It didn't matter. Dashka didn't need them. She rode with her chin up and her eyes half shut, reading the ground the way a preacher reads scripture, choosing every turn, never slowing. Around the 10th mile, Tavana pushed her gray up close to me. close enough to shout over the downpour. Boon, my first name.
First time she'd used it. I almost came out of the saddle. There is a thing I must tell you about the hides. Now, now because all night you have believed you burned our grandfathers in that tower. I saw it on your face.
I watched you carry it under that rope until dawn. You do not need to carry it one more mile. I burned them, Tavana. I held them till they were ash. You burned hides.
She dragged the rain off her face with the back of her wrist. My father painted those for your courts, for your judges, because your people will not believe a thing unless it is written on something. But the map was never on hide. It was always in us. I stared at her through the water running off my hat.
Five daughters, five countries. When we were grown women, he walked each of us through our own piece of the land, season after season, until we knew every spring and seep and buried river in it. The way you know the inside of your own mouth. Dashka holds the east. Yona the red rocks.
Can the high messes the south towards Sonora and I hold the north, this mountain, this canyon, everything that runs beneath it. That's why they hung you instead of instead of killing us. Yes. Kill one and one country goes dark forever. Ror knew it.
He knew my father. He knew how my father thought. Her face was streaming. You destroyed nothing, Boon. You burned the one thing that made us worth hunting.
You kept the thing that makes us worth something. Do you see the difference? I saw it. I'd ridden all night with 37 graves and every river in the territory on my back, and she'd just lifted half the load off with a handful of words. You might have mentioned this last night.
Last night, you were very busy being brave. It seemed rude to interrupt. Ahead of us, Dashka threw up her hand and hauled the paint back on its hawks. the canyon mouth. Two days ago, it had been a dry rock floor. Now it was a creek, ankle deep, brown, fast, carrying sticks and yellow foam and climbing.
I could watch it climb. The broken mountain was catching the whole storm on its shoulders and pouring it out through every crack it owned. Ror's black stood at the water's edge. Riderless, lthered, head hanging. He's gone in on foot.
Then he is a fool. A greedy fool. That is worse. Dashka was already sliding down off the paint. The water rises faster inside.
Much faster. Soon. How soon? Soon enough that we should stop talking. We went in, waiting.
The current dragged at my knees. Both canyon walls were running with water. Little falls spilling off every ledge. The roar of it filling everything so I couldn't hear my own boots for once. We passed where Drie's camp had been.
The fire ring was gone under brown water. A dead man's hat came spinning past my legs and away. Then the cave mouth where the crack had been. Ror's men had cleared the rubble into a ragged hole big enough to lead a horse through. Lantern light flickered inside.
Dashka went first. Before I could grab her, she was the quickest and the quietest of us. And she was over the rubble like a shadow crossing a wall. I heard her cry out. I came through the hole with the Winchester shouldered and Tavana right behind me. the treasure cave by lantern light.
Gold on every side, the same as before, except now the floor shone wet, a thin sheet of water spreading from somewhere in the back. And in the middle of it all, Thaddius Ro, hatless, soaked, grinning. A canvas sack slung over one shoulder, sagging and chinking with every move, and his other arm locked across Dashka's throat, the muzzle of his pistol jammed up under her jaw. Halleran, you're a mighty hard man to hang. Let her go, Thaddius.
I don't believe I will. She's coming with me as far as the horses. Maybe a good deal further. She knows some country I'd dearly like to see. Dashka's eyes found mine, not frightened.
Furious, she stood dead still against him. The way you stand still when a rattler's coiled at your boot. Tavana had her rifle up on his face 6 in from her sister's ear. Go ahead, niece. You're good.
You're not that good. Not with her squirming. I am that good. Then why is your hand shaking? It was a little not from fear.
From the one thing she'd waited a month to do, standing right in front of her, wrapped around her sister's neck. The water on the floor was rising over my boot souls now. And it wasn't coming from the cave mouth behind us. It came from the back from behind a low wall of fitted stones. I'd never noticed.
Old stones laid tight without mortar, running clear across the rear of the cave, maybe four feet high, like a little dam. Water was squirting through the joints between them now. Hard under pressure, Tavana saw where my eyes had gone. Low in English, never taking her sights off. Ror.
The grandfathers built that wall. There is a river under this mountain. When the rains come, it rises. The wall keeps this room dry. If the wall goes, the river goes through this room to the door fast.
How fast? Fast enough. Ror was backing toward the hole, dragging Dashka. The sackchinking talks over. Step aside, Marshal.
I moved my rifle. Off him onto the old stone wall onto one stone near the center of the top course, a little bigger than the rest. Water spraying out around its edges like a fountain in a city park. Dashka. Her eyes came to me.
When the water hits you, go down, not back. down. Ror's face changed. What in hell are you? I fired. The keystone burst, and the grandfather's wall came apart all at once, and the river under the mountain came through.