Ayanna was there and Nalin and Chee. Luke watched from a distance. He expected a ritual, some chanting or shaking of rattles. Instead, what he saw was a quiet, profound tenderness. Nalin knelt and placed her hands on the boy's chest.
Ayanna brought a bowl of steaming water infused with crushed creosote and held it under the boy's nose, urging him to breathe the steam. Sani held the boy's hand, singing a low, repetitive melody that sounded like the wind in the grass. Another woman brought a cool, wet cloth and wiped the boy's face. They formed a wall of bodies around the child, a shield of maternal will against the darkness. Luke stopped working.
He sat there, the awl loose in his hand, and felt a lump form in his throat. He remembered the night Sarah died. He remembered the doctor in town shaking his head, the cold sterility of the room. He remembered the feeling of being utterly alone in the universe. These women had nothing.
They were starving, hunted, and living in the dust, but they had this. They had a bond that was stronger than iron. They shared the grief, just as they shared the food. He looked at Ayanna. Her face was softened by the firelight, the hardness gone.
She looked young and scared, just a woman trying to keep a child from slipping away. For the first time since his capture, Luke did not see them as Apache. He did not see them as the enemy. He saw them simply as people clinging to one another on the edge of the world, and he realized, with a jolt of painful clarity, that he was the intruder here. He was the alien.
That night, the wind picked up, moaning through the crevices of the rocks. Luke lay on his pallet, staring up at the slice of stars visible between the canyon walls. A coyote howled in the distance, a lonely, shivering sound. Sleep would not come. The scene with the sick boy had unlocked a door in his mind he usually kept bolted shut.
He closed his eyes and he was back in the tent, the canvas flapping in the wind, the smell of cigar smoke and whiskey. General Crook was tracing a line on a map with a gloved finger. "They are using these canyons to move between the reservations and Mexico," the general said. "We need to close the door. " Young Will, Luke's brother, was leaning over the table, his face flushed with excitement. "We can clean them out, General.
If we hit the water holes, they will have nowhere to go. " And Luke? Luke was standing there, silent. He knew the land. He knew where the water was. He knew the hidden trails.
"Carver," the general asked, "is this the route? " Luke saw his own hand reaching out. He saw his finger tapping a spot on the map, a spot that looked exactly like the shape of this canyon. "Yes, sir," Luke said. "That is the place. If you block the southern pass, you trap them. " Luke opened his eyes, gasping as if he had been underwater.
The shame was a physical pain, a gnawing knot in his gut. He had drawn the map. He had pointed the finger. He had sent the soldiers who broke Nolan's leg, who killed Sunny's husband, who made Ayanna a widow. He looked across the sleeping camp.
The fire had burned down to embers. He wanted to get up and run. He wanted to flee into the dark and never look back, but he knew he couldn't. He was bound here, not by Nolan's ropes, but by the weight of what he had done. A few nights later, the sound of a drumbeat woke him.