Caleb stepped forward and put out his hand, and after a moment Makya took it — forearm to forearm, the old grip, solemn as treaty.
"Tell the chief: tomorrow at sunrise, if Gray comes to my gate, he finds it open. No first shot from this ranch — not from his people, not from mine, not if Sutter himself rides in shooting. The truth does its own work or none of us deserves it to. And tell him — " Caleb glanced at Sihas, "— tell them both, this house is proud to stand with them. In whatever comes."
He worked late, after the council broke, making the ranch ready the way you'd make ready for a wedding or a hanging, the two being not so different in the labor they demanded: the yard raked clean, the gate hung true on its hinges and opened wide, the big table dragged out onto the porch where any man could see it plain. Delgado, brought word of the column by his guards, had to be told twice to stop shouting, and then went silent in his corner of the barn in a way Caleb liked even less than the shouting.
"Too quiet," Tomás said, stacking the rifles in the house, unloaded and broken open — "that one. He knows something, Caleb. Men like Delgado always know one thing more than they have told, and they spend it when the spending keeps them alive."
"Tomorrow," Caleb said. "Or tonight, if he asks for water. Men talk at water." He set the last rifle down gentle. "Tonight we sleep in turns. Tomorrow we find out what kind of officer the Army sent us."
Above the camp the stars came out over the tanks, and the water in the rock basins held them, doubled, perfectly still — a day's grace, nearly spent.
Chapter 15 — What Delgado Knew
Delgado asked for water at the second hour of the night watch, and Caleb brought it himself, a full canteen and the tin cup, and sat on the threshold stone where the prisoner could see his hands, and waited.
Delgado drank like the desert was still in him, wiped his mouth, and talked — the way men talk when what they've carried finally outweighs the fear of it.
"You got to understand about me first, Rourke. I ain't the worst of that outfit, whatever the Apache think. I held horses. I drove the wagon. That's my whole sin — horses and a wagon."
"You held horses at a massacre, Rufe," Caleb said mildly. "Go careful with the arithmetic. But go on."
Delgado's hands shook around the cup. "Sutter come to us in San Miguel in March. Hired five of us — me, the two Pruitts, Olan Beckwith, and a tracker named Kass who quit after. Sutter had the paymaster's route — he knew the escort would camp the second night at the springs below Box Canyon, knew they'd be tired, knew they'd post two sentries and sleep four. We waited on the rim two days. The covered wagon went in first, at dawn — cloth over rifles, like a settler family's goods, and the escort waved it through the mouth of the canyon because who fears a wagon — "
"Slow down," Caleb said. "In order. The box."
"I'm getting to the box." Delgado drank again. "It was over quick. I've heard shooting all my life, and it was still quick. Sutter took the strongbox off the pay wagon. Carried it out of the canyon, him and Olan, while the rest of us — did the other work. There was a place he'd picked, by the mouth of the canyon, where a flat-topped boulder stands to the north. They dug at the foot of it, not deep, saddle-blanket deep, and laid the box in, and over it they set three flat stones, one atop the other like a little cairn, and scattered dirt and brush so it reads as nothing. Three flat stones, Rourke. I can see them plain as I see you."
"Why bury it at all?" Tomás asked, come up silent behind Caleb's shoulder. "Why not ride it out?"
"Because Sutter's no fool," Delgado said. "Ride out with an Army strongbox and you're a dead man the day anyone counts. Bury it, put the blame on the Apache — there's a war scare, troops in the field, and amid the noise the syndicate buys the crossing at Coyote Tanks, and when the country's quiet — " he made a small, helpless gesture, "— you dig up your retirement. The box holds the payroll, sure, but it holds the paymaster's ledger and his brass seal too. Sutter said burn those, the first night. Olan said they were in the box's tray and the box was iron-bound and it could wait, and Sutter let it wait. That seal and that ledger — if them things ever sit on an officer's table, Rourke, your Apache are washed clean, because the Army accused them of stealing what was never in their hands."
"It was in the ground," Caleb said. "And Sutter means to keep it there."
"Sutter means to move it," Delgado said, and his voice dropped and he looked past Caleb into the dark, toward the camp. "It's the part that's been eating me. He sent word by me, before your Apache caught me — the order to the Pruitts: on the second night, they dig it up and carry it to the line camp on San Pedro creek and sink it in the well, with the ledger and seal burned first. Rourke." The cup rattled against his teeth. "Count it. I left Sutter four nights past. The second night from then — the night they're coming with shovels — is tonight. While we've been sitting here drinking water, they're walking in the dark to that cairn."
The barn was very quiet. Out at the tanks a horse stamped once and settled.
"If you knew this four days," Caleb said at last, very level, "why is it coming out of you at the second hour of the last night there is?"