Aikens held his gaze a moment longer. Then he touched his hat β a parody
of politeness β wheeled his horse, and rode out with the younger hand
falling in behind him. Neither of them looked back.
Silas stood on the porch until the dust settled and the hoofbeats faded down
the creek trail. Then he stepped inside, closed the door, and lifted the rifle
from its place.
Saya stood in the middle of the room, her crutch in one hand, her face pale
and set.
"They know," she said.
"They suspect," Silas corrected. But his voice was grim. "Which is close
enough."
He crossed to the window and watched the empty trail. In his mind he was
already counting: the homestead's exposures, the canyon's approaches, the
days until Saya's leg could take real riding. And underneath it all, the cold
arithmetic he'd done in the shelter, now with new figures added.
Hale wasn't just buying land. He was clearing it β of shepherds, of travelers,
of anyone who wouldn't sell. And now he knew somebody had cut his trap.
Silas set the rifle across his knees and looked at Saya.
"Tomorrow," he said, "I ride into Juniper Flats. Quietly. There's a land office
39
there, and a blacksmith who owes me nothing but might tell me everything."
His jaw set. "If Hale's consolidating water rights around Three Springs,
there'll be paper. Paper's harder to hide than men."
Saya nodded slowly. Then she did something she hadn't done before β she
crossed the room, crutch thumping, and laid her hand flat against his chest,
over his heart.
"Then we find out," she said. "Together."
Outside, the wind moved through the cottonwood over the two small graves,
and the creek ran on toward the springs, and Silas Wren β who had spent
eight years waiting to die β felt, for the first time in all those years, like a
man with something left to protect.
That night, after the lamp was lit and the door barred, Saya finally let herself
shake.
She'd held herself iron-still through Aikens's visit β Silas had felt it in the
air of the cabin, the particular silence of a person making herself small and
ready. Now, with the riders gone, the trembling came up through her like a
fever returning, and she sat on the edge of the bunk with her hands knotted in
her lap, furious at her own body.
"I am not afraid of them," she said, low. "I want that understood. I am angry
that I must be careful of them. It is a different thing."
"I know the difference," Silas said. He was cleaning the rifle at the table β
not because it needed it, but because his hands needed the work. "Fear makes
you run. Anger makes you plan."
She looked at him. "Then help me plan. If they come back harder β if they
bring more men β I can ride. My leg will hold for a hard ride if it must.
40
Don't you dare leave me behind to keep me safe."
"I wouldn't dream of it," he said honestly. "Mostly because you'd cut my
other stirrup leather in my sleep."
That got a short, sharp laugh out of her β the first sound of ease since
midday. "I would. And then where would you be?"
"Stranded. Lesson learned." He set down the cleaning rod and looked at her
across the lamplight. "Saya. That man today β Aikens β he's Hale's fist.
The fact that Hale sent his fist instead of his lawyers means he's worried.
Men who aren't worried send paper."
"And the surveyor's red book is paper," she said slowly.
"Exactly." Silas leaned forward. "Tomorrow I ride to Juniper Flats. I'll go in
quiet, buy my supplies, and pay a call on Felipe at the smithy. His brother
was Esteban β if anyone's been keeping track of what's happening around
Three Springs, it's a man with a dead brother and a forge full of horseshoes."
He paused. "And I'll take a look at the land office records. Filings are public.
If Hale's been buying up water rights around the springs, his name'll be all
over that book."
"You'll be careful." It wasn't a question.
"Freight men are cockroaches, Saya. We survive everything." He tried for
lightness and didn't quite manage it. "Besides. Somebody has to come back
and cook the beans."
She rose then β crutch, three deliberate steps β and came to stand beside
his chair. Before he could ask what she was doing, she'd taken up her pouch,
knelt with some difficulty, and begun unwrapping his bad shoulder, her
fingers finding the knotted muscle unerringly.
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"What are you doing?"
"My hands are steadier than my nerves," she said. "And your shoulder's gone
tight as a drumhead. Sit still." She worked the poultice in with strong, sure
strokes, and gradually the shaking in her own hands eased as the healer's
focus took her over. "When my mother taught me this," she murmured, "she
said: a healer's hands must be calm even when her heart is not. The patient
borrows your calm. So you lend it, even if you have none to spare."
Silas sat very still under her hands, feeling the ache in his shoulder loosen β
and feeling, underneath it, something else loosen too. Eight years he'd lived
in this cabin like a man in a waiting room. Eight years of silence, of the clean
cup on the shelf, of talking to two stones under a cottonwood.
"When this is over," he said quietly, "whatever 'over' looks like β you'll go
back to your people. Dokan's looking. He'll find you."
Her hands paused. "Is that what you want?"
"It's what will happen," he said. "I'm not asking you to stay, Saya. I'm not
asking anything." He turned his head to look at her. "But while you're here
β while any of this is happening β I promised you in that shelter that they
wouldn't take you. I meant it then. I mean it now."