A little, not enough, a leader's ration. How long were you up there? Since the sky turned gray. That was the one with the scarred hand. They said they would come back when the sun had finished with us if we changed our minds.
About what? Silence. All five of them. And then something passed between them that I didn't see so much as feel. A look, a pause.
Like a door opening and closing in a house I wasn't invited into. The tall one turned back to me. Names first, Marshal. So she'd seen the badge. Of course she had.
Boon Halleran. I am Tavana. She touched each woman's shoulder in turn as she named them as if naming was a thing you did with your hands. Kane, Yon, Dashka, Isha, the rifle shoulders, the healer, the listener, the sharp mouth. The mission at San Rafael is 10 mi south.
The Padres's there will take you in, feed you. Nobody hunts anybody on mission ground. Isha laughed. It was not a happy laugh. Everybody hunts everybody on mission ground.
They just pray after. Tavana didn't laugh. We do not go south. Then where after them? I looked at her.
She looked back. The wind moved her hair across her face and she didn't brush it away. You want to chase down the men who hung you on a tree? Yes. Five women, one rifle between you, which is mine.
Yes. That's not a plan. That's a eulogy. Something almost like a smile touched the corner of her mouth and died there. Then write it well.
I went up to the rimrock to see about the lookout. Partly because it was my job. partly because I needed 30 seconds away from those eyes. He was dead. Bottle in his coat, rifle beside him, a cheap Spencer carbine. I went through his pockets the way I'd been taught.
Tobacco, $4 in silver, a folding knife, and a paper folded in quarters and soft from handling. I opened it, printed official. The kind of notice they tack on the wall of every stage station from Yuma to Lordsburg. Reward $500 for the apprehension of five Apache women wanted for the murder of the Pickering brothers and the robbery of their freight. Armed and dangerous by order of Thaddeus Ror, Sheriff, Saguaro County.
I read it twice, then a third time slower. The way you reread a letter that says somebody died. Five Apache women. The moccasin prints. Too neat.
And the case I'd been writing for 3 weeks. My case, my warrant. The one Amos Puit had handed me himself in Tucson with his hand on my shoulder and his voice low. Bring them in, son. Whoever they are, whoever they are.
I looked down from the rocks. Five women standing in the shade of the tree that almost killed them, passing my canteen, watching me, watching me read. I climbed down slow. My hand was already on the cuffs at my belt before my boots hit the sand. And I hated that.
And I did it anyway because a badge is a promise. And the promise doesn't care how a man feels about it. Tavana saw the paper in my other hand. Saw my face. She didn't run.
Her voice came out low, almost a breath. So now you know what they call us, murderers. That is one word. It's the word on my warrant. Kane took a step.
Isha took two. Tavana raised one hand, palm down, and they both stopped like the air had gone solid. Hold out your wrists. Her eyes went to the iron. Then to the raw red marks the rawhide had left.
Then to me you cut us down to put us back in rope. Iron, not rope. Ropes for hanging, irons for court. Is there a difference, Marshal? There is to me.
A long breath. The wind. The dead packhorse. The shadow of that crooked limb lying across the sand between us like a line somebody drew. She held out her wrists, the cuffs closed.
Click, click. The loudest sound in the territory. Isha swore at me in two languages. I understood the English half. It was creative.
Tavana never took her eyes off mine. And there, hanging from a thong around her neck, half tucked inside her buckskin, I saw a small pouch of old leather, darkened with sweat and years. Her cuffed hands rose without thinking and covered it. Not her throat, not her face. That pouch I filed it away, which is another thing Lawman learned to do.
And somewhere north over the far ranges, a long bruise of cloud had started building. Black on the bottom, white on top. The kind of sky that doesn't storm today. It storms when you've forgotten it was coming. The lookout had left his horse picketed in a crack behind the rimrock.
A ragged bay with a Mexican saddle and a bad attitude. So now we had two horses for six people and one canteen for all of us. And the sun was sliding west like it had somewhere better to be. I put Tavana on the bay, cuffed hands on the horn. Isha behind her.
The others walked. I rode the sorrel with the Winchester across my thighs and my eyes on everything. Nobody spoke for the first mile, which suited me. The second mile, Dashka drifted up beside my stirrup. The listener, lean and quiet, with a way of walking that never seemed to put weight on anything.
You go the wrong way, Marshal. I'm going toward the stage road. Yes, the wrong way. The right way is wherever my warrant says. She tilted her head toward the low hills on our left.
Water is that way. A seep under the red rocks. 2 hours. I don't see any red rocks. Because you are looking with a white man's eyes and the rocks are hiding. Kane snorted somewhere behind me.
I didn't turn around. Dashka knows the water. No, that was Yon, the healer, walking with one hand on the bay's flank. Her voice was soft. Every word sounded like it had been chosen.