Someone said that maybe Tanner had gone soft in the head from living alone too long. Someone else said that it did not really matter why he had done it, only that he had to stop before the consequences caught up with all of them. A few men mentioned things they remembered from the old days. Raids and fires and the sounds that came from cabins that no one reached in time, and the fear grew thicker with every word. Samuel Crew, the storekeeper who sold flour and coffee and ammunition to everyone in the valley, cleared his throat and said what everyone else was thinking, but no one had wanted to say out loud.
If those Apache get through the winter strong enough to walk, he said, "What is to stop them from remembering where the ranches are? What is to stop them from coming back in the summer with their cousins and their horses and doing what their people have always done when they find weakness? It was an ugly thought, and it hung in the cold air like the smoke from their breath. Some of the men looked away because they did not want to be the ones caught agreeing with it. But others nodded harder, their jaws set and their eyes narrow.
And someone suggested that maybe they should ride out there armed and give Tanner a choice. Send the Apache back into the snow or face the consequences. But before anyone could fetch a horse or a rifle, a voice from the back of the group cut through the murmur. It was old Clara Hicks, the widow who lived in the smallest cabin at the edge of town. She had not said 10 words to anyone in public since her husband died in the chalera outbreak of 74.
But now she pushed through the crowd of men like they were nothing but fence posts in her way. And she walked right up to the front where everyone could see her. And she looked at each man in turn with eyes that were sharp and cold and completely unimpressed. I remember the winter of 61," she said, and her voice was stronger than anyone expected. My husband and I were starving in a cabin 50 mi from here because the supply wagon had broken an axle, and no one in the world knew we were there.
We had eaten the last of our food 3 days before, and we were too weak to walk out. Do you know who found us? Do you know who brought us meat and guided us out of the mountains before the next storm buried that cabin? She paused and looked around at the faces of the men who were suddenly not meeting her eyes. "It was not any of you," she said.