and the water pressing behind it, and the high path, and the children in the wash, and the order not to fire back, and he thought that dawn would decide more than whether a spring ran. It would decide what kind of people they all were, when the water finally came.