Like it had already been decided and maybe it had been without anyone saying so. Somewhere in the days of routines and shared meals and firelight, "We prepare," he said. He showed them where everything was. Not just because they'd been living there for over a week and probably had a right to know, but because preparation that only lives in one person's head is preparation with a single point of failure. The rifle.
Two positions. Near the door and the smaller one he kept under the bench near the window. The supply of cartridges in the tin box on the top shelf. Way to bar the door from inside. Old beam.
Slots worn into the frame from years of use. The cellar hatch under the kitchen rug. Narrow, dark, cold. Not a good place. But a place Nayeli listened to all of this with that same focused attention, filing, categorizing.
Tsula listened differently. Her eyes moved around the room as he talked and he could almost see her mapping it. Overlaying what he was describing onto the physical space, turning it into something three-dimensional and usable. "If there are six," Tsula said when he finished. Her voice was quiet and precise.
"Six or seven." "If there are six, and one of them positions at the barn, one at the east side, that leaves four for the front." He looked at her. She met his eyes without flinching. "I've thought about this kind of thing before," she said simply.
Not as an apology, apparently. "Our band was attacked twice in two years. Before this," a pause, "after the first time I started thinking about it." He nodded. "You're right about the barn," he said.
"That's the obvious move. Draw me off. Get me split, so you don't go to the barn, so I don't go to the barn, unless unless the horses" a pause. "Yes," she said quietly. "Unless the horses."
He looked at the floor for a moment. Rex, Clara. He'd had Rex for six years. Rex had an opinion about everything and communicated it clearly, and was genuinely difficult in cold weather, and had still walk through a blizzard without complaint the day he needed him to. "We'll see," Hadley said.
The next morning Malone came, not in the dark, not with weapons raised. He came at mid-morning, alone, riding easy. One hand visible on the reins and one resting on his thigh, like a neighbor paying a call. Hadley saw him coming from a quarter mile, was on the porch by the time Malone reached the yard. Behind him, the cabin door was closed.
The window on the east side showed nothing, but he knew Nayeli was at the window. Malone pulled up his horse 20 yards out. 47 years old, and looked at thick to build, the kind of weathered that comes from decades of outdoor work and not much else in the way of softening. Gray at the temples, a face that had learned to be pleasant as a strategy rather than a feeling. His eyes were pale and very still.