The defiance left her shoulders all at once. Her lip trembled, her chin dropped toward her chest, and she fell to her knees upon the buffalo robes, burying her face in her hands as five years of unshed tears broke through her defense.
Maverick did not reach out to hold her; he knew better than to touch a wild creature that had been bruised for too long. He simply picked up the discarded veil, laid it gently by the doorway, added three dry piñon sticks to the fire, and sat keeping watch over her tears until the first gray light of dawn touched the high rim of the valley.
The dawn came up over the rimrocks like spilled copper, staining the high sandstone towers a bruised vermilion before spilling down into the bottom of the valley. In the damp chill of first light, the mist rose off the river in slow, ghostly ribbons that clung to the tops of the cottonwoods and tangled among the wild rose thickets.
Inside the lodge beneath the black willow, Maverick woke before the birds began to chatter. A man who had spent fifteen years sleeping with one ear cocked for cattle rustlers, horse thieves, and flash floods did not lose the habit simply because he had a roof over his head. His eyes opened without a twitch of muscle. His hand went naturally to his right hip, fingers searching for the smooth walnut grip of the Colt Army revolver, before he remembered where he was.
The fire in the central pit had settled into an ash-dusted mound of dull orange embers. Across the hearth, wrapped in a double layer of woven wool blankets and a winter-cured buffalo hide, lay Hesper.
She was sleeping on her side, her back turned to him. The long cascade of her black hair fell across the buckskin pillow like ink spilled across dry parchment. From this angle, only the unblemished right side of her jaw was visible, smooth and golden in the faint amber seepage of the coals. Beside her hand, placed carefully on the flat river stone where she could reach it the moment she stirred, lay the heavy buckskin veil.
Maverick sat up quietly, making sure the dry grass beneath his blankets did not crackle. His joints ached with the memory of three days in the saddle, and his throat still felt raw from the dust of the Tucson basin. He pulled on his boots, retrieved his hat, and buckled his cartridge belt around his hips, tying the leather thong around his right thigh with a weathered square knot.
He slipped out through the leather doorway into the morning frost.
The valley smelled of damp river mud, decomposing leaves, and the pungent, clean bite of mountain sage. Two hundred yards downriver, the village was already stirring. Blue woodsmoke rose straight into the windless air from a dozen hearth fires. An old woman with a wicker basket was bent double near the water’s edge, gathering wild mint and watercress; three dogs barked once at a stray hawk overhead and then curled back into the warm ash piles beside the wickiups.
Maverick walked to Bramble’s rope corral, checked the gelding’s legs for heat or swelling, and nodded with satisfaction. The horse had drunk deeply and was already tearing into the high grama grass with steady, crunching bites.
"He likes the grass here," a voice spoke from behind the willows.
Maverick didn't flinch, though his thumb brushed the hammer of his revolver out of instinct.
Emerging from the brush was Lobo Negro. The chief was dressed for the cold in an elk-hide mantle lined with beaver fur. In his right hand, he carried a heavy ash bow and a quiver of dogwood arrows fletched with eagle feathers; in his left, he held a rusted iron spade with an ash-wood handle, an artifact traded from Mexican freighters years ago.
"A good horse knows good water," Maverick said, resting his forearm on Bramble’s wither. "Better than most men do."
Lobo Negro stopped three paces away. His dark eyes, shadowed under the heavy shelf of his brow, drifted from Maverick to the silent lodge beneath the willow, then back to Maverick's face.
"She wept," the chief said. It was not a question.
"She did," Maverick answered evenly. "And after that, she slept."
"Did you demand that she put the skin back over her flesh?"
"I didn't ask her to hide anything," Maverick said, holding the old man's stare until the chief gave a barely perceptible nod. "A woman who carries scars she didn't ask for doesn't need a stranger barking orders at her. She put the mask down because she wanted to show me her truth. I showed her mine."
Lobo Negro stared at him for a long moment, the wind stirring the white strands of hair that framed his temple. "Words come easily in the morning, Maverick Cole. Rocks and timber do not move with words. Come."