"Probably." Lyra laughed. "Man of few words. I respect that." Cole didn't answer.
Behind them, Sani and Kaya were talking in low voices, a language Cole didn't recognize. The sounds were sharp, rhythmic, nothing like the Spanish or French he'd heard in border towns. He wondered where they'd come from, what had driven them this far into the frontier. But he didn't ask. People's pasts were their own business.
By midday, the sun had burned off the morning chill and replaced it with heat that shimmered off the rocks. They stopped at a shallow creek to water the horses and refill their canteens. Cole dismounted, stretched his back, and immediately regretted it when something in his lower spine popped. "You're getting old," Lyra observed, dropping down beside him. "I'm not old."
"You move like you're old." "I move like someone who's been shot at too many times." Sani knelt by the creek, cupping water in her hands and drinking slowly. "How many times have you been shot?" Cole hesitated.
"Four. Maybe five." "Maybe?" "One of them might have just been a graze. Hard to tell when you're bleeding that much."
Kaya crouched beside Sani, filling her canteen. "You live a dangerous life, Cole Mercer." "Used to," he said. "These days I try to keep my head down." "That why you stepped in front of four armed men to save three strangers?"
Cole didn't have an answer for that. He took a long drink from his canteen, wiped his mouth, and changed the subject. "We'll make Silver Ridge by tomorrow if we don't run into delays. Once we're there, I'll ask around about the cattle drive. If they're hiring, you three stay quiet and let me do the talking."
"Why?" Lyra asked. "Because trail bosses are stubborn, mean, and they don't like surprises. You show up looking like you've never seen a cow before, they'll laugh you off the ranch." "So lie," Kaya said.
"I'm not lying. I'm just not mentioning certain details." "That's lying." "That's survival." Kaya smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"You're good at that, aren't you?" "Survival?" "Good enough to still be breathing." They remounted and rode on. The landscape shifted gradually, trading flat scrubland for rolling hills dotted with juniper and piñon pine.
The air cooled as they climbed, and by late afternoon, Cole could see the faint outline of mountains in the distance, their peaks still capped with snow despite the season. As the sun dipped toward the horizon, Cole found a sheltered spot beneath an overhang of red rock and called for a halt. They unsaddled the horses, set up a small fire, and rationed out the dried meat and hardtack Cole had packed. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Lyra sat across the fire from Cole, chewing slowly and watching him with unnerving intensity.
"What?" Cole finally asked. "Just wondering." "About?" "Why a man who clearly hates company keeps letting us follow him."
"I didn't let you. You're just stubborn." "True," Lyra said, "but you could have shot us." "I don't shoot people for being annoying." "Good policy."
Sani spoke up from where she sat, her voice quiet but firm. "He's letting us follow because he understands." "Understands what?" Cole asked. "That we won't leave. That fighting us would take more energy than tolerating us."
"And that somewhere deep down, you don't actually want to be alone." Cole stared at her. "You don't know me." "I know men," Sani said. "And I know what loneliness looks like."