Chapter 8
What the Hillside Teaches
The hillside above the river was Naya's pharmacy, and she did not take Micah there lightly. She took him because Marta's hand had healed clean, because the feverfew was running low before the sickly season, and because β she admitted this only to herself, and only while braiding her hair that morning β she wished to see what kind of student a man became when he was not performing his goodness for a whole watching camp.
"Stay behind me on the path," she said at the trailhead. "Some of what grows here bites."
"Yes, ma'am," Micah said, with such grave obedience that the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
She showed him creosote, its leaves resinous and sharp-smelling after handling, good for drawing poisons from a wound. She showed him the gray rosettes of mullein for a cough, the bitter root her grandmother had prized for fevers, the prickly pear whose flesh cooled burns. He repeated each name twice, once in English and once in her language when she offered it, and he asked before he touched anything at all, even a leaf.
"This one?" he said, hand hovering.
"That one will blister you for your curiosity. Leave it preaching where it stands."
He withdrew the hand, solemn as a schoolboy, and something in his solemnity undid her. She laughed β surprised by the sound of it, which had become a rare visitor β and after a heartbeat, astonished, he laughed with her. It was the first time they had laughed together, alone, with no camp watching, and the ease of it ran through her like the river in a good year.
The rocks above the arroyo were loose where the trail crossed a slide of broken shale. Naya picked her way across by memory, skirt gathered, basket on her hip. Behind her she heard Micah's boots test each stone.
"The next stretch is poor footing," she called.
"Then may I take your hand, Naya?" He said it plainly, still six paces back. "Only till you're across. And only if you've a mind to allow it."
She turned. Every man she had ever known would have simply caught her arm, calling it gallantry, and expected thanks for the taking. Micah stood with his hand open and empty at his side, asking, and the asking was the whole of it β he would as cheerfully have watched her cross alone as helped her, because the choice was hers and he had arranged his pride so it could bear either answer.
"Yes," she said, and put her hand in his.
His palm was calloused and warm and careful. He did not squeeze. He did not pull her toward him at the far side, when momentum offered an excuse that a hundred dances are built upon. He steadied her across the sliding stones, released her the instant her boots found firm ground, and stepped back to the distance she preferred, as if the touch had been a tool, briefly borrowed and promptly returned.
"Thank you," she said, and meant considerably more than the words usually carried.
They gathered in comfortable quiet after that, and she found herself telling him things she had not planned β how her mission-school teacher, a gaunt Boston woman named Miss Hale, had taught her Latin names alongside the Apache ones and called it a sin to waste either; how a healer learned patience from plants because no root could be hurried out of the ground before its season. He listened the way he worked, completely, without interrupting to prove he already knew something similar, and she realized she had stopped measuring her words for safety, which she had done with nearly everyone for years.
"You talk like the valley is a person," Micah said.
"It has moods and memories same as you." She straightened with a full basket. "It forgives slower."
They were coming down at noon when the riders appeared on the river road β three townsfolk from Cedar Flats, hats in hand before they were even close, which told its own story. It was Tom Ellery the storekeeper, his brother, and a woman clutching a shawl though the day was hot.
"Miss Naya," Ellery said, and the Miss, from a Cedar Flats man, on Apache business, was nearly as notable as the fear in his face. "It's my boy. The fever won't break. Doc Purdy's gone to Tucson till Friday. My wifeβ" He swallowed. "We should've come yesterday. Pride kept us. Will you come?"
Naya was already untying the basket from her hip, handing it to Micah without a word, and the valley held its breath to see what the drifting scout would do.
Micah took the basket. "I'll saddle her mare," he said, "if she says she's going." He looked to Naya and nobody else. "And I'll ride with you if you want company on the road. Only if you want it."
The townsfolk stared at him as if he had spoken a foreign tongue β which, Naya thought, setting her foot in the stirrup her own way, unassisted, he very nearly had.