an entire hidden cavern of it, clear as glass, fed by some underground river running down off the distant mountains to the north. He'd kept it secret ever since, because in a country like this one, telling anybody about a water source that size was the same as handing over your own life along with it.
He'd never told a living soul. Not Dobs, not anyone. But he was starting to understand, standing there in his own yard with 20 Apache warriors watching his every move, that some secrets are only worth keeping right up until the exact moment they become worth far more. given freely to somebody who needs them more than you do. Except it wasn't that simple. It never is.
Not really. Not when. The thing you're about to give away is the one piece of ground you've built your whole survival on top of. Because if he told them, if he actually led 200 Apache warriors and their chief straight to the one secret that had kept him alive through five dry summers, there was no taking that back afterward. No changing his mind on day four.
Water like that once shared belonged to everyone who knew about it forever. The same way a secret told out loud stops being a secret the second the words leave your mouth. He sat on the edge of the well that whole long afternoon turning it over. What if they didn't believe him even then? What if Grey Talon looked at that hidden cavern and saw only a trick, a trap, a white man's clever way of buying trust cheap?
What if Wade gave up the only real thing he owned in this world and it still somehow wasn't enough? Then it isn't enough, he told himself finally. And that's that. A man does the right thing because it's right, not because he's certain it'll pay him back. Sarah used to say something close to that once, a long time ago.
Back when he still let himself remember the sound of her voice clearly. Doing right by people isn't a wager, Wade. It isn't supposed to come with odds. He hadn't thought of that particular memory in longer than he wanted to admit. It felt strangely like a kind of permission.
He needed to speak to the chief again sooner than three full days if he could manage it. He found the warrior who seemed to be running the watch—older weathered a scar cutting clean across his left cheek and said as plainly as he knew how, "I need to see gray talon. Got something to show him, but I have to take him there myself. Can't just describe it. The warrior's face didn't move a muscle.
"Chief returns at dawn." "It's important." "You will wait,", the warrior said in a tone that made very clear there was no second version of that sentence worth arguing with. Wade sighed and let it go. Some men you push and some men you simply don't.