Elena looked at Samuel.
He considered lying.
“Yes.”
The reporter leaned forward.
“What did you do?”
“Put my rifle down.”
That disappointed him too.
“Why?”
Samuel smiled.
“Because I can count.”
Elena laughed.
The reporter tried again.
“Then they rewarded your kindness?”
Samuel’s expression changed.
“No.”
“But the bear hide—”
“Was a gift.”
“So a reward.”
“No.”
“What’s the difference?”
Samuel looked toward the well.
“A reward makes kindness a transaction.”
The young man waited.
Samuel continued.
“If I tell your readers that I gave a thirsty woman water and then three hundred people arrived to repay me, they’ll learn the wrong thing.”
“What should they learn?”
“That sometimes you give water and get nothing.”
The reporter wrote.
“Sometimes the person hates you anyway.”
He stopped writing.
“Sometimes helping someone costs you.”
Elena listened.
“Sometimes you’re still afraid.”
Samuel shrugged.
“You do it because they’re thirsty.”
The reporter looked dissatisfied.
“That’s not much of a story.”
Elena smiled.
“Then write about the dam.”
He did.
The article was surprisingly good.
Not perfect.
The headline still called Elena “The Woman Who Brought Three Hundred Riders.”
She hated it.
Samuel framed it.
Mostly to annoy her.
Samuel died in 1918.
Seventy-two years old.
Not dramatically.
Winter pneumonia.
Elena sat beside his bed.
His sister’s children, now adults, came.
Ortega’s grandchildren.
Neighbors.
People Samuel had known long enough to forgive badly repaired fences.
The final morning he woke briefly.
“Water.”
Elena stared.
Then laughed despite tears.
“Horse first.”
Samuel smiled.
Barely.
“Mean woman.”
She gave him the cup.
He drank.
Then looked toward the window.
“Ridge empty?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
Samuel’s breathing was shallow.
“Tired of visitors.”
Elena laughed.
He closed his eyes.
An hour later, he was gone.
The funeral included more people than Samuel would have wanted.
Apache families.
Mexican ranchers.
White settlers.
Surveyors.
A territorial judge.
Former soldiers.
Travelers who had used the trough.
No one pretended these people represented perfect harmony.
Some disliked one another.
Some had fought in courts.
Some carried old grievances into the same cemetery.
They came because Samuel belonged to overlapping pieces of their history.
Elena buried him beside Miriam.
That surprised people.
Someone asked whether it bothered her.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Elena looked at the two graves.