"My people are dying of thirst, Wade Callaway." Slowly, the drought's taken two streams already, and a third's going this season if the rains don't come. My father spent a year watching his own people weaken in front of him, and not being able to do one thing about it. A man like that doesn't have room left over to trust easily. Every choice he makes now, he's making with an entire tribe's life balanced on it.
Wade sat with that a moment, thought about his own well, about the cavern. Two years and a lucky accident away. He find out I know something about that, Wade said slowly. Might change how careful he's feeling. Autumn Sky's eyes sharpened, fever tired, but suddenly very alert.
Know something about what? Wade almost told her right there. Felt the words rising up. Ready? Then he thought better of it.
Some things a man learns are better shown than said, especially to a chief who already didn't trust him. and especially when the telling might sound coming from an exhausted stranger at 2:00 in the morning. Exactly like the kind of desperate lie a guilty man tells to save his own skin. "Nothing yet," he said instead. "Get some rest." "You're going to need the strength, and so am I likely, before these three days are through."
She studied him a moment longer, clearly unconvinced, clearly filing the moment away to return to later. But the fever pulled at her, and her eyes slid shut again before she could push any further. Wade sat back in his chair. Outside, the fires of 200 warriors burned low and steady against the dark, and somewhere out past all of it. A truth he'd buried for five years was waiting on him to finally go dig it up.
20 warriors stayed posted around the cabin when the rest of the party withdrew a short distance off. Not exactly jailers, not in so many words, but their eyes followed Wade every single time he crossed his own yard toward the well. And there was no mistaking what would happen if he tried to ride out past the tree line uninvited. He drew a bucket, drank deep, let the cold water clear ahead that badly needed clearing. What does a man with nothing give a chief who already has everything he needs except trust? gold.
He didn't have jewels he'd never once owned. His whole cabin held nothing but tools, a couple of worn blankets, and just enough food stores to carry him through one more hard season if the rains never came. And then he remembered two years back chasing a spooked horse through rock country south of here, he'd found a crack in the stone he'd almost ridden straight past without noticing. followed it on foot, curious, half expecting nothing. And on the other side of that narrow crack water, not a trickle, not some hopeful seep that would dry up by August,