She was gentler than Ayanna, her eyes wide and skittish. She led Luke to the camp's secondary well, a deep hole lined with stones that had begun to collapse. "It is dangerous," Sani whispered. "The earth falls in. I cannot go down there. " Luke looked at the well.
It was a death trap. If the walls gave way while someone was at the bottom, they would be buried alive. "Do you have rope? " Luke asked. Sani nodded and brought him a coil of braided rawhide. Luke tied it around his waist and handed the end to Sani and two other women who had gathered.
"Hold this tight. If I shout, you pull. Do not hesitate. " He lowered himself into the darkness. It was cool and smelled of wet earth. He worked for hours, wedging flat stones into the gaps, shoring up the crumbling sides.
It was delicate, dangerous work. His hands, calloused and bleeding from the wood chopping, had to be precise. When he climbed out, covered in mud, Sani was waiting with a gourd of water. She handed it to him, her fingers brushing his. "Thank you," she said softly.
Luke drank, the cool water sliding down his throat like a blessing. "It is fixed, Sani, but tell the children to stay away from the edge. " Sani smiled, a fleeting, shy thing. "You have good hands, Carver, for a white man. " The next day, he was sent to help a widow named De Sun. She was trying to build a stone windbreak for her wikiup. The stones she had chosen were massive, river-smooth boulders that weighed as much as a calf.
Luke moved them. He set his shoulder against the rock, gritting his teeth, driving with his legs. He sweated and strained, moving rocks that would have taken the widow a week to drag. When he finished, De Sun did not thank him with words. She simply handed him a piece of dried venison, the first meat he had eaten in 10 days.
Luke ate it slowly, savoring the salt and the gaminess. Then there was Chee, the grandmother. She was trying to drag a bundle of firewood with a rope tied in a clumsy knot that kept slipping. Luke watched her struggle for a moment, then stepped forward. "Let me," he said.
Chee glared at him. "I do not need help. " "The knot is wrong," Luke said. "It will slip every time the wood hits a rock. " He knelt and re-tied the rope, fashioning a timber hitch that tightened under tension but released easily when slackened. "Try it now," Luke said. Chee pulled.
The wood followed obediently. She looked at the knot, then at Luke. She grunted. "The white man knows ropes," she muttered. "Perhaps he is not entirely useless. " It was a small victory, but it mattered.
Luke realized that Nalin was testing him. Yes, but she was also weaving him into the fabric of their survival. He was becoming necessary, and in becoming necessary, he was becoming less of a ghost and more of a man. One late afternoon, the heat broke as the sun dipped below the canyon rim, bathing the camp in a violet twilight. Luke was sitting near the corral, mending a bridle with an awl he had been given.
A commotion near Sani's wikiup caught his attention. He looked up to see Sani weeping, rocking back and forth. Her son's cough had turned into a terrifying, barking spasm that echoed off the canyon walls. The women abandoned their tasks. They moved like a single organism, converging on Sani's shelter.