They left before sunset.
Mara rode a gray mare with black stockings and a scar across its shoulder. She carried a rifle in a leather scabbard, two canteens, dried meat, a blanket, and almost nothing else.
Elias had packed enough for three days.
Mara removed half of it.
“You don’t need this.”
“That’s coffee.”
“You do not need coffee.”
“Now we have our first serious disagreement.”
She tossed the coffee sack back into his saddlebag.
“Fine. Die carrying it.”
They rode northwest beneath the falling sun.
The camp disappeared behind them.
For two hours, neither spoke.
The land changed as they climbed.
Cottonwoods gave way to juniper. Red sand became broken stone. Shadows filled the canyon cuts long before darkness touched the higher cliffs.
Elias had crossed difficult country before.
Mara moved through it differently.
She seemed to read signs invisible to him.
A snapped stem.
A disturbed patch of dust.
Birds rising from a distant slope.
Once she lifted her hand and stopped him.
“What?”
She pointed.
Elias saw nothing.
Then a flicker of movement appeared along a ridge half a mile away.
A horse.
Then another.
“Someone following?”
“Watching.”
“Railroad?”
“Maybe.”
Elias’s hand drifted toward his revolver.
Mara noticed.
“If you shoot at everything watching you, the mountains will become very loud.”
“I prefer knowing what’s behind me.”
“I prefer knowing what’s ahead.”
“That why you rejected me?”
“You were standing ahead of me.”
He glanced sideways.
She was smiling.
Only slightly.
They made camp after dark beneath an overhanging shelf of stone.
No fire.
Mara insisted.
Elias ate dried venison and drank water.
He stared mournfully at his coffee pot.
“You cannot be serious,” Mara whispered.
“I’m grieving.”
“For coffee?”
“For civilization.”
She looked around at the moonlit canyon.
“You call the thing building railroads through people’s homes civilization?”
The humor left him.
“No.”
“Then choose your words carefully.”
Elias nodded.
“That was poorly said.”
Mara seemed surprised by the immediate apology.
“You admit mistakes quickly.”
“I make enough of them to practice.”
She studied him.
“What did you think today?”
“About what?”
“When you saw the women.”
He leaned back against the stone.
“You want the polite answer?”
“No.”
“I thought your people were trying to trade a woman for access to the canyon.”
Her jaw tightened.
“I know.”
“And I was angry.”
“At us.”
“At the idea.”
“That matters?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elias looked toward Bishop, sleeping nearby.
“My mother was married at sixteen.”
Mara waited.
“To a man twice her age,” Elias continued. “Not my father. First husband. Her family had debts. He had money.”
Mara’s expression softened.
“She left him?”
“Eventually.”
“What happened?”
“He broke her arm.”
The words sat between them.
“She waited until he fell asleep. Took his horse and sixty dollars from his desk.”
Mara almost smiled.
“I like your mother.”
“So did my father. Met her two years later.”
“She chose him?”
“Every day for twenty-eight years.”
Mara looked toward the stars.
“That is different.”
“From what?”
“The way men speak of women in towns.”
“You’ve spent time in towns?”
“Enough.”
“Which ones?”
“Brennan. Santa Fe. Denver once.”
“That’s more traveling than most ranchers I know.”
“My father believed knowing two worlds might keep me alive in both.”
“Did it?”
Her face became unreadable.
“He died trying.”
Elias did not ask how.
Not yet.
After a while Mara said, “What happened today was not an old marriage ceremony.”
“I suspected that.”
“It was Nita’s test.”
“Of me?”
“Of all of us.”
Elias turned.
“How?”
“The women volunteered.”
“All twenty-two?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever rode with you might not return.”
Elias looked at her differently now.
“You volunteered before knowing me.”
“I knew what you carried.”
“Then why the performance?”
“Nita wanted to know whether you saw us as people.”
“And if I had chosen immediately?”
“No one would have gone.”
Elias laughed under his breath.
“So the only correct choice was refusing the choice.”
“Perhaps.”
“That woman is terrifying.”
“Yes.”
Silence returned.
Then Elias asked, “Why did you volunteer?”
Mara’s fingers tightened around the edge of her blanket.
“My father’s name was Tomas Red Bird.”
Elias waited.
“He worked as an interpreter between our council and the territorial office. Two years ago, he discovered boundary markers had been moved.”
Elias sat straighter.
“He confronted the land agent.”
“He disappeared on his way home.”
The night seemed suddenly colder.
“Was his body found?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I do not need sorry.”
“What do you need?”
Her eyes found his.
“The truth.”
