Sheltered on three sides by the rock walls and shaded by a stand of cottonwoods following a thin stream. He could smell cook fire smoke before he saw the first brush dwelling. He came in slow, hands visible. The way you do when you want men with rifles to make their own minds up about you. He'd done this before.
You let them see you're not afraid and you're not a fool, and then you wait. An older man came forward. Not old, the word that fit was elder. He was lean and straight-backed and his face was the face of someone who had made hard decisions for a long time and had stopped flinching. Wesley later learned his name was Nantaje.
He was the headman of this small band, one of the last groups that had not yet been pressed north to San Carlos. Wesley spoke with Spanish he had. Nantaje answered in kind, and between them they had enough language to trade in. The two horses were brought forward and inspected carefully. Nantaje's men ran their hands down the legs, checked the teeth, watched the animals move.
They knew horse flesh. They knew it better than Wesley did, probably. The negotiation had gone on perhaps 20 minutes when Nantaje stopped it. He turned and said something to the men behind him. Wesley couldn't follow the Chiricahua words.
But a murmur moved through the men gathered there. Not an approving murmur. Something more complicated. A few of them looked away. A woman was brought forward.
She walked on her own. No one pushed her, but no one stood beside her, either. She stopped a few feet from Wesley and looked at him without lowering her eyes. She was perhaps 22, 23. A narrow face with a strong jaw and dark eyes that held a quality he could only describe later as a person who had decided to stop being afraid of what other people thought.
She wore a calico blouse and a deerskin skirt, and her black hair was braided with a thin strip of red cloth. There was a scar along her left forearm, starting just below the elbow and running several inches toward her wrist. Old scar tissue, long healed, white against her brown skin. Nantaje spoke again, and the Spanish came out halting, but clear enough. The woman's name was Sonsee.