Dashka knows the ground east of the creek. The seep is in my country, your country, mine. Then that look again quick across all five of them. Tavana's eyes flicking from Yon to Dashka to me and something closing in all their faces at once like shutters before a storm. Ya went quiet.
Didn't explain. Didn't need to. I had just walked into the edge of something and been gently firmly turned around. My country. Her country. as if the desert had been cut into pieces and handed out.
I turned the sorrel toward the hills because I was out of water and pride doesn't drink. The red rocks were there. Of course, they were a steep in a cliff no wider than a door. Cool water dripping down green moss into a basin the size of a wash pan. 2 hours almost to the minute. We drank in turns, the horses drank, and the sun went down behind the hills in a long red smear that made every face look like it had been painted for war.
We made a cold camp, no fire. I sat with my back to a boulder and the Winchester across my knees in Tavana, 5 ft away, cuffed, watching the stars come out one at a time like they were checking whether it was safe. You will not sleep tonight, Marshal. Didn't plan on it. Good.
Neither will we. Somewhere in the dark, a nighthawk. Then nothing. I bent and checked the little twoshot derringer in my right boot, the way I did every night. Habit.
My first teacher in this work, a hard old sheriff in Mosquet Flat, used to say a man's last gun should be the one nobody remembers he has. So I kept it where nobody looked. Then I straightened up and rested my eyes on the ridge. I must have rested them a little too long because when I opened them, Kane was standing over me with a rifle. Not my rifle.
Mine was still on my knees. This was a sharps old welloiled. The barrel wrapped in a strip of greasy hide to keep the shine off. She held it the way a person holds a thing they have held 10,000 times. Easy.
Final. The muzzle 6 in from my breastbone. I didn't move. You don't when it's that close. Where'd that come?
The rocks. Her voice was flat. We have guns in many rocks, Marshal. Did you think we would hang on that tree for nothing? We knew where they would take us.
We knew where we would come back. You hid weapons before they caught you. Before, after. Always. A shrug that didn't move the rifle a hair.
This is our land. Behind her, four shapes in the starlight. Nobody else moving. Tavana still sitting with her cuffed hands in her lap. Calm like a woman watching weather.
So pull it. I could. I know. You put iron on my sister. I did.
You read a paper from a dead man and believed it over five living women. I believed it enough to make sure. That's different. Kane's jaw worked. The muzzle stayed steady.
And I thought about Mesquite Flat 10 years back and a crowd with a rope and how I had stood in front of a jail house door with an empty shotgun and told 40 men that nobody hangs before a judge says so. And how my knees had been water the whole time and how they were water. Now you want to kill me can you'll have your reasons. But hear me first. That paper says five Apache women killed the Pickering Boys.
I've been on those boys trail 3 weeks and everything on it was staged. The tracks, the arrows left in the wagon bed like somebody wanted them found. The cargo gone, but the mules turned loose. Nobody who lives off this country turns loose good mules. Somebody playing at it does.
Silence. I don't think you did it. I think somebody wants the territory to think you did. And the only thing standing between you and every bounty man between here and Tucson is a federal badge that says otherwise. Mine.
So you can shoot it or you can use it. For a long time, nothing happened. The Nighthawk again, the bay shifting its weight. Then Kane turned the sharps around in her hands. Stalk first and held it out to me.
I didn't take it right away. I looked at her. She looked back. Her eyes were wet and furious and steady all at once. "Now you have two rifles, Marshal.
And you know we could have kept this one. Remember that next time you read a paper?" I took the sharps, laid it beside the Winchester. My hands weren't quite steady. I let her see that it seemed fair.
Tavana rose, walked over, held out her cuffed wrist to me without a word. I looked at the iron a long time. If I take these off, you ride with me. You hunt Dupre with me my way. We take them alive if they'll let us.
We bring them to a judge. No knives in the dark. No settling scores on the trail. And if they will not let us, then I'll be the one who decides that. Not you.
You ask a great deal. I'm offering a great deal, a federal witness. My word on paper. That's the only thing that makes you anything but wanted women for the rest of your lives. Her eyes went past me to Kane.
To Yon Dashka, Isha. That silent passing again. Five minds turning like one key in one lock. Agreed. Your way.
A pause until your way gets my sisters killed. That's fair. It is not fair. It is only honest. I unlocked the cuffs.
They fell open in my palm, still warm from her skin. She rubbed her wrists once, the same hard rub as before, and her fingers drifted for half a second to that little pouch at her throat. Then away. Marshal Halleran. Boon.
Marshal Halleran. Firm. Not yet. There is a thing you should understand before mourning. The men who hung us did not want us dead.