They struck the winter camp in the box canyon, leaving behind the piles of ash and the memories of the starvation months, and headed for the high meadows. The journey was a slog through mud that was thick as molasses, sucking at the hooves of the ponies and the moccasins of the walkers, but there was a lightness in the air that had not been there before. The scent of pine resin grew stronger in the warming days, and in the shelter of the rocks, tiny purple wildflowers began to push their heads up through the wet soil. Luke Carver rode near the front of the column, a position that would have been unthinkable 3 months ago. He sat on Roan, his bay gelding having regained some flesh with the new spring grass.
Across his saddle lay a Winchester rifle. It was not his old one, that had been lost or traded long ago, but one Nantan had given him from the tribe stores. It was a heavy symbol, that rifle. It meant they no longer believed he would turn it on them. It meant he was, if not a brother, then at least a necessary part of their survival.
He watched the land with eyes that had changed. He no longer scanned the horizon solely for his own safety. He scanned it for theirs. He looked for the glint of sun on a soldier's brass button, the dust cloud of a cattle drive, the unnatural straight lines of wagon tracks. The new camp was situated in a high valley, a bowl of green surrounded by granite peaks that scraped the belly of the sky.
The water here was clear and cold, tumbling down from the snowpack, and the grazing was good. The horses rolled in the fresh grass, shedding their winter coats in clumps of ragged fur. As the days lengthened, the dynamic between Luke and Ayanna began to shift. It was not a softening, exactly, but a sharpening of focus. The necessary proximity of camp life threw them together.
They found themselves repairing the same corral fence, or watering horses at the same bend in the creek. At first, the silence between them was a wall. Then, it became a series of short, tense exchanges. "Pass the rope," she would say, not looking at him. "Here," he would answer, placing it in her hand.
But as the sun grew warmer, the words grew more frequent. Ayanna began to ask questions. They were not idle chatter. They were interrogations, driven by a desperate need to understand the enemy that was slowly eating her world. They stood one afternoon by the stream, the water rushing over smooth stones.
Luke was scrubbing down a saddle blanket. Ayanna was filling waterskins. "Why do they want it all?" she asked suddenly. Luke paused. His hands slick with soap and water.
He didn't have to ask who she meant. "They think it is empty," he said. Ayanna looked around at the valley, at the smoke rising from the wikiups, at the herd of ponies grazing. "It is not empty to them if it does not have a fence." "It is empty," Luke explained, ringing out the heavy wool. "They have a hunger, Ayanna.
It is not just for land. It is for something they call ownership." She frowned, the concept alien to her tongue. "Ownership? How can you own the ground? The ground was here before the first man, and it will be here after the last man dies." Luke sighed, wiping his wet hands on his pants.
"In their world, in my world, everything is written on paper. Deeds, titles. A man pays gold, and a man in a big house in Washington signs a paper, and suddenly that man owns the mountains, the water, the trees. He can put a fence around it and shoot anyone who crosses it." "But he has never walked it," Ayanna argued, her voice rising with frustration. "He does not know where the deer sleep.