The next morning she was up before he was. He came out of his bedroom and found her at the wood stove. She had already fed it and had the coffee on and was working at something near the back door. It took him a moment to see what. She had found the broken chair he'd shoved into the corner 3 months ago and was looking at the cracked leg with the expression of a person who knows how to fix things and intends to.
She glanced at him when he came in, then went back to the chair. He poured his coffee. She didn't take any for herself. He poured a second cup without asking and set it on the table near where she was working and went out to feed the horses. When he came back, the cup was empty and the chair was mended.
She had used a piece of rawhide from her bundle to bind the joint. It would hold better than the nail he'd been planning to use. He sat down at the table. He said, "Thank you. " He said it in English first and then tried the Spanish word. She looked up.
She said something in Chiricahua. He shook his head not understanding. She pointed at the chair and then at him with a short, precise gesture that clearly meant yours. Then she went to find something else to do. That was more or less how the next several weeks went.
The language came in pieces. Wesley had picked up a little Chiricahua from a scout years ago. Broken fragments good enough to name animals and simple actions. Sonsee's Spanish was better than she'd first let on. She had kept it back cautiously.
The way you don't spend money you're not sure you can replace. As the weeks passed, she spent it more freely. He learned that she'd been born in the canyon country near the Chiricahua's old summer grounds to the north. That she had married at 17, a good man, she said. He had died in a raid 3 years back.
Not fallen in battle, he had died in the pursuit afterward, chasing down riders who had taken horses from the band. There was a warrior in the band named Duclura who had led that pursuit. Who had, by some accounts, been slow to call the retreat. Who had watched Sonsee's husband ride into an ambush and done nothing. Duclura had come for Sonsee the following spring, expecting to step easily into the place her husband had occupied.