The directness of someone who has decided the shortest line between questions is the honest one. Cole. And this was the thing. This was what he'd remember. Did not have to think.
He looked at Kaya. She was looking at him. Had been since Gray Elk started the sentence. Those amber eyes that had spent 3 months reading him the way she read tracks. Carefully, precisely, believing what they showed her.
He looked back. At this woman in her ochre dress with the turquoise beads dusky in the torchlight. And her braids over her shoulders. And 3 months of shared mornings and shared silences and shared work written in the way she stood and the way she was looking at him right now. Yes, Cole said.
Not for Gray Elk. Just the truth. Said the way you say something you've known for a while and are finally giving its right name. "Yes. I love her."
Kaya. Her face. He'd watched her face for 3 months. He knew the small lexicon of it. The tightness around the eyes when she'd seen something troubling.
The fractional lift at the left corner of her mouth that was as close as she got to open amusement. The way she looked at plants she was proud of versus plants that were giving her trouble. What happened on her face now was not in any of that. It was new. He filed it immediately and completely.
She breathed in slow. The particular quality of breath that happens when something you weren't certain was coming arrives. Gray Elk looked at Cole for a long moment. Then, "Good." The word of a man who has put down something very heavy.
He turned to his riders, spoke in Apache. Briefly, the warriors began to dismount. "We camp here tonight." Gray Elk said to Cole as simply as weather. Tomorrow we ride back with good news and that was that.
The next hours were the strangest and most ordinary of Cole's life. Apache warriors in his yard, their horses at his corral, a fire in the flat ground east of the stable. The sounds of a camp assembling, lower voices than he was used to, the specific language moving through the air. He made coffee. More than he'd ever made at once, the large winter pot.
Brought it out and offered it around. There was a moment when he handed a cup to a warrior who had five months ago held a spear at his face and the man took it with a nod and that was that. History was apparently contextual. Kaya cooked. Of course.
Already moving between the camp and the kitchen with the ease of a person navigating two rooms of the same house. She brought things from the garden and combined them with what was in the kitchen and what the Apache had brought in their packs and the result fed 17 people and smelled extraordinary. River Wolf found Cole at the corral fence around 10. The camp behind them had settled into the quiet of a fire burning low. Someone somewhere playing a drum beat soft enough to be restful.