Just put it in front of him. He ate it. Said nothing for a moment. Then where'd you learn to cook over an open fire like that? Where did you learn to track in the dark?
Fair point. She almost smiled. Not quite, but close. He showed her the weather signals he read from the ridge. The way a certain color in the western sky meant weather coming.
The way the birds moved differently the hour before a pressure change. The way the horse's ears positioned in relation to the wind, and she showed him things he hadn't known he didn't know. She crouched by the dry creek bed one afternoon and pressed her palm flat against the earth and stayed still for a long moment. Then water 30 ft down. Moving east, Jack looked at the ground, looked at her.
How temperature. The soil here is 2° cooler. There's a a vein below. She stood up, brushed her hand against her leg. If you dug here instead of the well, you'd have water by October.
He stared at the patch of ground, then at her. She walked back toward the cabin and didn't make a thing of it. He stood there a while longer, just looking at the ground 30 ft moving east. He'd been out here 3 years and he'd never known that. The evenings Jack wouldn't have said it that way.
He wouldn't have named it at all because naming things made them more real, and more real meant more to lose. But the evenings were when the heat finally let go and the desert turned colors it didn't show during the day. Purple and rose and the deep orange that wasn't quite sunset but wasn't afternoon anymore. When the work was done and the cooling air came through the canyon, and there was nothing required of either of them for a little while, they sat outside by the fire pit, not always talking, sometimes just present. He learned the way she sat, cross-legged, back straight, hands in her lap, watching the fire with an expression that was calm on the surface and working hard underneath.
He learned the sound she made when she was about to say something that mattered. A small pause in her breathing, barely there. She learned his, too. He knew because she started using it against him. "You're going to say we should go to sleep," she said one night before he'd said anything.
"Was I Yes, you do that when you don't want to keep thinking about something. You make practical suggestions. He looked at her. That's a very long analysis of a man you've known less than 2 weeks. I'm a quick study, apparently.
She looked back at the fire. What were you thinking about? He was quiet for a moment. This felt like the edge of something, like the top of a ridge where you could see both sides. Coyote Valley.
He said she didn't react visibly, but that pause in her breathing, he heard it. 76, he said. Autumn. I was hired to guide a cavalry unit through Apache territory. Southern route Fitch's map.
I'd done it before. Different units, different seasons. I knew the ground. What happened? He kept his eyes on the fire.
We came into the valley from the north. I was reading the trail and I started seeing sign that didn't match what I expected. He paused. The tracks were wrong. Too many of them, too small.
Children and women traveling, not fighters. They'd camped there recently, maybe 2 days before, moving east away from the fighting. Saiia said nothing. Just listened. I was about to say something, Jack said.
I was turning around, too. He stopped, tried again. The order came before I got the words out. And it moved fast the way things moved fast when men were scared and armed and pointed in a direction. I set my rifle down.
I refused, but by then it was. He paused. Already silenced. My brother came to pull me back from the front of the column, Jack said. He was three positions behind me.
He caught a rock. Flying debris from the canyon wall where someone was trying to use the rifle. Not aimed at him. Just he exhaled. He was just in the wrong place.
The fire cracked, sent a spray of sparks up into the dark. I carried him out, Jack said. Took an hour, maybe more. He was trying to say something the whole time. I couldn't always hear.
But near the end, I heard two words. A pause, he said. Find Voss. Say his eyes moved to him. Sharp.
I didn't know what it meant, Jack said. I'd heard Voss's name once, twice. Just a merchant in redstone. I didn't know the connection. Didn't know what Dany had found or how he'd found it or what he'd been trying to tell me.
He turned to look at her. I still don't know all of it. She held his gaze for a long moment. But you think you're about to find out, I think, he said. Someone is making sure of it.
She looked back at the fire. The flames were low now, settling into coals. Red and steady. My father lost three people in Coyote Valley, she said. The words landed quietly.
Not an accusation, not forgiveness, just truth. I know, Jack said. He described the soldier who refused, she said. The one who set his rifle down. I was 16 when he told me.
I remember thinking, "One man setting down a weapon doesn't stop the ones who didn't. I thought it was a useless gesture. " Jack said nothing. "I don't think that now," she said. He looked at her. Her face and the fire light was steady.