Dawn came to Stone Bowl Canyon the way water comes to a dry place: slowly at first, and then all at once. The eastern rim caught fire first, a thin line of gold along the rock, and then the light spilled down the walls, and the cold of the night lifted, and the canyon smelled of dust and stone and the faint, green smell of the moss in the basin's shade. Ethan was awake before it. He had not slept, not truly β he had lain with his eyes open, listening to the horses shifting in the wash, to the soft breathing of the camp, to the silence from the rim where Murdock's fires had burned down to embers. Now he rose, and washed his face with the last of the seep water from his cup, and walked to the basin with Besh at his side, his heart beating hard against his ribs, not from fear, but from the weight of what the morning would decide.
The band was already moving, quietly, in the order the council had set. Dzeni and Jolon were gone β they had left before first light, climbing the high path in the dark, Dzeni with his rifle slung and Jolon with only a staff, two figures against the stars, going up to stand where the rim trail narrowed. The women and children were in the wash behind the camp, guarded by Kani and Chinche, the old people among them, Tahnee holding Yana and Koi close, Sani with the infant Lula wrapped against her chest. Ishtah waited near the basin with her medicine bundle, her face calm, her hands ready, as if she already knew that the morning would ask her for her work. The warriors stood in a loose line between the water and the rim trail, rifles lowered, their faces set, their eyes on the trail where Murdock's men would come.
Ethan knelt at the plug-stone. The clay packing was dry and hard. The lever β a stout bar of ironwood, set under the slab's edge β waited in his hands. He looked at Besh, and Besh nodded, once, and Ethan thought of the notebook in Besh's pack, and of the promise that it would be given back at noon, and he set his shoulders and pulled.
The stone moved. It did not move easily β it moved the way a door moves when the house has settled around it, groaning, resisting, and then giving, all at once. Clay cracked. Gravel rattled. And then, from the throat of the basin, water came.
It did not burst. It came the way Ethan had always known it would: first a dark seep, then a thread, then a stream, clear and cold, running over sandstone, filling the hollow, spilling down the channel they had laid with flat stones, singing as it went β a sound none of them had heard in fifty-five days, a sound so ordinary and so miraculous that for a moment no one moved at all. Then the basin filled, inch by inch, the water clear as glass over the stone, reflecting the gold of the rim, and the channel ran full, and the smell of it rose up, clean and mineral, like rain on a roof that has waited all summer.
The chief stepped forward first. He knelt at the basin's edge, cupped water in both hands, and drank, slowly, deliberately, the way a man drinks when he wants everyone watching to understand that this is not theft and not triumph but a simple, human act. Then he turned, and nodded, and the warriors came forward, and then the others, cup by cup, hand by hand, kneeling at the water with a reverence Ethan had never seen given to anything made by men. Besh drank, and wiped his mouth, and laughed β a short, startled laugh, as if he had forgotten how. Ishtah dipped her fingers and touched them to her forehead. Tahnee brought Yana forward, and the girl knelt and drank from her mother's hands, water running down her chin, her eyes wide with disbelief.
It was then, in the middle of the drinking, that the rim trail filled with horses.
Murdock came down first, Wade beside him, the other riders behind, and they came fast, too fast for men who only wanted to talk, their horses scattering gravel, their rifles in their hands. They had waited on the rim, Ethan saw, waited for the water to be opened, waited for the work to be done, and now they came to take what the opening had made. Dzeni and Jolon stood on the high path above them β Ethan could see them, small against the sky, Dzeni with his rifle raised but not aimed, Jolon with his staff planted β and Murdock's men rode past them, or around them, too many and too fast for two men standing to stop, and came down into the canyon, shouting.
Hold there! Murdock cried, reining in at the water's edge, his horse blowing, his thin face flushed. "That water is claimed! By filing and by law! You will step back from it, all of you, or my men will clear this ground!"
No one stepped back. The band stood where they were, cups in their hands, water on their lips, and looked at him, and Ethan felt a terrible, quiet pride in them β they did not run, they did not raise their rifles, they simply stood and drank, as the chief had ordered, as if Murdock's shouting were wind against a wall.
The chief rose from the basin's edge, water dripping from his hands, and faced Murdock. "We are drinking," he said, evenly. "Your claim is paper. Our thirst is real. Step down from your horse, and drink with us, and we will talk about sharing. That is my offer, and it stands."