Eli Booker, May's husband, a mountain of a man whose skin gleamed like polished walnut. He carried a bucket in each hand as if they weighed nothing. "Welcome, miss," he said warmly. "Don't mind my wife. She scares rattlesnakes for breakfast."
May swatted at him, chuckling, and turned to Yanni. "Come along, child. Let's get you some water before you melt." As Yanni followed, she caught sight of another figure lounging near the barn. A young man in a wide hat, plucking lazy notes from a battered guitar.
Tomas Rivera, she later learned, a Mexican drifter who sang more than he spoke. He raised his hand in greeting, the melody twining with the hum of the windmill. Inside the house smelled of flour, wood smoke, and coffee gone cold. The scent alone felt like a kind of peace. May poured her a tin cup of water.
"You can call me May. We keep our own rhythm here. You'll find it soon enough." Yanni nodded, murmuring, "Thanks." Her voice came out hoarse from days of silence.
That night, she lay on a narrow cot in the small room off the kitchen. Through the window, she saw the vast sky spread like black velvet, stars sharp as needles. She thought of the town's people's laughter, of the cruel words that had followed her all the way to Dry Creek, and how Alden Ror hadn't asked a single one. The next morning began before sunrise. Roosters crowed, hooves stamped the dry ground.
Yanni joined May at the stove. Her movements quick and precise. No one told her what to do. She simply knew how to work, and work became her refuge. She scrubbed, carried, mended, and stayed out of sight.
Alden kept his distance at first. He was a man who spoke less than the wind, but noticed everything. When he passed the kitchen window, she saw the way he slowed just slightly, as if listening to her hum while she worked. Days turned into weeks. June, ever fearless, followed Yanni everywhere, trailing her shadow through the yard.
One evening, when the chores were done, the girl asked shyly, "Do you know any songs at Yanni?" Yanni hesitated. Then, with a voice low and uncertain at first, she began to sing an Apache, an old lullaby her mother once hummed when the rain came. The melody carried beyond the porch, over the corral, and into the falling dusk. Conversation in the bunk house faded.
Even the horses turned their heads. When the song ended, only the sound of the wind remained. June giggled softly, pressing her small hands together as if she'd caught something precious. From the shadows near the barn, Alden watched. For the first time in a long while, the weight of drought and loss lifted from his chest.
The ranch that had long felt hollow seemed somehow to breathe again. Summer dragged on like an endless breath. Each morning began in silence, the kind of silence that only the desert could hold, where even birds dared not waste their songs. The drought had stripped the land bare. Yet somehow life at Coyote Bend Ranch began to find rhythm again.